Welcome to another Mantra Monday where we look at the mantra and what’s happening in the world relative to that today.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Mantra Monday
0:52 Food
3:16 Water
3:46 Energy
6:15 Security
7:39 Barterability
8:20 Wealth Preservation
10:52 Community
TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO:
If you think that the world is headed in a direction that makes you a bit concerned for the future and you’d like to be as self-sufficient and independent as possible, then you’ve come to the right place. My name is Lynette Zang. Now it’s time to go Beyond Gold and Silver.
Hello everyone. I’m Lynette Zang, Chief Market Analyst at ITM Trading, and a very proud prepper and I’d like you to welcome you to Mantra Mondays. So where we take a look at the mantra and what’s going on in the world relative to that today. So we’re just gonna jump in and of course, food becomes this biggest single issue for people during these transitions.
Soaring dollar, that’s dollar relative to other currencies, leaves food piled up in ports as world hunger grows. Because these other countries that don’t earn dollars but have to pay for this food in dollars, they just don’t have the money for it, even here in the US. I mean, look at how quickly and rapidly food at home is going up and food anywhere frankly at home or in the restaurants. But it is still less expensive to eat at home and they cannot afford it. They cannot pay for these commodities. I mean, it’s not a shocker. And part of what I really am wondering is how much of this is real supply and demand, the strong dollar, and how much of this is traders moving prices up? I mean, I don’t know that I’m ever gonna really know the answer to that, but that is something that I think about more and more these days. And at the same time, a subchapter I guess of food are medicines. And as the healthcare and the cost of drugs and the cost of everything, which is far outpacing whatever we see in inflation, well guess who has to pay for these additional costs at this point? And we’re also assuming that they’re still getting the care that they need. Because what ultimately happens is meds dry up. You can’t really get the care, but homeowners property taxes, right? They call that immovable property cause you can’t put it on your back and walk away. So ultimately taxes have to go up to pay for all of this. They recently, in New Jersey, had a 20% premium increase in public workers healthcare costs. And that caught lawmakers by surprise, shocking and left them criticizing a potential $350 million bill to homeowners who already pay the nation’s highest property taxes. This is the function of fractional. Here’s, here’s a one ounce piece and that’s the fractional piece of gold for your property taxes. It’s all part of the strategy, but you know, as we know, it’s critical to make sure that you are secure in that area.
And the ongoing issue around water is growing. In this particular case we’re talking about, and this is happening all over the world about transfer lanes, transportation lanes being cut off and going down and that only drives the prices up as well as the cost to transport everything increases as well as inflation. That’s what it makes it do.
But the true reality is, is that the global, the current global energy order is unraveling and energy is more and more being used as a weapon who basically pays this price? Of course, it’s the public. So it’s critically important for you to figure out how you can be energy secure up at the bug out location. I’ve got full solar as well as propane. We’ve got a little bit of wind, but we’ll be doing more of that up there and we’ll keep you posted as that progresses. But if you’re counting on diesel or any kind of oil, then you need to also be counting on rising prices. And again, you know, you need a true asset, a flight to safety asset that ensures that no matter what your circumstances are, hopefully you’ll be able to pay your way out of them. And we’ve seen that over and over and over throughout history. So you gotta wonder who’s really controlling these prices? Is it really about supply and demand or is it really about the traders? I I can’t really tell you fully the answer for that, but I do know that energy went to negative $34 bucks a barrel, right? That that wasn’t real. So maybe these prices are not real either, but as long as the traders make their money, who cares? I care cause we only have 26 days of heating oil left. You know, here in the US inventories are at the lowest seasonal point in weekly data and heating cost scenes surging to the highest in at least 25 years. You know, especially for those in the north and the northeast, that northwest, northeast north that need to, to use heating oil to heat their homes. This is really, really significant. And the stockpile 26 days? Well winter lasts longer than 26 days. Aye, aye, supply squeeze seems like a plausible excuse. But then again, I go back to what we’re looking at in the derivative space in those contracts because traders only care about making money, they don’t care about your energy or your heat.
All right? Well, as things get more expensive and people can’t afford the necessities more theft, burglaries and even murders are the unexpected side effect of rising prices. Inflation could spark sharp rises in theft, burglary, and even murder. You know, high inflation was creating more demand for stolen goods. So theft and burglaries, retailers fear police are now focusing more on violent crimes than on burglary and theft. So what are you doing to make sure that, that you are not the victim of a burglar? I recently put in security shutters in my home in Phoenix on every single window that and every door that does not already have, you know, a safety, a burglar proof gate. So I mean, it’s a way of life. It’s, it’s kind of interesting cause when I’m down here in Phoenix, I find that I lock myself in and when I’m up at the bug out location, everything is open and I feel like I can breathe much better up there. But we have to be conscious of this and make sure that you can protect your family. And there’s lots of different ways for security. We’re just talking about the physical security today.
Another is making sure that you have always have a tool of barter. Because what happens in hyperinflation is all confidence is lost in this garbage. Nobody wants it, right? So that for me, as much of what silver is about, that’s a big part of my barterable position because it’s universal, right? And there’s the broadest base of buyers. So anything physical, anything physical, any talent that you have that’s all barterable. It’s just that gold and silver are more universal and we’re gonna see more and more of that as things move on.
Because when we look at people counting on their pensions or their IRAs or their 401ks or any of that, you know, I think that this current pension funding index in October really tells a story for the markets because so much of what is invested in these pension plans are in the stock market, the bond market, the derivative market, and the ratio is, you know, while the stock market was going up and the bond market was going up, these ratios looked much better their ability for them to pay out their promises. But just in September alone, they fell from 85.5 down to 69.3. That is a huge drop. Do you see these markets going up? Well, yeah, the fed pivots and starts pumping in tons and tons. Oops, tons and tons of new money. Yeah. Will that make those fiat markets look like they go up? Sure. But on the other side of that, what happens is the confidence and the value, the purchasing power value will be lost through additional inflation. So you wanna make sure that your wealth is preserved. The way that I personally do it, is right here. This the silvers for barterability. The gold for me is about wealth preservation. And if you wanna see what that looks like in just another way, okay, well they’re their liabilities and those have gone up and there’s the market value of what they hold. And that has gone down creating this massive deficit, which as you can see is also growing. So as long as the markets continue on the trajectory that they’re on right now, which I believe they will until, until the next crisis occurs where the Fed does a pivot or central banks do a pivot and start pumping money for free back into the system, I think are gonna continue to implode. And much as we haven’t heard that much about the retirement plan crisis, guess what? You saw what the Bank of England did and you see what we’re gonna have to do.
Because what ends up happening, are protests, when people are hungry and hopeless, they make choices they would not otherwise make. And it puts the risk of remaining in power on the table for central bankers, for governments. I mean, this is how things shift. And you know, could we see, I mean here in Iran, a young woman died under suspicious causes and it’s rallied the whole world. This is part of the broader Community, but we all feel what’s going on. And right now we have consumer confidence at the lowest levels. Ever since they started tracking this, and this was going back to 1970, well 1977, that’s when they first started tracking consumer confidence because we went on a pure debt based system. This is not good. We are a consumer driven economy and people are having trouble meeting their basic needs. Could they come together? Could this be a potential global revolution? I think that that is a high possibility and so does Ray Dalio. So we’ll kind of see how this goes. But you wanna have yourself in a position to be keep your family safe, to feed your family, to do what you need to do.
But don’t worry about the housing market. So many people thought that houses could never go down, right? Well, what happens is into this Rocket Mortgage and a few others have launched programs to lower the first year of mortgage payments. What are they doing? Are they thinking that if they just get people in now we’ll deal with the consequences later because really what they’re actually telling them is that they will pay 1% of their interest because we know interest rates have gone up so high on, on homes, they’ll pay that one year’s worth of interest. Well, what happens on the 13th month? When all of a sudden their mortgage payments go up? Are they going to be allowing people into this program that won’t be able to make those payments in 13 months? And if we are going into a recession and the Fed wants more job losses, they’re gonna get ’em. I promise you they will get what they want as they continue to raise interest rates. Well, what does that mean for all of those people that took out these funny mortgages? Let’s hope that this doesn’t create another problem. But don’t worry because they’re also telling us Rocket is, that if interest rates go down in three years, that they have a program that covers some of the cost to refinance. So don’t worry about the interest rates now because they’re probably gonna be a whole lot lower in three years. I’m being facetious. Nobody knows that. They don’t know it. This is just because their buyer base is shrinking and they need to get people in. And who’s most likely to take out a mortgage right now? Frankly, I mean my first mortgage, I remember it was 12%. That was 1978 yeah, would’ve been, I got married in 77, so I think that was 78 or 79, something like that. Make sure house payment a whole lot higher. I did subsequently refinance, but it was many years after that. So I don’t know. Here’s hoping that interest rates are low in three years. No, because when they are, and if they are, it’s because the central bank had to come in and push them down because everything’s imploding. So we’ll just deal with the consequences of this later. But I have to tell you that this seems similar to a lot of the attributes of the mortgage crisis that happened pre 2000 leading up to 2007-2008, right? You’re, you’re locking in one rate. Okay, well you know that’s a variable rate because in a year it’s going up by a percent and then you’re gonna have to wait maybe three years and hopefully the interest rates will be lower. I don’t know. That was kind of like, “ah, don’t worry about it you can always refinance.” For those of us that were around in 2008 and heard that, I think we can remember this. Amid inflation uncertain economic conditions and intensifies competition in a shrinking mortgage origination market Rocket has rolled out a range of new products and increased its conventional loan limit to reach more buyers and brokers. So they are changing the rules and we’ve seen that with the grading services as well. There are all sorts of ways for people to boost their credit score so that they can afford more debt.
So this is Mantra Monday. I hope that you can see why the mantra is what it is. Food, Water, Energy, Security, Barterability, Wealth Preservation, Community and Shelter. And we are running out of time. So until next we meet. Please be safe out there. Bye-Bye.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAF11
https://www.sounddollar.com/bartering
https://www.milliman.com/en/insight/Public-Pension-Funding-Index-October-2022
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UMCSENT
