The Coming Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It: Make a Fortune by Investing in Gold and Other Hard Assets [Hardcover]

I just finished reading The Coming Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit From It By James Turk & John Rubino published in 2004. James Turk is founder of GoldMoney.com, the leading digital gold currency payment system. John Rubino is the author of How to Profit from the Real Estate Bust.

I've posted a lot about inflation and gold, the Federal Reserve, and the destruction of the US Dollar. I have read about the inflation that Germany experienced after WWII, the devaluation of the Mexican Peso and the Argentine Peso. If that is our future, I wanted to have some idea of what is in store for us and. The book is divided into four parts and is well written and difficult concepts are explained well:

Part One - Why the dollar will collapse

Part Two - Money Then and Now

Part Three - Wht Gold Will Soar

Part Four - Profiting From The Dollar's Collapse

In part one we learn that we have a fiat currency, backed by nothing except a decree that the US Dollar is legal tender. Throughout history, in order for governments to satisfy demands without raising taxes, a government not only begins to debase its money, but inflates as well. Both are happening in the US and no government has been successful. We have a history of that in this country with the Continentals and the Confederate currency, both worthless.

Another fact that dooms our currency is that we have too much debt. Total unfunded liabilities of the US are in excess of $43 Trillion, as a society we owe another $37 Trillion and Derivatives are in excess of $200 Trillion.

Then we have a trade imbalance which just topped $800 Billion for 2005. We have been up in arms lately by the Chinese wanting to buy Unocal, then Dubai wanting to own our eastern port management companies and Dubai wanting to own some of our critical defense industry by trying to buy Doncasters Turk and Rubino point out on p31:

Foreign investors now own about $8 trillion of U.S. financial assets, including 13 percent of all U.S. stocks, 24 percent of corporate bonds, 43 percent of Treasury bonds, and 14 percent of government agency debt. By the end of 2003, about a third of Fannie Mae's mortgage-backed bonds were being sold outside of the U.S.

That was in 2003 and it has gotten considerably worse. What's in store for us:

Over time, the gap between tax revenue and the demands placed on government tends to grow, and spending, borrowing, and currency creation begin to expand at increasing rates. Inflation accelerates, and the populace comes to see the process of "debasement" for what it is: the destruction of their savings. They abandon the currency en masse, spending it or converting it to more stable forms of money as fast as possible. The currency's value plunges (another way of saying prices soar), wiping out the accumulated savings of a whole generation. Such is the fate of every fiat currency.

The government wants to keep this game going as long as possible by issuing phony CPI numbers, then by excluding energy and food, concentrating on a "core" rate. Phoney low inflation numbers keep bond yields down and "COLA" adjustments low. What is the housing bubble, but selling USDs for a tangible asset. Gold is a warning sign and a rising gold exchange rate is fought by capping and leasing gold, until the central banks are short 12,000 to 16,000 tons. And now one of the tools Turk and Rubino use, The Fear Index, to gauge where gold is going in the next few years will be handicapped by the ending of release of M3 data.

Turk and Rubino do an excellent job of instructing you in Part Four. Can you profit from your knowledge of an impending collapse of the dollar? How can you protect yourself? How can you protect your accumulated savings?

I highly recommend this book to professional and novice, alike.

The authors do a good job of explaining how to invest in gold and how to put a portfolio together (from coins to mining stock).

Following the advice and investing all your funds into gold and a limited number of stocks could be self destructive though.

However, as the authors point out, the Government has confiscated gold before - and could again. If things get as bad as they suggest Governments could nationalize mines ........

If the authors are on target with their predictions, investing now in an assault rifle, a cabin in the woods and alot of tinned food would make a better investment than gold.

Gold could very well make a great investment given a sliding dollar; the argument that the dollar will collapse completely is taken to an absolute extreme (the Dollar Crisis, Causes Consequence Cures, covers the same ground more convincingly).

Useful book - worth considering as part of your personal investment strategy. However, I wouldn't plan my portfolio around the authors advice alone - having too great a dependance on any one asset class can be bad. Advice on how to invest in gold (practicalities)is very good though.

The authors are convinced that the dollar will collapse, but their book is far from convincing. Even if the dollar does collapse, it might not do so for years or even decades. They offer up historical and theoretical reasons why the dollar should collapse, and they sound persuasive, but they never show exactly WHY the dollar MUST collapse.

That said, if the dollar does collapse, then following their advice should prove fruitful. They present a number of different ways for both relatively conservative and aggressive investors to profit. But, embarrasingly, one of the contra-dollar mutual funds they recommend (PIMCO Foreign Bond) is actually a dollar-hedged bond fund, meaning it's not designed to benefit from a dollar decline. I guess they didn't bother to read the prospectus.

Their model portfolios would have even "conservative" investors basically place all their bets on a falling dollar. This is arrogant and irresponsible. Unless you're a speculator who can afford to lose big, you need some diversification (cash, short- term U.S. bonds, dividend stocks, etc.) so that a dollar rally won't lead to huge losses. I'm about 1/3 gold/contra-dollar, 1/3 cash/short-term bonds, and 1/3 dividend stocks. (I am avoiding long-term bonds completely until we see at least 7% yields to compensate for the risk.) When I become bearish on stocks, which I expect to do by 2006, then I may go up to 49% contra-dollar and 51% cash, but I'd never bet more than half my dough on a single investment strategy and no responsible advisor would suggest that you do.

Strangely, the publisher touts praise of the book from ultra-bear Robert Prechter, whose predictions have been pretty lousy of late. Prechter is a deflationist who has been a long-term bear on gold for quite some time. Did Prechter bother to read this gold bug tome before he lavished praise on it?

Gold is money, yes, and everyone should have some. But that doesn't mean "money" is or will be the most profitable asset to hold. We just don't know. If this book can convince some of those people who have been taught by Wall Street and CNBC that all they need is S&P 500 index funds -- and maybe some bonds -- to diversify into hard assets like gold, it will serve a useful prupose. If it turns sane people into raging gold bugs who mortgage their house to stockpile gold coins and go on margin to buy shares in mining companies (something the authors actually suggest since they're so sure gold is going up), then this book is just another vehicle for creating more gold bug losers who get caught up in a mania and ride it down to the inevitable crash (the irrationally euphoric gold bugs of the late 70s are STILL trying to recoup their losses).