Last week we taped a Peak Moment conversation with a local financial market analyst who we first heard on our local community radio station KVMR about a half year ago. What Marc Cuniberti said on his "Money Matters" show made sense to us.
He talked about the Fed Reserve's recently printing tons more money and thereby continuing to worsen inflation. He talked about protecting the purchasing power of the dollar. And he obviously cares about others: "I don't want people to lose money."
What Marc said resonated with what we've been learning about the money system via documentaries like "The Money Masters", "Money as Debt", "In Debt We Trust", "From Freedom to Fascism" and "Zeitgeist."
Pretty eye-opening stuff — money as debt, backed by nothing by promises, the power of the central banks to control our lives. We learned how fundamental the money system is to how we live, what we value, what we do. It's the basis for our global industrial economy which requires infinite growth. As Michael Ruppert said in our Conversation on Pondering a Post-Petroleum Future: "Until you change the way money works, nothing will change."
With the subprime mortgage debacle, credit crunch, and the Federal Reserve (which is a private corporation - not "federal" at all) printing gazillion more dollars, causing beaucoup inflation — well, we've been watching our purchasing power and nest egg going downhill, wondering what to do about it.
We knew we weren't alone. So we invited Marc for the conversation. Marc isn't a financial planner. Interested in the money economy since he was fifteen, he's a market analyst. He talked about the causes of inflation and strategies to protect and even gain some money in a down market. Like getting out of debt, saving, perhaps having some gold and silver, investing in tangible things that people actually need (commodities like agriculture, precious metals, energy), and stocks that pay you to hold them by paying a dividend. He stressed the principle of using compounding interest in your favor: $100 saved today (with 6% return) can grow to $200 in 12 years.
Marc's strategies are about working within the financial system as it is. He's not trying to advise how to keep money local, or protect the environment, or do socially responsible investing. But keeping ahead of inflation (which Marc notes isn't in small single-digits like the government touts, but more like 10%) is a primary economic survival tactic for many. As he likes to say about inflation, mortgage woes, credit crunches, and financial sector misdeeds: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" See the video.
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