One of our friends’ family members was grocery shopping recently at a nearby “big box”
market. She had just corralled her two small children for the walk from the parking lot to the store when she noticed a bumper sticker on the back of a nearby pick-up truck. The sticker read, “What luck for rulers that men don’t think.” The young mother was intrigued.

All along her walk across the parking lot she thought, “I wonder who said that?” and  – thinking about some of the bumper stickers she’d read in traffic recently – “ I wonder who would have a bumper sticker like that on their truck?”

All throughout her shopping experience her mind kept going back to the words on the sticker and wondering what the truck’s owner might be thinking in posting such a provocative comment.

She finally finished shopping, got back to her car and had just finished unloading her groceries and putting the kids in their car seats when she happened to look up to see a grandmotherly-looking woman in hospital scrubs putting several grocery bags in the bed of “bumper sticker” pick-up.

She couldn’t resist. “I was just noticing your bumper sticker and I wonder if you know who that quote was from?”, she asked. The woman smiled and said she did and began a conversation that included a number of interesting comments. Here are some of them as remembered:

• “You know that I’ve been around the block a few more times than you and with a young family like yours, you ought to begin storing up some extra food. I think in about three months or so we’re going to experience an attack right here in our own country.”
• “Stores like this one only have food for two days or so, even in good times.”
• “I’m now cooking with dried beans and rice from scratch. They’re especially good for you and they’re inexpensive.”
• “ Save and clean your used food jars because they’re great to store things like rice and dried beans.’
• “Start buying a little extra each shopping day and put it away for an emergency.”
• “People don’t know their history. History repeats itself and we’re about in the 1930’s.
• “About the quote; it was from Adolph Hitler. When I tell people that, they often think I’m supportive of him and/or his views but it’s just the opposite. However, the truth is the truth no matter who says it.”
• “We’re on the way to a one-world government now and a number of governments are involved in this effort.”
• “Imagine how you’d feed your family during a martial-law situation.”
• “Listen to what the people are saying.”

During the first telling of this little story, we were told that an especially spiritual member of the group listening speculated that the lady might be an angel. One of those with a more historical perspective noted that when a number of the German-Jewish survivors of the holocaust were asked how they could have missed the signs of its approach they said, “ … things happened so slowly.” And finally, a third speculated that the lady represented an example of the deep and growing dissatisfaction abroad in the country; along with a profound distrust in/of government.

Please feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Until next time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

The holidays are a thought provoking time it seems. In spite of the rush of faith, family and friends we are apt to take a moment here and there to ponder our current condition here in the USA. While we were doing just that here at PrudentHome, we ran across these three “takes” giving us a quick look at the bigger context of our family preparations. Here then is the first:
From the “Blue Christmas” post  of Howard Kunstler (kunstler.com/blog) on 12/21/09 this small picture:

“The infatuation with technology, and the disgusting cockiness that goes with it (so well captured in “Avatar”), is but one facet of the psychosis gripping the nation — and by that I mean the profound detachment from reality. We have no idea what is happening to us and, naturally, no idea of what we’re going to do. I sat in a bar Friday evening with a financial reporter from a national newspaper, trying to explain the peak oil situation and what it implied for our economy. He had never heard it before. The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him. (It also came up in conversation that he could not tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was about despite a history degree from Yale.) There you have a nice snapshot of the mainstream media in this land.”

The second, from Charles Hugh Smith at his Of Two Minds blog (oftwominds.com) this past 12/22/09 and his post  “Symbolic Economies: U.S. and China”:

“In the U.S., unprecedented Federal borrowing and bailouts have created a symbolic economy of the stock market rally and bogus “recovery” statistics. Even as measurements of the real economy show structural devolution (tax receipts continue to plummet, incomes and hours worked remain at Depression levels, jobs are still being lost, etc.), the stock market’s 70% rise is in effect the symbolic evidence that the “economy is recovering.” Behind this facade, the real economy lies in ruins.

How can GDP be growing at a robust 3.5% clip (oops, already adjusted down to 2.7%) while employment and tax receipts are both falling? The answer: statistics are ginned up to support the symbolic economy of recovery, rising corporate earnings and a “new Bull Market” in stocks.”

The third is from Mike Folkerth – King of Simple (mikefolkerth.com) and his 12/21/09  post entitled “Auto Manufacturing; The Second Wave of Failure:” Here’s a peek:
“I’m off to get my truck rescued from the repair shop this morning. The computer went haywire and a new one is only $1300, not including labor (I found a new one on e-bay for $200). A $20 gasket in the front of my engine (Cummins diesel) was also leaking, but the labor to replace it requires removing the front of the truck and pulling the camshaft out of the engine in order to get to the gasket. Total cost is around $700 bucks (you can’t buy labor on e-bay).”
-“My mechanic noted that with the complexity of the engines and the difficulty of working on these modern trucks, that the entire hood should tilt forward for access to the engine and the electronic components, just exactly as they do on semi trucks. But then, that wouldn’t be all that stylish and pretty. Nope, that won’t do at all; style must trump function.”
“Regardless of how loony our society becomes, we all have to live here. … We may be forced to listen to the music, but we don’t have to dance to their tune.
Make the shift, live simple, live free, and live well.”

Until next time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers moving fast.

In “… an interview given by former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh to the Sunday Times in which he said that if Iran were not further sanctioned by this Christmas Israel would attack the country. Sneh told the paper that if Israel were forced to attack the Islamic Republic on its own it would do so …”

PH – Focus: PrudentHome.com has mentioned the potential conflict between Israel and Iran several times in the past and has discussed some of the possible world-wide consequences stemming from such an event              (remember the closing of the Straits of Hormuz with its conveying forty percent of the world’s oil during a time of global recession/depression?) and we’re mentioning it again because time may be running out for a peaceful resolution of this conflict: less than ninety days.

No one can say with any certainty what the future of this or any difficulty will be, but what can be said is that now is an excellent time for the prudent family to focus. Focus on preparing for what appears to be an even more difficult and uncertain future in a host of different areas: continued (and perhaps worsening) economic downturn, influential regional/geo-political upheaval and/or war, climate change, resource depletion, population increases, and food availability concerns.

To name a few.

Focus on what your family can do to mitigate the effects of these or similar events on your family. Focus on developing greater independence from the existing economic system in a self-sustaining way. Focus on your family providing, for your family, more of what it needs to function in all the essential areas: shelter, food, water, medical care and security.

Focus on strengthening faith, family, friends, and neighbors.

Focus.

Conversations With ‘Pop’ Smith:

PH Question – Pop, there’s a lot of talk today about walk-out packs,  kits, ‘rucks’ etc., and they’re referred to as GOOD bags, BOB’s, WOB’s and a host of other acronyms. What a lot of folks are saying is that if things really break bad, they’ll just  “saddle up” and make for the woods. Any thoughts?

‘Pop’: Actually, that particular sentiment was more popular in “back in the day”. Today, it has less popularity because folks have been thinking-it-through a little more: there’s too many people, not enough woods, and a few have even tried to shoulder a forty to fifty pound pack for several rough-country  miles – a clarifying experience – and then just said, “mebbe not”.

Basically, a bag is to get you where you’re going and to provide for your needs (shelter, water, food, medicine, and security) along the way and/or for a relatively short while after. With great skill, health, conditioning, experience, and a good bit of luck, there are a very few individuals that could provide for themselves (survive) for quite some time. However, the “very few” aren’t taking along an aging parent, a child(ren) or a spouse with a chronic medical condition -  just to name a few additional concerns.

A bag is vital as a plan, or part of a plan ’B’ or ’C’. It’s for when your place is no longer viable, you need to get back to your place or someplace else; something like that. You must have one (several preferably, with each for a specific need/situation) as a part of any realistic preparation program but it’s probably not your first choice for a “home”.

On July 16,2009, Michael J. Panzner posted “Shining a Bad Light” on his Financial Armageddon blog

site (http://financialarmageddon.com/). His post discussed ’…the lack of information coming from Washington detailing how and where — and perhaps, why — taxpayer funds are being spent in an effort to “save” the economy.”

But sometimes “…we do see the occasional ray of official sunshine …”.

That  “occasional ray” Mr. Panzner refers to in his post is from the Congressional Budget Office’s Director’s Blog -7/16/09 -  entitled “The Long-Term Budget Outlook.” Here’s some of that post:

• “Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario of current law. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress economic growth in the united states. Over time, accumulating debt would cause substantial harm to the economy.”
• “Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt stems from the three largest entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
• “In CBO’s estimates, the increase in spending for Medicare and Medicaid will account for 80 percent of spending increases for the three entitlement programs between now and 2035 and 90 percent of spending growth between now and 2080.”
• “Federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will grow relative to the economy both because health care spending per beneficiary is projected to increase and because the population is aging.”
• “The current recession and policy responses have little effect on long-term projection of non-interest spending and revenues. But CBO estimates that in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the federal government will record its largest budget deficits as a share of GDP since shortly after World War II. As a result of those deficits, federal debt held by the public will soar from 41 percent of GDP at the end of fiscal year 2008 to 60 percent at the end of fiscal year 2010. This higher debt results in permanently higher spending to pay interest on that debt. Federal interest payments already amount to more than 1 percent of GDP; unless current law changes, that share would rise to 2.5 percent by 2020.”

Some PrudentHome Observations: We are, as a people, deeply in debt. We are in debt to foreign money lenders and to our posterity.  Our debt is both public and private and there appears to be little will to retire either as we continue to increase our indebtedness.

Our only hope lies in the individual/individual family exercising fiscal restraint and responsibility and thereby separating prudent homes from a system that encourages debt and the dependence it breeds.

Until next time: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.