If You Can : good, short read

[corn18]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29031758/If%20You%20Can.pdf

Tom

[james.hendrickson]

Tom,

Thats an interesting document. Thanks. One thing that I didn't see well covered in there was the importance of inflation. The reality is that a period of inflation similar to what happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s will up end a lot of current thinking in personal finance.

I also frankly haven't seen a lot of good analysis as to how individuals should respond to mitigate inflation risk. Typically investors trot out two answers when they discuss responding to inflation. They are:

1. Buy Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS)

2. Buy precious metals

TIPs have a number of problems - notably they are lagging indicators. So they calculate their payments based on inflation rates for the past 6 months. The problem is that inflation happens in real time, which squeezes the individual investor.

Precious metals are a historical favorite when paper currencies are unreliable. The major problem is that there isn't really a lot of good data on how well the price of gold responds to inflation. And frankly I find it problematic to make financial decisions based on what a lot of internet gurus like Robert Kiyosaki say about gold.

So, if that piece said more about inflation I think it would have a stronger impact.