Frighteningly accurate, but difficult to sift through

I give this book 5 stars for accurately predicting a number of things that have come to pass since the book was published, and for almost certainly accurately forecasting some things that are yet to be. I give the book 1 star for organizing the material in a way that makes it easy to identify all the risks and the required responses. Hence, on average, 3 stars.

For example, the author accurately forecasts the doom that is befalling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He accurately forecast that the market collapse would shake out a number of crooks (eg Bernie Madoff). He accurately (in my opinion) forecasts the looming pension crisis, municipal and state defaults, and other public financial crises that lie ahead. And much more. However, the way the author breezily drifts from details in one paragraph to gross generalizations in the next makes it hard to separate some of his key observations from general conjecture.

The book is organized in four main headings (Threats, Risks, Fallout and Defenses) with four chapters under each heading. That's great. However, each chapter is 10 to 30 pages of unbroken paragraphs covering a multitude of topics under that chapter heading. For example, under 'Defenses' are the four chapters Planning, Investments, Relationships and Lifestyles. In the 14 pages under 'Investments' is a sea of paragraphs covering everything from the Hunt Brothers cornering of the silver market in the 80's to municipal bond fund safety to the strategy of holding cash in the deflationary period to the strategy for buying commodities, food and the like in the hyperinflation to follow, with data points bobbing on this sea of paragraphs like driftwood. It's not difficult reading, but it's difficult to extract a coherent picture of the point the author is trying to make, or a cogent personal plan of attack for addressing the problem. In my opinion this book is crying out for many more smaller, focused chapters.

An example is his discussion starting with TIPS (U.S. Treasury Inflation Protected Securities), which he rightly points out are not a hedge for hyper-inflation because the government will simply redefine or blatantly distort the inflation numbers as it does currently with it's 'hedonistic' adjustments to those numbers. So you could buy 'inverse ETFs' that short the TIPS, but those could suffer from market 'irregularities', so you could go to cash, but hyperinflation will eat that, so consider gold, but the government could confiscate that...all in a few pages in the Investments chapter. Whoa. Reading this is like reading a flowchart full of if-else decision blocks without the nice pretty symbols.

The key to this book is probably the last 40 pages, entitled 'References and Resources', which are nothing more than hundreds of listing of web page articles and references, most from 2006, and presumably the primary sources from which the author gathered his data and conclusions. Unfortunately the author didn't cross-reference these sources to his discussions in the text, so like the rest of the book they are hard to sift through in any organized fashion. Like most of the stuff on the 'net, some of the links should be taken lightly (if at all), while others are in turn prognosticative, profound or downright scary when examined four years later.

In summary, this book will make you think hard about the 'bigger picture' of this economy, but it doesn't make it easy.

Doom and Gloom come true

I read this book late 2007 and have just picked it up again. It is frightning how insighful Michael Panzner was. If you own the book please reread it, if you have not purchased please do so. We must be aware of what is happening to us financially. Every day the ecconomic future is becoming more and more bleak.

Writing about issues without saying much

I was looking for some good information to help me assess some of the looming financial issues facing the country like paying for retirement benefits. When I flipped through the book at the store, I saw words in each chapter dealing with the issues I wanted to explore so I bought it. I was very disappointed when I read it, though. I had to force myself to read through the whole book just beacause I hate to be a quitter, but I got little out of it. It seems to talk around and about the issues without giving specifics on what data show the problem getting worse or better and what specifically an investor should think about doing in response.

Great book with a great title

I became interested in this book because the title sparked my curiosity. The author analyzes how our country found itself in the financial predicament it is in. He, of course, gives some valuable investment advice on how to prosper in the future.

I got really excited about one topic that really made so many things clear for me. One of the threats that the author describes is government guarantees. He talks about how the FDIC insures our deposits at the banks. We might think that this is excellent because our money is safe. But is it really good for us? I learned that because our money is insured, we don't really shop around to find the safest banks. Banks are aware that we feel safe and won't run on the bank when they lose our money because the government will cover the losses. So what do banks do? They make ridiculously risky investments with our deposits. And if these investments turn sour, they don't care because the government will bail out the depositors. Now I understand why these banks are in so much trouble. But because of their ignorance, we, as citizens of this nation, will probably pay higher taxes in the future because of their dumb mistakes.

This book was extremely educational. It may be a bit too negative at some places, but it was good.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

Scary

If only half of of Mr Panzners projections come true we are in for a bad time. Written in 2006, he was prescient in seeing the destructive forces at work in our economy. Worth reading.