We have a subscription to Fortune magazine. In 2003, we came across
an article by Warren Buffett where he issued a warning about our continuing trade imbalance. We recalled the article lately, as the federal government seems to be "
printing money" to get out of the current financial crisis. It's worth reading the article.
"Sooner or later the Squanderville government, facing ever greater payments to service debt, would decide to embrace highly inflationary policies -- that is, issue more Squanderbucks to dilute the value of each. After all, the government would reason, those irritating Squanderbonds are simply claims on specific numbers of Squanderbucks, not on bucks of specific value. In short, making Squanderbucks less valuable would ease the island's fiscal pain."
The question we seem to be asking ourselves is, "How do we plan to protect our
Squanderbucks against inflation?" Personally, we tried to decide between US Savings bonds, gold,
stocks, a combination thereof, or
McDonald's gift certificates. The winner you might ask? Sammy voted for the most reliable way to continue buying
Happy Meals. On that we have to agree... if we had the choice from living
Squanderville,
Thriftville, or McDonald's
PlayLand...we'd choose the land with the clown...oh, we mean Ronald McDonald.
