Authored by Tom Chtaham via Project Chesapeake,
Numerous economists and investors are warning of another great financial crisis to come but few people want to listen to them. No crisis is ever exactly like the last one and the next great depression will be different from the last one. In the last depression those who had money were in a good financial position to ride it out but the next depression will see those with fiat money drowning in it as it becomes worthless.
Very few Americans have any significant savings today. Most live on credit and those with savings have it stored in financial instruments that will be wiped out as the bankers collapse the system to hide the theft they have been involved in for decades. Those who think they will retire with their IRA, pensions or social security will suddenly find them all gone never to return leaving them with no means to care for themselves.
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The west line has moved to Asia. This means that North America is no longer the shipping center of the world. The consequences of this for Americans will be disastrous. This means our economy in the future will be smaller and slower and will result in a standard of living far below what it currently is.
Those that own very few assets free and clear will become the new homeless as they become jobless and default on all of their credit obligations.
All of the social safety nets that exist now to keep people fat and happy will fail leaving mobs of people to roam the streets to seek out what they need to survive.
One only has to look at Venezuela today to see where this will all lead.
The basic minimum wage in Venezuela today is $7 dollars a month. Not a day or a week but a month. Those that hold local currency see it devalue on a daily basis making things increasingly worse as time goes on. Had any of these people stored some of their wealth in gold they would have the ability to live a little easier as the economy collapses. One ounce of gold in the hands of a Venezuelan today would last them for years. This is a lesson we all need to heed.
Simply storing some of your wealth in gold and silver is no cure all but it is part of a bigger strategy to insure you do not have to suffer as many will in the coming years due to their blind faith in their belief the government will care for them. Keep in mind that the government is actually controlled by the same people that will destroy your standard of living so why would they care about your suffering.
Understanding what will likely happen and insuring you have a plan to deal with it is the only hope you will have of coming through the coming bad years in tact. Those who trust in government or only live for today will reap what they sow and it will be unpleasant at best if they survive at all. A simple strategy to insure you do not suffer does not have to be expensive or complicated. The best plans are simple and allow you to adapt to the changing times. If you invest in a simple, inexpensive plan and the world somehow goes on as normal, you will not be any worse for the investment but if things takes an unexpected turn and your plan becomes necessary, it will allow you to survive the crisis much better than the bulk of the population.
The strategy I outlined in The American Dream Lost is a basic plan that will work for just about anyone but is mainly designed for those that have only a few thousand dollars to draw on in an emergency. That is to say it is designed for the majority of Americans that have little money. It is important to understand that a plan of this type is an insurance policy against bad times that can do great harm to you and your family and needs to be understood in that light.
One of the worst problems people have is that when something bad begins to happen they attempt to continue living as they always have and ignore the future consequences until it is too late to do anything meaningful about it. If a person loses their job they continue to live as they always have using up their small savings in the hope that things will change for the better before they run out of money. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, it depends on how lucky they are. This type of mentality often leads people to the point where they run out of money and only then do they try to come up with a plan. The problem is, by then they have no resources left to enact a plan with. This is what you need to avoid.
When your economic situation suddenly changes for the worse you need to immediately sit down and determine what the future is likely to look like. It is good to be optimistic but if the chances of finding a new job are not very good you need to decide how best to use what resources you have to maintain a decent living standard. You may have to make some very difficult choices but the option of doing nothing could be very harmful in the long run. For those that decide radical steps may be needed to continue caring for their family the following list is a good place to start.
Buy a years supply of basic foods and supplies that store easily
Buy some durable clothing for future use
Buy an older vehicle for cash that can pull a trailer
Buy a good used camper trailer for cash that can house your family
Buy a weapon and ammo for protection and hunting purposes
Buy a few rolls of silver coins to preserve wealth and act as an emergency fund
What this gives you is the ability to continue caring for your family even in the worst of situations if everything is lost to creditors. They will have food, shelter, clothing, transportation, security and the ability to buy critical items that are needed at some future time. Convincing your family they have to move to a camper for a while would not be easy but the alternative of being homeless would make it an easy choice. The fact that thousands of people all across America are at this very moment living in tents near large population centers is proof enough it can happen.
Depending on your shopping skills all of these things can be secured for under $5,000 dollars and much less if you have time to look for bargains. Your plan may be slightly different depending on the resources and skills you have. You may have access to a small piece of land you own somewhere that a cabin can be built on or you may have the skills to retrofit a van body truck or enclosed trailer for living in. In situations like this skills are worth as much as gold coins.
When the next great depression hits it will be unlike anything we have lived through before. Nothing will be as it seems and only those that have the resources to adapt will come through it whole. Preparation is the key to adapting to future events and those without resources will reap a bitter harvest as they struggle to survive. No announcements will be made, no warnings will be given by the establishment, it will just suddenly happen out of the blue and everyone will say it was unpredictable. But those who prepared will know better.
and save one bullet for yourself
If the bankers “collapse the system” what happens to them since they rely on the fiat money and related fiat financial system to sustain themselves and maintain their positions?
Seems like a sort of a suicidal thing to be doing to me.
They will just grab the gold and silver they hold as trustees for precious metal etf’s and perhaps even wander through the safety deposit boxes.
This piece belongs on ZH as part of their usual weekend doom porn lineup.
Have to disagree. We all can see the tent cities on TV. But, I speak from front line experience. I have several rental properties in tidewater Virginia and increasingly, I am being approached by a desperate class of people who want to sleep inside a house. Mostly female, usually divorced a time or two, no reserves, formally employed at a middle class wage. Now 55-70 years old, no man, no money, no children that can or will help. There is a flood of liberated women who slept around, bought the lie that they could have it all, and now have the harvest of an undisciplined and largely selfish life. No longer able to shake a tail feather, not able to replace an income level lost several years ago, these poor souls are in a jam. There are a lot of them and I guess they are a monolithic Democrat bloc. God help us all. Reminds me of The Ant and the Grasshopper. Just a fable. Right?
I know a woman like you describe. Lives in a 30k trailer on an acre, churns through guys based somewhat on her needs. Be it house maintenance, auto help, take care of machines or property. She is 62, divorced and on her last year of alimony. She is staring over the cliff in her words. I am at that age where you can see all your life choices pile up, and those of your friends as well. Another childless couple i know has actually contracted with a younger nurse cousin that she will care for them in their old age in exchange for their estate. Funny how much better the extended family works than arrangements like these. Especially facing any sort of economic collapse or devaluation of a life time of saving. Wife and i should retire in ten years, collapse or world war not withstanding. Hope our pensions hold up better than our bodies.
Turlock. Did you get that ID from “Chesapeake” by James Michener? Great novel.
These must be the “educated woman” demographic the commies pander to.
Yes, my people and my life has played out as the genetic and cultural inheritance of Michener’s Turlock. You are the first to catch this and I have used the name for years. You are obviously a gentleman and a scholar.
You described my two American ex-wives. Number two just told me that deep dark depression is her biggest enemy now. When they were beautiful butterflies, they got some nectar from every flower. Now they are like ragged moths living in hollow logs. They could get’em but couldn’t keep’em.
“One of the worst problems people have is that when something bad begins to happen they attempt to continue living as they always have and ignore the future consequences until it is too late to do anything meaningful about it. ”
Revolution of Rising Expectations (Alexis de Tocqueville)
“The idea that unfulfilled, rising expectations create unstable political situations has a long tradition in political and social analysis. As far back as the early nineteenth century Alexis de Tocqueville suggested that it explained why the strongholds of the French Revolution were in regions where standards of living had been improving. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century the concept was associated with explanations of revolutions, insurgencies, and civil unrest throughout the world and the urban riots of the 1960s in the United States.”
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/revolution-rising-expectations
History repeats, Trump’s tariff war may just follow the script of the last great depression. You would be wise to hedge against this event with PM’s, food and a bug out location away from the city.
1920’s Americans still had compassion in their hearts for their fellow man, that is no longer the case and this time will be a trip into the worst horror movie imaginable.
In spite of making barely ten grand last year I have a few thousand in the bank and I am using the money to put raised garden beds in. We have a long growing season here and much of what I plan to grow is storable for the short winter- potatoes, Anasazi beans, amaranth and quinoa. Medicinal herbs. Much of what I have is non-hybrid so I will have seeds to help others grow food too. You do the best you can with what you have.
KaD,
Think about buying some silver. The price will explode in a crisis while the value of the already worthless dollar will reach its inherent value-ZERO. Good Luck
The life lessons that come from experience are worth the most. Next are those you watch going by, to your family, relatives, friends and acquaintances. Finally are the ones you hear about, second or third hand, from witnesses who saw it happen and had to help / live with the outcomes.
This 4th turning will teach an entire generation what ignorance, folly, deceit and insanity bring. If you survive, be sure to tell your stories so the next generation doesn’t repeat the previous lunacy – or claim that “the outcome couldn’t have been foreseen”.
Excellent article, but it misses one important point: racial balkanization in America! When you have JZ demanding a national discussion on White Privilege (a persistent myth), and refusing to equate the fact that more afros are in prison because they are the ones actually committing most of the violent crime, what do you think will happen when the economy goes bad?
Of course if you live in cupcake land then you don’t have a clue about this, and will espouse libtard opinions, that does not correspond with reality. But its easy for libtards to pontificate from afar when personal safety is not on the line. For those who regularly dealt with it, and witnessed afro ghetto destructive behavior & violence since your childhood, you already know what I am talking about with no further explanation necessary.
At one time there was a great paleo libertarian movement that was well grounded in racial realism regarding radical afro american ghetto culture. Now modern libertarians are among the ranks of pandering libtards with no clue about the level of afro animosity that will be directed at them when the economy melts down, and the welfare check (appeasement payments) stops.
Of course just as the leftist try to pander to afros that they are the “good white people”, the modern libertarian libtards try to convince afros that they hate the police too (equating the front line urban ghetto cops with their local small town suburban revenue collectors), and that they want afros released from the prison industrial complex also (really, prisons make money for industrialist?, and I always thought they cost money to run, and do not produce any actual value).
Well unfortunately for them the white hating afro is not going to distinguish, and libtards will pay dearly for their naiveté. I guess when you live in cupcake, safe & secure from extreme up close & personal violence (where someone is semi routinely maimed, killed, or hospitalized) its no big deal to release the violent afro felons (predators) back into the community so they can prey upon Non Blacks (and Blacks) all over again.
Well after the economic meltdown it won’t just be waiting on long lines for food, fuel, ATM, and pharmaceuticals, as played out in other countries. Its going to have afro initiated home invasions, rioting, arson, looting, gang rapes, shootings, and gang assaults. Then the libtards can try pontificated political theories at the point of the afro knife/gun (I doubt it will go well). But maybe that is the price a libtard has to pay for giving aid and comfort to the BLM movement at the rest of our expense. Radical afro american hatred of Non Blacks, and our debt ridden economy, are existential threats, everything else is frivolous in comparison, and the libtards will find out the hard way when it all finally erupts.
[Hold on to your guns America, because unfortunately you are probably going to need them]
My grandmother and her siblings grew up in the middle of The Great Depression. She used to tell me stories about growing up and there were lessons baked in those stories.
They never had money, but they never went hungry.
They stuck together as a family and lived in a tight knit community.
The men all had skills that allowed them to earn enough to purchase the things they couldn’t raise or make for themselves: carpentry, plumbing, hunting, fishing.
The women all had huge gardens and knew how to preserve food for the Winter.
They were the least pretentious people on Earth and it never bothered them to wear clothes that were old because they kept them patched and clean.
In all the photographs there is a commonality- multiple generations living together and always there are children, adults, and the elderly leaning against each other, arms around shoulders and waists and the kinds of smiles that are genuine, not those wide toothy soy grimaces, but tight lipped and from the heart. All you get from them are love, devotion, solidarity, and commitment.
The lessons she taught me were the ones I ignored for the first part of my life, but they were the ones that really stuck long term. In all my life I don’t think I have ever admired or looked up to someone as much as I did those two, old, shuffling and broken people that were my Grandparents because no one ever made me feel as cared for, loved and valued as they did.
We can look at what is coming as a punishment or we can find within it what we deserve and should expect. We called the tune and now we must pay the piper. You feast and eventually they bring you the tab to settle up.
Think about what’s important, focus like a laser on that and never forget that in all things there is a balance and a cycle that must find equilibrium and all we need to do is to trust in the ones we love and care for and man up no matter what comes our way. In the end, we are all we have.