Today’s financial world is over-centralized. It’s a fact, and it’s becoming increasingly clear by the week, perhaps even on a daily basis as I write. The roots of this go back pretty far, and many excellent books have been written about it – and so often been discarded as too contrarian, or not proven, or outright been dismissed as conspiracy theories. Well, with so many of them turning out to (unfortunately) be very true, and the financial situation getting more nerve-wrecking every day, it may be time to take a better look – and take a good hard look at solutions that are different from what’s clearly not working. As if the events back in 2008 weren’t enough, the world has been pretending that it’s handled and taken care of by the smart and great bankers, bureaucrats and governments throughout the world. Far from it. If you cared to look closely – then and now – you would have realized that something was off for a very long time. That would at least include the late 1990s and the goings on around artificially low interest rates (to allegedly “keep the economy growing”) and resulting grave mis-allocations into pretty much anything “not affected” by those inadequately low rates. Fast-forward to 2007 for a glimpse of the ugly results this has been yielding: no-money-down mortgages, the disposal of the same through ABS or derivatives “packaging” that nobody really understands (nor understood back in the day when “it was done”) a consultant-dominated financial industry where true value and the most basic understanding of prudent business had been replaced with quickly pocketing some margin money for “selling a mortgage package” (or any other pile of fishy paper) in order to make a quick (paper) profit to show to your superiors or to your shareholders, or similarly risky and outright negligent behavior on the part of almost all the big players. Little wonder this cannot end well. We all know that. Every person should. These things have that nasty tendency to come home to roost; now they do. Even bankers and, politicians, or Fed officials should know that (and they know: you can see this when the failure and apparently orderly takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS and/or the Swiss government are hush-hushed and hardly even in the news).

In an increasingly over-centralized financial world, it is essential to find de-centralized tools for safeguarding your Money and Freedom against illegitimate control.