Collapse of The Dollar?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome everyone, to the Annuity Straight Talk podcast, episode number 156. My name is Brian Anderson, founder and creator of Annuitystraighttalk.com. here. Chugging right along on these episodes. Go ahead and please, like subscribe or comment on any of your favorite podcast platforms are on YouTube. If you want to talk to me about your financial situation, retirement plans, sales, pictures, you're getting any of this garbage that's out there, top right corner of any page on Annuity straightTalk.com. love to help you out. This is an interesting topic that I get a lot of questions about. And from time to time, it's not necessarily concentrated or recently. I think it's something that everybody should pay attention to. I think it's something that's very important. But I got a comment on the website a while ago, probably a little over a month ago, and I like to respond to the comments when I can, if it's viable. There's some spam comments or sometimes people leave personal information. I had a comment last week. I got it from you told me, hey, here's an expert you can reach out to, but it had a guy's name and phone number in it, so I can't. I'm not going to publish that. And to let you guys know, when you do make a comment, you type your name in and it's the name you type in that appears on the website. So you could put in your first name, you could put in your initials and it'll ask you to put your email in there as well. But that's not published. That's only so that if someone responds to or replies to it that you get notified. So don't even worry about that. So, yeah, feel free to comment on the website if you have something to add, something to say. This is something that could be definitely, you know, a follow up episode because I've had a little bit of input from some other professionals, some guys that know what they're doing. I know some smart guys, people I got to where I am because I know a lot of people that are smarter than me. So we're going to suppose a few things today. We're talking about what happens if the US dollar collapses. All right, and here's the newsletter. It's kind of fun if you look at this, if you're watching the video, obviously go to the newsletter page. Extra credit for anybody who can tell me where that little graphic came from that's on there. Kind of fun. Popular children's movie with the rabbit hole in it. I just gave it away doesn't matter. Nothing free for that, I don't think, because too many people are going to know. But most time when people comment, it's like on the topic of that post, and this one was off the topic. And so. But I didn't think it was. So Mark is the guy who said, who wrote it? And here's his comment. It was like not. It was way off topic. Okay. So I thought, okay, well, let me think about that, because it's not something I can just a couple of sentences answer the question, what do you think? So here's a comment. He said, what's your take on the rise of the BriCS nations and currencies? The decline of the dollar, the lack of solid backing of the dollar, that is, gold, out of control inflation due to uncontrolled printing of fiat currency. And then he asks, are assets consisting of fiat currency the way to preserve wealth? I wrote a short response to this, as I possibly could, and this is quite possibly the best pitch for annuities, the best justification to use annuities that I've ever, that I could come up with. That's what I wanted to run it. Say, here you go. So if a thousand words is the real short answer, imagine how detailed and deep it could get. And that was the trick in doing this is, how do I just explain this? Simply talk about it generally and why we might. This could be financial conspiracies part two. I did one earlier in the year about Social Security and Roth IRAs. That's a big one, but okay, so I'm going to hit all of these things individually and try to develop this out to be the answer to his question or my answer to his question. So now I'm going to try to stay away from conspiracy theories and speculation. I'm just talking to you about what is obviously, like I said, going deeper. And I know I got a lot of really sharp people that listen to this, and I'm curious to see what you have to say. Please comment on this. It'd be fun to just start a little back and forth. Just keep it reasonable. We don't need to like dive headfirst into the rabbit holes, but you'll see some of those. And so a lot of what we're going to talk about is kind of speculation as to what might happen. And I'm not trying to say, oh, don't worry about it, you absolutely should pay attention to. It should not be played off as no big deal. The amount of leverage in the financial system that we have is going to lead to larger and larger corrections over time. So past interventions in the system in like 2008 that were done to save capitalism, they only created a bigger bubble and that's where we're at. So then you come, the BRICs nations main one's, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, there's a few others. They created an international trading system that doesn't rely on the US dollar for the exchange. And people were, is that going to threaten the US? Well, it doesn't help, but they didn't want to. And from their perspective it makes sense. They didn't want to have to convert to us dollars just to then convert back to the currency of their neighbor. There was too much risk, there was too much spread change because currencies are very volatile. US dollars probably the most stable by a long shot, I would guess. But they decided to, hey, all just trade directly with each other. But if they're going to the dollar and then back into it, from their currency to the dollar and back into another currency, the exchange rate could, it's going to shave margin off for them. So fully understand why they'd want to do it. But it basically is just backed by China and all of it's done with. I think there's eight or nine countries, give or take. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't really know something like that. It's all for those countries to trade directly with China. Little, very little trade is happening between the individual companies themselves. It's all directly to China. It's put more power in China's hands. That's an economic threat because they own a lot of our federal funds as well. But you need to keep that in perspective because while the dollar is still used in a little more than half of all international trades, and I think it was 53%, so he's like, oh, that's not that big a deal, but it sits on at least one side of the trade or the transaction about 90% of the time. So it's still an enormous player. And the major currency work and reserves in the world right now, all thanks to my googling skills. You guys can go look that up and there's different reports, but that's about right. That's a kind of a consensus number right there. So. And possibly you can make you take some solace in the fact that without the american consumer, none of these countries have a much of an economy. We all live great lives, we all spend a lot of money. Even if you live on a budget and even if you live well within your means, then you still have a higher standard of living than 90 plus percent of people in the world. So we spend a lot of money, keep doing it, pay cash whenever possible. They're trying to get rid of that so we don't get shoved into a fully digital system where everything is surveilled but that there's another rabbit hole. Hey, hold up. We'll stay out of that for now. So fiat currency, you see, is basically just fake money and it's all we have if you think about it. And I only want to talk about bitcoin electronic trading in and out of the system. I did a podcast on that. I am not a believer in that. You think that the US dollar is going to collapse, we're going to get shoved back into the 18th century, but you're going to have your phone to trade bitcoins to go get it, get some groceries now, ain't going to happen. Might be a fun little catchy thing to do, but you got to get out and convert it back to dollars in order to actually have something. But it's been a hundred years since, or almost 100 years since we left the gold standard. It was 1933 FDR and it's worked, but it's not making anything, making things more secure. And it's got exponentially worse over time and especially in the last 40 years. The worst of it's really been in the last four or five. And I don't care who, what social issue is important to you or who you think is going to do what. They all contributed to this. Every single one of them is devaluing your hard work. No matter what they say and how good it sounds. It's close as I'm going to get. I don't want YouTube to slap me for talking about that day that's coming in a couple weeks that I could care less about. So. So the deficit spending, inflation, devaluing dollar assets, all that stuff, it's a cause for great concern. But I heard this from a trusted guy, a really sharp financial guy a long time ago. Yeah. Do you want to go back to the 18th century and go back to the gold standard and give up everything you've got that has provided the standard of living that we wouldn't have otherwise? You can complain about federal deficits and inflation, but with. But you cannot do it without giving it credit for the large investment balances you enjoy. Anybody that's got a. A million bucks, 3 million, 5 million, you realize that deficit spending is in your ira, your 401k, your homes, your real estate rental, real estate everything you've got and all the dollars. Yes, you worked hard, yes, you saved your money, and it's ballooned in value because of your savings and because of deficit spending. So if you look at the us deficit pales in comparison to the value of stocks, mutual funds, bonds, real estate, gold, personal possessions that people have. So that currency is tied up in investment banks, bank accounts, real estate. Everyone from the top to the bottom has benefited from welfare in one way or another. You got $5 million in investments. You owe that to welfare just as much as the person does getting food stamps. Right? I'm not picking on anybody here. I'm just saying like, keep it real. So talking about the US dollar collapsing is a catchy way to talk about it. But USO's like, oh, it's gonna, the dollar is gonna collapse. You realize that it really means the bubble popping on every single asset you could think of. Every major corporation is leveraged. What's their stock really worth? Zero. Close to zero. Every bank has a fraction of deposits on hand for the liabilities they carried. In 2008, banks 3% of loans had to go bad to wipe out those giant banks. Right. Owning your home is a good thing and encourage everybody to be debt free and all that stuff. Dave Ramsey. I'm debt free. How do you think the government officials are going to try to collect if there's no dollar? Now that we can talk about, there's going to be a new system and all that stuff, right? Even precious metals have values expressed in dollars, so the actual value of those metals will be determined by its tradable value with another person. If you really want to play the speculation game, I suppose you can transfer all assets to another if you think that's safer. But China's the front runner. So doing that, I hope, I guess you're investing in communism. Okay. And I'm not even sure you could do it. I know a family member of mine is working as a construction company. Got a big construction deal with South Africa, one of the BrICS countries. A two year construction deal, monster project. They can't finish the contract because they can't settle the currency exchange. South Africa is volatile. They're in the bricks. They're bound to this. It's considered international trade. Can they do it? Can they not do it? Very tricky, because you can't have, you don't want to price building supplies 18 months out based on the exchange rate of currencies. Now be silly. Right? So financial. Here's, and here's the pitch. Financial assets held with insurance companies by way of fixed indexed annuities. Fixed or indexed annuities or cash value life insurance are the only thing you can have that isn't leveraged. So what you want to do, if you're talking about preserving wealth with fiat currency, is you don't want leverage. The more it's leveraged, the more it can be devalued and written down. If there is a collapse, solid backing, dollar for dollar make these products the best thing to hold for security in a financial system that might be compromised. Now, it's not going to be completely immune from a total collapse, but these assets will be the last to fall and the best chance at maintaining previous value. If or when a new system is created, some value is going to transfer over. You're still going to own your home. I mean, I mean, I don't know. So this goes back to the conference I went to with a bunch of advisors last year sometime, and we're all having a barbecue and hanging out, and there's ten or twelve of us had a real long picnic table and, I don't know, it came up and I just kind of looked around. Crowded. Hey, guys, you guys realize that our world seems to kind of be going to hell, right? Financial system is in trouble. And these were extremely successful 20, 30, 40 year veterans of the financial services industry. Good client focused people, good family people, all that stuff. You realize the system's compromised, right? And they all kind of look, look at each other and, yep. They all nod in agreement. Yep. I said, do you guys agree that annuities and life insurance insurance companies are going to be the last ones to fall? They're kind of nod in agreement. Yep. That's what we're dealing with here. I understand it's fiat currency, but take some leverage out of it. Don't get drunk on returns, don't chase all the products. So if the dollar collapses, it's not going to be a pleasant day for any of us. It's not going to be like, oh, I was smart and I bought this. You could have a pile of copper pipe in your garage that might be worth a lot of dollars when the dollar is worth nothing. Then again, if you collect all that stuff, you got to have a way to defend it. Newsletter a few years ago, ammo and annuities, people are in trouble. They're going to come get it. There's going to be a bunch of blue helmets running around in that case. It's like you forget about the money in the bank, you make sure you're the first one to loot the grocery store. Tangible assets will be a value, but you still got to have cash. So everybody should own some gold and silver to use in a pinch. It's good to have. I've heard people say 510 percent, get some good assets. It's good, hard asset to have. And I know a lot of people, I think it's been pretty popular for people that have collected 40 50oz of gold over time. I know a lot of people have done that. Prudent individuals. If you really think about it, it's like you'd be crazy not to get some cash with insurance companies. So assets based on fiat currency. This is kind of my answer to the question. In short form, those assets are nothing more than fiat wealth. So preserving it within the same system it was created is likely the only way to do it. I mean, again, you're jumping currencies, you're taking risk on commodities. You tell me. I'm hoping for this because I'd love to do a second episode with a bunch of good feedback. Yeah. If you decide to stockpile tangible assets, you got a way to protect it and or transport it because you got to find a willing trading partner. So if I got a coin bag full of silver, great. It might have some value when things go to hell. But I gotta have somebody who's willing to take value for something that I need. They might want to just keep what they have. So no matter how you look at if the dollar collapses, we're looking at a completely different way of life. And I'm not so sure that having a bunch of money is going to make a whole lot of positive difference. Yeah, you got to know how to build a campfire cook outside chase elk in the mountains. So one of the reasons I like to stay sharp, I love doing it, but it might pay off if the dollar collapses and the UN tanks roll in. So I'd appreciate you guys feedback on this. I'm not trying to scare anyone. This is just the reality of the world we live in. We're a highly leveraged system. We've all benefited from it. But really think about it. Think about preserving what you have. I know the stock market looks awesome and some people are like, oh, if I didn't have that annuity, I'd have this more money. It's like, okay, well that's got leverage all over it. So anyway, this has been episode. If you guys want to talk about it, respond. Reply to the email. This is going to go out on Saturday and or comment on the website. Whatever it is, I prefer an email, give me a call. It's cool, but I don't have a lot of time to always be answering and calling back. I'll do what I can. I'll do my best, but please like subscribe or comment. Send it to somebody, see if they get their two cent in on it and disagree with me. That's perfectly fine. This is open for debate. This is something we should talk about, and I'm happy to do it with anybody. So I appreciate you guys joining me. If you want to talk top right corner of any page on annuitystraighttalk.com I'll be back next week for episode 157. Not sure what it's going to be, but it's going to be good. And I'm probably not going to do the cowboy hat again. This is only for serious topics. Okay guys, thanks for stopping by and I'll see you next week. [00:16:36] Speaker B: You have been listening to annuity straight talk. The preceding information is for informational and educational purposes only and does not represent tax, legal, or investment advice. The views expressed by guests on this program are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of annuity straight talk or its partners. No information presented today should be acted upon without meeting with a qualified and licensed professional. It is important that you read all insurance contract disclosures carefully before making a purchase decision. Guarantees are based on the financial strength and claims paying ability of the insurance company.