Fellow survivor Rob Kirby joined me for a talk about the current financial woes. The dollar has already used up 8 of its 9 lives and has done so recklessly. When we speak of the demise of the dollar, we're in a crypto-currency contagion. It looks bubblicious. To Rob's eyes cryptos are doing exactly what gold and silver have not been allowed to do. We're experiencing hyper-inflation in cryptos, stocks and real estate. However, Rob is skeptical of the party continuing in the real estate sector. As economic conditions continue to worsen, with half the population not working and not earning, residential will wind up suffering the same way that commercial has collapsed. Mortgage rates can't go any lower. Banks will not continue to extend credit should real estate prices move any higher and will tighten lending standards, thus shrinking the eligible pool of borrowers and purchasers. Anti-dollar financial assets will continue to increase. Crypto especially looks good. The long arm of the powers that be have so suppressed physical bullion that it's becoming increasingly scarce and is becoming unobtainium.
Rob Kirby is a financial commentator and former broker who worked on an institutional trading desk for most of the 1980s and right up until 1996. He also worked for 11 years at Prebon Yamane, an international inter-dealer broker of foreign exchange and interest rate products. He spent an additional year at another money/bond broker called Freedom Bond Brokers, then spent two years at Garban Inc., another inter dealer bond brokerage in Toronto - and left the industry in 1996. He started writing in 1997, and was involved in a number of entrepreneurial pursuits from marketing Buffalo meat to a part time stint in the giftware business. In 2002, he went to work for Investor's Group, the largest Mutual Fund Company in Canada. He worked there up until September '04 when he resigned to write about the markets - and his book - from a "gold bug's" point of view. His website is called Kirby Analytics.