Finance - Gold and Silver for Peace of Mind Part II

This fits in with PART I.  It is from a Stansberry Research article.  Not my own but very fitting in the sense that 1) it is difficult for people to think of the need to protect themselves and 2) further reasons why someone should take action:

 "As you go about your everyday life, it's easy to forget how big the economic problems we face really are… and how desperate our political leaders have become to safeguard the existing system.

That's because of human psychology. It's called the "normalcy bias." It explains why, if you don't heat up the water too fast, the "frog" never jumps out of the pot before it starts to boil. People (the frogs) have a hard time believing that tomorrow won't be a lot like today. It can be almost impossible to open your mind enough to think about how the world might look a year from now… or five years from now… if there's a serious economic crisis.
 
 ......the largest, most systematically important banks in the world: Mitsubishi UFJ (MTU), Deutsche Bank (DB), and Citigroup (C). Their share prices are down 72%, 83%, and 90% over the past 10 years.

How is that possible?

 I'd like for you to ask yourself two simple questions: First, if you believe that everything in the world's economy is basically fine and operating normally… how could the three most important banks in the world all be falling apart? Ask a reasonably well-read and knowledgeable person – like your broker, or the friend you always talk with about investments – what the 10-year return has been on the three largest banks in free-market capitalism. I guarantee they won't come anywhere close to the correct answer.

That's normalcy bias in action. People constantly disregard any facts or data points that don't match their underlying assumptions, especially when those data points would disrupt a long-held belief or worldview. Let me say this as plainly as I can: If our global financial system were working normally, the returns on these major, immensely important piles of capital would at least be positive.
 
Here's the second question I want you to think about carefully: How far will these banks have to fall before you think seriously about taking all of your savings out of the banking system? If these banks fail, the system will fail. And how much faster will you make the decision to pull your cash if these banks begin charging you to hold your cash in their bankrupt vaults?
 
So what happens when suddenly, for no discernable reason at all, everyone decides to stop pretending otherwise?

 When that happens, the authorities will have three choices. They can…

1. Inflate away the bad debt by devaluing the currency and propping up the banking system with newly printed money and trade surpluses. That's the International Monetary Fund's playbook. It's what Japan has tried to do for 30 years. And it seems like that's what America and Europe are going to try now, too. Or…

2. Write off the bad loans, shut down the bad banks, and suffer a severe (but short) crisis. That's the sound-money option. (Nobody does that anymore, because depositors in the bad would banks lose everything… and they vote.) Or…

3. Simply repudiate a lot of the debt and stiff the creditors, like Russia did in 1998 and Iceland did in 2008. (That option works best if you have foreign creditors… like Argentina did in 2002.)

.....................and especially commodities—are likely to explode on the upside as people panic into them to get out of depreciating dollars in general and bonds in particular. Real estate will be—next to bonds—the most devastated single area of the economy because no one will lend money long term. And real estate is built on the mortgage market, which will vanish."