 Good day, fellow investors. This video is called Been There, Done That and we talk a lot about economic environments, macroeconomy, potential hyperinflation, political turmoil, stock markets that never recover like the Japanese market or so and I really want to discuss here where I come from. I had the luxury to be born in the former Republic of Yugoslavia, a communist country, so I come from the eastern block and when you say inflation, war, stock market never recovering, Been There, Done That. I have seen it all from my perspective, from where I come from. I've lived through everything and I just want to show you in this video that I'm sure 90% of my viewers never seen such things because either they are very young or they don't even imagine that can happen because they are biased by the current stable market environment, stable interest rates, stable inflation, stable long-term economic growth. Even if we had the crisis in 2009, many of you were still in high school but even that was just a blip, okay, 2009 crash, huge intervention and everything was stable. Things can get unstable and where I come from Yugoslavia, small country, an isolated ecosystem where all these things happening now in the global world might develop much faster and that's why I see what happens when you do certain things. I want to show you what happened there because it can apply to the global world in the long-term cycle. It just on small countries it happens much, much faster. Let's see. This is something very nice. Yugoslavia's 1970s deficit and debt. So the total external debt spiked, the cumulative trade deficit spiked. Let's see the US total debt spiking. Do you see that? And total cumulative trade deficit also spiking. Where did this lead back in Yugoslavia? Well over the next 10 years from 1970s that continued and then at a certain point in time when inflation went out of control you had inflation, yearly inflation of 1,252%. I remember I was a kid and we were given a pen so that we can write over the four zeros and make the nodes of a smaller nomination but that's crazy. But I've been there. I know how that works and how that ended. Then as Delio says, and I hope it doesn't happen, this is Dubrovnik not from a medieval artistic picture but this is from 25, 27 years ago as we had a war unfortunately. I hope I never see a war again. We never see a war but I've been there, done that. So I know how it looks like and it's not nice. However afterwards the situation got better and then we have a real stock market boom everybody was exuberant price earnings ratio went to the sky and then 2009 small economy Croatia in this case and everything crashed and it didn't recover forever. Now the stock market is even lower than it was in 2005-2012 so really really bad performance because of valuations because of the quality of the businesses over the long term. Similarly to what happened in the 1930s it took 30 years for the stocks to recover from back then. So just a quick video to share with you the message that anything can happen. You can just kick the can down the road but when these economic forces get into the game from debt, trade deficit, low production, long-term cycle, increasing debt, debt, doing everything with debt instead of productivity, sometimes down the road it has to explode. You can kick the can down the road using the military power you have, using the currency power you have which Europe doesn't have for now for example and then try to enjoy the system for as long as it takes but sometimes somewhere down the road you have to pay your dues. Smaller countries pay them extremely quickly and there we have this huge boom and bust cycles, huge inflation rates and that's what I've been through that is what I've seen through my eyes but I want to also to give you the positive picture. Life in the 1980s in back in Yugoslavia was much worse than what it is now in Croatia. People live better, technology improved, they have all internet, they all have mobile phones, they all enjoy their coffees at their cafe in the sun. So things are from a perspective GDP perspective not that much better but life goes on no matter what even if inflation life goes on people still use products so you can still be invested in businesses that have pricing power etc etc so the key is okay well if that happens how am I prepared and as always if whatever happens if you are prepared then you can take advantage of it. If you're not prepared the situation will take advantage of you and that's the key when it comes to whatever investing life job business whatever and my message for the channel and for this is be prepared because anything can happen and you you can predict them because those things happened when we had exactly the same conditions we have now and that's what Dalio keeps mentioning with the long term cycle with the short term cycle it might happen tomorrow it might happen in 2035 but it will probably happen over the life cycle of most of us and that's something we have to always keep in mind okay we can have hyperinflation we can have this we can have that we can have stocks not recovering what will I do in that situation and when you think like that then you are divided diversified across different asset classes uncorrelated asset classes and then you rebalance between them depending on what is cheap at the moment and then you do extremely well over the long term you accumulate wealth you accumulate value and when you accumulate value nothing can stop you because value is value forever if it's really real value not even inflation not even wars in the worst case scenario so that's the message for today looking forward to your comments to your comments share your stories if you have similar stories or share if you have never seen such things as stock market crashes of 80 percent that I show shown you I remember watching the screens fortunately I had no stocks in 2008 but it was minus 10 minus 10 everything read back then hyperinflation I'll bring the notes one day when I get back to Croatia I have a pile of money like this that didn't even buy you a loaf of bread so thank you for watching I'll see you in the next video