Category: Economics & Investing

Forever Preps – Preparations You Can Buy Once, and Have Forever, by Andrew D.

As a self-confessed budgeting fanatic, I’ve constrained my prepping budget on a monthly basis where I spend in one month what I made the previous month.  For example, I spend money in February that I earned in January, and so on.  Given the uncertain times, I never want to be “on the hook” with paying for things with “future money”.  So confession out of the way, sometimes it’s hard to know where to start with your preparations.  I know all about the rule of 3, etc., but when it comes down to it, there really are a lot of choices.  …


Economics and Investing:

$4 Gasoline? Definitely in California, but Maybe Not for Everyone Else US House Prices to Continue Falling: Economist. [JWR Adds: That is, until mass inflation kicks in, and makes us all millionaires.] Englishmen warned: House prices ‘to fall by 20%’ De Borchgrave: Mideast $400 Oil Imminent With Mideast Upheaval John R. suggested this piece by Bob Chapman: Public debt: unsustainable and simply unpayable Items from The Economatrix: On-going Overnight Short Squeeze Takes Silver to Fresh 31-Year High   Credibility Blown (The Mogambo Guru)   Silver Bankers May Be Sitting On Big Derivatives Losses And The Fed May Be Funding Them …


Economics and Investing:

Thor sent this bit of news on the global food supply: Planet could be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050, experts say Luis (At Sea) sent us this link to Seeking Alpha: Case-Shiller: Home Price Declines Continue. Luis notes: “Notice that Washington D.C. had the only positive number, and even that was marginal.”   Several Items from Kevin S.: A Tipping Point Is Nearing   Food/Financial Crisis of 2011   The Collapse of America’s Labor Force   Items from The Economatrix: How Much More Demand Can Silver Handle?   Despite Oversupply, US Gasoline Prices Leap   Oil Surges 6% as Libya Tension Intensifies …


Affordable Preparedness, by Phil in East Tennessee

I enjoy reading SurvivalBlog each morning as I prepare for my day. I have only been a reader of the blog for six months, and enjoy all the varied insights. So I feel compelled to share some of my experiences. Let me start off by saying I was raised in a Christian preparedness household.  Both my parents suffered through the Great Depression as children and my mother was deeply impacted by the possibility of being hungry and cold again. As a teenager in the mid-1970s I remember we had a basement full of Neo-Life brand long term storage food, thousands …


Letter Re: Investing in Nickels, in Quantity

Dear Mr. Rawles, Regarding people eventually mailing U.S. nickel [5 cent coins] in bulk, you had asked: “Is there a box manufacturer that makes a sturdy corrugated cardboard box that fits tightly into a Medium size Priority Mail Flat Rate corrugated cardboard box?” At ULINE you can get a box to fit nicely inside the corrugated Medium Flat Rate Box (“FRB1″, with dimensions 11″ x 8-1/2″ x 5-1/2”). It is item #S-4517. It measures 10″x8″x5″. These boxes cost 54 cents each in lots of 25. (OBTW, leave it to the government to make two “medium” flat rate boxes. The longer, …


Economics and Investing:

The short squeeze in silver that I recently mention seems to be on, in earnest. Check Monday’s spot silver chart. That is a 31-year high. KAF sent us a link to a great piece by Patrice Lewis over at WorldNetDaily: Connecting the dots to anarchy. (SurvivalBlog readers will recognize Patrice Lewis as the editor of the excellent Rural Revolution blog.) Companies Raise Prices as Commodity Costs Jump. (Thanks to Daniel S. for the link.) Anthony S. sent this sign of the times: Pan American Silver Shifts Assets to Canadian Dollars John R. suggested this: Six Charts Which Prove That Central …


Economics and Investing:

Along The Watchtower reports on the COMEX‘s severe shortage of physical silver for delivery, amid strong open interest (OI) for March contracts: Wow! If a higher than normal percentage of buyers demand delivery, then the market will implode. There is already short squeeze in progress. The COMEX governors are likely to resort to drastically raising margin requirements to near 100% in an attempt to cool the market. (As precedent, they did this back during the Hunt Brothers silver short squeeze, three decades ago. Silver was then approaching $50 per ounce, and the COMEX hit the brakes hard.) A repeat of …


Inflation Watch:

Reader C.D.V. mentioned this: Inflation: It’s Here. “This is an important topic because with an expanding money supply, one would expect to see price inflation, yet the official statistics reveal no substantial price increases. And that begs the question: Why not?” Deutsche Bank on the Imminent Inflationary Outbreak in America. (Thanks to G.G. for the link.) Why Are Food Prices Going Crazy? Cotton hits $2 a pound Cotton values surge owing to increased demand Following Beijing’s lead, news from Taipei: Prosecutors Office vows to crack down on food hoarding. (Hmmm… Could it be that double-digit inflation is on the horizon?)


Economics and Investing:

From Peak to Valley. Dr. Housing Bubble reports: Beverly Hills real estate selling for 1989 price levels. Home sold for $920,000 in June of 1989 and has a pending sale at $920,000 in 2011. [JWR Adds: So much for oft-touted “buy and hold” strategy! Oh, by the way, how much did the owner(s) of that house cumulatively pay in mortgage interest, property taxes and insurance, for those 22 years? Doubtless somewhere north of a million bucks. And how much has the purchasing power of the Dollar declined in those 22 years? So… Cui bono?] J.B.G. sent this: Government Has Borrowed …


Two Letters Re: Investing in Nickels, in Quantity

Jim, Thanks for the blog. I’m a huge fan, and your blog is literally a rock-solid anchor for me and my family during all this turmoil. I took “Rick in Kentucky’s” claim that he could get $190 worth of nickels into an ammo can as a challenge. My ammo is flat green can has yellow paint on it which reads as follows: “200 CARTRIDGES, 7.62 MM, NATO 0 M80…” I took out a full can that I have where the coins are arranged laying down, dumped out the rolls, and started stacking vertically as described by Rick. It was quite …


Economics and Investing:

Loyal reader “OSOM” (“Out of Sight, Out of Mind”) pointed us to an eloquent piece by Bill Bonner (of The Daily Reckoning) titled: “Where to Be When Black Swans Appear” OSOM’s comment: “This is a great introductory article for those folks who don’t yet read SurvivalBlog.” Daniel H. flagged this evidence of flight from the U.S. Dollar: China sells $34.2bn of US treasury bonds. Jon R. mentioned this at The Daily Reckoning: The Food Crisis is a Dollar Crisis The latest FDIC Friday Follies: Regulators shut two small banks in Georgia; makes 20 US bank failures this year. (Thanks to …


Letter Re: Food, Nickels, Silver and Gold

Mr. Rawles:   Like the ridiculous commercials touting Internet stock trading in the recent past, today the sheeple are treated to commercials extolling the wisdom of investing in gold, all the while the economic world is apparently heading for a meltdown of epic proportion.  As an ardent fan of your novel “Patriots” and a daily reader of your site, I must question the wisdom of investing in either physical gold or rolls of nickels as one will not be able to eat either. And frankly, if someone appears at most doorsteps offering either as payment for goods or services after the …


Letter Re: Gauging Government Over-Spending

Dear Mr. Rawles, Thank you for your hard work on the blog. I did some thinking and research today concerning the Federal budget and want to share what I found with you. How much does the Federal government spend and how do we put this into context? There are several ways to look at this data. First, one can compare the dollars spent today versus those spent in 1962. Using the data from supportingevidence.com, I found: The government spent $106,821,000,000.00 in 1962 (106 billion dollars) according to http://federal-budget.findthebest.com/detail/64/1962. However, adjusted for inflation this would be about 700 billion dollars. The …


Economics and Investing:

Brett G. sent this: John Hussman: Stocks Too Expensive, Correction Due Frequent content contributor John R. recommended this analysis by Monty Pelerin: Faking Our Way to Sovereign Bankruptcy Karl Denninger reports on the collapse of the MERS house of cards: MERS Caves Items from The Economatrix: Dim View of Housing Market Weighs on Economy A Tipping Point is Nearing Oil Prices Fall on Economy, Supply Concerns   Bartering, Inflation & Growing A Garden


Inflation Watch:

The latest from Gonzalo Lira: Ballsy or Crazy? Where are We on Inflation and Hyperinflation. (Be forewarned that Mr. Lira uses some crude language.) Reader Brett G. sent us a snippet from an e-mail that he received from a friend who lives in Alaska: “[Rapid price inflation is] really happening up here [in Alaska], overnight: $3.91 [per gallon] for gas $4.89 [per pound] for butter and that was with it ‘on sale’. Milk is $3.89 [per gallon]. It had been $2.99 [per gallon] until this week. Plant seeds! Get ready. Tomatoes will be $7.75 per pound soon, but people just …