In the first half, investment banker and risk manager James Rickards discussed why he believes the coming collapse of the dollar and the international monetary system is entirely foreseeable, and what we can do to protect ourselves. The International Monetary System has actually collapsed three times in the last century-- 1914, 1939, and in 1971 when Pres. Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, he pointed out. When this happens, it means that the major financial players in the world get together to rewrite "the rules of the game," he said. The incidents of collapse were all tied to wars-- WWI, WWII, and Vietnam, he added.
The next collapse will likely result in a high inflationary period and the people most hurt will be those on a fixed income, whose dollars will be worth less. There are also winners during inflation, such as those with fixed assets, like owning a factory, gold, or other currencies, he continued. The dollar will still be used in the US as local currency, but it will no longer be the leading global reserve currency-- that could be SDRs, a reserve asset of the International Money Fund (IMF), he explained. Rickards recommended that people devote around 10% of their assets to gold such as the American Gold Eagle, which would increase in value during an inflationary period.
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In the latter half, Zac Bissonnette, a personal finance writer, talked about the various ways people from all professions lie to the public in sometimes outrageous, unbelievably arrogant, and hilarious ways. It's become way too easy to become a trusted authority in America-- so many of the people anointed by the mainstream media, business world, and the political class turn out to be frauds or hypocrites, he declared. For instance, former NY governor Eliot Spitzer talked about "making New York as ethical as the people that live there," he cited.
Bissonnette has found the field of self-help in particular to yield many cases of "Do as I say, not as I do." An extreme example was the motivational speaker Ernest Garlington who advocated for people finding deeper spiritual connections, and then was convicted of ordering a hit job on his wife's former husband. There was also former US Sec. of Education Bill Bennett, who published books on virtues and morality, but in 2003, it was revealed he'd lost more than $8 million gambling in Las Vegas. Beyond the hubris that seems to be a common denominator amongst such cases, there may be an element of projection going on, in which people have a dishonorable impulse inside of them, and then seek to warn others about the same human foible they are more prone to than anyone else, he suggested.
News segment guests: Katherine Albrecht, Mitch Battros