Henry Makow, PhD:The Folly of Long-Term Investing!

We are entering a deflationary period, where the bankers will call in their loans and expropriate our property. If there are riots, they'll take our freedom and independence too. Being a "long term" investor takes steady nerves. Since July 22, your gains for the year have been wiped out and you are down at least 10%. You could be down 25-40% if you are in commodities, but you are not about to panic, because you've invested for the long term. Your mantra is "buy and hold." You're not going to "time the market." You are investing for retirement. That's why I have another investment strategy for you. I suggest you take your savings out of the bank in $1000 wads. Then, put a few wads of cash on the curb in front of your house. You may wish to "diversify" and put the cash on different streets or street corners. Within minutes or at most hours, you will find that your money is gone, but don't panic. That's short-term thinking. You're in it for the "long haul." With the passage of time, the people who took your money no doubt will have pangs of conscience and return it, and even leave a little extra. Be patient and have faith. We all have fantasies of buying a promising stock, then checking the price ten years later, and finding: we're rich! But this doesn't take "business cycles" into account. Even people who preach the gospel of long-term investing admit that business cycles exist, which are merely alternating periods of price inflation and deflation.