The New Paranoia: Hedge-Funders Are Bullish on Gold, Guns, and Inflatable Lifeboats

[antimatter98]

http://nymag.com/news/features/all-new/53372/

"During the final months of 2008, as the financial markets imploded, talk on trading desks turned to food and water stockpiles, generators, guns, and high-speed inflatable boats. “The system really was about six hours from failing,” says Gene Lange, a manager at a midtown hedge fund, referring to the week in September when Lehman went bust and AIG had to be bailed out. “When you think about how close we were to the precipice, I don’t think it necessarily makes a guy crazy to prepare for the potential worst-case scenario.”

Preparations, in Lange’s case, include a storeroom in his basement in New Jersey stacked high with enough food, water, diapers, and other necessities to last his family six months; a biometric safe to hold his guns; and a 1985 ex-military Chevy K5 Blazer that runs on diesel and is currently being retrofitted for off-road travel. He has also entertained the idea of putting an inflatable speedboat in a storage unit on the West Side, so he could get off the island quickly, and is currently considering purchasing a remote farm where he could hunker down. “If there’s a financial-system breakdown, it could take a year to reset the system, and in that time, what’s going to happen?” asks Lange. If New York turns into a scene out of I Am Legend, he wants to be ready."

[liberal N proud]

1. Maybe they expect to be the first target when all hell breaks loose

[tomreedtoon]

2. Wasting his money. No one has the guts to riot.

I know people (my sister is one) expecting the blacks to rise up and riot. She gathered guns and goods in preparation for the day when the (expletive deleted) would boil out of the Saint Louis ghetto to kill and rape (in that order) all the white people.

This guy assumed that we would riot because we'd all lost our jobs, homes, retirement and future. We don't do that. We're wimps. It is more likely that his own family will turn guns on him than that some stranger will come looking to kill his oppressor.