Money: Going Tactical
March 30th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy sell or hold any financial instrument.
UPDATE 6 April 2007: Bank of America Delays BullionValut Deposits
In the post below, I discussed how I wanted to immediately move some of our money into gold using the BullionVault system. I did, indeed, try to move some money to BullionVault. I used the electronic payment option for customers with U.S. bank accounts and followed BullionValut’s instructions exactly. Since I haven’t used BullionVault before, I decided to try it out by moving a small amount of money at first.
I’m a Bank of America customer and BullionVault uses Bank of America to receive funds from clients with U.S. bank accounts. If you were to use BofA’s system to pay anyone, a slow payment would take four days. I’ve never had it take longer than that. It has been a week since I made the payment to BullionVault, and Bank of America finally said that it was complete on April 3rd.
The money STILL hasn’t shown up in BullionVault.
I emailed BullionVault:
I should be showing a deposit of US$ to BullionVault user account [DELETED]. Do you know what the story is with this?
I sent this payment several days ago, and my bank only indicated that it was delivered to BullionVault’s Bank of America account on 3 April.
Transaction Description: BANK OF AMERICA, N.A. Bill Payment
Date: 04/03/2007
Reference Number: [DELETED]
Amount: $[DELETED]I’m a Bank of America customer so I didn’t expect delays like this.
Thanks,
Kevin Flaherty
BullionVault promptly wrote back:
Dear Mr Flaherty,
Thank you for your email.
I can see your deposit pending on our Bank of America system – it should clear in the afternoon of the next working day (this will now be Tuesday 10th April, as we have Easter bank holiday Friday and Monday).
We have complained to BOA about these delays, but it seems they process these particular payments manually. We are currently looking into ways to improve this system.
Let me know if you have any questions, or if I can help in any way.
Regards
I must say, even I wasn’t paranoid enough on this. I expected the transaction to simply be noted in some Homeland Security database. Obviously, it’s all being archived in some crypt, forever. But held up and an inspected for manual processing? Again, even I wasn’t paranoid enough.
There is obviously a national security component to this type of transaction. While Bank of America processes millions of transactions per day in an automated manner, moving a few hundred dollars into a physical gold trading account requires manual processing… If you are inside the U.S., or have assets there, this type of nonsense represents a clear and present danger to you and your money. Only criminal regimes behave like this.
If this is happening now, what will be your chances of getting money out of that thing in the wake of a crisis? It’s like someone said it a comment on the post, “Zürich seems like a long swim to get your assets.”
Before even mentioning BullionVault, I warned people to TAKE PHYSICAL POSSESSION OF THE STUFF. Pay cash for it at a coin shop. The only reason I didn’t take my own advice is because New Zealand has less than a thriving precious metals market. However, that wasn’t a good enough excuse to break my own rule.
I honestly feel that BullionVault is a first class operation and that they are sincerely doing their best. I cannot, however, recommend this service for U.S. bank account holders, unless you are prepared to physically travel to your Brinks vault of choice to recover your gold in the event that the U.S. government bans gold ownership again, (BullionVault explicitly allows this in case the regime in your banking country turns overtly criminal). The U.S. has gone too far down the path of fascism for a service like this to be viable for Americans. I questioned Paul Tustain, the Director of Bullion Vault, about this and I am satisfied with his response. I am a Bullion Vault customer, and I have been pleased with the service so far.
– – – End Update – – –
The situation in the Persian Gulf could become a crisis for “life as we know it” at any moment. Personally, after the Zbigniew Brzezinski Senate drama, I didn’t think it was going to come to this. But here we are.
The situation hasn’t blown up yet, but Becky and I are now planning as if it will.
It seems sick to be thinking about money at a time like this, but money provides options during a crisis.
If the U.S. engages Iran in a military conflict, all of us, everywhere, are probably in VERY deep shit.
Becky and I don’t have much money saved, but we’re looking at this situation and all we see are bubbles. Real estate bubbles. Currency bubbles. Equity bubbles. The situation with Iran might be the thing that throws gasoline on the already smoldering real estate situation.
I know of no reliable way to save “money” in a time of crisis. Even cash savings are bets on fiat national currencies. Most of what little we have is in New Zealand dollars. The rest is in U.S. dollars. If this strategy had a name, it would be, “Dumb and Dumber.”
Besides just going to town and spending our meager savings on tools, sacks of grain, etc. what other options are out there for people once their strategic requirements are met? <--- This isn't a rhetorical question that I plan on answering. I'm asking you because I don't have any good answers. Nobody wants to admit this less than me, but I may need to revisit gold here, as a hedge against the "bet" Becky and I have made by holding New Zealand dollars. This would represent the biggest plate of crow I've ever had to eat on Cryptogon. My official position on gold, stated several times, is that it can't be trusted because it's traded in leveraged fiat currencies. Gold's price is not actually determined by supply and demand. I've written about this over and over again, but if you want more detail, see this comment.
How about FOREX? A small amount of capital could be used to hedge via currency trading. Hint: Very wealthy people pay professionals to do this for them. But what if there are network problems? Liquidity problems? Exchange problems?
This feels like a situation where there’s no good choice on how to proceed. As an analyst, I hate it when that happens. But if this thing goes down with Iran, I think it’s going to affect all of us.
Is gambling the only option? If not, what are the non-gambling options for wealth preservation? If gambling is the only option, which gambles have the best odds?
Becky and I are looking at shifting about 10% of our cash into gold immediately via BullionVault, with vaulting in Zürich. This seems like the least bad option.
If you have a plan, consider sharing some information in a comment. Maybe we can all come up with some ideas.
I’ve been trying to work out why I don’t agree with your argument against gold for a while, and I think it’s finally clicked. The question is not whether the current price of gold is meaningful or not (it clearly is not, given that the price is listed in illusory currencies, as you rightly point out) – it is about the relative value of paper money vs. gold in any post-crash situation.
If 600 life-credits buys you an ounce of gold today, and in 5 years time that ounce will buy you a bushel of wheat, whilst the paper money / binary digits have become entirely worthless, then at least you have managed to retain some of the portion of wealth you had back in Civilisation.
The gold may well buy you a lot less then than it could now (you are gambling, after all, on people’s imaginational inertia, hoping they continue to believe in the age-old social value placed on gold), but it will probably have devalued less than anything else you could buy with your money – stocks, shares, currencies, bonds etc.
Frankly, if I had a farm to store them on, I would be tempted to hoard a whole load of farm equipment, handsaws, nails, needles, seeds, rope etc. A few barrels of oil might come in handy, too. These are the only things I can imagine actually being worth more post-collapse. Then you could be a crash profiteer! And the other townsfolk would begin to plot amongst themselves…
European alternative Energy funds and European Utility Trackers are doing very well right now 🙂
This is going to be an inflationary depression, not a deflationary one, as far as I can see. I’m looking into how businesses survived the extreme inflation in Brazil and Argentina right now.
Short selling stocks is one option, but it will only work when the stocks finally crash. Lot’s of commodities exist that may retain their value after a crash, but it’s a more of a bet than a sure thing…
An organized community can react better to this than one that’s divided up. If people already have relationships with boundaries set up BEFORE everything comes crashing down then it should be easier to retain some of our ideas of Republican Democracy, instead of reverting back to despotism.
If you can find honest churches, Freegan/Food Not Bombs or other neo-anarchist-hippie groups, and other types of organizations that don’t live entirely inside the system, then you’ll at least have some peers to work with . The only problem is that the dumpsters that a lot of the neo-hippie groups rely on may become barren as people become more and more desperate.
Or you could make it simpler and just GTFO
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0390b.asp
“In an attempt to protect themselves from future currency depreciation, individuals have their contracts, as well as their bank accounts, denominated in terms of BTN, the Brazilian national treasury bonds. The value of the bonds is adjusted daily in accordance with movements in the bond price index. To further escape the inflation, incomes are either denominated or paid in U.S. dollars. One Brazilian employer told me that one of his employees even threatened to resign his employment if his salary was not paid in U.S. dollars.
“
I’m in agreement with steve. Fence wire, staples, hog and cattle panels etc. will always have a buyer in the future.
I sold a house I built years ago and have a nice chunk of change in a money market account. It’s not enough to pay off the farm mortgage, so what to spend it on? I don’t want to put in high dollar home repairs cuz if the bank takes the farm it’s gone just like that. I bought an expensive U-bar, replacement tool handles, some old timey hand tools like drawknives, brace and bits, and a buck saw. Will order a country living grain mill, some hand pumps and things like that.
I suppose my operating principle is get stuff that I can either haul or herd to a new location if necessary. I believe I can weather a long slow powerdown or a thermo nuclear EMPulse better that a middle size whack on the US economy. Not getting stress out over the bleakness of it all is rough at times. The one guarantee is continuing inflation so stocking up rediculouse amounts of things we use anyway just saves money in the long run. I’ve always been good at buying things that make money unnecessary in the future – have goat- no dairy product bill…
I’m for buying gold and storing it where I can get to it.
Episodes of Hyper Inflation:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/hyper.htm
The biggest joke in this whole mess is that there is one country that is entirely unaffected by all this bullshit: Cuba. They had their energy crunch already and went through the trouble to making their agriculture sustainable. They reduced the amount of oil they use per ton of wheat by 95% or so and are now practically self reliant.
And it’s all because of the embargo that was supposed to hurt them.
Kevin,
Welcome to fiat hell. As a tactical conduit for safe liquidity maintenance, I’m astonished that BullionVault has passed your BS test, for two reasons:
1. They need to convince a custodian to stick with their retail-scale business for the long haul, and Brinks may not want it (see http://www.dgcblog.com/?p=64).
2. You can only cash out through your current bank account. Easily intercepted, since you are clearly a terrorist, and now your bank becomes the weakest link.
I think there’s a more important strategic issue here. Your mistrust of gold is warranted. The situation in which gold and other durable commodities (including fenceposts and handtools) are not good stores of wealth is when there are extreme shortages of necessary non-durable commodities–food, fresh water, medicine, and recreational drugs, and their “means of production.” It’s a very safe bet that this will come up sometime soon, and for a few years could be the biggest survive/thrive bottleneck. Your farmlet is just not set up to meet all of those needs yet, and will be less valuable when everyone catches up with you. Caches spoil and make you a target.
Once you have a fist size chunk of gold and a few bags of silver, you can get much more bang for your buck preparing for tough times in non-durables by diversifying your ability to generate sharable wealth, and becoming less reliant on the fluctuating fortunes of a few crops and animals. A small still, some spore prints of mushrooms for food and medicinal use (the kombucha is a good baby step), a bee colony, a forest garden of Maori medicinal plants and native tubers…no bubbles in any of these, and they can be shared without loss of value to you.
You bought a 5-acre ecosystem, and can now invest a little in making it more complex, stable, and provident without much additonal day-to-day work.
“…spending our meager savings on tools, sacks of grain, etc. what other options are out there for people once their strategic requirements are met?
Don’t know if those “italic” codes will work, but above is the question you asked, and I will try to provide a partial answer that I hope does not appear too smart-ass. Can you change your own oil? Clean your own furnace filter? Repair a leaky faucet or other piece of equipment that malfunctions? Etc. Etc.
Are you investing in tools that don’t require electricity? OR batteries? Handsaw, brace and bits? Got “strike anywhere” stickmatches in a waterproof container?
Hint: If something breaks and you’re unfamiliar with the “name” for it, remove it, take it to the hardware store, and announce, “I need one of these”–and try to seek out an older, perhaps wiser clerk who possibly knows exactly what needs to be done.
Got a gallon or so of bleach in your stockpile? Just a drop or two in your water will purify it if purification tablets are unavailable. More than that will give you the shits and a lot more than that will kill you.
Before discarding ANYTHING, ask yourself if it could be used for anything else than what it has previously been used for.
Everbank provides CD’s in multiple currencies. Icelandic Krona provides 12.55% interest (but that is just the expected currency devaluation.) 😉 Pan Asian CD only pays 2.7%, but everyone is betting on revaluation after Yen carry trade unwinds and Yuan floats back up for trade imbalances.
Commodity Index CD 5.41% 5.37%
Petrol Index CD 3.70% 3.79%
Icelandic Krona CD 12.55% NA
Australian Dollar CD 5.09% 5.06%
Pan-Asian CD 3 mo. > 2.78%
Commodity Index CD3 mo. > 5.41%
Indian rupee CD 3 mo. > 4.58%
Euro (Up to 56,500) > 0.50%
Since all the world’s currencies are fiat now, and no one knows how they will inflate/deflate relative to each other, a basket of Euro, Asian and Northamerica currencies will probably offset relative changes.
Gold is only good for long term wealth storage. I have a 72 year old farmer friend who lived in Germany during end of WWII and said guys would come around with gold watches looking for a loaf of bread. No luck.
But for long term storage, like over the last 6000 years, it is awesome. I have 10% in physical and have GoldMoney and now BullionVault accounts for some more.
For short term storage, if you want to be the hero of your village, how about a pallet of gin, vodka, bourbon, rum! I did this and everyone I met in the store said to me literally these exact words ‘I want to go where you are going!’. I guarantee you can trade that for anything you want! Talk about liquid assets.
One incredible thing I read today was that San Francisco gas prices just jumped today and are over $4 per gallon in some places. The incredible part is that Americans are buying more oil than they did last year!
So the gang in DC/AIPAC thinks that if they nuke Iran and prices go to $10 per gallon, demand for oil will be inelastic and people will continue to use it and just work a little harder, take on a little more debt, and that will increase demand for the USD!
Now that Iran is selling its oil in EURO, the beginning of the end of the USD is underway NOW. If we invade, oil goes back to being sold in USD, oil prices double and that increases demand for USD reserves in every country that has to buy oil, so the US can print more money, inflate the dollar and make a $9 trillion deficit look puny.
So think of it this crazy way; the Iran invasion is for the protection of your USD, and you do not even have to pay the $1 trillion +- cost of the invasion since you pay no US taxes!
I would put more than 10 percent in gold ASAP.I did this just this week. I also decided that I will take delivery. I guess I don’t want to have to figure out how to get it out of Zurich when I need it. Besides, sure is pretty. Going to Amazon to shop:-) for medical supplies.
I tried to send this comment from work computer and got a denial of service message.
Have a good weekend!
Kevin,
If you want to buy a little gold or silver, the local dealer is AGR Matthey in Auckland (09) 360-4830. You do not even have to give an address or IRD number. (Of note, there is no history of government gold confiscation in NZ) Just telephone and have your bank do an electronic funds transfer. AGR Matthey will also buy gold or silver when you are ready to sell. You do not have to pay capital gains tax when you sell.
If you prefer vault storage to burying the bullion on the farm, the ASB Vault in Auckland is excellent: http://www.customhouse.co.nz
Another tidbit to note is that today the U.S. announced its first trade sanction against China in over two decades. It’s on “coated paper”, which either means the “coated paper” industry in America has awfully powerful lobbying interests or that it’s a relatively minor target that’s merely being used as a shot across the bow. It probably won’t blow-up into anything big anytime soon, but it’s a noteworthy slap in China’s face at any rate.
My own convictions, for what they’re worth, are that Cash is the best bet for the short term, Land for the medium to long term, and Gold/Silver for the very long term.
I think it’s helpful to remember that the value of cash is tied to “place”: the whole world could dump Dollars (whether U.S. or N.Z.) tomorrow, and you’d undoubtedly still be able to go into your local store a week or month from now and spend them at reasonable prices. It takes time for devaluation to work its way through the originating country, since “value” is insulated by biased perceptions, long-standing habits and established economic infrastructure.
Also I feel the real “value” of gold is only, only that it has historically been so weirdly popular with people. Like you I don’t believe we’ll actually be trading in gold in even the darkest of foreseeable futures, but I also can’t see any reason not to build a tiny treasure chest of it for the more UNforeseeable future.
Since all voluntary exchange involves trading for something someone else wants, whatever is locally needed in a post-fiat-meltdown scenario should be the best investment.
I’ve recently had the revelation that a high quality, concealable handgun and ammo supply is going to be worth a hell of a lot more than the ounce of gold now required for their acquisition. It doesn’t matter how well planned and how large your post-meltdown supplies are if they and those who use them cannot be “preserved.”
Also, this “preservation kit” is scalable into a savings context. Each kit-unit will probably be worth several times the value of an ounce of gold.
Ultimately the best investments will be in things which yield returns perennially. Seeds, hens, sheep, songbooks, caring neighbors.
Scary. I source development sites off-market for wealthy investors in Northern Ireland, where property prices rose by over 35% last year (in some towns by much more). So much of what we do is based on the assumption that rises will continue, although I tone it down in projections to a measly 7.5 – 10%. We now have the case where investors are “land-banking” sites they paid far too much for, in the expectation that one day soon property prices will rise enough to make development of their sites viable. This means that prices continue to rise because vendors know buyers are hoarding land waiting for further rises, and are therefore willing to pay too much! The situation has led to claims of insufficient development land being available right now, with the government reported to be contemplating outlawing the practice of land-banking.
Anyway, I’m digressing from the main point I wanted to make. My wealthiest client, who develops land throughout the UK and in continental Europe beyond, maintains a large rural homestead of sorts here in Ireland to which he can retreat in the event of crisis and has recently bought another farm here, for his own use. I had heard rumblings that other wealthy Brits are doing the same throughout the UK, so it seems the monied (or rather, the asset rich) are well aware of the value of self-sufficiency contingency planning.
IMHO (without reading the previous posts) and based on a timeline that progresses in stages towards a sub nuclear world war, the use of a variety of wmd’s in varied locations without an allout nuclear exchange. Such weapons will probably include a limited nuclear exchange, emp’s, chemical/biological. Many of these things cannot be predicted or considered survivable if in the wrong place at the wrong time despite how prepared or smart you may be. Local governmental response will vary, wildly. Shortages of common goods if/when shipping and supply chain failures or interruptions occur. This where I find emp’s interesting. At the outset of most conflicts chaos and confusion is intended. What better source of chaos than complete disruption of society, while leaving the people intact to deal with it in the most likely human fashion, going nuts?
The wealth you carry, is ultimately based in your SKILLSETS. (Tools are a very close secondary, but anyone trained enough should be able to retask/produce minimal tools to perform basic works.) Trade has/can/will be based in ‘what can you do for me?’ Additionally, the product traded is only as good as its producer. I entirely appreciate your concerns towards fiat currencies and still hold my ground on a comment made regarding gold/silver physical assets, as in tucked under a floorboard or two. Zurich seems like a long swim to get your assets. If gold/ silver appreciate, they’ll do it under the bed just as well as in a safe. =)
In the outset, leadership and diplomacy/community building will be the key. Information management regarding events and escalations suggesting specific action can be distributed while high speed communication networks remain intact (ala cryptogon, nice =P ). The people around you can be your allies, even those who scoffed if treated with generosity. A strong community can then focus on matters at hand and provide the manpower to achieve larger goals.
From there, the maintenance or provision of technology, health services, and food (such as power and a working local telephone system, at least minor medical like bone settings, etc) to maintain the suggestion of ‘society’ as we know it and are still a few levels above monkeys. This could be a challenge if airburst nukes or emp weapons are used. If a cache of ‘tech’ could be secured/faraday caged, I would recommend it. Anyone who can keep and/or train a community in its own maintenance would be highly prized. Not just locally either, the chance to gather information further afield also presents itself.
Beyond that is completely unknown territory to us. A complete global collapse means no one comes with a supply run from the red cross after a few days, weeks, or months. Technology will degrade quickly and will probably be mostly unusable/unavailable in the future contexts. The potential for a follow up conflict once the dust seems to have settled is possible as well once ‘command structures’ unbunker themselves and attempt to reestablish governments.
The Chinese have a saying so I’m told…’may you live in interesting times’. The times don’t seem to be getting any less interesting the further we move forward. Good luck to everyone out there.
disclaimer – I live in a large coastal city, have few assets, and little hope of long term survival in the event of. I do have a small local community consisting of the above basic elements, with less than optimal resources. Here’s to hoping =)
Skillsets were mentioned above, but it should have been elaborated that the supporting physical libraries should also be collected and maintained.
I’m investing heavily in benzodiazepines.
This is going to sound awfully dark but has anybody thought out how they might take themselves out if (when) things get really bad and you’re not at the exit door yet?* I mean REALLY bad as in you get word there’s a team of Blackwater contractors on the way to take you to a Halliburton workcamp where they’ll be forcibly jamming an RFID command-and-control up your ass?
*One of the problems with our “way of life” is much like the plantation slave you have to buy your way off the plantation. And once your free you’re still tied to it indirectly. But I feel like I may have just come across this info too late. I’ve been saving like a madman for 3 years. I finally have enough to actually move and live off it for a while (about a year). Not enough for land and the whole 9 though.
Matt, I consider that issue quite frequently. If you don’t have the available assets to reasonably prepare for 2 lives…and really, how many people do? The one life is incompatible with most of the other. Hmmmm, how bad will it get? Does it go all the way towards collapse? Does it stall into a preplanned semicollapsed state such as 1984? What is your comfort level? Theoretically, you could be living our of a tent in the bush somewhere and get by in a fashion. It’s the transitions that are actually the most dangerous it seems. The change in immediate society once employment and cashflow levels drop to difficult levels. Russia after its economy issues is a worthwhile example. Add to that a permanent state of war and we would seem to have achieved near Orwell fiction. Although the most organized elements appeared to be criminal, not a surprise I suppose.
To get back to your original question, I believe a community is stronger than a man alone. There is where you will find the strength and support needed if you don’t have it all yourself.
Realistically, if someone like Blackwater has cause to ‘drop by’ it’s highly likely the majority your action tree has been compromised/inferred. The exposure of flight then has consequences. If you’re caught in a web, it’s better not to attract the spider by flailing around looking for a way out in a hurry. That just seems to get them a little excited.
Hopefully, that wasn’t too dark a response. Good luck sir, I appreciate reading your efforts.
I sure wish I knew as much about this topic as you guys do. In the meantime, the NT’s take on last day events says
Revelation 6:6 …A quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for a denarius and do not harm the oil or the wine.
A day’s wages for 1/2 a kilo of wheat. That’s about 10-12 times the usual price at the time. Perhaps non-perishable food items will be a good investment?
Wow. I was out building a goat fence with my Father in law and look what happened!
Thanks for so many thoughtful comments.
Re: Gold.
It’s funny, being told about the importance of physical gold possession since I prefaced my introduction to BullionVault by telling people: Take physical possession of the stuff!
The only reason I’m considering BullionVault is because it’s easy to get US$ into it. It’s not easy to get NZ$ into it; there are costly FOREX issues involved with that. Bullion vault ONLY takes US$, Euro and British pounds. Pretty sensible, actually, for them, since they’ve probably got most of their clients covered directly with those currencies.
BullionVault IS the best solution for gold, outside of physical possession. If you take the time to read about their service, you find this, under “Your Rights” in the help section:
Is that good enough? For some yes, for others no.
I’m glad to see so many people thinking clearly on gold.
I considered getting up to my old tricks and looking for a dealer in New Zealand and paying cash for gold. Wow. To say that there isn’t a thriving precious metals market in NZ is a bit of an understatement. Anytime a market in anything has so little liquidity, you’re going to get burned on the spread getting in and getting out. Alek’s info on AGR Matthey in Auckland is very helpful information, though. Thank you.
I’m starting to see gold as just one piece of what is a very complex puzzle. To me it seems worth it to hold a small amount of gold, but probably not more than that. Between 5% and 10% (at the maximum) of assets.
People above who are suggesting pallets of booze, firearms, tools, fencing materials, etc., in my opinion, are also on the mark. I think these types of things represent more than a few pieces of the puzzle. They are much more fungible in a collapse situation. Just this afternoon, I was working outside with my Father in law using: FENCING WIRE, WIRE CUTTERS, HAMMERS, NAILS. He used a FENCE STRAINER. We needed all of those tools, but we didn’t need any gold.
Let’s think about other precious metals: tools.
I started writing a post a long time ago called the Iron Age Barrier. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to think about it. This refers, of course, to a level of existence below which the simple tools I’m relying on out here are no longer available. I have the basic hand tools and I find this lifestyle difficult; it is really not easy. Nobody said is would be easy, and I didn’t think it would be. Well, it isn’t. (And we still have electricity!) Take those handtools out of the picture and where would that leave us? I don’t like those thoughts. My public paranoia about this issue has come out over the years as various posts about shovels. Those are fear-of-loss-of-metal-tools posts.
Knives. I was going to write an entire post on knives. Becky’s sister and her boyfriend bought us a set of Wüsthof knives for our wedding gift. Would you believe, we don’t even use them. I told Becky: We should keep those in reserve, for when our lives depend on them. As far as I know, they are the finest knives available. They are shockingly expensive.
I picked them up and looked at them. That’s really when I started to think about all the metal on the Farmlet, and how, without the metal, there really wouldn’t be a Farmlet.
Using the tools, and feeling tired at the end of the day is one thing. Now imagine you don’t have the tools. Imagine the metal tools that you have are broken.
That was the crux of was my unfinished Iron Age Barrier post.
Me personally on metalworking, if it was required:
1) Won’t have the materials required
2) Won’t have the fuel/energy required
3) Won’t have the skills required
“I think I’ll go pick some tomatoes instead of worrying about this right now.”
There is a guy around here who makes incredible knives out of salvaged metal, old chainsaw bars mostly, and carves the handles out of hunks of wood. These knives are a works of art. Becky’s brother bought us one of these bad ass knives for Christmas. We’re not afraid to use that thing. We hack up carcases with it, slice open pumpkins, etc. But I thought about it: In terms of the finished knife, having that old chainsaw bar is (I’m guessing) about 95% of the work completed, compared with having to mine the iron ore, smelt it, forge it, etc.
Ok, enough on metal. You get the point I’m sure.
Rob wrote:
Absolutely solid suggestions. The bee situation, however, is another thing I don’t like to think too much about. I live down the road from the toughest organic farm auditors probably anywhere in New Zealand. These people are TOUGH. The guy is a bee keeper and the word from him: He can’t keep bees alive without using varroa strips. I haven’t said this before, but that right there made me believe that we’re doomed. Not doomed in some sort of hyperbolic nonsense way, but doomed in a profoundly unimaginable, in fact, fucked sort of way.
“You can’t keep them alive without the strips?” I asked.
He must have seen the fear in my eyes because he started to grin in a dark manner.
He said, “That’s right, mate.”
I think he was grinning because I probably looked like I’d seen a ghost. There we were, two freaks who understand the implications of pollinator die off, standing in the mud in our gumboots, out in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re fucked,” I said.
“That’s right. We’re fucked,” he said.
And that was before the latest bee dieoff events started making news a few weeks ago. So, yeah, I’ll choose not to think too much about the bee situation.
That part about “without much additonal day-to-day work” is key. We have spent an absolutely disproportional amount of treasure, time and effort on getting some avocados in the ground. Becky’s dad grew avocados commercially, so the man knows what he’s doing. Annual garden crops are nice, but they’re a hard way of going. I don’t really see us expanding intensive gardens much beyond what we have now. But get back to me when the shit hits the fan. I might change my tune on that one.
Steve wrote (Good to see you, Steve, by the way):
That might be true in some places, but where we live, in the Far North of New Zealand, you wouldn’t believe how wrong that is. How do I know?
All, yes ALL, of the electricity for this region travels over a single set of transmission cables to a substation in Kaitaia, a small town near where I live.
What happens when you put all your eggs in one basket next to a rock quarry that uses lots of explosives?
That’s right, a rock quarry, located right next to THE SINGLE SET OF ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION CABLES FOR THE REGION, lit off some explosives a bit too close to those cables, damaging one of them. The power didn’t go out just then, but the power company announced that they would have to turn off the juice for 12 hours the following day.
All gas powered generators in the area were sold within about an hour of that news. All rental generators were rented. That was for an outage scheduled to last about 12 hours.
During the best of times, supplies of stuff here are shaky. I assume NOTHING about availability of goods here. The few times I’ve waited to “think it over” A) the stuff was gone when I returned later, or B) the price went up. The universal response to this situation up here is, “Welcome to the Far North.”
Oh yeah, when gas took a leg down recently, I decided to buy several dozen liters of it, because I knew it was going to go back up again. I went to buy plastic gas containers. All gone. That’s right. All sold out. Yep, the locals, most of them farmers, know a deal when they see one. They jumped on that cheap gas faster then me!
Granted, I’m in small town New Zealand, kinda at the edge of civilization on a good day, but my guess is that the situation would be remarkably similar in theoretically more robust areas with higher populations. The just-in-time paradigm assumes a hell of a lot, if you ask me. Way out here, the weaknesses of that thing are apparent on an almost daily basis.
Our local RD1 (farming supplies store) is interesting. Just about every time we buy stuff there, the prices marked on things are often wrong. They ring up in the computer as more. Sometimes much more. Heavy duty rubber rain jacket: price indicated NZ$99. Rang up for NZ$119. Heavy duty rubber rain pants: price indicated NZ$49. Rang up for NZ$64. Underground electric fence wire. Stock molasses. Whatever. It was all higher in the computer than marked. Luckily, we only had to pay the prices marked on the stuff, but the point is that everything is costing more. The employees tell us that prices change in the computer, but the prices indicated on the stuff don’t get updated all the time.
I’M NOT COMPLAINING. I’m just saying that, while your individual situation may not be as tenuous as mine, in terms of availability of goods, don’t bet your life on it.
Matt wrote:
I think that you can move further out from the core of the thing, but that’s about it. I feel pretty darn far out from the core operations of that thing, but I’m not outside of it. Many of the same doomed economic rules that apply to the core, apply out here. Joe Bageant is probably further from it than me, but yep, he’s still on board. Ruppert left the core, but returned a few weeks later to tell everyone it sucked being too far out there. It’s not easy, any way you slice it. For me, though, there’s a big difference between not easy and unlivable, between not easy and not caring whether I lived or died.
I like to think of those subroutines in the Matrix movies, like the Oracle, the Keymaster and the Merovingian. They know they’re in The Matrix, and they use the tools available to them to, well, make the best of it. There is no off the plantation, so I’m going to use the tools available to me to make the best of it.
Is the grass greener on the other side of the plantation? I think so, but it’s still on the plantation.
If “off the plantation” was really an option, could any of us survive there? I couldn’t.
The hamartia or “character flaw” of human beings lies in the fact that we always, invariably assume we know the future. Even when we admit we don’t, we still do. It’s in our essential mental construction–we walk into our bedroom and we unconsciously take for granted that it’s still our bedroom and that it’s not really any different than when we left it. And since our bedroom falls well within our control, these kinds of assumptions work well. But when we’re contemplating a whole world, with an almost infinite number of events unfolding and forces working to attain their myriad goals–and 99.9999% of it all happening completely outside of any awareness we have–we need to admit that we just don’t have a freakin’ clue what the next decade will bring. Actually, more than just admit it–we need to actively REMIND ourselves that we really don’t know what is going to happen.
But still, we’re human beings, so we can pay attention to the state of things (and not assume our room is the same as we left it, nor blindly trust that tomorrow will simply be the same as today but even more so…). And we can observe as much as we’re able and let those observations inform us. In this way we can prepare intelligently, and in ways that don’t work against our personal nature.
Hope for the best, Prepare for the worst, and have Faith (Accept) that you can respond and deal with whatever comes.
And who knows? You might even find you end up being in just the right place at just the right time to really benefit from the coming changes. None of the people in power today planned their way to power. We’re constantly told that they did because it makes them look better than us, but they didn’t. They were granted their power solely by force of circumstances. And like us, their hamartia lies in believing they deserve it, that it’s the way it should be and always will be. “Born on third-base, thinks he hit a triple”, as the saying goes. But circumstances can change all of our fates quite quickly.
Cash is good. Land is better. Gold is probably good too. Skills are definitely good. Community is very, very good. Active Awareness, however, is the best asset of all.
don’t know how to quote stuff here but this is exactly how I feel at times. Hence my “a joke but not ENTIRELY a joke” about stocking up on benzos.
__________________
KEVIN WROTE:
“You can’t keep them alive without the strips?†I asked.
He must have seen the fear in my eyes because he started to grin in a dark manner.
He said, “That’s right, mate.â€
I think he was grinning because, I probably looked like I’d seen a ghost. There we were, two freaks who understand the implications of pollinator die off, standing in the mud in our gumboots, out in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re fucked,†I said.
“That’s right. We’re fucked,†he said.
And that was before the latest bee dieoff events started making news a few weeks ago. So, yeah, I’ll choose not to think too much about the bee situation.
I want to be perfectly clear before I write this so nobody gets the wrong idea as humor can get lost in the written word: despite all the horrors I’m still generally in a good mood on a day-to-day basis.
Now having said that and making sure nobody gets the wrong idea about my mental state, I’m thinking more and more along the line of “where and how do I want to spend my last days?” (years I suspect) as oppossed to “where and how do I want to survive . . .?”
Gold has been a store of value since at least the Roman period. In addition, as Doug Casy likes to say “it is the only financial asset that is not similtaneously someone else’s liability”. To place 10% of ones assets in gold is nearly risk free and it could increase by significant multiples while other forms of currency approach their intrinsic value, which in the case of the US dollar is zero. Nearly all western currencies are inflating at about 10% annually, while gold is not. Water, food, land, tools,community,gold, cash. If this don’t work, shit at least you tried. Keep Rockin…
From what I have heard just like what some posters have already said:
Shortly before and after the end of WWII the trading items with local
farmers where whatever they needed at the time: tools, furniture,
etc. or american cigarettes after the war, but certainly not gold
coins. In other words in a total collapse situation gold appears
pretty useless. (I am not saying that holding some physical gold or
silver coins may not be useful).
However, for the short and medium term gold is probably a good
bet. But this begs the question why one would use bullionvault? All
these companies will adhere to tax and anti-terror laws or they will
immediately go out of business, so whatever they claim on their web
site is just marketing.
Kevin,
you cleary are experienced in day trading, so whilest the electric
infrastructure is still working why don’t you open a spreadbetting or
CFD (contract for difference) account and use it for short term
investments? You can just as easily invest in gold there and if you
don’t like the price of gold anymore or see a good trend you can
quickly respond to it. I can really see no difference between that and
bullionvault except the latter is limited to gold only.
Watched the movie “Children of Men” this Saturday night. Totally bizarro and also so very realistic. Convinced me that my plan to grow my own or distill something similar is something that will be a very important craft in the years to come. One character survived off of his primo weed. My grandparents brewed “something” during the Depression – I asked my Aunt how they brewed gin in the bathtub and she said it wasn’t gin, and laughed at me, we forgot to talk about it further. Anyways, grandpa did time for short periods of time over this.
Back to COM – the “former political cartoonist” in the movie had a camauflage for the entrance to the family property. Never thought of that. Also made me realize that I’m going to have to get some sort of weapon. Which is difficult for me because I have trouble when it comes to even pulling a weed, ergo killing it. I think ammunition for guns will be unaffordable, Have been thinking of a crossbow since I saw the little Amish man walking near the interstate with his crossbow during hunting season. One benefit, You can make your own projectiles – e.g. “arrows” with used razor blades as a tip. Can’t make ammo.
Kevin, I forgot you wrote about taking physical possession of gold. So sorry.
Perhaps we should also be buying ( in addition to taking value in gold for dollars) stockpiles in honey. Only food there is that does not spoil. No one seems to know this. I think I’ll start taking my own advice. When you get a market established trading honey let me know. I tell you what vintage I have stored up.
Eileen, I make my own crossbow ammo from sections of dowel rod, flights from printer labels (3 per arrow) which I cut to shape, and arrowheads from ball bearings bonded on with heay duty epoxy glue. If you want to be ultra adventurous, you could solder on a few razor blades too, but that could get very messy if you shot someone with that.
Hi all,
regarding the bee situation, I became aware of the varroa mite plague last year when I considered joining my local beekeepers society and taking advantage of their “try a hive” program.
It struck me then that european honey bees as a species are essentially on life support. Without our chemical intervention the majority of them would die off pretty quickly.
The key word here is “majority” because there are some types of honey bees that are naturally resistant to varroa:
http://members.aol.com/queenb95/russian.html
It seems to be that by constantly battling the varroa with chemicals, we are actually causing more harm than good! If all beekeepers started breeding for varroa resistance, and distributing varroa resistant bees as widely as possible, then we could have this thing licked permanently. Of course, this would mean losing a large number of colonies initially, but if managed sensibly, with chemical usage gradually phased out, evolution would take over quite nicely!
Also, honeybees are not the only pollinators, and we need to be taking steps to encourage a wide diversity of insect pollinators in our gardens, farms, countryside. Articles like this give me hope that when people realise there is a problem, they generally do something about it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/06_june/23/wild.shtml
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Dan
I saw mention of metalworking above and thought I’d paste this:
http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/index.html
Only things I’d suggest: get a couple of good knives. 1 small folder, 1 skinner, 1 machete or Gerber “Pax” Camp Ax is good too. Gerber and K-bar make good stuff. Get a decent backpack that will carry enough stuff, but not so much that you can’t take off at a dead sprint. Also get Lofty Wiseman’s “SAS survival guide”. Portable reading, and has more info than you can remember on “surviving”. Learn how to light fires! It’s harder than you think, and you’ll find a system that works for you. Get a mountain bike.
If you’re feeling adventurous, get a firearm, befriend a “gun nut”, or at least learn how to use one. Learn about calibers and their uses. There’s probably going to be a few guns lying around when the excrement hits, or enough jerks with them to make your life a little more “interesting”. A good bow and arrow or slingshot will do in a pinch too.
Good luck.
Here’s something that you might consider in a portfolio of investments that won’t depend on fiat money. It’s my opinion that solar panels can be an effective “hedge” against inflation for normal times and they are more useful than gold in a barter economy.
Let’s look at how this works. Based on past installations, you can probably get 30 years from a good panel with only a 10% drop in efficiency. So, we’ll take a long term outlook. Let’s take a look at buying power. Here’s what we do. If we use the pizza index, we see that in 1970, $0.15 would buy a slice of pizza. Today, a similar plain cheese pizza slice will cost you at least $1.50 – usually more. Other commodity items (with the exception of computers) follow a similar pattern. When it comes to solar panels, that means if we have only normal inflation for 30 years, to replace just one $400 panel it would cost at least $4000! If we have a period of 1970’s type inflation due to peak-oil, the investment return on such a panel will be much more!
But wait, there’s more! It’s also important to consider all the tax-free electricity each panel could generate over all these years too! Plus, some states offer tax credit deductions or rebates for installing a system. Many states also have a generous period where your assesment is unaffected by such a solar improvement.
Dimitri Orlov in his observations of the end times of the U.S.S.R. stated that the electricity usually stayed on even in a bad economy. However, having your own source of electricity could help financially either to reduce your bills or perhaps to run high value loads such as computers, TVs or small refrigerators more reliably if rolling blackouts start to happen!
But there’s still MORE. Suppose we descend into a barter like situation. A set of 10 or 20 50W panels are large enough to be useful as an array (and would be relatively safe from being stolen on a roof of a house with a few armed occupants) Then, when the time is right, such an array could be broken down to be sold individually as car battery chargers for people in the community that want lights at night. Unlike gold, proving a solar panel is what you claim it to be is rather easy. As for useful power, I’ve found I can run a 20W CFB or a small TV for a couple hours each night with a window mounted 50W panel and never run out of juce even in the winter! (Plus, I can do this for YEARS)
If you don’t want to flaunt your wealth, 50W panels are also small enough to be hidden behind furniture, hung on the wall as art, hidden above drop ceilings or even mounted flat on a roof (as long as nobody has a line of sight above the roofline) Just remember if your doomsday plans are to break down your array, you also need to have enough 50-150W inverters, cheap charge controlers and extra wire on hand too). “Customers” would probably be able to provide their own car batteries.
On the brighter side, if you are into community building, a few lights, a TV or even warm solar water perhaps in partnership with a local tavern could go a long way to unifying a group you form or join. It could give a munch needed illusion that your group represents a small pocket of civilization that still exists.
Geesh! From my posting it looks like I sell the darn things! I don’t. Hmmm, maybe I should!
Good answers. I guess it all depends on how far society ‘collapses’. Gold will be useless in such situations since it’s primary value would be jewelry or adornment. Liquor was something I might not have thought of. Are you prepared to kill other people who will try to take your stuff? That might be a real problem.
Enjoy.
[…] Money: Going Tactical Posted in Economy | Trackback | Top Of […]
While we’re on the topic of a near- or medium-term collapse, thought I should share this with all of you. Perhaps some of you here are already familiar with Ran Prieur’s work. If not, do check out some of his essays:
http://ranprieur.com/essays.html
I’d especially recommend “The Slow Crash” and “How to Survive the Crash and Save the Earth”.
The ‘crashwatch’ section of his site (http://www.ranprieur.com/crash.html) has a link to this free online copy of “The Final Empire” by William Kötke, an absolute must-read:
http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/index.html
-W
The key is striking a good balance between preparation and living your life. Look at how you’re living your life right now and how you can make some small changes or develop some useful skills that don’t conflict with the rest of your life.
As another poster mentioned, a good handgun costs the same as an ounce of gold right now. If they weren’t as plentiful as they are now, they would certainly be more expensive. Plan accordingly.
If $600 is a lot of money for you, focus on things that are a lot more likely for your life. For example, do you have at least a couple weeks worth of food and water stored? Which is more likely, that you’ll need a handgun or that you’ll need to eat? If you lose your job unexpectedly, do you want to know that you have food to last you for a while or that you have a handgun?
Someone else said that you can’t make your own ammo. That’s true if you don’t know how, but I don’t seem to have any problem doing it. As with anything, you have to decide what you want to do and learn how to do it. Society hasn’t collapsed yet and there are plenty of people who are willing to help teach you all sorts of things if you’re just willing to ask.
I’ve cast my own bullets using lead from wheel weights. If you buy a set of tires and have them installed, asked the people what they do with the wheel weights they pull off when they do an installation. Chances are they toss them in a bucket and if you brought your own bucket, they’ll be happy to give them to you. I got over 100lbs of lead by doing this one time. If I remembered to do it every time I bought new tires, I’d run out of places to put the lead.
Brass can be reused many times. Primers and powders have to be purchased unless you’re really dedicated and want to work with some nasty chemicals to make your own. These are very reasonably priced now, so this is when to take advantage of the benefits of our society not having collapsed.
One thing I’ve spent more time on recently is learning how to start a fire without matches or a lighter. If you spend enough time doing this, you can simultaneously get good enough to be able to start a fire reliably and learn why you will buy disposable lighters in the 100 packs and leave a few everywhere you might possibly want one. Society hasn’t collapsed yet, so take advantage of how plentiful the modern technology is.
Ferrocerium rods (incorrectly referred to as “flint” in many cases) and cotton balls are a simple way to get a fire started. Fresnel lenses are incredibly inexpensive and act like a much larger magnifying glass. Char cloth is something I recently rediscovered (forgot about it for 20 years since I was in the Boy Scouts) that makes getting a fire started incredibly easy with a small magnifying glass or small spark. A 8.5×11″ fresnel lens costs a couple of dollars and can be used to start a sustained flame on a 2×4 in under a minute. That’s pretty impressive for anyone who has tried to start fires with traditional magnifying glasses, which is a royal PITA.
The trick to any sort of disaster preparedness is finding the right balance in your life. That’s not something anyone else can tell you because we don’t all have the same resources available. Don’t focus too much time or money on things you don’t appreciate. Food and water is something you need, so plan sensibly. Firearms, body armor, and training in the use of deadly force are luxuries that are not appreciated equally by all. If you don’t think it’s for you, don’t do it. If you’ve always wanted to be a gun nut, but never got into it, find others who are like minded and learn from them.
The best way to prepare for any situation is to determine what skills interest you and develop them. There will be other people who are interested in things you don’t care about and don’t want to do any of the things that interest you. Any society has to include a lot of people with different interests to be sustainable. Being mediocre at everything is less valuable than being really good at a few things.
Back to topic, gold can have a place in anyone’s plans. Determine where that place is in your priorities and act accordingly. The price could shoot up or down at any point, so I treat it as a long term planning measure. If you’re putting more than 10% of your resources into any one scenario, you need to think long and hard as to why. 10% of your savings in gold and silver is fine for those who can afford it. Someone who has no savings, an empty fridge, and lives paycheck to paycheck should probably wait on buying gold. Spending more than 10% of your income on your primary home is perfectly reasonable because it’s something that provides you with a place to live – that is of value whether or not society collapses.
While the signs are all there to suggest that everything has to come crashing down at some point, how much time and effort do you put into the possibility that it won’t? The fact that it hasn’t come down yet has to make you wonder if there’s something not obvious going on that is sustainable in the long term, or at least as long term as any of us have to consider.
To Matt Savinar–
You might be surprised how little money it takes to buy an acre of land with a single-wide trailer on it. A friend of mine just sold such a property for $4,500–and it was lakefront, albeit on a dinky cove.
Some family friends bought 14 acres with a ratty single-wide trailer for around $7,000, a number of years ago, and another family friend bought three acres and a ratty double-wide for around $7,000 a number of years ago.
The only way to find out about these deals is to move to an economically distressed area and make a lot of friends.
Failed real estate developments in rural areas are good places to find cheap properties. Some such developments are unincorporated townships that aren’t even on the map. (Some are incorporated, and still aren’t on the map.)
This is easy for me to say, since I found such a property after searching for two years–even though my real dream is to find a larger property in the Missouri Ozarks.
I don’t have the resources to go there and have a long look around, and would have trouble supporting myself if I did move there. Actually, I don’t even have the resources for a weekend vacation trip tot he Ozarks.
Will–
I’ve looked at solar, but most websites are designed to sell you a solar set-up that costs tens of thousands of dollars. We have no local providers of solar stuff.
Except–what I have seen down at the MFA Agricultural Service is small solar panels equipped with a 12-volt battery, for use with electrified fencing. These little devices cost about $250, which I still can’t afford.
I’m thinking that if I could obtain such a panel cheap, and hook it up to a hot car battery (which I have), I could then purchase an inverter and wire it into one of the house circuits.
From what I’ve read, a 12-volt car battery is not ideal for charging with a solar panel. Supposedly what you really want is a “deep-cycle” 12-volt battery. (A 12-volt car battery could actually run a circuit for awhile, without a solar panel, but then you would have to recharge it by swapping it out with the battery in your car. And you could keep swapping–though I understand this is hard on your alternator.)
Anyway–please provide any information you have about how to buy the materials cheaply and piece them together.
For now, most solar stuff of any decent size is bought online or mail order. What you’ll need to do is to decide what you absolutely need to power and then add up the loads and then build capacity according to what you need.
Just remember the formula P=IV
p=power, I=amps, V=Volts
For example, if you wanted a small emergency system for a blackout, you could build it with a 50W panel that would be around $300 ea (http://www.altersystems.com) and a charge controller at around $50 ea. To draw out the electricity, a 150W inverter (get from Walmart for around $40) and a marine battery (around $50) would allow you to power a small TV or radio and compact florescent light or two each evening. You would not wire the inverter to the house wiring. Just plug the appliances directly into it. Other small sensible loads might include things like rechargeable power tools, cell phones, radios, laptops or compact florescent lights.
A 50W panel is rated for 50W per-hour in direct sunlight. So, if you had 3 hours of direct sun, you have 150Watt Hours. You could either use all 150 watts for only an hour or 50 watts for 30 hours or 1W for 150 hours. You get the idea. Rarely are days 100% sunny and you may not get the panel angled correct to get 100% sun so you should assume a 30-50% loss in your calculation or you may just want to buy another panel in parallel to make up for losses.
Expensive electricity – but I’ve found some electricity is better than NO electricity.
Will–
Thanks for the info. (Been waiting all day to hear from you.) I’ll probably be checking the wattage on just about everything all day tomorrow. I notice that my Hovabator incubator (for making yogurt and tempeh) is 25 watts, so I could run it for four to six hours, I guess.
So–it appears you could use a 40-watt bulb for 3+ hours, with luck.
But let’s say you got 10 hours of sunshine. Does that mean that you’d have 10 X 50 watts–or 500 watts–from such a setup? And could run a 40-watt bulb for 10+ hours?
Another troubling thing: $300 seems like a lot–to me, at least. I wonder what the wattage is on those solar panels, already attached to a 12-volt battery and battery case, that they have down at the MFA? If I remember right, the whole set-up was only $250–though without the inverter. Now at least I know what I need to check, in order to know how much power I’m getting for the buck.
I didn’t know Wal-Mart sold inverters–let alone for $40.
Now I know a little better how to estimate what I need.
Probably the main thing I’d want to power in an emergency would be the pump that pulls water from the cistern into the house. I haven’t checked the wattage on the main pump yet, but, alternatively, I could use a small submersible pump. A pump should be easy to power, since I would run it only long enough to draw water for a bath (10-15 minutes) or to fill containers for heating water (2-5 minutes). Even the main pump cycles on and off, turning on only when it’s in use and has used up its pressure.
It would also be nice to be able to use the microwave.
In an emergency, I would be wanting, above all, to be able to cook, wash up, and have water without pulling it up with a bucket.
After I check with MFA, I want to get back with you. What if their setup uses, say, a 25-watt panel? Would three hours of sunshine get me 75 watts, and 10 hours of sunshine 250 watts? I think I could live with than–in preference, as you observed, to no electricity at all.
Also, I’m wondering how easy it would be to wire another panel in parallel to the MFA device–or, indeed, to any device.
And I’m wondering at what point it becomes sensible to get another battery and another solar panel. As in, what’s the maximum service you can get from one battery, and how many watts of panels does it take to max out the capacity of your battery?
Willl–
Excuse me for rambling and being annoying–I get to the point where I’m talking to myself.
[…] Money: Going Tactical, I discussed how I wanted to immediately move some of our money into gold using the BullionVault […]
Well that sucks, I guess I’ll have to get an offshore account set up rather than use my Wash Mutual Account for Bullionvault. Or maybe I’ll just buy a few coins here and there and stash them away for a rainy day…
Kevin,
Now you know why I do my pure bullion trading at AGR Matthey in Auckland. The buy/sell spread narrows for larger purchases.
There is a thriving small bullion coin market on the New Zealand internet. Have you looked at http://www.trademe.co.nz? I have bought gold sovereigns on trademe at bullion price. A sovereign is a 22K coin similar to an old US $5 gold piece and contains 0.2354 troy oz of pure gold. At current prices the bullion value of a sovereign is less than NZD 250.
Rob’s comment
“Now that Iran is selling its oil in EURO, the beginning of the end of the USD is underway NOW. If we invade, oil goes back to being sold in USD, oil prices double and that increases demand for USD reserves in every country that has to buy oil, so the US can print more money, inflate the dollar and make a $9 trillion deficit look puny.”
hits the nail fair and square on the head. Forget diplomacy, forget tit for tat, forget 15 British sailors, the shoring up of the USD is the one and only reason the U.S.A MUST invade Iran…… after all, what a waste to have spent so much moolah on a warship if it just sits in the ocean, going rusty then needs its bottom scraped plus a re-paint each year? Every weapon ever invented has been used for warfare – from the club, to the sword to the bow and arrow, to the cross bow, to the musket, to the rifle, and on and on infinitum. Sadly, the atom bomb was no exception. As far as gold is concerned, it is a shame the price is tied to the reserve US currency. When I bought some physical gold from the Perth Mint in 2004 at A$586, the Aussie dollar was worth about US$0.73,which put gold at US$457. With the increase in the Aussie compared to the USD, the ratio is now A$1.00 to US$0.81. If I buy an ounce of gold at today’s price of A$823 (US$673)and the value of the USD continues to fall, most other currencies, including the A$, will climb by comparison. A falling US$ will guarantee a surge in the price of gold which, if it gets to US$823 means a profit for gold holders who bought in US$, however if, at that point, A$1.00=US$1.00, I will still be holding a piece of gold at the exact same price of A$823, at which I bought. Of course, this scenario is not set in concrete. Once the USA has control of the middle east oil to sell exclusively in US dollars, the “value” of the USD will go to the moon and every other world currency will drop back. For me, this means the “value” of my tiny hoard of gold will increase, but at what cost to the world and its human and non-human inhabitants? Gold will always have a tradeable value, however, in difficult times practical goods may be more valuable………think condoms, knives, fishing hooks, oil to stop the fishing hooks going rusty, first aid items, whiskey, clothing, and anything else you can think of which you “wish you could have”. In World War II it was silk stockings and cigarettes, in Russia it was vodka, and in the future…………..who knows?
I had a similar experience a couple weeks ago. My wire transfer took about a week. I thought it was b/c the dunderheads at National City messed up my wire slightly, which they did…but now I know the rest of the story.
This is not an isolated case!!
It is happening in banks in Canada to.
How to deal with these transactions is coming right from the top of the banking system. Banks do NOT want money flowing from their accounts into bullion. I have had a bank teller I know quite well say that they will anything they can to stop this money flow…including shutting down the ability to make internet transactions to organizations like BullionVault and Gold Money. TD Canada Trust has already shut down Canadians ability to fund these bullion accounts via the web. The only option left now is to bank wire and they expect $30 CAD per transaction to do this!!
The banking system is scared and we must continue to protect our freedom to do what is in OUR best interests.
Guys,
Thanks for sharing your experiences re: your banks and BullionVault. This situation is unbelieveable and totally believeable, all at once.
@ Alek,
I looked on trademe. I was looking for Canadian Maple Leaf coins. There are VERY few on Trademe. I was also interested in the Gold Kiwis, but they seem even more rare somehow. Someone in Christchurch is trying to sell 20 1/10th ounce coins at full retail.
This was why I was drawn to the efficiency of BullionVault. Unfortunately, efficiency doesn’t mean viability, given the fiat banking chokepoints involved.
Hi Kevin, have you heard of ePay? They claim to allow international transfers more easily.
https://www.epay.vg/
“EPAY member services include various funding and withdrawal options (bank wires, e-gold, pecunix, 1mdc), transfer options (single, recurring/subscription, multiple), SMS services (SMS messaging, mobile payments, balance and invoices by SMS), email payments, invoice services, cards (debit cards, virtual credit cards), conversion, merchant tools, security (128 bit protection, password and digital signatures, IP protection etc.)”