The answer is invariably somebody close to us, either in our family or intimate circle of friends. Someone who you love. Someone who has stood by your side during your darkest moments. Someone who you have shared indelible experiences with, both good and bad.

It is also someone you may not be spending enough time with.

The ironic truth is that we live inverse lives where we prioritize our attention and time in the exact opposite configuration to what we value. We do this is in multi-faceted ways and with such stark disregard to our hypocrisy that we would blush if we could only see ourselves.

Asking yourself who you’d want to see on your last day of life may jolt you into the realization that you are not spending enough time with that person right now.

Is that extra bonus money worth the time and attention away from the person? What about that promotion you’ve devoted yourself to attain? Is the person really too far away that you can’t travel to visit? Are you really too busy to take some time off to travel?

What we may feel is important today - the money, the job title, and all the other forms of achievement in the material world - will be things you would gladly trade so that you could be with that person on your last day in this reality.

Many will realize that even though they are lucky and can be with that person on their last day, they wish they could have spent more time with that person beforehand and regret not doing enough to make the time. They were too busy chasing meaningless carrots, accumulating temporary trophies, and spinning around in circles within the simulation to realize what really mattered, until it’s just too late.

Sadly, for many of us, time is unidirectional and there is no way to rewind the clock of life. Live according to what you truly value and don’t fall for the mind tricks of the material world.

So, whoever your answer is to the question of who you’d like to spend the last day of your life with is, go and meet that person as often as you can. Capture as much of the true meaning of life before it’s too late.

I can guarantee you that it’s not hiding somewhere in the office at work.

In the world of finance, eradicating the need for a group of anointed people running centrals banks that print money was once considered blasphemous. Yet, here we are. There can be no doubt now that Bitcoin is not a scam simply because it has risen, multiple times now, from the ashes of massive crashes.

Let me put this bluntly: there is no ponzi scheme in all of history where after the ponzi collapses, the same exact scam rises over and over again, and that includes the Tulip Mania and Bored Ape NFTs. Bitcoin, by this definition, is not a ponzi nor is it a scam - there is an inherent underlying value to it.

What Bitcoin is, is an asset that promises so much that it forms bubble after bubble that pops due to froth and fomo. Yet, after a bubble pops, the underlying real value keeps the asset alive over and over again. Such is the case of the Internet bubble of 2000, and the current AI bubble of 2025. These are not ponzi schemes nor are they scams. The Internet did change the world after the DotCom bubble popped, as shall AI. They are step change developments in humanity that people get fomo over. Bitcoin is one of these step changes.

Now, imagine a religion that has no temple, cathedral, or governing body managing it. No central bank run by a group of anointed people printing money. No Pharisees or deities in human form governing what is acceptable and what is not. If you think this through, you will come to the same conclusion that I arrived at: such a phenomenon is not a religion, because all religions have centralization.

They all also have manuscripts and text that have been canonized - meaning, that a group of individuals sat down and determined what was acceptable and what was not, which was then snap shotted for all eternity, never to be altered again.

FoFty specifically does not incorporate these two structural designs.

There is no FoFty temple or church. Likewise, there is no FoFty hierarchical priesthood in the Vatican, nor is there a Vinaya Pitaka governing a buddhist Sangha, and so on and so forth.

Additionally, the FoFty Manuscript will never be canonized and will constantly evolve as it incorporates new discovers both in the areas of spirituality and science.

What FoFty does incorporate is inclusiveness with all other religions and belief systems. There are no FoFty stories or mandates based on blind faith which reduces potential conflict areas - flash points that many religions face. Instead of pitting religions against each other, the idea is to accept that there is more than one pathway to elevate and enlighten oneself, and that all these pathways are similar to tributaries that feed into the same river as we journey towards the same destination: the Truth.

One of the core understandings of FoFty is that we are living in a simulation. While this may sound unorthodox or radical, it is simply an update to an already established understanding. For example, nobody will jump in disbelief if you told them they were living in a universe. Well, a simulation is really no different than a universe - it is a system governed by laws and provides a myriad of probable outcomes within the system. The laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are really no different than the algorithms and code that generate a simulation - they are simply rules that enable the construct of probabilities, outcomes, and existence. We are merely updating the fidelity of how we convey the same thing, for we have gained new knowledge.

Thanks to developments in technology and artificial intelligence, we can create very basic and rudimentary simulations to observe how intelligence emerges and interacts with each other. These relatively recent developments are examples of how, as we continue to gain knowledge and evolve, we can update the fidelity of our understanding of the Truth. Whereas tens of thousands of years ago we would have created stories and metaphors to explain solar eclipses and lightning, today we are generating intelligence to discover new molecular drugs to cure diseases and smashing protons together and analyzing them with quantum computers to understand our origins.

It should be clear now why canonizing manuscripts and creating snap shots that are eternally static can become a limiting factor to the fidelity of how we understand and convey the Truth.

If any of the above is something you have thought of in the past, I encourage you to watch the first video I created for the new FoFtyLife YouTube channel:

This video took over a year to make - so many takes, so many questions, so many doubts, so many fears, and at the same time, so much hope.

It's scary to discuss topics like this among friends. It's even scarier to share your true thoughts out in the open. Yet the reality remains that our belief system is the most important determinant in how we orient ourselves in life: at work, at home, with our colleagues, and everything in between.

The video is an introduction to the FoFty Manuscript which I have drafted and begun to share with a few people. It represents a new belief system that is inclusive, not exclusive. Decentralized, not centralized. Scientific, not random. Spiritual, not canonical. Entrepreneurial, and not fragile.

It is the way I live my life and how I got to where I am today.

Go ahead and see what it's about. If anything I say resonates with you, DM me. There is a group of us I've gathered on a Discord server and we’re building FoFtyLife together.

Keep elevating.

I find this startling especially when we consider most of us are aware that wearing clothes is a learned behavior. In other words, we all know that babies and toddlers have no concept about clothes outside of the functionality of their diapers, and that they are completely fine walking around and playing without any clothes on. That means, we have learned to wear clothes even if most of us never bother to ask why. Perhaps the reason is that the answer seems obvious, especially regarding modesty.

But is it?

Sure, we started wearing animal fur and skin for physical reasons. There’s no doubt that insulation from the weather and protection of our vulnerable organs are legitimate benefits. In fact, we can still observe this in today’s world when we encounter tribes with minimal or even no contact with modern humans, such as the Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island or the Awá of the Amazon rainforest.

However, at some point in our history, wearing clothes crossed the rubicon into a cultural and learned phenomenon. While there are many aspect of this, what is common is that they all hinge on our perception on what others think of us.

They include:

• shamefulness of how our bodies appear when compared to society’s current definition of desirability, which changes over time

• stratification in social stature depicted by the worth of what we choose to wear

• desperate need to stand out and differentiate ourselves from everyone else

• objectification of our body parts leading to the concept of lust, which is considered sinful in many belief systems

All of the above, every single one of them, were created by our minds and are figments of our imagination. They were learned and were imprinted on us by the society that we live in. None of the above is indigenous to our existence.

Interestingly, stories such as Adam and Eve in Genesis eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge intimates that this knowledge is what gave birth to civilization, culture, and society through developments in technology such as agriculture. Our progression led to the constructs that formed the practice of wearing clothes and the concept of shame. But that’s a topic for another time.

The point I’m making is that clothing, and wearing clothes, is so important to us that it is literally our last layer before we fall into complete destitution. We will cling to our clothes and wear them even if we end up homeless and are sleeping on the streets. That’s how important clothes are to us.

Now, what if I told you that we are wearing a different set of clothes that matter even more to us than the threads on our skin?

No, I’m not talking about our physical bodies such as our skin, our legs, or our faces. You’ve already heard of that metaphor, of how our physical bodies are the clothes of our souls. We literally treat our bodies as clothes and we do so in plain sight through plastic surgery, anabolic steroids, and other innumerable body altering schemes. However, that’s not the type of clothing I’m referring to, even if that too is something one needs to master and not become a slave to.

The clothing I’m referring to goes beyond our bodies, and we wear many layers. In fact, we have a plethora of this type of clothing and they come in all designs, shapes, and sizes with one curious trait: they are all invisible to the naked eye. These are the clothes that cover and cloak The Self and who we really are inside our minds. We obfuscate, through many layers, the true being within the mind.

And we hide ourselves for the very same reasons:

• shamefulness of what we have done in our past, for no human is perfect

• stratification and judgement of how “good” or “bad” we are based on moral and religious or belief system standards, which also changes over time

• desperation to “stand in” and not deviate for fear of being labeled as crazy

• objectification of The Self and who we really are, perverting our very essence of existence

We cling on to these clothes of The Self more desperately than threads or our bodies. They provide us with a layer of diffusion to hide behind and some modicum of control of how others perceive who we are.

We project who we wish to be based on society’s values.

We do not project who we are.

The astounding part is that we were taught to do this and learned how to do this by our parents, friends, and society in general. Obfuscating who we are in the myriad of ways that we perform every day is not in our natural programming as humans. Yet, it has become a necessity in order to function within the confines of societies in our civilizations.

There comes a time in one’s life where one must ask oneself whether or not the constraints of society are worth the cost of losing The Self. For when one cannot face oneself with complete honesty and without shame, one is not alive and merely existing in the murky shadows cast by society itself.

Only by removing the garments of your mind will you see your true Self, and in seeing your true Self, will you see the that there is no reason to fear. There will be no judgement or punishment to suffer from because you will understand that there is no inequality between all humans - because none of us are perfect, and yet we are all hypocrites.

At the same time, you will discover just how powerful a being you can be in this reality once you shed the cloak around The Self for you have nothing to hide. The absence of fear transmutes into a well of courage and gumption, allowing you to achieve and accomplish so much more than you ever thought was possible.

My life has changed ever since I disrobed and I encourage you, the reader, to disrobe as well.

After all, these garments were invisible to begin with.

• “I have no choice, I have to continue working at this job because I can’t find another one that pays this much.”

• “I have no choice, I can’t go through a divorce because I’d be broke.”

• “I have no choice, I must go to pre-med and become a doctor just like my parents and brother did.”

• “I have no choice, I’m too busy to put in a 30 minute daily exercise routine into my schedule.”

and many more …

The examples are endless, and they all convey scenarios where people have given up the reigns of control over life and helplessly flip into auto-pilot mode.

Who’s flying the plane?

As I shared in an earlier post, choosing is the essence of living. Through choice, we dictate consequence - this simple cause and effect relationship is at the core of what life itself is about:

In reality, giving up control and declining to exercise choice is actually a symptom of an underlying issue: fear. We are so fearful of fear itself that we have become masters at conjuring up excuses that are shielded by the the half-truths we’ve nefariously baked into them.

Ironically, the more we complain about how hard life is because we are stuck doing whatever we are doing due to not having a choice, the further we detach ourselves from reality. The truth is that by giving up choice due to fear, the less “alive” we are and the more “hard” life becomes.

In fact, fear that leads to inaction is one of the culprits of “hard” lives.

Whatever one is afraid of is orders of magnitude less disastrous than the slow death of being trapped in a situation that is supposedly out of one’s control. People in this situation are alive, but they are not living. You can see the defeat in their eyes.

What is astonishing is that when you see workers commuting to work on the subway or bus, the proportion of dead eyes is orders of magnitudes greater than students going to or coming back from school. Strangely, it seems as if once we graduate from school and wade into the world as free individuals, we become less alive.

As students, we are put into straightjackets - we must go to class, we must follow orders from teachers, there are very specific rules to follow. As adults, we self-strap the straightjackets unto our minds. Even if we have freedom to do whatever we want to as adults, we don’t. Unlike students who have limiting factors imposed unto them, many of us impose limiting factors unto ourselves as adults and effectively die a slow death.

Then, there are the surreptitious examples where the individual believes s/he is exerting choice, yet in reality is a slave to a situation and merely reinforcing it:

“I’m fully aware of how unhealthy cigarettes are and I choose to smoke them regardless because I want to live my life according to my wishes.”

In reality, such a person has become a slave to the addiction of nicotine and has obfuscated the lack of choice by conflating desire with helplessness. These are the most nefarious situations one can find oneself in because of the delusion generated by the the overlapping factors. The choice being exerted is illusory. There is no choice going on, only justification through half truths.

Let me explain this more precisely. Recall the first example I gave above:

“I have no choice, I have to continue working at this job because I can’t find another one that pays this much.”

One can easily flip this like the cigarette smoker and proclaim:

“I choose to work at this job because it’s the highest paying job I could find.”

At face value, this seems to be a proactive assertion, and an active exercise of choice. However, what is not shared is just how much effort did this person put into looking for a high or higher paying job. Did s/he just do a compensation search on the internet? How many applications where submitted? How many interviews? Did s/he stop? When?

Many times, the absolute bare minimum is done to satisfy the statement technically, but not in spirit. In other words, there is a minimum threshold in our minds to clear to be able to say to ourselves that “I can’t find another job that pays this much,” and that’s the target because the goal is to avoid the fear of rejection and the uncertainty of changing jobs.

So, the next time you find yourself saying, “I have no choice but to …” take a step back. Ask yourself if you are setting yourself up to relinquish control over your life. Is there fear involved? Spend some time to introspect before jumping into autopilot mode.

And whatever you do, don’t be that cigarette smoker.

Don’t fall for the fallacy of a binary world. Being in a state of meta-awareness is not binary, nor does it necessitate meditation or mindfulness. In fact, you could achieve a state of meta-awareness at any moment in time. While brushing your teeth. While performing in front of a crowd. While jogging. And yes, while meditating or praying. The difference is that it requires less effort to be meta-aware when meditating because of less stimuli coming in from the simulation.

However, once you have developed familiarity and the ability to become meta-aware by practicing meditation, prayer, or other forms of mindfulness, the state can be achieved even if there is noise from the simulation. In fact, advanced FoFty practitioners are able to not only achieve but maintain meta-awareness even in the most noisy environments such as being in front of a crowd, or being draped with deep emotions. Maintaining a state of meta-awareness is critical because the moment one drops into the lower state of simply being aware, one risks relinquishing control over how to render the simulation and reverting back to being an NPC.

We already know that there are many different forms of meditation. Some practice it with their eyes open, while others keep their eyes closed. There are even forms of walking meditation which introduces kinetic motion as complementary inputs along with breathing and other senses. Equipped with the FoFty knowledge of how the body, the mind, and the Self combine to render the simulation, a FoFty practitioner has the potential to transmute any stimulus coming in from the simulation into a complementary input no different than walking.

Elevating Above Attention

If you make the effort to monitor how frequently you lose your state of meta-awareness, you will quickly realize that it occurs so often that you can’t even count it. When you dive into why you keep losing the state, the typical conclusion you will come to will revolve around attention and focus. Then, you will ask yourself why is it so difficult to focus on something in the simulation, say cooking an egg or scrolling through a social media feed while maintaining meta-awareness at the same time? Why is it that we get “lost” in the simulation and must forcibly re-orient ourselves back to meta-awareness?

The answer is because we allow our attention to control us, when in fact, the Self controls attention when one is in a true state of meta-awareness. If one finds themself at the mercy of their attention and wherever it goes, then one is not in a true state of meta-awareness and constantly flip-flops in between states. There is no form of control being exercised if attention rules supreme.

In many belief systems, this phenomenon is described as temptation and falling prey to one’s “worldly desires.” However, what is being described as temptation is actually a subset of attention, namely, the subset that leads to unrighteous, forbidden, and evil actions as defined by whatever the belief system has set as its canon. There exists the antithesis of this, which is attention that appeals to righteous, encouraged, and heavenly actions. In both cases, the force is the same, but they are just classified in different categories. This is important to understand because FoFty is not about selectively targeting the phenomenon of attention and eradicating the application of it to a subset, but rather to elevate and master control over it in its entirety.

Most importantly, we must understand that while attention can be controlled and even manipulated, it can never be eradicated for it is a core component of our mind’s operating system. The goal is not to remove attention from existence in our minds. That would be the same as ejecting emotions which we discussed earlier as another immutable component of how we manifest reality. Instead, the focus of FoFty is on how to properly combine the knowledge of both controlling and manipulating the potential force that attention creates. We will discuss how later in the entrepreneurial section of the manuscript.

For now, the key hurdle to clear is to never forget that you are in simulation. Remembering that the Self within the mind is experiencing this simulation forces you to acknowledge that the Self is merely rendering everything around it, including every emotion that is experienced. If at any moment in time you find that the Self has drifted below into a state of awareness from meta-awareness, the first thing you should do is to remind the Self that it is in fact in a simulation.

Instead of taking five seconds to breathe in and out deeply during times of duress, take five seconds to close your eyes and simply re-acknowledge that the Self is simply rendering the simulation in your mind.

Sang @LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangyshin/

More about FoFty: http://fofty.net

If an advanced life form were to observe humans, our behavior, the way we live day in and day out, and what we chase - would it not think that we are really no different than the racing greyhounds?

Every once in a while, a greyhound will accidentally catch the mechanical rabbit. Guess what happens? That greyhound will never race again. It has discovered that it’s been duped and led to believe that what it was chasing was real, when in reality, it was a figment of its imagination curated by its upbringing and environment.

Retirement is to people what the mechanical rabbit is to Greyhounds.

People chase the notion of retirement all their lives, having been fed stories of freedom, happiness, and reward for all the challenges they are struggling through. Some people, like the greyhound that catches the mechanical rabbit, even retire “early,” having struck “success” at an early age. They are the lucky ones as they still have a long time horizon left in their lives.

The typical retiree does not have as much time left in their lives, and most face physiological and cultural hurdles in trying to start again as they search for fulfilment which did not materialize as promised when they retired. They find out that playing golf is satisfying, but only temporarily so. Traveling and touring is enriching, but becomes repetitive and morphs into a generic experience. Hopping as vaunted board members from one company or organization to another becomes a muddling mix of meetings and approvals loosely linked together. Hobbies that they thought they were into and finally have the time to pursue aren’t as deep as they thought. And so the jumping from one thing to the next thing in hopes of filling the void within continues until time finally runs out.

The sad truth is that most people, just like the greyhounds, don’t ever get to catch the mechanical rabbit we call retirement. Financial challenges have placed many into situations where they need to work past their allocated corporate shelf lives. Most resort to gig-jobs such as delivery or cleaning services as a result.

The sooner you understand that retirement is not a real rabbit, the greater the chance you have of finding actual fulfillment.

————————

Sang @LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangyshin/

More about FoFty: http://fofty.net

So I projected myself into the future where I’m laying on my death bed and asked myself what the most outrageous things I would never say be.

This is what I came up with:

I wish I spent more time in the office to do more work

Said nobody. Even though I have no empirical data, this is the one that I’m quite certain nobody reading this has ever heard of either. This is why it’s at the top of the list.

How many times have we stayed late at work for that one additional meeting, that report that’s due the next day, or even worse to look busy in front of others? There’s always some “critical” reason why we need to bleed work into our personal lives.

Can you picture yourself wishing you had spent more time at work on your deathbed?

If the answer is “no,” then stop devoting your life to it. It’s just a job. Get over it.

I wish I spent more time scrolling through social media

I might as well have replaced social media with drinking Red Bull because they are one and the same thing: sugary dopamine traps. Only difference is, instead of sugar, social media peddles mind-numbing, click-farming, bite-size nuggets of dopamine hits to your brain. The more emotionally charged and outlandish the content, the better - validity be damned.

The type of information that the algorithms promote literally renders your brain into mush as it turns you into an unhealthy 300 pound intellectually obese slave to the attention masters battling it out on the various platforms. You know this. I know this.

Start winding the time you spend on social media down. Go read a book instead. Or better yet, write one.

I wish I was more obedient

If you were a total rebel and did things completely your way, then you definitely would never say this when your time is up.

However, many of us aren’t total rebels, and what happens for us is that when the time comes to look back on our lives, lost opportunities is what we will see. There will be forks in the road that we will remember where we decided to take the safe path and follow what we’ve been indoctrinated to believe as the “right” way.

I guarantee that there will be those moments where we think “I wonder what would have happened if…” and be haunted by the fact that we shall never know. It is precisely because of this why nobody will wish they had been more obedient - and spineless - when their time comes.

So the next time you find yourself at one of life’s forks in the road, don’t be afraid to be a little bit of a rebel. Being saddled with the “what if…” amulet for the rest of your life can be cumbersome because it gets heavier and heavier as time passes.

An exception to this would be with religions if you are religious. Obedience in that context is completely different, especially when the time comes to leave this existence.

I wish I had gotten into Harvard

These are the pedigreed badges of honor that we fool ourselves into thinking that they define who we are. I chose Harvard but you can easily replace it with any of the other badges such as Forbes 30 Under 30 or any other list or accolade created by media to generate sales through branding.

If you never attained these badges, I can guarantee you that you’re not going skip a heartbeat because of that when your time comes. In our old age, and after living and experiencing life in all its nooks and crannies, we realize that many of these ideals that have been thrown at us as success-bait since we were children don’t represent what they were stacked up to be when our time comes.

The point here is not to diminish the accomplishment of attaining any of these badges, but rather, to underscore that they are a means to an end. In our maturity, we realize that the end can be achieved through a multitude of ways, many of which are not part of the regular programming for children because, well, you can’t really program life - there are simply too many dynamic variables involved.

I wish I slept less

Nobody is going to complain that they slept too much when their time comes. If anybody does, then I congratulate that person for being able to consistently pull off one of the hardest things to do: get a good night’s sleep in.

Personally, it’s a toss up between this and spending too much time doing work as the most difficult thing to manage. Now that I come to think of it, they are probably related to each other as well.

Sleep, as you know, is one of the most underrated factors towards general health and wellbeing. It also something most of us take for granted and don’t get enough of. The thing is, lack of sleep not only impacts you and your health, but others around you as well. Irritability and crankiness really does suck on the receiving end.

Do yourself and your loved ones a favor. Make it a habit to get enough high quality sleep. Place your mobile phone in another room. Control the lighting and get thick curtains. Make sure the temperature is cool enough but not too cold. Get a sound machine or wear ear plugs. Upgrade your mattress and sheets. These simple changes will make a world of difference.

So there you have it, 5 things nobody ever said on their deathbed. I hope they were ridiculous enough to trigger you into thinking about taking some action and making some changes in your life.

Remember, starting out with small nudges leads to a sustainable and more permanent change compared to attempting to go all out with a Big Bang approach.

If you’ve got other even more ridiculous things nobody would ever say, do share them with everybody in the comments 😁

Perhaps the more interesting aspect of our thoughts is that they can be both involuntary and voluntary. At times, we have thoughts that germinate seemingly out of nowhere and streak through our minds. They can be trivial such as what we plan to eat for dinner, or what time we will head to the gym. Or, they can be deep thoughts that linger such as concern for a friend undergoing hardship.

Our involuntary thoughts stem from our unconscious mind which is continually operating without our awareness, hence their seemingly random nature. At the same time, we can conjure up thoughts proactively by simply thinking about something. Triggers from the simulation we live in can cause us to proactively think, and these triggers can combine with our memories to launch a thought that we hold and continue to think through. Whether it be studying for an exam or daydreaming about that vacation in the Seychelles, we have the ability to proactively think about anything we want to.

But what exactly are our thoughts? To answer this, we can use the analogy of a computer to describe how our mind operates:

CPU 

We have the ability to reason and to perform cognitive tasks. The pre-frontal cortex of our brain enables us to calculate mathematics and deduce logic. It is in effect our Central Processing Unit, or CPU and it is the key enabler of processing thoughts. 

GPU

Emotions, and feelings generated from the stimulus of our bodily physiological sensors are processed around the activities of the amygdala of our brain. This includes what we call qualia, or the subjective and conscious experience of the simulation we are in. The taste of chocolate. The feeling of getting tickled. Sensations that we struggle to describe in words without using labels or synonyms. Much like the Graphics Processing Unit, or GPU in a computer, this is what generates our experiential dimension of the simulation.

Memory

Memory chips and hard drives store data with permanence that can be retrieved and incorporated into our thoughts. Our brains have different memory storage units with the hippocampus being the main vault. Emotions play a big role in storage as described earlier, and highly charged emotional memories even have a “4K high definition” special storage chamber in our minds. 

System Bus

If you look inside your laptop, there is what is called a motherboard. It is the main system board that is flat, usually green or brown that everything plugs into. That represents the system bus and in our brains, it is the web or neural networks consisting of over 100 trillion synaptic connections. 

Together, all these system components connect with each other in your computer to produce or generate something. What is that something? Well, it could be music, videos, programs to help you generate content, browsers to access the internet, and the list goes on. You tell the computer to do something, and it obliges.

In our minds, the “something” that is being produced is the rendering of reality from the simulation that we are in. It could be seeing, listening, tasting, walking, running, laughing, crying, and the list goes on. Our minds spin up and render a version of reality based on where we are in this simulation.

Our thoughts are actually part of the rendering process of this reality. They are a product of the simulation, generated by our minds, and are ephemeral except for memories that we may have of our thoughts. The key distinction to make here is that our thoughts are not part of the simulation, but rather a rendering resulting from it. That means, our thoughts cannot be directly measured by science or any other means within the simulation itself. Sure, we can measure brainwave activity using electromagnetic scanners but they are merely measuring byproducts and not the actual thoughts. Our thoughts need to be translated into the simulation, through our bodies before they can be interacted with. 

As such, our thoughts are part of the spiritual realm separate from and beyond the simulation itself. The same goes for our consciousness and experience of our emotions, feelings, and other bodily sensations. These experiences cannot be measured nor can it even be properly described as they are beyond the simulation - hence the difficulty of explaining qualia such as what sweet actually tastes like.

When Descartes famously said “I think, therefore I am” he was referring to the aforementioned thoughts that work in conjunction with our memories and cognitive reasoning abilities to form our mind - all propelled by the biological machine that we call our brain.

Let me take the analogy one step further: our thoughts are actually a means to an end - they exist to serve a critical purpose. Our thoughts lay the foundation and ground work, together with our emotion and memories so that we can accomplish the single most important function of existence in this simulation: making choices.

< The is an excerpt from the upcoming FoFty Manuscript. It is from the chapter called: “Spawn Again” which talks about how to respawn yourself in this simulation and evolve from being a Non-Playable Character (NPC) to a Respawned Playable Character (RPC) >

That’s Mike Vining. He’s the undisputed World Champion of “Don’t judge a fighter by their appearance.”

This mild-mannered looking man who could pass as a math teacher moonlighting as a CPA accountant is one of the most feared men to step foot on the battlefield. He’s a body stacker like no other and a bonafide military legend. Not only is he part of the vaunted Delta Force, he’s a founding member of it. He was at Desert Storm, was part of the Iran Hostage rescue team, led the Granada incursion, and clocked many hours in Vietnam on top of other special operations. And he stacked bodies. Just look at the ribbons on his chest and the red shoulder badge.

Yet, even though his eyes convey “I’ve seen some shit in my life” vibes, his overall harmless appearance has turned him into a meme that perhaps some of you are aware of. They say Chuck Norris checks under his bed to make sure Vining isn’t hiding there before he goes to sleep every night.

Now, we’ve heard the mantra of not judging a book by its cover since we were little children. If we are honest with ourselves, many of us - including yours truly - at some point in our lives have been cooked by judging a book by its cover. Maybe you thought someone was weak when they were strong. This happens all the time at the gym. I’ve been guilty of thinking an overweight basketball player was a scrub only to get torched and embarrassed by him in front of my friends and girlfriend on the court. There are countless of examples. Someone might have appeared poor yet is wealthy. Ignorant but highly experienced. The greater the discrepancy, the more memorable and embarrassing. Ever see one of those [Some Country]’s Got Talent shows where a janitor belts out a song better than the original artist?

The point is, it’s takes a lot of effort to not judge a book by its cover, even if we strive for a perfect score. Our instinct is to fall prey to stereotypes and expectations - concepts that have been baked into our minds as bootloading programs and operate stealthily from blind spots within.

But at least we try.

You know where we don’t try and let our guards down? With ourselves. Think about it. When it comes to how we view ourselves, we have a mental image - a cover if you will - of what, and more importantly, of who we are. And most of us never question it. In other words, when it comes to ourselves, we judge our own book by our cover.

I’m not talking about some consultant fee generating concept like Growth Mindset™ here. That’s just believing that you can improve in something if you put the effort in, in contrast to having a fixed mindset that you can’t get any better. No, what I am telling you is that you don’t have to “look” the part of whatever you strive to be - you just have to become what you want to be.

Take a moment and think about that. It’s actually quite profound.

Your “cover,” which can literally be anything including your physiology, your mental capacity, your pedigree in education or any other measure in accomplishments, your culture, and even your belief system has nothing to do with your “book.”

That means, the way you appear to yourself has nothing to do with what you can be. In other words, you can be whatever you want to be.

Now, we’ve all heard the platitude that you can be whatever you want to be if you only try. So this might not seem like anything new, right? Come on Sang, I read all the way to this point and this is what you’re telling me? Give me five minutes of my life back. There’s even a song that about this!

Yes, I know, and I love that song and listen to it all the time.

The point of this post is not to present something new - it’s to present in a new way. Yes, don’t judge a book by its cover - especially if that book is you!

If you have any doubt about the legitimacy of what I’m preaching, just take another look at the man Chuck Norris fears the most:

I rest my case.

Somehow, we have arrived at a point where if you are doing something good, like helping those in need, then doing well - or making money - while doing that good is frowned upon. We question people who make a lot of money from doing good deeds. I suppose the reason is that if you’re doing something good, it should come from the heart and not be about making money. In fact, we have warped this train of thought into a strange acceptance of a status quo where people doing a lot of good are expected to make low income. Just look at the pay for teachers in public schools who are entrusted with one of society’s most important good - namely, the education of our children.

Conversely, we turn a blind eye and accept people who make billions selling “vice” products and services. Hey, it’s the free economy right? As long as it’s not illegal, anyone can make as much as they want - forget about the destruction and harm caused to society. How many examples do we have of this? Big Tobacco can probably give you a laundry list.

The strangest thing to me is that we have even institutionalized this mindset. We have created categories such as “non-profit” companies to define a barrier whereby the entity itself is supposed to divert its assets into more “good” which generally means the pay for working at such places is low. Do we really believe that regulating the balance sheet of these companies will yield in more good being done to society? I don’t know about you, but I don’t really think so. I’ve read about too many non-profit organizations getting called out for, well, taking profits in creative ways. If anything, the term non-profit has morphed into some low-key virtue-signaling tool that people use to bolster their branding and perhaps their egos. Being associated with or even working at - for a stint at least - some non-profit entity apparently commands some badge of higher moral ground. The more badges, the better.

The most nefarious part of all is how some of the perpetrators actually claim to be doing good, which is a half-truth. We have situations where organizations that are supposedly doing good, end up doing bad with the very thing that’s supposed to be good - such as the large pharmaceutical companies. Unlike the typical targets of the past that include Big Tobacco, these drug companies are supposed to be producing medicine to help people. Yet the very medicine they produced was weaponized to fuel the global opioid epidemic in the name of the almighty dollar. If you never read the scandal of Purdue Pharma and how it ultimately plead guilty to a federal felony, I suggest checking it out when you have some time. The part that gets me is how they paid their way out of lawsuits through a settlement.

So, have you every stopped to wonder why things are this way, and how we’ve been so brainwashed to simply accept and not even bother to ask why?

Let me ask the obvious question: why aren’t we configured to reward those who do good the most? Shouldn’t people producing goods and services that do good for humanity get rewarded the most? Wouldn’t that incentivize us to strive to do good, even if for egotistical and selfish reasons to get rewarded?

The truth is that humans, in general, don’t demand good things. We can prognosticate about it, glorify it, but when it comes down to paying for it - we simply don’t. Free capital markets have delivered this verdict to us over time and again, over decades, centuries, and even millennia. This is the crux of the matter when it comes to movements that cater to the general good of society such as sustainability. People talk about it, but when it comes to putting in the effort and money as individuals, the “not in my backyard” mentality rears its ugly head.

So this is where a public institution such as the government enters the chat group. Much like parents, these public organizations are supposed rear us because we can’t walk the talk. And for that reason, they aren’t as effective as we’d hope them to be, simply because they are synthetic and “forced upon us.” I mean, how many times either as parents or kids have we realized that no matter how much parents try, things really never change unless the kids decide to change themselves from within, organically.

This leads me to the point of this post: if we are able to drop this nonsensical notion that doing well while doing good is disingenuous, then we have a chance of creating an organic change and view of what doing good actually represents. We want people to do extremely well while doing good, so that more good can be done. We must break the cycle and install common sense back into our minds. After all, it’s what is done with all the profit as individual human beings that matters, not the fact that profits were made. Branding an entity as non-profit is not going to cut it - we need to challenge ourselves to be genuine people aligned from inside to out. And be wildly successful while doing it.

FoFty’s Principle #7 was created to highlight this important point:

I challenge you to have no shame in doing exceptionally well while doing good. It’s not only “ok” to make a lot of money while helping the world, it’s an absolute necessity. All that is required is being genuine and authentic about it.

Those of you 40 years old or older understand the challenges that an actual recession brings forth. If you are 50 years or older, then you would have been in the workforce during the 2000 recession that followed the Dot Com Bubble and subsequent crash. Actual recessions are painful - people lose their jobs. Money becomes tight. Anxiety runs high. Security evaporates and uncertainty reigns supreme. It’s all very unpleasant.

Due to the elongated and record breaking length of this bull market cycle, many of the younger generations of working professionals have never experienced an actual recession - they have only witnessed an economy and stock market that only goes up. The challenge for them is, no matter how much they read about the past, there is no emotional sealant to memories that experience provides leading to a distorted and emboldened perspective of reality.

This distortion applies to all generations, as no generation lives forever. People who are in their 60s and 70s today have no recollection of World War II - just words and images that they have consumed. And nobody today truly understands what a Great Depression is like since that occurred more than a hundred years ago. We are about to repeat these events, starting first with the coming recession.

The last two real recessions were precipitated by market crashes shown above in the pink shaded areas. The key point here is that they both occurred soon after the Fed started cutting rates and ended a rate hiking cycle, as shown by the bottom part of the chart. Those who have not lived during these recessions have been Pavlovian trained to believe that the markets can only go up once the Fed starts cutting interest rates lower. Clearly, that is not always the case, especially after the Fed pivots and starts reversing rate hikes and starts to cut them.

Fast forward to today, and what do we see? The Fed cut rates on Sep. 18 after a raising cycle to combat inflation. This happened as well back in 2007, when the Fed pivoted and started cutting rates on Sep. 18 that year. Back then, the markets continued to go up until making a top on Oct. 11, 2007 - 17 trading sessions later. This year, the SPX made a top at 5,878.46 on Oct. 17, 2024, 22 trading sessions later.

Most may not realize it yet, but it is very possible that we have seen the top of the SPX last Oct. 17, some two weeks ago.

If that is the case, then just like before, expect the Fed to continue cutting rates as we enter a bear market complete with a crash or two. The outcome will once again dispel the myth that Fed rate cuts save the market from crashing - it doesn’t, it simply lays down the fuel for another bubble to form once the crash completes on its own.

There are a whole slew of factors that I’m carefully monitoring to help guide me through the complicated journey ahead. I will discuss them in my next YouTube video I’ll post later (subscribe to my channel here to get notified: https://www.youtube.com/@foftylife) but there is one that I will discuss here in this post: the bond market.

In an inexplicable and very troubling development, the bond market is doing exactly the opposite of what the Fed anticipated. The whole point of the Fed cutting its reserve rate is to lower interest rates, to get the market and economy moving again, and to prevent a recession or worse, a depression. However, ever since the Fed pivoted and started cutting rates, the bond market has collapsed and the yield, which is the real interest rates that the markets operate on, have skyrocketed.

This is extremely worrisome - the Bond market, which is three to four times larger than the stock market, doesn’t believe the Fed and is saying that it expects the Fed to end up raising rates, likely due to a return of inflation. In other words, the Fed cut rates too early, and inflation will return with a vengeance. The other narrative is that the US fiscal debt, now at over $35 Trillion and growing exponentially higher, has reached event horizon from which there is no return. Whether it be the former or the latter, neither narrative is welcome.

Goldman: we are entering a Lost Decade

Now, I’m very skeptical of what Goldman Sachs releases to the public, especially general news that isn’t reserved for its top-shelf clients from their proprietary trading desks. However, from time to time, they will make a long term macro announcement that lowers manipulation and conflict of interest thresholds due to the long time frame involved - in this case, 10 years.

These are rare instances indeed, because I actually agree with them. Nominal returns of 3% will be negative in real terms due to the return of inflation sometime in the coming years. The days of just buying an index fund and forgetting about it are over. Other asset classes, like Gold, will continue to hold value.

The old adage of “It’s not about timing the market, but time in the market” is about to get crushed. If you don’t believe me, just ask the Japanese who waited over 30 years to see their investment return to par (and in real terms still underwater due to inflation).

If you’re like me and 50 years old, that’s not a time frame that is digestible.

Which is why I have my own plans, and am willing to share it with the few of you who join me.

Stay alert, don’t blindly listen to the mainstream media, exercise your own critical thinking, and be prepared.

I convinced myself that I was doing all the work because I was contributing to the development of the startup ecosystem here in Southeast Asia. To be fair, that was true to a degree. Of course, it also helped that I worked for some of the region’s largest investors in the startup and innovation space. I’m sure that they benefited from the public exposure I brought whenever my title and their company names were mentioned.

To be completely honest, a large part of why I did what I did was to build my personal brand. Ah yes, personal branding - isn’t that what we are told is key to develop one’s career? At least, that’s what you may be led to believe if you’ve read enough LinkedIn posts where everyone and their grandmother is jockeying to advertise themself as some sort of thought leader.

I was part of that game, and to keep things 100% real, a lot of it was ego driven now that I reflect back on that time. I wanted to be known as “that startup” guy. Thing is, I obfuscated the ego driven nature of my endeavors and convinced myself that all that I was doing was for “the good” of the region. Perhaps this was how I manufactured meaning and purpose behind why I was doing what I was doing.

The truth was, I wasn’t being completely true with myself. I was chasing the clout. I was chasing the likes. I was chasing the followers. I was chasing my ego.

Then, one day, after I resigned from my job and started FoFty, I couldn’t keep the charade going on any longer. One of FoFty’s Principles is to “Live from the inside-out, and not outside-in.”

The game was over.

I stopped responding to requests and stopped participating in events. I stopped posting on LinkedIn, the go-to place to build your brand as an XYZ thought leader. I didn’t want to play anymore. Perhaps that was a drastic move, but it was a necessary move for me to factory reset myself and practice what I preach through FoFty.

Then one day about a year later, I saw a message from an old acquaintance who I recall to be a genuine person - someone who wasn’t playing the game. He asked me if I could be a judge for an upcoming hackathon at Switch, one of the largest annual innovation events in Singapore. I was about scroll away when out of the corner of my eye, I saw “Singapore Polytechnic.”

Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Singaporean education system, Poly is somehow viewed as “lower tier” in the education hierarchy for some reason. Without getting into details, it is considered as the less preferred path to get into a university. I’m not Singaporean, but I’ve come to understand that this is the prevailing underlying mentality I’ve observed after living in the country for a decade.

And that interested me. FoFty is all about travelling the less trodden path, looking where others aren’t looking, developing original and alternative ideas, and most importantly, breaking free of “norms” that have been boot-loaded into our minds since we were children. Thinking that Poly as a sub-standard educational pathway is a norm that I don’t agree with. I explain why in one of my earlier videos:

Now, I’ve participated in Switch events in the past - only the marquee, center stage events of course. The point was to maximize exposure in order to build my personal brand and stroke my ego, n’est ce pas? This event is not even with a top notch university such as the National University of Singapore. It’s a side event and not in the main hall. Yet, it is an event sponsored by a donation - The Batey Challenge - that is all about seeking talent from unconventional channels. In fact, previous winners include a student on the spectrum who built a gaming platform from the ground up.

You know what? This may be the most meaningful contribution I could make. If I could inspire even one of the students in attendance to break free from whatever chains that have been boot-loaded into his or her mind, that would be such a win. It would be, as Bob Marley said, emancipation from mental slavery. This would be a real contribution, without the fakery. This would be an example of Fofty’s Principles. Most importantly, this wouldn’t be about me, but about the students. The very people we are handing our future to.

Yes, there’s a lot of humble bragging on LinkedIn - but this time, I can truthfully say that I am indeed honored to be able to contribute and participate in the upcoming event as a judge.

FoFty was never about quitting what you are doing - the outcome could be to actually continue what you were doing, but with a newfound and genuine underpinning behind why.

And that is precisely why this is one of my FoFty moments.

Come check out the event and support the students if you can!

In that post, I described how a reset is coming for three distinct, yet interrelated global regimes:

1. The Global Financial Regime

2. The Global Geopolitical Regime

3. The Emerging Digital Regime

We are now seeing an escalation path in the war - let’s call it what it is - between Israel and Iran. On Oct. 1, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles into Israel as retribution for the brazen assassination of the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah - two of Iran’s proxy groups that are part of its coalition of resistance. This was the second time Iran has launched missiles into Israel this year. Put into perspective, Iran’s missile attacks dwarfs all missile launches in the entirety of the Russo-Ukraine war in terms of scale.

As I type this, Israel is mulling how it will strike back and is carefully planning how it could take out Iran’s oil and nuclear assets. Iran has already issued threats of a massive retaliation if its oil assets come under attack - it in fact stated that it would take out oil assets of other nations in the Middle East including Azerbaijan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. That would essentially do more damage than a nuclear bomb as it would wipe out almost 40% of the global oil supply in an instant, sending economies around the world into chaos. The Oil Shocks the world experienced in the 70s would be child’s play compared to such a scenario. Inflation and interest rates would skyrocket and many countries would fall into a deep recession, or even depression.

It is no surprise then that the Gulf States have come out and affirmed neutrality - meaning the US cannot launch attacks from their sovereign soil - in hopes to appease Iran. But will Iran listen?

The link between the Global Financial Regime and the Global Geopolitical Regime is very clear here in this case: it is oil. In the Russo-Ukrainian war, it was the US dollar which was weaponized in the form of sanctions against Russia, which have failed disastrously. These links are critical as they feed off each other and catalyze activity by upping the ante - they are chips on the table, and the bets are getting larger and larger.

In just a few weeks, the 2024 BRICS Summit will be held in Russia, and that will be a significant event as an alternative to the US Dollar Hegemony and incumbent global financial system is being built by them. Bear in mind, Iran is already a member of BRICS, and Turkey - a NATO member - is looking to join which would escalate tensions even further. In fact, look at all the nations that have already applied, or will apply to BRICS:

These countries control a vast swath of the earth’s commodities and minerals - critical ingredients for making things, including weapons.

Just like in a game of pickup basketball, the team captains of the two sides are picking the last players to join their side before the game begins. And make no mistake, the game - in this case, a global reset - will happen.

As I’ve been telling as many people as I can, there is still time to prepare, but things are accelerating and time is quickly running out.

Let’s hope that this current flare up between Israel and Iran subsides and buys us some additional time - we really do not want an oil shock and skyrocketing inflation just as the Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates in celebrating the defeat of inflation. Nobody wants a repeat of the stagflation during the 1970s where inflation was “defeated” only to erupt higher twice due to the two Oil Shocks.

The US had to raise interest rates to 20% to finally get out of that quagmire. Can you imagine what a 20% interest rate would do to today’s global economy?

Oh, and by the way, about that 3rd Global Regime that has to do with Digital?

These are currently being tested, possibly to be deployed in the Middle East, and have already been deployed for limited reconnaissance use in Ukraine. It’s coming.

Watch my video back in April where talk about the acceleration that we are witnessing today:

Gold is one of the main instruments I have leveraged as a preservation vehicle. So I took a look around at my existing assets, determined whether or not they were in a bubble, and if they were, liquidated them and converted them into Gold.

We are in a period of the “Everything Bubble,” which basically means that so much money has been printed out of thin air that now we have multiple bubbles in various asset classes including real estate, equity, and debt to name a few. I reduced my exposure in those assets and started converting them into Gold to the point where Gold now makes up about 35% of my net worth.

In this article, I’ll go over these four topics that articulate my personal perspectives which have led me to executing this strategy years ago. A strategy, that so far, has played out even better than I had anticipated.

1. History of Gold

2. Fundamentals Behind Gold

3. Physical, Not Paper Gold

4. How I Did It

Bear in mind that I am not selling Gold or any Gold Dealer services. I have no affiliation or ties of any kind to any Gold revenue generating business whatsoever. I am sharing my personal journey simply because while many talk about Gold, few if any actually reveal their own story.

History of Gold

Let’s cut to the chase right off the bat. The only reason why Gold has any monetary value is because people believe that it does. It is this belief that converts anything into money, and yes, that includes the currency of cigarettes used in prisons, the pieces of paper in your wallet you call “cash,” and the relatively new digital entrant called bitcoin. The single most important reason why they can function as money is because we, the people, believe in it. All the other characteristics such as divisibility, portability, scarcity, yada yada that people like to spew around when they talk about what money is are distant footnotes. If you think about it, the fact that we believe the US Dollar is money laughs in the face of the “money must be scarce” requirement because we’ve been printing it out of thin air, at will, for over 50 years now. But we still believe it’s money, right?

Well, Gold is just another one of those “things” like cigarettes or cash, but with a very special and unique characteristic: it is by far the oldest incarnation of money with a history of thousands of years functioning as a currency of exchange. It has survived the rise and fall of many civilizations, from Ancient Egypt to the Roman Empire. Many other forms of money have come and gone over these thousands of years, but humanity’s belief in Gold as money has never wavered.

That is why, Gold and not one of the other many rare precious metals like iridium, rhodium, or platinum is considered as money. Nothing else has withstood the test to time in terms of our belief in Gold as a form of money - not even close. It just happens to be this yellow metal but honestly, it could have been a whole bunch of other things.

The message here is that the “thing” doesn’t matter - what does matter is the longstanding belief in the “thing,” whatever it is. And that is why I am not a Gold bug, because I literally don’t care about the “thing” itself. I really don’t. I just care about humanity’s psychology over thousands of years. If you want to call me something, then call me a humanity bug.

Fundamentals of Gold

Now, I’m not newbie to Gold. In fact, it was one of the many ways I increased my net worth during the 2007/8 Great Recession and Housing Bubble burst (thankfully, I didn’t cave into the pressure of buying a house back then).

Let me make this clear: the fundamentals behind Gold are many times stronger now than it was back then.

We don’t need to get into complex econometrics to understand why.

Reason #1: We have printed a disgusting amount of money (and debt) out of thin air. Perhaps the greatest unintended consequence of Covid was the Fed and Treasury panicking and printing money, even directly into people’s pockets resulting in this:

I mean, this makes 3D Printers jealous! We can barely notice the spike from 2007/8 when they printed boatloads of money to save the Too Big To Fail banks, and once we did that, we never stopped because… well, who doesn’t want free monopoly money?

And they expected inflation to be “transitory” after this? A ton of more money chasing the same amount of goods and services. Hmmm, what could go wrong here. But hey, that’s why there are PhDs and we are just plebeians. What do we know. Also, if this is the recipe for prosperity as a society, why don’t we just print money into infinity all this time in the past? Why is this “New Monetary Theory”… new?

Reason #2: We have entered a deglobalization and geopolitcal bifurcation period as we barrel towards what could be a global conflict between the US and its allies versus Russia+China and their allies.

So what does that have anything to do with anything? Well…. this:

Central banks are the final backstop to money when all else fails - the final boss. When the final boss is buying gold, and when its the final bosses of China and Russia - the up and coming contenders - you must pay attention or ignore at your own peril. These central banks are not buying bitcoin, nor are they buying cigarettes. They are buying Gold, because they know only one thing has been proven to survive without any doubt whatsoever as money after civilizations end and world wars pass.

So what has all this translated to you ask? Well… this:

Without getting into technical analysis, just understand that this is an extremely bullish chart - there is no technical analyst out there who would dare to argue against the technical strength in price action we are witnessing. But all it’s doing in reflecting what is going on fundamentally in the world.

Keep in mind, Gold is not an investment - the goal is not to generate returns. The goal is to preserve your purchasing power. So comparing Gold to stock market gains or any other investment seeking returns is a failure in understanding what the whole point to begin with is. I’m not looking to make money out of Gold - I have other ways to make investment returns, and they perform much much better, albeit with greater risk profiles.

In fact, I expect there to be a discount window in the coming months because when a liquidity crisis explodes and margin calls come in, asset holders will have no choice but to sell things that have made them money to pay up and that will include Gold. We saw this happen in the 2007/8 Financial Crisis, and it turned out to be one of the best discount windows to accumulate even more Gold. One that I am waiting for.

Now, I do think Gold can become a speculative risk asset. We’ve seen it many times before, such as what happened in the 1970s - the last time we had a serious bout of stagflation and supply shocks which I think we shall have once more:

A 900% move in just four years. I’m not saying something similar will happen this time around. I’m just saying that if we do see something like this, that’s how you know Gold has become a speculative risk asset, and preparing an exit plan becomes critical. We’re nowhere there, but stranger things have happened so be on the lookout - n’est ce pas bitcoin?

Physical, Not Paper Gold

Paper Gold? What’s that?

It’s basically paper, or these days, digital representations of Gold. That includes ETFs such as GLD which you can easily buy on the stock exchanges. I didn’t buy them and the reason is simple: the goal here is to protect your capital. The moment you buy one of these representations - or derivatives - of Gold, you introduce something called counterparty risk.

All of a sudden, there is risk that if something blows up, you won’t be able to get your Gold, or the equivalent value in cash back. The “safety” factor of owning Gold is greatly diminished and as I said earlier, that’s the whole point. If you’re willing to take on counterparty risk, then you are making an investment, and there are many other investment instruments out there that will do a much better job at being an investment and generating returns than Gold.

So buying Paper Gold never made any sense to me. If you’re going to eat chocolate, eat the damn chocolate.

How I Did It

So how does one go about buying physical Gold? Well, it greatly depends on where you are domiciled interestingly.

Remember how I said I started buying Gold back during the 2007/8 Great Recession? Back then, I was living the US and that played a factor. Firstly, Uncle Sam will take 28% thank you because owning physical Gold is considered a collectible. Then there was always the risk of the US making it illegal to own physical bullion, which it has done in the past during the period of 1933-1974. That’s right, it was illegal for US Citizens to own physical Gold bullion.

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt's initial actions as president was to declare the withdrawal of gold and currency from the struggling banking system (sound familiar?) a "national emergency." To address this, he ordered all banks to close from March 6-9, 1933, to prevent the export, hoarding, or earmarking of gold, silver, or currency.

However, Roosevelt deemed this measure insufficient to stop bank runs and the consequent drain of gold. Thus, on April 5, 1933—just a month after assuming office—he issued Executive Order 6102, which prohibited Americans from owning gold coins or bars and imposed severe penalties for violations: up to ten years in prison and a fine equal to twice the value of the unreturned gold, which had to be surrendered to the Federal Reserve in exchange for paper money.

Dentists were exempted, allowed to retain up to 100 ounces of gold. Score!

Look, we’re not configured in a similar way today. For one, there is no Gold Standard anymore and we are operating on a pure fiat currency regime. But the point here is, we can’t underestimate what the government is willing and capable to do.

So back then, what I did was to use an online platform where physical gold can be traded and also stored in a vault of your choice. I chose to store my bars at a Swiss vault. In the worst case, I could fly to retrieve my bars and then figure out what to do from there. To be honest, this was somewhat risky as I would not be able to physically inspect the Gold in-person and had to rely on accreditation by third-party inspectors. But it was good enough for me back then given the options I had on the table. I just needed to be very, very, very careful and did a ton of research before deciding which platform I would use.

Fast forward to today, and I am based out of Singapore - a very Gold friendly nation. Its central bank has been one of the largest Gold buyers in recent years and it has updated legislation to completely remove any tax from the purchase or sales of Gold bullion. You can even pass through Changi airport without paying any import/export duty for Gold as it is completely exempted - you just have to declare if you are carrying more than $10,000, that’s it!

At the same time, I didn’t want to store my Gold bars at home - there’s overhead there I didn’t want to deal with regarding theft (although Singapore is an extremely safe nation) or fires. So I bought my bars from one of the most trusted dealers and stored them at a maximum-security vault in Singapore. The vault sits on top of a parcel of sovereign land that has no international jurisdiction when it comes to laws regarding asset ownership, and it is a vault that also stores very rare paintings and other valuable collectible items.

I made it a point for the dealer to show me the Gold bars in person, so that I could hold and inspect them physically before they was transported to the vault where I can track them down via serial numbers and video surveillance.

And so that is how I executed part of Recession Prep #1: Preserving Your Capital.

Do your own due diligence on Gold, and depending on where you reside, consider what method of ownership and associated risk/cost levels you are willing to assume.

Most importantly, always remember that Gold is not an investment and you shouldn’t treat it as one. Do that, and it will treat you just as kindly in return.

Watch my video on Gold over here for information:

And every time I ask myself that question, the same answer pops out: because sh*t is about to hit the fan and you can’t keep that knowledge to yourself.

And so, here we are - yet another week and another post of me trying to get as many people I can to realize what is about to happen so that they can prepare.

Look, this is not Noah’s Ark, and I’m not Noah. The world is not ending, and the globalist New World Order and the WEF network is not going cull 80% of the global population. At least, I hope not. The point is that there is a lot of speculation leading to many labelling such ideas as conspiracy theories.

What I’m talking about is not speculation. It’s straight up data, backed by historical cycles that we, as the human species, have repeated over and over again throughout our existence.

If there’s one thing that never changes, it’s us: humans. We never change, and history has all the proof to validate that statement.

When there is an imminent and potentially life altering event, you should learn about it, even if it is outside your domain. The current imminent event I am referring to has to do with our economy and financial markets. Even if these are not things that you are have an interest in, you should understand just enough to know the “how” and “why” so that you can at least prepare.

My job is to make things easy for anyone to understand the basic concepts - that is what I offer to you. If economics and finance are already in your domain of knowledge, additional perspectives can supplant what you’ve already constructed in your mind.

So what do I mean by potentially life altering? Let me show you - I’ve lived through two of them: the DotCom bust in 2000, and the 2007/8 Great Recession. In both cases, more than half the people I knew fell into hardship. They either lost their jobs, lost their house, lost their retirement savings in the stock markets, or some mixture of those unfortunate events.

This is a chart of the stock market that shows what happened in 2000 and 2007/8. It is a great chart made by Ron Walker over at Charting Prodigy that I want to bring to your attention because it summarizes what happened, and what is about to happen.

In both episodes, the stock market crashed over 50%. There were a lot of job losses - everybody, and I mean pretty much everyone I knew, at some point was worried that they were going to get laid off. There was much pain, and for many, it took years of tough slogging to get out of the quagmire they found themselves in. The worst hit were the older people who didn’t have as much time to recover, financially speaking.

However, there were a few who benefitted greatly from those collapses. Michael Burry from the Great Short was one of them. So was Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates whom I worked for. In fact, I was also one of the few who benefitted as well, even if I’m no billionaire.

Now, let me boil things down to three simple concepts that Sable (RIP), my Labrador Retriever could have understood:

1. Topping Process

2. Fed Pivot

3. Recession indicator

Topping Process

A topping process - with the keyword being ‘process’ - occurs when the economy and financial markets finally break down after many years of expansion. We are talking in terms of years, and even decades of growth and expansion - this is also known as a Bull Market. Everything is great, and towards the end, things become frenzied - as if everyone was on some drug induced high thinking that nothing will ever go down, ever again. Remember back in 2007 when people were hollering that house prices will never go down? I do, they (and that includes my parents) kept telling me to buy buy buy! And I kept saying hell no no no. Good thing I didn’t listen to them.

Well, there indeed is a powerful drug, and it’s called low interest rates - something that the Fed controls.

Now the key here is that it is a process. The economy and financial markets don’t slam on the brakes and make a U-turn in a week or even a month. Instead, it churns up and down and up and down over many months, sometimes even a year if the run-up to the topping process has been elongated due to reckless administration of the drug known as low interest rates.

Want to know what happened after the last recession we had? Make sure you don’t miss that red arrow:

That’s right - basically, since the 2007/8 recession, we haven’t had a real recession. We had a blip during Covid when everything shut down, but then the Fed and the Treasury went berserk and printed insane amounts of money out of thin air.

In fact, we have just witnessed one of the longest, if not longest, Bull Market in all of history. You might be wondering why. You also know the answer.

The Fed has pumped the economy and financial markets with so much drugs - that low interest rate thingy - that we’ve just been on an incredible high. And just like any drug, we need moar and moar of it to chase the high. This is all and good until Covid happened which spooked the Fed and Treasury so much that they decided to upgrade the drug from the stepped-on, low quality street stuff to 100% pure cocaine straight from Bolivia. How did they do that? Well, they printed a ton of money out of thin air which they’ve been doing, but this time, they literally stuffed into the pockets of people: enter the stimmy checks.

The result of this was something called inflation, and that was the canary in the coal-mine portending an upcoming end to this artificially juiced Bull Market that has been extended way too long. Imagine having a stomach ache and instead of going to the bathroom you just pop more pills to calm things down? Well, at some point, you’re going to have to go - it’s inevitable, and the longer you wait before you go, the more violent things get!

Fed Pivot

The Fed Pivot is what occurs when the Fed, after increasing interest rates for many consecutive months, pauses and then eventually reverses course and starts cutting interest rates.

Remember that pesky thing called inflation that was unleashed by the Fed and Treasury as a result of getting spooked by Covid? Well, there’s medicine for that. It’s called: high interest rates. It’s the opposite of low interest rates, and just like Narcan, the drug they administer to people who have overdosed on opioids to save their lives, high interest rates can combat inflation.

So basically, after over a decade and a half of doling out the drug of low interest rates to juice everything up and keep elected officials happy and in their posts, and unexpected phenomenon called Covid barged into the scene and ended the party. These academics at the Fed and Treasury thought they could get away with printing and stuffing money down people’s pants without raising the inflation genie from the lamp. When inflation came to the party, they poo-pooed it as “transitory” for the longest time until it finally - like Joe Biden - became too obvious to hide. And that’s when they panicked and raised interest rates to combat the now non-transitory inflation at a record pace.

Let me pull up that chart from above once more:

You see those squares at the tops of the 2000 DotCom bubble and the 2007/8 Real Estate bubbles? Those were the topping process where the Fed decided to pivot and start cutting rates after raising them. In fact, the last time a significant pivot happened was on Sep. 18, 2007 - one day after my birthday.

Guess what’s about to happen this time around - yes, you got it: the Fed will finally pivot and cut interest rates at their meeting on Sep. 18, 2024. You can’t make this stuff up - unless you don’t believe we are living in a simulation, but that’s another post for another time.

You know what will happen once they pivot - just look at the past.

Recession indicator

Ok, so for this third and final concept, I will not go into the depths of financial jargon and lingo. At the same time, I am also not peddling “trust me bro” logic so if you’d like to dive into it, here’s one of the many places you can learn.

Put simply, there is something that has always predicted a recession - without fail - for the past 70 years. Some academics might try to argue it gave a false signal once, (once in 70 years? stop it now) but even that is debatable and why waste time splitting hairs on minutiae when in aggregate, it is inarguably a very, very, very, very accurate predictor. It is in fact the most accurate predictor, even if some crazies will try to sell you the “this time is different” Kool Aid spin.

It has a name befitting of snobby nerds: Yield Curve Inversion.

Forget about the name. It doesn’t matter. What matters, is this:

See those grey bars? Those are recessions. Whenever that blue squiggly line goes below zero, bad things happen. But bad things don’t happen immediately. In fact, bad things happen only after it gets back up above zero again, after some lag. This chart is nice enough to show you the lag for the past recessions.

So, guess what just happened this past week? Yep, we went back above zero (for the nerds out there, this is called an uninversion, and for the hardcore geeks, it’s a bull-steepener uninversion, which is doubly bad) after being below zero for the longest time in history. That’s right, the only time we were below zero for this long was in 1928… you know what happened after that? It’s called the Great Depression.

Now, if you look at the lag times, we’re talking about months but not years. Remember what I was saying earlier about the Topping Process? It’s the same time frame.

So if you’re reading this and haven’t done anything to prepare, there’s still time. But time is indeed running out, and trust me, you don’t want to get caught with your pants down when your job or business is on the line sometime next year when the hammer comes down.

Want moar? Well, you can upgrade from three to five signs I’ve been watching over here:

This is a cycle that has repeated many times over the course of many hundreds of years across multiple civilizations.

Generally speaking, it starts with something like this….

1. Money is tied to some physical asset that is scarce, with scarcity being the key attribute:

Gold in the current cycle, although we are possibly in the midst of a transition into a digital asset: crypto (to be determined…)

2. Too much debt is accumulated:

The root cause of this is attributed to politics, with central controlling authorities attempting to stay in power (get re-elected, or avoid riots) by spending money they do not have on “projects”

3. The tie to the physical asset is abolished as there isn’t enough of the physical asset due to excessive spending and debt in #2 - the runway is cleared for even more money printing which leads to even high inflation:

President Nixon did this as part of the “Nixon Shock” in 1971, when the US essentially defaulted because it did not have enough gold reserves to produce when Europe demanded the yellow metal in exchange for the US dollars it held. The 1970s are remembered as an era of stagflation, which is the combination of a recession and inflation.

4. Interest rates become the main tool to control the economy:

In order to “combat” inflation and spark economic activity, the “cost” of money (or how much you would have to pay to borrow money in the form of interest) becomes the main tool for the Federal Reserve: Fed Chiefs Volcker and Greenspan laid this foundational control for the Fed where they would set interest rates to “manage” the economy.

5. Too much debt is accumulated:

We just can’t seem to help ourselves.

6. Quantitative Easing (QE) is initiated:

As debt explodes, we face various financial accidents. The last one (if we don’t include Silicon Valley Bank et. al as that is still in the process of playing out right now) was the 2007/8 housing and mortgage crises. QE results in bubbles, such as the DotCom bubble in 2000, and when they pop, the Fed steps in with ever more money printing schemes.

7. Too much debt is accumulated:

*sigh*

8. Fiscal and monetary authorities gang up to directly pay individuals:

While pandemics are not a financial phenomenon (let’s skip all the baggage about how the pandemic started), the response by both the Fed and the Treasury was the final level of money printing: literally creating it out of thin and stuffing it into people’s pockets directly - hello Stimmy Checks.

9. Too much debt is accumulated:

— —

10. Inflation begins to appear as the effects of endless money printing finally catches up:

Authorities attempted to downplay and “talk away” inflation in 2022 by calling it transitory - this continued for as long as possible until reality, similar to Joe Biden’s mental acuity, caught up and the truth could not be obfuscated any longer.

11. Central banks have no choice but to raise interest rates:

As a response, the Fed has to raise interest rates, and it did so at a record breaking pace after an extended period of “easy money” - unsurprisingly, such a dramatic shift caused unintended consequences such as the Silicon Valley bank implosion and continues to reverberate today. The most recent accident being the Japan Yen Carry Trade unwind, a phenomenon that continues to play out as you read this.

Sidenote: the Fed portrays itself as the hero, swooping in to save the day by lowering interest rates and executing mindless money-printing QE-to-infinity schemes. The truth is, the Fed is like a Fireman who is also the arsonist: yes, they come in to put out the fire, but they were also the arsonist who caused the fire in the first place.

12. Cost to service national debt skyrockets higher due to higher interest rates :

A picture is worth a thousand words…

13. Cost to service national debt becomes too high as % of GDP

Once more, a picture puts things into perspective…

14. Central banks have no choice but to lower interest rates to stop the runaway debt train

We are literally at this step, right here, right now. After the Fed hiked interest rates and kept them high for the past couple of years, we are about to see them lower it for the first time in the next two weeks. Take a wild guess what will happen afterwards…

15. Currency debasement ensues

We have to look no further than Japan, the progenitor of money printing in the modern era. Watch what happens closely with the Yen Carry trade as the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has no options left anymore but to inflate. The BOJ attempted to raise interest rates as the Yen kept crashing and were stung by the worst crash of their Nikkei Stock Exchange forcing them to reverse course immediately. The Emperor has no clothes! A similar story is coming for the United States.

16. Eventually, faith in currency and debt markets wither away and a new regime is created in a “reset” -> go to step #1

Now that we are about to enter step #14 as the Fed lowers interest rates for what may be the final time in this cycle, the red flag will be up for the final steps.

Throughout history, this long term debt cycle has occurred in tandem with geopolitical stress as well as wars. Across hundreds of years, and multiple civilizations. When they occur, they occur rapidly.

Is it really a coincidence that the Russo-Ukraine (NATO) and Iran-Israel conflicts are ratcheting up these days?

Nobody alive on this planet has experienced this cycle and the ending of it - that’s how long the cycle is. 

The point I’m making here is we are near the end of this generational cycle - something that people usually see only once in their lives. 

Given the long time frame, I don’t expect it to complete in one month or one year. However, within five years, there is a much higher likelihood that the reset and the accompanying geopolitical impacts will manifest. 

Prepare yourselves.

You should be petrified. I am.

Let me give you the simple reason that slices through academic spaghetti like a katana blade: never in the history of the United States has the government begun to lower interest rates after raising them when asset classes were at all time highs. The reason is simple: lowering interest rates boosts economic activity and “heats” things up. It is medicine, or as steroid users say, the “juice” to resuscitate a lethargic economy - an economy that is in a recession or has suffered a major crash like in 2007/8, or when Covid hit.

We can throw all sorts of advanced economic / academic / jedi-mind-emic to fabricate reasons why this time is different but we can never change the laws of gravity itself. We are not God.

Boosting the economy up by giving it a hit while it is at all time highs is like handing a meth user keeled over on the street a loaded crack pipe - the dude is already high man!

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, let’s take a quick peek:

The stock market is at all time highs…

Home prices are at all time highs…

Food prices are at all time highs…

I think you get the drift here - why are we cutting interest rates to boost the economy when everything is already exploding higher?

This is the part we will avoid - there are a lot of other places to go online to engage in politics, speculation, and plans within plans. We’re not going to do that here. Instead, we are simply going to stick to the core topic at hand: so what does this mean for all of us?

There are only two outcomes heading out way…

Outcome #1 (the one we should hope for, and the more likely outcome):

We will have a recession that will be “announced” by main stream media in 2025. The recession will be deep and painful, resulting in significant job losses and economic activity slowdown.

This would be the base case if we are already in a recession and the government has been obfuscating data around it from us, at least until after the elections are over as 2024 concludes. Why it would do such a thing such as continuously revise jobs reports downwards during an election year (the last of which was the largest downward revision in over a decade), again - I will leave that to the many corners of the internet that provide a myriad of reasons.

Outcome #2 (the one we pray we will avoid):

The meth user, already high and almost completely detached from reality, decides to take a hit off the loaded crack pipe that was handed to him. He gets even higher for a bit, before his body suddenly short-circuits as he has an overdosing episode.

Before we write this off completely, let me remind you that this has happened many times in the past - the last one being the Great Depression in 1928/9 that plunged the world into severe hardship, eventually culminating into World War II and a new set of global orders that the winners - namely the USA and its allies - got to write. There is a reason why English is the internationally spoken language, and why the US Dollar is the world’s global reserve currency.

What that means is we would have a return of inflation with a vengeance, as whatever money we own and get paid with gets watered down as it loses its purchasing power in an ever accelerating pace. It is essentially stealth taxation gone wild, to finance insurmountable sovereign debt.

Everything will rocket higher, but whatever nominal numbers represented in prices won’t mean much as the value of the currency emasculates away.

Could there be a third option? One where, the Fed actually got it right and everything - literally everything - we are hearing from the main stream media is absolutely true? Technically, yes - but the chances would be less than Kanye West marrying Kim Kardashian again. Let me remind you, the Fed has never engineered a soft landing in the entirety of its existence. So in practical terms, no, there is real third option.

So then, what are we to do? How do we prepare for either option? Is there a way to prepare for both?

Well, this is where I must tell you - for legal reasons - that I am not a financial advisor. Go seek financial advice for a legally licensed financial advisor. All I can share with you going forward is what I’ve been doing for the past three years in preparation of whats to come.

There are five general principles that I have implemented, and continue to implement to this day:

1. Diversify income streams

2. Protect purchasing power

3. Reduce allocation of illiquid assets

4. Increase exposure to decentralized stores of value

5. Setup accessible local stores of physical value

I won’t cover the the typical “reduce your debt” revelations - you can go to many other places for that, or just call up Robert Kiyosaki after you read his Rich Dad Poor Dad book for the 50th time 😃

I’ll be going over these five principles in my next post, but do have a look at my previous post on this topic in the meantime over here:

I believe the quickening of the unraveling will begin to peak around then, and there will be much pain and gnashing of teeth by those unfortunate enough to not have prepared. The confluence of an economy slowing down, coupled with continuing geopolitical escalations in the Middle East and Ukraine will rise to a boil after the conclusion of the US presidential elections at the end of 2024.

In fact, the incumbent regime is having an incredibly difficult time holding things together until at least the elections have concluded. As I type this, the US is holding a hail-mary last-ditch ceasefire talk to avert escalation as Iran and its axis reportedly prepare for an attack on Israel.

Whether it be a financial accident that plunges us into a systemic risk scenario, a broadening of the current wars into regional wars, or some combination of the two with the digital world order acting as a catalyst, the world is teetering on the brink of massive shifts that generations in the future will study as one of humanity’s pivotal turning points.

So yes, I do believe that time is indeed running out as we continue to barrel down the path that I laid out in my last post on this topic over here:

Just look around you and observe what is happening:

• The stock market flash crash in late July

• Iran threatening to strike Israel

• Ukraine invading Russia

• The attempted assassination of Trump, and how the US was literally an inch away from devolvement into civil war

• The riots in UK

• Mpox (clade 1) detected outside of Africa (Sweden) for the first time

and more…

Can you believe that was just all in the last month? We still have four more months to go in 2024!

I think we will make it. But just by a smidgen.

Mindset Orientation First

In preparation for what’s to come in 2025, one might be tempted to focus on procedural tasks to reduce risks to livelihood, especially if a family is involved.

We’ll get to that - but first, we must address the more important component: mental agility.

Having a pliable yet grounded and clairvoyant mind will be absolutely critical to weather the stress, uncertainty, and whiplash heading our way. The best strategy and plans will fail if we do not possess the proper foundation and fortitude to execute them. There is no room for mental weakness during the turning.

We must acknowledge the possibility that the world, and our lives as we know it may be a relic of the past. Even if you don’t think it is probable, it is possible and because it is life-altering, you should take a moment to at least consider what essentially has been the unthinkable.

Because Black Swan events lurk in the dark crevices of unthinkables.

The first order is to recognize that your job or business is a facility to generate income - and that it is not the only facility that can fulfill that capacity. Disrobe the illusory security that they seemingly provide. It is a cloak that weighs you down. Even in the worst case scenario where you lose your job or business, your world will still continue, and you can find or create new ones as long as you aren’t lazy and have a strong mental foundation. Rather than being the end of the world, it’s a chance to turn to a new chapter in your book of life.

If you are an employed worker, a key mental shift is flipping to a mindset where you own corporations and jobs rather than them owning you. What that means is having the mental state where you recognize that your are in the position of providing companies a favor, for which you agree to accept renumeration for. In essence, you are using them to accumulate wealth, experience, and connections with people so that you can pursue your real objective in life later on. Nothing more than a means to an end that they should be thankful for besides paying you money. They do not own you, they do not control you, and you are not in their servitude. There’s no difference between you and a consultant, except that you receive benefits and are paid through different schedules such as salaries and bonuses.

In reality, such a mindset is not the way the majority of corporate workers think. Instead, fear wafts through most of the halls, meeting rooms, and open-plan workspaces as the thoughts of a myriad “what ifs” permeate invisibly. Perched near the top of the list, is “what if I lose my job?”

Similarly, if you are a business owner, the corresponding mental shift is to not get trapped in a fragility feedback loop cycle fed by the sunk-cost cognitive dissonance. Success in your business does not necessarily have to beget more success in the same tunnel. There is no single golden goose to success - there are many of them. Protecting all the effort, hours, and capital you’ve invested into you business will result in a fragile mindset. The trap is that the more successful you get, the less you are willing to deviate because there is so much more to lose. Much like a job or career, there is the danger of being held hostage by this fear of losing all that you’ve worked for.

We must realize and accept that there is no need to fear hardship because some of humanity’s best moments have manifested during the most difficult of times.

In fact, one of FoFty’s Principles is:

We embrace the inevitability of pain rather than avoid it

Pain is not something we can escape in life. Nobody can. It is as inevitable as death. Understanding this fact, the Principle is to embrace it so that it can be transmuted into something productive in life instead of letting it become a destructive force.

The idea is not to seek pain like a masochist, as doing so would not lead to success in the long run. Rather, it is the realization that avoiding the inevitable is an exercise in anxiety and stress. It is a source of fear, and thus weakness.

Once you have mastered and have become the master of your life, you will have equipped yourself with a base that is pliable, open-minded, yet grounded and immovable in its foundation. You have ditched tunnel thinking and are open to all options, including options that were once not considered possible in your life.

It is critical that you achieve this mindset orientation because the unmitigated fear I described earlier is poised to fester and grow, like a malignant tumor as the prospect of an incoming recession grows higher each day as discussed in Part 1:

To recap, the Fed is astonishingly terrible at engineered soft landings - once interest rates were raised, a recession followed soon after they started reducing them afterwards:

What’s that you say? Going back 40 years to 1985 is not far back enough?

Don’t worry, I’ve got a chart for that - here you go:

So guess what the Fed is about to do next month - that’s right, cut interest rates after a feverish cycle of raising them because inflation, which they once poo-pooed as transitory, has now been “defeated.”

Stay tuned for Part 3 where I will discuss Financial Strategies to weather the incoming turning now that you are mentally prepared to ingest the options I shall share.

The three global orders I am referring to are:

1. Financial

2. Geopolitical

3. Digital

Make no mistake, all three are interrelated with each other - they feed upon and catalyze each other. In reality, warning shots have already been fired on all three fronts as you are already aware. As these topics can get very broad and FoFty is not a financial / political / tech think tank, we are going to keep our focus on the intersection of all three in the middle, and how that translates to you as an individual and as a family.

Today in Part 1 of this series, we are going to talk about the Global Financial Order, the changes it is undergoing, and how the other two changing global orders are shaping it. In Part 2, I will discuss what these changes in the Global Financial Order mean to you and your family, and I how I took action to prepare for it.

The Existing Regime

Don’t worry, I’m not going to take you down some long-winded diatribe that rehashes all the missteps (yes, we screwed up and continue to do so) that led us here. Instead, I will simply enumerate a cycle that humanity has repeated over and over again since the Roman Empire and beyond:

1. Currency (paper money) is tied to some physical asset (gold in the current cycle - btw, did you know that before the Dollar, the US currency was the Continental? In fact, its failure is why we start with #1)

2. Too much debt is accumulated, because we are a greedy species that likes to spend money that we don’t have

3. The tie to the physical asset (gold) is severed, so that more debt - and spending - can be taken on (President Nixon in 1971, removal of US Dollar peg to gold)

4. Interest rates now control the cost of money (or the price paid to borrow money)

5. Too much debt is accumulated (did I mention we are a greedy species?)

6. Quantitative easing is invented (to “save us” after housing crash in 2007/8)

7. Too much debt is accumulated (well, what did you expect?)

8. Fiscal and monetary authorities (The Fed and US Treasury) gang up to directly stuff money into individuals’ pockets (stimmy checks)

9. Too much debt is accumulated (we just can’t help ourselves)

10. Inflation begins to appear (“transitory” inflation in 2022, we can laugh at that now)

11. Central banks have no choice but to raise interest rates (Silicon Valley Bank and friends implosion)

12. Cost to service national debt skyrockets due to higher interest rates (now higher than total annual spend on military and only second to social security/medicaire)

13. Cost to service national debt becomes too high as % of GDP (imagine interest payments on your mortgage exceeding your take home salary)

14. Central bank has no choice but to lower interest rates to stop runaway train

15. Currency debasement ensues

16. Eventually, faith in currency and debt markets wither away and a new regime is created in a “reset” -> go to step #1

So, we are about to enter step #14, with the entire world watching in anticipation of the US Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates for the first time after raising it at the fastest pace in history to combat what they thought was “transitory inflation.”

Sure, they will say they are engineering a “soft landing” after having slayed the inflation beast. By the way, the Fed has never in its history achieved a soft landing - but somehow they will get it done right here, right now.

Source: trust me bro.

In reality, they are behind the curve of triggering a recession and backing off from bankrupting the nation from impossibly high interest rate payments.

Don’t believe me? Then take a look at this:

The Unexpected Ripper

Everything was going swell actually… even after that annoying blip of 2007-2008 when the housing crisis threatened to upheave the system. Tons of money was printed to save the Too Big To Fail banks, even more debt was taken on, and magically inflation was nowhere to be seen. I call this the Goldilocks period.

And then… the unthinkable happened: Covid.

There was a point where “is the world going to end” flashed through our minds. I know it did for me. And it must have for others, because the Fed did something even more unthinkable than Covid itself: they printed money like there was no tomorrow, and even stuffed it directly into people’s pockets!

Hello Stimmy Check!

I don’t know about you, but when I see any chart that has a vertical line going up, I cringe because I know bad things always follow parabolic vertical lines.

Somehow, the academic geniuses running the show did not think exploding this much money into existence all at once will not have consequences: I mean, more money chasing the same goods and services (or less since everything was shut down during Covid) will result in higher prices right?

Call me stupid, but that’s what I thought. And that’s exactly what happened. We finally let the inflation genie out of the bottle.

The part that frustrates me is how these geniuses kept downplaying the inflation staring at them in their faces by calling it transitory for so long. I mean, it was literally an insult to our intelligence folks - you see something but they try to talk you out of what’s literally in front of your eyes. Listen, I trust my eyes… and my brain. If I see an apple in front of me, no amount of talking by these geniuses is going to make me think it’s a tomato.

Finally, they had to admit that it was indeed an apple in front of us, and so they started raising interest rates in spectacular fashion to “catch up.” In fact, they raised interest rates so quickly that it was the fastest ever in history.

Guess what? There were unintended consequences, the first of which was the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank and friends. Remember that? Yes, that was just last year.

Well, just last week, we had another major unintended consequence, but this time, instead of some regional bank, it was the 3rd largest economy on the planet: the unwinding of the Japanese Yen carry trade. I’m not going to go into the details of what happened there, but suffice to say it was ultimately the result of a prolonged discrepancy between high US interest rates and perennially low Japanese interest rates sparked by global inflation that finally caught up to the fat cats.

Trust me when I tell you that there will be more of these unintended “financial accidents” that nobody foresaw coming, coming. Why should you believe me? Because I followed my own advise and cashed in:

The Geopolitical Financial Accelerant

Meanwhile, over in Geopolitical land and the road away from a unipolar world to a multipolar world, we have recently seen multiple wars erupt.

The Russo-Ukrainian war has further cemented the the pathway, as each side jockeys up. Ever play street ball? Two team captains, usually the strongest players, start picking teammates to battle out. The same thing is going on, within the financial context.

There is the existing regime, as highlighted above. And there is the new challenger, which is called the BRICS+. China, Russia, India, Iran and friends (note this list includes the world’s two most populous nations) have setup an alternate global banking system that can operate separately from the one the US and its allies created after winning World War II.

And it works.

How do we know? Just look at what happened to Russia after it entered the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Despite all the sanctions - which is how the US weaponizes its dollar’s status as the world reserver currency - Russia’s economy is thriving. It has figured out how to create dark shipping pools to transport oil. It has learned, through BRICS+ which includes China, how to settle trades directly with its allies completely separately from the existing regime’s global banking system.

Not only does this challenger have legs, the legs look like they have some muscle!

The Digital Two Face

Straddling the other two global orders is the new kid on the block: the Digital World Order. And boy, this whiz kid is like the Flash!

In the context of finance, there are two areas to note.

The first of which, is AI. I’m not talking about how it’s going to change our lives. I’m talking about how AI is in a stock market bubble similar to the DotCom bubble that popped in 2000 and fell over 75% (Nasdaq):

The AI bubble may have recently popped - we will need more time to confirm this, but as of this writing (Aug. 10, 2024) it is possible that we may have already seen to top of the Nasdaq for this cycle.

The second area of note is in the world of Bitcoin, crypto, and blockchain. Never forget, the reason Bitcoin was created was because of the 2007-2008 financial crises that led to all the money-printing by the central banks, for the banks. People, folks who we still actually don’t know to this day, got tired of the Monopoly money games the governments were playing and decided to create a new monetary paradigm that can never be centralized.

Don’t believe me? Then just have a look at bitcoin’s Genesis Block:

What’s this? Do we have another challenger? It looks like we do, but wait - there’s more!

Central banks despise alternate forms of money - and that includes Gold and Bitcoin. They realize that they cannot prevent them from manifesting though, and earlier attempts in the past to make possession of Gold Bullion illegal have failed. The same will be likely true for Bitcoin.

Therefore, the Central banks’ alternative is to join the bandwagon and build their own digital currencies - known as Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs. If you think this is a new thing that they are still experimenting with, know that legislation has already been passed, and they have run trial tests many times over under the guise of “cyber attack prevention.”

Just have a look at this website to see the developmental phase of CBDCs around the world (yes, this is a global phenomenon): https://cbdctracker.org/

CBDCs are the exact opposite of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies even if the underlying technology may share some similar characteristics. With CBDCs, the state can monitor and control exactly how one spends money. It is in fact the ultimate tool to control spending and thus behavior. I don’t have to explain the perils of such a system of control can introduce, only because… I think I’ve mentioned how greedy humans are a couple of times already if you scroll up.

A Swirling Dance

I hope by now I’ve surfaced enough pivotal developments in the Financial World Order to make you understand that we are approaching a watershed moment. The developments are subtle at first, and slowly build momentum until suddenly, there is an eruption accompanied by the other two World Orders.

Together and in conjunction, they will usher in a new era. The challengers have emerged, and the team captains are settling their team picks.

Preparing ahead of time for this event in a non-reactionary way will yield the best results, and in the next post and video, I will discuss the tangible impacts they will have to individuals and how I’ve made changes to prepare for the coming turning.

The kicker: I was living together with my family during my corporate days, whereas today, I am away from my family as a solopreneur.

How is this possible?

Here are a few things I learned in my journey that I’d like to share with you, in hopes that if you’re in a similar situation they may help.

Going at it alone

In my past, when I created and built startups I was always was a co-founder. There was always someone else who was in the boat with me. We rowed together and found solace with each other as we hodled through rough waters and during times of darkness. We shared first-pumps and high-fives when we were blessed with sprinkles of success. There was always someone there with me, dialed-in to situation I was in who I could bounce ideas around with.

When I look back on my past startup days, I didn’t really notice such a big change between startup life and corporate life when it came to feeling companionship. Sure, there wasn’t as many people around me compared to when I used to be an employee at a large company, but there were co-founders and team members. In fact, it was the better of both worlds because all the annoying people seemed to have magically vanished into thin air from my life!

I hate to say it, but this time is different. This time, I ventured down the solopreneur path to build FoFty, with what I thought was eyes wide open (yes, I know I have small eyes, so that was a caveat from the get-go!).

Gone are the people in boat with you - you’re rowing alone. And if you you’re not careful and row only on one side of the boat, you’ll be going around in circles real quickly. Darkness becomes frightening. Anxiousness creeps in when the boat rocks amid turbulent swells. The dagger is the inability to share joy - this is soul quenching. Have you ever tried to high-five to yourself? What joy is there to share when nobody else has gone through the pain and struggles with you to understand how much that little sprinkling of success even means?

Even though I went in eyes wide open, I learned that there is simply is no way to go in heart wide open.

Leaving My Family

When my wife and I decided to embark on the journey to create FoFty, one of the difficult choices we had to make was our living configuration. We ended up deciding to trial a split arrangement where my wife and our children would be in Bali while I commuted between Singapore and Bali:

We both knew two things: (i) this would be a temporary arrangement, and (ii) this was not going to be a walk in the park. The arrangement is perhaps the costliest aspect of the whole endeavor, especially when considering my time away from the children as a father. Yet, we decided it was worth it - at least for a fixed amount of time.

In the beginning, I psyched myself up by being as busy as I could. The whole hustle culture and “out-efforting” the competition mindset came back in a flash, almost as if it was muscle memory. Pushing agendas, following up on leads, writing, recording, putting myself and FoFty out there - I was way to busy to feel lonely. In fact, when I would go to Bali to be with my family, I kept the effort and busy-level elevated to the point that I didn’t really notice a difference between Singapore and Bali.

“I got this,” I thought. I’m going to not only make it, but brute-force my way to success!

Cracks in the Wall

At first, it was my wife who began to surface the challenges - she was taking care of our children, which is a tremendous amount of work and responsibility especially during the stretches when she was alone. I’ve always felt guilt whenever I left to go back to Singapore, and I would try to remind her and myself that this was part of the plan and that it was temporary.

And then, I’d get lost in my busyness.

That all changed last weekend, when I sat down to write the next Substack post and record the next YouTube episode. This was an unusually long stretch for me to stay in Singapore for due to a portfolio company of the investment firm I am an advisor to visiting from abroad. For almost a month, I have been away from my family.

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.

I simply couldn’t get myself to write and record what I had planned to. The combination of being a solopreneur and extended absence from my family finally hit me like a liver shot to by side.

After innumerable failures to jump start myself back into action, I decided to just write about what I was feeling out of the rawness of the situation. That too, was difficult - I almost broke down while recording the video. Especially when I realized the video was really for my children to see later in life, as part of my hope that they could understand just a little bit more why their dad wasn’t with them all of the time for a while.

What Loneliness Really Is

The next day, after recording the video, I met up with friends from our FoFty community Sasmini and her husband Dulitha who happened to be in town. We were catching up over coffee when the conversation turned the loneliness I was going through. And that’s when I remembered that loneliness is not just a physical absence. In fact, the mental absence is just as, if not more powerful.

Flashbacks of my past, when I was working at a company erupted in my mind. Me and my family were all together physically, but I was so busy and engrossed with work - meeting, deadlines, and more meetings - that I was mentally checked out. My body was there, but my mind was somewhere else.

And you know what? I realized that I was even more lonely back then! In fact, it was not just me but my family who also were so lonely, even if we were all physically under the same roof. This feeling was part of the reason why I wanted to leave that lifestyle.

Thanks to that conversation, I understood what true loneliness is: isolation in the spirit and mind. Of course, physical isolation matters as well, but it can be overcome - if you are on the same page, on the same wavelength, on the same mission 100% with your closest family members and friends, then you are not alone.

I drew much strength from this reminder and realization, because my family has bonded over our commitment to FoFty - something we couldn’t do before as I meandered aimlessly working at large companies.

To anybody reading this, I present to you my humble case where once I was lost, but now have discovered a higher order than finding the way. Fixing our relationships, aligning ourselves on our mission, and engaging our cores together can connect us in ways that transcend physical distances. Conversely, the reverse can also vaporize physical proximity when our relationships are neglected and deprioritized.

After finishing our coffee and saying our farewells, I couldn’t help but smile: I may not know where the road will lead to, but that’s ok, because I’m not alone!