Now That The Sand Has Settled...Presidents Week Retrospective
If you've ever attended a conference...or maybe you're a regular...then you know that these events have a certain rhythm.
They start as a disparate group of people sharing a little wedge of space and time. But in just a few days, in casual conversations over breakfast, lunch and dinner, the faces of strangers begin to acquire names, hometowns and histories. Personalities emerge. Tales are told. Every a glass of wine, mojito, or island beer becomes an opportunity to make a new friend, gain a new viewpoint, learn about a business or investment you never heard of before.
And then, when it's all over, suddenly everyone is gone, and you're left to shake the sand out of your sandals and sort out all you've absorbed.
Thus it was with Presidents Week, the Hemispheres conference held on the sun-blessed island of Ambergris Caye, Belize.
For those of you who weren't among the insiders who enjoyed full access to the speakers, the white sand beach and Caribbean vistas, I'll share a few of my notes.
Perspectives
You want a variety of perspectives, to help you decide your next steps? We heard them at Presidents Week.
For much of the week, the dominant viewpoint was that the U.S. and other governments and economies are on a downward slope, and sliding fast.
"The economy has not improved -- it's gotten a temporary stay of execution," Swiss asset management expert Egon von Greyerz told the audience the first morning. Pointing out how governments' statistics can be used to hide the true state of the economy, he predicted, "The decline will start to accelerate this year and next again, in my view."
His reasoning? Egon pointed out that U.S. government revenues last year were $2.2 trillion, while expenditures hit $3.5 trillion -- a $1.3 trillion deficit, which he believes will widen at accelerating rate in the near future. Entitlements alone are $2 trillion a year, nearly equaling income.
"This is the picture of a bankrupt government," he said. "And it's not just in the United States. It's happening all over the world."
Porter Stansberry sounded the same note in his video and live question-and-answer session with attendees the next day. Renowned for his warnings of the imminent collapse of the U.S. dollar, Porter backed his predictions with a wealth of historical data about countries suffering hyperinflation and currency devaluations that wiped out people's savings, pensions, livelihoods, and caused social chaos that even endangered their lives.
International banking expert Peter Zipper, president of Caye Bank in Belize, added a balancing viewpoint in the conference's final session. North Americans get so wrapped up in their economic worries, he said, that they lose perspective. Having grown up in Austria in the aftermath of World War II, he knows that life can be so much harder, with challenges so much greater, than anything we face today. His advice: Stop worrying, stop whining, and just get on with life.
Predictions
Given the array of perspectives, what kind of predictions did we hear for the future of world economies, and especially that of the U.S.?
An impromptu discussion over breakfast on the beach one morning predicted a variety of future possibilities -- and raised the futility of predicting at all.
It started with a contrarian question for the contrarian: What if Porter Stansberry, and a number of our speakers who agreed with his scenario, were wrong? What if the markets don't tank, the economy truly recovers, gold falls and the dollar holds its value?
"We're always asked to predict," speaker Hank Brock responded. "What we need to do instead is prepare. If you predict you can be wrong. If you prepare, you're always right." Prepare. Plan. Diversify.
Others followed with the view that no matter how indebted the U.S. is, there isn't another government or currency the world trusts more.
Or alternatively, that the dollar will lose its value and its status as the world reserve currency, and no single currency will rise to replace it, as governments are no longer willing to let another country's fiscal policy decide their future.
We heard that gold is the only safe asset to hold...and that any real asset has intrinsic value and will continue to have, whatever its value in U.S. dollars.
One prediction that no one disagreed with was that if the dollar is devalued, every economy in the world will be affected.
Repudiating Fear
The conference ended on a high note, a reaffirmation of human resourcefulness, and a repudiation of fear as a driving force in making life decisions.
Speakers and attendees expressed optimism about the ability of U.S. citizens to create new solutions to their problems -- if they take responsibility for their lives, invest in creative solutions and problem-solvers, and retake control of society and the economy from the governments and corporations that control both.
Perhaps the most popular speaker was one of the youngest in the crowd, a CPA and financial planner from Alabama, who said that if Dante came back and added another level of hell to his Inferno, it would surely be spending your life fearfully anticipating dangers that never manifest. Volunteering for fear, he called it.
The purpose of awareness, he reminded us, is to do what you can to avoid danger and then move on with life. "It's been said that if you're on a train track and see a train coming at you, you most likely will survive. Why? You'll simply step off the track.
"You won't outlaw trains. You won't try to resurrect Newton and ask him to change the laws of motion. You'll just step out of the way."
But preparedness can only protect you from the foreseen, not the unpredictable, he concluded. So just do what is within your power to prepare for the future, and then deal with whatever happens.
Helping you do that is what our work at Hemispheres Publishing is all about.
