You could argue that we are already 6 months into a shattered economy. Towards the end of March nearly half of the nation was in some form of lockdown. From that moment the wheels of the economy began to grind to a halt.
Most Americans assumed that by the summer we would be firing the economy back up, people would be spending hard on big vacations after being locked up and the economy would bounce right back. Now we are back to making tough decisions as the first wave of COVID-19 creeps into new places and cases spike as people peek out into the world to see if all is clear.
Historical Cues
In 1929 the ball started rolling on the great depression. Hoover came to power and took little action to assure the economy would remain sound.
It was clear that the stock market had peaked, and the roaring 20s growth had reached its limits
By 1930 Hoover was imposing greater tariffs on foreign nations which started to collapse international trade. There were massive bank failures that year and some of the nation’s biggest banks and their affiliates, many did not belong to the Fed. This meant they had to survive on their own cash reserves. Bank runs soon followed.
The first year into The Great Depression was punctuated by the Dust Bowl which was a tremendous drought that stymied food production in the nation. 23 states were affected and even farmers themselves were going hungry!
By the way, did you know that congress bailed out the banks in 1932 to the tune of 2 BILLION dollars! It is estimated that would have been a 30-Billion-dollar bailout in today’s money. Sound familiar?
Related: Your Great Depression Era Recipe for Hard Times
World Affairs
Never has the world been run by a benevolent superpower. Just think about that for a moment. America is not out conquering, in the literal sense. Let’s not get into the semantics. We help people. We give money, we give our doctors, we render aid and we promote democracy. It may never be better than this.
America could be the first and last benevolent superpower on the planet.
If we face a longer period of economic depression there is no doubt that the world will suffer right along side us. Depressions lead to isolationist thinking. In 1931 Great Britain became the first nation to abandon the gold standard and abandoned their role as the world’s major international lender.
A world pressed into isolationist thinking will eventually result in war. The isolationist policies of the US, following the Great Depression, kept America away from WWII until Pearl Harbor. However, similar thinking lead to Japan moving into China and Germany into Poland.
The US Dollar
The state of the US dollar is an interesting thing because its value is all about confidence. Its about confidence in the constant progress and growth of the United States.
For years I have been listening to a mixture of scoundrels and economists, sometimes one in the same, proclaim that the death of the dollar was just around the corner.
Our nation has been burning through dollars as though its value were some strain of Pandemic more deadly than the Spanish Flu that needs to be burned out before it can spread.
We are pumping money into the banks, businesses and even the taxpayers are getting a sliver to assure they keep the machine alive.
If the rotors on the US economy were to slow down even more and imports dropped substantially, confidence in the US dollar would undoubtedly falter. Add to that a growing civil unrest in the streets and a government struggling to control it. It’s easy to see how other nations might present their currency as a viable replacement to the once unstoppable US dollar.
Of course, this would lead to real inflation and the nightmare we all hope to avoid.
Related: 10 Expenses You Need to Cut Now for the Upcoming Economic Depression
Food Shortages
As we speak there are serious food shortages affecting our nation.
The supermarkets are doing their absolute best to keep up with it but if the supply is not there than there is not much you can do. People are eating at home like never, in recent times, and many industries are struggling.
The largest brand in beverages addressed their issues on a social media platform:
“We are seeing greater demand for products consumed at home & taking measures to adapt, working to mitigate the challenge during this unprecedented time. We appreciate your loyalty to our beverages; please know that we’re working hard to keep the products you love on the shelves.”
You have seen the shelves yourself. Despite the fact that less people are working, and less people are traveling, there is less food than ever.
Big names like Conagra, General Mills and even Campbells Soup are working overtime to meet demand but falling short.
Civility
The streets are already alive on the topics of inequality and capitalism. I read that 1/3 of all restaurants in LA are going under no matter what happens. To understand the effect that has on the economy you must look at the restaurant supply chain on a hole.
1/3 of the employees in that market never go back to work, 1/3 of the orders placed by restaurants for food and other supplies will disappear affecting an already ailing restaurant supply industry.
This works its way back to factories and farms. A tsunami of layoffs and closures rushes through the restaurant supply chain.
This is just one industry.
People have to work. When people don’t have work and they don’t have money they go into the streets. They go there for answers. They hold up signs or burn down buildings. Depending on how bad it gets and how long it lasts, they might run up into homes and take what they need.
Civility in our nation will be at a breaking point if our economy suffers for a full year.
Families
We like to think that our love and our families will get us through the hardest times. That might be true for some, but it has hardly been true for all through this lockdown and subsequent civil unrest. There has been a spike in all kinds of destructive behavior.
We saw domestic violence up as much as 27 percent through May. Drug overdoses also saw a significant spike. Divorces and custody battles were just another example of how being locked down and out of work can affect the family dynamic.
Those numbers came from just 2 months of struggle. Imagine what it would look like if people were out of work for a longer period!
Related: What Will Your Rights Under Lockdown Be?
A second American Depression would undoubtedly send the world at large into a tailspin. We buy everything! To be frank. Our tourism dollars are precious, and these are just examples of what we do from a consumerist perspective.
There is a chance other powers would step into the fold to take advantage of a weakened America. Would China finally have their chance? While it sounds like a nice plot, they stand to lose the most from an American Depression!
The time has come for you to build your own economies. You need local suppliers and businesses that you and yours can sustain through this dark time. It is a time for self-reliance and independence. It is a time for preppers to take advantage of all their hard work.
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The good news is that USDA crop reports I’ve seen are showing bumper crops of corn and soybeans. Reports on wheat and other grains should come out next month. Early estimates are that the quota will be high.
The downside is that prices will be low, and farmers will suffer even more economic hardship as a result. Subsidies will be needed.
The best bet we have now is to buy local and support our larger entities (like General Mills), and STOP importing foreign goods (specifically agriculture).
Was the report from this week, or from the beginning of the month before the derecheo destroyed a lot of crops? Please check out “The Ice Age Farmer” on YouTube – he had a sobering report on the storms’ destruction. To summarize, the storm had 100mph straight line winds that took out huge swaths of crops and devastated cities and towns all along the front. Many places are still cleaning up a week plus later.
The saddest part is that you would have been right – the crops did look to be some of the best in recent years.
Miz Kitty. that was only in some parts of the country. We get up to 40 MPH winds in summer, often one or two a week that can be 20 MPH and under 10% humidity. Outside, non-local plants cannot handle it, but native and adapted do. What we need to start here is the food dryer and dry meat, beef and ham, for storage. The stores are full of goods, and prices beginning to drop. Mexico is doing well despite the drought, but many farmers there are going aquaponics to save on water. It’s becoming the standard in AZ, too. niio
The report I saw was indeed from this past week. I saw serious damage in Iowa yesterday, and don’t know the full extent yet. I’ll keep my eyes open for updated crop reports.
The holiday season this year will be the coup de gras to the economy. The grid will go down and millions of people will freeze to death in northern cities before they starve to death. Southern cities will die of starvation and disease. Eastern cities will either freeze, starve or die from violence. Western cities will die from thirst, disease and violence. Merry Fucking Christmas
Welp, if we all die we won’t have to worry about whether or not we’ve got enough toilet paper or beans and rice.
Miz Kitty: Straight up fact. ! niio
I guess this is looking on the bright side.
I’ve spent some time in the area having some corn belt relatives, most of the grain lost is subsidized for ethanol production, goes for export, or is sold for feeding hogs. Pork prices might go up a bit but nobody is going hungry because of the Derecho storm. There is a lot of corn grown in Texas but the corn in Missouri and Iowa is different, bigger plants with broad blue green leaves, just beautiful. Gonna be lots of p and moaning from all the big corporate welfare growers up there…
I’m not terribly happy about farm subsidies. Family farms are few and far between. Most are large corporate farms now. It’s farmer’s welfare. One guy I know personally has increased his net worth to 40 million off of taxpayer dollars. He’s growing corn for ethanol. And the farmers where I am from have been getting paid to NOT grow crops. It’s a racket!
Jane: Agreed. Then they complain young people today are leaving farming. Gee, I wonder why 🙂
I got into arguments with farmers in Ohio about it. “Oh, we got to work hard for that money!” I said so do the welfare people. then told them when they got coffee in the morning in town, look at the people on the square. Most were waiting to be taken to work. Ohio is good like that. niio
Getting Paid NOT to grow crops??? Could be the Conservation Reserve Program program which is widely supported even by the left or Prevented Planting payments which you have to quality for legitimate reasons. I’m a farmer and don’t know of any other reasons to be paid for not growing crops.
The biggest farm subsidy is Federal Crop Insurance which the Govt subsidizes almost 80% in certain cases. I don’t like this but it almost guarantees a farmer to break even. This allows the big to get bigger without much risk involved and DOES NOT make the farmer more efficient. Just gives a way for the greedy to get bigger and the Govt can deal with fewer people.
Most of these large corporate farms you talk about are family owned corporations which incorporate for tax benefits.
40 million dollars seems like a lot of money but isn’t when you add up a land worth 5-10,000/acre and a line of equipment that worth several million which is needed to farm a large family corporation of say…10,000 acres. I know of family corporations that have 100 million dollar lines of credit.
Farming is big business and takes big equipment. I know of people who farm 1000 acres and still have a full time job up town so they can get insurance benefits.
40 million as I said is his NET worth. I’m not opposed to profits/making money, but as he said himself, his money has come from subsidies funded by the U.S. Taxpayers.
A family I know well has taken on foreign investors for their corporation. As a result, their land is more than 50% foreign owned now. Alarming. There may be laws, but swamp-dwellers pass no laws without legal loopholes to leave themselves with an out. Additionally, that one family it’s growing Monsanto GMO crops. I just feel like there’s a lot more going on and the foreigners and Monsanto have a more nefarious intent on respect with Monsanto, foreign investers, and the swamp.
Thanks for telling the other side of the story. There’s tons of propaganda out there, and some people find it delicious.
Important and helpful!
It’ll be a full court press by the DNC to hinder & squash the economy before the election >>> total different mindset afterward – by the retail Black Friday the state Virus restrictions will miraculously be lifted – holiday travel will be pushed across the country >>> next DNC fight will be Trump’s Vaccine – “No need to get a Virus shot” ….
Virus’ have no political agenda.
But how the pols and bureaurats react to the virus has everything to do with politics.
I hope you’re right Illini Warrior, however I don’t think you will be.
If Trump wins the Left will riot and burn the cities. The military will have to intervene because the Leftist City Govts will do nothing.
If Trump loses the Left will celebrate by burning the cities. They will assume their victory is approval of their previous actions. They will take over the wealthy areas of the cities and call it Reparations. The Leftist City Govts. will do nothing and the military will not be called on to restore order until all wealth is destroyed. They will blame it on Trump.
Anarchy is accomplished with the later scenario and the Left will then use this bedlam to fulfill their dream of Socialism, repeal of the 1st and 2nd amendments for the conservatives. Civil war will follow. Now would be a good time for all conservatives and those with wealth to leave the Leftist cities with as much as they can take with them.
The only thing we can do now is Pray for souls of our Nation.
The left eat their own as there is no honor amoung thieves. I agree. Any conservative needs to get the heck out of the city if at all possible. The wealthy are already leaving in droves. I read somewhere that in the last month there were over 13,000 high end condos put on the market in NYC. If you have retirement savings, cash them in and buy land now, while you’re still able.
PLEASE stop forcing divisiveness. And notice that you’re forcing your divisive attitude upon the left, like it’s them who are doing it when it’s YOU.
I think you have lost your mind
Spike: With the left, it’s always heads they win, tails we lose. Half of them can’t wipe their own tushies but hire someone to do it. Right now, Kali-fornia (Harris’ San Fran district) is trying, again, to drop the age of consent to ten-years-old. Liberalism is gross. Even Malcolm X said, liberals are the enemy of the people. niio
How can you two set here and spout fox news propaganda points like they’re gospel? Fox always lies. You really need to diversify your news sources! One of the worst things in American politics is the uninformed voters who vote based on nothing but propaganda.
ta… and you believe your CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes etc.like they are Gospel. You go ahead and believe your media and I’ll believe the media that sticks up for the Constitution and moral values.
True, the left has always gone for propaganda as opposed to the truth. They can’t stand the truth to steal a quote from Jack Nicholson.
ta: what’s fox news? We threw away the TV years ago. BTW if you go to pow wows you might hear things like dnc/kkk=nazi party usa. And if you like to read, try the Kennedy Curse, written by a friend of the family and approved by none other than Teddy. You’ll find where Joe Kennedy went nazis and tried to blackmail FDR into declaring the US a nazi nation. You may now go back to goose-stepping in the basement.
Actually, Information from Fox News is more truthful than other sources. When you turn on channels and they say Fox News is biased, but there is no other network that is biased like them, that sort of information that is so patently false that I know it is a bad source for information.
I used to go to BBC and the online Christian Science Monitor for additional news sources, but found that their journalistic integrity as declined as well. It is difficult to get the totally straight story. Fox News covers events that other stations remain silent on. Fox News often plays montages of talking heads from other networks using exactly the same wording, one after another after another. These are clearly talking points from the Dems.
We should have cloned Walter Cronkite while we had the chance.
False. And cut it out with this whole dividing of America. The Obama years were terrible for us mostly because of how divided and antagonistic we all became towards “those other people”. But this new guy’s brand of divisive antagonism has Obama’s beat by a country light year.
It was the dems who knew COVID was a threat early on, it was them who begged to save people’s lives, and ironically, or perhaps because we’re so divided, the right saw the dems’ opinion and immediately went into opposite mode by insisting that businesses remain open, old people’s lives be damned. It was the dems who begged people to practice safety measures to save lives; meanwhile the right created this myth that COVID must be fake and doesn’t really hurt people, and they strut around with “pro-choice/my body my choice” signs about masks… But remember what the right has said about pro-choice for decades? “Pro-choice is the opposite of Pro-life”. Let that sink in!
And wear your mask! It’s what a patriot does!
It is interesting how otherwise reasonable minds can differ.
Red State Escapee apparently fled from some state with less government interference in the lives of its residents to a state where the nanny state is looking over everyone’s shoulder and prescribing how its residents should live their individual lives. I feel confident the remaining citizens are happy to see Red State leave.
He or she apparently thinks Obama did a wonderful job in uniting the country. In my opinion Barry did more to stir up racial discontent than anyone since Woody Wilson.
I suspect he/she thinks Lindy Johnson was the second great emancipator putting the blacks finally on the road to equality with other “races.” He/she seems to overlook that Good Ole Lindy had contempt for the minorities and only passed his legislative package because he thought it would buy the minority vote for the party of the KKK for 200 years.
Unfortunately, the second “great emancipator” did more to destroy the black family unit than any president in history in my view.
Consider his/her opinion about the current flu epidemic. When The Donald wanted to limit or eliminate visitors from China the dems decried his attempt as sinophobia. And then criticized him when he backed off due to the sinophobia tab as not doing enough. Barry and family took expensive vacations to Hawaii and Europe without a whimper of criticism from the media. Donnie takes off to Florida for a couple of rounds of golf and the press goes crazy about the expense of his weekend off.
I haven’t seen a president attacked by the other side so much since Harry Truman fired MacArthur. Truman’s only mistake was that he didn’t do it sooner. He should have canned Dugout Doug the first time he was insubordinate.
The communist anarchists stirring up riots have a solution to the unrest: just do what they want and there will be peace and tranquility. And they call it adopting reasonable attitudes.
Well, yeah, Hitler was peaceable enough as long as you did what he dictated. So was Mao. Every dictator is peaceable as long as you toe the line. Well, sometimes not. Stalin even killed folks who were toeing the line.
What is amazing is that these limp-wristed yuppie fellow travelers think that they won’t be stood against the wall when the anarchists gain power. They have failed to gain the lessons of history. Their group was the first to be stood against the walls or sent off to slave labor camps.
@left coast chuck
What a long line of blather directed at me, just to hear yourself be wrong. I never stated nor implied Obama was good or great; check your local area for remedial literacy programs. The left coast has them.
About 90% of the rest of your hysteria was all pulled straight from… well, the same orifice that you got my approval of Obama.
All that matters is instead of disproving anything I wrote, you just went on long-winded assumptive diatribes entirely bereft of fact. That tells me you *couldn’t* disprove anything I said.
Oh, wait, you may be correct about the low IQ meth and opioid addicts I left behind in the Red States not missing me. They sure don’t miss me, mostly because red state suicides (which are legion) have taken care of that!
” But this new guy’s brand of divisive antagonism has Obama’s beat by a country light year.”
I suppose reasonable minds can attach different meanings to the import of the above quote.
Every day when I open my e-mail account I see outrageous lies told about Trump with absolutely no hesitancy at all. The latest being that his wife jerked her hand away from his when he reached for it coming out of the helicopter. Trying with another feeble attempt to sew the idea that somehow there was a marital rift between the two.
The video clip was cut off at the point where she continued her hand further to the right to hold down her skirt which was in danger of billowing up in the wind. That was another one and a half to two seconds of video clip which was “inadvertently” edited out, otherwise no story, just two people getting off an airplane. No salacious story there. No ill-willed lie to make it seem as if there is marital discord.
As I said in my post I have never seen a president as vilified as this president. The democrats have wasted four years doing nothing for the country but expending all their efforts at vilifying Trump and obstructing his platform promises of what he would attempt to do if elected.
The latest is this post office brouhaha. I don’t know about the rest of the readers of this list but my mail volume is down substantially in the last three months. With a dramatically reduced mail stream, it behoves the post office to cut back somewhere so they don’t go deeper in the red.
The democrats plan is to print more phony money for the post office to find some way to waste. I wonder just how much pork in in that bill to “save” the post office? That’s a closely guarded secret. Another “You have to wait until we pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”
Trump isn’t in the running to head my list of all time favorite presidents. I voted for him because the alternative was so despicably bad. It wasn’t a case of voting for the best candidate. It was a case as has been so despairingly common in recent elections of voting for the least worst candidate.
RSE: What? I left a blue state and suicide by heroin and meth. I could take trips to NYC, Jersey, Maryland, up to Vermont, and every slum is filled with pain and suffering and dope. go to a real blue state and see. I lived on Rattlesnake road in a blue state. When I was a kid, it was bootleg sourmash, moonshine, and beer. Before I was in my teens, it was heroin and coke. When I left the blue behind, I left behind Nazis and the Klan, communists and others, and all of them work hard for the DNC. they talk one thing and then make certain dems get elected no matter how bad they are because dems give them what they want, power.All the dems have given us is division, hate, and lies.
So, I read here just like every other website on the Internet, that politics is winning. Politics has now turned into the”Great Division”. Look at how it divided you all are!
I just hope “we the people” can wake up and take OUR COUNTRY BACK before it is too late. I fear only one thing, it might be too late to pull ourselves out of the hole we let politicians dig. United we should stand and divided we are going to fall! Political anything WILL NEVER SAVE US. GET UNITED PEOPLE!
RSE: No, the dems shrieked when Trump closed the borders. Refugee cities took in 23,000 sick people. why do you think NYC has the world’s record for dead corona victims? Why do you think people are demanding Fauci be tried for mass murder? Hitler was as much left as Stalin, a friend of his, and the US took in hundreds of Nazi ‘refugees’ after the war. Many were Jews, Eastern Europeans, and more. A half-million SS and Gestapo were sent to refugee nations like the USSR, Spain, Egypt. They took over the DNC. That’s modern liberalism, out of the Nazi handbook.
January-President Trump banned travel to the United States from China, mandatory 14 day quarantine For U.S. citizens
Democrats and Pelosi criticized the decision calling it xenophobic and racist.
Feb 24th-
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was out in San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February encouraging people to go out in public and spend money at local businesses despite concerns regarding the spread of the coronavirus.
‘Come to Chinatown, here we are — we’re, again, careful, safe — and come join us.’” Pelosi
March 2020 clip, Fauci said: “Right now in the United States people should not be walking around with masks …
March 16th Trump announces 15 days to slow the spread
On March 19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom implemented a lockdown of the entire state
March 20 Cuomo Orders lock down
I didn’t hear Dems calling for strict lockdowns in China town (Or at Mardi Gras either).
Sky: Or at all those riots they hosted. niio, walk in beauty
Thanks, IvyMike!
I happen to agree with you. Usually I split my votes between parties based on whoever I feel would do the better job… and to avoid putting too much power into the hands of one party. And, like you, I voted for Obama because I wanted to see the positive change that he promised. After eight years of “meh” punctuated by the fiasco of Benghazi, I was more than ready for positive change, so I voted
as much against Clinton’s unlikablity and incompetence as for Trump. What I wasn’t prepared for was the four year long temper tantrum on the part of certain elements of the Democratic party, the Media, and the global elite. I have never seen the level of hatred and spite against a person that we have all witnessed during Trump’s term of office. Regardless of political party, anyone who looks at it objectively and fairly can see that it has been a non-stop attack against not only Trump, but anyone even suspected of being a supporter in any way shape or form. There have been multiple incidents of people wearing “MAGA’ hats being beaten, cars with Trump bumper stickers being vandalized, people who dare to even say they don’t think that Trump is a monster being “cancelled”. If you are stupid enough to admit to being a Republican, you are branded as a racist out of hand, just “because”. The list goes on.
Does any of this behavior seem normal or right? We’ve had political differences before. People have voted for “X” and “Y” was elected, and people were disappointed, but there was not this level of hatred and harassment on either side and certainly not mainstream like it is today.
People joke about “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, but it’s no longer a joking matter. AND there is plenty of crazy on the part of “conservatives”, too, but there doesn’t seem as many of them.
What is going to happen if Trump is reelected? One thing I can tell you… the riots will be unlike any we have seen before. I’m afraid of the fallout from this, no matter who is declared the winner, because there are so many violent nutjobs on both sides. And while you may conceal your politics, you can’t conceal your race. Things are going to be ugly, again on both sides. We need to be ready for that, too.
Yup. Hard times loom large today. Weather, mobs, lack of work, many different areas affected. People and politics going insane!
Producing and saving food for the long term is wise. Support local or regional businesses as much as possible. All are important steps we can be part of during the lockdown and even after.
Many small businesses are disappearing. They can’t weather such a long shutdown or the expense of opening and closing and opening and closing again. Some stores will go to online rather than brick and mortar places of business. Many parents of school age children may end up forced out of the workforce or into odd hours of home based work so they can home school and watch small children. We used to hate “latch key kids” home alone till the end of a parents work day. If parents can find work now kids m a y be home alone all day! Then kids and parents will home school in the evenings.
Where rioting, burning, and looting have been common many large businesses are not coming back. That means a lack of jobs and shopping opportunities in those communities. Do mayor’s even comprehend that yet?
It is fast becoming a strange new world. I don’t like it!
Arizona, food on the shelves, prices for some things dropping, and no riots. Those of us old enough to remember Babbitt as governor (a friend of the Clintons) remember shortages caused by him, including water, rising prices, racism, and other forms of hate. then the Tohono revolted and Babbitt got the shaft. we’re under invasion by Kali-fonians, but most won’t stay. Arizona is still Indian country, and it’s always Indians who start the revolt against liberalism. Mexico is slowly grinding down thanks to the PRI (their DNC/los maritos) and that spells trouble here, north of them. Best bet, keep selling Mexicans guns and ammo. Then the PRI is too scared to do anything against the US. niio
I use to talk sarcastically when the Prez of Mexico was complaining about guns being run into Mexico from the U.S.
I couldn’t see the Sinaloa cartel coming up to Tucson to buy guns from Uncle Mike’s Beer, Bait and Bullets shop one or two at a time.
Then I found out that the federal government actually WAS running guns into Mexico in absolute violation of a significant number of federal laws. That gun running resulted in the death of at least one federal law enforcement officer and who knows how many Mexican law enforcement officers.
Man, was I chagrin! I thought the Mexican Prez was just blowing smoke to take heat off him because he wasn’t doing much of anything to control gun violence. And all along he had a righteous bitch. Uncle Sammy was enabling gang crime in Mexico. And both George junior and Barry knew all about it. Silly me. How stupid of me to think that the U.S. government would never do something like run guns to criminals in another country.
No wonder gringo is a term of derision in Mexico.
LLC: Like I tell college injuns, put a letter behind the name. Obama, Holder both D. When W did it, he did so with the blessing of the PAN. Each stock had a homing device to track it and that led to a lot of tank tracks all over drug lords. Fox and Calderon both used Mexican Army to make arrests. If the drug lord didn’t like it, he was arrested posthumously, right around the tank demolished his house, and him.
Nieto, PRI/mariot party, looked the other way when the dems sold M16s, no homing devises, to drug lords. Then tried to stop citizens from giving the solders of drug lords bad accidents. Right now, when they can, Mexicans are coming over the border to buy in the US and taking their goods home to stop the socialists. Same with American Indians north of the border.
I knew things weren’t going well in Mexico. Not a single avocado in Walmart today. Not one!
Gov: Might be at that. But I bet you could buy a little kid in Seattle, easy enough, from over the border. niio
Mexico has been a complete mess since Santa Anna wiped his behind with the Constitution of 1824, which was a very good Federalist document. Our Homeland Security Brown Shirts selling weapons to the cartels was a disgrace, but the Cartels buy their real military weapons from the Mexican Federal Police or the Mexican Army depending on who they can corrupt. They say the drug wars in Mexico kill tens of thousands a year but the dead seldom are Narcos or Army/Police, near as I can figure the country is at war with its own people. Despotism, anarchy, mass murder all financed by American drug users who don’t give a damn and by our war on drugs which isn’t even effective enough to raise the price of Mexican dope. I hear that next toilet paper shortage Homeland Security is going to hand out paper copies of the 4th Amendment, Santa Anna style.
Mike: I’d go back a little more to when the Aztec invaded the Valley of Mexico. Santa Ana was a creollo pimple Other than that, agreed!
BTW, Stick with the small, wild-grown Mexican avocados. Those jumbo Kali avocados are sprayed all the time and fertilized with human wastes. Texas and Arizona are getting into avocado production, but they’ll never be as big as those Kalo avocados. there must be something about sewer water that makes them so big and salty. niio 🙂
IvyMike: That’s why I couldn’t buy into the cartels buying their guns at guns shops in the U.S. Why buy semi-automatics when one can purchase fully automatics from the Mexican Army? Why buy bolt action rifles when one can buy RPG rockets from the Chinese Army at the port that they own on the west coast of Mexico? I shopped all over SoCal one weekend in all the gun shops trying to score just one RPG launcher with a half dozen grenades with absolutely zero success. It’s so bad, an honest anarchist just can’t buy decent anarchy weapons in the U.S. anywhere. I thought I had a chance to score some Claymores at Auto Zone but it turned out they were just a doohickey to put on your trailer hitch. Bummer. Even the local Cal National Guard armory where one could always steal some decent crew-served weapons has been turned into a homeless shelter and there isn’t even a sharp letter opener in the place. Sheesh!!!
There’s nothing to stop the larger cartels from building their own small arms factories. Nothing at all.
Wow! Maybe we kept them all. Large California avocados are on sale at Safeway this week 75¢ each. I bought a bag of smaller Mexican avocados half a dozen for 59¢ for the bag.
LCC,
So you’re the guy who bought ’em all.
Hopefully, it’s just temporary. I don’t even like avocados; it’s my husband who eats them, but I find it very upsetting. This is supposed to be the land of plenty. There should not be shortages.
A few years back a friend who is big in the Hispanic community in Eugene told me about a church group that came up to visit from Mexico. Where did they want to go? The Dollar Store. They all bought things to take back to friends and family. One man was a building super. He bought a new shower head for everyone in his building. That is the America I know and we have to do everything we can to keep it that way.
GovtGirl: How I agree. Everyone is crying and wringing their hands about having to have rolling blackouts because of our piss-poor electrical infrastructure not being able to take the stress and the fact that we just can’t generate enough electricity to match the demand.
The San Onofre generating plant is closed. I don’t know about the Huntington Beach plant, but I suspect because it is right on the ocean front it is closed. The Oxnard generating plant is closed. The Diablo Canyon plant is closed. The Pescadore generating plant is closed.
That is four definite plants closed and a very possibly fifth plant closed. I wonder why we can’t generate enough electricity to meet demand. It is especially puzzling since the rationale for closing at least the Oxnard plant was that there wasn’t enough demand to merit keeping it open. Say what?
When I came to California in1959 it had the finest road system in the world. The California university system was ranked as one of the finest in the world. There were plenty of good paying manufacturing jobs in the auto industry, the oil industry, the aircraft industry. The construction industry and farming was a major source of income to the state.
Aside from Tesla who got an incredible deal to build his electric cars, there is no auto industry in the PDRK. The major Japanese car manufacturers have even moved their headquarters out of the PDRK to states that welcome industry. McDonnald-Douglas, Curtis-Wright, Lockheed and smaller a/c manufacturers are all gone. Instead of dozens of aircraft manufacturers in the U.S., the country that really made flying the industry it is today, has only one, Boeing in Seattle and for how long, given the political climate in Seattle, no one knows.
A great many of the farmers have moved to the midwest or to Mexico. We still grow a lot of crops but not nearly the quantity that we did at one time.
Even the motion picture industry which started in California mostly makes pictures in other states or countries.
Yeah, we have the electronics industry with all the manufacturing done in China or some cheaper far eastern country.
And, of course, that long litany of what has happened to California has been repeated in other parts of the country too. I feel confident the explosion that rocked Baltimore this past week was because of decayed infrastructure. But we can send aid to Beirut. We maintain a large standing military presence in South Korea. It’s been over 50 years since the Korean War was hot. The South Koreans have one of the most vibrant economies in the world. We buy tons of products from them, including cars. Their gross national production and manufacturing base is a gazillion times that of North Korea and they still need us to protect them? Maybe it is time a couple more South Korean boys put down their Samsung phones and picked up a rifle.
Yeah, it’s not the country I came back to from my almost four years overseas, that’s for sure.
I agree with you 100% on everything except S. Korea. I think the base there has a more strategic purpose as a weigh station in Asia. One that I feel is important to our national security.
Gov: when I was a sec guard at a junkyard in PA, every month a crew came up from Mexico for a week, stripped parts, and hauled a semi-load back to Hemosillo and Mexico City. In 1910, Mexico was heads above the Us in economy and pay rates. Gold sold for USD 28.00/oz, and the peso was valued at USD 1.86. By 1912, socialists took over. By 1936, it took 4,000 pesos to make a dollar. niio
That’s interesting. For the longest time a peso equalled 8 cents. Just looked up exchange rate and it’s 4 1/2 cents and that’s with a devalued dollar. Must be having a pretty rough time down there.
Gov: PRI does what the DNC tells them to do. I need to get down there, maybe a month from now, to see family. Might as well pick up coffee and organically, wild-grown avocados while I’m at it. 🙂
Pres. Nieto (PRI) devalued the peso so badly after Calderon lost the election to outside voters (mostly from Kali) a pack of smokes went from 25c US to 10 bucks, US. Once people understand how much the PRI is hated down there, they understand why so many customers in AZ gun shops speak no English. AZ, You pay for the gun, you fill out the paperwork, then take it home. If you’re paperwork is rejected, the feds send a notice to whatever empty lot you used as an address. If you are known to belong to a gang anywhere, The computer shows it, so the drug lords are donating a lot of cash to get the dnc back in power.
niio
This is so sad. We have everything to gain by having a strong Mexico, Central America abd South America, but there is so much corruption we can’t turn the Americas into what they should be. So, the place to start is Mexico. We need a strong ( not to be misinterpreted as the murderous strongman model) a strong and honest leader there. That, plus the work ethic and natural resources and Mexico and their people could really thrive. We need to do this for our own national security. Remember when Obama posted warning signs 50 miles this side of the border that it wasn’t safe? Pathetic! No wonder people stream across. No wonder we need to build a wall. Horrible!
Gov: Exactly. the PAN was outgoing, selling off all the nationalized companies, and Mexico was booming. then the DNC and PRI took over, again. The PRI depends on young men of fighting age to leave the country for a while, at least. If forced to stay home with no real job prospects, it sets them on edge. Mexico teaches even little kids to help support the family. No job, no manhood. Then people get angry. Every revolution starts with an angry woman and a fool with a gun. niio
We’re already on the edge of the precipice, and standing on a banana peel.
There are already threats of a massive upsurge of covid cases in the fall, plus flu and other illnesses. Many schools are not having any in person classes, and a lot of businesses have been forced to permanently close due to lost revenue. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
What we as preppers need to do is to concentrate on the long term here, because it’s going to be years before the economy regains any semblance of normalcy. This means looking at the long-term effects on every aspect of our lives, not just guns, food, gold or whatever.
My thought is to combine resources with family members that you can stand living with on a daily basis (or close friends), and hunker down on the family farm, grandma’s house or wherever there’s enough room for everyone. Families of yore were extended, not only because of a lack of social services in case of emergency, but because basic survival requires a lot of labor in order to work. You can’t survive on a couple pots of tomatoes on your terrace, and if you are alone anywhere you will be a target, not because of what people know you have, but what they think you might have. If their kids haven’t eaten for two or three days, people might feel bad, but they will eventually kill you for anything they can eat, sell, trade, use. It’s even worse when you factor in the vast number of people who have addictions, because they will have no scruples in killing you for your stuff. More people means more people to fight and protect against marauders.
Also consider stockpiling extra clothing for personal use and trade down the road. Much of our ready to wear clothes and shoes are made in China, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam. Anything disrupting trade in the future – Covid, war, economic collapse – will effect our being able to get what we need. Kid’s clothes in particular are good to get now before everything shuts down again and Junior is stuck wearing pants that are five inches too short. If they’re kept nice, you can always pass them on to someone in need.
The economy is never going to return to any sense of normalcy”. The entire purpose of the plandemic was to utterly destroy all nations economies so the OWE could be established. That has now been accomplished the further shut downs and the idiotic mask wearing are just control mechanism now!
It’s maddening to hear Biden and Kamala reviled as wacked out far left progressive liberals, they are no different than any of the other hand puppets worked by the wealthy we’ve seen in the White House between Reagan and Trump. I had hopes Obama would bring real change, but he is a spineless chump, I had hopes Trump would bring change but he is incredibly weak minded and stuck in the 1970s. I like Miss Kitty’s post because she goes right to the heart of what is possible in a major economic downturn w/o boohooing about the world wide liberal conspiracy. If there is a world wide political conspiracy I suspect it is apolitical.
Don’t underestimate the hardiness of Our Constitution. Weird as it sounds coming from a libtard I applaud Trump for his signature achievement of appointing hundreds of conservative constitutionalist judges to the Federal Courts. The future of the Republican Party is not good, but the Federal Judiciary, co-equal to the Executive and Legislative branches, will be there to moderate change for a generation.
Here is an excellent (long) article on the forgotten struggle between FDR and the Supreme Court. Although the Court backed off in its resistance to FDR’s agenda the whole kerfluffle validated the independence of the courts.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-franklin-roosevelt-clashed-with-the-supreme-court-and-lost-78497994/
No, Mike, some of us paid attention in U.S. history class back when it was still taught. I for one am quite familiar with the machinations of the “venerated” Frankie Roosevelt and his equally venerated wife Ellie who should have dumped him for infidelity early on but was so enamored by the power of the White House that she chose to ignore his flagrant infidelity.
LLC: ain’t that the truth. FDR AKA DC Rapist. He sent a shipload of kids back to the Nazis. That and his rape of the queen of Norway were used as blackmail by repubs to force him to declare war on his friend, Hitler. Socialist trash with money is still trash. niio
Thumbs up LCC, but I also lament that history ‘used to be’ taught. Shoot, the 1920s and 30s are lost to today’s Americans, times that have a lot to teach us. Like Hoover being the 1st politician to alienate blacks from the Republican Party. So far as infidelity goes, I haven’t met or heard of many Alpha males who kept the bull in the barn, especially rich ones. And you have to wonder, why did FDR marry his plug ugly cousin? It is said she played for the other team…
Get ready for a barter economy where no sales tax is collected. How do you keep track of a home grown potato? What value do you assign to it? How would a government collect taxes on an armed populace without outright force? AND, how successful would they be?
Back in the 80s there were trade clubs set up where one could trade goods and services with other members. Not too long after they got started the IRS announced that the goods traded had to be declared as income. Not sure how much tax money was collected on the traded goods.
I never saw one trade club that I thought didn’t take too much of a commission on the deal and never joined one although I certainly checked them out at the time. I guess others thought the same as me because they didn’t last very long.
One of the reasons why money was invented was because it actually made trade possible. Trading goods is cumbersome and expensive. Using monetary coins as an exchange basis made national and international trade possible. Even farmers’ markets dealt in coin of the realm as opposed to trading chickens for potatoes.
Of course, the coins traded were precious metal coins, silver and gold so one knew what one was receiving in value as opposed to fiat money based on nothing more than credit.
long: they don’t have to tax. they confiscate, claiming its for everyone’s good, then keep a lion’s share for themselves. So far, they’re pretty successful and were back before money became common. How do you hide a garden from jealous neighbors? Best bet is to grow eatable ornamentals. Most American native plants were picked for beauty, as well as for food. Canna lilies, the whole plant is food from roots to seeds. Dalias were raised for the roots as well as how nice the flowers are. In the event of SHFT, we can raise buffalo gourds. They stick! Bugs like them better than squash and pumpkins. One whiff and people gag. One bite and they puke all over. We always get compliments, even from gardeners, on how pretty the flower beds are. Nasturtiums (leaves and seeds), cannas, lemon grass, blueberry tomatillo, cowpeas (purple blooms, good green beans), tepary beans (good for shelling), lots of mesquite and cactus, and more. Scralet runner beans for green beans, shell beans, and a storage root like a rough potato. Wild tobacco. sweet potatoes, small blazing hot chilis like chiltepin. Sunchokes. Fruit trees. Hide the garden because if you don’t the law will harvest for you. niio
Blueberry tomatillo? Sounds great, but i googled it and can’t find it, more info, please!
Scarlet runner has an edible root?
Mike: They’re blue tomatillo. Some have a blueberry taste. some are purple, some dark blue. https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/tomatillos
Scarlet runners are a bean, but not related to the kidney bean. They develop a storage root that some people will take in before a frost, then replant in spring, if they don’t eat it. One nick-name is 7-year bean because it can produce 7 years. It’s somewhat frost tolerant. One variety can grow 68 feet. Donno about you, but I think that’s a tad too long to reach up to pick. Glider, maybe? 🙂
https://northernhomestead.com/growing-food-scarlet-runner-beans-recipe/
niio
Thanks, found them under purple tomatillos, they are top of the list for new food to try, I bookmarked the order page at your link. nativeseeds.org is a great site, I looked at their prickly pear products page, reminded me of the 70s in Austin, hippies used to make wine from tunas. It was terrible.
Mike: A neighbor makes tuna wine, but it’s not bad. half cup of juice in 5 cups of water. Tastes like watermelon. ‘Tis the season now for fruit, but no troom in the freezer and no pressure canner to can the juice. Raw, very tasty! Juiced straight up, gross. niio
What is tuna wine? Tried to look it up and all the articles just talked about which wine to pair with the seafood?
Gov: Tun/tuna the fruit from nopales, prickly pear. More than you wanted to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia#:~:text=Opuntia%2C%20commonly%20called%20prickly%20pear,the%20fruit%3B%20or%20paddle%20cactus.
niio
Thanks, red. Really interesting. Such a useful plant.
red,
What can you do with Devil’s Claw? The leaves and stems are extremely sticky, it is listed as a “protocarnivorous” plant, meaning it traps insects but does not eat them. It has some green fruit that I saw a pickling recipe for (I think I waited too long to pick them for that because they are pretty big now) and I saw where the fruit are used for crafts and dried arrangements because they are unusual looking. We have a lot of them, but one in particular is a mutant! It is HUGE with stems about 2″ in diameter And I don’t think it is done growing yet. It seems to be the only successful thing in my gardens and it is a volunteer! The grasshoppers won’t eat it even though I wish they would. (They ate everything else in my garden…for the second year in a row! Evil creatures!,,??) It has pretty flowers that the bees seem to love which is a (the only?) point in the plus column for it.
Sabel: I don’t use them. Basket weavers do as a stiffener. I know herbalists use it.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/devils-claw#:~:text=Devil's%20claw%20is%20a%20flowering,%2Dinflammatory%20effects%20(%202%20).
https://www.desertusa.com/flowers/devil-claw.html
niio
I copied this from foragingtexas.com.
The young, tender pods are cooked (boiled, steamed, or fried) before eating…but frying them like okra is the best. Boiled or steamed Devil’s Claw pods are kind of an…acquired taste. If they are starting to get tough just leave them on the plant until the pod matures. This is indicated by the pod turning hard, brown/black in color, and beginning to split. At this point collect the seeds. They can be eaten raw but roasting them first improves the flavor. Once roasted they can be boiled as a porridge or ground into a gluten-free flour.
I’ve never been hungry enough to eat it but I’ve got a few of the claws hanging around in odd places.
“How do you hide a garden from jealous neighbors? Best bet is to grow eatable ornamentals.”
Thank you. That’s some of the best advice I’ve read on here lately.
The reason everything is so messed up is cuz we aint played cowboys and liberals yet!
So you’re thinking the Redskin’s new team name is The Liberals? So cool…
! Good one. What was wrong with the redskins? 🙂 niio
There were four democrat native americans who were offended by the name. From articles I read most native Americans just didn’t care one way or the other. What do they call the Cleveland baseball team these days? Or is there a Cleveland baseball team? I don’t follow professional sports at all. What significance is there in watching supposed adults leap around celebrating what they are paid enormous sums of money to do? Do we high five folks in the neighborhood when the postman drops the mail in the mailbox with the outdoor temps hovering around 115?
Do we leap up in the air and ass bump when the counter girl at Mickey D’s gets our order right?
Do we high five everyone in the grocery store when the bag boy puts the cake on top of the load of groceries instead of on the bottom of the bag? (You can tell how old I am. How long has it been since there were bag boys? Now they are called courtesy clerks. In fact I started my grocery clerk career as a bag boy)
LLC: Exactly! 2 people protested Arctic oil and were well-paid to be traitors to their own. It’s a long list of people playing the skin game. Go read Indian Country Today, it’s owned by Bill Gates. Most so-called American Indian sites and rags are owned by dems, and not read by American Indians. Thank you! niio
Oh, you had me rolling with this one.
“…cases spike as people peek out into the world to see if all is clear” should read “…as idiots run around throwing temper tantrums about wearing a bit of cloth over their faces and ignoring all epidemiological protocol during a pandemic.” I received a tip from a doctor friend working in epidemiology in late December that this was coming. Unfortunately, his belief that the federal government would be proactive (as it had been on ebola) was misguided, so we’re far worse off than he believed.
“America is the world’s only benevolent superpower.” Comedy gold here. American exceptionally knows no bounds.
Do you live in the United States? If so, why, since you seem to hate it so?
Is it because most other countries arrest and execute dissidents, or restrict their movements, prevent them from getting jobs and apartments and harass their families and friends?
Yes, we’ve made mistakes and done some admittedly horrendous things (especially to our indigenous people), but throughout our relatively short history we have been a beacon of hope for a better tomorrow for millions of legal immigrants who have been grateful to come to a country where they had an opportunity to live without the fear of being murdered for their ethnicity or religion. While we have had isolated incidents, (because of individual crazy people who live to hate) the majority of people in this country are safe to go about their business without the government engaging in pogroms and ethnic cleansings.
You may disagree with me all you want, and probably will, but remember that you have a legal right in this country to do so without fear of reprisals that you will not find in most other countries in the world.
While you’re sipping your soy triple shot cappuccino and eating your sustainably sourced and produced cookies, please reflect on the millions of people from this country who fought and died for your right to look down on it and it’s inhabitants.
I doubt that you are capable of feeling anything like shame, and I’m sure you will reply with some sarcastic shot about how I’m stupid, brainwashed and racist.
Truly, I’m expecting no less, because that’s how you college indoctrinates roll. A sane, balanced point of view that contradicts yours is to be met with ridicule, picked apart and twisted into whatever shape supports your own narrative. All because you are incapable of mounting a valid argument sustaining your point of view because it’s inherently unsustainable.
Enjoy your coffee and cookies.
you might want to consider spending your fiat money on gold or goods. if you think things were/are bad now, wait until october. here in illinois there is already talk of closing us down again due to covid “spikes”–conveniently forgetting how fall/winter is prime cold and flu season, so of course, covid will re-emerge, but that will be the excuse. it will be politicized and our president will get the blame for all. but he’s still going to be re elected. and yes, the rioters will just go ape s*** crazy and the looting and violence will escalate. i think that will lead to a depression and subsequent fall of the dollar, by as much as 2/3, and will last a minimum of two years. this affects the whole world, remember, so if you want/need a new freezer, now is the time to buy cuz the price and wait time to get it will never be smaller. if you could buy one at all.
Excellent points, Diane!
This fall will be our last brush with “normalcy” for a long time.
Stock up, prep up, and prepare mentally.
This article may be of interest:
https://readynutrition.com/resources/could-we-be-living-through-a-systemic-breakdown-here-are-3-telltale-signs_20082020/
Be well.
IvyMike: This comment”I had hopes Trump would bring change but he is incredibly weak minded and stuck in the 1970s.” leads me to believe you don’t understand our current president. Many don’t, so you have much company.
Trump is not a politician, not an ideolog as most politicians are. He is simply a doer. When Trump perceives some problem/situation that’s been chugging along for decades with the wheels constantly falling off he will either attempt to fix it or replace it or just eliminate it. It wastes money the way it is & Trump is all about MAGA. It’s not just a slogan.
Don’t let his demeanor or his Queens way of talk fool you. His record so far proves He’s a Do-er!
RK: Trump is stuck in the 70s is OK by me. I’m stuck in 1776 and wish we had statesmen all around as they were. I support Trump because he loves to make an ass of liberals, not hard to do, and does get things done. when was the last time we had a president who made the chicoms cringe? Russia is acting respectful, again. Most nations look at what he is getting done and cheer him. Sky News, AU, is very up on him and few outside the US are supporting the liberals here any longer. When your enemies speak with respect to our nation, you know you have a good leader. niio
red,
It was the “weak-minded” remark that I objected to. Even though the 70s bring back memories of Carter (talk about weak-minded) but at least morals were more prevalent, and we were for the most part more civil even in the 70s.
If it were not for constant lies & denigration & pure hate of this president’s opponents Trump would not feel the need to fight back as aggressivly as he does. I believe many are completly ignorant of the many positive accomplishments of President Trump mostly because the pres will not report ANYTHING positive this president has done. He has been a boon for small business and our country in general as evidenced by the unemployment numbers across all people.
He is the man we needed in the whitehouse at this time.
That’s coming from someone who had serious doubts about him in the 2016 primaries.
RK: Tongue in cheek! I was trying enforce your comments. A lot of mine were leery of him in ’16, as well. As said about his enemies, we changed because of the hate they have for him, as have a lot of people around the world. Mike is rarely wrong, and in this case, he needs to remember Trump has a New York sense of humor. niio
It appears that third quarter economic growth is expected to be somewhere in the area of 30%. That’s plus thirty percent! Just an FYI.
This is good information to know, but it won’t be happening this year.