All Commentary
Tuesday, October 30, 2012

“Clouds Gathering”


Sandy was a bad storm. But some are warning of worse to come.

When quotes like the following are pushed through the chattersphere, it’s enough to make you wonder whether people who stockpile precious metals in backyard bunkers are so crazy after all:

I am more worried than I have ever been about the clouds gathering today (which may be the most wonderful contrary indicator you could hope for…). I hope they pass without breaking, but I fear the defining feature of coming decades will be a Great Disorder of the sort which has defined past epochs and scarred whole generations….

So I keep wondering to myself, do our money-printing central banks and their cheerleaders understand the full consequences of the monetary debasement they continue to engineer?

This comes from the newsletter of a well-respected financial analyst for French megabank Société Générale—one Dylan Grice. He adds: “The 99% blame the 1%, the 1% blame the 47%, the private sector blames the public sector, the public sector returns the sentiment… . . . the young blame the old, everyone blames the rich… . . . yet few question the ideas behind government or central banks.”

And this guy is apparently no charlatan—i.e. he’s not paid by a university to jaw jaw or write journal articles. Like other friends in low places, Grice has actually fed his family with the fruits of sound economic predictions. Maybe it’s time to start listening to the people who, instead of figuring out where to put their money, are preparing to adapt to a post-fiat-money world. At the very least we should prepare to pay $5.00 for a pair of socks.

Note: if you’re worried about global economic collapse, you may like Resilient Communities—a site dedicated to helping people prepare through localism.

Note 2: FEE scholar Steve Horwitz has great research on post-disaster recovery, which he’s done with the Mercatus Center.


  • Max Borders is author of The Social Singularity. He is also the founder and Executive Director of Social Evolution—a non-profit organization dedicated to liberating humanity through innovation. Max is also co-founder of the Voice & Exit event and former editor at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). Max is a futurist, a theorist, a published author and an entrepreneur.