How would you feel if a gang of criminals broke into your home, stole your most valuable possessions, and then went on national TV to claim it was for your own good?

My guess is that you would be pretty angry.  Yet this is essentially what our central bankers and political leadership are doing right now.

Last year, at a picturesque resort in beautiful Wyoming, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke met with his global counterparts, including the Bank of England’s Mervyn King, the European Central Bank’s Jean-Claude Trichet, and Masaaki Shirakawa of the Bank of Japan.

The financial world was attentively looking for indications of what these men are planning, after having exhausted every monetary policy tool at their disposal.

These bankers have collectively printed trillions of currency units, purchased unprecedented amounts of government debt, given handouts to commercial banks, slashed interest rates to record lows, and taken risky assets onto their ever-expanding balance sheets.

And how have these historic efforts fared?  Poorly.  Aside from a few outliers, economic data in the developed world is anemic at best.  There has been little recovery in the jobs and housing markets, and the debt crises have grown worse.

Look, I’ll be the first to tell you that there are great opportunities and good news stories around the world; unfortunately, millions of people were having their lives and livelihoods turned upside down, whilst Bernanke and his friends toasted themselves with expensive champagne at a luxury resort.

Politicians, meanwhile, are flying around the world on their government jets, praising themselves in front of voters and trying to convince the taxpayers that stimulus programs are working.

They’ve spent trillions of dollars over the last few years with little result.  The ultimate consequence is more debt, with little benefit to show for it.

Despite printing and spending trillions of dollars, the world is still faced with the same financial conditions as when this crisis started:  huge government debt, and lack of credit availability in the private sector.

And so… what is their solution now?  Continue cutting interest rates, spending trillions of dollars, and printing trillions more.

Full stop. Something is wrong with this picture.

The first thing that comes to mind is the oft-quoted definition of insanity, attributed variously to Albert Einstein and author Rita Mae Brown:  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” This is exactly what’s happening now.

Then again, how do you cut interest rates that are already at zero? How much more money do you print when you have already printed trillions of it? How much more do you spend when the deficit is already beyond $2 trillion?

At some point, even the most insane individual has to question this logic.

The crazed decisions of our financial and political leadership have a significant impact on our hard-earned savings…and entrusting our capital to a corrupt system of incompetent bureaucrats is a sure-fire way to lose it.

As we enter the Age of Turmoil, the risks to our capital are only going to increase. The way out, the way to survive and thrive, is to become self-reliant and reject the limiting options that have been force-fed by the old system.

In my daily newsletter, Notes from the Field, I have written about defining your reality as the first pillar of self-reliance. I believe that the second pillar of self-reliance is capital preservation:  maintaining the value and purchasing power of the savings that we depend on to feed our families.

In the past, loose central banking and generous government entitlement programs were part of the old system that made a lot of people very rich. It generated huge returns in the market, easy credit for businesses and investors, and a giant safety net, courtesy of the taxpayers.

That system has collapsed. There are a lot of people who still cling to it, who put their trust in their governments and central bankers.  They’ll keep buying bonds, CD’s, etc., and they’re going to have their lives turned upside down.

Over the next 10 years as the Age of Turmoil rages on, you can absolutely bet on things like rising taxes, capital controls, further erosion of financial privacy, increased regulation, and negative real returns.

Perhaps most importantly, there’s a major debate in finance right now among various camps who are arguing whether we will see significant inflation, deflation, both, or neither.

Wherever you stand on the issue, I would suggest asking yourself one simple question: Will the paper currencies of the largest debtor nations in history continue to be reasonable stores of value in the long-term?

Absolutely not. A complete loss of confidence is coming, and this will have catastrophic effects on your savings, if they are trapped in a debtor nation’s fiat currency.

Fundamentally, finding suitable alternatives to preserve capital is one of the ways that the self-reliant individual can survive and thrive in the Age of Turmoil.

This includes strategies such as foreign bank accounts, alternative and productive assets, offshore gold storage, high-yield financial assets, foreign currencies, and others.

My subscription service, Sovereign Man:  Confidential provides readers with detailed information on how to put those strategies into practice.  I hope you'll join us on the most interesting journey of all, through the Age of Turmoil to what lies beyond.