The impacts to the average person from COVID will be dwarfed by the looming economic issues of inflation and shortages.
As your information scout, Dr. Chris Martenson will explain what inflation really is (so you can be smarter at parties) and explain where it really comes from. Importantly, the Federal Reserve’s claim that inflation will be“transitory” is almost certainly wrong. Inflation is rising — caused by printing too much money — and will both exacerbate and be exacerbated by shortages.
Finally, in a global just-in-time economy, a missing critical raw or intermediate good can completely derail downstream manufacturing and delivery. But those can be solved for rather easily. Much more difficult are several missing components that potentially feed back into other critical manufacturing areas so that none can get going. At least not quickly or easily.
Against this backdrop, the government continues to spend at record levels, creating record deficits, and the central banks continue to print and print and print. All they can show for their efforts, for sure, is a record wealth gap between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else.
Man oh man, am I jumpy. The blog hasn’t even aired yet! I’ve had a feeling about future shortages and rising prices. Just spent about 1000 bucks building my pantry back up a couple of weekends ago. Last year we put in a hand pump for our well, so have access to fresh water at all times.
Still so much left to do … especially communications. We got producing fruit trees though, right now harvesting apples in FLORIDA no less!
The potatoes and squash are doing well in the garden. I was holding off on buying the food freeze drier until later this summer but might have to go down to the farm and fleet this weekend and get one.
As a mining electrician, I was impressed at how much copper we left down a mine when we decommissioned the mine.
So there is an opportunity for a young buck to go get it. You don’t have to dig the mine, but beware of stale air.
My sister in small town south central BC tells me she cannot find any wide mouth mason jar lids anywhere in the region… and it is not even high canning season yet. Sager: you will love that dehydrator! I have a great table top one that stacks high. This week so far I have pureed and dried 8 lbs each of blueberries and raspberries which were on sale this week. Think of it being like fruit leather. I break into small pieces/batches then seal in food sealer bags. They last a long time this way, with no refrigeration needed. High energy & nutritious. I am now eating the last of my dried strawberries from 2016! (it was a bumper year lol) No spoilage in all that time! ?
Deep pantries are so reassuring during uncertain times!
There is a certain naivete that gathers apace in the world.
How soon are these people going to be labeled “terrorists”, “Nazis” or have kiddie porn discovered on their computers?
Adolph dismissed the Banksters and their Thrall and our Masters sent us to bomb Germany into a bloodsoaked rubble.
(I am fully aware that this is not a popular analysis. Spare me your outrage.)
second the canning lids. I look every week at the big box stores. I’ve been lucky on three separate occasions and should have enough to get through the next 2 years but lids were only present on 3 occasions since last Mayish - unless you want Pur lids. I have no experience with Pur so I welcome some thought.
I’m planning on this Thursday to be a prep day…on my list so far
vacuum packer supplies. ground burger bags ( I process my own deer and goose meat). dry goods. toilet paper. and I think I’m gonna grab veggies seeds for next season if I can. I may grab a small chest freezer just to have but not use
The federal reserve has it stated on their website that they have a fiduciary responsibility to serve the public interest. Paraphrasing, but that’s the sum of it. The public interest from their perspective is to preserve retirement income which (surprise surprise!) Is heavily invested in MBSs and stocks and treasury bonds. If they raise interest rates, the bonds lose value and the market gets flooded with worthless debt and the stock markrt tanks. If they lower interest rates, inflation gets worse. So they have their hands tied and all they can do is say “it’s transitory”.
One correction I have to make though is the 2019 spike was when the fed bailed out the repo market which spiked up to about 12% and kept zombie companies from getting their overnight funds to continue doing business. Were they to fail though, the stock market would have plummetted 30, maybe 50% and would have left so many unemployed in the streets the great depression would have looked like promising times.
The real problem is these companies, whose stocks are rolled up into indexes and owned by 401k’s and union retirement funds, and whose commercial debt is rolled up into CDO’s and CDO squareds (if not only by another name today), that their failure would mean the public interest would have been jeopardized. All this stems from ghe too big to fail years where the fed dropped interest rates to historic lows and then kept dropping them. They kept them there through the Obama administration when all financial indicators said they should have been raising them. They instead played politics since race relations demanded Obama be treated with kid gloves. When Trump took office, they raised rates a quarter percent, and the market reaction was a couple thousand point drop… the damage was already done and it was not recoverable. Since then, they’ve been bailing water out just long enough to try to find a suitable liferaft, but none exists. This problem is too widespread and penetrates every aspect of the global economy. This is just the slow tip of the rollercoaster as it releases from the chain and slowly coasts over the first hill before the plummet. Half of us can see the bottom, and the other half still think the skies the limit. But the rollercoaster only heads one direction. How fast is the only variable we can control at this point.
This is the one I have: https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/kitchen/canning-and-preserving/66386-food-dehydrator?item=EV332
They have the extra trays etc as well. No doubt you can get something similar via Amazon. I try to not feed the beast. Lee Valley is a really impressive private company - gardening and woodworking specialty. I am certain they are in America as well.
I can tell you that it is a good thing they do not sell fly fishing stuff too, or I would be in serious financial trouble… I spend enough there to be invited to their consumer advisory committee. But hey, it is better than money in the bank at 0.002% interest. Great service, impeccable quality, 3 month money back guarantees. Awesome! ?
Here’s where I bought 3,000 canning lids ?. Seriously, I’ll never have to buy them again. I heard that the Amish buys the generic ones this company sells. I figured if it’s good enough for them, then…
No shortage of lids for jars but I need more bands for my freeze dried jars. Ordered from Lehman’s 5/15/21 still not shipped. Robinair premium vacuum pump oil ordered for my freeze dryer on 5/09/21 still not shipped. Hope you have any lubricants or grease you might need for equipment as that looks like the next domino to fall.
A couple of years ago I bought some Tattler reusable canning lids. The lid is actually two pieces: a solid top piece and a rubbery gasket. You still use a screw-on band, but most people who can have lots of those. The jars need a bit more headspace and you can’t fully tighten the band until after processing, but they have worked well for me. I bought more in the late summer of 2020 and it took at least a month for delivery. They are available on Amazon, and the link below is to the company web site (not updated often)
Julie
There is a large Amish community 35 miles from me. I often shop at their general store: lots of high quality farm equipment at good prices. They usually have canning lids in paper sleeves of 300-400. Mid summer 2020 they had absolutely nothing. No store in Michigan had any lids. In May 2021 the Amish store has lids, but you can only buy a few dozen at a time. I believe that they are getting a few from their bulk supplier and repackaging. The local “English” stores occasionally get a shipment which is sold out immediately, kind of like toilet paper in April 2020
Julie
My mother got it for me when she decided I really had to have one. I didn’t think so because her idea of Christmas and birthday presents was to send boxes of dehydrated veggies and fruits that she’d made from the culls at the organic food market she worked in for almost 20 years (after retiring from a teaching career). She was always quirky - a health food pioneer before it was a popular thing.
Anyhow, I’ve got an Excalibur. An excellent, high capacity device that I’ve mostly used for making beef jerky, and fruit rollups for visiting grandchildren. I prefer canned, pickled, and fermented preservation to dehydration. But dehydrated keeps large volumes very well in small spaces and serves in crisis.
