Montreal, Canada

Last night I attended a concert performed by Roger Waters, co-founder of the rock band, Pink Floyd. I’ve been a huge Floyd fan since I was 16 and I’ve seen several shows since 1984, including Pink Floyd (without Waters) and a few solo shows by David Gilmour, who later joined the band as guitarist. This was the fourth time I saw Roger Waters.

If you like Pink Floyd, then you can understand the cult following this group attracts. I think you could compare it to The Grateful Dead. The latter never appealed to me.

To this day, The Dark Side of the Moon, released in 1973, ranks as the top- selling album of all-time. Nothing even comes close.

Last night’s performance of The Wall (1979) was simply a theatrical masterpiece. The Wall, like many other Floyd albums, is an artistic epiphany, just mind-blowing.

Is this a Rolling Stone’s critic of last night’s show? Not exactly.

So what does Roger Waters have to do with investing you might ask?

It occurred to me during this incredible 2-hour extravaganza how Big Brother is growing bigger and more powerful by the day. Waters makes this case loud and clear in his lyrics, especially in The Wall. The message is that we shouldn’t trust government.

George Orwell’s classic 1984 plays a big part in this important performance as citizens are lined-up like robots, completely and utterly brainwashed by repeated messages like “Trust Us,” and “Believe in Us.”

Increasingly, I think Orwell was right on the mark. We’ll see more government in our lives, less privacy and more confiscation of liberty and, possibly, personal assets, including gold.

The government has crossed the line since Obama took office. Everyone should prepare for more of Big Brother over the next several years, particularly if economic hardship continues in the major industrialized economies. I’m often reminded how great conflicts were triggered over the past 100 years amid severe economic dislocations in society, a breakdown of the class system and, eventually, chaos.

Be wary of Big Brother. Roger Waters sends the right message.