Letter Re: Gauging Bank and Thrift Safety

James, I wrote you a month or two ago regarding a post of yours that was concerned about failing banks. I commented that I thought the worries were overblown – there was no reason to think that FDIC wouldn’t pay off the claims, just as FSLIC paid off the claims in the 1980s. I still think that’s true, but I have had a personal cautionary experience that has moved me much closer to your way of thinking. I had a brokered Certificate of Deposit (CD) issued by IndyMac. (In case you post this, for readers unfamiliar with the term, “brokered” …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“How fabulous,” writes Brian Reade in the British tabloid The Mirror. “Thanks to the way it props up the USA’s two biggest mortgage firms, more than half of American homes are now effectively owned by the state… Who’d have imagined that when the most right-wing of neo-cons leaves office 50% of the Land of the Free will effectively be [public housing]”? – Bill Bonner


Letter Re: My Preparedness Measures Pay Off During Fuel Shortage

Mr Rawles You mentioned the current gasoline shortage in the southeast. The local news media reported that 70% of the gas stations are empty and have been for three days. To me it seems closer to 95%. Here is example: In south Nashville, there is a major road called Nolensville Road. In a five mile mile stretch from Thompson Lane to Old Hickory Boulevard there are 26 gas stations. Not one of them has had gas for several days. Within a two mile radius of that stretch of road there are 55,000 residents. That is a lot of people without …


Letter Re: Home Canning and Stocking Up

Dear Sir, I would like to thank you for your time and effort in providing a “one stop shop” for such a large volume of information. Principally due to your site, my family and I have begun to increase the size of our pantry with both purchased food/supplies and other materials as well as increase the amount of food we are home canning. One observation I have made in all our preparations is the amount of food (from local gardens, backyard fruit trees, farmyard orchards) that goes to waste in our area. It is amazing the amount of produce on …


Letter Re: My Hurricane Ike Experience

Dear Mr. Rawles, First of all, my heart goes out to all those who truly suffered with loss of life or property as a result of Hurricane Ike. I only had the minor inconvenience of being without electricity in Houston for five days. (There are still over one million in Houston and the surrounding area without power.) So I had a taste of what it is like to be off-grid and learned a few things to share with your readers. It seems a lot of people here had generators which burn lots of precious gasoline. But after a few days …


A Girl Scout Troop Leader Wants to Get Her Girls Prepared

We recently got an e-mail from a Girl Scout troop leader, describing how she wants to start a project making 72-hour “bug out” bags for the troop members. Her goal is to get her troop members better prepared, yet not tip-off their parents to her own level of preparedness. She wants to avoid making herself look like some sort of “preparedness nut” or “whacko”. The important thing to keep in mind is that terminology and phrasing are crucial to how people form opinions. Do not use terms such as “Bug Out Bag” or “Get Out of Dodge Kit” or “Survival …


Letter Re: A Suggested Reading List

James: Thank you for all of the work that you put into your web site. I have been reading your site and preparing for the last couple of years. I thought you might be interested in the Bibliography to my [retreat] group’s operations guide. Fiction Adams, John Joseph. Wastelands. San Francisco : Night Shade Books, 2008. Alten, Steve. The Shell Game. Springville , Utah : Sweetwater Books, 2007. Brin, David. The Postman. New York : Bantam Books, 1985. Budrys, Algis. Some Will Not Die. New York : Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1961. Card, Orson Scott. The Folk of the Fringe. …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Norman in England suggested a piece of commentary about the Mother of All Bailouts: The Rescue of the Wealthy    o o o Brad E. and Kevin A. both forwarded some bad news from Forbes, that confirms what the Peak Oil crowd has been telling us: Here comes $500 oil. The law of supply and demand is inescapable. I do, however, have my doubts about the supply side of the equation. (See, for example, the arguments presented by the Abiotic Oil proponents.)    o o o More Odds ‘n Sods gathered by Cheryl N., our Economic Editor: Dow Down 373 …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

Every economy in the world has experienced booms and busts, but somewhere along the line someone came up with the bright idea of eliminating the busts. Throughout the 1990s the world experienced a series of economic crisis in Asia, Mexico, Russia, and even in the US markets that would have been enough to cleanse the system and restore equilibrium. On each and every occasion the Fed met the problem head on with the printing press, so a full blown reaction was avoided thereby creating what I call a “distortion” in the financial system that would eventually have to be sanitized. …


The MOAB Accelerates the Inevitable Destruction of the US Dollar

Back in March, I coined the acronym MOAB (for Mother Of All Bailouts), to describe the Federal government’s continuously-expanding response to the global credit collapse. My family has been getting great chuckles mentioning each time that commentators and legislators start using the term. These have included Michelle Malkin, Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Richard Shelby, and Joel Skousen. So now we are waiting for a pronouncement for Al Gore, that he invented both the term and the acronym. The government’s virtually uncontrolled bailout spree has now expanded to more than 1.5 trillion dollars, and there is no end in sight. At …


Five Letters Re: Preparedness Advice for the Parents of a Newborn Infant

Dear Memsahib: I’d like to suggest exploring the Wear Your Baby site There are free directions for making your own baby wearing wraps and free videos demonstrating different wrapping/carrying styles. The free printable items have good clear photographs to help in choosing the right fabric for the job. Now that slings have become poplar and trendy the prices have become rather expensive. There is nothing like spending $30+ dollars to find that baby doesn’t like that carrying style or is wrong for momma’s back. I’d rather buy fabric and try different styles (more comfy). If it is a total washout …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Eric sent a link to a London Telegraph article: Financial crisis: Default by the US government is no longer unthinkable.   o o o Wayne S. suggested this article: Great Myths of the Great Depression. Wayne’s comment: “I found it to be a great educational primer on the Great Depression. It is interesting to draw parallels with today’s tumultuous times and MOAB with the government policies of the 1929-to-1941 Depression years.”    o o o Eric also found this important tidbit in The Des Moines Register: Brasher: Corn, soybean supply on brink of shortages. Stock up!    o o o Laura …



Note from JWR:

The high bid in the SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction is now at $770. The auction for a large mixed lot that includes: A Special Mixed Vegetable Case-Six #10 Dehydrated Food Cans (Retail Price $105.95) This special Mixed Vegetable Case contains six #10 (96-ounce) cans–one can of each of the following: Mixed Vegetable Blend, Green Beans, Sweet Garden Peas, Mixed Peppers, Potato Dices, and Sweet Potatoes and a EZ-Towels 10 Pack Combo (10 bags of 50 towels. Retail value: $99.95). These items were donated by Jan at Healthy Harvest Foods. An assortment of world class loose leaf teas, and a box of …


Even Chuck Schumer Thinks that We Might Be in Deep Schumer

A front page headline in The New York Times on Friday shouted: Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings. The article began: “It was a room full of people who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first.” Later in the piece, it mentions: “…the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.’” U.S. Senator Charles …