Day: February 13, 2009

Notes from JWR:

The economic news has been so copious for so many months that I’ve decided to create a new daily Economics and Investing section, to divide those items from the extant Odds ‘n Sods section. My heartfelt thanks to The Economatrix (our volunteer Economic Editor) and to the many SurvivalBlog readers that have sent such a deluge of economic news and commentary links. Please keep them coming, via e-mail. Thanks! — Just two days left to bid! The current high bid in the SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction is at $1,650. This auction ends at midnight (Eastern time) on Sunday, February 15th. This …


Letter Re: Gold and Silver Coins as an Investment

James Wesley, I’d like your input regarding the purchase of gold and silver coins from third party vendors. Instead of paying $1,000+ for a single gold coin of one troy ounce. I’d like to buy ten 1/10th troy ounce gold (or silver) coins. I feel smaller denominations of “hard” currency promote better trade/purchase power. I have noticed in a multitude of Gun/Survival forums/magazines various companies that offer coins that are not directly from the U.S. mint but are [in smaller fractional sizes] than what you normally purchase from the US Mint. I can foresee having a handful of one troy …


Letter Re: Denominating in Time Versus Dollars

James, Today I picked up 200 pounds of pearled barley from my local health food store that had ordered it for me. As I loaded it into my living room so I could mylar seal it, I flashed on what it would have represented in terms of time (man hours) in an earlier age. To get that 200 pounds of barley, I would have had to: 1) Have land 2) Have seed 3) Till, irrigate and plant the land 4) Protect the crop from birds and thieves 5) Harvest, thresh and transport the grain The number of man hours required …


Sending “Patriots” as a Form of Protest

Dear Jim, I was incensed that one of my state’s US Senators (Kay Hagan of North Carolina) voted for the so-called “Stimulus Bill”. I searched for ways to register my protest in such a way that it would get her attention. Thanks to you and your novel “Patriots”, I have a way. I just sent her a copy with a gift card from Amazon.com. The gift card reads: “This is to thank you for voting for the stimulus bill and making the resulting economic collapse and hyperinflation profiled in this work of fiction a reality.” I just hope she gets …


Economics and Investing:

From the most recent issue of The Appenzell Daily Bell comes an article that details both banking peril and some blatantly revisionist editing: European Commission report says $25 trillion in toxic EU bank holdings Reader “DD” sent us this: Thousands losing jobs in housing crisis. From reader H.D.: The Great Awakening: Boomers, Your Crisis Has Arrived (Part 1 of 3). From G.G. came this link: German 10-year Bund auction fails for second successive time. Laura H. said that liked this Wall Street Journal editorial: Capitalism Needs a Sound-Money Foundation. Items from The Economatrix: Martin Weiss: Stock Market to Fall at …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Hawaiian K. flagged a great article at Kevin Kelly’s Technium Blog: Amish Hackers    o o o SurvivalBlog’s Editor at Large Michael Z. Williamson pointed us to the comments accompanying this article: Second Circuit to Second Amendment: Drop Dead…. The article was informative, but I thought that the comment from “Bruce” was potentially quite practical: “[I]f you live in a rural area like I do, go out in the woods somewhere and dig a hole. Don’t fill it in. We’ll call it the ‘plausible deniability hole’. Then, when the state comes for your guns (bullion, whatever), take the officers to …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“You’ve got to understand that we had a big ranch but we only got money once or twice a year out of it. The money wasn’t very free. All the money you got was in gold coin. I remember I was nearly fifteen or sixteen years old before I saw much paper money. It was all gold and silver. They didn’t have any greenbacks that I remember. My dad would take the wool and mutton to sell, and he’d come back with some tobacco sacks full of twenty-dollar gold pieces. He used to drive three or four-hundred head of sheep …