You need to read this article from Financial Times, but let me say right up front that it’s going to feel like homework. It’s got four different fever charts, lots of phrases like “shadow financial system” and “credit contraction,” and so many references to obscure investment markets that you’ll wonder if anybody simply works hard and puts their money in the bank anymore.

OK, you’ve been warned. I’ll give you a minute to read it.

Back already? Hey, you’re not fooling anybody. You took one look at that essay and bailed out immediately, didn’t you? I don’t blame you. It’s pretty dense. So how about if I summarize it for you thusly: The current housing crisis is only the start of a chain of events that will drag the country into a catastrophic economic and financial meltdown, which will vaporize a trillion dollars of wealth and tip us into a protracted recession so deep that life will become as ruthlessly primitive and feral as a Mad Max movie.

Maybe I exaggerate, but only a little. The article says things could be really, really bad.

It caused me to think about how you organize your investments when the economic forecast calls for near-apocalyptic conditions. It isn’t a simple matter of getting out of the stock market and investing heavily in T-bills. It isn’t even a matter of cashing out your investments entirely and buying gold to bury in your back yard. In a Mad Max world, the economy will run strictly on barter, and gold won’t do you much good. You’ll need something that other people will find useful on a daily basis, something that you can readily trade for essentials like food.

Years ago, when I lived in Montana, I knew a guy who’d actually thought about this. His belief was that in a lawless, Mad Max world, the most valuable commodity would prove to be .22-caliber ammunition. His reasoning was that a .22-caliber weapon is the firearm the greatest number of people is likely to have, and that no one else would have thought to stockpile ammunition in massive amounts. At a certain point in that post-apocalyptic world, when personal protection and small-game hunting had used up whatever meager amounts of ammunition people had on hand, he’d be the Bill Gates of the new era.

I’m less visionary (which is why I’ll never be a kingpin in the barter economy). My plan to simply spend all my money as quickly as possible. Drinks are on me, people. Let’s meet the economic meltdown in the proper frame of mind.

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