The long and winding road.

This predates the previous post but I don't remember putting it up. Ed sent this in a different form, so H/T to him as well.

From Joseppi:

I'm a thinkin'.......Let's see...We have an International floating currency regime with no tither to prevent any central bank to print credit/money to create financial bubbles, which is nothing but credit expansion based on debt - with all/most countries engaging in a currency war, whereby each country tries to depreciate their currencies for a export trade advantage.

OK, the stage is set - All self-interested actors printing debt certificates called dollars, Euro's, Yuan, Yen, Pound and doing this with a poker face. This poker game is now in the throes of breaking up in a nasty fight. Each player is throwing massive amounts of fake chips on the table to keep the fraudulent game going a little longer. The game depends on the chips on the table, but all players have a stash of gold behind them that they are trying to keep from linking to their fake chips on the table.
Will they introduce a new fake colored chip to replace the old ones and can they agree on how many new chips for old chips for each country counterfeiting chips? Will the trump card of tying chips to gold, like in the barbarous olden days, to give a responsible order to the currency game be reinstated?

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Who cares what they do?  Mathematically the economy must fail.  Math is the only REAL connection we have to our universe and it doesn't lie.  The government is telling us that everything is fine and pretty soon everyone will have medical insurance and Social Security and free champagne and a chicken in every pot and all we have to do is bomb Iran.

Brilliant.  Iran got it's nuclear technology... where?  Pakistan.  It is not totally unreasonable to expect that Iran could borrow a few nukes from Pakistan which, with Afghanistan and EVERY OTHER MUSLIM COUNTRY, would join Iran in a war against the US.  Iran is strongly supported both militarily and in the UN by whom?  China and Russia.  Shall we fight them all at the same time?  Not if we want to keep borrowing a couple BILLION dollars a day from China - which is holding up about 40% of our national budget.  The US and Israel can't fight the whole world.  We can't even protect our own borders.  And our 180 F-22 Raptors are out of production and completely obsoleted by the Russian PAK-FA which is in production.  A thousand of them.  Want to talk submarines?  If we send our attack boats to fight in the middle east, we can't defend our coastline. 

Yes, Israel MIGHT be able to slow down Iran's nuclear capability for a few years, during which time the US will go bankrupt. THEN WHAT?!?!?!?  Shall we keep bombing them forever?  CAN WE keep bombing every emerging country every few years and expect to pacify the world that way?  I don't think so.  No one thinks so.  Because it is simply insane to believe it's possible to do that.   We have wasted our national treasure and our national will fighting in Iraq, which was never a danger, and invading Afghanistan - which will be formally taken over AGAIN by the Taliban an hour after we leave.  What, exactly have we accomplished?  The creation of the TSA?  The destruction of our Constitutional rights?  Is America safer?  I guess it is for people who are out of touch and expect Big Brother to protect them.  The kind of people who think they are safe because they are living in prison because no one can come in to get them.  It's false security based on bad logic. 

Here is what actually WILL happen.  Israel will eventually be overwhelmed.  They will be nuked at Haifa and Tel Aviv.  Egypt, which gets 1.5 BILLION a year in military aid from us as a payment NOT to attack Israel, will attack Israel.  So will Syria.  So will everyone else in the area.  As an aside, Har Megiddo is between Haifa and Tel Aviv.  Jerusalem probably won't be nuked.  It's everyone's holy spot.

The concept of destroying Israel is stupid.  Not because it can't be done - but because it will cause the entire middle east to fall back into poverty.  Ahh, the wonders of religious fanaticism.

We are also told that the climate change we feel isn't really happening; that gas is plentiful forever and cheap...even though when I was a youngster PREMIUM gas was 17 cents a gallon and now it's around $5...and it isn't 'premium'.  It's the old 'regular'.  And the price is headed north along with my health insurance costs. I can't afford my prescriptions anymore - but since I ain't dead, I probably didn't need them in the first place.

Now then...if we believe math over rhetoric, the economy of the world is gonna crash.  Since we know that, or at least I do, I care less what color paper or what kind of metal the governments are going to try to circulate.  I care that I have most of the things I need to survive on my farm without ANY outside help.  Firearms.. water and filter technology for removing anything over 1 micron in size and all radionuclides.. wood for charcoal.. snares.. chickens.. vegetables.. more firearms.. hand tools.. sanitation facilities.. off-grid energy.. a two-holer.. a smokehouse..cast iron cookware...solar, wood, charcoal and ethanol stoves.. soapmaking stuffs.. worldwide communications ability..

I give a shit what the economy does because I know it's going to tank no matter what anyone says.  And I know that no one is going to be walking around or riding their horse-drawn cart with a sack of gold or 100 pounds of silver.  No one will trade for it.  People will live just like they did up until about a hundred years ago - like my father did - he would be almost 120 years old now...and he taught me how.

I have a Jeep and I'm going to trade in my like-new truck for a new one big enough to double as a tractor for the farm.  (A  2012 5.7 liter Full-sized Tundra fets better mileage than an '08 V-6 Tacoma.) 

Let's do a thought experiment.  Let us imagine that the stores are empty next week.  No rice, toilet paper, bottled water, canned food. No more fuel or propane.  The grid fails.  Someone comes to you with a sack full of gold and wants to trade for your food.  You gonna do it?

Only if I acquired so much surplus that I could not keep it from rotting would I ever consider trading for a placemaker like precious metal and even then I'd rather trade for useful, barter-able items.  But that's impossible in an agrarian community because people who have nothing else still have each other for mutual aid and support.  Giving and kindness are required.  Storing up huge amounts of surplus wealth can't happen.