As for me. All I know is that I know nothing

Anonymously yours

Vote Delusion – You Know It Makes Sense.

You are unwittingly driving towards the edge of a cliff at 100mph.Would you like to be told that the cliff edge is approaching

1.      Before you reach it?

2.      After you go over it?

If we eliminate suicide girls, lemmings and the manically depressed from this hypothetical survey I am assuming that most people would prefer to be in the self-preservation society and choose life i.e. option number one. Wrong, well at least partially in that we don’t really want to hear that the cliff is approaching in advance but will complain bitterly afterwards that we weren’t warned. Ridiculous, illogical yet apparently true.

It may or may not have escaped your attention that most of The West is broke. We have spent decades borrowing from the future i.e. saddling the next generation with gargantuan debts to fund unsustainable lifestyles/wars/bubbles and other Ponzi charades. There is only one problem with this – just like a Viagra addict, you can’t keep it up forever.

Let’s take the recent strike over public pensions and the ‘68 is too late’ [to retire] campaign. People are annoyed that their benefits are being eroded (although technically speaking it’s hard to erode something that doesn’t exist). What actually exists is purely a promise to pay and those promises are not fulfillable. Unfortunately that’s mathematics for you. So many people are relying on something that will either not be there (work until you drop dead a.k.a. ‘is 108 too late?’) or is only there in nominal terms i.e. yes you can retire but your agreed pension now only buys you one loaf of bread. It is an illusion waiting not to happen. Fair? Absolutely not.

There is a saying that goes,"if you can’t pay, you won’t pay". So regardless of how totally and utterly justified people are in their standpoint the reality is going to be different from what they expect – probably by a rather large margin. Who’s to blame? OK next questions:

1.      Do you vote for the party that promises you what you want/like to hear?

2.      Do you vote for the party that tells you the truth?

Well this one is easy to answer because option 2 does not currently exist. Why? Because for years telling lies has been an election winner. Whose fault is that – the liars’ or the voters? So instead of reality we 'choose' to vote for delusion but delusion eventually has consequences.

Let’s hop across the Channel for a moment. The French have just voted for a President who won on the back of promises of growth and lowering the retirement age. But why stop at this? Why not promise people eternal youth? This isn’t possible either but who cares when it gets you the most votes?

In America they voted for change in 2008, and got short changed instead. Unless you consider no change is ‘change you can believe in?’ 2012 now looks like a race between Barack O’ Romney and Mitt Bama. Both appear to be Wall St Manchurian Candidates promising to further assassinate the country’s finances. Of course there is Ron Paul but that isn’t going to happen and, on a personal note, maybe for him it’s best he doesn’t win – it’s not only finances that get assassinated.

Back to the UK – we have far more choice right? Err...if the full theoretical electoral spectrum was represented by a dartboard then all 3 main parties would be stuck in triple 13 - unlucky for everyone. Strip away the specific vested interests and you have a very tricky spot the difference competition. They all borrow from the future...because they can (for now)...and because there are only long term consequences, not short term ones. Except, the future is already here.

We see the growth Vs austerity arguments framed as a battle between ideologies: Left Vs Right or in the case of pensions pitching one half of society against another with the Public Sector Vs Private Sector debate or alternatively the generation game with the young Vs the old but all this does is serve as a distraction away from the most fundamental issue.


There is something far more insidious and all encompassing at work...the monetary system that we live under. Ever wondered why this is hardly ever discussed? Oh look, its Wile E.Coyote

Time To Press The Eject Button?

Convention would suggest as this is a first post it may be best to focus on an introduction but as we live in interesting times and I’m arguably a tad behind schedule in getting these online machinations underway it’s time to jump in at the deep end, sans budgie smugglers, and return to the pleasantries later.

There is one golden rule reference making predictions; don’t do it. Or more precisely if you are stupid enough to make one then never apply a timeline. So predicting I will die is a fairly sound call but not if I add in next Tuesday lunchtime (unless of course I have a pre-arranged tête-à-tête with a Bulgarian umbrella operator on Waterloo bridge). So ‘stand away from the prediction’ is generally sound advice.

But thinking about, as opposed to predicting, the future is perfectly reasonable behaviour. And whilst not doing so up until now has had few negative consequences this is no longer the case. To cut to the chase, we are still facing a possible systemic collapse of the financial system or at the very least a massive bout of uncertainty and disruption to it. Ignorance and inertia are now very high risk strategies as far as your personal finances are concerned. Risk mitigation should be a priority regardless of whether the worst does or doesn’t come to pass.

So what can you do? Well let’s be clear, I’m not offering you any formal financial advice – what you do with your money is your own responsibility. However, at the moment, most investments look about as appealing as a robber’s dog chewing a wasp. Personally speaking I have moved most of my 'spare' money to cash (the worst possible place to be in the mid to long term) and gold. Why? Well as Mark Twain once said “History never repeats itself but sometimes it rhymes”. We will be delving into the whys and wherefores in future posts but let’s just leave you with a recent quote from Hugh Hendry:

"We are single-digit years away from the most profound market clearing moment".

Well actually Hugh may I humbly suggest it may be months not years? My money is on (or rather isn’t) 2012. This isn’t a prediction, it’s just a precaution. And if you are going to take precautions now looks like a good time to start. If I am wrong, the down side should be minimal; if I am right the upside is substantial. That’s asymmetric risk for you. Eject? I already have.