Thread: BASIC LIST / SUGGESTED ITEMS FOR LONG TERM SURVIVAL

Oh! yeah! "Happy Father's Day Sapper7"

I hope and pray we don't need it Steve... it is getting scarier by the day... Happy Fathers day as well

Originally Posted by AirborneSapper7

I hope and pray we don't need it Steve... it is getting scarier by the day... Happy Fathers day as well

We'll always need this thread/novel Sapper even if we win one for once. Thanks! Brother.

Yeah. Good job Saps. Thank you.

Thanks Pattyk ... I hope this some of this stuff works for you also ... the same for everyone ... hey folks... if you want to post on here please do so... I am just trying to keep it going as a public service for the country and people I love to pieces

its all about this country and its people... if you got something cool to post that will help others PLEASE DO SO

Living Large in a Tiny House

By Farnoosh Torabi | Yahoo! Finance – Thu, Jun 14, 2012 8:49 AM EDT

Imagine living in a space that measures a mere 168 square feet, more than 14 times smaller than the average American home. That’s the reality for one family of four who, for the past year, has been living in their “Tiny House” tucked away in the rural mountains of Virginia. It’s here, they say, that they’ve truly learned how less can be so much more. In fact, in just one year the family has managed to save about $3,000 a month by downsizing in more ways than one.

The move began when Hari, her husband Karl and their two young children Archer and Ella were forced to give up their 1,500 square foot home last year due to financial struggles. Hari and Karl decided to take matters into their own hands, literally, by building their new tiny house with just $13,000 in materials found on Craigslist. Karl’s a bit of a handyman, to say the least. His parents helped build homes for a living and he learned the ropes at a young age.

The Tiny House is temporary. The end goal, they say, is to save enough to one day build a bigger home, one that’s 100% mortgage-free. And with the amount they’ve saved so far, they’re right on schedule to do so.

click link here to watch video

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/living-large-in-a-tiny-house.html


Read more: Charleston Voice: Living Large in a Tiny House *vid*

Learning from the Best: Inflation Lessons from Argentina

By Bill Bonner

06/12/12 Baltimore, Maryland – Spain was down again before we noticed it was up. Yesterday morning, stocks all over the world were rising on hopes of a solution to the euro problem. By afternoon, the rally was over. The Dow ended the day down 142 points.

But that’s the way the euro rescues go. The effects are more and more short-lived. Pretty soon, investors will realize they don’t work at all…and then there won’t be any up-surge, A new rescue plan will be announced. Investors will realize it is just another scammy fix. And stocks will go down.

When that happens the game will be over.

We might not be far from that point now.

Meanwhile, the US is worried too. About Europe, which is on the verge of total breakdown?

Maybe. About China, which is growing at its slowest pace in 13 years? Maybe.

About the US itself…where the ‘recovery’ went missing? Almost certainly.

Here at our Daily Reckoning headquarters, we remain sans soucis. Which is another way of saying, we’re enjoying the show. What will the fixers do next, we wonder? Every fix makes things worse. But they keep at it.

For the benefit of Dear Readers with skin in the game, we leave our “Crash Alert” flag up for a few more days. This market could go to hell in a hurry. If you’ve got skin in the game, get it out.

And, for the benefit of everyone, we cast our weary eyes down to the pampas. Is there any policy so foolish the Argentines have not had a go at it? Is there any financial disaster so catastrophic the gauchos haven’t repeated it at least two or three times? Is there any trick so dishonest or so transparently fraudulent that the politicians south of the Rio de la Plata don’t make a regular habit of it?

Our Bonner Family Office chief investment strategist, Rob Marstrand, who makes his home in Buenos Aires, is visiting us in the US this week. He tells us that it is said to be a crime in Argentina to mention the “parallel” market in dollars. On the official market, the peso still trades at about 4.4 to the dollar. On the unofficial exchanges, that is, on the parallel market, the “blue” peso trades at less than 5.1 to the greenback.

But it’s apparently illegal to mention it.

So is it supposedly illegal to publish the real inflation rate. The Argentine feds have their rate; it’s a crime to contradict them.

The government is also trying to get Argentines to stop using the dollar as a protection against peso inflation. The president says she is converting her own dollar deposits to pesos, to set an example.

“I guarantee you she is not converting her accounts in Switzerland,” says Rob.

But the typical Argentine wasn’t born yesterday. He’s been around the block a few times. He knows that when the government gets in financial trouble, it can’t be trusted. He knows that it will seize whatever money it can get its hands on — especially if it is foreign currency. So, if he’s saved dollars, he’s hiding them…or getting them out of the country. Here’s the Reuters report:

BUENOS AIRES, June 8 (Reuters) — Argentine banks have seen a third of their US dollar deposits withdrawn since November as savers chase greenbacks in response to stiffening foreign exchange restrictions, local banking sources said on Friday.

Depositors withdrew a total of about $100 million per day over the last month in a safe-haven bid fueled by uncertainty over policies that might be adopted as pressure grows to keep US currency in the country.

The chase for dollars is motivated by fear that the government may further toughen its clamp down on access to the US currency as high inflation and lack of faith in government policy erode the local peso.

From May 11 until Friday, data compiled by Reuters from private banks showed $1.9 billion in US currency had been withdrawn, or about 15 percent of all greenbacks deposited in the country.
Feisty populist leader Fernandez was re-elected in October vowing to “deepen the model” of the interventionist policies associated with her predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, who is also her late husband.

She wants Argentines to end their love affair with the greenback and start saving in pesos despite inflation clocked by private economists at about 25 percent per year.

Fernandez set an example on Wednesday by vowing to swap her only dollar-denominated savings account for a fixed-term deposit in pesos.

But savers in crisis-prone Argentina are notoriously jittery.

Why would they be jittery? Because their dollar deposits were seized and forcibly converted to pesos 10 years ago? Because the peso was devalued by 66% in the last crisis?

Or because the Argentine peso of 50 years ago has been devalued by approximately 42 trillion percent. We don’t know how such a thing is mathematically possible…but that’s the report we’ve read.

Defaults, devaluations, hyperinflations — the Argentines have seen it all.

Americans have a lot to learn.

And another thought…

The British writer AA Gill once noted that…

“Europe is an allegory for the ages of man. You are born Italian, relentlessly infantile and mother-obsessed. In childhood, you are English: chronically shy, tongue-tied clicky and only happy kicking balls or pulling the legs off things. Teenagers are French: pretentiously philosophical, embarrassingly vain, ridiculously romantic yet simultaneously insecure. During Middle-Age, we become either Irish and fun loving, or Swiss and serious. Old age is German: ponderous, pompous and pedantic. And finally, we regress into being Belgian, with no idea of who we are at all.”

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning

http://dailyreckoning.com/learning-f...rom-argentina/

The Battle Lines Are Being Drawn



By Avalon
theintelhub.com
June 17, 2012

In a must-see video just posted InfoWars.com, Alex Jones talks with Survivalist James Wesley Rawles whose site is www.survivalblog.com and is author of Survivors. So many important subjects are covered that this video should go viral. Rather than summarize what is discussed, it’s more important to just present the video here for you to watch and hopefully pass along to everyone on your contact list. We are facing challenging times ahead.

Credit goes to Alex Jones and Wesley Rawles, who tell it like it is in one of the most important videos addressing survival, that goes over all the important subjects facing America and the world today. Please share via email and pass this information on to everyone on your contact list and please comment on the video so that the view count reflects a true count.

Theintelhub.com will also post an update showing the page count and redirect to watch the video on Alex Jones YouTube channel which is at www.youtube.com/TheAlexJonesChannel to document an accurate video count.



The Impending Economic Collapse with Survivalist James Wesley Rawles

Published on Jun 16, 2012 by TheAlexJonesChannel
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The Battle Lines Are Being Drawn :

20 Reasons Why America’s Next Bank Holiday Will Be a Nightmare
James Wesley Rawles
June 18th, 2012
Survival Blog
Comments (161)
Read by 9,002 people
This article has been generously contributed for your reading pleasure by James Rawles of Survival Blog.

The world is on now on the brink of a global credit crisis that could be far worse than the tumultuous events of 2008. The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in the southern reaches of the Eurozone indicate that bank runs in the region will continue, and that more bank closure “holidays” will be declared. Under a bank holiday, virtually all deposits could be frozen and irredeemable for days, weeks, or even months. The key question is: Will this crisis spread to the rest of Europe and then even to the United States? I urge SurvivalBlog readers–particularly those in Europe–to be proactive, to stay “ahead of the power curve.” While the Generally Dumb Public (GDP) wakes up some morning to hear news of a bank holiday, you will have long hence prepared yourself.

Digits Lost in the Ether–Redeemable Mañana?

Most people don’t realize that printed U.S. currency and minted coins amount to less than $800 billion, worldwide. That is just a small portion of the aggregate Money Zero Maturity (MZM) money supply that now exceeds $7 Trillion. So what is in your bank account is just electronic money, and there is absolutely no way that even a fraction of depositors could get physical cash to redeem the digits in their accounts. If there is a bank holiday declared, there will undoubtedly be severe restrictions on cash withdrawals when banks re-open. Given the precedent of the limits on withdrawals of a few institutions during the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, I predict that withdrawal restrictions could go on for many months.

Here are 20 Reasons why America’s next bank holiday will be a nightmare:

1. A bank holiday will create a virtual blackout of information on not just checking and saving accounts, but also automated mortgage payments, CDs, and more. Our presently quite transparent banking system will suddenly become opaque. Your bank balance will become invisible. Your handy-dandy online banking web page will be replaced by a “Service Temporarily Unavailable” notice. The willingness to accept checks will evaporate in less than a day. The FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) will be overwhelming.
2. Most businesses will no longer honor personal checks, corporate checks, or bank money orders. Showing a merchant your most recent bank statement isn’t likely to sway him. Again, the FUD factor will rule.
3. All checks in the U.S. are cleared through the automated clearinghouse (ACH)network. Most of this network is inside of banking system firewalls. Many Federal, State, and local tax payments are also handled through ACH. (A similar network exists for European banks–the Pan-European Automated Clearing House (PE-ACH), under the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) system).
4. Credit cards might not be accepted. The FUD factor will dictate that anything even peripherally related to the banking system will be suspect. (Even though the credit card companies have their own credit clearing mechanisms that are only attached to the banking milieu.)
5. Except for a few grandfathered recipients, Social Security payments are now made exclusively via bank direct deposit.
6. Military monthly pay, housing allowances, and ration payments are now made exclusively via bank direct deposit, in CONUS. That is true virtually across the board (Active component, Reserve, and National Guard.) Ditto for monthly military retirement payments.
7. Many State and Federal employees no longer get physical paychecks. They too, are trapped in the “direct deposit only” world.
8. Many Americans are now very dependent on bank debit cards (also known as a bank cards or check cards.) In fact, many people don’t even carry more than a few dollars in their wallets. If our world suddenly goes “cash only” most people will suddenly be out of cash.
9. ATMs, debit card transactions, and online banking can be shut down in minutes. This huge vulnerability of banking customers has already been evidenced by a few minor glitches.
10. Online payment systems like PayPal will be sharply degraded, because they rely on their ability to move funds to and from banks. More importantly, online payments are inextricably tied to credit card processing. If credit card processing is suspended, then online payments will be “dead in the water.”
11. Many regular monthly payments such as mortgages, insurance premiums, and some utilities are automatically debited from checking accounts. These will all come to a screeching halt.
12. SWIFT wire transfers will probably be suspended, freezing a good portion of global commerce. Similarly, International ACH transactions (IATs) will also be shut down, since they access the U.S. ACH network.
13. The ability to process credit card payments will be dubious, at best. Many merchants will wisely “just say no” to credit cards, even if their countertop POP terminals are still functioning and show available credit. And the fact that many credit cards are now just debit cards in disguise will only add to the reluctance of merchants to take any credit cards.
14. Point of purchase (POP) processing of credit and debit cards at gas stations has become ubiquitous. Nearly everyone now uses the “pay at the pump” option. Gas and diesel could become “cash only” transactions.
15. Most American families keep less than $300 in cash at home at any given time, including their kids’ piggy banks. For most families, that wouldn’t cover even one month’s rent.
16. Formerly distributed as “Food Stamps”, the USDA‘s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provides benefits to low income families through Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card payments. These cards look much like credit cards. And like checks, EBT payments are all routed through the ACH network. Again, this is a network that is inside banking system firewalls. If the banking system goes into holiday mode, then it may take days or even weeks to get EBT processing back on line. If the EBT payments stop, we can expect riots in metropolitan areas in less than a week.
17. Gift cards will be “iffy.” There are now two types of gift cards: “open loop” (or “network”) cards and traditional “closed loop” cards. Open loop cards are issued by banks or credit card companies and can be redeemed many places. It is likely that only closed loop cards will be honored by the issuing stores, because merchants will fear that open loop cards might have been zeroed out elsewhere. (If they can’t confirm the available balance, the card will be refused.)
18. Most Internet vendors are almost entirely dependent on credit card processing. If that processing system is disrupted, then mailorder firms will either have to cease operations, or have them slow to a snail’s pace, and be restricted to only non-bank money orders.
19. Reversion to U.S. Postal Service money orders (commonly called “PMOs“) will only be partially viable solution. This is because many small town and rural post offices don’t keep enough cash in their tills to be able to hand you $1,000 when you go to cash a PMO. You may be thinking, “Oh well, I’ll just ask them to write me a blank PMO, in exchange. Nope. A recent change to postal regulations designed to curtail money laundering banned money order-for-money order issuance. Bummer. And if you are considering using “Forever” postage stamps, hold your horses. Under a hygiene regulation published in the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), postal clerks are not allowed to cash out (“buy back”) stamp booklets unless they are still in their sealed clear plastic master packages. So it might take decades to use up your Forever stamps, or you will be forced to liquidate them on the gray market at a slight loss.
20. Bank safe deposit boxes will probably be inaccessible. Plan accordingly.

Some Observations and Mitigation Steps:

Because so many pay and retirement benefit systems are now handled via bank direct deposit only, we could easily live through a frustrating “Roach Motel” period of several months when “Dollars check in, but they don’t check out.” Be prepared to ride through that period.

If the European credit spreads to the United States, then immediately visit your company’s payroll office, and ask to be removed from their direct deposit system. This change might take a couple weeks. With a paper paycheck, you can probably cash it elsewhere, even if you own bank closes its doors–perhaps even at your local grocery store.

Keep plenty of well-hidden cash at home. Since it won’t be earning interest, some of this cash might as well be in $2 rolls of nickels. That method will also give you a hedge on inflation, and also serve as insurance against a currency reform. (Where a zero could be lopped off the Dollar, overnight.)
Be prepared for times for when anything other than greenback cash or perhaps silver coins will be eyed with suspicion, or rejected outright. Even USPS PMOs and drug store money orders may be refused. In the era of bank holidays, cash will talk. Keep plenty of it on hand. Oh, and needless to say, don’t store your cash in a bank safe deposit box. You probably won’t have access to it during a bank holiday.

Be wise and circumspect in storing cash at home. Don’t tell anyone other than your spouse about that cash. See the SurvivalBlog archives for suggestions on building secret hiding places, like this one.

A good portion of your “stash of cash” should be in the form of $1 and $5 bills. This is because during a banking crisis, many people will not be able make change for small transactions. And if your local power, water, and phone companies refuse checks, then you will need to be able to pay them the exact amount of your monthly bill. (They probably won’t have much “change”, either.)

Apply for at least one gasoline station chain charge card. In turbulent times when they won’t take your check or your VISA card, they might still take their own chain card.
If you have to pay your utility bills in in cash or by PMO, do you know where their business offices are located? And consider the sort neighborhood where those offices are located. (Unless you live in a free state for open carry or Constitutional Carry, do you have your CCW permit, and plenty of pistol practice?) For safety, it might be wise to form a neighborhood posse to go pay those bills in a group of of six people once a month.

Your local supermarket may declare “cash only.” This is yet another reason why it it is vitally important for every family to have a comprehensive food storage program. By the same token, fuel storage also makes sense, if your local fire code allows it.

At the tail end of a banking crisis–when the bank doors do re-open–the Federal Reserve will certainly have to crank up the printing presses. Even people that never had “mattress money” will want some. All this new cash will increase the velocity of money, locally. This will be inflationary, even at the same time that a the macro level, we will witness a huge dollar deflation. (This is because the multiplier effectof every dollar on deposit will work in reverse, as withdrawals are made.) These will be strange times, indeed. If you start to see any evidence of mass inflation kicking in, then be ready to spend your dollars as quickly as possible to parlay them into practical, barterable tangibles. Don’t be the last one standing in the game of Dollar Musical Chairs.

Conclusion

The threats of credit crunches, bank runs, and bank holidays are not new. No society is immune from them. We’ve been fortunate here in the United States to have not suffered any limits on bank withdrawals since the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. But don’t expect this stability to be permanent. We live in a dynamic world with rapidly changing threats to our lives and livelihoods. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

20 Reasons Why America's Next Bank Holiday Will Be a Nightmare

All Over America Government Control Freaks Are Forcing Preppers Back On To The Grid




June 18th, 2012
5 comments

In recent years there have been huge numbers of Americans that have sought to go "off the grid" and live a more independent lifestyle. It has been estimated that there are now approximately 3 million "preppers" in the United States, and many of them just want to be left alone so that they can take care of themselves and their families on their own land. But that is not the way America works anymore. In many areas of the country, government control freaks have essentially declared war on preppers and are attempting to force them back on to the grid. In some states, "nuisance abatement teams" are conducting armed raids on off the grid properties. Property owners are being cited for "code violations" and are being told that they are "bothering the neighbors".

In some cases, trees and gardens are being forcibly removed. In other cases, entire structures are being relocated or torn down. And in the most extreme cases, property owners are actually being forced off of their properties completely by these control freaks.

You see, the truth is that in America you don't really own your property.

You are essentially renting it, and you can only do with it what the government allows you to do.

And the government does not like people disconnecting from the grid and living an independent lifestyle. So these battles over property rights are probably going to get even more intense in the years ahead.

These days, many Americans are choosing to grow "survival gardens" as a way to help feed their families and become more independent of the system.

But in some areas of the country these survival gardens are being forcibly ripped out by government control freaks. Just check out what happened to one unemployed woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma....

A Tulsa woman is suing the city's code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause.

Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.

She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.

Last August, Morrison's front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.

The government agents left her with nothing. They ripped her garden to shreds. She was relying on that garden for her food and her medicine.

Because she is unemployed, she doesn't have any money to go to the store and buy all those things.

Now she is absolutely destitute....

"I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left," Morrison said.

Oh, but at least the government agents can report that "everything is now up to code".

What is happening to this country?

In the state of California, armed "nuisance abatement teams" are intimidating property owners into getting connected back into the grid, and in some instances they are forcing homeowners off their land entirely.

When I first watched the videos posted below I got quite angry.

This first video is about government control freaks driving people off their land in the California desert....