by
JW
Home
Economy
Economy
by
Mat Stein
[NOTE: This article is adapted from When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide for Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival]
What should you do if you are stuck in your car during a killer snowstorm?
In mid-December of 1992, unusually dry conditions had people cancelling their reservations for Christmas in Tahoe, but then the weather changed. A couple days before Christmas, it started snowing, and for the next three months it seemed to barely ever stop! The week between Christmas and New Year's, we averaged two feet of snow each day at our home in Truckee, and at nearby Donner Summit they averaged around four feet a day! The storms were so bad that at one point Highway 80 over Donner Summit was continuously closed for three days.
As the storm increased in intensity, the stream of bumper-to-bumper holiday traffic heading toward Reno moved slower and slower, eventually slowing to a complete stop. The snow kept falling at a rate of more than two inches an hour, burying thousands of stranded vehicles. Highway 80 over Donner Summit had turned into a 75-mile-long parking lot! Emergency vehicles could not get through. Snow plows could not get through. Cars ran out of gas from people idling their engines in attempts to stay warm. It was a three-day process to painstakingly remove each snow-bound car, one by one, along 75 miles of freeway. The restaurants and stores in Truckee ran out of food, and there were no available beds at any of the inns and hotels. Hundreds of stranded travelers slept on their jackets on the local high school's gymnasium floor – and they were the lucky ones compared to those who had been stranded in their cars, out of gas and freezing cold!
Every winter, thousands of people are stranded while driving in the snow. On more than one occasion, I have been overly confident in my abilities to drive in hazardous icy and snow covered roads, forgetting that while I may know how to drive in the snow, that does not mean the other guy does. When driving in winter weather, it is best to heed the old Yankee saying: Hope for the best, but plan for the worst!
Car Survival Tips for a Blizzard
by Mat Stein[NOTE: This article is adapted from When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide for Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival]
What should you do if you are stuck in your car during a killer snowstorm?
In mid-December of 1992, unusually dry conditions had people cancelling their reservations for Christmas in Tahoe, but then the weather changed. A couple days before Christmas, it started snowing, and for the next three months it seemed to barely ever stop! The week between Christmas and New Year's, we averaged two feet of snow each day at our home in Truckee, and at nearby Donner Summit they averaged around four feet a day! The storms were so bad that at one point Highway 80 over Donner Summit was continuously closed for three days.
As the storm increased in intensity, the stream of bumper-to-bumper holiday traffic heading toward Reno moved slower and slower, eventually slowing to a complete stop. The snow kept falling at a rate of more than two inches an hour, burying thousands of stranded vehicles. Highway 80 over Donner Summit had turned into a 75-mile-long parking lot! Emergency vehicles could not get through. Snow plows could not get through. Cars ran out of gas from people idling their engines in attempts to stay warm. It was a three-day process to painstakingly remove each snow-bound car, one by one, along 75 miles of freeway. The restaurants and stores in Truckee ran out of food, and there were no available beds at any of the inns and hotels. Hundreds of stranded travelers slept on their jackets on the local high school's gymnasium floor – and they were the lucky ones compared to those who had been stranded in their cars, out of gas and freezing cold!
Every winter, thousands of people are stranded while driving in the snow. On more than one occasion, I have been overly confident in my abilities to drive in hazardous icy and snow covered roads, forgetting that while I may know how to drive in the snow, that does not mean the other guy does. When driving in winter weather, it is best to heed the old Yankee saying: Hope for the best, but plan for the worst!
by
Adam Taggart
by
Adam Taggart
In this week's Off the Cuff podcast, Chris and Adam discuss:
- A classic symptom of Peak Oil
- The 4 largest oil majors report production declines for 2012
- Rampant insider selling
- The selling-to-buying ratio is at an abnormally high 9-to-1
- Gold's flight to China
- The West-to-East bullion transfer accelerates
- Scarce platinum
- Mine shutdowns and growing demand sends prices higher
- The upcoming Peak Prosperity Seminar at Rowe, MA
- Now's the time for those interested to register
Off the Cuff: Disturbing Data
PREVIEW by Adam TaggartIn this week's Off the Cuff podcast, Chris and Adam discuss:
- A classic symptom of Peak Oil
- The 4 largest oil majors report production declines for 2012
- Rampant insider selling
- The selling-to-buying ratio is at an abnormally high 9-to-1
- Gold's flight to China
- The West-to-East bullion transfer accelerates
- Scarce platinum
- Mine shutdowns and growing demand sends prices higher
- The upcoming Peak Prosperity Seminar at Rowe, MA
- Now's the time for those interested to register
by
JW
by
Chris Martenson
Executive Summary
- The Fed's money-printing actions are simply creating new unsustainable bubbles in certain assets, like stocks
- QE-created huge excess reserves on banks' balance sheets are the rocket fuel that can –and like will – trigger explosive inflation
- The Fed is extremely unlikely to be able to unwind its QE efforts in a controlled way
- Things WILL correct, and when they do, the lack of an exit strategy will result in a massive financial dislocation
- The fundamental case for owning gold
If you have not yet read QE for Dummies, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The Risks of Money Printing & 'Excess Reserves'
The first is that the recipients of all this thin-air money could just sit on it and do nothing. No loans would be made, which means no new deposits would be made, which means the 'miracle' of fractional reserve money multiplication would not happen, which means the economy would not get juiced.
Indeed, that's exactly what has happened. We can detect this in the form of what are called 'excess reserves,' which are dollars that banks now hold that are in excess of what they need to have on hand to satisfy reserve requirements.
There must be a lot of disappointment at the Fed that all of these funds are just piling up there and not doing anything (yet) to supercharge the economy, and so you might wonder why the Fed persists in 'quadrupling down' on a strategy that is not working as intended.
Unfortunately, I don't have a satisfying answer for that, as it mystifies me, too. The only thing that makes sense is that the Fed is essentially just gunning for higher stock and bond prices in the hopes that asset inflation will bolster confidence and insulate large financial institutions from potential losses.
But this brings us to the second risk…
Why You Really, Really Need to Care About the Implications of QE
PREVIEW by Chris MartensonExecutive Summary
- The Fed's money-printing actions are simply creating new unsustainable bubbles in certain assets, like stocks
- QE-created huge excess reserves on banks' balance sheets are the rocket fuel that can –and like will – trigger explosive inflation
- The Fed is extremely unlikely to be able to unwind its QE efforts in a controlled way
- Things WILL correct, and when they do, the lack of an exit strategy will result in a massive financial dislocation
- The fundamental case for owning gold
If you have not yet read QE for Dummies, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The Risks of Money Printing & 'Excess Reserves'
The first is that the recipients of all this thin-air money could just sit on it and do nothing. No loans would be made, which means no new deposits would be made, which means the 'miracle' of fractional reserve money multiplication would not happen, which means the economy would not get juiced.
Indeed, that's exactly what has happened. We can detect this in the form of what are called 'excess reserves,' which are dollars that banks now hold that are in excess of what they need to have on hand to satisfy reserve requirements.
There must be a lot of disappointment at the Fed that all of these funds are just piling up there and not doing anything (yet) to supercharge the economy, and so you might wonder why the Fed persists in 'quadrupling down' on a strategy that is not working as intended.
Unfortunately, I don't have a satisfying answer for that, as it mystifies me, too. The only thing that makes sense is that the Fed is essentially just gunning for higher stock and bond prices in the hopes that asset inflation will bolster confidence and insulate large financial institutions from potential losses.
But this brings us to the second risk…
Total 2946 items
Community
by hgrootveldgmail-com 
Gold Newsletter
Learn more