Yesterday I recorded a new podcast with my US-based tax attorney to talk about the Trump administration’s new tax plan… or as I like to call it, the plan to have a plan.

Clearly they’re trying to do something positive and significant.

But to say that their strategy is light on details at just a single page would be a massive understatement.

Rather than rehash and recap what has already been covered in the media, my attorney and I dove into some of the more important issues: what’s NOT in the plan, what are the major details to sort out, and what’s SAFE?

Personally, I’m extremely skeptical of major tax reform… though I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

As I’ve written a number of times, the last time the tax code was updated was 1986.

Tech-savvy consumers were still using 5 ¼ inch floppy disks. Many of our readers hadn’t even been born yet.

The 1986 tax code was perfectly reasonable for an industrialized economy dominated by large companies like General Motors.

Today, technology makes it possible for companies to generate income across the world through products and services that are entirely digital.

Yet today’s companies are still forced to use the same hopelessly outdated tax code.

It’s such an embarrassing anachronism, it would be like the US government using those 1980s era 5 ¼ inch floppy disks to run its nuclear program.

Oh wait…

The reason I’m skeptical, though, is that each and every line item in the tax code has a certain group of beneficiaries that’s willing to fight tooth and nail to keep it.

There are people who benefit from all the deductions that the administration wants to eliminate. There are even people who will fight to keep the widely-hated Alternative Minimum Tax and Estate Tax.

And the larger problem, of course, is that millions of taxpayers and businesses have made plans and structured their affairs in a way to conform to the current tax code.

Pulling the tablecloth out from underneath them and suddenly changing the rules could end up causing some serious blowback.

So it’s enormously difficult to please a firm majority. And even if they manage to pull this off, they’ll still be accused of not being ‘revenue neutral.’

This is the part I find to be completely absurd.

The tax code is going to affect hundreds of millions of people and businesses in the largest, most complex economy in the world.

Economist cannot possibly predict with any accuracy how a radical overhaul of the tax code is going to impact the US government’s tax revenue ten years from now.

Nevertheless, this is going to be one of the primary arguments against the plan.

One of the points my attorney and I discussed is what will remain safe, i.e. what they’re NOT going to touch.

Retirement accounts are CLEARLY in that category.

If you have an IRA or 401(k), that’s not going to be touched. It would be politically disastrous for everyone.

This means that establishing a robust retirement structure like a self-directed SEP IRA, or a solo(k), is still a fantastic option, regardless of what they do with the rest of the code.

With a self-directed SEP IRA, for example, you create a new retirement plan with a contribution limit that increases from $5,500 to as much as $54,000 per year.

That’s almost 10-fold. Plus the contributions are tax-deductible, meaning you can aggressively (and LEGALLY) reduce the amount of income tax that you owe.

Meanwhile, the idea of a self-directed IRA structure is that your retirement plan owns precisely ONE asset: an LLC.

(You’ll need to find an IRA custodian that accepts self-directed structures, like IRA Services.)

You (or your spouse, parent, financial advisor, etc.) become the MANAGER of the LLC, which essentially gives you far greater discretion in how your retirement funds are invested.

Rather than be stuck in an overpriced stock market, for example, your self-directed IRA plan can own income-producing real estate, farmland, private businesses, cryptocurrency, secured debt, etc.

Under the current tax code there are a number of restrictions that are known as “prohibited transactions”. Those are probably here to stay.

You cannot use your IRA funds, for example, to invest in your own business, pay yourself any fees or compensation, buy/sell property that you personally own, or that is owned by immediate family members.

That’s why it makes sense to talk this over with a professional. But the benefits are absolutely worth having that discussion.

For now, I invite you to listen in to our conversation about the tax code, i.e. the plan to have a plan. It’s available here.

Yesterday I told you that the US government had recently released its annual financial report to the public.

And the numbers are pretty gruesome.

For example, the government’s “net loss” in fiscal year 2016 more than doubled, from MINUS $467 billion to MINUS $1 trillion.

It’s astonishing that anyone could manage to lose so much money, let alone in a year where devoid of major wars, recessions, financial crises, or infrastructure projects.

But what else can we expect from an institution that spent billions of dollars to build a website?

Today I wanted to highlight a few other items from the government’s report that are worth repeating:

1) The federal government failed its own audit. Again. (page 37)

Auditors have a bad reputation. People typically conflate ‘auditor’ with the guys at the IRS who harass taxpayers.

This isn’t the case.

Auditors actually work for you.

Their job is to be an independent, objective set of eyes. They go into a company on your behalf and review all the records to make sure that there’s no fraud or deceit.

Every year, big companies submit their financial statements to auditors for inspection, and auditors spend weeks doing their own studies to determine if those statements accurately reflect the company’s true condition.

In fact, our agriculture company is undergoing an audit right now by a large, international accounting firm.

It’s important: audits provide an independent assessment to the shareholders indicating that everything we’ve said about the company is true.

Needless to say, when a company fails its audit report, it’s a BIG deal.

That’s what happened to the US government.

The government submits its own financial statements each year to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), its in-house auditor.

But the GAO gave the federal government a failing grade, yet again, and specifically singled out the Defense Department for “serious financial management problems.”

If this were a private company, the senior executives would be out on the street and probably facing criminal charges.

2) The government’s single biggest asset is $1 trillion in student debt (p.81)

This is pretty sad.

Like any large business or bank, the US federal government holds a number of financial investments.

Big banks, for example, have bonds, loans, and mortgages on their balance sheet.

For borrowers and homeowners, a mortgage is a liability. We owe the bank money.

But to a bank, a loan is an asset; they’ve loaned the money, and they’re the ones receiving interest payments each month from us.

The government also holds loans as financial assets– specifically student loans.

As of September 30, 2016, America’s youth owed the federal government $953.6 billion from student loans.

By the end of December, that number increased another $100 billion to $1.05 trillion.

This constitutes the US government’s single biggest asset, even more than the aggregate value of their aircraft carriers or national parks.

In other words, the government’s most lucrative asset is the continued indentured servitude of young people in the Land of the Free.

3) This is just the tip of the iceberg… there’s so much more to tell you.

Click here to listen in on today’s podcast– I’ll explain how, based on the government’s own numbers, their actual “net worth” is nearly MINUS $100 TRILLION.

We’ll debunk so many myths from the debt sheep who think it doesn’t matter.

And we’ll discuss a VERY plausible scenario about how this could play out over the next few years… as well as some simple strategies to limit your exposure.

Listen in here.

[Editor’s note: We have made this content available as an audio and video podcast, but I encourage you to watch the video with the slides.]

In the video I mention a preview issue of our 4th Pillar Investment Service.

For most of the past week, we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about trading overvalued paper currency for high quality, undervalued businesses.

Right now, this is an absolute no-brainer to consider.

If you’re holding US dollars, it’s critical to understand that the President of the United States, as well as key members of the Federal Reserve, ALL want the US dollar to get weaker.

This means you have an opportunity right now to trade overvalued US dollars, which will likely get weaker, for high quality, undervalued businesses, which will likely get stronger.

This is easier said than done, of course.

Problem #1 is finding a great business.

Problem #2 is making sure that you don’t pay out the nose for it.

Netflix, for example, may be a very nice business with a lot of growth potential… and even more investor hype.

But if you’re going to buy shares, be prepared to pay dearly for them.

It will take several decades for Netflix to generate enough cashflow to recoup your investment.

Successful investors never overpay.

Instead, they patiently seek out great businesses whose shares they can acquire for bargain, discount prices.

This is not rocket science. Successful, rational investing is a skill, and one that can be learned.

Last week I promised to explain how my team finds and analyzes these types of deals to ensure that we can generate strong returns while taking minimal risk.

I ended up recording a full presentation about it.

Even if you’re already an experienced investor, I’d encourage you to watch this presentation, or listen to the accompanying audio.

The presentation explains, for example, why conventional valuation metrics are deeply flawed.

Most people are probably familiar with the famous “P/E” ratio.

I’ll show you why P/E ratios are worthless… and teach you about a FAR better metric to look at… one that few people have ever heard about.

Once you understand it, you’ll never look at investments the same way ever again.

In the video I mention a preview issue of our 4th Pillar Investment Service.

One of my interesting friends is in town visiting Chile for a few days.

His name is Gianni– he’s originally from Croatia but lives in Vancouver, and has spent most of his career in the mining business.

Gianni is especially bullish on copper… primarily because he thinks the Age of Big Oil is coming to a rapid close.

He believes that conventional gasoline vehicles will be increasingly replaced with electric cars, which simultaneously reduces demand for oil AND increases demand for copper.

For investors, this presents an interesting opportunity.

Oil and copper prices have been strongly correlated for decades; in other words, as oil prices went up, copper prices went up.

This made sense in the past since both commodities were affected by the same macroeconomic forces.

Fast growing economies tend to consume a lot of copper and oil, pushing up prices.

But now Gianni thinks it’s time for those prices to de-couple.

You may recall that German carmaker Volkswagen is in hot water after being caught falsifying its emissions data. The press is calling it “dieselgate.”

Volkswagen has already been fined $15 billion by the US Justice Department, and roughly $2 billion of that is supposed to be earmarked to build electric vehicle charging stations across America.

This increase in EV charging infrastructure may very well create additional demand for electric vehicles… meaning that oil is going to start losing a LOT of customers, while electricity is going to gain.

Copper remains one of the most important commodities in electrical infrastructure, so prices may very well rise much higher in the future as a result of what’s starting to happen now.

Take a listen to today’s podcast, in which Gianni and I discuss the future of energy, as well as ways to profit from this long-term global trend.

What I’m about to tell you is a true story.

And by the end of it, I hope it will be pretty clear that we’ve been programmed to put far, far too much trust in the banking system.

We’re told that banks are supposedly “risk free”.

And yet every scrap of publicly available evidence shows that banks take every opportunity to prove that they cannot be trusted with other people’s money.

They have been caught colluding to fix interest rates, exchange rates, and commodities prices to the detriment of their own customers.

They make insanely stupid bets with their depositors’ savings… and then when the bets go wrong, they go to the taxpayer with hat in hand claiming that they’re too important to go bust.

But most importantly, as my story will show you, they act with a sanctimonious sense of self-entitlement… that it’s no longer YOUR money in the bank. It’s their money.

And they’re going to do whatever they damn well please with it.

Take a listen in today’s podcast… the first I’ve put out in a very long five months.

One of the most profound moments of my entire adult life came to me when I was learning about my family history, which I’ve managed to trace back over eight centuries.

I discovered so many incredible stories from the past, and the indelible conclusion that I’ve reached is that it’s an absolute miracle that any one of us exists.

The last few millennia have seen war, plague, and some of the worst conditions this species have ever experienced.

Looking back at my own ancestors’ lives I’m astonished at how many close calls I’ve had to never being born. I’ve calculated the odds, I had a 99.99999% chance of never existing.

But despite the odds, my ancestors survived. All of our ancestors survived.

And because of that string of luck, I’m here today. And so are you.

These days, we have it easy by comparison.

Most of us don’t have to deal with genocide, pandemic killer diseases, and civil war… yet we still have our own threats to face.

Governments across the West have amassed unprecedented amounts of debt, and are adding even more with each passing day.

Banks and whole financial systems are highly illiquid and in many cases even insolvent.

Our threats are financial. They are political. They are existential. And they are just as dangerous.

History is generous with examples of how governments, pressed by bankruptcy, have almost invariably turned to plunder the wealth of their citizens.

As well as how insolvent financial systems have culminated in extraordinary crises that have fundamentally changed the face of society.

It’s difficult to ignore these lessons today, especially when we can see things moving in the same direction.

It’s no secret that the US government is bankrupt. They tell you themselves each day as they publish how much debt they owe, to the penny, for the world to see.

It’s no secret either that the Federal Reserve is out of capital on a mark-to-market basis, which you can find stated very clearly in the reports they publish every Thursday.

The information is all right there for anyone who cares to look.

People who ignore these obvious realities do so at their own peril.

In many respects the purpose of our lives is to survive and pass wealth on to the next generation.

And that’s only possible if we can recognize the obvious trends and take action to prepare ourselves for what’s to come.

Luckily, given the modern technology available now in 2016, mitigating these risks is something that anyone can do.

And by taking the right steps it is more than possible to turn this period of chaos into one of opportunity.

Listen in to today’s podcast as I share some deep family history and the steps you can take to ensure that no matter what happens next you are in a position to not only survive, but thrive.

I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong.

Britain’s referendum on whether or not to stay part of the European Union was marred by some of the most blatant propaganda we’ve seen in the West in a very, very long time.

But… at the end of the day, the British government at least accurately counted the votes. No shenanigans.

“Leave” prevailed. So the UK will officially be leaving the European Union.

This has led to some unprecedented moves in the financial markets.

The pound is at its cheapest level in decades. High quality British companies are now trading for extraordinary discounts.

Investors are panic-selling because they don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Britain has been part of the EU for four decades, and now that’s coming to an end.

Nothing scares people more than their fear of the unknown.

In fact, for decades, the political, media, and financial establishments have been pushing people along a very clear path that they wanted us to follow.

Elections always represented the illusion of choice between establishment candidates and their establishment policies.

This referendum, just like the surge of candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, constitute a major revolt.

Simply put, this wasn’t part of the plan. So the system is in complete panic.

This is a huge opportunity, especially for foreign investors who have an unprecedented chance to pick up high quality British assets on the cheap.

I wanted to dive into this, so I rang up my colleague Tim Price, London-based wealth manager and one of the sharpest investors I know.

Tim and I discuss several options in both stock and the currency markets, and he even highlights what investments to avoid.

You can listen in to our call here.

Note: Tim and I cover the following… and MUCH more:

In our daily conversations, we regularly discuss how important it is to own real assets– especially precious metals.

There’s so much risk in the financial system right now. Just consider your own bank account, for example.

If you’re in the West, more than likely your bank is -extremely- illiquid, meaning that they only keep a small portion of your funds in reserve.

The rest of your money is gambled away in the latest investment fad; and as we’ve reported recently, banks are once again making low-money down home loans to subprime borrowers with YOUR money.

This is the same playbook that nearly causes the entire financial system to collapse back in 2008.

Now, here’s the thing—and a lot of people don’t realize this: the money in your bank account isn’t really YOURS.

Sure, your name is on the bank account. But as soon as you make a deposit, that money belongs to the bank. And you become one of their many, many unsecured creditors.

It hardly seems worth the risk, especially given the paltry 0.1% interest they’re paying you.

We’ve talked a lot about different solutions, like holding physical cash, as well as precious metals.

But when we use the term ‘precious metals,’ most people immediately think of gold.

That makes sense, of course. Gold is the most famous and most widely held precious metal.

But there are three others, namely palladium, platinum, and silver.

Silver in particular may be worth a closer look; we wrote to you several months ago that silver was very cheap on a relative basis, especially compared to gold.

And so far this year silver has been a top-performing commodity.

So today I thought it appropriate to take some time and specifically explore silver.

I sat down this afternoon with the founder and CEO of one of the fastest growing storage and precious metals trading firms in the world, based here in Singapore, and I think you’ll learn a lot from his insights into what he considers the ‘forgotten’ precious metal.

You can listen in below.

No one likes to pay for insurance.

If you don’t smoke, if you go to the gym regularly, and if you generally eat well, it just might not seem worth it.

Especially when the average cost of insuring against just catastrophic health incidents can take up about 4% of your income.

But most of us do it anyway.

After all, paying small amounts over time feels a lot better than having to write a huge check when you’re at your worst.

It’s become the norm to take out insurance against just about every possibility—

We buy car insurance in case we get into a car wreck.

We buy house insurance in case our house catches on fire.

We buy life insurance in case we die sooner than expected.

However, there’s one huge threat to our livelihoods that very few insure themselves against: financial disaster.

In comparison to your house suddenly bursting into flames, financial panic is far more predictable and frequent.

Given that the average business cycle lasts about 6 years, the average person will see at least 10 recessions in their lifetime.

So while we may not know exactly the day or month that it will hit, we know it’s coming.

And unlike a heart attack, financial crises don’t come out of nowhere. They can be diagnosed ahead of time.

In today’s podcast as I do a physical on the United States’ economy, in which the vitals are showing serious signs of strain and weakness:

Join me as I show how the decline in freedom, government bankruptcy, and an insolvent financial system are all related. I also cover several ways that you can insure yourself quickly and easily against all of this.

Listen in here.