Three Ways To Protect Yourself From The DC Shakedown
This report shows you how to fight back. How to protect the purchasing power of your wealth. And how to dodge some of those tiny (but annoying) laws that prevent everything from spa-like showers to clean clothes.
Make sure you read this report all the way through. If you like what you see here, we’ve got a lot more to offer. More on this in just a moment.
Before we show you the three moves to make, let’s answer this burning question: Why should you trust us? And why believe what we have to say?
Introducing The Most Entertaining
Financial 15 Minutes Of Your Day
Founded in Paris in 1999, as one of the world’s first email newsletters in the beginning of the Internet era, The Daily Reckoning is a pioneer in online publishing.
From the outset, DR founders Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin chose to take an honest look at the challenges facing the US economy, and the pitfalls ahead as they see them. As one of our early issues described…
“…Almost everyone expects the next century to be dominated by America… by its culture, its businesses, and its stock market. Nearly every editorial page makes some reference to “American Triumphalism.” Nearly every editorial writer is appalled by McDonalds…and contemptuous of the great hoi polloi of middle-class America…but proud to sit with them on top of the world. My prediction: they will slip from their perch before the end of this decade.”
— from the December 4th, 1999 issue of The Daily Reckoning.
More than 13 years later we are seeing the concerns first authoritatively voiced by The Daily Reckoning coming to light. That’s not just our own perspective. In 2008, Dave Eberhart at NewsMax described our record of accuracy as, “Calling It First and Calling It Right.”
With a critically acclaimed documentary film I.O.U.S.A., four New York Times bestselling books Financial Reckoning Day Fallout , Mobs Messiahs and Markets, The New Empire of Debt, and The Little Book of The Shrinking Dollar, it’s easy to highlight published evidence of our correct forecasts of how the future would look.
We alerted readers to the consumption-driven bubbles in the US as we saw them coming. In December of 2004, we warned readers of the total destruction of the US housing market. At that time Fannie Mae had just published a report revealing its exposure to the derivatives market. That was enough for us to see the trouble ahead.
We sounded the alarm with enough advance for Daily Reckoning readers to prepare – and protect – themselves.
Even more recently, we’ve been ahead of the curve in foreseeing how the current fiscal challenges of the US would be unfolding. As Mark Hulbert of The Hulbert Financial Digest described in The Baltimore Sun, “[They’ve] very consistently railed for a long time about deficit spending, they have earned their bona-fides there.”
In short, we pen The Daily Reckoning each day – for free — to show you how to live well in uncertain times. We aim to make each article the most entertaining 15-minute read of your day. You’re among good company. Each day The Daily Reckoning provides over half a million U.S. subscribers… just like you… with literary economic perspective, global market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Why type of ideas can you expect? Let me show you, starting with…
DC Shake (Down) Move #1:
Underground Banking – Radical New Ways to Save and Grow Your Money
With DC and Wall Street growing closer by the day, we suggest you transfer out of the “too big to fail” banks, and take your savings “underground,” instead.
“Underground Banking” as we call it, is like a normal savings account, but with one big advantage: You don’t have to hold just U.S. dollars.
With one simple call to the “underground bank” I’ll introduce you to, you can diversify your savings out of the dollar and into things like commodities… foreign currencies… and precious metals.
There’s nothing illegal about this “underground” bank. I call it that just because most people I’ve met have absolutely no clue it exists.
The name of this creative bank is EverBank.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it. It only has a handful of physical branches in Florida. Its name is also on the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars stadium. But nationally, it’s barely known. That’s why I call it the “underground bank.”
Don’t worry, though — you don’t have to live in Florida or even fly there to take advantage of its unique products. Most of EverBank’s business is handled on the Internet or over the phone.
This isn’t some barely solvent newcomer, either. EverBank’s roots trace back to 1961, though its current business model didn’t really come together until 2000. It proved to be a hearty bank, too, sailing through the banking crisis of 2008–2009 without fearing a Fed takeover or needing government bailout money.
Today the bank has over $12 billion in assets — up from $8.1 billion just a few years ago. How did the bank survive the worst of the banking crisis? If I had to guess, I’d say it was by offering some of the most innovative banking products and services ever.
EverBank has created accounts and investments that cover a wide variety of philosophies and goals — often backed by FDIC protection. In fact, they offer several products that focus outside the U.S. dollar, allowing you to diversify your portfolio without taking big risks.
Now, before I go any further, I will be upfront and tell you that we have a close business relationship with EverBank. If you open up an account, we may be compensated. But as you’re about to see, we’ve partnered up with them because their products offer some of the best ways to protect yourself against a falling dollar.
Take, for instance, its take on simple money market accounts…
Every bank offers money market accounts — a place to park your cash to collect interest. But EverBank lets you open a money market account outside of your home currency.
It’s called a WorldCurrency Access Deposit Account — and at last count, it offers a doorway to 20 of the world’s most popular currencies.
Starting with a US$2,500 deposit (or the foreign equivalent), you can put that money into the euro… the Japanese yen… the South African rand… the Swiss franc… and several more currencies. With a deposit of US$10,000 or more, you may be able to collect interest on the account, depending on things like the currency’s home interest rate.
As with any money market account, you can withdraw or transfer the money anytime you want, up to six times a month for free. You can also make the account part of your IRA. But here’s where it gets good. First, EverBank doesn’t charge a monthly maintenance fee.
Nothing. You can put money into the account and forget about it — hopefully earning some interest along the way. Even if you don’t deposit enough to earn interest, you can still make some money in the deal. At any time, you can transfer your money from one currency to another, up to six times a month, with no fee. (Note that you’re limited to a total of six withdrawals and transfers a month in any combination. After that, there is a fee to withdrawal or transfer money.)
That means you can capture gains from shifting exchange rates.
For instance, say you open an account with $10,000 and have EverBank change your deposit into euros. Let’s say the exchange rate you get is 0.7 euros for every dollar, making your account deposit 7,000 euros.
Now let’s say it’s six months later, and the exchange rate is now 0.67 euros for every U.S. dollar — meaning every euro is worth approximately $1.49. Converting your account from euros to dollars will give you $10,430.
And that’s not including any interest you get paid on top of that in the meantime! Keep in mind, though, that this works both ways — if the euro loses value against the dollar, transferring your euros back into dollars could result in a loss. The accounts are FDIC insured, but are NOT insured against currency depreciation.
Now, keep in mind, this is just an example. We’re not recommending right now. Far from it. Explore your 20 options with Everbank. Of course, there are other conditions and limits, which EverBank is more than happy to share.
Follow this link http://www.everbank.com/underground and click on “Foreign Currencies” under the “Personal” category. So that covers your savings. Now here’s a quirky set of ideas to take back the small freedoms that DC’s stripped from us…
DC Shake (Down) Move #2:
Hack Your Showerhead – Two Ways To Boot Uncle Sam From Your Home
Long ago and far away, government pretended to do good things for us like build parks, boost income, bring electricity to rural areas, and the like.
Today, it is the opposite. It sees its role as restricting and tearing down what the private sector creates — for our own good. This is why it is constantly telling us that it must curb our lifestyles. The regulators restrict what we consume, control what we do, crack down on our ability to live a good life.
Take water pressure, for example…
You might have some vague memory from childhood, and perhaps it returns when visiting someone who lives in an old home. You turn on the shower and the water washes over your whole self as if you are standing under a warm-spring waterfall.
It is generous and therapeutic. The spray is heavy and hard, enough even to work muscle cramps out of your back, enough to wash the conditioner out of your hair, enough to leave you feeling wholly renewed — enough to get you completely clean.
Somehow, these days, it seems nearly impossible to recreate this in your new home. You go to the hardware store to find dozens and dozens of choices of shower heads.
They have 3, 5, 7, even 9 settings from spray to massage to rainfall. Some have long necks. Some you can hold in your hand. Some are huge like the lid to a pot and promise buckets of rainfall. The options seem endless.
But you buy and buy, and in the end, they disappoint. It’s just water, and it never seems like enough.
Here is one example of why, from the Santa Cruz City Water Conservation Office: “If you purchased and installed a new showerhead in the last ten years, it will be a 2.5 gpm [gallons-per-minute] model, since all showerheads sold in California were low consumption models beginning in 1992.”
And it is not just crazy California. The Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 mandates that “all faucet fixtures manufactured in the United States restrict maximum water flow at or below 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at 80 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure or 2.2 gpm at 60 psi.”
Or as the Department of Energy itself declares to all consumers and manufacturers: “Federal regulations mandate that new showerhead flow rates can’t exceed more than 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at a water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch (psi).”
Here’s a quick and quirky tip…
Although you may not know this, many people now hack their showers.
You can take your shower head down, pull the washer out with a screwdriver, and remove the offending intrusion that is restricting water flow. It can be a tiny second washer or it can be a hard plastic piece. Just pop it out and replace the washer. Sometimes it is necessary to trim it out using a pen knife. I’ve even used a drill.
Using such strategies, you can increase your water flow from 2 gallons per minute to 3 and even 4 gallons per minute. You can easily clock this using a stopwatch and a milk carton.
Here’s another quirky, but actionable tip…
Remember the old days, when washing clothes made they so white that they were called bright? Not anymore.
Years back DC regulated a key ingredient in detergent, trisodium phosphate, or TSP.
The ban that took place in the early 1990s. The idea, or the excuse, was to stop the increased growth of algae in rivers and lakes (phosphate is a fertilizer too), even though there are other ways to filter phosphate, home use contributes virtually nothing to the alleged problem, and there is no solid evidence that plant growth in rivers and lakes is a harm at all.
But there’s hope… A quarter cup of real TSP (don’t buy the fake thing) combined with your usual laundry soap will yield wonderfully clean clothes, provided you were suckered into buying one of the government-approved front-loading models of machines.
Clean clothes require 1) lots of water, 2) lots of heat, and 3) detergent with phosphates. Then you can throw all those other silly products in the trash. The bleach, which absolutely wrecks cotton, can go too. Thanks to the government, you can only find in the paint section of the hardware store.
Go grab yourself some! Again, it’s right in the paint section of the hardware store. Add a cup to your laundry and be amazed.
Here’s the final way to protect yourself…
DC Shake (Down) Move #3:
Free Admission Into The World’s Finest Schools
Due to the government’s funding of college loans, tuition prices have absolutely skyrocketed over the past two decades. Check out this chart.
Cheap, government sponsored loans created more demand. And more demand meant rising costs, as you can see.
Most of the money went directly into the hands of the for-profit education industry.
If current trends continue, over the next 10 years, the for-profit college industry will collect half a trillion dollars at the expense of the government, taxpayers, and their students. Hopefully, they won’t get that far.
Truth is these “for-profit” companies command Washington’s best lobbyists and key regulatory bodies to protect their easy access to government sponsored credit via Title IV student loans — funds that have in some cases accounted for more than 100% of total revenues.
Like the subprime originators who suffered much less risk than the investors in their mortgage paper, the industry bears little to no risk and reaps all the rewards from their students’ debt. While we can’t change the system, we can find ways around the soaring tuition costs. Let’s hop to it… If you want college courses, this link below offers you access to the best universities around the world. Best of all, they’re free! Just go to this link to get started: https://www.coursera.org/
You can take classes on everything from finance to cryptography. All online. All free. All without ever getting a loan from Sallie Mae. All without ever having to worry about paying back a single dollar in student debt.
And lest you think we’re kidding about the “Ivy League” class level… let me troll around on the site for you. I’m seeing a design class offered by University of Pennsylvania. That starts in 11 days. It’s eight weeks long. Or you can take a six-week Stanford University course on algorithms. Or if you’re feeling a bit more impractical, you can take a course in narrative fiction from Brown. Or for the more pragmatic, try a course on financial engineering and risk management. The course description, by the by, claims to cast a “critical eye” on how derivatives are used in practice. I’m guessing that would be in the last five minutes of the last lecture: “Hey kids, remember, only do this if you work for JP Morgan.” Coursera partners with the top universities around the globe to offer online courses to help you master material.
More Where This Came From
There you have it; three ways to protect yourself from the DC Shake (Down.)
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