I had not planned on referring to MarketWatch.com again so soon, but a post today caught my eye. I have not been able to contact the writer of the post, a certain cbently. So if you, cbently, would like additional attribution other than what I’m giving you right now, just let me know.

This astute Wall Street trader said today:

I have worried about this for some time, but I have become convinced that in the headlong rush to restart the excessively consumer credit-dependent portion of the economy people will be encouraged to spend by being given implicit assurances that there will be no significant consequences if they fail to repay.

For example, at one time some people may have worried that defaulting on a car loan would lower their credit score, thus impacting their ability to obtain credit again in the future. In these days, the lending standards will simply be officially lowered in order to invite them back to the consumption table. There is no significant consequence for failure to repay. By doing so we will create an even greater financial catastrophe.
(more…)

MarketWatch.com is a site run by the Wall Street Journal, and has fairly up-to-the-minute stock market data. But the real draw for me are the posts to the main article, that you get to by clicking on the main article. I don’t read the article itself, since it’s basically just rah-rah puff by the Journal. I go directly to the posts.

Many of the posts are written by pretty sharp people who have been trading for some time. They are small traders, representing those who invest their money directly and do not depend on the fund managers to make their decisions for them. To make money, they have to have some sense… as well as dollars to invest.

There has been a very interesting change in both the substance and tone of their posts. A few weeks ago, it was, ‘oh boy, the market is volatile, so there is a change to make some money’. Then it changed to ‘uh… the market is doing strange stuff.’ Then the bailouts started, and it was ‘guys, this is getting very strange… I can literally see the clandestine manipulation of the government and other big players in the stock prices,’ which they call the PPT, or Price Protection Team, which was formerly just a rumor, a boogyman that many did not believe in.

Next the mood changed to, ‘(expletive deleted) I have NO idea what the market is going to do. It goes up on the worst news. It’s like it is disconnected from reality.’ And these pretty smart people started to basically panic. ‘Okay, that’s it… I’m not trading any more… but I don’t know what to do with my money.’ Some suggested gold, which is usually a pretty good hedge against falling stock prices. But gold is acting weird too. Some are looking for it to go from about $850 to over $2,000 and ounce. Others, looking at the obvious manipulation of stocks, aren’t so sure.

Which brings us to the really interesting comment I saw in one of the posts. It said that if food could be compressed so that you could get as much value as an ingot of gold in the same space, that would be the perfect investment. Because you can always eat food, and there may come a time where gold may be worthless because of either strange market pressures, or perhaps because of the government not allowing people to have it any more. There are already some restrictions, apparently.

I think that is brilliant. The perfect investment right now is food.

We still can’t compress it to get $800 worth in the palm of our hand. But the freeze-dried food and other emergency food supplies available are pretty condensed and very storable. I think it is worth far more than gold. Because even if the value of gold skyrockets, if there comes a time where there is a severe scarcity of food, gold may not do a person much good. Who would sell the food they need to live for a pretty piece of metal?

Not me.

“Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.”

If you think about it, this piece of the Bible in Luke 2: 8-15 tells us pretty much for sure that the first Christmas was not in winter, not in snow. Israel has much the same climate as Southern California, and shepherds are not out in the fields during winter. They are in the field during spring. More than likely, the real birth date of Jesus is in the spring, perhaps around Passover. That’s just my opinion, but it makes sense to me.

So, whatever time of year it is, there they are, those shepherds, out beneath the canopy of stars in the great outdoors. Dark. It is usually quite dark in the great outdoors, in the field, at night. VERY dark, if there’s no moon. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, with no warning… WHAM!…

“And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid.”

Oh yes! Greatly afraid. Can you imagine the shock? Real angels are not fluffy things of the imagination. They are powerful created beings. It would take just 3 of them to destroy the earth, according to Revelations, as I read it. I would think that this particular appearance, with the ‘glory of the Lord’ accompanying, would be nearly overwhelming. The angel understands the effect in them that he is causing, because…
(more…)

I was sent an interesting post by a friend today, regarding seeds. Before I tell you where to find it, let me say that we have been starting to grow a little of our own food. We trying to do it completely organically. I figure there is no use in learning how to grow stuff with fertilizer and chemicals and pesticides that will disappear if things go truly south.

It is, I admit, a little hard at first to go entirely organic. For one thing, you find out that there are garden insects that you WANT in your garden, ones that will greatly help to control the pest insects. Astoundingly, these helpers will come by themselves to your garden, if you will let them. It’s like there is this incredible balance that wants to establish itself, if we can muster the wisdom to just get out of the way enough.
(more…)

We’ve all seen the pictures of the African child with distended belly and the plea for money. Maybe we responded, maybe we figured that the money would go anywhere but to that child. But in any event we probably got ‘used to’ seeing it. The shock value wore off. The shocking idea of starvation wore off.

We probably need to be more concerned now.

According to the Guardian, an English newspaper, nearly one billion people worldwide are starving. Each day, 40 million more join their ranks. That’s close to 15 percent of the world going hungry in 2008. That’s serious world hunger.

To quote the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s Assistant Director General, “For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream….”

2009 promises to be worse. Very, very much worse.
(more…)

In the last post, I said sleep is becoming even more essential. This is why.

For the past few decades, we have been handed the magic bullets of antibiotics to cure all that ails us. Then we were sent back to work. No problem.

Now, the magic is running out of power. Many older antibiotics are useless against resistant strains of bacterium. The few new ones that do work sometimes are apparently loaded with serious, almost incredible side effects that can include deafness, severe joint pain and psychosis leading to suicide (1, 2)… in addition to the usual damage that nearly all AMA drugs do to the kidneys and/or liver, and the rest of your body.

Let’s shift gears for a moment. We know that only the body can heal the body. Everything we do is just trying to help it heal itself, giving it extra building blocks, or trying to take some negative factor out of the way. Bandaging does not heal a wound. It just keeps dirt out of it. (more…)

“It’s a wise man who sleeps when he’s tired, and eats when he’s hungry.”

I have always loved that saying. I have no idea where it originated, and I don’t care. It’s the essence of physical wisdom.

But it’s very hard to put into practice. We live in a 24/7 world where ‘I can sleep after I die’ is the operative phrase, and anyone who can’t have another shot of their favorite caffeine delivery vehicle and stay awake is, well, shall we say, a little kitty. Go to where truckers hang out and see them dig into their pockets for illegal amphetamines. It’s the same in the field for the military, but somehow it’s legal there and one is actually ordered to partake.

(more…)

I was in a chiropractor’s office being worked on, and the doctor, whom I’ve known for years and who helped me rehab from a couple of fractured vertebra, said, “If that was me on the table, I’d be jumping all over from the pain.” I honestly said back to him, “It used to hurt more.” And that got me thinking about how to share with others what to do with pain.

I think the beginning of my path was the Frank Herbert book, Dune, which I read when I was a teenager. It was the first time I encountered the concept of letting pain ‘pass through’. To not be afraid of it. Not hold onto it. Just let it … pass through.

Well, what the heck does that really mean? I had no idea. But I thought it was worth exploring. So I started practicing when the opportunity came along… as it does from time to time when you’re physically active and what they call a ‘risk taker’. At first I was just repeating the Dune words and concept to myself, and the pain was just pain, and there really was absolutely no difference.
(more…)

I know where things are in my garage storage area. There are also emergency lights and flashlights in various places. Even at night, there is some light from moon and/or stars, or from the streetlight that is not too far away. That’s a good thing, because there are sharp instruments and tools and very sturdy iron pieces sticking out from equipment, and I really do not want to run into any of them.

I was totally surprised one night when the garage door light went out before it’s normal turn-off time and suddenly… I was in total darkness. The power had gone out. It was very cloudy, so no moon or stars, and for some reason the emergency light did not come on automatically. So… total darkness. Now, most of the time I don’t really need light in a dark place. But this time, it was totally unexpected and I did not have time to orient myself to where I was in relation to the things I do not want to run into.
(more…)