Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes, Revised and Updated Edition

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
From desperate interest rate cuts and chaos in global financial markets to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and a fast-crumbling tower of public and private debt, Wall Street insider Michael J. Panzner exposes the cracks in the dike, the looming economic threats, and the vast array of promises and obligations that will ultimately go unfulfilled.

How did we get to this place, and how can we protect ourselves from the fallout?

This revised and updated edition features a new introduction by the author on the predictions that have come to pass since the book was first published. It also provides a financial bomb shelter for every American by identifying the most pressing risks we face today as well as what we can do to survive the crisis:

How an unraveling economy will affect each one of us
When to sell, what to buy, and where to invest as the crisis unfolds
The social, political, and geopolitical fallout from widespread financial upheaval

Everyone must learn of the disaster-in-the-making so they can protect themselves, their families, and their economic well-being—before it's too late. Financial Armageddon is today’s call to action.

Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

One of the better Doom + Gloom books June 20, 2007
116 out of 144 found this review helpful

I like to read gloom and doom books. They are more fun reading than crime stories. I remember reading "Bankruptcy 1995" in the early 1990's - a book which predicted the bankrutcy of the United States in 1995. It was a scary reading in 1990, but as we know today, that prediction did not come true. In fact, the majority of all predictions about the future turn out to be wrong. It is not easy to predict the future correctly.

The book under review distinguishes itself from other books on this subject by its willingness to consider extremely dark scenarios in the future. Contrary to most other books, Panzner believes that the future will unfold via a debt deflation first followed by hyperinflation later on. He seriously believes that the Dollar will get more valuable in the future due to the Dollar scarcity caused by the accelerated repayment of debts.

The attempt to analyze the future in terms of inflation and deflation is in my opinion a case of old and obsolete financial thinking. The last major incidences of hyperinflation and deflation occured at least 70 years ago. Since then, the nature of money has changed completely. Today, money is essentially a piece of data in a computer system. Very little cash exists in the world in form of currency. Ben Bernanke is right by emphasizing that it is very easy to fight deflation: just mail to everybody credit card offers with 0% interest valid until the balance is paid off. (Such offers exist already today: 1.99% until the balance is paid off). Although Bernanke did not say it, it is equally easy for the government to fight hyperinflation. Since hyperinflation is characterized by extreme circulation velocities of money, what needs to be done in such a case is simply restrict people's access to their bank balances and credit cards to let's say $100 per day. That will dramatically increase the scarcity of Dollars which in turn will kill any emerging hyperinflation. All of that is easy to implement because money today is not tangible currency (like 60 years ago) but electronic bytes in computer memories. Computers are very powerful. That power can be utilized in order to control the flow of money and economic activity very efficiently.

If the future does not bring deflation nor hyperinflation, how will the future unfold? I believe, in the future we will not run out of money. Instead, we will run out of resources. For instance, gasoline may not be avaiable all the time. Electricity may not be avaiable 24 hours a day (blackouts). Water may not be avaiable 24 hours a day. Certain types of foods may become scarce. I believe that these things are going to happen first before any serious financial crash will occur. More effort is being spent on securing the financial system than money is being spent in securing essential resources for the future. In other words, the future will unfold pretty much in the direction of what happened in the Soviet Union before it collapsed. Everybody had a job and plenty of money. The money had great purchasing power, but unfortunately stores were empty most of the time, that is, money could be not be exchanged against consumer goods all the time. Certain essential things could not be obtained in stores, but on the black market only in form of barter (supplemented by money and alcohol as a form of payment). A development like this would be the logical conclusion of monetary policies started by Roosevelt in the 1930's.

One last remark: Every doom and gloom book should commit itself to stating a date by which the author admits that his predictions were wrong. For instance, if you predict bankruptcy of the United States, please also state a date by which such an event is going to happen at the latest. It does not make sense to predict the bankruptcy of the US 100 years from today. Such a prediction is totally worthless. If no date is specified by which the prediction is going to happen at the latest, there are no means to falsify the intellectual efforts of the author. In such a case, the prediction has only entertainment value.

5 out of 5 stars

Forewarned is forearmed. March 6, 2007
105 out of 110 found this review helpful

Part One of this book offers a brief overview of four financial threats the author suggests Americans will be facing in the near future. This is the mild stuff.

What follows, in Parts Two and Three, is a very disturbing "worst case" scenario of what life might be like for the average American once these four threats hit home. We could be facing a full-fledged systemic economic breakdown. And we will each be on our own. There is no certainty that we can count on Social Security; retirement pensions; Medicare, or financial institutions to save us. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be fallout from dozens of other disasters headed our way as society begins unraveling. We need to start taking immediate steps to educate and protect ourselves. Part Four of the book offers some advice on how to do just that.

This is an intense read. It is fascinating in somewhat the same way a trainwreck is fascinating. I couldn't put it down.

5 out of 5 stars

Gripping, terrifying and informing March 2, 2007
99 out of 100 found this review helpful

Financial Armageddon presents an alarming discussion of the Four Horsemen riding towards the U.S economy. Panzner has turned what might seem dry or inaccessible subjects - i.e derivatives, deficits, pension liabilities - into a tale even the layest of laymen can understand. Some will suggest it goes overboard in it's pessimism (hyper-inflation? widespread beggary and pestilence?) but even if it does it scarcely begins to offset the institutionalised optimism pumped out in the popular media. However the book is not just doom and gloom, it also provides concrete ideas on how individuals can prepare themselves and their investments. If even a fraction of Panzner's predictions come to pass investors will be grateful for the recommendations contained in this book. Read it and come away disturbed, but informed.

2 out of 5 stars

Close to Worthless! April 9, 2007
68 out of 90 found this review helpful

Yes, the U.S. is running headlong towards several serious financial problems, and Panzer includes a few alarming statistics that help document this. However, the bulk of "Financial Armageddon" is composed of vague generalities (eg. we don't even get an approximation of how much current federal, state and local obligations total), unexplained situations involving complex financial instruments (derivatives, hedge funds, various risk-assumption tools), and his recommendations (minimal debt, maximum pension and healthcare protection) are banal and useless.

Some of his interesting observations: 1)Foreigners now own over 42% of outstanding Treasury securities, up from 30% in 2000. 2)By 2005, 13.4% of mortgages were subprime, up from 2.1% in 1999; meanwhile, 25% of mortgages outstanding carried adjustable rates. 3)Profits of U.S. financial firms have risen from 4% of the total in 1982 to over 40% in 2006. 4)Not one recession in the past 50 years has been predicted in advance by a major poll of economists.

Unaddressed topics include rising sentiment for major foreign holders (China, OPEC nations) of U.S. debts to switch to investments in other nations, as well as the likely consequences of their doing so and their alternative leverage over U.S. policy by threatening to do so, outsourcing and illegal immigration's contribution to our declining financial future, opportunities to substantially improve healthcare quality while saving money - eg. providing national healthcare coverage (less administrative expenses, increased incentive for preventive and appropriate care), or the opportunity to substantially reduce wasteful education expenditures - eg. inflation-adjusted per-pupil annual operational expenditures have tripled in the last three decades with no improvement in graduation rates or NAEP 17-year-old achievement scores.

1 out of 5 stars

Waste of time November 26, 2007
31 out of 38 found this review helpful

I can sum this book up in 3 words: We're all screwed.

I forced myself to read the 1st two-thirds of the book covering all the fairly obvious reasons he thinks the US economy will collapse in minute detail, hoping to get to the part where he explains how to "protect my future". His "advice" can be summed up by the saying: bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your butt goodbye. I was expecting some information on investments that would be at least somewhat protected from the possible failure of the US economy. That advice never materialized.

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