Hard Assets: What rhymes with the 1930's?

 

Everyone knows history doesn't repeat, it rhymes.

Unfortunately we are now rhyming with the late 1920's and early 1930'S.

Same massive debt hangover.  Same mass disillusionment with Demcocracy.  Same anger, frustration feelings of betrayal and victimhood.

Back in the 1930's the debt hangover and resulting anger was due to a World War, mass destruction, reparations.  Now the debt hangover is due to mass financialization and the betrayal of a financial class that instead of efficiently directing capital to where it would do the most good, has figured out how to efficiently suck capital out of the system into the pockets of the very very few.

The causes are different, but the situation rhymes.

The same mass anger, frustration, and casting about for scapegoats: foreigners, immigtrants, jews, muslims, dark skinneds, asians.  Crisis at the border.  Crisis in the cities.  The situation on the ground no different than it has been for decades, or centuries, but the imagined Crisis in the Minds of the Betrayed the same as in the 1930's.

The same disillusion with Democracy. After all it has only brought about and alarming debasement of the currency,  income inequality, and an alarming toleration of weakness - or Wokeness.  So the complaint goes.

We need a Strong Man to make it Right.

Make Germany Great Again.  Make Europe Great Again. Make America Great Again.

And the other thing sure to rhyme is the coveting of Gold and Hard Assets.

The first thing Hitler did when arriving in a newly conquered country was go straight to the Central Bank and steal all the gold.  Then go straight to the National Museums and steal the art.  Lebensraum was the pretext.  Gold was the objective.

And not just Hitler.  Everyone knew that to survive the era that led inexorably towards another World War was the amassing of Hard Assets.  That was the only way to get through.

It is happening already.  China and Russia and India are hoarding Gold.  There is a global race to corner the markets on scarce resources: Gold, copper, rare earths, oil, grain.

And the wealthy all over the world are converting their paper assets into Hard Assets.

Here in the center of financialization the realization that Hard Assets will be the economic saviour of the next decade has been a bit slower to sink in  It is just in its infancy.

But it is beginning to creep into the general consciousness.  Hard Asset TV shows are on at all hours on serveral channels all day long.  Storage Wars.  Pawn Stars.  Antiques Road Show,  Flea Market Flip, Money for Nothing, House Hunters, The Coin Vault, The Jewerlry Arcade, Auction Kings, American Pickers, Found Objects, Counting Cars, Rust Valley Restorers, on and on and on.

Go to the Sotheby's website.  It's not just old master paintings.  It's Grateful Dead T shirts, and Concert Posters, it's Celebrity Memorabilia, and Hand Bags, and Hip Hop clothing, basketball sneakers and anything and everything Hard and Real.

Money is beginning to flow there.  

Beginning.

Because we are in the early early stages of what rhymes with the 1930's.

What comes next is when you'll really need Hard Assets for your financial salvation.