Category: Current Events & Politics

Letter Re: Adjustable Rate Mortgage Rate Resets

Dear JWR: Back in 2009, and even as early as 2007, many dire predictions were made about the massive wave of Alt-A and Option ARMs that were to reset in 2010 and 2011. See this widely-cited chart. (First mentioned in SurvivalBlog in January of 2009, in a link to iTulip.) Like many of you, I braced for impact, and then, nothing. What happened? This happened. Alt-As and ARMs have been resetting, but at very low rates, keeping the level of defaults lower than they would otherwise be. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. The Federal Reserve has been keeping …


Letter Re: The Vancouver Hockey Games Riots

Mr Rawles, I first posted this in a Survival forum I frequent often in response to the widespread, violent riots that broke out in Vancouver after the local hockey team lost in the Stanley Cup playoffs. I just was reading up on it this morning and you got to ask yourself: If your “countrymen” would essentially devolve into barbarian hordes over a stupid game – what do you think they’ll do when they have no food, water, heat, electricity and no government to bail them out or keep them in their place? I was speculating this morning that Vancouver is …


Letter Re: Recent “Debtors Prison” Articles

Jim,   The Economatrix recently posted this article link: Welcome to Debtor’s Prison, 2011 Edition. I’ve read others like it and I feel compelled to comment.  In most states in the union someone cannot be sentenced to jail merely for owing money to someone else.  But in some states, you can, when it comes to child support and alimony. In these cases, a judgment creditor (spouse) can almost literally take the shirt off your back (even in my pro-debtor Texas) and send you to jail, sometimes facing felony charges. If you read the article carefully, you will see that despite the …


The Coming Bitcoin Revolution

SurvivalBlog’s Cheryl N. (also known as The Economatrix) recently sent me a link to a news article that deserves special attention: Peer-to-Peer Currency Takes Banks Out of the Picture. In my estimation, Bitcoin has the potential to trigger a huge shift in how business in conducted via the Internet. . Think of it as a “Local Currency” (such as the well-known Ithaca Hours experiment), but that is scaled up to be a Populist Global Currency. Because of the distributed architecture, it is beyond the control of banks, governments, and taxing minions. Now that is economic freedom! I highly recommend that …


A Real World Test of My Preparations, by Daisy in Canada

Last week my city was taken by surprise by a terrible windstorm.  There were some weather warnings but nothing prepared residents for what would come.  Winds reached 110 km per hour and the damage to property was extensive.  Several people lost their lives due to flying debris and downed power lines.  While some were without power for only a couple of hours, others were without for up to a week.  Although we got our power back after 48 hours, we still suffered sporadic outages for two more days. It was with a completely different attitude that I met this storm.  …


Surviving Foreclosure, by Cindy D.

I know there are a lot of intense feelings out there about people who have had a foreclosure.  I wanted to write about my experience to help others that may be facing the same situation. Even though I may write this very simply and factually, it was a very emotional and devastating time in my life. I learned a great deal but don’t want to ever go through it again. I want to preface my story with a little background. My husband and I have been married for 28 years and have always been fortunate enough to pay our bills …


Letter Re: RC Aircraft Possibilities

James Wesley: I fly radio-controlled (RC) aircraft, and the Switchblade is a definite possibility. As you can tell from the video, there is a lot of computer generated “help” going on there, but the concept is solid, the technology to do this is already readily available and has been for some time. It’s just a matter of time until somebody completes the package. The problem is, for an aircraft that small, the maximum payload I could see might be around a pound, maybe slightly less. But a pound of C-4 could put a distinct “dent” in your day! Lately, the …


Watch The US Dollar Index — A Dollar Panic May Be Ahead

I’m often asked about my mentions of the US Dollar Index in SurvivalBlog, and about the Dollar Index ticker link at my Investing Recommendations page. This foreign exchange (FOREX) market index is often mentioned by its shorthand names (“USDX”, “DX”, or less commonly, “USDI”). It measures the value of the U.S. Dollar (USD) relative to several of our country’s major trading partners. Although the mix has changed over the years, presently the index gauges the value of the U.S. Dollar versus six currencies: the Euro, Japanese Yen, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Swedish Krona and the Swiss Franc. The USDX was …


Letter Re: 33 Ways to Encourage Atlas to Shrug

Mr. Rawles, Thank you sir for “33 Ways to Encourage Atlas to Shrug” article. I, too, was born in 1960. It’s nice to know that you’re a young man. I moved to “the Redoubt” nine and a half years ago, and have no regrets, other than the fact that my state’s Workman’s Compensation rates are some of the highest in the nation. As a building contractor, I have had to pay upwards of  65% for the privilege of wearing out my knees and back, working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. At the end of the year my …


Letter Re: Underscoring the Absurdity of Gun Control Laws

James,   I read your recent “Quote of the Day” by Sam Cohen, and it got me thinking. The quote was: “The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20.” – Sam Cohen, inventor of the Neutron Bomb Cohen has the basics down, but he failed to capture just how far into the realm of the ridiculous the regulators have gone. A more complete analogy would be as follows: The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at …


33 Ways to Encourage Atlas to Shrug

Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged” is enjoying renewed popularity following the release of the new Atlas Shrugged movie. Rand’s story describes a group of American industrialists that lose patience with onerous regulation and taxation, and “shrug”–disappearing from their normal lives to relocate to a hidden valley called Galt’s Gulch. While this tale is fictional, it has some strong parallels to modern-day America. And despite the fact that Ayn Rand was an atheist and favored legalized abortion, she was a good judge of both character and the inevitable tendencies of elected governments. When I consider the regulatory and tax burdens …


Three Related Disasters (Part 3), by Joe Refugee From Tokyo

After the first few days, it was possible to get some idea of what had happened. The initial numbers of fatalities had been fairly low, and it was hard to know how many had survived in the coastal towns. As the phone systems and many roads there were devastated, a big effort was going to be required just to scope out the damage. Sadly, it became clear that well over 10,000 lives were lost. In terms of life in Tokyo, though, it was electricity and basic supplies useful during disasters that became somewhat hard to come by. The other major …


Letter Re: Traces of Radioactive Iodine in the Milk Supply

Sir: It would appear that very low levels of radioiodine (I-131) have been detected in Western US milk, as could be expected. Presently, the contamination from Fukushima is taking over a week to cross the Pacific, and that time, combined with dilution effects, reduces the contamination from the Fukushima disaster to point far below the level of concern. At the present time. It also appears that the fukushima fallout plume is not rising high enough at present to become entrained in the jet stream However, reports from Fukushima, and analysis of the data available, indicates that a containment breach may …


Three Related Disasters (Part 2), by Joe Refugee From Tokyo

Days Two and Three I slept well the night of 11-3-11, which was good, because I hadn’t the two previous nights. A premonition, perhaps? Like the day after September 11th, there was an eerie feeling everywhere. The weather was nice, at least in Tokyo, but a cold front was coming in from the North, so the folks near the Tohoku coast were going to be suffering even more. It was obvious that the damage was off the charts, but the television downplayed the likely deaths, and a big question was whether the government had learned from its poor performance during …


Useful Tidbits on Radiation and Journalists–The Season of Isotopes and Misanthropes

Many readers have been sending me questions about radiation. One, from a reader in Los Angeles asked: “Mr. Rawles, Should I sleep in my basement for the next few weeks?” Please don’t over-react, folks. I must state, forthrightly: 1.) The gamma emitters at the Fukushima reactors (and more importantly, their spent fuel ponds) are a long, long way from America. 2.) In my opinion, the only significant risk to health here in CONUS is possibly a chance that a bit of radioactive dust (with isotopes like Strontium-90 or Iodine-131) could end up deposited on pasture grasses and then subsequently become …