Day: September 30, 2008

Notes from JWR:

I just got word that the US House of Representatives voted down the $700 billion USD Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Bill. I’m glad to see that it was defeated. There is simply no proper substitute for allowing the credit market to correct itself, by working the bad debt out of the system. Propping up the system would have made the eventual reckoning day even worse. There will probably be some substitute or “bipartisan compromise” legislation offered, but don’t fall for it. If it extracts money from your wallet to bail out the banks from Credit Default Swap derivatives and …


Letter Re: A Successful Search for a Survival Retreat Property

Hi Jim, we wanted to share our story with your readers who may not have been able to acquire their retreats yet, and worry they never will. We hope our story will inspire them…. We sold our home in record time recently (big shock) and then went on a major hunt to find our “perfect spot”…we have been preparing and stocking up and looking to find the area we wanted to buy retreat in and start in earnest to live self-sufficiently, hoping and praying when the time came it would all come together. We had very specific parameters: minimum of …


Letter Re: Storing Multipurpose Castile Soaps

Jim, Thanks for your warnings and all the help your novel and blog are to us. In reference to the recent mention of Dr. Bronner’s soaps, I just wanted to pass along some tips on Kirk’s Castile coconut soap. It doesn’t have a lot of added chemicals. I can purchase it at Woodman’s for 79 cents a bar.[JWR Adds: It is also available at reasonable prices from several Internet vendors if bought in full cases.] It can be used as shampoo as well as to brush your teeth. People don’t believe me when I tell them it’s been my shampoo …


Letter Re: Recommendation for Water BOB Bathtub Water Storage Bladder

Dear Mr. Rawles, All the stories recently about power failure and storing water in bathtubs have encouraged me to write to you about the WaterBOB. It’s a heavy duty plastic bladder that you put in your bathtub and then fill with clean water from the tap. It comes with a siphon so that removing the water is easy. IMO, The greatest advantage of this product is that the water remains potable, even though a bathtub is generally not suitable for storing drinking water. The WaterBOB holds 100 gallons. Prices have increased substantially since I first bought mine a year or …


Letter Re: Expect Delays and Confusion During FDIC Settlements

Jim: If Michael A. in Seattle was surprised by his little run-in with the FDIC, I urge him and others to research what happened in Texas during the S&L crisis. That’s within fairly recent memory, just about 20 years ago, not like the Great Depression [which has faded from memory. And this was when the entire rest of the nation’s banking system was largely intact but the S&Ls in Texas (and a few surrounding states) caused all the fuss. Common problems included: 1. Inability to get at checking or savings accounts for months at a time. 2. Inability to get …


Letter Re: Making Alternatives to Commercial Chemical Light Sticks

Hi Jim, I’m a long time reader of the blog and I liked your novel. I have been amazed at your ability to acutely foresee coming events. More and more yours is the first site that I read every day. I noticed your article on glow sticks and I have an excellent upgrade for your readers. Forget using glow sticks and graduate to Krill lights. Now glow sticks still have their place, but 98% of the time this will be a better item to use. I have purchased several of these over the years and have always been impressed. They …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Some more newspaper gleanings, most coming from our Economic editor: Citigroup to buy Wachovia banking operations — Bailout Failure Will Cause US To Crash (For full disclosure, I would append the headline with: “But Bailout Success Will Cause Dollar to Crash”) — UK Banker Leaps To Death In Front Of Express Train — Fed Pumps Further $630 Billion Into Financial System — House defeats $700 Billion financial markets bailout    o o o Hawaiian K. suggested an article over at Treehugger on aquaponics    o o o Reader FFF spotted this: How China has created a new slave empire    …