James,
First let me say that I have thoroughly enjoyed reading SurvivalBlog over the years. It has been a source of insight, inspiration and motivation to myself, my friends and most of my family whom I’ve shared it with.
A few months ago we watched as Hurricane Sandy hit the upper East Coast from afar. I’m about 200 miles from the Gulf Coast and as any other resident in this area, we keep an eye on the sky during the Hurricane Season. But knowing this was not in our back yard, I didn’t worry. I generally keep everything stocked up well in advance for most things that could happen, but I do have family that live closer to the coast and aren’t as much of an ant as I. That being said I have made it a point to purchase an extra generator, extra water, filters, fuel, etc… Some of this of course, can be attributed to you.
On Monday, October 29th, as is typical for me, I spent time reading and praying and then went to the bank on the way to the office and made my personal deposit for the week. On Tuesday, I received a notice that one of my auto drafts did not go through. Thinking this odd, since I generally keep an eye on my income and expenditures I went online and found that my deposit had not made it into my account, nor had the deposit from the previous week. I called the bank to explain to them what had happened, only to be told that “due to Hurricane Sandy” my checking accounts would all be experiencing delays and problems. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve been with this “Locally owned and operated” institution for several years. How could this happen?? I dug a little deeper and found that our bank had actually been recently bought out by another “Locally owned and operated” institution a couple months earlier and they now run all of our transactions through a servicing firm in New Jersey. Talk about amazed… I was amazed.
But I was not dazed. I immediately thanked the Lord for the teachings of Dave Ramsey and James Rawles. I went home, opened my safe, distributed enough cash to my family for a week and we went on through for a full week before our bank was able to get our account back in proper order. I truly was and remain very wary of the ripple effect in our all of our lives. It is not new, nor will it ever stop really. We will always have to deal with the ripple effect of a shrinking and connected world.
I see the current gun debate going on. Within 30 minutes of the Newtown tragedy, the world new and was effected by it. We were all appalled and saddened to say the least. But that is not where it stops. Now we have to tolerate a seemingly knee jerk reaction at this opportune moment by the gun grabbing liberals. This is not truly a knee jerk reaction. They were and remain waiting, anticipating a cause to rally the troops and plant fear in the hearts of law abiding and sometimes ignorant Americans.
I could go on. Today, what is done in Washington DC does effect me. I can not keep my head in the sand and hope that it will all blow over. It won’t. I must make phone calls to our Senators, I must take an active role in our government. I must use my good influence to over come the bad. That being said, I do advise your readers to follow a plan in their finances. Diversify their holdings not only in multiple dollar based stocks but into tangible products, land, a home, precious metals, etc… For the price paid today for that diversification could be nothing compared to it’s worth in a few months or years. If you listen to the political pundits you will think that things will always be the way they have always been. But there is only one eternal kingdom and the US of A is not it. And just to clarify and close; the ripple doesn’t have to start in Washington DC. It could be Greece, Israel or Iran. I don’t know what the cause of the next big ripple will be, but I do know there will be an effect on many areas of our lives. – K.C.