Food Prices to Skyrocket in Coming Food Crisis

Activist Post

You don't have to be survivalist or a doomsdayer to recognize the practicality in having some food stored away for a rainy day. In fact, it's simply becoming common sense to have a certain amount of bulk food storage in your house.

But these days, with record droughts ravaging the bread basket of America coupled with runaway money printing by the Fed, food inflation is creating a dangerous scenario but also a fantastic investment opportunity for average folks.

During times of economic uncertainty it can be especially difficult to determine a safe place to protect your savings. Countless financial advisers offer advice on asset protection and other ways to keep your nest egg performing slightly above inflation. However, many of these strategies involve paper investments that come with risks.

How Bulk Food Storage Can Make You an 80% Return in the Coming Food Crisis

Activist Post

You don't have to be survivalist or a doomsdayer to recognize the practicality in having some food stored away for a rainy day. In fact, it's simply becoming common sense to have a certain amount of bulk food storage in your house.

But these days, with record droughts ravaging the bread basket of America coupled with runaway money printing by the Fed, food inflation is creating a fantastic investment opportunity for average folks.

During times of economic uncertainty it can be especially difficult to determine a safe place to protect your savings. Countless financial advisers offer advice on asset protection and other ways to keep your nest egg performing slightly above inflation. However, many of these strategies involve paper investments that come with risks.

5 Collapse-Proof Investments With Tangible Fundamentals

Eric Blair
Activist Post

Anyone who has followed the investment world since the 2008 financial collapse knows that fundamentals no longer have any relevance.  The curtain was pulled and the wizard of manipulation was revealed.  Yet, the stock market managed to climb from lows of around 6,500 to recently over 12,000 with no tangible growth in the main-street economy -- while insider selling has reached astronomical levels.

During this time the housing market continued to plunge; 15% of the U.S. is on food stamps and climbing; real wages have plummeted; international currency wars have broken out; and more bailouts and dramatic austerity budget cuts ravage the debt-ridden Western world.  In other words, there has been no measurable recovery for anyone but the bailed-out financial institutions who caused the crisis in the first place.

The fallout from the 2008 collapse makes it difficult to grasp why the markets are up when the fundamentals point in the wrong direction. Even investment spikes in commodities seem to be more connected to a weaker dollar than to authentic economic growth with increased demand.  Investors and average people alike are beginning to recognize that nothing is as it seems in the illusory global economy. Fundamentals and so-called reality no longer matter; it is universally understood that a much greater crisis looms no matter how much happy-talk comes out of our policy makers.


It seems that the major lesson from the financial crisis is that all paper investments, including suburban housing, no longer have realistic market price discovery.  In other words, it is impossible to arrive at a real price for anything when artificial subsidies, restraints, or monopolistic cartels determine prices.  The entire paper economy clearly has become a giant Ponzi-scheme, so true values cannot be determined or trusted with the available data.

Here are five tangible collapse-proof investments:

1. Food: Although your ConAgra or Nestle stock may seem like solid investments in times like these, they're still locked up in the phony world of paper assets.  Food commodities are also a highly manipulated market that, in the end, is still not tangible.  Therefore, if you are fortunate enough to have large sums of money invested, why not use that money to provide for your family's immediate food security first?  If you believe food is a good long-term investment, then invest in converting your lawn to a perennial permaculture garden, create a seed bank, or simply stockpile your pantry.  In other words, remove your money from paper food and put it into tangible food security for your family.  Once you've reached a comfortable level of personal food security and you have reserve funds, only then consider investing outside of your immediate needs. The mega-money is moving to buy vast stretches of global farmland.  If you possess the capacity, then you would do well to buy fertile farmland too.

2. Alternative Energy:  If you believe, as many do, that alternative energy will be one of the only growth industries in the near future because of unstable oil and coal supplies, along with environmental concerns, then you should not look for the hottest new solar power stock symbol, but rather use your precious nest egg to invest in getting yourself off-the-grid first.  Due to the ever-increasing prices for energy consumption, your return on investment will be realized immediately by making your residence more energy efficient through weather proofing or by installing solar or wind power.  Another investment to consider is a personal fuel refinery like the biodieselFuelmeister or alcohol options to run your vehicles.  Reducing your dependence on outside energy sources will be a priceless tangible investment even without the prospect of economic collapse.

3. Tools:  This is a very broad topic which can be defined more easily as anything useful or required to help provide necessary consumer goods and services during a crisis or even moderate hardship.  Important tools can be as small as garden and construction tools, sewing machines, food processors, guns and ammo, or as large as a production plant for solar panels.  If there is an interruption in the supply of necessary goods, owning a means of energy production will be far more valuable than a collapsing stock portfolio.  Again, once you have supplied yourself with enough tools for your own self-reliant needs, and if you have additional funds, consider buying or starting a local garden supply store and nursery, or buy small factory equipment to produce something of value.  Even if you just break even on these endeavors, their tangible production capacity far outweighs the risks associated with paper investments, including letting devaluing cash sit in a money market account.

4. Precious Metals: Precious metals, especially gold and silver, have represented a tangible store of wealth since the dawn of modern civilization. Their intrinsic value is deeply embedded into the global cultural psyche, and demand for silver and other metals has never been higher.  Some may argue that the "foolproof" investments listed in this article are not liquid in terms of quickly converting them to cash -- which is true for many of the items for self-reliance. Gold, silver, copper, and other metals are much easier to liquidate if cash is needed. Therefore, investing in metals may prove to be one of the most advantageous strategies given the fragility of the financial system.  Rather than investing in ETFs and other commodity securities, take possession of physical gold or silver and store it in a safe place.  If you have a limited budget, buy junk silver, or forage for used roles of copper wiring when you hear of office closings.

5. Useful Skills: You can never go wrong learning or polishing useful skills. Investing in yourself is never more vital than in times of great uncertainty.  Don't be confused, however, I don't mean to go out and spend a bundle getting a worthless new college degree.  It is far more beneficial to learn how to expand your hobby skills or other passions into productive capacities.  In the best-selling book How to Survive The End of the World As We Know It, author James Wesley, Rawles, proclaims that every household should have a side business as a cushion in case catastrophe strikes. Well, catastrophe has already struck 53% of the American workforce who are unemployed or under-employed.  Since the job market is not secure, it is worth the investment to develop skills to weather a collapse scenario.  Learning simple skills such as making candles or soap, building sheds, gardening, etc., not only provides valuable products, but also gives you a chance to have fun family projects.

Due to the larger economic crisis that seems to be approaching, and the utter lack of trust in paper "assets," we would be wise to invest in tangible investments that provide for our self-reliance.  It is the most important investment you can make during times of crisis where only human necessity represents the real world.

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Monetizing All the Debt, All the Time

What Am I Missing Here?

By David Stockman for Minyanville  

Chronic, trillion dollar deficits don’t matter because the Fed is financing them for free. The oracles at Goldman say that $750 billion of QE2 is priced in to the market, and possibly $1 trillion – a frightful prospect that was hardly diminished by today’s lost jobs report. On top of that, there’s $300 billion to $400 billion in annual GSE run-off that needs replenishment under QE1.5. So Brian Sack, the monetary apothecary who operates the New York Fed’s drive-thru window, is going to be giving Wall Street a lot of POMO. Call it $100 billion per month of Permanent Open Market Operations, and be done.

Not coincidentally, it appears that there’s also baked into the cake about $100 billion per month of new Treasury paper. According to CBO’s August update, the two-year, cumulative red ink under current law (FY 2011-2012) will total $1.7 trillion. But that doesn’t count the upcoming lame duck session’s predictable one-more-stimulus bacchanalia.

Juiced up by their election rout, the tax-side Keynesians in the GOP are certain to ram through a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for one and all. In return, the hapless White House will insist this one-half trillion dollar gift to the “still haves” be matched with several hundred billion more in presently unscheduled funding for emergency unemployment benefits and other safety net programs for the “no-longer-haves.” In combination, these measures — along with more realistic economic assumptions — mean that the FY2011-2012 deficit will be $700 billion higher than current projections, pushing the two-year total to at least $2.5 trillion.
These considerations make one thing virtually certain: After the new Congress sinks into rancorous partisan stalemate and does absolutely nothing about this fiscal hemorrhage, the Treasury will be selling at least the $100 billion per month of new government paper for so long as the New York Fed is open to buy. Stated differently, national policy now amounts to monetizing 100% of the federal deficit.
In the olden times — say three years ago — the idea of 100% debt monetization would have been roundly denounced as banana republic finance. No more. Earlier this week, William Dudley, who occupies the Goldman Sachs permanent seat on the Fed’s Open Market Committee, helpfully clarified that the new-age Fed should be judged by what’s in its heart, not what’s on its balance sheet. He said:

I am mindful of concerns… that [the Fed’s actions] could be interpreted as a policy of monetizing the federal debt. However, I regard this view to be fundamentally mistaken. It misses the point of what would be motivating the Federal Reserve.

It’s doubtless true that the New York Fed Chairman, hereafter referred to as B-Dud in keeping with his brand of monetary doctrine, has run the Fed model and determined that each $100 billion of QE2 will result in a 9.895564 basis point reduction in the 10-year swaps rate. Still, B-Dud and his gang of merry money-printers on the Open Market Committee should be under no illusion that they have ascended to a new rung on the ladder of central banking sophistry.

They may devoutly believe in their hearts (if hopefully not in their minds) that it’s economic milk and honey that they’re bringing to America, but in fact what they’re dispensing is digital greenbacks. In fact, nearly 150 years ago, Samuel P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury and father of the original greenback, proved exactly how.

When the then-diminutive federal budget spewed massive red ink with the onset of the Civil War, Secretary Chase went the direct route and printed up some $400 million in fresh currency — with his picture on it. It wasn’t Chase’s stern gaze, however, that caused his greenbacks to soon trade at a considerable discount to par, and thereby threaten a runaway inflation. Instead, speculators of the day had no problem effectively shorting (against gold) irredeemable paper money which threatened to be issued in limitless supply.

Chase was a lawyer and former senator from Ohio who nevertheless knew a thing or two about money. So seeing that direct money printing wasn’t getting the job done, he came up with an artful backdoor route to monetization. Under the national banking system, which he designed, the Treasury got out of the money-printing business and thereafter issued fixed-term bonds (20- and 40-year maturities) bearing an honest monetary wage, that is, a coupon of about 6%. In turn, newly chartered national banks were given the right to print their own currency (national banknotes) — so long as it was 100% backed by federal bonds and adequately reserved by gold and other legal tender.

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