What asset do you flee to when the world collapses

pub_date:You need the skills to pay the bills - more than stocks, bonds, gold, property or cashTHE idiocy - sorry, events - that befell the US government in the past few weeks have certainly made one think harder about the kind of asset that is safe to hold as a financial apocalypse looms.迷你倉US Treasuries look hopelessly inadequate, gold can't be eaten - and stronger people will take it from you anyway. Meanwhile, try convincing the chicken rice seller to take your Bitcoins as you fend off squatters from your multiple properties.If the world is going to sink into a second Great Depression as the mightiest economy in recent history looks set to self-destruct (as was the case this week), you had better prepare for not just seven years of famine, but something closer to 17.After all, this was precisely what happened from 1929. A stock-market crash in the United States led to runs on banks, businesses cut wages and jobs, consumers held back on spending, interest rates stayed low but did not attract investment, people were out on the streets begging for food and work, countries around the world turned protectionist, global trade collapsed and stronger countries invaded weaker ones in resource grabs.The world did not really settle down until World War II was over in 1945, and tens of millions were dead.Whatever financial assets you spent your life accumulating might lose a significant part of their value - and stay depressed - till your hypothetical four-year-old kid graduates from college.So what do you put your money in? Stocks are out, because all sorts of businesses suffer during a recession. Agricultural commodities and consumer staples companies might do well, but only if there is political stability and social order.What about bonds? Usually, in an economic crisis, there is one single asset the entire world flocks to, because it is regarded as the safest asset there is - and that is US Treasuries.OK, never mind. There is now a risk that Uncle Sam can't pay you the interest on the money you lend him. Or maybe he can, eventually, but he can't do it on time as originally promised.There is gold, the other safe haven espoused by doomsday prophets around the world. How would you buy that gold? And what price would it be at?Chances are, you won't be able to afford a piece of solid gold the size of a Snickers bar. Even if you did, you better hope it was a Snickers bar, because (a) you are still hungry and (b), all these bigger, stronger and faster people around you are looking enviously at the shiny thing.So you own multiple condominiums anmini storage landed properties. Will there be tenants willing to pay you rent? If you are hungry, how much food can you grow in the garden in your Nassim Road house, without worrying that someone else might break in to take it first?As for this mysterious computer currency called Bitcoin that some geniuses conjured up, try telling a stall-holder in a wet market that you will transfer some electrically generated computer code over in exchange for a pound of meat. You might just get rotten beansprouts chucked your way if you're lucky.And electrically generated currencies might not be the best of ideas when power is going to be scarce.What about the Singapore dollar? Our government has plenty of foreign reserves. It runs plenty of budget surpluses. But how long can Singapore survive if there is a sustained global economic crisis? With zero natural resources and an economy heavily dependent on global trade flows, Singapore's economy is especially vulnerable when nobody wants to trade and people worry about clean water and edible plants, not chemicals and electronics.The only asset you are left with, really, is yourself.The extremely good-looking can probably find someone to take care of them. The very rich can jet off in their helicopters to their private island, where they have a small farm, some chickens and cows, a wheat or rice field, fresh water supplies and guns and ammunition to defend themselves.But if you can't do that, and you live in an urbanised island of more than five million, you can still get by if you are useful to other people. Maybe you can make the rice trader's lung infection go away. Maybe you know how to preserve the vegetables that the Lim Chu Kang farmer grows. Or maybe you can repair a leaking pipe for someone who can fix your broken electrical appliance.In rich, sophisticated Singapore populated with financiers, lawyers and plenty of middle managers, skills actually useful to survive an economic collapse might be in startlingly short supply - not just jungle survival, self-defence or fishing skills, but knowledge of basic trades such as construction, vehicle repair, plumbing or woodworking.Also, how many of us know how to trade something for something else, or build a contraption to solve a practical problem? If we don't, do we have good relationships with these skilful, enterprising people we can count on when disaster strikes?Build up a set of skills and contacts that people will want in good times and bad, and you will never go hungry for as long as you live. There's no better asset to invest in.You have three months.儲存