RRC Archives

Dr. Richard Landes has been studying apocalyptic movements for over 40 years. Want to know what John & Yoko, Global Warming, Hollywood Movies & Islamic Jihad all have in common? Check out this short interview. http://bigjournalism.com/dkalder/2010/0 ... more-11278

Sounds like some crazy shit. But you know, it ain't crazy to be prepared for a short to medium term interruption in basic services. Hurricanes, ice storms and earthquakes really do happen.

During the last 2 ice storms in Lexington which knocked out power to much of the city, the health department received thousands of calls from people asking how to keep their perishable food from going bad! Upon being told to put their food in bags outside, many were astonished it would work and many also refused to put their food outside.

all that means is that idiots won't survive in an apocalyptic scenario. which is good. i mean, do you really want Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho to be our president in the future?

Check out this short interview. http://bigjournalism.com/dkalder/2010/0 ... more-11278

That was a very interesting read. The Jihadis are a force to be reckoned with. I don't think that it is just the economy that will cause calamity, or global warming (it's a like anyway), or even Obama. It's going to be a combo of the economy, natural disaster and terrorism that will catch the world with it's pants down. But, in order to survive and experience the joy in this present day, you cannot live in fear or live in the hope of the apocolypse. I mean, you could go out and get runned over by a truck, or something like that, and you would have spent your last day worrying about something you didn't even see come to pass...

So I explained my understanding of the market place. I gave an example of how industry is retracting. I showed you how this effects the man on the street. As far as personal responsibility..... what does that mean? Is that some sort of snipe at me. Personal responsibility for what. Getting caught in a trade that downsized overnight. Geting rid of all of my personal debt? Taking me and my family and making us able to follow the new economy as it emerges? Whats not personally responsible about that? You use this phrase as an attack on me. I think you are burying your head in the sand and screaming at me,"The sky is NOT falling!" when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. PLENTY!
A couple of weeks ago they were actually hearlding the end of the Recession because there were only 500k job losses in the month of December. Only 500k.
The economy is in a free fall. The goverment in collusion with the major media outlets are trying to paint a rosier picture than what is really going on.
Lets have a exercise in evidence collecting and use that evidence to hypothisize.
Here goes... Jump in your car and drive down to your local strip mall. One that has a mix of national chains and local businesses. Count how many store fronts are vacant. Then the ones that are still open, how many have 'going out of business', 'all items 80% off!!', 'everything must go!'. Go in and talk to one of the sales clerks. Ask them how business is doing. You won't be surprised at the answer. Now for the purposeses of our exercise lets extrapolate this nationwide. Barring some localized holdouts. When I go to the strip mall in Dry Ridge Ky. They are 70% vacant. This means two things, (1) obviously, 7 of 10 businesses have gone out of business. (2) The owners of the mall can't get there spaces leased. There are no new businesses willing to move in. This is a more tell-tale sign.
The net effect is this. Just like we had a bubble in the housing market and a fallout in the home mortgage market a similar thing is about to happen in the Commercial paper market. All of these holders of commercial mortgages are going to default. You can't make your payment on your property if you don't have anyone leasing from you. Vicious cycle. Commercial paper comes due with the fiscal year. Watch for it.
Another thing that you can watch for is this.... All of these bank execs who make millions a year. They don't usually get that in cash. They are usually paid in stocks. Stocks from the company that they are running. With the T.A.R.P. program, any bank that took money. The ececs were forbidden from selling their stock. It would have re-crashed the market. So the bankers knowing what they know, have paid off The goverment money and are selling off their own shares while the stock is still up. The banks have alot of "unrealized" debt. They have housese that are in default and haven't repossed them. The Feds are not making then put this on their books because they know that it would make the banks insolvent. The goverment can't act because it would ruin the economy. So we are at a Mexican stand-off. the Feds cant make the banks "realize" their debt. The bankers knowing this are selling off their personal stock while the stock is still high and before the goverment is forced to act. In the end you'll see a lot of bank execs prosecuted for insider trading. I guarantee you the profit taking made by them will never be recovered and they'll go do 3 years at a posh goverment resort and after the sentence move to Europe of South America. Where they'll live like kings for the rest of their days.

Saxman. wrote:Check out this short interview. http://bigjournalism.com/dkalder/2010/0 ... more-11278

♥♥ That was an interesting read. Landes while cataloging apocalyptic trends and telling us apocalyptic predictions have all been wrong, cites dangers and upheavals of society due to the mass fear resulting in destructive efforts to avoid apocalypse and real mass efforts to cause societal collapse.
â™ â™  I suppose if we all buy global warming and make efforts to correct it, the resulting societal implosion would be a soft shrinkage in the global economy and thus the human footprint, population reduction, and usage of alternate energy sources. While not apocalyptic, a calculated world wide societal implosion is still prescribed.
♣♣ What would the overall effect of an aggressive response to the apocalyptic notion of the Global Jihad be on society? Muslims in muslim nations at ~1.5 billion* all over the world would be drawn into war on some level. It takes two to tango so double the pain. Escalation of war might produce/ expedite nuclear capability in the Muslim like it did for the USA the the 40's. War is hell.
* http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
♦♦ If either unchecked Global Jihad ideology or human activities that are hypothetically producing Global Warming are allowed to continue . . . are we still in a bad situation or are neither of these issue that anyone needs to worry about? Are we looking at catch 22, damned if you do-and-damned if you don't?

Clevis:
go here
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EDJI
Change the chart to give you the Dow Jones 10-year performance chart. We see a major dip between 2002-03. We see recovery / stability from 2004-2008. We see another major dip in performance before early 2009. Since then there has been overall recovery. The job market will lag behind this graph a bit. IOW as far as the recession is concerned the job market is still looking/ feeling like it is declining. In some areas of the USA the situation is exacerbated, for example Detroit with the loss of the auto industry.
â™ â™  Now change the graph to catch between 1990 and 2010. Look at how small the recession appear from this perspective. Look at how well the market is performing on a whole.
♫♫ Wes' advice is bullet-proof, backup and look at the big picture. Ask whether freaking out and going apocalyptic will most benefit you and the family or whether weathering the local storm and looking for work where you find it doing whatever it takes will be the most beneficial?
♣♣ You might be at the crux. Stay calm, manage your resources and move with precision. You will send!

I laid out some pretty damning evidence based on market trends. You dismiss it out of hand with a bar graph.Nice.`
You do what you see fit and I'll do the same.
How am I going apocalyptic? I was in an industry that has taken a major hit. I reduced/eliminated debt and am moving/have the ability to move/ to where I can find work. I have taken steps to ensure that me and mine will be able to weather a deepening recession/depression. I have taken steps to have the ability to weather a major disruption of services. A couple of weeks ago we had a snow storm that knocked out power to a large portion of Eastern Kentucky. Some places were without power for a couple of weeks. Preparing for that kind of threat, well, thats just smart. F.E.M.A. even tells you to do that.
You sit in acadamia with a job that will be there no matter what and tell me, who is on the street, not to react. You are dimissed!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The reason why the Market is up is because one weekend last spring the Fed released 1.2 trillion dollars. At the time the world wide cash supply was 900 billion. Basically they more than doubled the money supply over night. That means that on friday the dollar you had in your pocket ws worth less than 50 cents on monday. The next problem was how to get this money into the general economy. In steps the Treasury Department. They issue T-bills, the banks buy the T-bills (even thought they didn't want to but the goverment using the leverage of TARP made them)and the money diseminates into the economy. CLassic bait and switch.
The net effect of what they are doing is to get money into the market place. Jump start the economy. You fight deflation my increasing the money supply. The problem with doing this is at the peril of inflation. The plan is to slowly pull the money out as the clcle kicks over from Deflation to the Inevitable Inflationary cycle. These are experimental efforts by Tiny Tim and the whiz kids. whether they work or worsen the economy no one knows. Like I said its all experimental.
I think I have a good grasp of what is going on with the economy. To dismiss me out of hand like you do...

You do what you do. Good luck, but I believe that you are being overly pessimistic.. Also, your info is slightly misleading and grossly under reporting the other side of the story.