Preparedness for when

nuatha

thriftwizard wrote: »

Can anyone enlighten me as to what's going on in the world of high finance, please? Has disaster been averted? Or are the world's shares sliding gracefully into a bottomless pit? The "Chinese crisis" seems to have virtually vanished from the BBC and other mainstream news sources that I check; is it actually over, or have they just decided it's not news any more?

The IMF issued a warning today that the continuing problems with the Chinese economy will have a greater impact on other economies than was expected. Commodity prices are falling (oil and copper were cited).
As per usual its not news anymore - nothing has changed. Though today's news is about the Chinese military and a old style soviet like military parade.

Frugalsod

nuatha wrote: »

The IMF issued a warning today that the continuing problems with the Chinese economy will have a greater impact on other economies than was expected. Commodity prices are falling (oil and copper were cited).
As per usual its not news anymore - nothing has changed. Though today's news is about the Chinese military and a old style soviet like military parade.

Like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NNOrp_83RU

GreyQueen

I grow veg because I like doing it. I learned veggie gardening from my Dad and Grandad, good ole English peasant stock, farmers and smallholders. Well, no one in the family has had a farm since being wiped out in the agri depressions of the 1920s, but the smallholdings went on long after that.

Contrary to the opinion some of you may have of me, I don't spend a humungous amount of time on the lottie. In the last 1.5 weeks it was precisely 15 mins, a flying visit to deposit compostables and pick onions. I will be up there at some point in the next few days, fitting it around other things, if it ever blinking stops raining.

Veggie gardening can take relatively small amounts of time and effort, but it does have to be consistant effort, fluctuating with the seasons, and it means you have to be of a practical and disciplined nature. All of which I regard as useful qualities to develop and which have practical carry-over into other parts of your life.

I really like chickens, and would love to have some, but it's not feasible how my life is now. But I love hearing about other people's chooks.

Re financial crises, there isn't usually one big bang, more a series of interlinked crises, with one building on the woes of the others. I think it's barely started atm, but we shall see. You often need several years' hindsight to see what exactly went on in the times you were living in.

1Tonsil

The CERN facilities are deep beneath the earth. At the moment they are running at massive levels of power,and they are dumping that power deep into the earth. There are signs that it is affecting the earths core and shield and Nasa are recording the signs and trying to figure out if they are dangerous as we have never seen them before.

JKO

This is not a joke. We are in great danger from it. If you need to have that danger spelled out for you...go to you tube to watch the warnings of Stephen Hawking and Doctor Haiku of messing with things we have no science for. There is a lot of rubbish on there as well, about time travel and the gates of hell, ignore that!

It sounded like you were making fun of me about hearing it. I really dont care if you believe me or not, I just wanted others to realise there may be a massive threat that they are unaware of because nothing is on the BBC or Sky news.

moneyistooshorttomention

TTonsil

Guess this must be where you've found Stephen Hawking talking about Cern?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4STWeUE7Do

I must watch that to see what he has to say - but, if its good enough for Stephen Hawking its good enough for me and I'll take his word for it - as his brain is in a "different league" to most of ours.

Can I check that I have the basic gist of what you are saying about this as the translation boils down to "Cern could well cause The End and that's that - ie by blowing our planet apart"?

The second question being;

If so - would it be instant - as I assume? That is one minute I would be sitting here typing at my computer, for instance, and literally the next minute thinking 'Oh....I seem to be dead...I'm in that Tunnel of Light I expect en route to the Harps on Clouds scenario'.

Or do you think The End would be more prolonged than that and we would have an interim period of some length or other (even if only hours long) where we would see disintegrating Planet/our own bodies being ill and in pain whilst we waited for it to be over (ie and get through to the safety of "Harps on Clouds" afterwards)?

Or I could put it as "Would there be a Hell on Earth scenario of disintegration temporarily or would we all instantly emigrate to Higher Parts?" The first scenario would scare the wits out of me. The second one would have me personally heading out for the celebratory champagne - though I know that may be just my personal view of things.

mardatha

But we can't do anything about things like that Tonsils, that or super volcanoes or asteriods etc. I need to plan for more practical things, anything else I just leave in the box

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

Re financial crises, there isn't usually one big bang, more a series of interlinked crises, with one building on the woes of the others. I think it's barely started atm, but we shall see. You often need several years' hindsight to see what exactly went on in the times you were living in.

I think it has a long way to run. We have a demographic cliff in terms of baby boomers getting to that age where they no longer spend but save and as they retire effectively run down those savings. So they are saving more. In fact because of property bubbles they are retiring in debt.

On top of that we have a massive credit bubble which has inflated the assets of the very rich to even higher levels but without any help to the rest of the economy. So that eventually has to pop. It cannot grow any further as the current debts are so large that there is a huge drag on any manufacturing production caused by all the interest payments. It has also with government policy loaded up the coming generations with debt before they even get on the inflated property ladder so their odds of owning their own home are minimal so they are not in a position to create households and so spend on things that families use. This is suppressing demand.

In the US you have the additional problem that big businesses have borrowed huge sums to simply back their own shares because they have few investment options as the economy is so bad and so they buy back shares to boost company performance that results in higher director pay outs instead. Eventually this policy actually hollows out the company by loading it up with so much debt that it collapses.

Then you have the average person paying a higher burden of taxes because they have been switched from incomes to consumption. This massively benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. This is compounded when capital gains taxes are an additional tax break that the average person does not get, and is taxed at a lower rate than income yet for many billionaires this is their sole source of income.

Until then watch for more and more empty shops and struggling businesses everywhere. Until the average person gets a break through higher wages then the economy will stagnate and you will hear politicians and economists wondering why the economy is not growing faster or more strongly, and the reason they will not grow is anti trade union laws which have stagnated US wages at 1979 levels ever since and UK wages since 2003.

Then look at Japan it has been stagnating for more than 25 years and the US and the UK and Europe are following the same identical policy. So do not expect any real improvements for several decades unless you change government. China is in a slightly different position. It has all the same failed economic strategy as the US as many of its economists were trained in Harvard and Chicago and so it has the same endemic faults. It has the advantage of a manufacturing bases and a trade surplus for now but unless it reforms it will collapse and will probably try and maintain those bubbles to keep power. The problem is that it atrophies business creation as start up costs are too high.

The Austrian economists are right on the business cycle and on a small scale but when they scale up the models they are a massive failure. So if you see or hear comments about bad Keynesian policies remember that Keynesians were replaced by Monetarists in the 1980's by Thatcher and after the failure of Monetarism in the late 1980's they morphed into the Neo Classical economists that run policy now. What we have now are corrupt politicians bailing out banks who are big political donors and that is all it is corruption not Keynesian failed policies.

All of these problems were started by the Thatcher-Reagan reforms and have been continued by New Labour so the rich will continue to get rich and the rest of us will continue to get poor until there is a change either of policy or of government either democratically or by revolt.

DawnW

GreyQueen wrote: »

I grow veg because I like doing it. I learned veggie gardening from my Dad and Grandad, good ole English peasant stock, farmers and smallholders. Well, no one in the family has had a farm since being wiped out in the agri depressions of the 1920s, but the smallholdings went on long after that.

Same here GQ. I live in a terraced house with a small garden, and grow as much in the way of fruit and beg as I can, because I like doing it, and have done it since I was a teenager. We used to have access to a lot more land. Much now necessarily has to be grown in pots, and watering takes up a fair amount of time in dry weather - the stuff in the raised beds can fend for itself most of the time. Currently what is taking up most time is harvesting and preserving. The French bean mountain is coming to an end, and now we are on to tomatoes. The freezers are full, so the dehydrator is coming out this afternoon, I will buy cheap olive oil from Lidls and have jars of 'sundried' tomatoes in olive oil for the winter. I have already frozen lots of tubs of roasted tomato sauce. And of course there are lots of tomatoes to just eat as they are. This is from 6 plants of bush cherry tomatoes (variety Garden Pearl) grown in pots. Having limited space, I find it best to concentrate on high quality, expensive items which I probably would be unable to buy otherwise.

I keep chickens in my little garden (only 3) who provide eggs and compost for the garden, and eat much of the vegetable waste.

1Tonsil

I think the second scenario is most likely..that we see signs we do not understand, that we ignore then and carry on with the experimenting with things we have no knowledge of....then one day some kind of knock on effect starts and we have no way of stopping it. I dont think the earth will be blown up or disintegrate at all. I think there maybe more earth movement, volcanoes going up and the changes to the electro magnetic shield will allow more solar flares and space weather to hit us. It could also alter the magnetic north and south of the earth and affect things adversely.

I do not worry about it but I do like to be well informed as to what is going on in the world. Especially with things that will not get mentioned on the Beeb or sky news unless not much is happening that day.:D

Living in Greece, I think we are in much more immediate danger from the chaotic politics, the migrant invasion and the chance of all the banks collapsing suddenly. I have prepared for these events in the best way I can, which leaves me ready for things like storms and earth quakes that we get all the time.:eek:

I am actually an optimist and do not worry about the future. I will survive one way or another, as I have before. But on a world wide disaster scale, it would take some coping with!

1Tonsil

DawnW wrote: »

Same here GQ. I live in a terraced house with a small garden, and grow as much in the way of fruit and beg as I can, because I like doing it, and have done it since I was a teenager. We used to have access to a lot more land. Much now necessarily has to be grown in pots, and watering takes up a fair amount of time in dry weather - the stuff in the raised beds can fend for itself most of the time. Currently what is taking up most time is harvesting and preserving. The French bean mountain is coming to an end, and now we are on to tomatoes. The freezers are full, so the dehydrator is coming out this afternoon, I will buy cheap olive oil from Lidls and have jars of 'sundried' tomatoes in olive oil for the winter. I have already frozen lots of tubs of roasted tomato sauce. And of course there are lots of tomatoes to just eat as they are. This is from 6 plants of bush cherry tomatoes (variety Garden Pearl) grown in pots. Having limited space, I find it best to concentrate on high quality, expensive items which I probably would be unable to buy otherwise.

I keep chickens in my little garden (only 3) who provide eggs and compost for the garden, and eat much of the vegetable waste.

If you decant some of the olive oil into smaller bottles, or reused jars, you can make your own flavoured oil. I make rosemary and basil infused oil, oil with chillies, oil with cinnamon and oil with garlic. Its a great way of making them as they are expensive in the shops. You can also make a pan spray by adding some to a garden hand spray which can be bought cheap. Keep it on the side so it stays warm enough to spray. You can also freeze olive oil to make a very nice spread. It can be used straight from the freezer, but remember to put it back in so it stays solid.