Day: September 13, 2008

Note from JWR:

A SurvivalBlog reader in northwestern Alabama wrote me to mention that he witnessed the local price of gasoline jump $.70 per gallon overnight (to $5.35 per gallon.) This presumably, was in anticipation of a disruption in supply because of Hurricane Ike. It bears mentioning that many SurvivalBlog readers wisely have at-home underground gas and diesel tanks. Among other benefits, these allows them to ride out the ravages of occasional price spikes like this one, in which even wholesale gasoline jumped to over $5 per gallon! It is starting to look pretty C.C.R.-ish out there. (As the song goes: “Hope you …


The Lehman Brothers Debacle Illustrates the Extent of the Global Credit Collapse

You probably saw yesterday’s headline in The Wall Street Journal: Lehman Races to Find a Buyer. Well, well. The once mighty Lehman Brothers Holdings firm had a market capitalization of $47 Billion last year. But when I last looked, it was down to a paltry $2.58 billion. The company is now definitely on the ropes. It is likely that the Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB) is going to grow even larger. There will probably be an announcement made this weekend of a “private” takeover of Lehman–possibly including an overseas “white knight”–but down in the fine print we will learn that …


Letter Re: A SurvivalBlog Reader Prepares for Hurricane Ike

Dear Mr. Editor: Just a quick note to tell you how people that read your blog are preparing for Ike. Thanks for all the great information. I live near Houston in the suburbs, about 60 miles north of Galveston. Most of the stores are open and have plenty of water, drinks, bread, tuna and other canned foods. The stores have done a much better job this time of keeping needed items in stock than they did when Katrina was headed this way a couple years ago. The gas is going fast, and many stations are closed. I filled both my …


Letter Re: National Geographic’s Cover Story on Soil and Food

JWR, Here’s a link to the September 2008 National Geographic cover story about the world’s fragile soils and their diminishing capacity to feed 6.5 billion+ people as well as cautionary examples of places where the soils can no longer support the existing population due to poor stewardship in the past. Pages 92-93 of the hardcopy edition have a great fold out map showing soil fertility areas around the world — a good retreats and relocation general shopping reference (although certainly not detailed enough for researching specific properties). My Best, – Lee in Hurricane Alley


Letter Re: An E-Mailed SurvivalBlog Digest?

Sir, I would like to sign up to get your blogs [via e-mail]; but I can’t see where I do that; Could you please help me. Thanks, – Dianne M. JWR Replies: For the privacy of my readers, I don’t have a digest of my blog that is e-mailed. (I don’t like to keep lists. I don’t even keep records of anyone that makes a voluntary subscription donation.) Just direct your web browser whenever you’d like to read SurvivalBlog. It is updated daily (and I haven’t missed a day since the blog was started three years ago), so you might …


Odds ‘n Sods:

U.K. state memo warns of “anarchy” in the city streets. (Thanks to Florida Guy for the link.)    o o o Yishai flagged this for us, from The Morning Brief: “This could be the mother of year-ends,” Brian Sack, of Macroeconomic Advisers and a former Federal Reserve chief market analyst, tells Bloomberg, which says the Fed may have to increase the cash it provides to banks and brokers beyond already-record levels to help them balance their books at the end of the year in the wake of six bank failures in the past two months and rising concern about Lehman’s …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’ So, if government financial ‘favors’ are granted to reckless investment firms (Bear Stearns) and now mortgage borrowers, what about other economically vital ‘multiplier’ industries like: automakers, airlines, credit card and insurance companies and even corporate real estate lenders? The logical conclusion for this current drift is hyperinflation. In order to make good on its promises the Federal Government will have to resort to the printing press…with a vengeance. – John Browne