Author: jwithrow

One of the books making waves in the finance space right now is David Webb’s The Great Taking. It posits that the global elite have reworked the legal system such that they are now the secured creditors for all financial assets and all the underlying property held by publicly-traded corporations.

According to Webb, the global banking cabal plans to set off another great depression – similar to what happened in the 1930s. This will cause a financial collapse and allow the elites to legally transfer all wealth to themselves.

Afterwards, we’ll wake up to find that we don’t actually own the stocks and funds held in our retirement and brokerage accounts. The middle class will be wiped out. Then, if we want to get back into the new financial system, we’ll have to consent to using a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The book suggests that the Federal Reserve’s (the Fed’s) aggressive rate-hiking campaign of 2022 was part of this plan. It was the trigger. Higher interest rates are what will cause the collapse and set the plan into motion.

It’s an entertaining story. But I don’t think it correctly identifies the incentives.

If we look at the numbers, the great taking already happened. 

Continue reading “The Great Taking already happened…”

Global shipping is fracturing and the new year is off to a chaotic start.

On New Year’s Eve a rebel group from Yemen known as the Houthis attacked a Maersk container ship in the Red Sea. In response, the US destroyer USS Gravely intervened and engaged several Houthi small boats in naval combat.

This event was an escalation of previous skirmishes in the Red Sea. The Houthis have been attacking ships they believe to be in route to Israel since last November. They made it clear that any cargo ships traversing the sea are at risk.

This has already impacted global shipping tremendously. To understand why, we have to look at the geography:

The Red Sea is that narrow strip of water separating Africa from the Middle East. It also connects to the Suez Canal, which provides direct access to the Mediterranean Sea.

So the Red Sea is critically important when it comes to global trade. Roughly 15% of all trade moves through it. And around 10% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) moved by ship flows through the Red Sea – most of that heading for Europe.

At least it did previously.

With the Houthis disrupting shipping routes in the Red Sea, Maersk suspended all cargo movements through the Suez Canal until further notice. And 262 container ships have already rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, which is located at the southern tip of Africa.

So all those shipments into Europe that previously entered the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal must now sail all the way around Africa to get to their final location.

That’s added enormous expense – up to $1 million in extra fuel costs for every round trip. And of course it’s causing dramatic delays as well.

No surprise, rates for shipping containers have skyrocketed. The cost to ship from China to Europe is up 80% just this week. And if the disruptions continue, we’ll almost certainly see oil prices spike as well.

But there’s a less tangible effect at work here also…

Trust is collapsing around the world. We’re seeing signs that the established order of the last several decades is splintering.

That means major changes are coming fast… and they will impact everything about money, investing, and retirement planning.

Are you positioned for what’s to come?

Get a jump on 2024 with our new financial training. We’re calling it Mistakes, Misconceptions, and Malinvestment.

You can find the broadcast right here.

-Joe Withrow

Urgent Financial Training for 2024

The Age of Paper Wealth is over. And that means the era of hyper-financialization is going to fade away.

I see this as good news.

Financialization refers to the increasing emphasis we’ve placed on financial markets, financial institutions, and financial activity over the last several decades.

All of these items may be important… but they should not dominate our economic activity. Especially not from within a fiat monetary system where all new currency is issued with debt attached (loaned or monetized into existence).

The growing emphasis we’ve placed on finance has come to the detriment of hands-on knowledge, skilled labor, the middle class, and traditional American values.

That is to say – nobody seems to know how to do anything anymore. Myself included. Finance is all I’ve known.

Continue reading “The Death of Financialization”

Happy New Year!

I hope you and yours had a great Christmas season. It’s such a magical time of year.

Each year I take a day or two the week after Christmas just to sit in my office and reflect. I reflect on the previous year… and then I think about my goals for the year to come.

You know, this is the first time that I’m not excited about the new year. I’m uneasy about what 2024 will bring.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m an eternal optimist. But something is in the air. We can feel it.

A core theme I’ve been tracking in these pages is the covert macroeconomic battle between the New York banking cartel, the West’s globalist faction, and the expanded BRICS bloc.

These factions are each jockeying for position on the world’s stage. And their weapons of choice are politics, media, and global finance.

Continue reading “What’s Coming in 2024”

The world as we know it ended in 2022.

Yet, as we discussed yesterday, our entire approach to retirement planning is based on the world that ended. This new world we’ve entered into comes with new rules of money… and these new rules require a new approach.

I submit to you that we should scrap the nest egg model completely. Because it forces us to choose between assets and income. That’s the core premise within my book Beyond the Nest Egg.

Instead, we should start thinking in terms of “financial security” and then “financial independence”.

Financial security comes first. This is how we make our savings bulletproof.

To achieve financial security, we must assess our current needs and lifestyle relative to our career, income, and family situation.  

Based on these things, how much money do we need to save to provide ourselves with reasonable continuity should we lose our job, our income, or suffer a major emergency?

This number is going to be different for each of us.

If we’re young and just getting started, maybe $25,000 is enough. If we’re middle age with a family, maybe we need to accumulate $50,000 or $100,000. And if we’re in or approaching retirement age, we may want our financial security number to be even higher.

But here’s the thing – we don’t simply stuff this money into a savings account or some kind of fund. We build a strategic asset portfolio across a range of asset classes. Each asset serves a different purpose for us.

Continue reading “The New Rules of Money for the 2020s and Beyond – Part 2”

I have one more image of winter’s first snowfall for you today:

This one truly captures the majesty of the Virginia highlands. But now it’s time for a serious discussion…

The Age of Paper Wealth is over.

That’s the conclusion my research led me to last year. And it’s the core theme I’ve presented in these pages over and over again.

It all comes down to the Federal Reserve (the Fed), interest rates, and the US dollar.

The market has been trained to see the Fed as a reactionary institution. When consumer price inflation rises, the Fed is supposed to raise interest rates to get it back down. Then when inflation slows, the Fed is supposed to cut interest rates to stimulate economic growth.

That’s the Keynesian view. It’s been the dominant economic school of thought in academia and American politics ever since the 1960s. President Nixon even went on television in 1971 and proclaimed, “We’re all Keynesians now”.

Keynesian theory created the Age of Paper Wealth. It lasted from 1982 to 2022.

Continue reading “The New Rules of Money for the 2020s and Beyond”

The first snowfall of the season came last night.

Just a dusting… but the mountains of Virginia sure look magical when they are covered in snow. I snapped a few photos down by the river this morning:

This is the small walking path that winds its way next to the Jackson river.

In the background you can see old Smith’s bridge. It’s a steel bridge that’s just wide enough for a truck to cross the river. It connects what was once Smith’s farm with the Cliffview Inn.

Getting back to finance…

Continue reading “What comes next…”

Suddenly the “Fed pivot” is all the rage… again.

Last Wednesday the Federal Reserve (the Fed) announced that it would not raise its benchmark lending rate again this year. And Fed Chairman Jerome Powell stated that we are “likely at or near the peak rate for this cycle”.

The stock market began ripping higher as those words came out of Powell’s mouth.

As I write, the S&P 500 is now up over 5% in just the last week and a half. That’s a huge move in such a short period of time.

But it wasn’t what Powell said that really kicked the markets into a bullish frenzy. It was the Fed’s quarterly “dot plot”. This is a chart that summarizes the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC’s) collective expectations for interest rates over time.

Now, the FOMC is composed of 12 members. It includes the Federal Reserve Chair, the Board of Governors,  president of the New York Fed, and four of the other regional Fed presidents.

The FOMC is technically the Fed’s inner sanctum. It meets eight times a year to discuss monetary policy. The dot plot is supposed to be representative of these insider discussions… which is why the market ripped higher last week.

This quarter’s dot plot shows that FOMC members expect three rate cuts next year and four in 2025. What’s more, the dot plot projects the first rate cut coming in March 2024.

But there’s a nuance here that nobody wants to acknowledge.

Continue reading “About that pivot…”

I spent the last seven years at the largest independent financial research firm in the world. One of my mentors there had a saying he was fond of…

“When your outgo exceeds your income… your upkeep becomes your downfall.”

Wise words. But also simple. So simple…

And that’s what I want you to realize about financial freedom. You do NOT need a fancy degree… You don’t even need a lot of money to start with.

What you need more than anything else is…

A mentor to show you the ropes. Someone who can save you years of expensive mistakes… 

And give you the skills and confidence to achieve financial security and then financial freedom.  

After working in corporate banking (and hating it)… And seven years at the world’s largest independent publisher of investment research (and loving it)…

I finally decided to go out on my own and bring everything I’ve learned about money and finance to regular people.

And that led me to create the new Finance for Freedom Mastermind. 

In it, you will find everything you need – no matter what your level of comfort or experience with money – to deal with the new economic environment we are now in.

Plus, you’ll also get something you won’t find anywhere else – access to a personal mentor who can guide you to adopt sound financial fundamentals for the days ahead.

And you’re going to need it. Because… 

Continue reading “The best advice I ever got about building wealth…”