Imagine this scenario, what would you do?

Offshoot of a Jim Rickard's scenario in his book Currency Wars. Let's say you are well prepared living in a suburb of a major city. You have food/water/protection and have transitioned your assets into gold and silver. The dollar is collapsing. The US seizes all gold held in banks (repayment later to owners). Gold is at $10,000 and going up every day. Silver is at $200. Physical supply of PMs are scarce/non existence. The US will announce a new Super USD which is worth $10 of the old one and is backed by gold at $10000/oz. A windfall profits tax of 90% will be imposed on your capital gains from PMs.

At this point, what is the best way to protect your assets from going back to the government? Assume the crash was swift (gold $2000>10,000 in two weeks), riots rage across cities but there is still law and order across most of the US. It's very dangerous to be outside but it looks like we will make the transition.

First, this scenario is one reason why I believe very strongly that people need to start contacting their Congresscritters and voicing their support for HR 1098. We need to put the government on notice that this won't fly. I've tried to contact Rickards (via twitter) and ask him his thoughts on HR 1098, but he never acknowledged my questions.

I would not sell any gold or silver under that scenario if I could avoid it. I'd let my children have that opportunity at some point in the future when sanity prevails and the laws are changed. I might consider moving some metals overseas in that scenario.

It makes perfect sense for the government to enact a windfall tax. If the US government decides to seize gold from other countries by executive order, no one is going to stop them from taxing our gold. Look at Gerald Celente, a commodities trader with some power. When MFGlobal "lost" his money when he was making his physical gold purchase for Dec. delivery, he was powerless. Bottom line, we have no protection from the government even if we decide to purchase physical. If we can't profit from PMs, why go through the risks and perils of owning physical PMs?

When the dollar collapses, the billionaires/people with power aren't going to have thousands of pounds of gold in their homes. Even if its profitable, it won't be practical. They will have converted it into SDRs, Renminbi, or whatever else is considered safe at that point. Point being, no one (besides the gold bugs) are going to care that PMs are going to carry a 90% tax on it.

So again, I ask, if PMs will carry a 90% tax, what can we do to prepare for this situation?

You said it right - in such a case it is not 'practical' - not from an above board 'investment' sense. For me it is a matter of survival, not investment or profit. I have always said that I am not "investing" in PMs, but rather "saving in them". Since I am not looking to "profit" from them, it's irrelevant to me. They are only valuable to me as a practical medium of exchange (i.e., "cash" purchases) that everyone trusts, regardless of scale government machinations.

Despite such a tax (and indeed, despite capital gains and other taxes already in place), the PM will still hold its value. A tax is just a way of attempting to siphon a value 'increase' that did not occur in the first place. It is literally a tax on a loss in value of the dollar, not a 'gain' in value of any PM. All that will do is prevent large, above board movements of PM, given that very few are stupid enough to simply hand over 90% of their wealth. Even when we had a 90% tax bracket, very few were paying 90%. But it won't affect day to day trading for goods and services, and not the long term value.

Such scenarios serve as proof of the axiom that if you don't own the physical, you don't own it (e.g., the location of all PMs in banks are known, and simply confiscated).

A 90% tax is an attempt to siphon value, but it is not an actual confiscation of PM. If silver is suddenly selling at $2000 per ounce in the increasingly worthless adjusted dollars, a "windfall" tax assumes that you bought your PM's in pre-adjusted dollars. What is to say that I didn't barter or make small purchases of my existing silver in adjusted dollars to get it? No windfall there. My holdings aren't known, and they aren't tracked by anyone but me.

PMs really are the longest term hedge for survival of your store of wealth. The idea that a "super-dollar" is somehow going to be stable is one that I seriously question, because I believe that a hyperinflationary spiral is already well in motion, and that we are witnessing the final death throes of the currency anyway. It would mean that a 90% tax was already levied on everybody, not just gold and silver bugs.

All that means to me is that the long term store of value will have to wait. You don't waive it under the nose of a starving and dangerous parasite. And I wouldn't want to be near ANY major metropolitan area under such a scenario, because if that's true, how to protect profits is not going to be the first order of business anyway.

...which brings me to your original question of how to prepare. And that's land...preferably farm land, and even a small amount, ALL of which will be at an absolute premium...away from metropolitan areas.

You'll want your PMs outside of the country before the dollar collapses IMO.

dereksatkinson said:

You'll want your PMs outside of the country before the dollar collapses IMO.

Click to expand...

:agree:
I would spread it arround Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore and Uruguay.

Rickards book is great by the way!

I guess you could potentially melt it down into jewelry if you are stuck in the USA.

dereksatkinson said:

I guess you could potentially melt it down into jewelry if you are stuck in the USA.

Click to expand...

I would hold them outside the US until monetary reform is enacted, i.e. a sound currency. Once things get back to normal, you can sell your bullion in the foreign country for the local currency. Then you can convert the local fiat into the new US currency. That is basicly what my great grandfather did in Weimar Germany. He didn´t sell all of his gold (and silver), though. I still own some Swiss gold vrenelis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vreneli) which he bought as protection against the German hyperinflation
This only works if we don´t get a global gold confiscation under some kind of supranational (i.e. UN/IMF) government. If this happens we´re stuck with the black market anyway.

When this is happening you should not be selling PM's.

At this time the things we all need, will be the things of real value.
Stack some of em as well.
My stored saleable commodity is ag diesel.

The PM punt may fail completely, so be prepared for it.
On the other hand it could work out extremely well.

rblong2us said:

When this is happening you should not be selling PM's.

At this time the things we all need, will be the things of real value.
Stack some of em as well.
My stored saleable commodity is ag diesel.

The PM punt may fail completely, so be prepared for it.
On the other hand it could work out extremely well.

Click to expand...

Cigarettes and seeds will also be a valuable alternative currency.

I would be buying/selling/trading gold on the inevitable black market - and as a good trader, probably making a killing at it. Maybe that's because I have a kind of "different" background - play rock and roll for awhile as a pro and you'd know - there's a thriving black market for everything already, gold would fit right in just fine. After awhile, you learn how to recognize who does what without a word, and the chances of getting caught at most things are nil already - the alternate system is in place and thriving now. You can thank the "war on drugs" for that.

Most of my neighbors already do "grey market" as it were - trading this and that, never written down, certainly never reported to "the authorities", sometimes for "I'll owe ya one later" and it's gotta be 30% of what transacts in the boonies.

I recall there was once a thing called prohibition. How'd that work out for "them"?

Great thread and great responses. A lot to think about.

+ $55,000 to the idea of having gold outside the country.

+ $55,000 to those of you who have or a re thinking of having remote farmland.

+ $55,000 to all of us keeping quiet and not selling (just giving it away to our kids / grandkids and/or trading it on the black markets).

I need to get to know my local black market... I should start a thread...

Great feedback. Thank you everyone. After thought, I agree that there is going to be a huge black market if they imposed a 90% windfall tax so you would eventually be able to collect a good chunk of your investment.

Regarding, sending it out of the country before things go bad... what is the best way to do this? What is your exact plan?

Shelby-villian said:

Regarding, sending it out of the country before things go bad... what is the best way to do this? What is your exact plan?

Click to expand...

I have family overseas so it's easy for me to just have them hold onto it for me. That's not an option available to everyone.

Another option is to deal with an offshore trust company. That has it's own risks because, most offshore trust companies wont take on US clients anymore. And if they do, you might not have any legal recourse.

It's also possible that you could simply relocate (again, not an option for everyone). Especially when you consider family obligations and relationships you have with your friends. Those can suffer if you leave the country. Sometimes people relocated for a 6-12 month period and establish banking relationships in a foreign country. Again, you are putting your gold at risk because it's inside a bank.

Ultimately, it's a personal choice on how you want to approach this and whether or not it's worth bothering with.

I keep quiet about my PM's and trade them for goods in the black market. The government won't see a dime of that money. If they somehow get purchase records, I simply forge bills of sale dating before teh enactment of said wind-fall tax. (edited my moderator)

Barter is probably a reason way around the tax and you'd probably be able to find a willing party.

In my mind, sending things out of the country before things get bad doesn't solve any problems, really, just moves them around (systems-guy thinking). Dividing things up into chunks means more risk that at least one chunk will be compromised, and you'd have to make your own trade-off there.

First, what if it goes just as bad or worse there? It's all kinda connected these days.
There is already much talk about how all new finance regulation has to be across the board, to prevent people just moving elsewhere with deals newly restricted in just one place. Why would this be any different? Presumably things would be worse than now with more people calling for more drastic measures than just trying to get derivative trades through a clearinghouse.

Second, so, how do you get it back again? Or do you just have to go there, and if there is more than one place, hmm, getting pretty complex here. What's the risk to being able to cobble up your divided fortune into one piece again? (If you have so much that any one will do fine, alone, then I'm jealous, but not very sympathetic).

Third, unless it's family or very trusted other party, to me it has most of the same objections as paper gold. We joke about "oops, tragic boating accident" but that kind of course is available to institutions as well.

I agree keeping quiet - particularly as regards local or government threats is a wise place to begin. No one will confiscate or steal what they don't know exists, and they can't really afford to brute force search everywhere and everyone to find it.

A few inconspicuous burial sites around your location allowed to re-vegetate would seem to be a fairly hard nut to crack for an attacker. For security - no maps! Memory! The key of course, is inconspicuous. Your neighbors lawn in suburbia has too many risks there. But a national forest? (just don't bury it under someone's pot farm) Or the woods around my place? Not so much, no one would see you doing it.

In the hills here, there's land I'd bet hadn't been stepped on by a human for hundreds of years...just not worth the effort to go down and climb back out of some of the deeper swampy hollows that rarely see the sun.

DC... I agree.. What good is gold if you can't convert it into something you actually need?

Barter is probably the way to go but if gold is trading at $5k an ounce, you are going to have to trade it to a trusted party. At that point though it kind of becomes tricky....

And what would 5k (or much more) an ounce really mean in that case, if we use the long term historical assumption that gold is the thing that's really constant-value - it is pretty close from cowboy days till now (the old story of what an ounce would buy - a gun, a bath, a suit, a saloon girl). Though none of those would be quite as good today as what you'd have gotten then, I think. (Genuine Colt Peacemakers are around an oz of gold right now, all by themselves - you'd have to accept a used Glock today, to have any left over for the other stuff)

Thus the important ratio might be "loaves per gram" or something more like that, as if it goes sky high in dollars, what you really mean is that dollars are useless, and loaves are also sky high in dollars, right?

And once dollars have failed, the paper price of gold is kinda irrelevant - it will no longer track that junk in any meaningful way.

This has led me to ponder that while oz size coins are sure purty and very stackable, for small-scale trading, they're just too large a unit - I rarely spend a couple $k at the grocery store at current ratios (more like 1/10th that). Their advantage is that people would trust their authenticity, but they are just too big a trade unit for most things.

Think how little you'd need right now for enough bread for a week for a family -- who and how would handle making "change"? You'd almost need a microscope and micro-balance to consummate a trade for a meal or a few for a sliver of gold.

Junk silver looks more attractive on that basis, to me, for working with small amounts and random strangers. Diversity!

I'd never let any untrusted party know I had gold bars, or a big stack 'o coins, even if I had them at gunpoint (unless it was just after I shot them ;~). But you only need a few trusted parties to work with in the barter game - people you'd make large scale deals with - your equals.

For most commerce, I see little things going back and forth as they do now, unless and until people's supply habits change. So you might buy a trunk-full of say, tobacco, booze, or toilet paper - in a big transaction with gold, then trade those back and forth with the bulk of the less trusted people you'd be trading with...at least till they become trusted trading partners. Ditto, if you had a very large stash of something else valuable - I heard diesel fuel mentioned - you might take a large chunk of gold for it, but only from someone you trusted - after all, they know you have the big chunk of gold now.

I'm pretty sure Hollywood isn't much of a guide here, but imagine the situation of a multi-million dollar drug or weapons exchange - a suitcase full of bucks or diamonds, and whatever else. There is always some risk that one party will attempt to ambush the other and take away both. In real life, those exchanges are mostly not done in the Hollywood fashion - there's a lot of mutual checking out that goes on long before, and the relationships tend to be long-established and mutually profitable, which reduces that risk, but...we'd be on new turf in this situation. In the current large scale/organized crime sorts of things, both sides realize that it's the flow, not the amount of this one deal that matters overall, so there's little incentive to burn bridges.

That might not be as true - hungry people in survival mode can be a lot more vicious and not care as much past the meal that will save their life right now.

In the end, it still comes down to a lot of other things than simply owning a store of value. You have to be situationally aware, able to handle yourself in adversity, and a whole lot of other tedious "getting and being ready" to make any of these scenarios play out in your favor - even if it's not TEOTWAWKI. I encountered some of the same situations just homesteading in the boonies, talented, and with some valuable stuff, but basically dead broke and needing to interact with "all kinds of people" to make it here. I'd see this as the same, but everyone a lot more hungry and dangerous or desperate. So part of this, to me, is making sure I'm in a bubble of other people of like minds and preparedness -- the best security perimeter you can have, or so I think so far.

I guess this is why economics is often called the dismal science. But being a glass-half-full guy (with enough of a paranoid streak to consider worst cases, it's natural for any engineer) - my strategy is to inform and help my neighbors get on the same track and for us ALL to be really ready for hard times. I know, if you live in the city or even most of suburbia, this is near-impossible. It's one of the bennies of living in the boonies, in an old established situation.

DCFusor said:

Thus the important ratio might be "loaves per gram" or something more like that, as if it goes sky high in dollars, what you really mean is that dollars are useless, and loaves are also sky high in dollars, right?

Click to expand...

...exactly, it is not that gold gains hyperbolic in value in times of troubles, it is the opposite way around - it is almost the only monetary equivalent that will largely HOLD its REAL value (and thanks to supply/demand laws, it will actually increase it's REAL value).

Just look at the historical monetary collapses, black market always thrives (man, I might even find my life experiences from communist country a life-saver in the future - although not so very happy to go back to "good old days"), and the "official" currency becomes worthless. Usually, some foreign currency took its place for all real-world (eg non-government approved/related) transactions. In Poland, it used to be a Dollar/Deutsche Mark - obviously illegal, but if you wanted to buy something quickly, for example a car - if you had them, you were sorted. If you haven't had them, well, tough luck, you were stuck in the queue with all others Kowalski's, waiting in the official waiting lists, for everyday's items, that you could eventually (when your turn happened - usually years and years of waiting for a car, or more than 10 years for a flat, forget about a house etc) buy for an "official" price (that was ridiculously low, in real life, if you decided to sell it off right away), using "official" currency (that was basically worthless, and exchanged immediately for ANYTHING that had some real-life meaning, if you happened to came across it somewhere - to be bartered later on with your friends/family/neighbors)

But in the current situation, there will be little to none trust in ANY currency after they start collapsing one after another (or all of them together), what's left, as universally, ALWAYS recognizable medium of value?

What is really important, how would the ratio of exchange look like for other items that you would like to trade for: for example, OZ/acre of arable land? Will it go up against land, or not? Against everyday items?

I presume it will - for one reason, there will be probably a HUGE investment demand (and I mean INVESTMENT, not trading here), and gold, unlike farmland, you can easily sell in as small hunks as you wish (I assume you don't own a 400OZ bars), whereas a farm, you have to sell as a more or less whole, and there will be preciously little people who could afford one and/or a credit - thus sending land prices down, IMHO. Regardless that people would starve and fight over food, actually, it might very well happen, that a lot of farmland will lay wasted (dependent on mechanization, not labor, plus no affordable oil to work it, and add foreclosures on heavily indebted big corporational farms etc.)

Back to the OP - correct me, but the "windfall tax" is only applicable when you sell your gold (and officially, brouhaha), am I correct? I wouldn't be too much concerned, I would just keep the gold. If the "new currency" is to survive, it will not leap back too much against gold, if it is to collapse as well, hmm - we are back to square one. Assuming you don't need to eat away your gold, just keep it. If you do need to eat it away - sell as little as you can in the black market, and make your living of it. Just be very, very careful. And try to get by with silver first, it doesn't draw as much attention, is much less risky, I suppose.

If you want to "eat away" a large chunk of your gold at once, and make some killing on it - let's say, buy a farmland etc. (I'll probably try to do something like that, as currently I am not prepared very well, apart from general DIY/handyman skills, some good few years of martial arts under my belt (unfortunately, catching the bullets was still in the higher class than mine), and few chests of hand/electric tools) - I cannot imagine, that any seller would oppose to be paid in gold, in such a case of a general turmoil, actually you might be able to secure much better deal, if you offer to pay in gold - thus you don't need to "sell" your gold for fiat, just bypass that step and go to the seller right away. No windfall taxes to pay other than capital gains/whatever applicable I guess, which you should be able to pay easily with the remains of your gold/silver sold on the black market. Again, you were not supposed to own dollars back then in the communist block (it was just illegal), but it never stopped them from being broadly accepted (and quite often, the ONLY accepted currency) in big transactions between citizens. Same will apply here, with the difference of names - dollar becomes a fallen fiat currency, gold becomes a dollar of yesterday (and one Iron Curtain away).

Regards,

You could easily make the case that arable land would go up priced in gold, since when there's a food shortage, no one wants to sell good land, and food is worth more if you're starving. By arable land I don't mean those huge factory farms in the desert that require most of the "benefits" of civilization to grow food at all - water piped in and big machines and all that kind of thing, but the same stuff the settlers valued. Unlike gold, arable land pays real dividends.

I'd not make a big argument either way, things kind of depend on how the details play out - and how fast.

For example, should a bunch of like minded people show up here in an end-of-world scene - they'd not be buying my land (I don't need gold or money, and I'm kind of fond of this place), but I would probably let them live on it and work it to the benefit of us all. In other words, keep your gold - bring your hoe (and other tools, and skills, and a strong back) - the rest is here already. Maybe you can't dig in the dirt, but you can be security, a trader with the rest of the community, a doctor, or do some other task needed by all - I sure can't do it all by myself in what would be assumed to be really tough times with no internet and fedex to bring me what I want with a click. I see that as a more possible model going forward, depending, and I'd bet a lot of my real-farmer neighbors do as well.

If for whatever reason, oil became really dear - and ditto fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and meds for cattle - a whole lot more labor is required to make the same amount of food. Your back may be more valuable than the gold you can carry on it in that case!

In more normal times, it seems land of this type more or less tracks gold in value, eg goes up as the currency goes down. Real estate in the McMansion sense is entirely another story. And the high prices per acre in a city reflect value that only exists if the city functions, requiring all sorts of cheap imports of stuff from places like this, while cities export their trash and pollution to...places like this - and yes, we country folk do object to that.

If that relationship breaks down, those bets are all off, and the instant devaluation of everything in a city is a pretty much forgone conclusion - no resources, but plenty of hungry two legged predators will make it the most worthless land in existence, almost instantly.

By the way, this is one of the problems with the Just In Time inventory systems. Even a minor breakdown - grocery stores not being able to order for a few days for example - takes many weeks to recover from. They can't just order twice as much next time - it doesn't exist, and neither do the trucks and roads to bring it to make up for it - there isn't the excess capacity all up the line. Add hoarding behavior - you've got real trouble over something that might have been fairly minor to begin with.

I saw this in the gas crunch in the '70s - we weren't really that short, but the hoarding meant everyone who was happy to have 1/4 to half a tank of gas suddenly wasn't happy unless they were bouncing off full - instantly radically increasing the demand in a one-shot way that took a long time to make up for, and of course, at the worst possible time for it. I'd bet the effect would be much worse with food - now that's real fear, and frightened people are the most dangerous sort.

If you want to understand how bad it could get in the cities, read the 900 Days about the history of St Petersburg, Russia when they were under siege from German troops. Cannibalism was one of the results.

DCFusor said:

You could easily make the case that arable land would go up priced in gold, since when there's a food shortage, no one wants to sell good land, and food is worth more if you're starving.

Click to expand...

I don't want to make big argument about it either, but for the reasons I mentioned before - liquidity of either asset AND debt on many many farms (that will be netto unpayable, by and large = foreclosures) - I feel gold might actually go up vs land, in general. Especially in the initial phase, when our current farming methods go bust (oil/fertilizers/med prices, as you mention), and before readjustment into more labor-intensive/land-effective forms of farming.

I am thinking (and kind of hoping) that if you are careful, you will be able to pick up some nice farm for pennies on a today's dollar - of course, not preserved in "todays" dollars

That is a sick paradox, that DESPITE people starving, there might be a lot of land laid to waste, because even if there would be people willing to literally die to work it, they will not be able to afford it/get appropriate credit - I mean a credit in a worthless fiat, kept tight by ones in power over it .

Kind of like it was before the Great Depression (there are publicly available letters between bankers of that era, orchestrating the crash to "seize indebted farms for pennies on a dollar". I don't remember if it was quoted in "The Money Masters" or "The Secret of OZ"). But the mechanism I believe will be the same - tight credit and wiped-out paper wealth, will cause anything non-liquid, to fell down in prices against more liquid stores of wealth (PMs), simply because there will be preciously little people who could afford these non-liquid assets. Thus affecting supply/demand balance for them. It doesn't matter if someone would like to have a farm and work it for food, if he couldn't afford to buy it - because of (hyper)inflation/tight credit/non-economic returns from farming, in the failed money system.

At least that is my line of thought, we will see how it plays out

Unfortunately, we may well see how it plays out.

But in these analyses, you have to be careful to be consistent. For example, in a SHTF case, who really cares if some impotent and failed bank thinks they now own a farmer's land. As they say on Slashdot - GoodLuckWithThat.

Even in normal times, a neighbor got foreclosed (deserved it), tossed out. Moved right back in, got tossed again - kept that up for about a year, last time moved out and stripped the house bare of every appliance, kitchen cabinet, plumbing, you name it. I don't think the banks really prevailed there. Sherriff couldn't be there every day, or even every month. Too busy.

You should also know that a farm is more than land, it's the other stuff, and that land just sitting there for awhile is darned hard to make productive at first (or again), it's much more difficult than just next year's crop on an established, tilled, freed of trees and weeds farm plot. It took a couple years to really wrest my garden plot back from nature in what had been a farm a couple years before.

And in a real bad case, what's this afford crap? I'm on it, it's mine - try to take it and someone's gonna die. True of either an original owner, or any squatter prepared for defense.

So any analysis has to specify just what conditions obtain or what range of them, it makes all the difference. I see all too much crazy-inconsistent thinking around. You can't assume that humans fail this way, but it doesn't affect that over there - it's all one. You can't have failure of rule of law, but then depend on rule of law to allow you to buy cheap foreclosed land that was foreclosed because of rule of law, for just one VERY obvious example. All too easy to fall into those errors of inertia of the mind and unstated assumptions.

Goid going up vs (useful) land seems to require the belief that people who have the land will want it less than now if things go bad - or gold more when maybe there's not much to buy with it just then. Why? I'm having trouble figuring out a case where that would be true. I suspect that urban vs rural ideas about the worth of land (and gold!) vary and this might be creeping in as an error in the prediction equation.

Best to have both, at any rate. And a few other things.

Hi DCFusor,

I think my assumption is, it is going to be very, very bad (quite possibly starvation, extreme poverty and homelessness, riots, army on the streets, to tame them), but maybe not exactly a full-on Mad Max-world scenario. I think we will have to scale down hugely, and give up 80% of our current luxury (taken for granted), but I believe some form of society will emerge/prevail, not necessarily much different from historic ones. Thus I assume SOME rule of the law either during that period, or at least in a few years time. Also, I just could not fight over something, that I don't believe is rightfully mine. In any case, I'd like to have some lawful claim on the property, rather than just occupying it.

It is quite a different story from someone just squatting in the house - if you want to work the land, you need to constantly invest in it (labor, future crops that are pretty immovable, some green infrastructure that need to be created/maintained, in my case it would be also glass houses & fish ponds), and in this case, it is not exactly feasible, to get chucked out every month. Or see the "law enforcement" coming in and burning/level out my stuff, just to make the point.
It might also play out differently in different cultures (Europe/America/former Soviet block etc.).
So I guess my scenario should be with the above preface/disclaimer, than it makes more sense. And yes, this is nothing more than a prediction, but I believe we will see something along these lines.

Sure, my example on the local floozy was just to point out that even now, law enforcement is low, and compliance mostly voluntary - that'll probably become more true.

Like you, I have issues with fighting unless I'm damn sure I'm in the right.

Now, I've already "bugged out", I did so in the late '70s, and since have bought land (accumulating my spread of *desirable* land took years, regardless of price or currency of payment - and just "land" isn't the same thing at all), built on it, put in green infrastructure (water, gardens, buildings, solar power, wood heat, managed woodlots) and so on. And to do that, at least initially, and some would say still, voluntarily gave up a bunch of luxuries that most people think they're just entitled to for being alive. I'm already there. If things get bad, I'm already used to living "close to the earth".

And the fact that it took a young, smart, strong, dedicated guy years to pull that off gives me real issues with "I'll wait till its bad, then use my gold as a proxy for all that work and time" - from experience - that's likely not going to work out for you.
Just sayin. I think we can't make a whole lot of certain assumptions particularly about how it will be just after a major collapse, before things start to normalize again, and thinking the old ways will apply (buying land on demand for money) might not be the wisest possible thinking. Even now, and with money not much object, getting truly good land isn't just making a phone call, you know? Someone has to want to sell it.

I agree with Busshi's last post. I think it will go the way of food rationing and starvation, as the entitled masses simply wait for Uncle Sugar to helicopter in to the rescue. They learned nothing from Katrina, and will simply starve in place. The theory of the golden hordes is only partially true. Unless the thugs have a shit mountain of ammo, and even more food, they will quickly become weak from a lack of carbs and protein. In addition, fuel will become non-existent in one quick hurry.

I sure hope you're right ancona, because that's probably the scenario in which I personally do best. And it seems reasonable.

I wouldn't take away too terribly much from Katrina, though.
Been there? The call it "the big easy" for a good reason, and that place attracts a lot of losers who can't make it elsewhere. As an aside, one of the few places I've traveled where racism was still open and rampant.

When many refugees were taken in by neighboring states and still didn't do well there with a fresh start - and dramatically raised the crime rates in the communities nice enough to take them in, this became evident - that crowd didn't reach up to "normal" in quality of human being or they'd have been assimilated with less trouble.

Hate to make judgments like that but there is it in crime stats in black and white.

All of the ralk of racism pissed me off to no end. Just look at crime stats in Houston, where a huge number of these folks went. They skyrocketed.

It has nothing to do with race, it simply is the truth in this particular instance. When you relocate a huge number of people from the most dangerous city in the USA and which has likely the highest murder and violent crime rate to a place of low crime like Houston, what the hell did they expect. PC run amok has run roughshod over previously liveable communities there, turning them in to no-go crime areas.