Look, I love you guys, even though I am new here, so permit me to be harsh with you.
EVERY investment vehicle has exposure. EVERY ONE. I completely understand confusion and a lack of in depth knowledge as a reason to "stand pat", but as a professional IN THIS BUSINESS, you guys are risking your futures and retirements in a game the big boys are seriously balking at. I can't put it any more clearly than this. When this is over, every home, IRA, Money Market, and US dollar will be worth 20% of what it is today. Available working capital, the true reason for a credit based system, has evaporated. Business and the public sector is 100% tapped out, has no credit from which to draw, and will NEVER be recapitalized in ways most laymen will understand.
Total Debt to GDP ratio running at 360%, (more like 380% after all the recent idiocy) and that deleveraging process will absorb your money, our money, all of it. There will be no more overseas loans of any stature. Why do you think the FED and Treasury are bailing out the banks and not Soverign wealth funds?? The funds got hooked by our banks last spring, and between the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) and the IMF, we have been told NO CASH. But they will buy the EQUITIES of the US in the form of bonds, that the Treasury sells to cover their debts AFTER they bail everybody out. Get it yet?? If a Sovereign invests directly into the market, there is risk to the capital either through loss or dilution (well, they actually have ratchet clauses but I digress). If the .gov bails them out, then the new T-bills and US Bonds are backed by a little piece of country. They also want those bonds back here so they can implode on shore, and not effect emerging markets. Read emerging markets to mean "non-aging populous, high gross ratio of total debt/natural resource value.
5% of Total Money, or the no longer published M3, was physical cash, dollars and coin. If M3 is as high as I think it is NOW, that number has dwindled to about 3.7%. It cost ACTUAL money to print dollars, and cost nothing to increase electronic money as credit. Guess which one gets a boost??
This is why they are attempting to calm and quash rumor, because in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, and in the land of debit, the man with a grand can buy a house.
If the deflation don't get ya, hyperinflation will. We exist on a knife edge right now, as evidenced by the wishy washy "bail or not to bail" headlines, because they have no idea what to do.
I kind of laugh at the "NO F*&^% BAILOUTS" crowd of both parties, as if they got their wish, you would see a level of poverty and renewed totalitarianism unlike anything we have ever seen, short of maybe Pol Pot or Pinochet. At this point, conventional wisdom says a good ol war oughta do the trick, and as Russia is having they're fair share of issues, will probably oblige.
Back to topic. The only thing that is sure, is to get a good chunk of that little bit of cash home. DO NOT put it in a safe deposit box at a bank. Custodial accounts were the first to be "nationalized" by FDR, and no matter how you feel about him now, he ate up a lot of capital and regular people's savings and in doing so literally wiped out many who thought they had "safe" investments, in gold.
Desperate times and desperate measures and all that.
From the FDIC site:
http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/information/fdiciorn.html"So - you feel your cash is safe and protected when you walk through the door of the bank or saving association, much safer than when you kept it under your mattress. And you should. BUT, are your funds all covered by FDIC insurance just because you walked into a secure-looking building with iron bars and guards? Not necessarily - it depends on which of the bank's products you decide to use and whether the bank is FDIC insured."
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