Day: September 20, 2012

Notes from JWR:

There are now just five days to release (and “Book Bomb Day”) for Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse. Please wait until the release date–which is also our planned Book Bomb day–to order your copy. Not only will you get yours at a better price (probably around $11), you will also help boost the book’s sales rank–hopefully into Amazon’s Top 20 titles. Thanks for your patience. — Today we present another entry for Round 42 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include: First Prize: A.) A gift certificate worth $1,000, courtesy of Spec Ops …


From Timber to Lumber: A Beginner’s Experience, by Sam D.

The recent article on Do it Yourself Timber Harvesting prompted me to share my experience starting a homestead on our 200+ acre tree farm in East Texas. Almost two years ago I settled on a site back in the woods next to a dry run-off creek bed for my home. Our farm has been in the family for well over a century, and the forest area I picked sat untouched for 60 years. One of my first investments was a 20” Stihl chain saw. Starting with little experience, about 10 chains, one sprocket and 2 replacement bars later I’m finally …


Letter Re: The Larger Questions

James: My wife and I have been “aware” that something isn’t right since the whole Y2K scare back in 1999.  Sadly at the time, we had no idea of what “prepping” was or the first thing to do about how we felt.  I think we might have had a dozen gallons of water on our shelves.  Pretty sad, but we really had no clue.  I’ve always had this nagging feeling that things were really getting worse all the time, but it wasn’t until I watched the “37 Things to Hoard” advertisement, that I finally decided I was going to find …


Letter Re: QE3–What Just Happened To Me?

Dear Editor: The monetization dubbed Quantitative Easing (QE) Round 3 (“QE3”) is very confusing, and there is a lot of mystery attached to the confusion. To fully understand what just happened to us I find it useful to frame the scenario in this why, and this maybe a better way to understand it for some. When I put currency somewhere(make a purchase or invest it) it is currency that I worked to obtain and represents an exchange of my labor for a specific amount of currency. This currency is representative (if I negotiate the salary correctly) of the value of …


Economics and Investing:

G.G. flagged this headline: 8,786,049: Yet Another Record for Americans Collecting Disability Also from G.G.: Moody’s: More California cities at risk of bankruptcy–Credit agency sees greater chance of municipal bankruptcies, bond defaults in California Paypal suspends domestic transactions in Argentina From reader B.B.: For Every $1 Added to the Economy, Obama Added More Than $3 in Debt Peter S. sent: FedEx says economy is stalling, cuts outlook Bond Wars: Chinese Advisor Calls For Japanese Bond Dump Items from The Economatrix: Ron Paul:  “Country Should Panic Over Fed’s Decision” QE3:  Helicopter Ben Bernanke Unleashes An All-out Attack On The US Dollar


Odds ‘n Sods:

Reader V.H. wrote: “I couldn’t help but notice that the Propper [brand] A-TACs camouflage pattern uses soft edges and colors that are very similar to the rebels’ camo used on the planet Endor, from [the second-produced film in the] Star Wars [movie series]. Is this one of those “life imitates art” situations, or vice versa? As I recall, the German Army experimented with soft-edged patterns during WWII, and some of those were quite effective.    o o o A clever new product that I first heard about nearly a year ago will soon be available to the public: The Survival …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“It is difficult to tell what will happen. I happen to believe that eventually we will have a systemic crisis and everything will collapse. But the question is really between here and then. Will everything collapse with Dow Jones 20,000 or 50,000 or 10 million? Mr. Bernanke is a money printer and, believe me, if Mr. Romney wins the election the next Fed chairman will also be a money printer. And so it will go on. The Europeans will print money. The Chinese will print money. Everybody will print money and the purchasing power of paper money will go down. …