I just know that the economy is not functioning smoothly

I’ve actually been very surprised that there hasn’t been more disruption at the university level for example. I mean here we have all these people taking on all these loans with the promise of some job that they don’t get.

They can’t possibly pay off the loans, and yet nobody seems concerned about them. How about if you’re at university today and you know darn well that when your time comes to get the social security, there’s not going to be any social security? Literally, people of my era are benefiting at the expense of people that are going to be in your era because all these programs that we have, we can’t afford. But nobody wants to cut them down to size -- not on their watch, not while they’re running the government, even though it’s so obvious that there’s no way that when you retire the social security benefits that you’ve been promised can be paid.

For example, they just announced that the disability fund is going to be out of money next year and then the retirement fund will be out of money in 2034. Well, that’s maybe getting to when you might retire.

But there won’t be any money there. So it’s a very difficult situation and I’m surprised that there haven’t been more people complaining. Maybe someday if food prices go up shockingly high -- perhaps because of the drought in California or other things -- when you start affecting food and its availability, then people will be more disruptive.

I don’t like to even contemplate those things. I would much rather just look at the economy. Let’s not get into how people are going to react, although it could be very negative to markets.

I just know that the economy is not functioning smoothly. Sooner or later-- because I have to care about these things -- stocks won’t sustain the highs that they’re at and the banking system won’t be able to pretend that it’s solvent.

And of course it’s the banking system not being solvent that always takes me to precious metals.

I think of the people in Greece, who could only get – what was it? -- sixty euros a day? Well, if they’d had their gold somewhere, they could cash something in. But they go to the bank and they got to get in the line-up and they get 60 euros in a day. I mean that doesn’t carry you too far. So I still believe that’s the ultimate manifestation that there’s no economic recovery. The banks will suffer. People will figure out that banks are risky and the money will go to where it should go -- precious metals.

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