Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown [Format Kindle]

If you would like to visit the author's website, hire them to financially advise you, or simply buy their friend's books, then you'll have plenty of opportunities during this read. Shameless plugs and weblinks are littered throughout so many of these pages you'll probably catch yourself laughing in spite of it all.

And seriously, I have never encountered a more pretentious self-congratulatory pat-themselves-on-the-back-and-then-do-it-again group of authors in my life. Ever. It's tolerable at first, annoying next, unbelievable, and finally comical. Is it entertaining? Oh ok, you'll finally be entertained by their level of arrogance... but probably because you suspect these guys (and gal) don't even realize it.

Their message is simple and never approaches the more erudite levels of their contemporaries. They even complain about their failure at publishing in peer reviewed journals at one point. More sour grapes appear when they devote a huge section of the book (probably about 35%) to attacking practically every economist in the known world. At least they explicitly reveal to the reader exactly where each economist makes their mistake and how they should proceed down the path of redemption. Hell, they even take on the entire SCIENCE of economics at one point.

It's a fun read though and I enjoyed it. It's a serious topic and these guys are probably pretty damn close to predicting what will happen in the next few years despite their sophomoric approach. Go ahead and buy it if you are interested, but in case the Aftershock has already left you penniless, here's the summary:

The U.S. will hit their credit limit when foreign entities quit buying our T-bills. The Fed will continue to buy bonds to manipulate the market, massive inflation will occur, so you better have stocked up on gold because nothing else will protect you.

After reading this book I can't decide if it was written as an educational piece or for self-promotion and aggrandizement. Granted the economic theory and facts are correct but about a third of the way through I was tired of the continued "patting ourselves on the back" by the authors. I was even more disenchanted with the authors when I found that they are promoting a free and "secret filled" final chapter that is only available if you order directly from their website. In my eyes this gives them major credibility issues. I would also argue that this books theories and facts could have been plainly stated in about a hundred pages which, without the emotional hysteria, would would provide us with a better basis for discussion.

Highly summarized version: "Unload your debt, sell your stocks, sell all your real estate, buy all the gold you can afford, and hire us to give you this advice but using more and longer words--oh, and economists are stupid (except for us)."

The early chapters in this book explain why the authors believe that the global economic failure that was made visible through the failure of Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers, and led to a material collapse of the U.S. housing market, is fundamentally different than a cyclical expansion/contraction phase. And we see the word "bubble" so many times that we yearn for a more comprehensive thesaurus that might have provided the authors with different word choices.

Later chapters make the case that the worst is yet to come, with the most significant risk to the U.S. being the astonishing accelerated accumulation of U.S. federal debt, reaching the point that we'll never pay it off. Yes, the U.S. government is headed for default. That will create a level of inflation high enough to decimate the value of most of our investments, sending that value to to "Money Heaven", in their words. They advise getting out of stocks, selling our real estate (because they believe we're nowhere near the bottom of the housing slump), unloading any high-interest debt we have (up to and including defaulting), and staying away from any long-term commitments.

Given this future state, the authors explain why they believe gold is clearly the investment vehicle of choice and they anticipate a future price of gold so high that they don't actually state it in the book for fear of losing credibility. They suggest that those of us with any substantive asset base should at least subscribe to their newsletter (free for a two-month trial basis!), and they just happen to run a consulting business and would be happy to work with us to provide more specific advice.

And lastly, the end of the book is spent explaining why the field of economics has failed all of us in a number of ways. First: No one else seems to have been able to predict the situation we're in now; Second: no one else seems be able to see what the authors see coming in the future; Third: economists have failed because they haven't had a bright idea since they introduced computer modeling. I'm no economist, but I have to say I'm skeptical when three people (the authors) tell me that every living economist on the planet has failed. And more curiously...I don't know why they even bothered to include that chapter in the book, as it has no bearing on explaining the problem nor in determining solutions.

To their credit, these authors have successfully predicted, in advance and in writing, many of the events we've seen in the past four years, and because of that they deserve an open-minded but critical audience. If we get nothing else from this book, we see the authors' views on what the global economic future could look like, and based on how much we've been persuaded they're right, we can start taking steps to protect ourselves.