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From SHTF Plan – When It Hits The Fan, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You

The article has been generously contributed by Tess Pennington of Ready Nutrition. After joining the Dallas chapter of the American Red Cross in 1999 Tess worked as an  Armed Forces Emergency Services Center  specialist and is well versed in emergency and disaster management & response. You can follow her regular updates on Preparedness, Homesteading, and a host of other topics at www.readynutrition.com .

Those of you who plan to take the first steps toward preparing for emergencies may feel a bit overwhelmed at where to begin. After all, there is a lot of food to choose from at the grocery stores. Many websites, including this one encourage families to start buying small amounts of food related preparedness items each time they go shopping. This way, your budget is not dramatically affected.

Food storage calculators are a great tool to incorporate in your preparedness planning, and can help you understand how much food your family will need for a given emergency. The food storage calculations can also be printed out and used as an inventory list to keep you on track in terms of what preparedness supplies you have and will need.

To make the most of your emergency food supply, keep these essential food pantry rules in mind before purchasing:

1. Caloric intake is an important factor in survival. In any disaster situation, you want to avoid malnutrition. Having foods stored to prevent this health issue will keep you at your optimum health. Stock up

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Long term food storage.
Video Rating: 5 / 5

From The Economic Collapse

Everywhere you turn these days, someone is proclaiming that the economy is improving.  Barack Obama is endlessly touting the “improvement” in the economy, the mainstream media is constantly talking about “the economic recovery” and an increasing number of Americans seem to be buying into this line of thinking.  A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe that the economy will improve over the next year, while only 17 percent of Americans believe that it will get worse.  But is the economy actually improving?  Not really.  At the moment things are relatively stable.  Some economic statistics are improving slightly and some continue to get even worse.  However, it is very important to keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons why things have stabilized is because the federal government is pumping more than a trillion dollars a year into the economy that it does not have.  The Obama administration is engaging in a debt binge unlike anything America has ever seen before, and yet many economic indicators are still in decline.  So what is going to happen when the federal government stops injecting gigantic waves of borrowed money into the economy?  That is a frightening thing to think about.  The best efforts of our “leaders” in Washington D.C. are not accomplishing a whole lot.  The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates as…

From Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

Citing the latest report on “Debt and Deleveraging” by the McKinsey Global Institute, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard proclaims America overcomes the debt crisis as Britain sinks deeper into the swamp.

Britain has sunk deeper into debt. Three years after bubble burst, the UK has barely begun to tackle the crushing burden left by Gordon Brown. The contrast with the United States is frankly shocking.

US debt is already lower than Spain (363pc), France (346pc), or Italy (314pc), and may undercut Germany (278pc) before long — given the refusal of the European Central Bank to offset fiscal contraction with monetary stimulus.

One is tempted to ask what all the fuss was about in the US. The debt of financial institutions is just 40pc, compared to the UK (219pc), Japan (120pc), France (97pc), Germany (87pc) and Italy (76pc). Bank debt has dropped from $ 8 trillion to $ 6.1 trillion — accelerated by the Lehman collapse — as lenders rely more on old-fashioned deposits.

In hindsight, the US property boom was remarkably modest compared to what happened in Spain, or what is happening now in China now where the house price to income ratio in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen is near 18. America’s ratio peaked at 5.1 and is already back to its modern era average of three. The excesses have been unwound.

Personally, I am coming to the conclusion that the US crisis in 2008-2009 was largely a case

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From The Market Ticker

Oh my…..

For immediate release

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in December suggests that the economy has been expanding moderately, notwithstanding some slowing in global growth. While indicators point to some further improvement in overall labor market conditions, the unemployment rate remains elevated. Household spending has continued to advance, but growth in business fixed investment has slowed, and the housing sector remains depressed. Inflation has been subdued in recent months, and longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.

In other words there’s nothing really going on here that tells us much.

Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. The Committee expects economic growth over coming quarters to be modest and consequently anticipates that the unemployment rate will decline only gradually toward levels that the Committee judges to be consistent with its dual mandate. Strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook. The Committee also anticipates that over coming quarters, inflation will run at levels at or below those consistent with the Committee’s dual mandate.

No pressure in the labor market and none in the others either.

To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with the dual mandate, the Committee expects to maintain a highly accommodative stance for monetary policy.  In particular, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the

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From SurvivalBlog.com

I have been a police officer for eleven years, with assignments in patrol, SWAT, undercover operations, and as a use of force and firearms instructor, I’m often asked by gun owners one question. The questions usually goes something like, “When can I legally shoot someone?” Or, “Can I shoot somebody if they do this?” Because I am prepping myself, I also talk with those who are preparing  for the collapse of society. They generally don’t ask those questions. With the possibility of no law enforcement or court system to worry about, they believe they can shoot anyone who, in anyway, is a threat to their survival. But it seems whether we are talking about everyday encounters with criminals, or preparing for a world without order, everyone is very focused on the “can I shoot” question. Which I believe is the wrong question.

While current laws may restrict people’s rights in regards to weapons, it almost always allows you to respond with lethal force, to protect a life. Even if you live in an area where the law says you cannot protect yourself, if necessary, you will protect yourself anyway. Making the question of what the law says you can do irrelevant. If you can articulate that a reasonable person would feel threatened with serious injury or death, the law allows you to shoot. It is important to know what the law says you can do. But when you are faced with a potential lethal…

From What if IT is today? – A Survivalist’s Blog

The next door neighbor died two months ago.  He was a crabby old man of 89.  I didn’t have much to do with him or his wife because they just spent too much time complaining but I did take their trash cans out to the road before trash day and brought them back up to the house after trash pickup.  Just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you don’t have to help them out…

This was the same neighbor who hated my brush pile across the front of the property.  He complained to everyone and everyplace possible to try to have me forced to remove it.  Unfortunately for him there’s no laws saying I can have a 150 foot long pile of brush along my front fence.  I have berries planted in front of the pile and this spring I expect the plants to take off and start to cover the piles.  It will start looking better soon.  It’s too late for the neighbor though. 

After living in the house for 30 years, his three kids (all in their 50s and 60s) packed up their mom and moved her into an apartment three hours from here.  She has a brother in the town she moved to.  Of course none of the three kids lives near there.  Today the kids and grand kids were over at the house.  They had several U-haul trailers and were moving all the…

JBF Awards 2011 Humanitarian of the Year: FareStart FareStart provides a community that transforms lives by empowering homeless and disadvantaged men, women, and families to achieve self-sufficiency through life skills, job training and employment in the food service industry. The company was founded by David Lee, a chef and entrepreneur, who in 1988 recognized the need to provide Seattle’s disadvantaged and homeless populations with healthy and nutritious food. David first launched a for-profit business called Common Meals, and in 1992, after years of working out of small church kitchens, found a kitchen large enough to meet his needs and the needs of the growing homeless population. There, he began to train the very people he was serving, providing homeless individuals with the opportunity to work and to contribute to their own community and FareStart was born. FareStart, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit company, has established a variety of training programs that provide invaluable lessons and educational resources to the local population. The Adult Culinary Job Training and Placement Program provides a free 16-week course that includes culinary training, counseling, life-skills classes, housing, food and clothing. Students have the opportunity to give back, beginning their first day by preparing food that’s delivered to local homeless shelters and low-income daycare centers. FareStart’s Graduate Support Services program provides ongoing guidance to adult graduates, including …

From The Economic Collapse

Barack Obama is a man without a plan.  When you are young, they often tell you to “fake it until you make it”, but Barack Obama is taking this to ridiculous extremes.  Barack Obama has absolutely no idea what he is doing when it comes to the economy, and yet he continues to give speeches in which he declares that he is the man for the job.  The State of the Union speech the other night was just abysmal.  The federal government is spending way too much money, and yet Barack Obama is proposing even more government spending.  Entrepreneurs and small businesses are being taxed into oblivion and yet Barack Obama is proposing even higher taxes.  Our economy is being strangled to death by crippling regulations, and yet Barack Obama is proposing a vast array of new regulations.  Barack Obama always gives a nice speech, but it has become appallingly evident that he is totally out of ideas.  So our country will continue to drift aimlessly along without a direction and without a plan until the next financial tsunami comes along and makes things even worse.

And the American people are starting to clue in to the fact that Obama does not have a plan and does not have anything new to say.  Just check out how the audiences for his State of the Union addresses have declined…

From Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

Here is a chart of apparel trends sent to me last week by reader Tim Wallace.

Wallace Writes ….

Dear Mish

As I have been saying over the past several months there is a tremendous unit drop going on in the import apparel industry, but it is not reflected in reporting because dollars keep going up, at least until recently when they flat-lined.

The attached chart looks at the two criteria together, dollars imported and units imported reflected as meters square. As you can see, the dollars kept going up but the units turned south back in May, yes the very May my petroleum distillates distinctly show the economy turning south.

Things are just starting south like towards the end of 2007. Give it time.

Demand is plummeting.

Regards,

Tim

For Tim Wallace’s latest report on gasoline and petroleum usage, please see Year-Over-Year Gasoline and Petroleum Usage Charts; Shares Decline as Chevron Warns of Weaker 4th Quarter Earnings.

JC Penney’s Slashes Prices on All Merchandise by “At Least 40%”

I had forgotten about the apparel chart from Wallace but was reminded of it today by this headline news story today in USA Today: Penney’s slashing prices on all merchandise

J.C. Penney is permanently marking down all of its merchandise by at least 40% so shoppers will no longer have to wait for a sale

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