Today the national debt tops $17 trillion. To some people it means the end is near. And to a few, it points to the opportunity of a lifetime.
Q: What does it mean to you?
A: While I empathize with the first two groups, I am in the third group. Although I’m a bit fearful and very concerned for those who will be hurt, I view the future with excitement, excited to be a witness to the biggest power shift and transfer of wealth in the history of the world. It is the dawn of a new age. If the change is managed well, many of humanity’s shackles will be thrown off and we will enter an age of sustainable prosperity for all. If things do not go well, and those in power today win using violence to retain control of their power, we may enter a New Dark Age.
Q: What will make the difference?
A: Many things will play a role… such as technology and the rise of China as a world power. Yet the big shift must come in education, not only in what we teach but how we teach.
Q: What do you think the chances are? Do you think education will change?
A: No. Not in the near future. A case could be made to support the position that those who control the monetary system also control the educational system. That is why I became an educational entrepreneur back in 1984. That is why I write my books and create financial education games outside the school system. Today I am a hybrid, an entrepreneur like my rich dad and an educator like my poor dad.
As you may know, I believe in personal responsibility. I believe in changing the things we have the ability to change and control. Each of us has the power to change ourselves. And the easiest—and often most powerful—change we can make is through education.
Q: What do you see in the future?
A: To see the future you must study the past. As the saying goes, “Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.”
In the past, there were two different types of Depressions:
1. The American Depression (1929 to 1954)
2. The German Hyper-Inflation (1918 to 1924)
Q: What was the difference?
A: In very simple terms, Americans did not print money and the Germans printed money.
Pictured on the next page is what happened when Germany began printing money.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this photograph only (and not other parts of this book) under the terms of one or more of the (1) GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3, or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts (a copy of the license can be found at www.gnu.org), and (2) Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses.
The picture above shows what happens when a central bank and a government print money to pay their bills.
In 1918, a German citizen could be a “millionaire” by having millions of German Reischmarks in savings. In less than five years, that same German millionaire was poor.
Q: Is the same thing happening in the United States today?
A: Yes. England, Japan, and Europe are all printing money.
Q: Why are these countries printing money?
A: To pay their bills.
Q: I thought countries collected taxes to pay their bills?
A: Yes. The problem is the world economy is collapsing, so the bills go up as tax revenue from the economy goes down. A real-life example is a family of four with both mom and dad working. One day, dad loses his job. Although mom is still working, her income cannot cover the family’s expenses, so the bills keep piling up. The difference is that mom and dad can’t just print money. A country has the power to print their currency… until the world stops accepting their currency as money.
Q: What will happen when the family’s bills become mountains of debt?
A: Eventually mom and dad might declare bankruptcy.
Q: What happens to a country?
A: The currency of the country collapses. That means no one will accept the country’s money. A country’s currency collapse is the same as mom going to the grocery store only to find that her credit card is declined and the store won’t accept her checks, even though she has a job.
Q: Is that what happened to Germany in 1923?
A: Yes.
Q: Has it happened recently?
A: Yes. In Zimbabwe, once the richest country in Africa. In 2008 its currency, the Zimbabwe dollar.
Since few of us are old enough to remember the 1923 collapse of Germany’s currency, I traveled to Zimbabwe in 2004 to experience a currency collapse first hand. It was not pretty. In fact it was frightening. Millions fled Zimbabwe and tens of thousands died.
Zimbabwe was once known as Rhodesia, named in the 1880s after Cecil Rhodes, once the richest man in the world. He was an entrepreneur in South Africa who made his fortune in diamonds.
In 1980, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe—and went from being the breadbasket of Africa to the basket case of Africa. Why? The government began printing money to pay its bills. After the 2007 crash, several of the richest countries in the world began to follow the economic model of Zimbabwe.
Most of us have experienced a stock market or a real estate market crash. Few of us have experienced a currency collapse. A currency collapse is very different from stock and real estate market crashes.
Q: What can I do?
A: That is what this book is about. Part One of this book begins with understanding the past so you can see the future. That’s why the picture of a German citizen, sweeping a street littered with paper money in the 1920s, is really a look into the future. Always remember, when governments print money to pay bills, cash becomes trash.
Q: So this book is about preparing for a global currency collapse, as well as a stock and real estate crash?
A: It is.
The following is a chart on QE, Quantitative Easing.
Q: What does this mean?
A: It means the United States is following the German model from the last Depression. America is attempting to “print” its way out of financial crisis.
Q: What does this mean to me?
A: It means exactly what I stated earlier in this chapter. It means your wealth is being stolen via the money you work so hard for. As I said, the monetary system was not designed to make you rich. Money was designed as a means to steal your wealth.
Look at the chart below. It shows what has happened to the purchasing power of your money.
It has taken about 100 years for the dollar to lose 95% of its purchasing power. I doubt it will take another 100 years to lose the last 5%.
Q: Are you saying the dollar will go to zero?
A: If the United States keeps printing money, it might.
Q: But it can’t happen in America, can it?
A: It has happened a number of times.