Benefit Spending: “Benefit Spending hits $2 Trillion, Highest Percent Since 1929; One Dollar Out Of Every Six From Vouchers” is the title of Mish Shedlock’s 6/4/09 post at his web site  globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com.  Here are some highlights;

“As economic conditions deteriorate and unemployment continues to soar (now @ 9.4%/PH) one in nine Americans are now on food stamps (Note: In 20 states as many as one in eight or 12 1/2%/PH).  Moreover, a staggering one of every six dollars of American’s income is coming in the form of a federal or state check or voucher.”

Laughing At Tim: “Why The Chinese Laughed At Geithner” says the Paul Craig Roberts post headline at prisonplanet.com today (Paul Craig Roberts is an economist-PH D from UVA, Assistant Sec. of Treasury under Ronald Regan, and editor/columnist for WSJ, Business Week, et al). Here’s a small piece from Mr. Roberts article:

“Treasury Secretary Geithner … told China that he stood for a ‘strong dollar’ but that China should let its currency appreciate relative to the dollar, which, of course, would mean a weaker dollar. He simultaneously told China that their investments in US Treasury bonds were safe. The Chinese university students, being economically literate, laughed at Geithner.”

Chinese Gold: “Chinese Begin Buying Up Gold” is the title of the Julie Crenshaw post at money newsmax.com on 6/4/09. Here are a couple of her key points:

• “Individual Chinese investors are now rushing to hoard the precious yellow metal, hoping it will retain value if the dollar collapses.”
• ‘Analysts say they expect the Chinese government would continue to raise its gold holdings as the yuan becomes increasingly internationalized.”
• “If I look at 10 years from now, I do believe that the purchasing power of the dollar is going to be substantially less,” portfolio manager Axel Merk told The U.K. Guardian.”

Hyperinflation bets: “Black Swan Fund Bets on Hyperinflation” is Dan Weil’s headline in his post for newsmax.com on 6/4/09. His points contain these highlights:

• “Univera Investments, a hedge fund manager known for it ties to contrarian investor Nassim Taleb, is opening a fund to benefit from a surge in inflation, The Wall street Journal reports.
• The fund is betting that massive fiscal and monetary stimulus around the globe will lead to huge price increases.”
• “The fund will also bet on losses for treasury bonds.”
• “Warren Buffett shares Taleb’s concern about inflation.
• “A country that continuously expands its debt as a percentage of GDP and raises much of its money abroad to finance that, at some point, it’s going to inflate its way out of the burden of that debt,” Buffett told CNBC.”

If the views presented in the foregoing articles are accurate, then the average American family will find it more difficult to adequately prepare for hard times in the future/as time passes.  This then is a wake-up call to prepare now; as much as you can, as rapidly as you can.

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

View #1 is from Mike Folkerth – King of Simple (mikefolkerth.com) today, 2/09/09, and is from a piece entitled “Try to Make Sense of This”:

“The leadership calls for unprecedented economic growth and at the same time pushes to protect our environment. We need fewer green house gases, but at the same time we need to consume more fuel for commerce. We can’t keep up with the cost of road repair, but we need more cars on the road. We need to use less fuel, but need more fuel taxes. We need to raise tobacco tax to pay for children’s health insurance and hope that the raise in tax will discourage tobacco use. We need to increase spending in education while our graduating kids fail to find employment. We need to subsidize auto and home purchases, while Americans are losing their autos and homes. We need to protect pristine wilderness but encourage population growth. We need to preserve our precious water supplies, but encourage greater water use. We need to protect our fisheries, but we need to harvest more fish to feed our growth.”

View#2 is from Charles Hugh Smith in his post “White Collar, Blue Collar, No Collar”, on his oftwominds.com blog, dated today.

“…What is dawning is a new appreciation for technics-related work. By that I mean, what was once known as “skilled labor”: the welders who keep refineries on line, the folks who keep the canning machines working, the employees who know how to repair the glass-coating ovens, etc.’

“…It takes longer to learn how to be a truly skilled welder than it does to earn a marketing or business degree. It takes longer to learn the tricks of industrial ovens than it does to earn an MBA.

We as a culture have assumed technics-workers are interchangeable and easily replaceable; we are about to learn that they are irreplaceable and it’s the white collar middle-class jobs that are expendable.”

View#3 is from a prisonplanet.com article by Paul Craig Roberts entitled “Driving Over the Cliff” dated 2/09/09.

“The unemployment rate reported in the U.S. media is a fabrication. Williams (John Williams of shadowstats.com) reports that in changes since 1980, particularly in the Clinton era, “discouraged workers’ those who had given up looking for a job to be had-were redefined so as to be counted only if they had been discouraged for less than a year. This time qualification defined away the bulk of the discouraged workers. Adding them back into the total unemployed, actual unemployment (according to the unemployment rate methodology used in 1980) rose to 18% in January, from 17% in December.

“In other words, without all the manipulation of the data, the U.S. unemployment rate is already at depression levels.”

View#4 is from Jim (James Howard) Kunstler at kunstler.com from his Monday, 2/09/09 post: “Poverty Of Imagination”.

‘The attempted re-start of revolving debt consumerism is an exercise in futility. We’ve -reached the limit of being able to create additional debt at any level without causing further damage, and new perversities of economy (and of society, too). We can’t raise credit card ceilings for people with no ability to make monthly payments. We can’t promote more mortgages for people with no income. We can’t crank up a building industry with our massive inventory of unsold, and over-priced houses built in the wrong places. We can’t ramp back up the blue light special shopping fiesta. We can’t return to the heyday of Happy Motoring, no matter how many bridges we fix or how many additional ring highways we build around our already-overblown and over sprawled metroplexes. Mostly we can’t return to the now-complete “growth” cycle of “economic expansion.” We/re done with all that. …”

“GOT GARDEN?” DELAYED AGAIN: We’ve written it and outlined it and thought about it, and it’s still “not right”. In light of what’s happening in the U.S. and around the world there’s something missing and/or out of focus. We at PrudentHome view gardening as a critical undertaking in these critical times, especially at the home level. We/ll keep trying to present a useful article on the home garden within the next week or so. Thanks for your patience.

Until later this week then, keep your eyes on the horizon. The weather’s rolling in fast.