The subprime mortgage crisis in just about over. Those whose loans came with usurious interest rates have, if they got behind or lost their jobs, already been foreclosed upon. Now the issue is negative equity, the fact that real estate is depreciating so fast that homes are no longer worth the price paid, even with prime interest rates. Being “upside down” and expecting a higher rate to kick in on the original price is causing more and more people to simply walk away from their mortgages.

And indeed, walking away from the debt may be the best option for people who purchased during the “bubble” of inflated valuation. Because the underlying problem the bubble was based upon – ever-increasing wages for the working classes – has dismally failed to materialize.

We’re all paying for the bubble and the ridiculous amount of side-bets that got made by financial pyramid schemers who artificially produced and inflated that bubble. When the “average” price of a below “average” home (say, 50 years old, in need of repair, in a bad neighborhood and too small for a family) rises above $120,000 in one of America’s “Officially Depressed Regions” where a majority of citizens are chronically out of work and wages hover right around minimum, you know something’s got to give. That’s how it is in my nearest county with an actual city in it – Buncombe County, NC, home to the city of Asheville (pop. less than 100,000).

See, the cost of living either keeps pace with what the semi-skilled or skilled laborer can expect to earn, or it doesn’t. Around here we’ve got a perpetual situation of “doesn’t.” This doesn’t just mean that the vast majority of the population must pay rent to the landholders who CAN afford the real estate, because the cost of rent is tied to the value of the property being rented. So if you have to pay $1200 to $1500 a month just for a kitchen, two bedrooms and a bath either way, the only difference between ownership and renting is that if you rent, the landlord has to fix the roof and furnace and plumbing. And when the average family with two full-time workers can no longer afford to live indoors and eat regularly, what are they supposed to do?

Economic greed of the sort that led us to this current “financial crisis” – is not just one of those deadly sins, it’s blind, deaf and dumb to its own interests. Stupidity of the inevitably terminal variety that we should NOT have to make good on after the crimes have been committed. A legitimate slave-owner had to provide food, clothing and ostensibly adequate shelter for his slaves. If they were starving they couldn’t work. If they were freezing or sick or naked they couldn’t work. It cost the slave owner money to replace his chattel, and the necessities of life had to come with the bargain. This hasn’t been so in America since slavery was outlawed. Of course there had to be a bad end to it all.

So now that the marginal debtors have been generally ‘liquidated’ in the first wave of cashing in our collective assets, the better debtors are scheduled to fall. As described in the Business section of the New York Times, this stage of the liquidation will cost more, be every bit as damaging, and is not expected to salvage any actual wealth for anyone but the bankers. It involves real properties so quickly falling in value that their prime mortgages are upside down enough that the debtors are simply walking away.

Those who don’t wish to walk away are being charged exorbitant fees for refinancing closer to value, and rising interest rates are also denting the effectiveness. Fannie and Freddie are big into this second wave heist, as apparently are Fed and Treasury. Just another way to clean out the higher end of the so-called “middle class.”

The bad news is that there is a building third wave building as well, as commercial properties either default or turn upside down. Soon there will be vast wastelands of once-nice suburban neighborhoods and shopping centers and malls where the homeless sleep at night sans utilities. They’ll be homeless even as millions of empty homes and apartment complexes sit dark and empty because no one owns them, they’re not worth buying and nobody’s renting.

In a future post we’ll take a look at some innovative options that abandoned property squatters can put to work for themselves toward necessary things like light, heat, cooking ability, water supply, sanitation, etc. – ways that people are either keeping the utilities on in a home they neither own nor rent/lease, or providing for themselves. Sure, these are the “future-slums” many complained they’d become when they were being built, but hundreds of thousands of once-productive Americans every month join the ranks of the “future-slum” dwellers they never thought they’d be.

To all but the top 10% of wealth-holders things are well beyond mere recession at this point, whether any talking heads want to call it that or not.

Another Scam Alert

CNN Reports that fraudulent “discount medical cards” are spreading like wildfire, and offers some hits on how to recognize a scam:

1. You learn about it from a blast fax or internet popup ad.
2. They promise a certain percentage savings.
3. They use the term “guaranteed coverage.”
4. They won’t give you a list of providers until you buy.
5. It sounds too good to be true.

Because these scams are growing and a matter of concern to law enforcement in a number of states, always check out an offer through the BBB, your state’s attorney general’s website, the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud and National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

For a great many regular hard-working, tax-paying American citizens the way money works in the modern world is very much a mystery. This is not surprising, considering that money has always been a mystery shrouded in mythical associations, psychological phobias and religious overtones. And designed to be thus by those who do know how money works. When the US Federal Reserve was established in 1913, it was not actually made a National Bank under the control of the government, it was established by and for the wealthiest bankers and Wall Street barons as an independent entity with only ceremonial ties to the federal government.

In a critique of the ancient psychological “money complex” in his book Life Against Death, Norman O. Brown explored the debt-guilt association in the essay Filthy Lucre. Brown wrote, “Whatever the ultimate explanation of guilt may be, we put forward the hypothesis that the whole money complex is rooted in the psychology of guilt.”

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that a development in late June of 2008 that rocked the American financial world went largely unreported in this country. It appeared in an article of Spiegel Online on June 26, 2008, entitled The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve.

It seems that the International Monetary Fund [IMF] became concerned about the rate of inflation Fed Chair Ben Bernanke was allowing in 2008, and how that was affecting the price of goods – primarily crude oil – all over the world and translating into flashing neon signs of coming recession. Because the world’s financial dealings are tied to the US dollar’s value, the IMF exercised an option under its bylaws that it had never before exercised in regards to the United States: it scheduled an audit of the entire US financial system.

As part of that audit the Fed, the SEC, the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds were to hand over confidential documents to the IMF auditors. About two thirds of IMF member states have undergone this process since the Fund was started, so the US really didn’t have the power to opt out. President Bush refused for seven long years of his administration to allow the IMF audit, even as he ran up the debt grotesquely with his oil wars, no-bid contracts, free-for-all bubble-blowing on Wall Street, etc. Your basic Republican cash-out before turning the country over to Democrats who spend 4 or 8 years thereafter trying hard to repair the damage the greedheads have done.

Bush finally agreed to the IMF audit, so long as it didn’t begin until his last weeks in office and isn’t scheduled to end until after he was gone. 2010, to be exact. The auditors took up residence last July, just two months before the CDS bubble burst and took both Wall Street and the Fed down with it. Bernanke had already lowered the interest rates so drastically that he practically had to pay banks to borrow money, and this left him no leverage as the shit hit the fan. When our economy tipped, so did everyone else’s. As the IMF was no doubt concerned about.

It’s hard to know who is most responsible for the fix we’re in. George Bush’s wars, his friends’ greed, the Fed’s inaction, the funds’ CDS pyramid scheme, the insurers’ ridiculous gambling bets, or the oil companies who drove the prices up so far in the months before the election that half of America stopped driving (thereby cutting demand way down even as the oil barons racked up obscene profits). We may suppose the IMF is going to find out.

The best indicator that there was collusion and much back room dirty dealing going on is the fact that the audit began in ernest (the paperwork was due) on September 30, 2008, the end of the fiscal year, though the warnings had been issued in June. September 30, 2008 also just happens to be the exact date that George W. Bush claimed that half a trillion dollars’ in immediate bailout money just HAD to be in the hands of those institutions the IMF was planning to audit, or the economy will collapse!

Could it all have been not just unethical, but illegal even by whatever rudimentary banking and investment rules remained after W. wiped most actual regulations off the books early in his term? Does this explain the mass exodus to off-shoring havens of the bonus babies We the People have been forced to pay off with our hard-earned dollars? Will there come a time of reckoning when the world’s crookedest greedheads and game-players will be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity?

Stay tuned, dear readers. This one is bound to keep rearing its dragon head as the audit proceeds. Should be interesting!

Links:

The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve
Corrente: IMF to audit US Financial System
Did IMF Audit Lead to (expose) US Economic Collapse?
Banks Holding Up in Tests, but May Still Need Aid

Let’s face it. The “Recession of 2008″ is now officially over, because it is January, the first month of the “Depression of 2009.” The last jobless statistics for ‘08 showed more than half a million new first-time unemployment filers, which represent only those workers who qualify for unemployment. Final ‘official’ tally for ‘08: 2.6 million jobs lost. These are the worst figures in 16 years, while the average hourly workweek for those underneath the supervisory level doing the real work shrank to the lowest number since the government started keeping such statistics in 1964. That, for the quick-math challenged, is 45 years ago.

Most of us who watch the economic comings and goings in this strange era of bail-outs for super-crooks and callous economic eugenics for working families also know that the ‘official’ statistics don’t come anywhere close to matching what is really going on in the real world. Young workers, seasonal workers, minimum wage workers, temp workers and millions who otherwise don’t qualify for unemployment aid or who have exhausted their eligibility are completely off the books – no one bothers to count them, even if their numbers swell the real unemployment picture to more than double the reported statistics. “Unofficial” numbers can range anywhere from 11.1 million jobless Americans to somewhere very close to 20% of our work force. No one much likes to mention that, since anything more than 10% puts us in that ‘depression’ they’d rather slit their wrists than admit to.

Because lengthy layoffs and lack of available new jobs will tend to swell the ranks of both young and unemployed workers going back to school (one way or another) to expand their horizons, I have found a very interesting website tool called Online College that readers may find helpful for themselves or their children suddenly looking at a bleak employment picture for the foreseeable future. There are good and very useful articles posted to the site, and one stands out right now – 15 Ways to Set Yourself Apart in a Recession.

These are hints on how to make yourself stand out on the job so the bosses looking for employees to lay off skip right over you. Some have to do with expanding your useful role to the company, how to make the best impression while looking for new work, and what you can do educationally while ‘between jobs’ to enhance your hireability when the smoke clears. There are even helpful hints about striking out on your own – always risky even in the best of economic times – to find opportunities that will either get you inside a startup or send you in the direction of starting your own business.

And on that starting your own front, a website called brainz offers some great ideas in 33 Ways to Fund Your Startup Business. With the observation that even in the worst of economic times there is always money out there and people looking to invest, these 33 ideas are pure gold for the budding entrepreneur with a good (and potentially lucrative) idea. Some will cost the idea man less than others, and it’s probably not the best idea in this economic climate to risk one’s own property, if one’s real estate is still worth anything (and that’s not very clear right now in many parts of the country).

In future posts we’ll take a look at some of the ideas out there for small business startups, supply and demand and the most “recession-proof” goods and services people will need regardless of economic situation. So stay tuned, don’t get too discouraged, and begin taking a close look at where your family is right now, what its immediate future looks like, what resources you may have to invest and how best to invest them.

Links:

Free Fall: Jobless Rate Worst Since ‘94
Mid-Cycle Meltdown: Jobless Claims January 15, 2009
15 Ways to Set Yourself Apart in a Recession
33 Ways to Fund Your Startup Business

The election is now over, the Neocons and their operatives at Treasury and the Fed are doing their best to loot the nation completely before power changes hands, and the citizens are collectively holding their breath, wondering just how bad it will get, thousands of jobs disappearing every week. The Grinch may well have succeeded in stealing Christmas this year – looks like we won’t have Circuit City to kick around anymore.

As the economy falls (for everyone but the oil companies, who are enjoying record profits as usual), the prices of just about everything keep going up. The most primal of our needs is food, and how we will survive the depression without sacrificing our health, our weight or our taste buds is a question many families are beginning to struggle with.

By next spring we can expect the number of home ‘Victory Gardens’ to explode as patches of lawn are tilled under and favorite veggies are planted. Depending on where you live – thus how long your growing season is and whether you get two a year – a family can produce a significant chunk of its annual consumption of fresh greens, tomatoes, peas, peppers, and various specialty items like melons, squash, eggplant, artichokes and tasty herbs. In a well-managed yard garden of no more than 12×20 feet and a clever porch container garden.

In the meantime, here are some basics for making the most out of short food dollars while getting the most nutrition and least amount of excess fat from your day to day diet.

1. Eat More Soups and Stews

Basic one-pot meals can be hearty, tasty, nutritious and extremely satisfying. If you don’t have a crock pot, consider one as your Gift Wish this year. You can start a soup or stew you prepped the night before when you make your morning coffee, it will be ready to eat when you get home from work.

For these you can use cheaper dry legumes and grains, bullion stocks and storage veggies like potatoes, onions and carrots. If you’re meat eaters, a ham hock in the pot adds a lot of flavor. Cheaper cuts of beef make for fine stews, and chicken is a perennial favorite. Can be purchased in tuna-size cans (same aisle), will make tasty chicken-rice or chicken noodle or chicken n’ dumplings. A good pot of hearty soup or stew can last a couple of nights, or provide easily microwaveable lunches the next day. Every time you don’t buy prepared food you’re saving real money for better tasting and more nutritious home-cooked meals.

And don’t forget about pot pies – a great way to stretch a good hearty stew when there’s lots left over, they freeze well and can be made in single-serve portions when you’ve got time!

One Dish Crockpot Meals
All Crockpot Recipes

2. Learn All About Quick-Breads

To go with those hearty soups and stews you’ll want to whip up some good side-breads. A 5-pound bag of cornmeal (self rising) can make a lot of cornbread either for dunking or crumbling or just munching. There are good recipes for various quick wheat breads using leavening agents that don’t require as much work as yeast. Crackers are another side that doesn’t take long to whip up and can be as hearty as you like with sesame, caraway or flax seeds, some herb flavorings and maybe some additional flours (rye, oat, etc.) to the usual wheat.

Homegrown Evolution: Quick Breads
6,718 Quick Bread Recipes

3. Window Box, Porch & House Plant Gardening

Salad greens – your basic variety of leaf lettuces, spinach, etc. – love cool weather. Even if you live in an all-winter-freeze environment, if you’ve a sunny window you can attach plastic weather sheeting in such a way to enclose a window box, which will then pick up enough heat from the house through the window to allow growing salad greens. If you can water and harvest from inside the house, even better!

These boxes need not be deeper than 3-4″ of good potting soil and compost, lettuce and spinach have very shallow roots. If you sow the mixed leaf seed, don’t worry about separating the plants. Just cut the leaves when they get to be about 3″ tall with a pair of scissors, they’ll keep growing back. Spinach should have a bit of room, harvest outside leaves and let the center keep producing more.

Dark green leafies like kale and collards can easily be grown in well-insulated pots on the porch, so long as your porch gets sun. They’ll grow right through snow cover, but you have to keep the pot from “ground-freeze.” Harvest these the same way as spinach (though the leaves are much bigger) – outside first, let the central plant keep producing rather than just cut the whole thing down. I have collard and kale plants in my garden that are two years old, their multi-harvested stems several feet long, still producing fine greens.

And peppers (chili or bell) can grow indoors all year long in a good size pot if it gets sun. They even have seeds for ‘ornamental’ pepper plants just for houseplant use, though the peppers are indeed edible. And like avacado and citrus trees, they’ll live forever if you take care of them.

Container Gardening: Vegetables
Vegetable Gardening in Containers

We’ve seen a lot of desperation as the world (and US) economy tanks in the wake of the mortgage-loss pyramid scheme crash. We’ve heard a lot of hyperbole and rhetoric from the candidates who want to replace Bush-Cheney as President and Vice-President of the United States. This is The Week That Was, votes will be counted tomorrow night, and we should know sometime in the wee hours of Wednesday which of the contestants gets the erstwhile “prize.”

As Wall Street began its precipitous fall, Republican candidate John McCain was busy informing the nation that the ‘fundamentals’ of our economy are strong. No, they aren’t strong, they’re utter failures after years of massive tax cuts to the wealthy, heavy borrowing to support two wars, and the “Unfettered Free Market” [TM] frenzy allowed by blanket de-regulation of the banking and investment sectors.

To get an idea of just how outrageous things had gotten, consider the so-called “Mortgage Meltdown” that took so many once-staid capitalist houses into ruin. We all know that housing prices had ballooned in most urban areas of the country, a ‘bubble’ sustained by the practice of lending to workers whose incomes haven’t seen even a minimal rise in more than 30 years, for houses that cost easily twice as much as they could hope to afford and three times what they were actually worth. Many of these loans were made with specific criminal intent to skim fees off the top, and saddled with adjustable interest rates that worked just like time bombs to force people into bankruptcy.

Knowing that these time bombs would explode X number of years down the line, the banks and futures traders on Wall Street invented a new paper vehicle called “Credit Default Swaps” for the express purpose of betting on strapped families defaulting on their mortgages. [Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny]These are an insurance vehicle, insurance to be paid out to the holders of the policies on bad mortgages. And those policies – as “Credit Default Swaps” were sold and resold hundreds of times. This is what led corporate insurance giant AIG to be one of the first Big-Time Players to fail, our government moved right in to nationalize it.

This situation is a prime example of the philosophy of “Privatizing the Profits, Socializing the Losses.” It’s a bail-out to rich gamblers necessitated by unregulated greed. Pure and simple. Look at how it worked…

The number of risky, possibly criminal, largely ARM mortgages in the US that have or soon will default amounts to approximately 1% of all the mortgages outstanding. The re-insurance scam ended up valuing these mortgages at 5 times the annual Gross Domestic Product of the entire world. They were of course never worth anywhere close to that much, this is just the amount of insurance pay-outs once they DID default. And default they did, that brought Wall Street – and the world markets which participated in the scam – to their knees.

Despite the fact that candidate McCain did not seem to have the slightest grasp on the impending doom (his chief financial advisor Phil Gramm famously called people concerned about the situation “whiners”), his tax promises to the nation if elected is still to maintain George W. Bush’s blanket tax cuts to the top 2% of wealthy citizens and corporate giants. Democratic challenger Barack Obama would reverse this situation by taxing the rich and giving significant tax cuts to the middle classes. Even to the point of eliminating income taxes altogether on seniors who make less than $50,000 a year.

McCain of course calls this tax-the-rich situation “Socialism,” as if that’s as scary a word these days as it was back in the ’50s. It is not. All governments receive taxes and use them to support infrastructure, public education and other social programs, thus all government is essentially socialist at heart. The fine points always apply to who pays the taxes and gets the benefits of governmental largesse.

CNNMoney recently published an article about the different tax plans of the candidates, along with a breakdown of just how much your taxes will go up or down according to your income. McCain, Obama and your tax bill is recommended reading for everyone out there who hasn’t already voted, and is concerned about the recession/depression that we now know will last more than a year.

Then get out there and vote on November 4th, as if your way of life depended on it – because it does!

Links:

McCain, Obama and your tax bill
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
Economists see recession through 2009

World markets continue to take dramatic hits and the Dow has fallen below 10,000 for the first time in four years. Seems a lot of banks and other players are unhappy with the trillion dollar bailout package passed last Friday because it limits their personal golden parachutes and stock option scams. Awwww. Should we call the waaaaambulance for these whiners? Nope. If they didn’t need our money they shouldn’t have begged for a handout in the first place. In the meantime, regular people are having a much harder time putting food on the table as prices rise dramatically and more and more find themselves out of work. This post is a beginner’s primer on how to get food if you can’t afford it.

Before I get to the list of good links readers may find helpful depending on their particular situations, readers should know that many states, such as the one where I live (NC) have budgetary caps on how much relief in the form of food stamps they are able to provide. This can mean that even as increasing numbers of people find themselves going hungry, fewer people will have access to the standard governmental relief. Thus more people must turn to other providers. A good overview of those providers supported by the USDA commodity program is provided at Amber Waves. If your family is in danger of ‘food insecurity’ be sure to familiarize yourself with emergency providers in your area. Cities generally have soup kitchens, places where you can go for a hot meal. Most smaller cities and many towns or counties also have food banks, check into what you will need to provide to qualify.

For those with few to no reasonable alternatives, or who may find themselves in a chronic situation (or are just stubbornly self-sufficient), here are some fine hints about foraging. Foraging the nearly lost art of getting your food from places other than the neighborhood supermarket or soup kitchen. Food prices are projected to continue rising and stay high for at least the next three years. Part of this is our newfound dependence on imported foods with huge ‘carbon footprints’ due to transportation and energy-intensive mechanistic agriculture. If you’re trying to keep your family alive and healthy, you honestly don’t need mangos in January or expensive processed foodstuffs at any time.

Of course, as with all matters of saving real money on food, you’ll have to learn (or remember) how to cook for yourself. Eating out and buying pre-prepared meals is the most expensive way to eat, not to mention the most unhealthy. Since health care is a growing desperate concern for everyone, staying healthy should be paramount in all our planning.

From the great DailyKos “Frugal Fridays” series, Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land we get several good ideas. Of course living close to water allows foragers with a little skill the luxury of catching crabs, crayfish, regular fish, baby clams, etc., and seaweed can be a fine addition to the pot to lend nutrients and salt (plus ample amounts of iodine). Living inland can offer lots of fine opportunities to forage for edible fungi, berries, tubers and pot herbs as well. it’s puff ball season in my neck of the woods, which are spendid stuffed with chopped acorns, cabbage, herbs and onions, baked in clarified butter in a covered dish. Hickory nuts are falling, and the wild sunflowers are blazing – these are otherwise known as Jerusalem artichokes, and eat like small potatoes.

Of course there’s Cossack Asparagus in marshlands almost everywhere. These are your basic cattails, and all parts of the plants are edible all times of year. The new green shoots are better than bamboo shoots (which also may be found here and there), but I best like the set-cob’s fuzz which can be ground into a very light, fine flour for baking and thickening broths. As things nutritional become rarer, families will likely have to learn how to like basic stew meals that can be made in large pots and eaten over a period of two or three days (refrigerated in between, of course).

If you don’t mind killing and cleaning, there’s a reason they call possom the “other other white meat.” People have traditionally made fine meals of squirrel, turkey, various ground birds, snakes and the standard larger game. Just be sure you’ve got whatever permit is required, both for hunting and fishing, in your area for the game you’re seeking. I’ve known families who could eat meat twice a week (all anybody needs) for an entire winter from a single deer. Best advice is to stay away from carnivores and scavengers (like ravens and buzzards, bears and racoons).

People in the country or with ample back yards could consider a fresh goat for milk and some few chickens (easily kept but noisy if you’ve a rooster) for eggs and occasional Sunday dinner. Check your local paper’s “livestock” want ads, chickens are very cheap and goats aren’t anywhere near as expensive to buy or feed as a cow. Or make friends with a farmer who has livestock. Around here I can get cheap (or for straight barter) milk, honey, free range eggs, grass-fed meat if I ate it, and all the composted fertilizer my garden can handle.

Of course learning how to garden will help a lot. Tomatoes and peppers and salad stuff can easily be grown in pots and flats on the patio or deck, herbs in the kitchen window, and many other things if you’ve the room, a shovel to turn ground and a metal rake to break it up. Know what grows in what seasons in your area – some crops like cabbage, collards, kale, lettuce, spinach, radishes, broccoli, brussles sprouts and cauliflower need cold weather to develop. Kale will keep on growing right through the snow! Others need lots of heat and sun. If you plant extras you can preserve for the future, or barter for trades with those who have foods you didn’t grow. Specializing can be better than trying to grow it all. Barter will become increasingly important as the food shortages and high prices continue.

Many wild flowers and weeds are edible, and some of those are more nutritious than anything you can buy in the store. Violets, dandelions (greens and flowers), day lilies, wood sorrel, purslane, etc. Don’t forget kudzu – its greens are very high in protein and its flowers make lovely jelly or colorful additions to salads.

Out in the woods there are acorns, elderberries, fox grapes, sloe plums, wild cherries, blueberries, hickory nuts, walnuts, ground nuts and other goodies in addition to the edible ferns and fungi. Be sure you know what you’re doing with those fungi – many local extension agencies offer print material and courses to let you know what’s edible and what’s not.

And don’t be shy – if you live in a farming/gardening region, keep track of who’s been harvesting, go ahead and ask permission to glean from those fields. Modern mechanical machinery leaves quite a lot of edible food behind, and farmers usually just plow it under. Many or most farmers in your area may be entirely willing to have you gather what you can of their already harvested crops.

Foraging is a lot like work, but more fun. Since millions will be out of work (and many of those one out of a two-income household), there should be time if you’ve got the energy and desire. Do check out some of the links in this article and below, get yourself psyched about the possibilities right now. In really hard times all we really have to do is survive, and learning to do for ourselves instead of waiting for a handout that may never come is very empowering. Kids love this stuff, so be sure to include them on your weekend foraging trips!

Links:

Emergency Providers Help Put Food On the Table
Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land
BHM: You can become a hardcore forager
Wild Food Foragers of America
Edible Wild Things: “Cossack Asparagus”
Wild Herbs/Foods Archive
Staples Archive
Harvesting Wild: The Mast Crop
Modern Forager

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Roadblocks and Interference
Part 2: Food: Eating What You Can Get

As Congress meets today and tomorrow to grill the principals before Friday’s vote on the $700 billion “emergency” Wall Street bailout plan (which has been in the works for months but strategically dumped on us all as an “emergency”), oil companies have instituted “rolling shortages” all over the Southeast. Some areas have been out of gas for more than a week and a half, and the situation is not expected to ease until Monday at the latest. Some gas – a single tanker at a time – is being delivered to stations along the Interstates and is being strictly rationed unless it’s diesel, one station per county.

State police are managing the gas lines to prevent violence, which did break out last week in the Nashville, Tennessee area when people started cutting in line. Food prices are rising so fast the stock boys at the grocery stores can’t mark up the goods fast enough, and the specter of looming fuel shortages for winter heat – or price increases that will force people to do without – is beginning to look very scary.

Bailout or no bailout – and despite the launch of FBI investigations of Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG – the United States may well be fully in the clutches of major economic depression before winter even hits. Whether or not that translates to global recession isn’t much of an issue to regular people, as we here in our own homes wonder how we will survive. This post and several following posts in a new series will take a look at the steps citizens should take as soon as possible to ensure their families will make it through the next 6 months. If depression goes on longer than that, additional strategies will be necessary, some already compiled as series in this blog and available under the “Our Most Popular” header on the left side of the page.

Here in Part 1 there are two broad categories of concern citizens will have to work around in order to do for themselves, particular to not freezing, not starving, and not getting indefinitely detained or killed. Considerations must start NOW.

Things to Plan Around:

1. Availability of home heating fuel/gasoline.

It is quite likely that there will be rolling gas shortages throughout the next year. We can also fairly assume there will be drastic fuel oil shortages in the northern tier of the country, and that many will unfortunately freeze to death in their homes or die of carbon monoxide poisoning from kerosene heaters, or fires from badly planned fireplace/wood stove installations.

If you live in an area with ample woods with standing or down dead or a brisk firewood market for purchase, or availability of wood stove pellets, get yourself a wood stove. These come in all sizes and thicknesses, some need more protection to floors and walls than others. You will also need stove piping and must plan a way to get the smoke outside your house (can be through a removed windowpane if necessary). Stoves are often available reasonably cheap and in good condition through Craig’s List or other re-sale sources. Do your homework, install it correctly. If the electricity goes out or fuel oil is unavailable, your family will still be warm. AND you can cook on it!

Resource: NASD: Proper Installation, Operation and Maintenance

2. Deployed Troops, Curfews, Travel Restrictions, Rationing.

Beginning on October 1st – next week – the US Army’s Third Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team – all 6500 to 8000 troops – will be re-deployed within the borders of the United States for various police functions. Regular police forces are being deployed for crowd control and peacekeeping functions as well, in managing protests, gas lines and runs on banks, grocery stores, etc. Expect to be challenged every time you go out, be thankful when it doesn’t happen.

Important: In case of travel restrictions, try to gather your immediate family in one place, preferably the place among your extended network best situated according to all considerations. Schools may be shut down due to lack of fuel for transportation and/or heating, if you have college-bound offspring, consider taking a couple of semesters off unless things at the college look stable. Don’t be afraid to call the admin and ask pointed questions, either. You won’t want anyone near and dear to you to be stuck someplace where they have no resources.

What this means is you need to do what stocking up you can immediately, and plan for obtaining the rest of your needs in possibly creative ways. If you have money socked away, withdraw enough to get you through if the bank goes under, all of it if they’ll let you have it. Store ready cash in freezer bags in the freezer. Purchase as much staple supplies as you can possibly afford, NOW before there are serious shortages and before the prices double or triple.

What food supplies you will need to obtain, along with other tools and supplies, will be supplied in Part 2 of this series. Please stay tuned!

Links:
Southeast Gas Update
FBI investigating companies at heart of meltdown
Long Term Capitol
Craig’s List: Great Resource or Scary Place?
20 Ways to Live on Almost Nothing
It’s Better Than Cheap… It’s Free!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Roadblocks and Interference
Part 2: Food: Eating What You Can Get

Watching Treasury’s Paulson on Meet the Press Sunday made me sick. That pitiful, pleading look, the bizarre non-logic, the reversion to fear, fear, fear… the guy’s a cheap crook in an expensive suit and no, the whole world isn’t going to self-detonate if we let the greedheads take their lumps for being so damned greedy. Let ‘em fail.

Meanwhile, I’ve a fine plan to salvage the housing market as well as the business and jobs outlook. Instead of giving up to $3 trillion dollars (the price goes up hourly) to the crooks who got us into this mess, why not give every citizen $3,000 dollars? They’ll catch up on their mortgages, then FHA (the receiver for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) can refinance at lower rates and more realistic selling prices. Voila! the mortgage market is no longer “bad debt.” And if we’ve got an extra couple of trillion laying around to spend on these greedheads, why don’t we spend it on something useful – like universal health care?

That price tag is less than a third of the price tag the Fed, Treasury or Wall Street has come up with to bail themselves out of the hole they dug, and it would completely solve the asset valuation problem for regular Americans who don’t earn $5 million a year. And it lets the Wall Street failures fail. They earned it, they deserve it. Screw ‘em. The rest of us will be fine with our dividend.

But if you really want to try and understand what they’re all so boogedy-scared of right now, here are some links to excellent overviews that will tell you more than anybody wants to know about how we got to where we are today, and why.

Daily Kos front pager ‘Devilstower’ published a spectacular overview of how we got here in his Three Times is Enemy Action. It’s clear and concise, easy to understand, and will make you furious. His piece is so good that it was picked up by The Nation, which also offers an article by William Greider that’s worth reading, Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle.

Trading insider bonddad offers his usual excellent analysis of the bailout plan being pushed by BushCo (with further links) with Paulson to the US – Grab Your Ankles, beginning with the relevant observation…

“There’s a plan afoot to screw the US taxpayer.”

Yeah, well. Seems to me that instead of ‘trust’ in the very people who have screwed things up so thoroughly, we should see if trusting We the People might not work better.

If indeed we must in the wake of the failure of the only valuation we’ve had in recent years (real property) find some other means of valuation, giving the “bailout” money to those of us who DO consider our homes and businesses to be valuable would do more to dig us out of this mess than giving it to crooks.

Links:

Paulson to the US – Grab Your Ankles
Three Times is Enemy Action
Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle

That’s what Angry Bear says about the government bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, announced on Sunday, September 7. It will cost the American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars we don’t have. Why? Because more than 1.3 trillion dollars’ worth of those mortgage bonds are held by foreign countries, primarily China, Japan, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Belgium, and they want to know if their holdings are any good.

Now, you might be struck by some of those listed ‘foreigners’. Cayman Islands? Luxembourg? Belgium? Well known for hosting questionably legal accounts for some questionable characters, I suspect we’d find a lot of Americans on those lists. Americans don’t count as “foreigners.” Unfortunately, we’d also find a lot of Russian front companies and Middle Eastern Sheiks as well.

We’ve once again been robbed blind by wanton corporate and individual greed, and we are expected once again to bail out the wealthy speculators whose greed led to the failures.

Predictions for what happens now aren’t pretty. The dollar will plunge, inflation will zoom, regular Americans will have an even more difficult time keeping up. While the richest 1% will have their taxes cut and get their bad investments paid off so they can go speculate on other nifty things like food and water.

So buckle up, fellow shoestring budget enthusiasts! We’re going to get our chance to put all our alternative survival strategies to work. If we do it right, what will arise from the ashes of the late, once-great American economy might be strong enough to last awhile.

Links:

Bonddad: Our Foreign Masters Have Spoken
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: A Broader View
The Fannie/Freddie Bail-Out: The Plan and Why Now?

As the economy continues to slide ever deeper into recession – dragging the entire civilized world along with it in one spectacular leap into the great oil scam abyss – we get the mainstream media’s too-cute economic pundits telling us things designed to make us laugh out loud. Which could actually be semi-useful, considering how many neurosciencey-type researchers keep telling us how much humor can help us conquer stress and depression and other unavoidable side-effects of living in interesting times. But only if you actually read their sage advice *as* comedy, meant to lighten your mood.

For instance, the jokers over at CNN Money have some real thigh-slappers on what we regular people should do ‘just in case’ the worst happens (the whole house of cards comes tumbling down). We need to beef up our “emergency funds,” we’re told, as if we had more cash to stash in zip lock bags in the freezer than the two to three weeks’ worth (which we’d still have to scrimp to save up) advised in the post Hold On: The Ride’s Just Starting.

We are told that in the face of bank failures, job losses and investment wipeouts that the “standard advice” is to keep at least three months’ worth of living expenses ’socked away’ if there are two wage earners in the family, six months’ worth if there’s just one breadwinner. Surely it can’t be that difficult to just take ten or twenty thousand dollars out of your bank or investment portfolio in small bills and find a safe place in the house to hide it from the teenagers, right? Hahahaha. That’s a good one.

Of course, in a recession such as the one the deputy campaign manager and financial advisor for Republican candidate John McCain told us was “all in our heads,” a year’s income is a better idea, particularly if you’re fairly close to retirement. I mean, that money’s not exactly going to grow any time soon, and will more likely melt away into nothing instead. They say buy a money market account or put it into your savings account, but what good is that going to do when the fund goes bankrupt and the bank shuts its doors? Hmmm… I guess at that point we’ll be really glad we’ve got that week or two’s worth of expenses in the zip lock bag in the freezer. True clowns.

But fear not! Those of us who don’t have big investment portfolios or maxed-out savings accounts and CDs are, according to CNN Money, still demonstrating a strong reluctance to give up everyday pleasures. But the truth is that Americans are eating out less, not spending a lot at movie theaters, cutting back on buying clothes and taking exotic vacations, and not driving nearly as much as they used to.

Americans are, not surprisingly in view of inflation and cutting back elsewhere, shelling out for HD and flat-panel televisions and are not dropping their expensive cable or satellite subscriptions. There are also inexpensive ways to travel or take nice family vacations close to home. More and more people are learning about the thrill of thrifting and seeking things they need secondhand or even free. Even better – for everyone’s health given recent salmonella outbreaks across the country due to fresh produce imported from Mexico – people are flooding local farmer’s markets and buying food produced closer to home.

While not exactly a joke, it’s nice to find ourselves ahead of the curve on advice now being given to the wealthy on how they can possibly survive the coming depression. When it gets bad, they may look around and see that not everyone is lining up to jump out of 7th story windows, but are instead living life just fine without a lot of money.