jwithrow, Author at The Phoenician League

What comes next…

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…

About that pivot…

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.

The best advice I ever got about building wealth…

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…

Is this the 8th Wonder of the World?

No lesser mind than the brilliant Albert Einstein thought this feature of money was the “8^th Wonder of the World”.

Loosely translated, what he said was…

“Those who don’t understand [it], pay… while those who DO understand [it], earn.

He was talking about compounding – the magic bullet when it comes to investing.

Now, I don’t know if Einstein actually said compound interest was the 8^th Wonder of the World. There are questions about that. But you know, it doesn’t matter.

Because the point still applies. If you figure out how to earn a compounding rate of return on your money… you win.

Over time, you not only collect a return on your original investment…

You also collect a return on the money you’ve already earned. That’s how a small stake in the right asset can go like this:

You’re being robbed RIGHT NOW… [There’s still time to fix this]

In 2022, something big happened to our money… and almost no one has noticed. The Age of Paper Wealth came to an abrupt end.

Interest rates bottomed and started heading up again for the first time in 40 years… all while government and private debt exploded to unpayable levels…

And inflation is now destroying what remains of the American Dream.

If you’ve tried to get a loan to buy a home or car recently, you know what I’m talking about…

Finance charges have more than doubled in the last few years – making it much harder for regular people to secure affordable financing.

Well here’s the truth about the US dollar and where we are headed…

Until 2022, cheap credit was everywhere. Now… it’s gone. And that’s not going to change.

If the Federal Reserve (the Fed) prints a bunch more money and drops rates, it will be the end of the dollar and the financial system as we know it.

If they keep rates high and drain excess liquidity – like they are doing now – we’re guaranteed to go through a recession. And we may even see a full-blown credit crisis if Congress can’t reel in spending.

How I discovered the fast track to financial freedom

When I graduated from Radford University with my degree in finance, I was a fresh-faced lad of 22, ready to take on the world – convinced I would do meaningful work.

Not long after, the 2008 global financial crisis hit and I was right where I felt I needed to be… the Loss Mitigation department at Wells Fargo.

I was in the right place alright. But for all the wrong reasons. Let me explain…

Loss Mitigation is a code word for “we are the guys at the bank whose job it is to modify mortgage paperwork so Wells Fargo could show the government what a fine and noble job they were doing”.

I probably don’t have to tell you this was pure theatre. The only thing being mitigated was reputational damage.

I quickly understood that my real task was to satisfy government bureaucrats at various agencies by fiddling with paperwork to make it look like we were helping…

In reality, all I was doing was making sure my employer would have a profitable quarter… while almost four million families had lost their homes!

Needless to say, that didn’t sit right with me. In fact, I started having real trouble respecting the guy in the mirror. So, I walked.

And then, the most amazing thing happened…

America at the crossroads…

For generations, succeeding in America was simple…

Go to school—> get good grades—> go to college—> get a good job.

If you followed this plan and worked hard, a middle-class lifestyle was easy to achieve.

And those more ambitious could start a business with almost no regulatory obstacles. Opportunity was everywhere.

Not anymore…

Because the American Dream that inspired millions of immigrants to leave their homeland and create a new life in the US… is fading into history.

Today, many colleges load up students with debt and fill their heads with destructive ideas—the kind of ideas that prevent success in the real world.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy in Washington churns out endless regulations – strangling small business success. Many entrepreneurs from a generation ago would be hard-pressed to recreate their same success today.

And to top it off, reckless government spending and money printing are driving up the cost of living for everyone.

Just look at this data on consumer price inflation:

A financial storm is brewing… [Do this to prepare]

What role does money play in society? If you’re like most people, you’ll answer something like:

For transacting commerce. Or…
As a means of saving.

These are good answers… I give you my money, and you give me a product or service. Or I could save some portion of my money to use later.

Both are vital functions of money in any society. But money plays another role most people have never considered…

Money is also a communications system.

Prices for goods and services act like signals in a massive economy like ours. This price system is the most sophisticated “machine” ever built.

The prices of goods and services communicate information about the supply and demand of scarce resources to billions of individuals in real time all over the world.

When the price of something goes up, that’s a signal that it has become more scarce relative to demand – which prompts entrepreneurs and business owners to create more supply or offer alternatives to meet demand.

When the price of something goes down, that’s a signal that the item is abundant compared to consumer demand – leading firms to produce less of it… until the price rises again.

This price-signaling system allows millions to coordinate their productive efforts across time and space. It’s what Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith, called the “invisible hand”.

This is how individuals can make decisions based on self-interest – driving economic growth for all.

When the price system is left alone, labor and scarce resources can be allocated to their highest and best use.

Why am I telling you this? Because there is a problem…

What to do when trust is broken…

“Your dollar is a promise, a pact of trust,” President Nixon once assured the nation. “It will hold its value, come what may.”

The date was August 15, 1971. The day the world’s financial landscape was forever altered.

Nixon had just closed the “gold window”, a system that allowed foreign countries to exchange their US dollars for physical gold. This had been a cornerstone of the global monetary system for nearly 30 years.

The essence of this system was trust. But not in the US dollar. In gold.

If the United States started to print money excessively, the rest of the world could exchange their dollars for gold. That’s what the gold window was for.

The narrative behind Nixon’s “gold shock” is complex, but the aftermath is starkly clear…

Since Nixon’s decision, the US has created over $8 trillion out of thin air. This naturally diluted the purchasing power of each circulating dollar.

This is evident in the rising consumer prices we are all grappling with today.

But there’s another, less visible story unfolding. This chart reveals the truth:

The Fed Can’t Outrun This Economic Law

As regular readers know, my thesis is simple. The Age of Paper Wealth is over. This chart tells the story:

Here we can see the S&P 500 and the 10-year Treasury rate going back to 1980. The S&P 500 is the black line. And the 10-year Treasury rate is the blue line.

We’re using the S&P 500 as a proxy for US stock prices. And we’re using the 10-year Treasury as a proxy for interest rates. This chart makes it perfectly clear that the two are inversely correlated.

Interest rates started falling in 1982, and they fell consistently for the next 40 years. Meanwhile, US stocks consistently went up in value over that same time period.

But everything reversed in 2022. Rates started going up, and stock prices started to fall. We can see those moves clearly marked by the red arrows on the chart above.

So the period from 1982 to 2022 will go down in history as the Age of Paper Wealth.

And here’s the thing—what happened from 1982 to 2022 was not normal. Nor was it organic.

Instead, it was all driven by the debasement of our money.