Coping: With Excessive Optimism

A kind reader sent me a link to a fine article in the Fairfield Weekly headlined “We’re Screwed!” which then gets into an interview with ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the rick of hyperinflation.  Worst case scenario?  Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system...”

While the scenario he paints is not only possible – but somewhat likely given that healthcare is the new CCC and WPA for this depression, the actual worst case that has popped out from reading the predictive linguistics runs is actually far worse than what Williams gets into.

Hyperinflation doesn’t just lead to rioting in the streets and devolution into a bartering system…there’s a whole breakdown of the Western business model that could go on along with that.  Some of the highlights of which would also include:

• Energy supplies by foreign countries to the US would be shut down due to collapsing value of the dollar.  While you might be able to hedge by staying home and reorganizing your life to cope, it wouldn’t be more than a year before frozen pipes were busting all over the place and there’d be no spares for repairs since that’s all petroleum based.

• Of course whatever food you had would be either canned, freeze-dried/stored, or fresh harvested since without power from largely imported energy, how are you going to run a refrigerator?

• There won’t be any work, since work would be paid for with nearly worthless dollars.  And it’s not like you’d be the only one walking off the job.  The cops, firemen, prison guard…how many of those kind of folks are going to keep working without money that actually buys them something?  More question to ponder: Do the guard keep all the bad guys boxed up, or are they all released on humanitarian grounds into the general population where they get to take revenge and whatever else?

• Also since there’s no power, there’d be no way to pump gas and that means for the rest of your life, you may be constrained to traveling whatever is in your tank right now.  Oh, and did I mention that 3-months is about it for storage life of ethanol laced fuel?

• Of course with no cops, a kind of ‘frontier justice’ returns and along with starvation, medical deaths (no meds or means to transport…) we all move back into the mid 1800′s.

A fellow I know, Dick Browning (The Texas Book of the Dead) has written an interesting (short) ebook type treatment what it would be like in a big city trying to survive and get into a stable/survivable position.  Pretty horrific stuff, but as the pressure builds in the Middle East and as the PTB ratchet up their mechanisms of control, what Williams lays out in the interview is not the whole weave of the terrible clothe woven of system breakdown.

The big horrors are the mass deaths from trapped militaries that become unsupportable without a working tax base and monetary system, the disease and deaths over food, and so forth.

Still, it’s a worthy read as long as you don’t look too far out ahead and ask the really scary questions like “Why does the predictive linguistics data fall off to almost nothing past 2012?”

Last Monday

But wait!  Who was that muttering about the grim/sober tone of this morning’s report?  Why, I’d cheerfully note this is the last Monday of 2009 that you’ll have to get up to go to work. 

Consider yourself privileged if you still have a job to go to…More than 15 million 375-thousand Americans aren’t so lucky, so no whining.  If the work doesn’t make you free, are you working on the right things?

–-

Send your comments to george@ure.net

The UrbanSurvival Mall:

“Live on $10,000″ A Year

With another round of layoffs due to start later this month…a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades…might I suggest a preemptive tactical move?  Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we’re all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California!  A good starting point, at least if you’ve still got $10-bucks is my e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”

It’s an automatic download.  It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left…  Click here for the index and details.

MyGroPonics

My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics.  It’s an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few ‘dollar stores’ and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space – like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight).  Sound interesting?  It’s just $10 bucks here…

Pass It On

The business model of this website is base Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list…Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh?  Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course….

—-

 Last week’s report is here.    For back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

“If you ain’t paranoid, you ain’t payin’ attention!”