Excellent Retirement Crisis Analysis

[Nords]

Watch out for that TMND seminar...

Tom Stanley hasn't done very many of them and I'd be surprised if he's at yours.

Danko, OTOH, has been mercilessly flogging his TMND horse through the lecture circuit for years. Stanley has clearly despaired of his collaboration and has gone on to write two more books without Danko.

IMO Danko's behavior puts him one step above Robert Kiyosaki. Lock up your wallet and maybe even bring a pair of earplugs.

John Galt is right. You'll always find valuable real estate, even if you have to work your assets off like Panhead to make it profitable.

 

[Hyperborea]

I haven't read any of Dent's books.  What's his argument for deflation?

There are two arguments for deflation. The first is a small time scale argument. The average spending of families increases until about the age of 46 (age of head of household) and after that drops away. By about 2008 all of the boomers will have past this peak. With less spending there will be fewer dollars chasing the same numbers of goods.

Now that covers local jiggle around the long term inflation. He argues that over much of history inflation has been zero and only a major factor in 3 time blocks: the "commercial revolution" from ~1100 to ~1200; the "capitalist revolution" from ~1450 to ~1600; and now in the "information revolution" from early/mid last century. The industrial revolution did cause inflation too but it's a blip compared to the other 3 at about 1/3 or so in magnitude. After this revolutionary transformation happens then society goes back to relatively close to zero inflation. I've actually seen this long term inflation chart from someone else too - I think it was on of the Bernstein's (William or Peter)?

Combine these too and we get deflation - the ending of this current revolutionary inflation and the passing of the peak boomer spending.

 

[wabmester]

Combine these too and we get deflation - the ending of this current revolutionary inflation and the passing of the peak boomer spending.

That seems like a pretty wacky argument, but then people buy his books, so what do I know.

I wonder if there has ever been a long stretch of deflation in any economy with a fiat currency like ours. All the fed has to do is print more money and the threat of deflation goes away, which is another reason I think inflation is a pretty safe bet.

 

[Cut-Throat]

I wonder if there has ever been a long stretch of deflation in any economy with a fiat currency like ours.

There has been periods in the U.S. economy where we have seen deflation. Not sure when, but in the 1800's and early 1900's - I think there were 3 major periods. Someone may wish to contribute here.

 

[wabmester]

There has been periods in the U.S. economy where we have seen deflation. Not sure when, but in the 1800's and early 1900's - I think there were 3 major periods. Someone may wish to contribute here.

Yes, but that was back when we were on the gold standard. Deflation is easy to whip up if you've got a tight money supply. We've only had a true fiat currency since 1971.