Page 80 - Why We Want You To Be Rich - Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki.pdf

74 I CHAPTER FIVE

governments and financial institutions. Between 2000 and 2005, the
Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion - more than all the
previous administrations combined.

Getting back to the $5,OOO-a-month families, many of these families
tried to solve their problem by taking out home equity loans. Youhave
seen the ads on television telling you how smart it is to payoffall your
credit card bills with a home equity loan. This is a smaller example of
pushing the problem forward. The president and the government today
are solving the problem in much the same way,taking out ahome equity
loan on our future. This problem leads to the next problem.

3. A falling dollar: As already mentioned, in 1971 the dollar was
converted from real money to a currency. In 1971, President Nixon was
trying to solve a problem - too much of our gold was leaving the
country. Why was gold leaving the country? The answer is found by
going back to problem number one - a growing trade deficit. Because
we were buying too manyJapanese and European goods, the difference
between what we sold to them and what we purchased from them was
collected in gold, because back then our dollar was backed by gold. To
solvethat problem, President Nixon simply changed our dollar from an
asset to a liability - an IOU. Today,our trade deficit ishigher than ever
before and our IOU to the world is massive.

Instead ofbacking our dollar with gold, the United States can just print
more money (just as we as individuals use credit cards or write checks
without any money in the bank - the difference being that you and I
can be arrested and thrown in jail for writing bad checks).

While printing as much fake money as we wanted was intended to
temporarily solve the problem in 1971, it did not solve the problem of
over-consumption. As a result, the 1971 change created even more
problems. Very big problems that we are beginning to pay for today.

Between 1996 and 2006, in just 10 years, the u.s. dollar has lost half of
its value, when compared to gold. In 1996, gold was selling for

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