Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Theres pretty much two kinds of posts a person can make and still be on-topic as far as preparedness goes – you can either post about things you are are going to do/doing/have/want to have or you can post about ‘theory’ which is mostly things like “When the zombies invade, you should….”

I tend to stick close to the former. This is mostly because theres very little you can opine about that hasn’t been beaten to death elsewhere. However, knowing this still doesn’t keep me from throwing my two cents in every once in a while. You’ve been warned.

Stayed up until about 1:30 yesterday mrning setting up what should, ideally, be the finally set of shelves in the bunker. Now that its (for the most part) all done, its time to actually re-arrange and inventory whats there. All the foodstuffs on one shelf, all the sleeping gear on another, etc, etc. Part of me is looking forward to it and another part of me is cringing at the thought of meticulously going through all this stuff and moving it around. On the bright side, it may free up more space if things are stored more efficiently. A casual glance shows that at least 40% of the available space down there is taken up with long-term food. MRE’s, freezedrieds, barrels of rice, etc, etc. Then theres the 2×4 rack holding all the ammo cans of ammo. I need to go through those as well and inventory them too. Life as Commander Zero is not all sunshine and stun grenades…sometimes theres a bothersome amount of ‘housekeeping’ involved.

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At work, I have a copy of Mel Tappan’s ‘Tappan On Survival’ as a text file on my desktop. I browse it when I have nothing better to do. Here’s some interesting paragraphs about government and monetary policy that Tappan wrote over twentyfive years ago:

In fact, it does a number of far more significant things as well. It frees billions of dollars for lending by the banks that would otherwise have been held as reserves, further fueling inflation, and for the first time it allows the Federal Reserve to print unlimited quantities of Federal Reserve notes (paper money) and to store them for immediate distribution. It increases deposit insurance from $40,000 to $100,000 (reducing the reserves backing up that insurance to about $1.11 for every $100 in deposits), and it empowers the comptroller of the currency to proclaim “bank holidays” on a local basis.
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To grasp the full impact of what these laws collectively portend, you must have a clear understanding of the nature of inflation and how it works. It is not, as the government and press would have you believe, rising prices. And it is not caused by big business, labor unions or OPEC. Inflation is simply an increase in the supply of money without a commensurate increase in the wealth that backs it. Only governments and, to a lesser degree, lending institutions can create it and only they can stop it.

To be sure, prices rise against an inflated currency, but only because the value of that currency is declining through dilution. If you owned an ounce of gold and issued ten pieces of paper currency against it, each piece would obviously be worth only half as much if you later issued ten more against the same ounce of gold. Once your butcher or tailor understood that you issued ten more pieces of paper money against that same ounce of gold every week, his prices to you would increase accordingly until, finally, your paper would have so little value that he would not accept it at all.
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Our present currency is backed by nothing and convertible into nothing else, much less “lawful money” as defined by the Constitution. It only has value so long as, and to the degree that, someone is willing to accept it. Were it not for the fact that many other western nations use the dollar as their reserve currency and have, therefore, a stake in keeping alive the illusion that it has some worth, the U.S. dollar would long since have been allowed to collapse into utter oblivion.

The time is soon coming, however, when we will hyperinflate to such a degree that no one can bail out the dollar. Inflation is almost as old as government itself, but nowhere has the potential for hyperinflation existed that could equal the present situation of the U.S. government.
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Suffice it to say that we owe more than twenty times the money supply and several times our total wealth, both public and private. And we haven’t even started bailing out the banks yet! There is no example in history of any nation coming anywhere near this level of debt without a collapse of the entire economy and repudiation or hyperinflation.

Although it may now be too late to stop a socioeconomic collapse from occurring in this country, it is not too late for aware individuals to take independent action to avoid or attenuate its impact upon themselves and those for whom they care.
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For example, when inflation reaches levels just short of initiating public rioting, Wage and price controls will be instituted. Never mind that they will create essential shortages and a black-market economy—Big Brother will deal with that problem when it surfaces. Next may be a liquidity crunch and bank runs. The machinery is already in place to declare a “temporary” moratorium on loans and to supply unlimited printing-press currency to the banks without collateral and without regard to their financial condition. (Why not? The stuff they are printing isn’t really money.)

The stunning inflation that will result may then be defused by another delaying tactic, and all the while a steady stream of propaganda will be explaining away these “extraordinary,” “temporary” occurrences, and new controls, rules and restraints will be put into place as rapidly as they can be distributed. All of these will be for “the public good” and against the makers of “obscene profits.”
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You and I are not the cause of inflation and neither is industry or labor. Prices and wages increase to compensate for the dollar’s declining value. Only the issuer of money—in our case, the government—can debase it by issuing so many vouchers (paper dollars) that they become worthless. Goods and services are no more expensive in terms of real money (gold) than they have ever been. They only seem so because our currency is becoming valueless. Don’t be misled by attempts to shift the blame to the “energy crisis,” “big business,” labor unions or the fact that your wife uses imported perfume. The problem is simple, though the solution is not; our government prints increasing amounts of currency and dumps it into the economy by spending, without ever creating a single penny of wealth. That is why the dollar is daily becoming more nearly worthless, — both absolutely and in relation to other, more stable currencies.
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First, let’s all understand the term inflation. It does not mean high or rising prices. Inflation is simply an increase in the money supply without a concomitant and equal increase in the wealth that backs that money supply. It is true that when you print more dollars, the result is usually that prices will increase because each piece of paper that is reputed to be a “dollar” is actually worth less each time the number of them is increased. For example, if you owned a pound of gold and decided to issue ten paper shares in it, each would represent a tenth of a pound of gold. If the local merchants accepted these pieces of paper in payment for goods, a “price” in these shares would be established. If you issued another ten pieces of paper (now each piece is worth only one twentieth of a pound of gold), it wouldn’t be long before prices doubled. It is important that you see the distinction between inflation and high prices because any number of things can cause prices to rise, but only the government can cause inflation because only the government prints money. It isn’t about to stop, and nothing else—short of a war—could possibly prevent an overwhelming economic upheaval from occurring in the fairly near future. Now I hold no particular brief for the oil companies, but their slice of your gasoline dollar is already piddling compared to the portion that goes for taxes. The breakdown goes like this:

Producing country………………………………………………$0.49
Oil company costs (transportation, refining, etc.) … .16
Oil company profits…………………………………………… .04
Local service station gross (before expenses) …. …. .13
Taxes………………………………………………………………. .18

Profits are not obscene. People working to benefit themselves have made this the greatest nation on earth. What we need to worry about is obscene government.

Tappan died in 1980 so all of this stuff is almost thirty years old, but you can see little bits of todays current situation in the paragraphs above. If you can find it posted somewhere, ‘Tappan on Survival’ has some interesting reading regarding his ideas of what sort of economic troubles were brewing. If anyone finds an online link to it, please leave the link in comments for others.