Find out what this multi-millionaire wrote me about where he believes our economy is headed. Over the last ten years his predictions of the market have come to pass. This is GREAT insight as to what is coming and on the next letter he wrote me will be even greater insight on how you can position yourself whether it be job wise or investment wise for opportunity. Please share this with everyone you know that you think will benefit from this.
Hi Mike,
Yep,
The War Generation, my grandparents generation, set up the system so that their retirement and government benefits were assured on the backs of future generations. Then the silent generation, my parents generation, came along and spent their years supporting the system that their parents had set up. Then my generation, the baby boom generation, came along and had Utopian ideas and lots of "compassion". So they decided that all the social programs ought to be expanded and extended to able bodied individuals who didn't want to work along with illegal aliens that didn't pay into the systems but were entitled to draw out from them. So my generation's outstanding achievement has been that now we have more than 50% of the population not paying any taxes at all, calling for higher taxes on the rich and essentially having no skin in the game. In fact a good percentage of these do not work, receive tax rebates for taxes they never paid, receive food stamps and welfare checks and contribute nothing to the nations welfare. Of course my generation was too smart to pay any attention to the economics of a socialist state. Tax the rich they said, they can pay for our compassionate utopia. So their second greatest achievement will have been to bankrupt themselves, their cities, states and national government all in the name of compassion.
I spent my youth trying to communicate to my generation that they were heading off a cliff. It wore me out because such thought were considered to be ridiculous. After all, they never heard of the economic crises we were heading into from the likes of Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings or any of the other left wing media. My generation believed in magic, figured that everything was possible, everything would eventually be free and hey, if it didn't work out: What the hey? Your generation would pick up the tab. So they lived on credit card debt, saved a fraction of their earnings in 401k plans and presumed that the government would be able to take anything else they needed from your generation, in the form of higher taxes. What they didn't realize however, was that it wouldn't be your generation that would pay their bill, it would be them. They will pay the bill with their retirement funds that collapse, higher taxes, more money extraction schemes for taxing and regulatory authorities and less government assistance. They will discover, way too late in life, to make up for their blind mistakes, that the majority of them will not be able to retire like their parents did because all the social plans they put into effect will bankrupt this country just when it is their turn to retire.
At any rate, when no one would listen because my generation was too busy building a utopia with money they assumed someone else would have to pay, I decided that I would have to go it alone. As Margaret Thatcher once remarked "Socialism works just great until you run out of other peoples money". Well, we are at that point where we are running out of other peoples money and so now its time for my generation and former generations to pay their bill themselves. I got busy when I was young and worked twice as hard as the rest of my generation. I didn't live on credit so I had to work that much harder to make up for the difference between the realities we were facing and the decisions that my generation was making. The harder I worked, the higher my taxes increased but I continued on anyway presuming that by the time it was my turn to retire, this country would be in the midst of an economic crisis, pension funds and social security would be defaulted upon and my generation, along with the generations that came before it, would be crying that they were somehow cheated because they were having to pick up their own tab.
So this is my future forecast: Beginning this year and continuing on for the next five years or so, most of my generation and the generations that came before them will loose their jobs and most of their life's savings. The war generation is virtually gone so they got away with it. The silent generation's pension plans will go broke, along with possibly their social security checks either being cut or defaulted upon, their banks will close and the FDIC insurance will be defaulted upon, in one way or another, so they will feel cheated and destitute. The baby boom generation did not have pension plans and so had to save for their own retirement via IRA's and 401K plans. When those are wiped out they too will be destitute and will be complaining that they did everything right and now when its their turn to retire, they are being cheated. Your generation will complain that they never had the opportunities that former generations had and so you have been cheated. Government will be forced to lay off employees that thought their jobs were secure and to add insult to injury, their lucrative government pension plans will default and so government workers will feel cheated. Finally the welfare generations will have their freebies cut and so they will be angry and feel cheated. Oh did I mention, those who were prudent enough to see what was heading our way and so spent their lives working and saving to prepare for the crisis, they will be vilified by the press and calls will be made to take their assets and redistribute them to all the hurting and suffering victims out there. So, the prudent will especially feel cheated. All in all, everyone will feel cheated, depressed and angry.
In the meantime states, municipalities and Washington will attempt to make up for declining revenues by coming up with ever more draconian and clever schemes to remove whats left in their citizens wallets. All, of course, in the name of the public protection and good. Washington will try to use the crisis to gain more power via false economic fixes. However, I don't think they will have as much success as did the Roosevelt administration given that there will be 350 million angry people on the net watching their every move and beginning to understand how they have been played by the power elite. So, I project that we will have a bull market in scepticism, distrust and anger at politicians of all stripes.
Your generation will feel cheated for the next five to ten years or so but in the end, your generation will have heroes that work hard to set the economy on a sound footing again and if their is any poetic justice, your generation will likely achieve an economic climate that allows you to retire where your parents will have been, or so they will believe, "cheated" out of their retirement. I have had to spend my life paying for the foolishness of my generation as well and the previous two generations. Your generation however may be more fortunate because after this crisis is over, your generation may be able to start out anew with a clean economic slate and without having the burden of paying for all of the foolish programs and mistakes of prior generations. So that's my rant - you can now go back to work.
Sincerely,
P.S. You may want to print this out and review it each year for the next five years. It may help you to understand the economic climate as it develops and besides you will then be able to grade me on my economic forecast. Also, I have attached a GIF file that accurately illustrates what the behavior of most people has been and will continue to be as we move into the most severe phase of this economic crisis.
********************************
On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 6:02 PM, Michael Shepherd wrote:
Yeah I have heard about the new ruling with disclosure on blogs regarding the FTC. I never thought about it as a way to raise extra tax money but yeah that makes total sense to me. So patriotic aren’t they? J It’s actually gotten so regulated that we can no longer use real numbers in our testimonials and it is best to stick to general testimonials like
“This is the greatest product ever, blah blah blah”
The blog is not really active simply because I am building a better one on Wordpress. There are tools that I can integrate with Wordpress that make it better for search engine optimization and cloning. Because of this I am building my disclosures into these sites. I put a general disclosure on the bottom of my Blogger blog just to be safe.
********************************
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 8:37 PM
To: Michael Shepherd
Subject: Blog
Hi Mike,
I thought you ought to know that during times of recession, or depression as the case may be, regulations tend to explode as municipalities, states and federal governments attempt to cover their shortfalls by coming up with ever more clever ways to extract money from their citizens. As a personal example I have often complained to my county that they are inconsistent in sending me the license tag renewal notices. I get them about 50% of the time and when I don’t get them I have to make an inconvenient trek down to the courthouse to get my tags renewed. The standard answer they give me is that they were mailed and must have been lost in the mail. Last year the county instituted a new late fee of $25.00 per month or portion of a month that a vehicle or trailer (trailer fees are usually about $21 per year) is late in being registered. This of course gives them an incentive to have 75% or 100% of the renewal notices accidentally lost in the mail. Another example, I presume that you have noticed the increased number of troopers on the highways writing tickets, some are issued for the violation of speeding as little as 4 mph, or less, over the speed limit. Fines for such minor infractions have risen, in some areas, into the hundreds of dollars. During 2009 sales and property taxes plummeted leaving gaping holes in most state and local budgets. New regulations that are easily violated are the preferred method by regulators make up for the shortfalls without having to get unpopular tax increases approved. This is because they can extract dollars from citizens under the guise of serving and protecting the public good.
Given that you do a blog, the FTC announced recently that they have the power to regulate blogs that endorse any commercial products. They are now mandating that “bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service”. For example, if someone were to give you a DVD that you review and you endorse that movie on your blog but you fail to disclose that you received a free copy, you are in violation of the new regulation and can be fined $11,000. Again, a word to the wise, be aware and hold onto your wallet during the upcoming market decline. It will become ever more difficult to avoid running afoul of new and ridiculous regulations designed to separate you from your hard earned dollars.
Sincerely,
* If you enjoyed this post why not subscribe to the RSS Feed or Email * Don't be stingy, be sure to tell your friends!
Interesting post somewhat long post.
ReplyDelete