The Wall Came Out of Nowhere—And Attacked My Car

The wall came out of nowhere!

There I was, minding my own beeswax, talking to my wife about something innocuous—probably some shoes she wants—and all of a sudden…. BOOM!

The corner of a blue-tiled, concrete wall in a parking garage here in Lisbon ran up out of nowhere and stopped just in time for me to back into it with a solid crunch. The driver’s side taillight was broken, the bumper was messed up, and the seeing-eye doo-hickey that alerts me when backing up (ironic, yes) was wonky and bejiggled.

Now, just to set the scene and to forgive my carelessness just a bit… Lisbon parking garages are made for Hobbits tooling around on nothing larger than a Big Wheel.

They. Are. Tiny!

Sidenote: For any politician whining about why Europeans buy so few American cars… it’s because automotive life in European cities is not built for the SUVs, massive trucks, and land-yachts that American automakers crank out.

Roads here are narrow. Parking often consumes both sides of the street, thereby narrowing the roadway even more. Double-parking is common. And parking spaces are teensy-weensy—engineered within an inch of a car’s capacity to park in a given spot.

But what are you on about, El Jefe?

Insurance!

Thankfully I had local Portuguese insurance. I paid my €250 deductible (about $290), and the insurer covered the remaining $3,265 in repair costs.

Now, in the grand scheme of life, $3,200 isn’t a lifestyle killer. Had I had to pay it, the cost would have been an annoyance and a frustration, but it wouldn’t have sent my financial life reeling.

But what if instead of a parking garage wall attacking your car out of nowhere, the financial emergency was something like, say, the value of your money plunging?

Your paycheck shrinking relative to your monthly expenses.

Your savings account losing its purchasing power rapidly.

Merchants raising prices weekly, maybe daily. Maybe more often.

What I’m on about here is that we are entering a troubling age—an age in which the dollars in your wallet are less and less valuable. Not just because the Federal Reserve’s mandate over the last century has been the never-ending destruction of the dollar ($1 today buys about 4 cents worth of goods relative to a dollar when the Federal Reserve began in 1913).

The real risk to your money today is that the rest of the world is weary of dead American presidents.

Proof of that is showing up all over the place, if you’re paying attention.

I’ve told you in recent weeks about projects—Dunbar and Icebreaker, for instance—that have central banks around the world devising strategies based on blockchain/crypto technology that removes the dollar as a necessity in global trade.

I’ve told you about a spring survey a financial think-tank conducted that showed—shockingly—that 70% of the world’s central banks say they’re now hesitant to invest in the US dollar because of America’s political and fiscal environment… and that the dollar is now #7 on the central banks’ list of popular assets. Last year it was #1.

I’ve told you about foreign investors skipping out on attending US Treasury Department auctions, choosing instead to keep their money out of the greenback, which has forced Treasury to pay higher rates on the debt it needs to fund Congress’ ongoing grift. Those higher rates mean higher interest payments—exactly what Uncle Sam doesn’t need when he’s already schlepping around with a backpack stuffed with $37 trillion in debt.

Meanwhile, there’s a concerted effort by any number of countries to de-dollarize the global economy. Brazil and China are now trading in each other’s currency. Russia, Brazil, India, China, Malaysia, the UAE, Turkey and others are, variously, trading with each other in local currencies rather than the dollar.

Today, roughly 55% of China’s trade with the world is denominated in Chinese yuan, surpassing the dollar for the first time. The yuan’s share of global trade still trails the dollar but given that China is the #1 trading partner for roughly 130 countries, and given China’s aforementioned push to denominate that trade in yuan only, the writing is certainly on the wall.

The BRICS nations (11 currently) as well as ASEAN (all of Southeast Asia) are beginning to trade amongst themselves in local currencies rather than the dollar.

Those are a lot of dominos stacking up against the dollar… which means lots of dominoes stacking up against normal American life, since the dollar losing its place in the world hits American families hard.

Every day prices rise for items such as groceries, insurance, utilities, and gasoline. Interest rates on houses and cars and lines of credit and credit cards all rise. Traveling outside the US would be much pricier. The economy would falter because foreign investors would scale back their purchases of US debt, since they don’t have to worry about using the dollar in global trade.

And to be clear: Maybe nothing comes of these dominoes. Maybe all the signs of discord ahead are misprints.

Maybe we pass this moment without incident and the world decides America’s where it’s at forever and the dollar reigns for another hundred years.

The thing about the future is that pretty much anything is possible. So I’m not ruling out that a cabal exists of dark underlords pulling all kinds of secret strings that steer the global economy and the way the world trades.

Then again… I don’t necessarily believe that’s true.

I believe that humanity, society, history move in loosely defined arcs that cycle between ebullience, decay, collapse, and rebirth. That’s visible across the span of history as empires rose up and died… as reserve currencies rose up and died… as countries and leaders rose up and died.

Nothing has fundamentally changed.

And so, insurance.

In your daily life, you have insurance on your house, your health, your car. Maybe your life. You might have even bought insurance on your new laptop or TV or some rando kitchen appliance. Maybe you buy flight-interruption insurance with every vacation.

You never want or expect to use any of them. Well—maybe health insurance if you catch measles or whatever.

Nonetheless, insurance populates your life.

Just in case…

Well, the dollar’s future in not a “just in case.” It’s abundantly clear how the rest of the world sees the dollar. It’s abundantly clear that the rest of the world is actively moving away from the dollar—verifiable facts, not my opinion.

And it’s clear that the impacts of that will negatively affect American families, American pocketbooks, American savings accounts.

So… buy some insurance.

In this context, that’s learning about all the options you have for building a life overseas by way of residence permits or second passports.

And maybe you never need to use either of those. If so, fantabulous.

However, if tomorrow’s juju is bad, at least you know your options and you have the beginnings of a plan that can lead you and your family to a safer, more secure, more comfortable life.

Walls come out of nowhere to attack your car.

You gotta be prepared for those moments.

You gotta have insurance.