How do you like it so far? The financial dictatorship, that is. At least the dictator, Hank Paulson, looks like a real dictator. Right out of central casting, a tall white skinhead with an arrogant demeanor. Just the kind of guy Batman is supposed to come and save us from. But Hank has something even Lex Luthor never dreamed possible; a blank check from Uncle Sam to do whatever he wants, with no oversight, no accountability, and no review. Recall that the seven hundred billion dollar bailout absolutely must pass or there would be martial law. It was needed to buy bad loans from failing banks in order to save the world. But just as soon as it was passed Hank decided to give the money to banks that were in good shape, in essence partially nationalizing the banking system. It gives a whole new meaning to First National Bank. Then we learn that one hundred billion is going to pay "discretionary bonuses" to these very same fat cats.

Weren't we told back in Reagan's day that government should just get out of the way and let the free market be free? Weren't we told that government was the problem? Now we are told that the government has to step in and fix the problem. You could get kind of confused if you believed what you were told. The free market was a good thing while it was transferring wealth from the many to the few elites. As long as million dollar bonuses were flowing and the Gulfstreams were flying everything was as it should be. But when the tide turned then the government had to step in and do the transfers directly. The camouflage of the "free market" is no longer useful or necessary. I wonder if KBR has those detention centers built yet.

It took a little longer than I'd expected. After all, it's an election year and a few congress critters had to puff and posture like a lek of booming sage grouse for the voters back home. But the outcome was never in doubt. Over 99.9% of the voters could have been 100% against the bailout and it still would have passed because that 0.1% wanted it to. That's how an oligarchy works. Don't worry, though. It's not real money. Nobody's taxes will go up and there will be no repayment plan. Instead, the debt ceiling will go up over eleven trillion dollars and Uncle Sammy will borrow funny money from our competitors. They're in the game to win and so are the American Oligarchs. It's the American people, that's you and me, who will be sold into indentured servitude. All this so-called bailout does is transfer another huge chunk of money to the already filthy rich and bring the house of cards a little closer to collapse. Some time soon the creditors will declare the U.S. Government to be insolvent. So what happens next? God only knows. Likely the looting of the treasury by the oligarchy will begin in earnest. There will be a little bit of chaos for ordinary folks. Lots of people will be sleeping in their cars. Banks will fold and meld into one another. They might even close for awhile then reopen in different forms. I expect we'll have martial law for awhile if for no other reason than just because everyone believes it's coming and is necessary. There will be physical shortages of commodities such as food and fuel, even if the price doesn't go up. Already Atlanta and elsewhere in the southeast have experienced gasoline shortages. It just didn't make the evening news because watching Sarah Barracuda take a bite out of Joe was more entertaining. Besides, O.J. is finally checking into the Gray Bar Hotel. What could possibly be more important than that? People ask me what they should do. Where should they put their money? What should they invest in? My advice: wheat, beans, and ammunition.

So this is how it happens. We have to kill the country to save it. If you've ever wondered how the Rothschild and the Rockefeller families take over governments, now you will get to watch it in action. When this maneuver of the financial elite is over Hank Paulson, head of Goldman Sachs, will be your new dictator. The courts, formerly the last bastion of civil rights, will be powerless to intervene. You, the taxpayer, will be even more of a debt slave to the financial system, and the only things left of our former Republic will be history. Don't expect much from Congress except a quick rush to do their master's (the financial elite) bidding. Parliaments in empires are mostly hereditary luxury clubs anyway. It's all peeled grapes and Roman baths for the Senators. For us little people, though, this is the beginning of a very long term debt slavery. The lid is coming off the national debt. That debt will never be paid back so the question is: what assets will go into foreclosure. For many now out on the streets it was their homes. It will most certainly be our natural resources. Don't look for much concern about your environment in the new world order. For the proletariat it will be a lifetime of labor for a daily bowl of gruel.

These two articles in the mainstream media are rather bleak. Next week, most likely, Congress will cede it's last wee bit of power to the Federal Reserve, a clique of private bankers. That will leave us with two branches of government: the Executive Branch and the Federal Reserve and no constitution. These two branches, one of them unelected and the other chosen by an odd system of the electoral college, will make up the rules and change them at will. Congress will be relegated to deciding whether or not gay marriage is legal while the courts will be responsible only for punishing petty crimes of the people. Welcome to the Union of Socialist Republic Corporations.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aDhH0TDoeFaY&refer=home

The first word most children learn is "Mama" and the first sentence they learn is, "that’s not fair" proving that most of us are born ideologues, going around comparing the world to some ideal that exists in our mind of truth, justice, and the way it ought to be. The trouble with ideology is that reality doesn't give a rat's ass what we think. It just goes on happening as it happens, in one seemingly bizarre and troubling thing after another until one day it sucks us down the memory hole and we too are gone.

Meanwhile, back in the country of America between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel we taxpayers are getting ready to be soaked for the biggest bailout in history. Next we'll bailout the automobile manufactures then the next in line and the next until who will bail out the taxpayer? Regulators closed Silver State, the eleventh bank to go bust this year, so I suppose the FDIC will need a bailout here pretty soon, too. Does anyone remember all the money that went missing about the turn of the century? It was something on the order of 10 to the twelfth power of dollars. Talk about a Y2K glitch that you never heard about. You know somebody has that money and it ain't you or me.

The next war is getting closer every day. Whether it's snarling Dick Chickenhawk swooping down on the Caucasus or Israel getting ready to bomb Iran or Lebanon or Syria or a fleet of warships bringing "humanitarian aid" to Georgia, it's only a matter of time. I guess we'll still have plenty of money for bombs and ammunition even after all the bailouts.

I suppose some people who see this and realize that they and their children and grandchildren are going to have to pay for the bailouts of all those high rollers, their multi million dollar salaries, bonuses, and severance packages might think that it's not fair. Some people might think that $2.3 trillion dollars missing from the Pentagon is wrong. Some people might think that starting another war on top of the two we already have going might not be a good idea. I suppose a whole lot of people will eventually get worked up into a righteous fit and find another bunch of people equally worked up to fight with. But I'll keep my head down, try to grow leafy green vegetables this winter, and wait for the next thing to happen. It's going to be a long and rocky road down from the summit. Every few years there will be some new trouble and things will get a little worse for more folks. This is how it happens. Se la vi.

It never ceases to impress me how quickly one can get into trouble out here in the Mojave Desert. On the whimsical excuse of finding some landscaping rocks, I set off towards the Rodman Mountains in my Jeep Rubicon with the intention of turning a few public property rocks into private property rocks. I've tried before to find the way south towards the lava flows to the gas pipeline road that runs behind the Newberry Mountains, only to get lost in a maze of braided stream channels. This time I took the road past the transfer station up to a BLM open route. The only place this route is marked is where the old dump road turns west. After that you are on your own. Not far up the wash I was flagged down by two offroaders. This being Labor Day weekend I'm sure the dirt bikers and dune buggiers were thick all over the Johnson Valley OHV area to the south. These two fellows were completely lost. They thought they were almost to Slash X and were somewhat dismayed when I said that they were almost to Newberry Springs and that Slash X was a long ways in the other direction. The older fellow asking directions (I guess guys do ask for directions) said, "well at least we have lots of water" and then they roared off in the wrong direction (guys may ask but then not listen). Just about every year a few people die out here, just a little ways away from a civilization that is just out of reach.

I got lost twice and had to backtrack when the boulders in the wash got too big to drive over. Finding the right braid in the stream channel almost depends on instinct. A few miles south of this mild farming community lies a rugged landscape where life is ruled by the ancient laws of instinct and survival, mistake and death. Somehow I get the feeling a that few other folks might be feeling that nature is not under our control. About two million people are headed inland in advance of Gustavo. Another half million or so Indians are waiting out a flood on high ground.

For these and others the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away, as Edgar Rice Burroughs would say in his classic Tarzan novels when some cultured English man or woman was cast into the jungle. I'm sure the motorhead fools didn't think this as they roared away, and never would until they ran out of gas, lost up some remote canyon. Neither do the motorheads pulling their high powered fizz boat to the lake behind their Hummer. Likewise for the motorheads gassing up their motorhome, pulling behind it their Ford Excursion, civilization is many comfort levels deep. Until, that is, a little storm or some other act of God, Nature, or man cuts off the juice of civilization.

Last Saturday I was invited to speak at a local workshop about living with fire at the wildlands urban interface. I warned the organizer that I would go off the reservation. He said, "that's fine, come anyway, doom and gloom and all." It was a small audience, but I'm used to that. A few fire folks in a two bay firehouse on the south side of Apple Valley, a middle-aged couple that drifted in for entertainment, and the neighbor family of one of the organizers came to hear about native landscaping, fire resistant siding, watch a demonstration burn, and hear me preach doom and gloom. Although in fairness, they didn't know about this last event in advance. But somehow, over the last couple of years, I've learned to give an ultimately pessimistic presentation without disturbing anyone or ruffling any feathers. It's all in the words and style, not in the substance. For example, on the oil/population graph, rather than say peak oil is coming and we're all going to die, I point out that population is strongly correlated with oil production (consumption) and when the global curve takes on the shape of the U.S. curve then human population will likely track its shape. The people nod and go uh huh. But it doesn't sink in. It's superficial and kind of academic in an interesting way. Everyone told me it was an interesting talk and then went on about their lives. I've seen other doomers give the same talk in the vein of the end is nigh and we're all going to die and watched people go apoplectic with denial, scoffing, laughter, and even hatred.

"Yeah, Tom and I were laughing about Guy's presentation," the workshop organizer told me as we had both help organize that workshop where Guy talked about peak oil and kicked over an ant hill of government bureaucrats. Nearly everyone saw Guy's talk not as a warning but a social faux pas. No, it doesn't sink in and it never will. Not even when the gas lines stretch around the block. Even at large conferences of geologists, where everyone should know better, hardly anyone has heard about or cares about peak oil. And scoffing at anthropogenic climate change has become a fad.

As I've said before, we are in a buying opportunity the likes of which may never come again. Any spare cash I have is going into energy index funds, gold, and commodities. Enron, Worldcom, Bear Sterns, Indymac, subprime and the credit crunch – those were foreshocks. The big one is still coming.

These are happy days. The stock market is going up, the dollar is going up, gas is going down, gold is going down, and Preznit Dubya is on a bender at the Olympics. Economists are squealing with delight as it seems we can accelerate our unsustainable rush to use everything up before Jesus comes back. Banks can start lending again, making money appear out of nowhere, the Fed can pull rabbit after rabbit out of their hat, and maybe the house builders can even get back to turning perfectly good land into stucco shack ghettos as fast as possible. Oh, it's a good time to be alive. Except if you're in Darfur, Haiti, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Ossetia, or any of those other unlimited projects.

If you read any of my meager diatribes you know I take a light hearted approach to doom. That's because all doom is personal – all pain is suffered individually. We all come to that last thought before the light winks out no matter what wicked moves are played on the Grand Chessboard.

How can I possibly be serious about the inevitable? It's all a matter of timing. I don't know when for anything except for some astronomical events and only what for a very few things. One what is that the value of petroleum in a time series plot will look like a V – we're presently on the left leg – and another what is that "in the long run we're all dead." That's why I love these mad rushes back into Denial. It's a buying opportunity just like going back in time. It's a chance to plant a few more fruit trees and stock up on supplies. And it's the funniest thing in history to hear the propaganda industry "explain".

"International pressure on Russia is building," the professional propagandists say. Pressure from what, I wonder? Hot air maybe, blowing out of Washington? Hey, if they don't go back to being the losers in the Cold War like they're supposed to then we won't let them be in our private club for special friends.

"Now," says Condi as she stamps her foot angrily. Some scheming might have been done in Crawford back in August of 2001 some think. Now the Babes of Ba‘al Zebûb are headed back to the ranch. One wonders what a terminal bookend to Dubya's term might look like.

How low will it go? Oil dropped to $113.10 today, down by almost of fourth from it's summer time high. You can get a gallon of the cheap stuff now in Barstow for $4.079 a gallon. Look out for twenty dollar oil, here we come. Let the good times roll.

"We told you so," the Cornucopians cackle while the Peakists hang their heads to keep from getting hit by another piece of falling sky. The stock market shot up in glee, the huge pickup trucks roared past me on the highway, even a few flags reappeared flapping from car windows. Meanwhile, we have nothing to worry about but the Olympic Games, China's human rights record, and John Edwards' affair.

But what's really changed? Nobody has suddenly made any more oil in the ground and nobody certainly has found a bunch more. Quietly, very quietly so as not to disturb the Americans, a quiet little war started in South Ossetia. Just as quietly a huge armada slipped off to the Persian Gulf. Hmmm – Caspian basin, Persian Gulf – this couldn't have anything to do with oil could it? Naw, we have plenty of that stuff, just look at how the price is dropping.

Meanwhile, back in the Heimatland, people who couldn't pay off their loans yesterday still cannot pay them off today. So Fannie posted a $2,300,000,000 loss in the second quarter, poor thing. Don't worry, honey, it's only money. Besides, the stock market is going back up again.

Yes, no, everything's changed but still stays the same. In the housing bill that bails out Fannie and Freddie, in Section 3083, the debt ceiling is raised to $10.615 trillion (that's $10,615,000,000,000). If your ceiling is the sky and you raise it, what do you have but the sky? The sky's the limit! Whoohoo! It used to be that most of us peasants were a paycheck away from personal doom. Now it looks more like we are about nine Big Macs away from anarchy.

The writing's on the wall, my dear.

4: They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.

5: In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.

25: And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

26: This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.

27: TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

28: PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

Daniel, Chapter 5.

Now we know the Persians as Iranians but who were the Medes? As it turns out, they were the first Iranians.

Do you feel sometimes like things are getting out of control? In Maryland cops delivered 32 pounds of pot to the Berwyn Heights Mayor, Cheye Calvo's house then the SWAT team showed up and shot his two Labrador retrievers. They had to chase one dog around the house to kill it. Oh and then it turns out that our very own Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is most concerned about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. So much so that us taxpayers must bail out the Chinese and Russians so they won't have to suffer any losses on their Freddie and Fannie stocks. And here you thought it was all about the poor homeowner. Yeah, you and I must simply be shit to fertilize the money tree.

Out here in California the state employees might be making minimum wage for awhile. Let's hope they have money saved up to make their mortgage payments. Or maybe they'll take out a few more credit cards and pay big bucks interest until the new budget is approved. Aren't we in a fix? If you try to drive without a license or tags the judicial system will make an example of you. But you can't renew because all the workers at the DMV got sent home. And if you can't drive you can't work, and if you can't work you can't make your mortgage payment. Then another house goes into foreclosure and Hank will have to give more of your taxes to the Chinese. What a country.

It's clear that some powerful interests made it so that automobiles are an absolute necessity for life in the States then went on to loose billions of dollars. People you know are probably going to retire to the poorhouse because of this as their pensions go under. It's unlikely Social Security will be there for them. Perhaps a few of the mad Scotch Irish will have to go kill some liberals to get even once their food stamps run out.

There's no way out of the fix we're in – no silver bullet, no magic pill – only Cargo Cults and Denial. People say I'm negative but I'm not. I'm positive. I'm positive we are going to Hell in an hand basket. People want answers. People want solutions. The answer is that some problems don't have solutions. Sometimes the solutions involve pain and suffering. In our present situation the solutions might involve stocking up on non perishable food, such as hard red winter wheat and beans, and trading dollars for old silver coins; tightening our belts and relearning how to dig the earth with a spade.

Almost 30 years ago Bill Catton succinctly explained the predicament of an overpopulated planet. Not only are we doomed to die off, but when it's over and the dust has settled, the ultimate carrying capacity of humanity on Earth will be less than when we started. Yet in that short time the human population almost doubled again from about 4.5 to almost 7 billion. Six or seven million souls are added every month.

In the modern tradition of gasoline burning Americans, I departed mid-July for a semi-annual road trip across the southwest to about the middle of the continent. Numerous writers have claimed recently that the increased cost of fuel is keeping people off the roads. "Staycation" has entered the lexicon. I don't believe it. There was as much traffic on interstates 15, 70, and 80 as I've ever seen. Americans drive the biggest cars they can find as fast as they can go. On the uphill approach to the Eisenhower Tunnel I'm sure one driver burned as much gas passing me in his Dodge Ram 3500 pulling a boat and trailer as I did coasting down the other side into Denver. The only change in people's behavior as a consequence of $4/gallon gasoline that I've seen is a significant increase in the level of whining and complaining.

Bill Catton was right. Paul Erlich was absolutely correct when he said that famine will stalk the world. Malthus' words of wisdom ring down through the centuries. Meanwhile we burn gasoline like there's no tomorrow (and maybe there isn't). I personally turned over 120 gallons of regular unleaded into atmospheric carbon dioxide propelling my jeep almost 2500 miles down the highway. Nearly everyone passed me, not because they don't know that driving slow saves fuel but because they don't care. They want to go as fast as possible. The cost in money is no big deal. They don't know and don't care about any other costs. Despite James Howard Kunstler's weekly incantations, the suburbs continue to grow. Every new wannabe metropolis I drove through – St. George, Cortez, Fort Morgan – was bigger than the last time I saw it. We just can't have too many shopping malls and McMansions.

The stars were high above them and the moon was in the east

The sun was settin' on them when they reached Miami Beach

They got a hotel by the water and a quart of Bombay gin

The road goes on forever and the party never ends

Robert Earl Keen

Delusions line the banks of Denial, a deep, wide river that runs through America. Willful Ignorance stands tall on the shores, carefully cultivated by the Gods of the electromagnetic spectrum with endless, mindless chatter. Today our problems ended. Thank God that's over. The stock market shot up, the price of oil is finally going back down, and the troubles with Fannie and Freddie are ancient history. It was getting pretty bad there for awhile. Some people were late with their cable payment and a few other poor folks even had to put off upgrading to a bigger high definition plasma flat screen TV. Fortunately a fresh batch of zero interest credit card offers arrived in the mail just in time. And now that gas has gone down a dime you'd better hang on to that SUV or trade for a Hummer while you can still get the extra large, vintage model. Meanwhile, on the energy front, Al the Goracle recommended that the laws of thermodynamics be repealed for the good of the planet.

It's a good thing we're the smartest, richest people in the world. Even my dentist can see that what we need to do is start using our own oil instead of importing it from those awful foreign countries. The three wise businessmen at the table next to us in the restaurant agreed, we need to drill our way out of this. Everybody knows there's plenty of oil down there if those damn environmentalists would just let the oil companies drill for it. And at the office I was once again identified as a whacko conspiracy theorist for merely suggesting that inflation devalues our money. The government will take care of us. Don't worry. It will bail out IndyMac and make it whole again. It will see to it that Freddie and Fannie fulfill their mission to make housing affordable for everyone while the investors and executives make millions. The government will create wealth out of nothing and there's no end to where that comes from. It's only sore losers like me who won't believe and who won't have fun at the party.

Yes, this is a simple blog. I have no pretensions about explaining the way it is. If you want to see what's going on, look at the news links to the right. My attempts at posting solutions turn out to be mostly about failures. My water page is about how the groundwater table is dropping and how long it might last. My gardening page is mostly about insects and squirrels. My energy page must be plain wrong, given all the oil that everyone knows is down there and how the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to us. It's finally morning in America once again. If we all shut our eyes tight, clinch our fists, and wish really hard, the leghorn roosters in the media and halls of power will crow the sun up.

The monsoon hit last night in a fury. The sky became a cosmic strobe light freezing pounding raindrops in midair with each flash of lightening. Bolts seared my eyeballs for several minutes after they were gone and their thunder rumbled across Silver Valley. I had to stay out and watch it, I haven't seen a storm like that in ten years, even though I was getting soaked by sheets of rain driven by howling wind. After it drove me inside and I saw that the power was out, the wind shifted to the south. Gusts of probably 60 mph pressed against my house as I frantically tried to batten down the hatches. This is when anything that isn't nailed down tends to be gone. Finally I lay in bed feeling the wind pound against the wall and wondering if my roof would come off. I don't know how, probably electricians drove out in the middle of the night in a big, diesel engine boom truck, but the power came back on sometime in the first few hours of the day.

Plans are for the Mojave to become the Saudi Arabia of solar generated electricity. Hundreds of applications have been filed to turn hundreds of square miles of public land into privately owned power plants. Sunlight will turn water into steam that will turn turbines spinning magnets in coils. The grid will be energized. Even Joshua tree-hugging liberals are going on about how this "wasteland" has no higher purpose than to power our toaster ovens. But all things are not equal. Although the energy crises can be written in terms of kilowatt hours the crisis de jour is in transportation and at its basis is oil. Humans have known for all time that petroleum burns but we didn't start using it until about 1859. Our ancestors weren't stupid and we aren't smart. Think of it this way. If you have a pile of wood and a pool of oil and you want to get warm, which would you burn? Our ancestors didn't burn oil because they didn't have internal combustion engines. Likewise we won't drive to the grocery store on solar electricity because we don't have electric cars. The grid may be energized by hydro, solar, and wind, natural gas and coal but it still runs on oil. Our cars run on oil and our food supply runs on oil. Not very much is interchangeable, except for food and oil. We can trade oil for food and food for biofuel and wind up choosing between eating or driving.

In the old Bugs Bunny cartoons Wile E. Coyote would chase the roadrunner out into midair over a canyon, stop, look down, walk around a bit, and ponder his mistake. Then sure enough, it was real, and a long whistle to a small poof in the bottom of the canyon would ensue. Just like Wile E. there's a time lag in our response to reality. Empty claptrap chicken wire and stucco shacks will bake under no money down zero interest rate signs in Las Vegas while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go under. Billion dollar high speed trains will be scoped and surveyed while casinos ponder their bottom line and wonder where all the tourists went. The desert will be bladed to build solar power plants by companies that have no future. All with the best of intentions, hopes, and dreams, followed by a small poof in the desert sand, we'll come back to the lives of our ancestors – a little mesquite, corns, beans, and squash.

"Gas is soo expensive," my dentist said to her assistant over the whine of the drill. "It cost me $70 just to fill up."

"We're really cutting back," her assistant replied. "We don't drive nowhere we don't have to."

With a mouthful of anesthetic, latex suction tubes, and steel I fortunately wasn't expected to participate in the conversation. But they did pull the tools out long enough to ask if that was my Prius parked out back. The conversation turned to movies and movie stars, many of whom seemed closer than family. What else can you say about beautiful, witty people entertaining you in your living room every evening.

"Are you going to the party in Big Bear this weekend?"

"No, I have to work in Apple Valley that Thursday and by the time I come back to Barstow I won't have time to make it."

I wondered how much cutting back was really being done.

"It's going to be so rough going back to Vegas this afternoon. Traffic is already bad."

On the way home I saw a sight that's becoming slightly less common. A caravan of the biggest SUVs, Escalade, Expedition, Tahoe, Suburban, went roaring past, bumper to bumper, pulling boats and trailers with personal watercraft, trying to pass each other on the right in-between semi trucks. One last $200 hurrah at Lake Mohave or Lake Havasu. The only thing missing was the dual flags flying from the windows like horns on the beast; so common back on July 4, 2003.

"Are you as gloomy as I am?" a friend emailed me after I said that I'm known as Dr. Doom around the office. Actually I'm not gloomy, I'm pretty happy. Although I'm sorry for the suffering the party couldn't go on forever. Living within our means, both financially and ecologically, is not optional. My friend had reason to be gloomy as he'd gotten a four month notice of termination from his County of San Bernardino employer. Even though the American economy has shed jobs steadily for the past six months, government is still hiring. But at the County level they are asking staff they can't get rid of to take unpaid leave and dumping everyone else. This will work it's way up as the tax base dries up. At the Federal level, though, I think we'll just borrow money for wars and stimulus payments and a bigger military budget and aid to Israel and whatever else right up to the end. My bet is that the last U.S. government paycheck won't buy a loaf of bread.

My friend asked what I thought about the general situation so I emailed back with some free advice, worth about what he paid for it.

In the near term be prepared for shortages of fuel, food, and water. Also be prepared for the crime and social unrest associated with shortages. We are conditioned to expect a bailout. But this time the official response is going to look more like a police state than a welfare state. In the mid-term you'll need to provide for yourself locally, independent of long supply chains. In the long term life will never return to the glory years of the nineties. From here on down it's duck, cover, and make do.

In the deep currents running under most of the big factors of our civic culture, trouble in the financial sector, the mortgage mess, the military budget, commodity prices, are enormous transfers of wealth on the order of trillions of dollars. As we follow this trend, wealth and resources will come to be controlled by a very small elite minority, leaving the rest of us with not much more than debt.

As I said, I'm not gloomy. Recently I've discovered a couple useful things. Wheat grows like a weed out here in Newberry Springs and have you seen the price of wheat lately? I'll bet wheat is easier to grow, easier to harvest, and easier to sell than alfalfa. Take note all of you diesel tractor drivers. Melons and squashes do fairly well. They seem to resist the insects and the hard casing around the fruit means that I get to eat it, not the vermin.