Let's be realistic. These are financially frightening, unprecedented times for everyone, but especially for investors. Traders might not be as concerned because they try to make money whether the markets are going up or down. But everyone wants safe investments, or at least "safer" investments.

But if you are like many, what happens on Wall Street and the decisions The Federal Reserve and The U.S. Treasury make will impact your quality of life and your plans for retirement.

In these highly uncertain times, with the stench of panic and confusion wafting in the air, we need to put safety first and foremost.

"Right Marc, so what should I do?" Well, my answer is to do something smart, proactive and relevant to the circumstances we are faced with. None of us has a crystal ball, but we can look back with perfect 20/20 hindsight to see what worked during similar financial cataclysms.

"Yes, but this time is different!" That is correct, but there are similarities. For instance in the Great Depression of the 1930s and The Stagflation and Watergate years of the 1970s, we also saw a time when people were losing confidence in their government and in the paper currencies tied to their personal wealth.

Back then buying treasury bills or burying your paper money savings in your backyard might have sounded prudent, but when the prices of everything from housing to fuel to food began to take off faster than anticipated these "safe" investments couldn't keep up with the cost of living. So during bad times and hard times and economically depressed times, people turned to precious metals to preserve what they had and to keep up with the escalating cost of staying alive.

This is especially true during times like these when the population is exploding and other nations like China, Russia, India and Brazil are competing for the same limited resources that we need. More people than ever in history have money and personal wealth that they need to protect. Peak oil is real and the coming shortages of oil, natural gas, and the limited amounts of alternative energies points toward higher prices for fuel sources which generate power and movement. That's why I do believe we should be investing in the best managed, most resource-abundant companies like BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) for example.

At the same time, I expect another commodity investment to become even more profitable than oil and natural gas. You see, it’s not just the developing world that needs growth. With the U.S. and other developed nations saddled with high debt levels, we desperately need to keep interest rates low and liquidity high. You saw what happened this summer with the subprime fallout.