Posted on 09/06/2013 7:18:25 PM PDT by marktwain
It'll be real easy to consifcate the money with the "blame the old geezers" mentality in the US. That money (except the Roth) hasn't been taxed. All that needs to be done is to raise the tax rate on money taken out of IRAs.
I wouldn't have any money in a big bank, especially one that is a too big to fail, because those will be the ones that will fail. Find a credit union to keep your money, they are insured by a different agency than FDIC, and are in much better condition.
And in a couple of years, it would probably be best to have your money outside the system, in your mattress.
I would not keep more than a few thousand in physical cash. Cash is hardest hit by inflation, and is subject to a change of the currency.
No answer is perfect. Having some assets in another country might be helpful, but it is becoming harder and harder to do.
I'm not familiar enough with history to know for sure, but my impression is that when there were bank panics and the government didn't act against them, many people whose life-savings investments were suddenly exposed as worthless got wiped out but money ended up in the hands of people who could restart the economy in the aftermath.
The problem with depressions and recessions of 1929 and afterward is that the government has required that money which could be used to restart the economy must instead be used to prop up the appearance of value in people's investments. While protecting people's savings from being wiped out might superficially seem like a good thing, it fundamentally doesn't work. If a factory can't afford to buy the raw materials necessary to make product, having it sold off to someone with the capital to buy those raw materials might not seem ideal, but letting the factory stay barely afloat despite its inability to buy raw materials won't really help anyone. If the owner's credit is sufficiently overextended that he can't afford raw materials, the only way the factory will become productive is if it is sold. The sooner that happens, the sooner everyone can get to work.
It's unfortunate that the only way a crash can happen without the government blocking the steps necessary for recovery will be if the crash, and the recovery steps, are both sufficiently large that the government is powerless to do anything about them. The effects of such a crash on things like infrastructure maintenance and security are apt to result in damage there which could impede speedy economic recovery even if it should otherwise be possible.
Every investment (or even savings account) you’ve made is someone else’s debt; if their debt is cancelled, so is your investment.
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