[Old North State]

I can agree with most of this except N0. 40,
Most would be better off if they stopped obsessing about Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the president and focused on their own financial mismanagement.
No matter what you do, if the government destroys the value of the money that underlies financial instruments, you are sunk. That is the great ‘black swan’ of investing.
What about gold? The government has confiscated it before(1933) and will do it again if it suits them.

[ckilmer]

Yeah, I agree about fiat money. Under normal circumstances the fed would be destroying the value of the dollar by printing money.

but....

these are not normal circumstances.

the US has just entered the first phase of a paradigm shift in the oil patch. The result is that the US will be energy independent in a decade or so. Further the value of oil/gas deposits in the ground is more than 100 years supply or say 100 trillion dollars.

That’s a lot of new collateral/backstop for the dollar.

The consequence is that the borrowing is not going to be fatal. In fact, over the next couple years the dollar is going to put in a low and start rising against other currencies.

Why? All oil independent countries have hard currencies. Oil backing has the same effect on currency that gold backing does.

Even incompetent over spending socialist governments like the one in Brazil get by because they are also energy independent.