Red pill or Blue pill?

If you have ever seen the movie the Matrix you understand the title and even more understand that this is a question with in a question. If you haven't seen it you can watch the short clip here. The underlying question is, do you want the truth? And if you choose the truth are you willing to accept that things you have taken for granted all your life may not be as they seem?

I was faced with this question not long ago and began my decent "down the rabbit hole" well over a year ago. The question started out as many, small and fragmented. They mostly started out "what if...". What if America takes on more debt? What if the inflation rate is as low as reported? What are the unseen forces in this world that seem to be driving us toward some financial meltdown? Could there be a meltdown, and if so how bad would it be?

My brother and I often talked about the economy and how things seemed so gloomy. We often pondered the questions I raised of economic instability. Then one day he said showed me a video he found. It seemed to make sense what these people were saying but I didn't want to accept anything at face value. I spent the next two months reading and researching everything I could find on the problem of inflation. My conclusion is that it is not only a very real possibility it is already here and beginning to snowball. This will leave us in a depression far worse than 1929 because most of the people in the era had the skills needed to fall on to survive.

It was as if i had taken the "red pill" and had awoken to a world I had never seen before at least not in this condition. As began to study I found many authors of various articles saying we should use this time to prepare and buffer ourselves against tough times ahead. Now this wasn't "run for the hills and live in a cave" type survivalism but rather new emerging trend I found called "prepping".

The truth is prepping is not new. In fact the principles of it are very old. Keep extra on hand for emergencies is something I grew up with in the blizzard prone Northeast but keeping a years worth of food, and stocking toilet paper seemed a little excessive, at first. As I continued to research I saw that even the simple things are going up in price. (last week peanut butter went up in price 40%, expect to see more of this). I started to also study Argentina which in the late 90s went from a thriving first world nation to pitiful near third world country in less than 20 years. In part to hyperinflation and government corruption, sound familiar? Could it happen to us? Could the US the greatest country the world has know to date be slipping down the same slope?

The more I studied the more the more question I created than answered and the more upset I became until I became obsessed with looking for answers. Obviously I alone can not undo years of bad fiscal and monetary policy but can I do to save me? I felt like I was standing on the deck of the Titanic and the iceberg was there in site and no one even cared. This is the Titanic, dang it! It can't sink! This is the United States of America, dang it! It can't fail! Oh the pride that goes before the fall.

This, this is my story of looking, and in many ways, building my own life boat. I hope sharing my findings with might help you if you are also considering which pill to take.