Another worldwide economic slump coming?

[Zimmy]

I may have just drank the koolaid they feed you on the radio and internet too much, but it seems the economy isn't going in the right direction to be healthy. All that jumps at me is the pending default in Greece, the threat of Portugal and Ireland following, the American debt ceiling trap, lack of jobs and housing, the return of greedy banking practices, and our ineffectual and self serving American political machines. The list goes on and on...

It seems the "good news" you hear about in various economic indicators looks a lot like fluff, smoke, and mirrors.

Stock markets are a confidence game and nobody has confidence anymore.

How do you prepare for that kind of collapse? Are we headed to where cash might be worthless and a slice of bread could buy a bag of gold as the song says?

[Ops NCO]

Yep, it's all a house of cards. And, just like the mortgage mess, one day someone will say "Hey, the Emperor has no clothes!", and the whole thing will collapse.

I add to my emergency food supply every week. If I'm wrong, I can always eat it.

[Recon133]

No worry - drink the Koolaid, there is a spaceship coming to save us.

[AK Airborne]

Yep, it's all a house of cards. And, just like the mortgage mess, one day someone will say "Hey, the Emperor has no clothes!", and the whole thing will collapse.

I add to my emergency food supply every week. If I'm wrong, I can always eat it.

That's my logic. If I'm right..... I eat. If I'm wrong.....I eat. We are stocking up on 30 year food and expanding our growing area exponentially. Greenhouse, cold frames and a much larger greenhouse presently in the works. When completed we will have 1700 sq. ft. of greenhouse and about 200 sq. ft. of cold frames. Our food supply is already 3 years ahead not counting the 30 year food of which we are 2 years ahead. Bottom line: we can lock the gate and eat for 5 years even without growing one thing.We replenish as we eat. We also have a card at Sams Club. If the supermarkets begin to show signs of waning supplies we will stock up on even more. One thing to mention, you need to grow from non-hybrid seeds or you will not have seeds for next year.

[fstroupe]

I may have just drank the koolaid they feed you on the radio and internet too much, but it seems the economy isn't going in the right direction to be healthy. All that jumps at me is the pending default in Greece, the threat of Portugal and Ireland following, the American debt ceiling trap, lack of jobs and housing, the return of greedy banking practices, and our ineffectual and self serving American political machines. The list goes on and on...

It seems the "good news" you hear about in various economic indicators looks a lot like fluff, smoke, and mirrors.

Stock markets are a confidence game and nobody has confidence anymore.

How do you prepare for that kind of collapse? Are we headed to where cash might be worthless and a slice of bread could buy a bag of gold as the song says?

IMO it isn't you drinking the Kool Aid, it is the people that believe there has been some kind of recovery up to this point. None of the traditional indicators show significant improvement. Other indicators, such as the "unemployment" figures, have been changed so that the numbers can be toyed with to say whatever the creator of those numbers want them to say. (unemployment in the traditional sense is more like 20% rather than the 9.x the Department of Labor claims) Housing values have dropped a little this year, though that number usually is a little behind the curve. I don't really know what "greedy banking practices" you speak of.

The significance of Greece and some other European countries in all of this is that they are a microcosm of where we are going. (high taxes on businesses and job creators, huge unwieldy government, a significant percent of the population working for the government with much higher wages and much better benefits than the public sector, high debt to GDP ratio, etc)

Really, all you have to do is look at history. The US has been in 20 recessions with 12 of them being called depressions. (though there is a rigid definition for "recession", there is not for "depression") Only twice has there not been significant improvements in two years, the current "recession" and "the great depression". I have to assume for the same reason...government intervention. A country has never been able to spend its way out of a recession, the spending done by FDR caused "the great depression" to last well into the 1940s.

Confidence in the market and the confidence required for significant job creation will not improve until the government gets out of the way. Without knowing what kind of new regulations the government agencies may come up with, investors and job creators WILL NOT spend significant amounts of money just to lose their investments due to government regulation. The president and his agencies do not have to actually put new regulations in effect, just talking about them creates uncertainty and unrest. Passing massive laws without the details being worked out beforehand (such as in Obamacare) do not help.

Like you, I do not know what to do. We live from paycheck to paycheck and DO NOT have an elaborate lifestyle (by anyone's definition). If this thing lasts for 10 more years, food caches and the like probably won't help, but can't hurt either. Some "experts" say limit your debt. I personally think that owning a "paid off" single family dwelling is the best preparation you can do, if worst comes to worst as long as you can come up with the yearly taxes you have a roof over your head even if you can't afford the light bill. (I'm being very serious here) Though I know this isn't possible for most. "Paid off" vehicles too. I guess I'm thinking in the direction of things that you will not lose due to foreclosure or repossession, or in a bankruptcy if worst comes to worst.

I have tried to put us in a decent position, our vehicles are paid for (but quickly aging), my house note is fairly small, and the house will be paid off in 3.5 years. My wife lost her job last November, and though we are struggling, we are surviving. We do not have much credit card debt (less than $2000), and had "credit insurance" on the ones we do have, so no real hassles from the bill collectors for a year.

[Zimmy]

One thing to mention, you need to grow from non-hybrid seeds or you will not have seeds for next year.

This is true. Squash and tomatoes are some of the few hybrid plants that will "volunteer" plants from seed next year. Squash is iffy at that. The next year tomatoes are actually better than Romas IMO.

[SGT G]

You only need to look back to the Weimar Republic of post WWI Germany to see what awaits us. Convertible assets such as gold and silver are a good idea. Also food that can be stored for years is good too but nothing will be more important than guns and ammo. Being well armed and willing to do what's nessary for you and your family to survive trumps all other forms of preparation.

[rcook7440]

http://inflation.us/

NIA Newsletter below is the most depressing shit in the world to read but it makes sense and their analysis has been about dead-on since I've been following it. I started buying silver (and some gold) every paycheck when oh-bam-uh's plan for our economy started to become clear. Silver went up so fast last year that I was able to sell my silver and purchase my 10 acre ranch in cash last month.

NIA Newsletter below:

When the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) reported their latest consumer price index (CPI) inflation data last week, everybody in the mainstream media worked tirelessly to spin the data in order to proclaim that U.S. price inflation is not a problem. Most articles in the media reported that inflation slowed in May due to falling gas prices. The truth is, gas prices rose last month and U.S. price inflation is spiraling out of control.

Price inflation based on the CPI on a year-over-year basis rose during the month of May to 3.57%, up from 3.16% in April, 2.68% in March, 2.11% in February, 1.63% in January, 1.5% in December, and 1.1% in November. The official rate of price inflation has more than tripled over the past 6 months. Yes, maybe the rate of year-over-year price inflation rose by slightly less in May over April, than it did in April over March, but this isn't good news at all. This U.S. dollar is still rapidly losing its purchasing power and the rate at which it is declining in purchasing power is accelerating.

On an unadjusted basis, gas prices rose 3.6% in the month of May. The media is reporting gas prices based on the BLS's seasonal adjustments. Only with the BLS's deceptive seasonal adjustments did gas prices decline by 2% in the month of May. The BLS's seasonal adjustments will actually reverse starting in the month of July and add to reported gasoline prices. NIA predicts that come August when the BLS releases its July CPI report, the media will begin focusing on unadjusted gasoline prices because the unadjusted gain will be less than the adjusted one. The media always reports the data that supports their agenda and ignores the data that works against it.

The media is obviously just saying what the U.S. government wants them to say. Larry Summers, a Keynesian economist who served for 5 years last decade as President of Harvard and was up until late-2010 director of President Obama's White House National Economic Council, just said last week that, "the underlying rate of inflation is still trending downwards". The media's favorite economist Paul Krugman, a Keynesian who has an op-ed column in the New York Times, said last week that, "There’s really nothing here to shake my view that deflation, not inflation, is the threat."

Krugman, who has been calling for massive price deflation the whole entire time that NIA has been predicting massive price inflation, is refusing to admit he has been wrong and is telling all Americans to ignore rapidly rising food and energy prices because he claims they are too volatile. He (Govt) is telling the world to focus solely on the core CPI, which ignores food and energy, the two items that Americans need most to live and survive. Core CPI is weighed heavily by rents and America's Real Estate bubble still isn't done deflating. The only purpose of having a core CPI is for Keynesian economists like Krugman to use it to mislead Americans and deceive them into believing that inflation is not a problem.

Core CPI was an invention of the Nixon administration, which right there should tell you all you need to know about it. President Nixon's idea for creating core CPI, was to deceive Americans about price inflation by excluding the items that were rising the most, which he would justify by calling these items "too volatile". NIA has predicted from the very beginning that inflation will not effect all goods and services equally and that as inflation begins to spiral out of control, inflation would gravitate most towards the prices of the items that Americans need the most, and there is nothing that Americans need more than food and agricultural products, and to a lesser extent energy.

Based on the BLS's CPI, year-over-year U.S. price inflation in the month of May of 3.57% was the highest year-over-year price inflation rate since October of 2008, right before the global financial crisis. If it wasn't for the global financial crisis of late-2008/early-2009 and the world's mistake of liquidating real assets and hoarding fiat U.S. dollars as a safe haven, it is likely that the official rate of U.S. price inflation would already be in the double-digits today. NIA estimates the real rate of U.S. price inflation, minus geometric weighting and hedonics, to currently be approximately 7.5% on a year-over-year basis. It is possible that the real U.S. price inflation rate will reach double digits in the second half of 2011. That will be devastating to the U.S. economy because at that point it will just about guarantee that the Federal Reserve will have to raise the federal funds rate to north of 10% by the middle of this decade.

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet just reached a brand new record of $2.832 trillion, up from $2.815 trillion in the prior week, as we approach the end of QE2 at the end of June. The stock market is already anticipating the end of QE2 with the Dow Jones currently down over 900 points from its high at the end of April. The declining stock market is pretty much sowing the seeds for a QE3. After all, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn't want to see the phony U.S. economic recovery blow up in smoke.

Bernanke will do everything possible to disguise QE3 and will never admit to there being a QE3. Remember, this is the same Federal Reserve Chairman who lied to every single American on '60 Minutes' when he said, "We're not printing money." That is exactly what QE2 is, printing money, but just like how Bernanke won't admit to printing money, Bernanke is now going to retire the term "quantitative easing" and come up with a new term for the Fed's latest destructive policy of creating massive monetary inflation.

It is important to spread the word about NIA to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, if you want America to survive hyperinflation. Please tell everybody you know to become members of NIA for free immediately at: http://inflation.us