October 2021 in Precious Metals, by Steven Cochran

Welcome to SurvivalBlog’s Precious Metals Month in Review, where we take a look at “the month that was” in precious metals. Each month, we cover gold’s performance and the factors that affected gold prices.

What Did Gold Do in October?

All the headlines that moved gold prices in October boiled down to two things: inflation, and how the Fed planned to deal with it.

Gold spent the first week of October treading water around the $1,750 mark. This ended on the 13th, when gold saw big losses, then big gains, all in one day.  Inflation fears rocked the markets that morning when CPI came in much hotter than expected. This sent gold down sharply as bond yields and the dollar advanced.

Later in the day, the release of the September FOMC minutes revealed that most Fed officials are ready to start tapering of QE in November. This sent bond yields higher and the dollar lower. Gold took advantage of this to erase those early losses and jump $26 higher. This triggered stop losses that saw gold end the day up by $36 to $1,795.

Gold gave up most of those gains two days later, when retail sales came in far higher than expected. Combined with strong earnings reports from major companies, the week ended solidly in risk-on mode.

Gold got another chance at greatness on October 20th. The release of the Fed’s “Beige Book” report showed most of the nation reported “significantly higher prices”. The Markit flash manufacturing PMI came in 8 points lower that morning, to a 7-month low of 52.9.

These two reports together painted a picture of high inflation and shrinking economic activity – the very definition of stagflation. This sent gold $30 higher before noon.

This must not have been part of the script on Wall St., as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was trotted out to say the Fed will for sure begin tapering next month. This sent gold down vertically by $60 to $30 in the red. By the end of the day, prices had pushed up $44 to finish the day with a $14 gain.

The end of the month saw PCE come in at the second record high in a row, giving a big boost to the dollar and pushing bond yields lower. This sent the dollar down $28 early in the session, but the yellow metal managed to erase half those losses by the end of the day.Continue reading“October 2021 in Precious Metals, by Steven Cochran”

Editors’ Prepping Progress

To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year.  We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those –or excerpts thereof — in this column, in the Odds ‘n Sods Column, and in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!

Jim Reports:

My report for this week will be just one line, as I’m very busy helping to prepare for a memorial gathering, and frantically busy, clearing out my late mother’s house. Now, over to Lily…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.” – James Madison

Preparedness Notes for Friday — October 29, 2021

October 29th is the birthday of fighter pilot Vermont Garrison, an American who fought in three wars – WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. He was born in 1915 and died on February 14th, 1994, in Mountain Home, Idaho.

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Please contact your congrescriiiters are voice your opposition to HR 2377, a Federal “Red Flag” law — that would allow guns to be seized without due process!

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We are still seeking entries for Round 97 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. More than $725,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 97 ends on November 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

 

Potemkin Village on the Potomac

I’ll begin this essay with a bit of history, and then take a look at what I foresee in the near future of America.

The “Potemkin Village” (Potyomkinskiye derevni) was an invention of Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tavricheski to impress Empress Catherine The Second (“Catherine the Great”), while she was traveling through Crimea, in 1787. As the story goes, along the banks of the Dnieper River, Potemkin had workmen erect a fake village, peopled with paid actors. This village was designed to give Catherine with the illusion of economic vibrancy in the region under the prince’s rule, as she floated by. After her boat had passed, Potemkin would have his workmen disassemble the village and then hastily reassemble it, farther downstream, to be seen the next day. As the story goes (perhaps exaggerated) his ruse went on for several successive days. The phrase Potemkin Village is now used in both the economic and political realms to describe any construction or situational artifice built solely to deceive others into thinking that conditions are better than they actually are. In modern times, North Korea is famous for creating well-stocked fake storefronts, and non-functional computers, to impress visiting foreigners.

Sadly, 21st Century Potemkin Villages are not created by just Third World dictators. It is becoming common in Western nations. There is now a virtual Potemkin Village on the Potomac River. Unlike the movable village on the Dnieper, the Potemkin Village on the Potomac centers on boasts by the Biden-Harris Regime about a “strong economic recovery” and the merits of a multi-trillion dollar “Building Back Better” spending plan. It is Joe Biden mandating inoculation with flawed vaccines.  It is the Federal Reserve creating trillions of dollars out of thin air. And it is the media and academia perpetuating the whole charade.

The governments of most western nations have become a farce. They are led by power-hungry sociopaths and financed by extorted tax dollars of the citizenries. Their laws are willingly enforced by local, state, and federal police officers and agents who are more concerned with “officer safety” and their fat pensions than they are with protecting our constitutional rights. Meanwhile, the leftist stooges of the mainstream media blather on endlessly, repeating their socialist mantras.Continue reading“Potemkin Village on the Potomac”

Economics & Investing For Preppers

Here are the latest news items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. Most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor, JWR. Today, we look at the renewed strength of the Swiss Franc. (See the Forex & Cryptos section.)

Precious Metals:

Turkey Buys All Remaining Wholesale Silver For The Year.

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Commerzbank see gold rising on higher inflation expectations.

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Gold price up as it appears inflation genie out of the bottle.

Economy & Finance:

Thorsten Polleit at The Von Mise Institute web site: A Global Fiat Currency: “One Ring to Rule Them All”.

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Republican senators slam Democrats’ proposed bank account monitoring.

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Big money managers hoard cash, dump bonds as inflation fears mount.

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At Zero Hedge: Futures Slide On Stagflation Fears As 10Y Yields Spike.

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Hedge funds edge towards USD4 trillion milestone as volatility surges.

Continue reading“Economics & Investing For Preppers”

Preparedness Notes for Thursday — October 28, 2021

Today is coincidentally the birthday of several gun designers:

Wilhelm Bubits (born October 28, 1954) in Lutzmannsburg, is an Austrian handgun designer and creator of the Caracal Pistols (pictured) and Steyr Mannlicher M and S model pistols. As a hobby shooter and former police officer, Wilhelm Bubits used his experience and ideas about handguns to advance modern pistol design. Bubits worked for the Glock firearms company and in 1997 joined another Austrian weapons maker, Steyr Mannlicher. At Steyr, Bubits created the Steyr M and S pistols which were released to market beginning in 1999. In late 2002 Bubits worked with weapons experts from the United Arab Emirates in a UAE government-sponsored “Small Arms Project” to develop a series of modern pistols. The result of the collaboration was the Caracal Pistol line (Pictured.) Weapons manufacturer Caracal International LLC was incorporated in Abu Dhabi at the end of 2006. Wilhelm Bubits currently heads Caracal’s research and development team.

This is also the birthday of Horace Smith (October 28, 1808 – January 15, 1893) was an American gunsmith, inventor, and businessman. He and his business partner Daniel B. Wesson formed two companies named Smith & Wesson, the first of which was financed in part by Oliver Winchester and was eventually reorganized into the Winchester Repeating Arms Company

And this is also the birthday of Eliphalet Remington (October 28, 1793 – August 12, 1861), who designed the Remington rifle and founded what is now known as the Remington Arms Company.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 97 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. The photovoltaic power specialists at Quantum Harvest LLC  are providing a store-wide 10% off coupon. Depending on the model chosen, this could be worth more than $2000.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three-day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  5. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  6. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.
  7. Two sets of The Civil Defense Manual, (in two volumes) — a $193 value — kindly donated by the author, Jack Lawson.

Second Prize:

  1. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  2. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, that have a combined retail value of $589,
  3. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  4. Naturally Cozy is donating a “Prepper Pack” Menstrual Kit.  This kit contains 18 pads and it comes vacuum-sealed for long term storage or slips easily into a bugout bag.  The value of this kit is $220.

Third Prize:

  1. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  2. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  3. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  4. A transferable $150 purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of firearms purchasing privacy!

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More than $725,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 97 ends on November 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Shake Light 40B, by The Novice

The EcoCentricNow Shake Light 40B is a human-powered flashlight. It is fairly reasonably priced, reasonably water resistant, reasonably shock resistant, and reasonably heat resistant. It is charged by a powerful magnet that presents a danger to sensitive equipment, so I do not recommend it for field use or as a children’s toy. I think it could be useful for applications like tornado preparedness kits or as a nightstand flashlight.

The Back Story

I recently submitted an article to SurvivalBlog that included a review of the IKEA Ljusa hand crank flashlight. The beauty of the Ljusa is that the hand crank charges a capacitor rather than a battery. This gives the Ljusa a virtually unlimited shelf life, since it has no batteries to degrade over time. The greatest disadvantage of the Ljusa is that it is no longer in production.

A quick search of the Internet using duckduckgo turned up only one human-powered flashlight that uses a capacitor for storage and is currently in production. It is the EcoCentricNow NightStar Shake Flashlight. With that in mind, I contacted EcoCentricNow to see if they could provide me with a sample of the NightStar Shake Flashlight for testing and evaluation.

Knowing that I write for SurvivalBlog, EcoCentricNow suggested that I test the Shake Light 40B instead. The representative indicated, “The SL40B is a well-constructed, long-lasting, human-powered flashlight, which is price point oriented to emergency preparedness, survival, and outdoor recreation audiences.” Since beggars can’t be choosers, I gratefully agreed. Five days later, a package arrived in the mail.Continue reading“Shake Light 40B, by The Novice”

Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, we look at adverse events following Wu Flu jabs.

COVID-19 VAERS: 800,000+ Adverse Events Reported

I spotted this linked at the Whatfinger.com news aggregation site: COVID-19 VAERS Update: Over 800,000 Adverse Events Now Reported!  Many of the cases end up in multiple categories, but the VAERS numbers total of 818,042 adverse events, up to October. These include:

127,641 Doctor Visits.

83,412 Hospitalizations.

92,017 Urgent Care.

26,199 Disabled.

10,179 Bell’s Palsy.

10,304 Myocarditis.

8,408 Heart Attacks.

2,631 Miscarriages.

17,128 Deaths.

31,753 Severe Allergic Reaction.

3,875 Thrombocytopenia/Low Platelet

18,925 Life-Threatening.

9,734 Shingles.

JWR’s Comment: Let those numbers sink in, before you consider taking the jab.

Congrats to the Souzas: A Dried-In House

The latest from the North Idaho vlogging Good Simple Living Souza family: OUR HOME IS OFFICIALLY DRIED IN! Our congratulations. Oh, and also our congrats on them now having 313,000 subscribers!

The Meshtastic Mesh Network

I heard about this Wyoming Survival article by way of American Partisan: Meshtastic Mesh Network. A quote:

“Meshtastic lets you use inexpensive (~$30/board) GPS radios as extensible mesh communicators. It’s great for hiking, skiing, climbing – essentially any hobby where you might not have reliable internet access. Each member of your mesh can see the location and distance of all other members and receive text messages sent to your private group chat. Data automatically forwards as needed, so everyone can receive messages from even the furthest member.”

Continue reading“Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods”

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace.” – Milton Friedman

Quality Products for Prepping, by 3AD Scout

Having to stop in the middle of a project to go to the hardware store for something is extremely annoying to me.  For one it wastes time; two it is an insulting indication that I have a hole in my preps.  Post-TEOTWAWKI, going to the hardware store, or any other store for something you forgot will probably not be an option. Having stuff on hand in my stores for any project is important to me as a gauge for my level of preparedness.  Recently, while building stalls and pens inside my barn, I was enlightened to another annoying lesson, that quality is sometimes much better than quantity.

I’m no stranger to prepping, nor am I a stranger to the value of a quality item.  I’m well aware of the sayings “buy once, cry once” and “one is none and two is one”.   When making prepper purchases, there is almost always a compromise between quality and price. For example, say you wanted to put away 200 cans of soup. Progresso soup, which might taste better than your local store brand will cost more but your local store brand is may not taste as good as Progresso but is probably cheaper, thus the comprise on quality allows you to get quantity and stay within your budget.  We all do this, it might be subconsciously, but we do it, unless you are making a seven-figure income.

There are probably things we all won’t consider compromising on, such as firearms and knives or other items that our lives may depend on.   But what about common consumable items such as sandpaper, paintbrushes, blue tarps, wire brushes, and driver bits?  Over the years, I’ve come accustomed to buying many of my consumables at Harbor Freight. Do I really need to spend $10 on a paint brush to slap paint on a storage shed?   So, buying items at stores like Harbor Freight allows me to buy quantities of items at a reasonable price.  That theory works with paint brushes but perhaps not everything.Continue reading“Quality Products for Prepping, by 3AD Scout”

SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

This weekly column is a collection of short snippets: practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. We may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.

Simon in England passed along this instructional video link: BaoFeng Ham Radio From Noob to Skilled in 60 minutes.

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Andre reminded me to mention this, about the Cumbre Vieja volcano, in Spain’s Canary Islands: La Palma’s volcanic eruption is going strong three weeks later.

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This reporting runs contrary to the “Fauci wisdom”: Amish Covid. (Thanks to D.S.V. for the link.) Here is a quote:

“Then, last March, remarkable news. The Lancaster County Amish were reported to be the first community to achieve “herd immunity,” meaning a large part of a population had been infected with Covid-19 and became immune. Some outsiders are skeptical, and solid proof is hard to come by.”

Continue reading“SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets”

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.” – Theodore Roosevelt