Tag Archives: economy

Sticker shock

Posted on by

You know, the problem with living out of your freezer for months at a time is that when you ultimately do head down to the supermarket to grab some dead animal flesh you are shocked at the price because you’ve not had to be aware of pricing for the last several months.

Even at the grocery places that traditionally have been the least expensive it was still, to me, outrageous what the prices on beef was.

Chicken even took a hit….Winco had been selling boneless skinless chicken breast at 1.98/#. Then a couple weeks ago there was a note limiting purchase to four trays of meat. Then last week they were completely out. And then when I was in there today…it was back…at $2.18/#…almost a 10% increase. Hmmm.

Pork loin roasts have now become my ‘go to’ for animal protein since it’s the least expensive of the meats I usually buy.

But, geez Ruiz, 85/15 at $5.50? 93/7 at almost $7? Owie. I need to keep my eyes open for deals on meats like I do for deals on ammo.

Meat

Posted on by

I am amazed at what meat prices are doing these days. I was at CostCo the other day and regular 88/12 ground beef was something like $4.30 a pound. For freakin’ hamburger! It still seems like just yesterday I was getting it remaindered for less than $2/#. Fortunately I have a pretty healthy supply of the stuff in the deep freeze and, honestly, I don’t eat it that much. My go to is usually chicken breast and, as of late, various pork cuts. WinCo sells boneless skinless chicken breast at $1.99/#, which is reasonable, and pork for around $1.85/#. For my cooking, which is often a stir-fry type of affair, those types of meat are just fine.

But, good grief, hamburger at almost four and a half bucks a pound? What the heck are they feeding those cows? Imported Swiss hay?

But, this is the sort of thing I suppose we should be getting ready to encounter on a more frequent basis. Some of you may be old enough to remember a time in the 1970’s when inflation and meat prices were driving many people to designate one day of the week as “Meatless [weekday]”…Meatless Mondays, etc, etc.

I’m an omnivore, as all of us human-ish types are. I do , however, like meat. In fact, I am of the opinion that a meal is not a meal if there is no meat. (Eggs kinda count but that’s getting pretty nitpicky).

Here’s a really odd thing – I’ve been taking pictures of the pricing board at the CostCo meat department for the last few months and the price of some meats has actually come down. That kinda puzzled me until it occurred to me that with ‘supply chain issues’ and whatnot, it may make more sense for ranchers to slaughter their herds (and thus flood the market and drive prices down) than to pay higher prices for feed as the supply becomes unpredictable. What you wind up with is a glut and price drop…for now. The other side of that equation will not be a happy one for the consumer.

I’m lucky because I can live with ‘cheap meats’. I have a pressure cooker, cast iron cookware, a penchant for cooking, and rather low standards. I can take pretty much any cut of meat and make it into something I’m willing to eat. So…I’ve no problem with switching over to cheaper cuts and critters.

But, geez Ruiz, $almost four and a half bucks for burger is just alarming.

Its the Zimbab-way

Posted on by

So the notion being pointed out is that, rather than raise the debt ceiling by a trillion dollars, why dont we just avoid the whole mess and mint a trillion-dollar coin instead?

Or, in other words (mostly Robert Mugabe’s), why don’t we just print the money we need?

And then some wag at the Mint says:
“Voila, we’d have bought ourselves the equivalent of a trillion-dollar increase in the debt limit, without any impact on inflation,” says Diehl.

Without any impact on inflation? Isn’t the textbook definition of inflation that you increase the money supply you cause the currency to lose value? Am I missing something here?

The future is going to be either a) horrors born of economic malfeasance or b) horrors born of the steps taken to mitigate the economic malfeasance. Either way, it’s a lot of canned goods and bargain-store shopping in your future.

Video – Debt ceiling explained

Posted on by

The video is ten years old, so the numbers have changed…upwards…but the reasoning still seems relatable.

Unless there is a bout of hyperinflation, or another World War, it’s going to be mathematically impossible to pay off the national debt. Now, whether or not any level of national debt is a good or bad thing is something to mull over. But what irks me is how, even at the municipal level, the answer is always ‘raise taxes’ and never ‘cut spending’.

Article – Inflation speeds up in April as consumer prices leap 4.2%, fastest since 2008

Posted on by

“I think I have cancer…”
“I think I left the stove on…”
“We’re not gonna make it….”
There are some times I really don’t want to be right. But..here we are:

Inflation in April accelerated at its fastest pace in more than 12 years as the U.S. economic recovery kicked into gear and energy prices jumped higher, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

Really? Thats what kicked off inflation? A ‘recovery’? You sure it wasn’t .gov promising to spend and tax more money than actually physically exists?

Look, I’m not an economist. I’ve got some finance classes under my belt and thats about it. But I look further downstream than most when  it comes to downstream consequences. Perhaps my caveman-like understanding of economics is far too primitive to grasp the nuances of what the Biden people are doing. Perhaps my understanding of what does and does not cause economic problems is lacking. Perhaps…perhaps…

But…here’s what I see.. prices on virtually everything are going up. People are very concerned about the economy doing poorly and, regardless of whether the economy actually is doing poorly, that sort of sentiment has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Me? I’m keeping outta debt. I’m not spending money on vacations, jet skis, $700 living room chairs, new iPhones, or some I-deserve-this feelgood trinket. I’m saving money, buying metals, investing, keeping the pantry full, and being fiscally conservative…very conservative. Worst case scenario? I missed out on a Disney cruise or a sale on Samsung televisions. Boohoo. I can always spend it next year. And if we get into a Carter Redux economic situation I will look like the smartest person in the room.

Do what you will, man. You do you, and I’ll do me. As for me and my house, we will serve…our best financial interests.

Article -Treasury warns of need to deal with national debt limit

Posted on by

The Treasury will continue to initiate the types of bookkeeping maneuvers it has used in the past to keep the government from breaching a level that would trigger a default on the massive national debt.
……..
The amount of the debt that is held by the public currently totals $22.1 trillion, an amount slightly higher than 100% of the entire economy and heights not seen since the huge borrowing the government did in the 1940s to finance World War II.

I genuinely believe that, in one way, the national debt has become absolutely irrelevant. Simply, there is no feasible way to pay it down without going Weimar on it’s  butt. The best anyone can even hope for is to slow down it’s growth.

I remember the Carter years and the inflation. I don’t remember it’s real-world affect on those around me because I was just a kid with no real interest in economics. Nowadays, I’m an aging survivalist with a real interest in not being a homeless, broke, beaten down wretch…so I follow economics like a man with cancer follows drug trials.

End of the world? Probably not. End of your world? Quite possible. A smart man will have eliminated as much debt as possible, put away a goodly amount of cash or cash-like instruments for when his job disappears, and stocked up on things he’d rather not be forced to buy during a period of austerity. And….thats actually a good policy to have even when the economy is doing well.

There is a time when you can still do something to save the ship, and there is a time when the best thing you can do is head for the lifeboats. The critical part is knowing which particular moment you’re in and acting accordingly.

Chapter One on the way to national Chapter 11

Posted on by

Anyone catch the speech that whoever is actually running things gave Biden to say? I swear that this political climate is starting to look like the opening chapters of ‘Atlas Shrugged’. I suspect it’ll start drifting towards the first 3/4ths of “The Mandibles” (recommended) before we’re through. Trillions of dollars. Just for fun, a dollar bill is about 6.14″ long. If you lined a trillion dollar bills up end to end, the line would be a bit under 97,000,000 miles…thats about 3900 times around the earth. Here’s better perspective. Or, put another way, if you literally took every single bit of US currency around the world and put it into .gov’s hands, that’d be about $1.2 trillion.

So, what you’ve got is a guy who wants to spend more cash than actually exists. He could literally take all the currency that exists and it would still not pay for the things he wants.

Kinda hard to wrap your head around that, isn’t it?

Fortunately, as I understand it, the money (such as it is) is simply created with a push of the button. No need to pull the cash out of every person’s wallet. Yet.

Here’s the part I don’t  understand: When Robert Mugabe prints physical money to fund his government, hyperinflation results. When the US .gov does it electronically instead of physically, we get….minimal inflation? Something doesn’t connect for me there.

The old expression is “All politics is local”. You may not understand, care,  or feel that the consequences of this sort of economic behaviour will affect you. National debt? Thats a national problem. But when your paycheck gets smaller as taxes go up, as your purchasing power goes down, as economic growth slows and jobs fade, as .gov handouts pile up and people no longer want to work…then you’ll notice. And then it’ll be too late to prepare.

I’ve no crystal ball. What I do have, though, is a unique perspective and outlook. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn’t. But I’m never sorry when it pushes me towards caution, since I’ve regretted too little caution far more often than I’ve regretted too much caution. And now, it’s pushing me towards caution. So be it. If I’m right, I fare better than most. If I’m wrong, all I’ve done is build up a diverse store of assets and experienced some opportunity cost.

Will we be hauling around money in wheelbarrows eventually? Nah. I just can’t see that happening. But, here’s an interesting blog post about if that whole ‘wheelbarrows of money’ thing was actually real.

 

Metal

Posted on by

I guess you have to kinda be living under a rock to not notice that gold hit an all-time  high the other day. I don’t really keep more than a passing glance on gold prices, but I watch silver pretty closely. You know, it was only a few months ago that silver crapped the bed at around $12. Today its more than twice that. In other words, silver doubled within four months. I can’t think of the last time that happened. Maybe back when the Hunt brothers were working their mojo?

Where does it go from here? Beats me. But, to my uneducated way of thinking, people flocking to metals and driving up the prices is indicative of a belief that perhaps the economic outlook is not that great. If that’s true, I think you’d do well to spend some of that precious metals money on getting your debt knocked out, some food and ammo in the basement, and whatever else you need. If you’re so uncertain of the future that you’re buying precious metals, than that future is uncertain enough that you may wanna backstop with ammo and canned goods. Just sayin’.

But…if the market tanks, people are gong to need to raise cash in a hurry to cover their market losses. And that means selling their metals. And that means a big dump into the market which, as I understand it, depresses prices. Or does it? Seems like all the rules are off these days.

As I’ve said, whatever disposable income I have gets split into three different areas: silver in case things go really, really wrong; my Roth in case things go really, really well; and cash savings in case I’m not sure which way to go. That way I’m not totally caught flat-footed if the economy tanks or if it booms.

As much as I enjoy the sexy parts of survivalism, like guns and gun bunnies, the fact is that you’ll  need fifty-dollar bills far more than you’ll need fifty BMG in most emergencies. I can’t recall the last time I had a personal-level TEOTWAWKI that was resolved by the judicious application of M193, but I can rattle off a half dozen where a pile o’ greenbacks turned out to be the multitool that fixed things.

By all means, buy some precious metals when you have the money…but not before you’ve got the really unsexy-but-more-likely-to-be-needed things taken care of.

 

Video – 10 Things That Would Happen if the United States Went Bankrupt

Posted on by

In the book “The Mandibles: A Family , 2029-2047“, the US defaults on it’s national debt and all sorts of Bad Stuff happens. Its a very good book, in my opinion, except for the somewhat out-of-character ending.

Could the US actually default on it’s debt? What would happen? Well, here’s one limey’s interpretation:

The notion that a bankruptcy would kick off some type of Purge-like orgy of violence seems a bit dramatic. Crime go up? Sure. But unlike every other country that has gone through that sort of thing, there are enough people with guns in this country that a large part of the population would be quite a bit safer than the rest.  The problem with this sort of thing, as seen in places like Venezuela and similar venues, is that only the bad guys have guns. In ‘Murica, it’s a different story. I’m not saying its going to be all sunshine and stun grenades, but stuff like you see on the news in those Third World places? Mmmmm…not so much. Except for our own little pockets of Third World-like places such as New Orleans, any major California city, Detroit, etc.

Could the US go bankrupt? I don’t know enough about economics to say. But I do know this – when the US catches a cold, every other country sneezes. Just from a self-interest standpoint, it would be in the best interest of a lot of the planet to make sure the US doesn’t have something like that happen. That might mean a degree of debt forgiveness, renegotiation of terms, loans from the World Bank, etc, etc. I’m fairly confident what it won’t mean is hyperinflating our way out of it.

But…one never knows, does one? Which is why Zero had food, guns, and silver. And, really, probably why you should too.

 

Trickle down

Posted on by

I keep meticulous records of my bills around here. Got my power bills the other day and noticed something very unusual. Those idiots were giving me money. Or, more precisely, they were kicking back/discounting a portion of my bill.

Hunh….well, that was cool. Never had that happen under Obama. Shaved $30 off this months bill. Still haven’t gotten my wall yet, though. I’d happily have traded that thirty bucks for a border wall. But…that FTCJA just paid for two Magpul happysticks, or three 17rd Magpul Glock mags, or five AR mags…Making America Geared Again.