The Alpha Strategy: The Ultimate Plan of Financial Self-Defense A practical investment guide offers advice on beating inflation and protecting savings by investing in real goods as opposed to paper claims on wealth.
"The Alpha Strategy is, wit…
The Alpha Strategy: The Ultimate Plan of Financial Self-Defense A practical investment guide offers advice on beating inflation and protecting savings by investing in real goods as opposed to paper claims on wealth.
"The Alpha Strategy is, without a doubt, the best explanation of the Federal Reserve System and the perils of fractional-reserve banking ever put on paper. This accounts for the first 50 pages of the book; the next 70 serve as a great primer on free-market economics in general. Doug Casey (of LewRockwell.com) is quoted on the back of the book calling author John Pugsley maybe "the greatest living free-market writer" -- keep in mind, this is when Murray Rothbard was still alive! And based on the skill with which Pugsley explains supposedly "difficult" concepts, I'm inclined to agree with Casey's assessment. I only wonder why Pugsley didn't go on to write more books.
The second half of The Alpha Strategy might be the reason: like Ron Paul in Gold, Peace, and Prosperity and Gary North in How You Can Profit From the Coming Price Controls , Pugsley ended up being wrong with his dire economic predictions for the 1980s. This is understandable: no one could have possibly foreseen Paul Volcker's tight monetary policy. However, all of the same factors that led Pugsley, Paul, and North to project the implosion of the dollar and U.S. economy in 1980 are present once again, only this time, we have a much larger debt, much bigger entitlement deficits, currency competition in the form of the euro, industrial competition from China, overextended military, much greater debasement of our currency, and a president and Federal Reserve Chairman who absolutely WILL NOT do what Volcker did. Thus, The Alpha Strategy is even more timely reading today than when it was written. Pugsley's predictions were not "wrong," they were just about 30 years too early.
The second half of the book is a stylistic departure, . But the strategy for preserving wealth and beating inflation ..
