The crisis plaguing Athens, Greece is about to come to Athens, Georgia - here - and a lot of other places in the United States.  Why?  Because not only are we a "Bail Out" nation, with our government determining that they can't let anything - from big business to big government - but the entire planet is essentially making the same mistake.  From Washington, London and Frankfurt toTokyo and Beijing - virtually all world governments are bailing out and subsidizing selected industries and governmental entities.  They are doing this through what they euphemistically call "Quantative Easing" which is really just government jargon for printing a whole lot of paper and calling it money.  No, I am not oversimplifying it.  They, meaning just about everybody in power, are bailing out everything in sight, rather than allowing the entities in question to fail.

Why is this bad?  Well, first it removes all responsibility and therefore incentive on the part of the
failing project or government to rein in spending and ultimately change.  Why deal with angry constituents for one government program or another and  tell them the truth (that there is no more money) when you can just buy them off and push the problem down the road by literally papering it over?  Secondly, the printing of paper money and injecting it into the system artificially stops the natural fall in prices that a free market engenders during a downturn. This keeps things from having any true value and thereby puts off the inevitable day of reckoning.  And that day is coming. In both these cases, governmental and business,  artificially supporting spending and prices leads to imbalances that cannot be controlled and in the end, the collapse that ensues will be oh-so-much worse than it would have ever been.  Had everyone just bitten the bullet and done the right thing, allowing the market to work to begin with this might never have been so catastrophic.

So to all of you out there who have friends, family members or perhaps even personally hold bonds of any flavor and in particular municipal bonds, a seismic collapse is coming.  Get out while you can. The federal government will print money to rush in and help local communities and states to pay their interest - but that will only allow them to further push off reigning in spending.  At best, and in most cases, this will lead to higher taxes, which will only serve to further a depressing economic growth.  It is going to be a HUGE mess and you need to get clear.

Look, a serious inflation is already here, which isn't being reflected in official statistics because
it is artificially supporting false prices on assets like real estate and stocks that should have fallen much more than they have.  Believe me, reality is coming and coming fast.  Ignore government statistics as figures lie and liars figure.  They are either, depending on how paranoid you are or intentionally and stupidly covering up an underlying inflation that is going to be horrible.  Gold, baby, gold.  That is your insurance.