I sometimes differ from Don in his assessment of the timing of the collapse of our economic system, and thus conversion of assets to hard currency and tangible goods. Not in a bad way, but I see a slightly longer horizon - perhaps wishfully since my retirement timeline is still a few years away, admittedly.
However, tonight I watched a segment with Colonel Oliver North on Fox where he was commenting on the chaos in the Middle East. He made one very simple statement that stuck in my head and left me wondering if my timeline is off.
He said: " if you think the market drop in 2008 was serious, wait until the first nuke goes off in the Middle East. It will take 10 years to recover"
If the Sunni and Shiite continue down the path to a broad civil war it would not be beyond the possibility to see one of them using a nuke, which would essentially collapse the fragile world economy.