If you have an hour and fifteen minutes to spare, I would highly recommend you watching this next video. He does an excellent job at encapsulating exactly how we got into the economic state we are in as well as the problems we are facing in the near future:

No related posts.

Although this should come as no surprise to most of my readers, we are seeing more and more evidence that California is hemorrhaging and on the verge of complete collapse. To put it in perspective, they are so far in the hole that it would take freeing 168,000 prison inmates and permanently closing 240 university and community college campuses just to balance its budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

California, once the third-largest economy in the world, is becoming the next Greece. The California government has spent so far beyond its means that mass layoffs, a failing infrastructure, and welfare reductions that leave a million children and the poor and elderly without the services they need are now the norm.

Unemployment in some areas of California is at Great Depression levels. In fact, the total number of people unemployed in the state of California is equal to the populations of Nevada, Vermont, and New Hampshire combined.

On top of that, California’s health care system is also on the verge of system failure.  Over the past ten years, dozens of California hospitals and emergency rooms have shut down. Why? They weren’t able to keep up with the endless influx of illegal immigrants, unemployed Californians and homeless people who could not pay for the services that they were receiving.

As a result, the rest of the health care system in California is now completely overloaded and long waits, and even unnecessary patient deaths are becoming commonplace.

To resolve this issue, California policy makers are begging the Federal Government for bailout funds proclaiming that they too are “too big to fail”.

What This Means

As California goes, so goes the nation.

Even if you don’t live in California, this should give you reason to be concerned. California’s economy is very much intertwined with the rest of the nation. If California fails, be prepared to see the rest of the country to soon follow suit.

Besides that point, California is not the only state on the verge of bankruptcy (Florida, New York etc). The whole nation is infected.

We have become entitlement slaves

This once strongly independent and fiercely self-reliant country has turned into a population of entitlement slaves. Too many are dependent upon and expect to continue to be supported by government dole-outs. But this is completely unsustainable as we are seeing.

The system throughout the U.S. (and world) is collapsing and unless we revert back to the principles that founded this country (self-reliance, frugality, industry, faith) we all — not just California — are doomed to follow Greece.

As a side note, I find it ironic that the government of California — an overspending, overpromising, in-debt-up-to-its-eyeballs behemoth — is petitioning to an overspending, over promising, in-debt-up-to-its-eyeballs behemoth for a bailout. There’s something just not right about that.

How Does this Affect You?

If the saying “as California goes, so goes the nation” is true, we are in a world of hurt. For this purpose, if you haven’t yet, you’ll need to get yourselves prepared.

For you newbies who might be overwhelmed and not know where to begin, I’ve written some articles that lay out the process and begin with the basics:

Food & Water Storage and Beyond

Food & water storage should be the first thing you prepare your family with. It’s not just for end-of-the-world emergencies —  it’s pure common sense (ie you lose your job, food prices go through the roof with the devaluation of the currencies etc).

Here is a list of articles that details where to begin and where to go from there:

• Getting Started with Food Storage
• Food Storage Basics: Step 1 – Water
• Food Storage Basics: Step 2 – Building a Three Month Supply
• Food Storage Basics: Step 3 – Long Term Storage
• Food Storage Basics: Step 4 – Non-Food Items
• The Basics and Beyond

Related posts:

1. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief: Chileans Arm Themselves Against Looters
2. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief – October 6, 2009
3. Welcome to Tactical Intelligence .Net!

Efforts to prevent looters from entering neighborhoods after Chile's disaster include barricades like this one in Concepcion

In the wake of the earthquake, hundreds of Chilean survivors are forming organized neighborhood watch groups, arming themselves and barricading streets to protect their homes from looters.

The groups have taken over the role of security since the police were overwhelmed by looting and soldiers were not able to restore order quick enough after the disaster.

What this Means

Looting seems to be a common theme in natural disasters. When the grid goes down for a period of time and the first responders become overextended, 1) the less savory people of society see it as a free for all and go on a looting spree, and 2) when people become desperate enough due to lack of food and supplies they often resort to looting as well.

This is especially problematic in an extended grid-down situation.

To reduce inventory and the associated carrying costs, modern grocery stores receive their inventory “just in time” for the next day’s demand. When that supply line gets held up for whatever reason, those who are dependent upon the goods in that store go without.

These Just in Time (JIT) supply strategies allow for no extended stock of food and supplies — which is why we see the shelves become empty prior to impending storms. The longer the supply is gone the more desperate people become.

How Does it Effect You?

A neighbor guards his block from looters in Lota, Chile, on Wednesday. (Aliosha Marquez / AP)

Think again, it happened in Louisiana after the Katrina disaster and if another major disaster comes — economic or otherwise — it will happen again.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from this:

1. You must be prepared: Food (and water) storage is absolutely essential. A minimum of 3 months but ideally one year’s worth or more. For more info on how to get started with food storage be sure to read my Food Storage Basics article series.
2. Get to know your neighbors: Similar to these Chileans, banding together provides safety and security and besides, you can’t expect to man a 24/7 watch all by yourself.

   Get to know your neighbors now, before disaster strikes. If possible, come up with neighborhood disaster plans and discuss the possibility of how the neighborhood would respond to looters.

3. Arm yourself: When the law is not around and the lawless run amok, you are the last line of defense for your family.

   Just having firearms is not enough. Be sure to get the proper training. There are numerous civilian training schools around the country that teach personal defense with a firearm.

4. Beef up the security of your residence: Having a secure home is a good idea even without a mob of looters running around. Now’s the time to increase the security of your residence before the zombies come a’knocking.

Resources

This is by far THE best book out there for building a secure home. 700 pages of hard-core information (no fluff):

The Secure Home (by Joel Skousen)

• Chilean survivors arm selves against looters
• Chile earthquake: Why do people loot? – A look into the psychological reasons people loot.

Related posts:

1. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief: California on the Verge of System Failure
2. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief – October 6, 2009
3. Welcome to Tactical Intelligence .Net!

In a recent issue of The Trends Journal, he wrote:

“Back in the Cold War days, survivalism meant building a bomb shelter and stocking it with enough food to outlast nuclear fallout.

In the late 1970’s, with inflation soaring, Iran raging, and gold and oil prices skyrocketing, survival meant cashing out of paper money and heading for the hills with enough ammunition and pork & beans to wait out the economic and political storms.

In 2000, the Y2K crowd – the most recent breed of survivalists – expecting computer clocks to crash, infrastructure to break down and the world to go dark, were armed and barricaded with enough food to feed an army and enough ammunition to hold one off.

In 2010, survivalism will go mainstream. Unemployed or fearing it, foreclosed or nearing it, pensions lost and savings gone … all sorts of folk who once believed in the system, having witnessed its battering, have lost their faith.

The realities of failing financial institutions, degrading infrastructure, manipulated marketplaces, soaring energy costs, widening wars, and terror consequences have created a new breed of survivalist. Motivated not by worst-case scenario fears but by do-or-die necessity, the new non-believers, unwilling to go under or live on the streets, will devise ingenious stratagems to beat the system, get off the grid (as much as possible), and stay under the radar.”

I think Gerald is right on the money here. I’ve been seeing the growth of survival and preparedness-related blogs/websites explode within the last year. More and more ‘mainstream’ folks are getting concerned about the fate of the nation — especially the economy — and as a result they are seeing the wisdom in preparing for what may come.

Overall I feel that this is all very positive. The more of us that are prepared the better off this nation and our communities will be.

No related posts.

If you haven’t by now, it’s time to get your food storage together, work on getting out of debt, and protect your wealth with strong hedges such as gold and silver. For step by step instructions in getting your food storage together and what to do after be sure to read the following articles I’ve written in the past:

• Food Storage Basics: Step 1 – Water
• Food Storage Basics: Step 2 – Building a Three-Month Supply
• Food Storage Basics: Step 3 – Long Term Storage
• Food Storage Basics: Step 4 – Non-Food Items
• Food Storage Basics: The Basics and Beyond

Related posts:

1. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief – October 6, 2009
2. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief: California on the Verge of System Failure
3. The Coming Collapse – In a Nutshell

If this doesn’t spurn you on to get out of debt, and get some real assets (such as gold to save your wealth), then nothing will. Thanks Jimmy for keying me in to this vid!

Related posts:

1. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief – October 6, 2009

The Independent, a well-known UK newspaper, today broke a story indicating that the Arab states will be dumping the dollar over the next 9 years. Their goal is by 2018 they will be pricing oil no longer in dollars but moving to currencies such as the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan, the euro as well as gold. The Independent claims that the Arabs have held secret meetings with China, Russia, France, and Japan about this. It seems that everyone involved (which also includes Brazil and India) is completely for it.

What this Means

If this really happens and the Chinese and Gulf Arabs get their way in that oil is no longer priced in dollars then you can kiss our currency goodbye. The world will soon follow suite and dump as much dollars as possible.

How Does it Effect You?

Well first of all — before I go into the affects — I don’t feel the dollar is going to make it the entire 9 years. You can’t deficit spend $1 trillion on a health care plan and hundreds of billions of bailout money and expect the world to have confidence in our dollar. The dollar is doomed to fail, that is the nature of all fiat currencies.

But as far as how it effects you is, I believe, two-fold:

1. Gold Price is Going Up: Since converting currencies from the dollar to other options will be difficult for the Arabs to do right away it looks like the only recourse is to get rid of their dollar reserves and buy gold. This in combination with China urging its citizens to buy gold will drive the price of gold up.
2. Hyperinflation is Coming: If the world markets drop the dollar on a global scale, all our money will come flooding back in and we’ll see some major hyperinflation. I’m talking huge. Zimbabwe, Argentina, Wiemar-Republic-Germany huge.

The fact is, this is eventually going to happen. If you haven’t started yet, it’s time to get out of dollar-based assets and see about trading a good chunk of your savings for some precious metals like gold or silver. In the near future I’ll be covering quite a bit about how to get yourself financially prepared for the coming hard times but in the meantime, see about getting your hands on some physical gold and silver bullion. One of my main sources is through APMEX (American Precious Metal Exchange). They provide great service and have been 100% reliable.

Resources

Here are links to the Independent article (one covered by Business Week):

Business Week: Oil Not Priced in Dollars by 2018?
The Independent: The Demise of the Dollar

Related posts:

1. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief: California on the Verge of System Failure
2. The Tactical Intelligence News Brief: Chileans Arm Themselves Against Looters
3. Welcome to Tactical Intelligence .Net!