Straying From the Flock


Seeing the future through the rearview mirror
April 10, 2012, 10:31 pm
Filed under: Local Networks, The World | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

When the mathematically certain collapse of the US Dollar happens, the majority of Americans will be caught off guard, and they will have no idea what led to the demise of the world’s reserve currency.  Some will know that the stock market crashed as investor’s greed morphed violently into fear.  It will be all over the news.  Most will get to witness the bank runs and looting live on their iPhone.  It will go viral within minutes, and the tweets will herald the crisis with each down tick of the market.  All that live will see the results.  Few will know how things got so bad.

In the not too distant future

Great question. Let us begin with the root of the problem.  What we have called money for the last hundred years or so, was actually not money at all.  It was fiat currency.  In order for something to be money, it needs to fulfill the following criteria:

  1. It must be a medium of exchange.
  2. It must be a unit of account.
  3.  It must be a store of value.

The fiat currency that was used right up until the moment it was worthless, was not money.  Once, when it was backed by gold and coins were made of silver, it could have been considered a store of value, but in the end it was not worth the paper it was printed on.  Besides, an overwhelming majority of the dollars that existed were nothing more than 1’s and 0’s in cyberspace.  Again, backed by nothing.  When the music stopped, there just weren’t that many chairs left to sit in.  I say this because it wasn’t just the cash.

All paper assets were backed by the dollar, and every one of them had counter party risk.   Which is to say, they were all dependent on someone else to back up their value.  The entire future of our society was lost to counter party risk.  IRA’s, 401(k)’s, mutual funds, ETF’s, bonds, pension plans, and bank accounts were all reduced to memory with a few keystrokes.  Each of them were backed by the full faith and credit of the government.  Each of them rendered worthless by the Federal Reserve’s “Print your debt away” monetary policy.

They attempted to keep the government afloat by purchasing bonds with money created out of thin air.  Yes, at that time, the Federal Reserve was not only allowed to just print money, but they insisted that was the only way to save the economy.  The chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, told Congress that it was none of their business who he made loans to. They printed so much money that the dollar lost more than 90% of its value in less than 100 years

For years, people complained about rising prices and stagnant wages.  While the wages were stagnant, the loss of purchasing power of the dollar was the real criminal, not rising prices.  When he was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan told Congress that the Federal Reserve could print all the money that was needed, but they could not guarantee purchasing power.  Whether we weren’t listening, or didn’t know how to fix it, is debatable.  They warned us before the last blow was struck.  Not enough people responded.

Once upon a time, when I was growing up, we believed that if a person had enough money in the bank, that person could live on the interest generated by that money.  It was a goal that the average American believed in.  Year after year, the Federal Reserve manipulated the numbers to keep the illusion of low inflation, while all along, the purchasing power of the dollars in the bank continued to shrink.  Towards the end, the high inflation turned phantom interest rates into real negative growth.  Savers were punished with the loss of their capital.  The indoctrination of 99% of the population began at birth.  It was a lie.

Only those who were aware enough to seek future answers in their past were able to make the choices in the new paradigm. It was those sage men and women who learned from the repeating cycles that shaped America since her birth. We became so fascinated with our digital lives, that we lost our ability to take care of our physical selves.  Those that saw the writing on the wall began to act with a new sense of urgency.  They  retrained themselves to think and to learn differently.  They rejected the input  and output system that they were born into.  In its place, they chose the disciplines of grammar, logic. and rhetoric to teach the next generation.  A generation born free, never knowing the pain of debt.

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Out of the pot. Some thoughts on the normalcy bias.
April 7, 2012, 7:54 am
Filed under: Home Gardens, Local Networks, Silver, The World | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I read an article about a term that I had heard in the past: The Normalcy Bias. It was a very emotional rendition of a woman trying to evacuate her home as a wild fire began to overtake her neighborhood. As I read about her standing there watching the report as it was being read on the news, I thought to myself, wow, she could see the flames out of her window, but she spent those precious seconds staring at the television. The thought baffled me. Why would you stand in the face of imminent danger and do nothing? That is the power of the normalcy bias.

By definition, the normalcy bias refers to an extreme mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate the both the possibility of a disaster occurring and also its possible effects.

It is this “That can’t happen here” attitude is both dangerous to yourself and those around you. Many have heard the metaphor about the frog in the pot. (there is debate to it’s truth in science, but the metaphor works well for this example.) Place a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will jump out, but place a frog in tepid water slowly raising the heat, and that frog will remain in the water until it has cooked. Gross, but effective. I can see a large melting pot with 350 million frogs doing the backstroke right now. I am swimming for the edge.

Why doesn’t the frog jump out? Is it because it fears no danger? I am sure that the frog feels the temperature increasing. I think that as long as most of the frogs are having a leisurely swim about the pot, the rest will just continue to tread water. Keeping the status quo intact is essential. Think of our elected politicians and corporate masters as the lifeguards. All is well in the pool, just relax and remember, no running. Someone hand me my towel.

We are told day after day that things are getting better. Inflation is being held in check, the stock market is back to pre-crash levels, and if you were concerned about that immanent terrorist attack, fear not, TSA will give you a little squeeze, take your picture, and ensure your safety. Again, nothing to see here, keep swimming and all will be well. Loss of civil liberties aside, we are much safer than 11 years ago, right? If things were getting better, wouldn’t we undo some of the constrictions that have been put in place to take care of us? Just do another lap and you will be fine.

It isn’t until you are standing outside of the pot that you see the problem. They told you the water was getting warmer because the temperature was being raised to compensate for the air outside getting colder. If you looked up you would see the vent over the stove was on. The first step is to release yourself from the illusion that we are being taken care of and that the recovery is well on the way. After that, there are many things you can do to prepare for the coming paper storm: Food, water, medicine, physical metals, a solid local network, guns and lots of ammo, and reducing your personal debt are just a few of the most essential.

It is not too late. Just follow the wet footprints away from the stove.

9 comments


An open letter to my friends
April 5, 2012, 4:26 pm
Filed under: Home Gardens, Local Networks, Silver, The Dragon Cave | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello my friend,

If you are reading this, you consider me a friend.  For that fact alone, I thank you and am grateful for your presence in my life.  Those that chose not to read this will have made their choice clear as well.  Seeing as I will not know who read it, only time will tell who did and did not.  I only say this because I am about to talk to you about what I see in our world and what I am doing about it.

Most of us are in our thirties now, scary I know, with families, mortgages, and jobs.  I say most because some are still single, some are younger, and some are unemployed.  It is a difficult time we live in.  That makes my sense of urgency that much more vital in regards to what I am writing to you about.  Time is running out.

I am neither a fear monger, nor am I a conspiracy theorist.  I am a practical man who has made a great many mistakes in his life.  I cannot spend another day silent as to what has been presented to me, and what I am doing about it.  The world around us has been built on a digital foundation of debt and slavery.  We pay our taxes because we are told that we must.  I don’t want you in jail, so keep paying your taxes, for now.

What I am talking about is putting your hard earned money into a store of value that will be worth something one day.  Your bank account is losing money each day.  With interest rates near zero, and inflation on the rise, you are a fool if you are keeping your money in the bank.  The truth is, most are living paycheck to paycheck and have little to save, let alone invest.  There are some of you that have created a great life for yourself and your family.  I am truly happy for you.  Please continue reading, as this pertains to you as well.

The dollar is not worth the paper it is printed on.  Only tangible assets will survive the collapse of the U.S. economy.  And rest assured, it is a mathematical certainty that it will collapse.  As it is impractical to store, oil, food, and most other commodities, and gold currently priced over$1600 per ounce, silver is the only real thing left available to us.  The bankers (pronounced: Corporate whore slave traders) can keep printing money to keep the government afloat, and the Federal Reserve can keep buying bonds from the U.S. Treasury.  They bought 61% of them last year.  There is only so much silver in the world, and that amount is getting smaller as we go forward.

Right now silver is undervalued and cheap enough for the masses to buy.  It is affordable enough for the average person to give up your daily grande soy peppermint laté and purchase a mercury dime from the local coin shop. One dime per day for a month will cost you $75 a month right now.  If you pay yourself first, you will not miss this minimal amount of money from your check.  That is a wild boast for me to tell you how much you can or cannot afford to put away.  Here is my case for your consideration:

For the last 2000 years and in half the world today, the average days wage was 1/10 of an ounce of silver.  2/3 of the world lives on less than $2.50 a day. Right now you can check coinflation.com and see that a mercury dime has a melt value of $2.2851.  On sale compared to the suffering of 2/3 of the world.  Each one of these you can put away gives you an advantage over the rest of the sheep out there.  Think of the buffer that 10 ounces of silver will give your family, that is the equivalent of 100 days of hard human labor. Can you give up $2.50 a day to protect your family?

Most of the population has no idea of how we are living on the edge of a cliff.  Those in the UK are facing the equivalent of $10 per gallon for gas right now.  We are upset about $4 per gallon.  What would you do if gas were $10 per gallon here?  Would you drive less, or cut money from somewhere else?  Right now you can purchase silver for unheard of prices.

I am not asking you to buy anything from me. I am talking about putting your money into something of value.  Soon the paper storm will come and only the real thing will be worth anything.  If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.  Don’t take my word on it, do your own research and you will find that what I am saying is the truth, not spin.  All debts come due. I am trying to show you the chair for when the music stops.

But, you say, you cannot eat silver.  To which I say. I agree.  That is why I also believe that you must start growing a hearty home garden.  We have lost our ability to feed ourselves.  We have to pay for our food at the grocery store to eat.  Are we that lazy?  I don’t think so.  We have just put it as a lower priority.  It has become easier to go buy it than put the effort into growing it.  What happens when gas is $10 per gallon and the trucks stop running.  There is a 3 day supply of food in the chain.  That is it.  Take a look in your pantry and tell me if you think that you could survive without the grocery store for a week?  A month?  Perspective.

The last thing that I want to talk about is relationships.  I have not been as in touch with you as I could have been.  Those days are over.  The internet is great, but you are not your facebook page.  A solid local network will be just as important as your garden and your silver.  There are skills that we do not possess that others around us do.  We don’t talk to our neighbors any more.  Why?  Too busy.  It is time to reset the paradigm.

Friend, if you are still with me, I am so thankful for this opportunity to talk to you.  I am putting my best foot forward to start building foundations for the future of our once great country.  Many of you stood by me in the big green machine once, and I know that some of you still are.  For us, it would be a good reminder to look back at the oath we took. It was to protect and defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. For those of you who did not choose the military as your path, stand with us now and let your voice be heard.  You are just as much a patriot if you still believe that this once great land can be great again.

We are the generation that will be the leaders of the next human cycle.  Rise up with me and declare yourself free and not afraid.

Your friend,

B

38 comments


Problems and answers
April 3, 2012, 2:04 pm
Filed under: Home Gardens, Local Networks, Silver | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When discussing the Federal Reserve and the end of our monetary system, the same questions get asked.  I see how bad it is, but what can I do?  You have shown me all these problems, but what are your solutions?  My friends, here is my answer:

This has been a hundred years in the making.  The Federal Reserve has been very patient, and in their maniacal vision, they have worked towards debasing the monetary system of the country it was chartered to service.  I have to believe that this was their goal all along. This is not checkers my friends, this is chess.  We loose our savings to the banks en passant due to almost zero interest, and when you factor inflation, well, now you are in the realm of negative growth.  A stat from zero hedge today said that for each $100,000 you put into the bank, you loose $3400 each year.  That fact alone should have you pulling your money from the bank and putting it into the only real store of wealth left:  Gold and silver.  But which one to choose.

Most that are educated in the world of pm’s know that silver is undervalued when compared to gold.  The industrial uses of silver, on top of the investment desire, makes it a very coveted material for the entire world.  Gold has been saved, silver has been discarded.  The total above ground sliver supply has dramatically shrank over the last three decades, and some have begun to speculate that within this decade, we may see such drastic reduction in silver that it may become virtually extinct.  Gold?  Nope, still have tons in the fed vault and all over the world.  Virtually zero silver held in reserve anywhere in the world.  For me, silver is the obvious choice, but it has occurred to me that metal alone, while providing a solid foundation for your paper ponzi fallout shelter, will not save you from what is on the horizon.

We have lost our way. Especially when it comes to taking care of ourselves.  Our great nation used to pride itself on self-reliance.  No longer.  The average American would starve to death, were it not for the local supermarket.  The ability to feed ourselves has been lost to convenience and self-imposed time restrictions.  A hearty home garden will be the difference between life and death when those who are not prepared begin to panic.  And panic they will, rest assured.  I have learned that our people would trample one another for a pair of glow-in-the-dark shoes, let alone a meal when starving.  Self-reliance will only take you so far.  We have silver and we have a garden that will feed us when the rest are wading through the empty store shelves, searching for scraps to try to maintain life.  The way I see it, there is one thing missing.

The final piece of the puzzle is a strong local network.  If you have been sucked into the digital prison that has caused us to stop valuing individual relationships, please, please unplug yourself from the machine.  You are not your facebook page.  Talk to your neighbors.  This may seem like a foreign concept now a days.  I assure you, the odd looks and timid smiles only last a few minutes.  Human beings are social creatures.  We have been retrained to stop behaving this way.  Reach out to someone and they will reach back.  I cannot stress to you enough that if you do not have the knowledge to do something, you have to either pay for it, we do have all that silver, or you barter for some skill or good that you possess.  Building a strong local web of friends and associates will give you the advantage over the masses.  Trust is easier built before the calamity, for after it comes, everyone will be out for themselves. For we as humans, still possess the instinct to survive.

I am sure that if you have made it this far, you already are in agreement with me on one or several of these things.  If you are still reading and you didn’t believe before, I hope that you do now.  Please, don’t get me wrong, there are lots of other things that you are going to need: guns and ammo, shelter, water, and the like are vital to survival, but without the first three tenants of my philosophy, the latter are not worth much.  I would argue you couldn’t live without water, but as neither will your garden, I figured that you had found a water supply. (when all else fails, look up)

This can be the dawn of a new era of human existence.  When the fiat experiment ends, as we all know it will, those that have prepared the right things will be the future of man.  Those that do not, will be a lesson learned:  That when we allow the banks and government to decide what is in our best interest, we subject ourselves to economic slavery.  Break your chains and live free.

Stack faster,

RGD

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