Guts, Guns or Gold: Nobody Rides For Free

Looking back at my e-mail records, it was October 12, 1999. I had sent out an e-mail to my family and friends, admittedly a wild-eyed, but none-the-less valid. Contained within the long-winded reasoning behind the message, I advised everyone to get out of the stock market immediately and buy physica gold and silver coins.

If it weren't for the laughing, there would have been dead silence. Just Ol' B going off again on one of his tirades. After all, the Dow was pretty danged close to its all-time high in absilute value (factoring inflation and all), gold and silver were around $260 and $4, respectively. The precious metals hadn't been much of a concern since the 80s mania. Hedge funds and tech IPOs were the order of the day. Clinton had deregulated banks, happy days were here again, and we were all going to skip to the bank with armloads of money.

Some lone nut preaching, "The end is nigh," sure wasn't convincing a lot of folks. I did, however, put my money where my mouth was and cashed out my 401(k), sold out my options and stocks, and bought up all the gold and silver coins I could afford.

Sitting here 11 years later, I see that the Dow has only hit an all-time high once since then, in both absolute and notional value. Gold has risen better than 500%, silver has shot up almost 600%, and the markets are set to drop in the crapper yet again, taking the last of everyone's life savings with them.

So, was I right or what?

In July of 2001, some guy nemed George Ure, whose site about long-wave economics I had been reading for about a year, started twisting off on some new technology he was pimping for a guy named Clif High. It came out that Clif, while working on a way to predict future market moves, had hit on something much deeper.

Clif's theory was that future events could be predicted by people's current expectations, and that their expectations could be discerned by parsing the words that they chose when posting on internet fora and bulletin boards. He would send out small programs called 'bots' to search for a pre-determined set of 'hot' words, and when the bots found them, they would sample a bit of the text around the words and send the whole package home.

Clif could then read the hidden subtext of people's thoughts by fermenting the results with his own algorithms. The product was, what I imagine to be, a 3-dimensional scatter-graph that he calls model-space. Certain hot concepts form a cloud in this space, surronded by various adverbs and adjectives that modify them. Those descriptors are given numerical weights based on the emotional value of the words. The clouds are connected to each other through various relationships, and the whole thing overshadowed by the meta-data layer, which holds the archetypes that people use to manipulate the world within their minds.

Model-space can be rolled back and forth over time to see how and when these concepts develop and their relationships evolve. Clif takes this view and puts into narrative form and releases it as occasional reports (formerly called ALTA, and now called (SOTC)

All that was build-up to the summer of 2001, when George and Clif started releasing warnings that some major, world-changing event was in the offing. The details were a bit vague, but it involved a hugely emotional event that Clif called a 'tipping point,' before which the tension values of words were increasing, and after which they decreased rapidly. This point in time was pegged to happen in the Fall and there was some talk of buildings and changing attitudes.

Sure enough, on September 11, 2001, a lot of things changed.

By now, I can just picture you, dear reader, scratching your head and asking, "What is this nut going on about now?" Glad you asked.

Point number 1: If you're been watching the price of gold and silver lately, you have noticed that they are running up the ladder like nobady's business. My nose is twitching, telling me that there is more distance to cover before this run finishes, if my spasming nose is anything to go by. Past episodes would seem to indicate the positive. I especially am watching silver, since supplies are tighter than gold, deliveries have been very slow and Clif's work indicates that it has a big leap to make in the near future. Just today, the story is the (hahahahahaha) Federal Reserve may inflate the crisis out of existence. If you've been paying attention, that started a while back, say around 1933. The (NOT) Federal (NO) Reserve is acting like they just discovered it. HAHAHAHAHAHA! What a maroon, as Bugs Bunny might say.

The second point is this: Clif's and George's work is pointing to a time in November when there will be a tipping point that is orders of magnitude greater than 9-11, and has been showing up for several years in model-space. Now, normally I would put future predictions in the category of 'here comes the apocalypse' fantasies, which have predicted the Second Coming daily for 2,000 years. Hey, it's going to be right one of these days, que no? (snicker) However, I have watched the bots' output hit the mark repeatedly: the shuttle disaster, the NE blackout, the Banda Aceh tsunami, Katrina). Granted, on some of the smaller things, it's been a bit of a stretch to say that the bots have hit their mark, but on the Big Ticket items they seem to be batting 1,000.

So what to do?

Well, if you are still in the markets, then there's no hope for you. You are brain-dead and no amount of talking will convince you to save your own ass. However, if you've cashed out and are looking for somewhere to park it, gold and especially silver are your best bets, I think. The only thing better is farm land, since you can't eat metals, but you can sure use the land to feed yourself.

The next thing to do is strap yourself to the mast, because a storm is rising and the seas are going to be mean. I have little to no idea what to expect other than to expact the unexpected. If you are ready for that, then you should be able to ride out the storm.

Check out Clif's site and if you can part with $10, buy the latest report. Also, give his blog a read, as he spells out a little information there with regars to what's coming.

As with all dire future predictions, no guarantee or warranty. You're on your own. But, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and anything you do to prepare will still have value, even if the sun keeps shining.

If Buddha is right, which he sure seems to be about a lot of things, then we make our own future. After you prepare for the worst, then envisioning some good things for Life As We Know It sure can't hurt matters.

Every little bit counts.