Author: jwithrow

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals… Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

That’s Jim Rohn writing about success.

Rohn left this world back in 2009. But in his time he was considered a leading authority on personal development and business success. His books and programs reached millions of people around the world.

As Rohn so eloquently points out, success doesn’t come from luck. It comes from consistency.

To be successful in any endeavor, one needs to first develop the good habits that will bring success about… And then stick with those habits day after day after day.

And here’s the thing – those habits don’t need to be major undertakings. In fact, they shouldn’t be. Instead, success habits should be small and hardly noticeable.

That’s because it’s very easy to stick with habits that are simple. And there’s a cumulative effect that goes unseen when we apply good habits consistently.

This is the secret of success. It comes from doing little things over and over again.

To that end, I do two little things every Monday morning to improve my financial situation.

First, I buy $100 worth of Bitcoin. That’s regardless of whatever the price happens to be.

Then I go into my crowdlending portfolio and I purchase $100 worth of new notes. This boosts my passive income ever so slightly.

I do both of these things every Monday before I start my work day. I’ve done so for a long time now.

I add to my Bitcoin stash every week because I see it as sound money that’s more scarce than gold. And as the world awakens to the importance of sound money, Bitcoin’s dollar price will rise significantly.

In fact, I fully expect to see Bitcoin trading north of $100,000 within the next 24 to 36 months.

On the crowdlending side, I add to my portfolio every week because it’s a quick and easy way to build a nest egg that compounds over time. I’ve been able to generate returns over 9% consistently with this strategy.

We’ll talk more about both Bitcoin and crowdlending later this week.

But what I want to emphasize today is this – no single $100 purchase has much of an impact on my overall financial situation.

In other words, I do these two things every week even though that particular action alone doesn’t move the needle in any tangible way.

That’s why I thought very seriously about ending these habits on multiple occasions in the early days. After all, if we’re doing something that doesn’t produce a noticeable impact, why continue?

It’s all about the cumulative effect.

If we purchase $100 worth of Bitcoin every week for years, we’re going to end up with a material stash. There’s no way to quantify this accurately simply because the price is constantly fluctuating.

But if we stick with this habit, we’ll end up adding tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to our net worth over time. And the best part is, this worth will be denominated in bitcoins, not dollars.

On the crowdlending side, it’s much easier to quantify the compounding effect.

My approach to risk assessment has been able to generate a 9.2% return on my crowdlending portfolio thus far. Assuming that rate of return, $100 a week will turn into $5,576 after the first year.

From there, the portfolio will grow to $11,578 in two years. And if we keep at it for five years, we’ll have a nest egg of $33,266. And then the portfolio will throw off about $600 a month in passive income.

There’s nothing eye-popping about these numbers. But they come simply from making small $100 investments every single week. They take no more than fifteen minutes to do.

So this is my Monday morning routine. It’s like clockwork to me.

Pair these two simple habits with a more extensive wealth strategy and we’ll be on the fast track to financial independence.

And in the spirit of financial independence, I’d like to try something completely new today.

We are packaging our Finance for Freedom program and our course on The Income Snowball Strategy into a single bundle. We’re calling it The Financial Consistency Bundle. This will enable people to try out both courses for the price of one.

So if my two Monday morning habits strike you as worthwhile, these two courses will lay out exactly how I go about doing both.

Finance for Freedom discusses the best practices around buying and storing Bitcoin… and a whole lot more. It also spells out the hidden secrets of money and asset allocation in full.

And The Income Snowball Strategy will convey my approach to risk assessment when it comes to crowdlending. Proper risk assessment is critical to generating high returns.

But here’s the thing – we’ve never bundled these two programs together before. So we’re going to make the bundle available for this week only.

If you’re interested, you can get more information right here:

The Financial Consistency Bundle

But please don’t delay. We’ll shut down the offer on Saturday, April 29^th at midnight Eastern.

-Joe Withrow

Asha is the path of righteousness, the straight path, the path that is true. Druj is the pAsha is the path of righteousness, the straight path, the path that is true. Druj is the path of falsehood, the crooked path, the path that is false.

Choose the path of asha, for it leads to happiness and joy. Avoid the path of druj, for it leads to suffering and pain.

This is a quote attributed to Zoroaster. He was the founder of the ancient religion Zoroastrianism.

Zoroaster taught that life was a battle between truth and falsehood. He called truth “asha”. And his term for falsehood was “druj”.

To Zoroaster, the purpose of life was to seek asha and defend it against druj. I’d say that’s a good philosophy.

I only know this because I was researching the origins of the Russian oil trade this week. That’s something I’m writing about in our April newsletter for The Phoenician League.

In 1876 a wealthy Russian industrialist discovered acres upon acres of untapped oil fields in and around the ancient city of Baku. It’s located right on the Caspian Sea in the modern country of Azerbaijan – just south of the Russian border.

It turns out that Baku was once a major outpost of Zoroastrianism. Marco Polo wrote about it in his famous 13^th century book The Travels of Marco Polo.

And it’s likely this Russian industrialist traveled to Baku specifically because of what he read in the book. Marco Polo reported seeing oil gushing out of the ground in the ancient city. The Zoroastrian temples harnessed it to fuel pillars of fire.

We’ve been talking about community and American mutualism all this week… and I felt like this old idea from Zoroaster fit right in with our discussion.

From my perspective, the belief that there is objective truth in this world is fundamental to the progress of western civilization. If we think about the modern comforts we enjoy today, they are all thanks to the work our ancestors did.

For most of human history, the world was a cold, dark, and often hostile place. But our ancestors constantly strove to discover the secrets of the Universe. And as they did so, they used this knowledge to make human life easier.

Fire… steam power… electricity… modern methods of energy production… advanced power tools – each of these developments came as a result of people seeking truth. Often under very difficult conditions.

So I wanted to leave you with a thought this week…

In many ways, our lives are a continuation of those who came before us. Many of us were instilled with the mindset that it’s up to each successive generation to take what they receive and build upon it.

But we don’t do this by electing the right politicians and passing the right legislation – no matter how many interest groups want to convince us of such.

Instead, we advance human civilization by building up ourselves first… and then by building up our community. Those are the things that we can control.

To that end, I wanted to introduce you to a non-profit that we recently formed. We call it the Foundation for Human Civilization.

Our mission is to help enable vibrant, self-sustaining local communities.

And our first project is to drill a centralized well in rural Uganda. It will service the remote villages of Mwera and Bugolo-Kireku.

These two villages are home to about 2,000 people across 220 households. Children make up more than half of the population.

Yet, the villages have no running water.

Residents must collect rainwater and/or travel to a natural spring to fill up their jugs. The closest spring is up to three miles away from residents in these two villages.

By drilling a centralized well, we’ll reduce the need for residents to travel to the spring each day. This will free up their time to engage in more productive activities… which in turn will help the villages become more prosperous.

If you would like to learn more about our little project and how you can support it, I invite you to visit the Foundation’s site right here:

Foundation for Human Civilization: Uganda Water Project

-Joe Withrow

Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.

Americans use associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes. In this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools.

Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate. Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.

That’s French ambassador Alexis de Tocqueville writing in the 1830s.

The French government commissioned de Tocqueville to travel to the United States. His job was to study American society and politics. And what he found amazed him.

That is, Americans worked together to manage society and take on important projects. This was done through private associations. And everything was self-funded.

Nobody was forced to do any of the things de Tocqueville mentioned. And the government levied no taxes to fund these projects.

Instead, those who found the projects useful and necessary came together to complete them. Everything centered around community at the local level.

What’s more, many of these associations also served as “safety nets” for people.

I’ve done a little bit of research on America’s great mutual aid networks of that time period. A great (but certainly not complete) resource for this is David Beito’s From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services.

I don’t think many of us realize just how robust and self-reliant Americans were back then. The mutual aid networks were incredibly comprehensive.

Members shared ideas and boots-on-the-ground intel… They facilitated skills-training and jobs-training programs… They matched each other up with career and investment opportunities… They banded together to take care of physical infrastructure… And they instituted programs that made access to quality health care cheap and accessible to all members.

That’s where the term “lodge doctors” came from.

Many of these networks would keep doctors on the payroll. Then, when a member needed medical attention, their lodge doctors were immediately available. And at far reduced prices since they were already on retainer.

A few of these old mutual aid societies are still around today. The Moose Lodge and the Order of Elks are two examples.

The thing is – these associations are extremely watered down today. They only do a fraction of what they once did.

That’s because the Welfare State crowded them out. And then the virtue-signaling philanthropy industry kicked them while they were down.

We’ve been talking all week about the America is going to the dogs narrative that’s prevalent today. It’s pushed upon us through both traditional and social media. It’s all about the perception that America had a good run… but now it’s on the decline.

And maybe that’s true in the major cities. Especially the poorly governed ones.

But from my perspective, there are still plenty of strong communities out there in this country. And I think people are feeling the need to band together with those of like mind more than they have in about a century.

This is a dynamic Robert Nisbet explored in his book The Quest for Community. In the book, Nisbet pointed out something that I found quite insightful.

The rise of the Welfare State enabled what’s often called “radical individualism”. This is the idea that it’s every man (or woman) for himself… and that somebody else will handle any problems that may impact society or its infrastructure.

This is quite ironic.

Proponents of the Welfare State claim that it’s necessary specifically because of so-called radical individualism. But the history of 19th century mutual aid in America says otherwise. Americans were far more community-minded before big government came to power.

The point is – America only falls if we let it.

And that’s because America isn’t one giant entity. Fundamentally, it’s an idea. The idea that individual liberty is a natural right… and that nobody has the right to infringe upon the liberty of others.

America is the idea that every man should be the king of his own castle, as Thomas Jefferson put it.

In other words, America exists at the local level. It’s all the countless communities dispersed across this great landmass.

That means we are in control. Each of us. As my friend Paul Rosenberg puts it awake, engage, act.

-Joe Withrow

P.S. Do you get the feeling that the principles of western civilization and American history are being lost?

To me, it’s clear that government-approved textbooks do them both a major disservice. In fact,

I’m amazed at how little I knew about our heritage. That is, until I sought out independent educational sources.

And one of the best resources I’ve found is Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom.

It features 33 video-based courses taught by some knowledgeable and passionate people. Several of them are professors at small private colleges that accept no federal funding. That provides them with full autonomy.

Liberty Classroom features basic history courses on both western civilization and American history. There are also courses on the culture of the early American republic as well as the early days of the western frontier.

Then there are courses on “freedom’s progress”. This is the history of political thought in the western world. There are several fascinating courses on mythology and science fiction in western civilization as well.

And finally, Liberty Classroom features quite a few courses on free market economics. That is to say, real economics. Not the hypothetical economics taught in all but a handful of American universities today.

Put it all together and this is the education I wish I had received in high school and college.

And it’s about more than just personal development.

This material provides a solid foundation for understanding the modern world. That includes the ability to parse through biased information to identify incentives. If you can find the incentives, you can get much closer to the truth.

So I can’t say enough good things about this program.

If you would like to give Liberty Classroom a look and browse its course offerings, just go here:

Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom

We talked yesterday about the manufactured America is going to the dogs narrative.

There seems to be an agenda in motion to convince us that everything is falling apart in this country. There was a time when I believed this. But not anymore…

My own observations suggest otherwise. We’re seeing a resurgence of self-reliance and self-responsibility in America once again.

I see homeschooling as a great indicator of this.

Not too long ago people considered homeschooling to be weird. Many looked down upon it.

Today it’s estimated that ten or eleven percent of American households with children are now homeschooling. Talk about a turn-around.

The Covid hysteria served as the catalyst for this rapid shift.

Of course, it started when they closed the schools and went to a “remote learning” model. This showed parents that their kids could in fact learn at home. It’s not hard to facilitate.

But more than that, parents finally got a glimpse of just how bad the public school system is.

In the best scenarios, the kids simply aren’t getting an education that’s suited for the modern world in which we live. The schools do not set kids up for success in the 21st century. They are a relic of the factory era.

In the worst scenarios, the teachers are pushing disturbing ideas onto the kids. Gender fluidity… the idea that all white people are systemically racist… a love of communism – I’ve heard stories of public school teachers pushing all these things and more on their students.

As a result, millions of families have taken their children’s education into their own hands. That’s the American spirit at work. I love it.

The other thing the Covid hysteria taught us is that we still retain a lot of power and control at both the state and local levels in this country. American federalism can still serve as a check against centralized government power… just as it was intended to do.

That is to say, we’ve learned that state and local governments still have a lot of control. They can refuse to adopt policies handed down from the federal government if they deem them harmful or unnecessary.

I’m incredibly encouraged by this. And I think it paves the way for a renewed sense of mutualism in this country.

Americans are seeing the need to work together to solve problems at the local level once again. Despite its promises, the federal government is not the ultimate arbiter of civilization.

And this is why I just don’t buy the America is falling apart narrative.

It looks to me like many Americans are willing to roll up their sleeves and work together to solve their own problems. Just like they used to do by default. We’ll talk about the great mutual aid networks of 19th century America tomorrow.

But I think the key insight here is that we, as individuals, have the power to shape the world around us.

Our energy is incredibly transformational when it’s focused on a clear and specific task. Clarity of purpose might be the most powerful force in the Universe.

That’s why I love the work Connor Boyack and the Tuttle Twins team is out there doing.

If you aren’t familiar with the Tuttle Twins, it’s a series of children’s books that convey critical lessons. Personal responsibility… accountability… mutual collaboration… empathy… standing up for what’s right. Each book portrays these values in some capacity.

What’s more, the Tuttle Twins books instill a mindset of self-empowerment. They depict individuals and communities that work together to solve problems and accomplish tasks. I think this is critical in our world today.

So for anyone in need of gift ideas for the kids or the grandkids – the Tuttle Twins books are a great pick. You can browse the book selection right here:

The Tuttle Twins Book Collection

-Joe Withrow

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors.

That’s Thomas Jefferson writing about the primary news media of his day – newspapers.

Many of us today see the news media as biased and sensationalist. We tend to blame the 24-hour news cycle and social media for this… but Jefferson’s writing shows that it’s a timeless issue.

I bring this up today because something of an insight occurred to me over the weekend.

It came to me as my wife and I were out to our monthly dinner. I’m walking down Main Street of this historic town nearby, and a thought came to me. Everything is mostly normal.

Then I had to stop and think… why does such a thought strike me as insightful? Shouldn’t I expect things to be normal?

That’s when it hit me – there’s been a concerted effort to convince us that America is going to the dogs.

I suspect this agenda has been in play for quite a while now. But it certainly ramped up in 2020.

Continue reading “The Plot Against American Reality”

Investors are always looking for new ways to generate a return on their money.

But as we discussed yesterday, those who have fixated on the stock market haven’t fared too well over the last fifteen months. That’s why we’ve been talking about an alternative investment strategy all week.

We call it the Income Snowball Strategy. It’s all about creating passive income outside of the stock market.

The beauty of this strategy is that there’s no barrier to entry.

It’s not like real estate investing where we have to come up with large down payments for every property we want to buy. Instead, investors can get started with just $25. That’s it.

And that’s because this strategy utilizes what’s called ‘crowdlending’. This is a financial model that connects borrowers with investors.

In other words, crowdlending allows investors to be the bank. We can pool our money together to issue loans to qualified borrowers.

This strategy provides several advantages for retail investors. They are:

• Higher Returns
• Monthly Passive Income
• Diversification
• Supports Small Business

Crowdlending provides investors with much higher returns than normal. Certificates of deposits (CDs) and bonds just don’t compare.

As I write, a 10-year Treasury bond currently pays 3.4% interest. And according to Bankrate.com, the average 5-year CD rate in the U.S. is currently 1.2%.

Meanwhile, our suggested approach to crowdlending can generate returns between 9 and 15%. Over and over again.

That’s been our experience. And we use legitimate credit risk analysis to build a robust loan portfolio – just like the banks do.

What’s more, these returns come in the form of monthly passive income. The bigger our loan portfolio gets, the more cash flow we have coming to us each month.

This is money that we can use for anything we want. My preference is to reinvest it. But there are no restrictions whatsoever.

Building a crowdlending portfolio also helps us diversify our assets. It’s a great way to put money to work outside of the stock market.

And finally, crowdlending helps enable small businesses.

It’s a way for small businesses to access capital without going through the banking system. They like that. The banks don’t always treat small business well as it is.

So by helping fund certain loans, we are directly supporting small business ourselves. And in return, those businesses send us a small portion of their revenues each month.

Of course, the key to making it all work is proper credit risk analysis.

We need to do our due diligence and build our loan portfolio strategically. That’s how we maximize our returns with crowdlending.

Ready to learn more?

We just made our new micro-course available to the public this week. Those interested can find it right here: The Income Snowball Strategy

What on Earth am I going to do now? It will take forever to regain what I lost…

Alex had been investing heavily in the stock market since the COVID-19 hysteria hit several years ago. He found himself working remotely for the first time… and suddenly he had extra time on his hands.

Like many, Alex began tracking the stock market daily. And he stumbled upon a few Reddit threads full of investors and “day traders”. Making stock picks became a game that the group talked about daily.

Pretty soon Alex began pouring a significant portion of his paychecks into his brokerage account to make new investments.

And for nearly two years he felt like a genius. He watched his investment account grow substantially as the market soared.

But then the market started to fall in January 2022… and it seemingly went down every day. Alex watched in horror as his account began a steep decline.

He thought about selling off some of his stocks to cut his losses. But then everybody in his Reddit groups kept saying the market would rebound as soon as the “Fed pivot” happened.

The Fed pivot refers to the idea that the Federal Reserve would have to cut interest rates to stop the stock market from falling. And everybody on Reddit agreed it was coming…

But it didn’t come.

A few weeks ago Alex threw in the towel. Then he kicked himself for not getting out when his gut told him to last year.

He lost what he considers to be a ton of money by staying firm and hoping the market would soon turn around.

Alex went from feeling brilliant to deeply distressed.

On top of losing his hard-earned money, Alex also watched his living expenses skyrocket – as we all have. A simple trip to the grocery store now costs at least twice what it did not too long ago.

Sadly, this story isn’t unique.

There are countless people out there in a similar position to Alex. They got caught up in the blow-off top of history’s greatest bull market… but then they rode the elevator back down.

To me, this is a perfect example of why the Income Snowball Strategy we talked about yesterday is so timely. It’s all about generating passive income outside of the stock market.

And that’s why we just unlocked a brand new micro-course around this approach. The course covers:

• The fundamentals of this alternative investment model
• Strategies for maximizing returns while mitigating risks
• Real-world examples and success stories
• Best practices for getting started and growing your monthly passive income

This new strategy is something I think all investors would be wise to implement. If you’re interested, you can get more information right here: The Income Snowball Strategy

-Joe Withrow

Your real estate program is great… but buying rental properties requires a large down payment up front. Do you have any strategies to start building passive income with less money down?

This is a great question that came in a few weeks ago.

We just conducted the second launch for our investment membership The Phoenician League last month. Our big pitch is that the membership delivers a comprehensive financial training program and actionable investment opportunities.

In other words, the program provides both the knowledge and actionable ways to implement it. It’s not just another information product.

One of the biggest promises we make is around helping members work up to $10,000 a month in passive income with rental real estate. We have the connections and the property deal flow to make this process as simple and straight-forward as possible.

That said, real estate is a slow game at first. It takes a while to save up enough to acquire our first properties.

The good news is that there’s a great way to start building passive income much sooner. We call it the Income Snowball Strategy.

I have personally used this strategy to generate a 9-15% return on my cash consistently. This is how I work up to having enough money to acquire new rental properties. 

And these returns come in the form of monthly passive income. The money hits our account every single month.

So we aren’t generating capital gains in the stock market here. 

That means we don’t have to worry about market crashes or investor sentiment. I see this as ideal now that the Age of Paper Wealth is over.

As such, we’ve unlocked a micro-course around this strategy. It’s short and to the point. There’s no fluff or filler whatsoever.

And the course outlines three specific strategies we can use to grow our passive income. One is conservative. One is moderate. And the last is aggressive – for those who have a higher risk tolerance.

If you’re interested, you can get our micro course right here: The Income Snowball Strategy

We believe, however, that events in the banking system over the past two weeks are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses, which would in turn affect economic outcomes. It is too soon to determine the extent of these effects and therefore too soon to tell how monetary policy should respond. 

As a result, we no longer state that we anticipate that ongoing rate increases will be appropriate to quell inflation. Instead, we now anticipate that some additional policy firming may be appropriate.

That’s Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting last week.

As expected, the Fed raised its target rate another 0.25%. It’s now between 4.75 and 5%.

That said, the Fed did remove its existing guidance that “ongoing rate increases” will be appropriate. Many analysts in the financial echo chamber took this to mean that the “Fed pivot” is coming.

If we remember, the Fed pivot refers to the idea that the Fed will have to end its rate-hiking campaign and get back to pouring cheap money into the system. 

I don’t think that’s the case.

To the contrary, I believe the Fed is committed to “normalizing” interest rates. There’s no other choice if they want to avoid destroying the economy and the entire monetary system.

Nothing said in last week’s meeting has changed my mind on that.

Unlike his predecessors, Powell appears to be a straight shooter.  Remember, he’s not a career academic like Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen were. 

Powell is a Wall Street veteran. And he made an absolute fortune on Wall Street. His net worth is north of $100 million.

So unlike Bernanke and Yellen, Powell doesn’t need to walk the party line or cover for hidden globalist agendas. We talked about that earlier this month.

With that in mind, let’s look at what Powell said last week in response to a question about what exactly “policy firming” means. The journalist basically asked whether “firming” meant no more rate hikes.

In response, Powell suggested focusing on the words “may and some, opposed to ongoing”. 

Reading between the lines here, Powell made it entirely clear that no pivot is coming. 

If we see a strong credit contraction due to the liquidity crunch in the banking sector, the Fed may hold off on the next rate hike for a quarter or two. But that’s it. 

The Fed is still committed to getting back to what they refer to as a “terminal” rate. This is the rate at which the Fed sees as neutral. That is to say, it’s not stimulative nor is it restrictive to the economy.

We don’t know what the Fed thinks the terminal rate is. But it’s almost certainly between 5% and 7%. And that means more rate hikes are coming. 

To me, that’s a good thing. We need “normal” interest rates to get back to any semblance of fiscal sanity.

That said, this also means that the Age of Paper Wealth is over. The days of the Fed juicing the stock market with low rates and cheap money are behind us.

The bad news here is the investments that worked incredibly well during the bull run from 2009 through January 2022 will not work so well going forward. 

The good news is that there are plenty of solutions. 

And it all starts with fundamental asset allocation. More on that right here.

-Joe Withrow

Remember, every Fed tightening cycle ends in disaster and then, much more Fed easing.

That’s a tweet Zero Hedge put out back in January.

Zero Hedge is a financial news aggregation site. And it’s incredibly popular in the alternative finance space. I browse its headlines every day to keep my thumb on the pulse of what’s happening out there… and what people think about it.

Of course, Zero Hedge’s tweet here implies that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) will have to “pivot” soon. That is to say, the Fed will have to end its rate-hiking campaign and get back to pouring cheap money into the system.

This is a common theme within the financial echo chamber. And to be sure, it has historical merit.

The Fed embarked upon the path of zero-bound interest rates and funny money in 2008. This created an incredible bull market in U.S. equities. That’s because funny money always feeds speculative booms.

But the Fed did start to “tighten” in 2016. It gradually raised its target interest rate from 0.5% at the start of the year to 2.5% by December 2018.

Then the S&P 500 tanked by nearly 20%… and the Fed went back into easing mode. It quickly dropped its target rate back down to 0.5% and began funneling cheap money back into the financial system.

This stemmed the tide and allowed the S&P 500 to resume its historic bull run.

Many analysts point to this episode and say the Fed will do the same thing this time around. I think they’re missing the big picture here.

Cheap money and excessive “stimulus” only go so far. And now we’re at the end of the road.

By raising rates aggressively, the Fed is forcing fiscal responsibility upon the economy once again. They have to.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m no fan of the Fed. Its creation in 1913 was itself a coup against free markets.

That said, those of us who have studied free market economics know very well that zero-bound interest rates and easy money policies are not sustainable. I’m surprised we managed to go this long without a major blow-up.

Ludwig Von Mises spelled out the dilemma very clearly in his great work Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Here’s Mises:

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

What Mises was saying is this…

Once you go down the path of manipulating interest rates lower and printing new money from thin air, you necessarily sow the seeds of a future crisis.

If you keep going down that same path for too long, you’ll destroy the currency and wreck the economy beyond all recognition. This is the worst-case scenario.

But if you recognize that your current trajectory is unsustainable, you can make the decision to reverse course.

This will result in a painful economic contraction. Artificially low interest rates and funny money fuel all kinds of malinvestment… and that malinvestment must be liquidated.

That’s what the necessary recession does. It clears out the bad debt and gets rid of unproductive companies.

It’s not fun to go through. But it’s far preferable to destroying the currency and the entire economy.

Most of us in the alternative financial space assumed the Fed would never reverse course. But they did. They chose Mises’ voluntary abandonment option.

The media claims that the Fed’s rate-hiking campaign is about fighting inflation. That’s not its primary purpose, however. It’s about saving the legacy financial system.

Again, this doesn’t mean the Fed is “good”. It’s simply acting in its own best interest.

But what we need to understand is that normalizing rates is the path back to a healthy economy. That’s what’s happening here.

We’re going to have to endure a recession first. That’s unavoidable.

But there’s a decent chance that we’re staring down the barrel of a new American renaissance. I never thought I’d say that two years ago. But now there’s now a path forward.

Of course, that presumes the Fed maintains its current course.

Thanks to the prominent banking collapses we discussed last week, the Fed now has all the cover it needs to stop raising rates and return to its old cheap money ways. But I don’t think it will.

We’ll get a better feel for where they stand at the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting this week. Stay tuned…

-Joe Withrow

P.S. The chaos within the banking sector has lit a fire under the price of gold.

As I write, gold is trading around $1,985 an ounce. It’s now up 9% on the year.

And to use trading terminology, gold’s price has “broken out” on the weekly, monthly, and quarterly charts. There are no guarantees this run will continue, of course. But such a strong technical breakout across several time horizons is typically very bullish.

That said, I don’t see gold as a trading vehicle. It’s not something we should put dollars into only hoping to get more dollars out later.

Instead, gold is real money. And there’s a good chance that we’ll see it “re-monetized” within the global financial system in the coming years. We’ll talk more on that another day.

So the best thing to do with gold is simply to accumulate it over time. I prefer to do so by purchasing one-ounce gold coins several times a year.

I also give my kids gold coins as Christmas gifts. That’s one of my two favorite holiday traditions.

For anyone who would like to learn more about gold and how to buy it, check out Taggart Trading at https://southfloridabullion.com/.

This is a small firm run by a friend of mine. He provides clients with excellent personalized service that we simply can’t get at the large online dealers.