Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Don, 

Your concerns and conclusions are correct.  But Bush is only the poster boy 
for the problem and not the problem itself.

Many have pointed out the financial house of cards we have been building for 
some time now.  A very large percent of our population expects to use goods 
and services for the rest of their lives without producing any of them - 
those 
on disability, SS, pensions, and those banking on the profits of stock 
portfolios.  The rest of the people in the country have over the past few 
decades 
abandoned doing any work that actually accomplishes anything and instead do 
no 
more than shuffle papers onto and each other's desks yet in real terms they 
are 
much like endowed in that they use real goods and commodities while not 
contributing to their production.   That is, our motor companies are failing 
while 
foreign built vehicles do a thriving business.  Try to find clothing, 
electronics, hardware, tools, etc. which are made in the US.  Now a 
frightening percent 
of our food is of foreign origin.

It is the 'oil only  in USD' schemes that have persuaded the rest of the 
world to send us its oil, its natural resources, its manufactured goods, and 
finally its food .... and for what?  What do we send them?  Our exported 
lifestyle 
and our debt and little else.

When the world calls back in its markers, as Iran is about to do, we are 
screwed.  You've heard the blather that the US has always made good on its 
debt 
and it will now, the Congress won't let it do otherwise.  But if every 
country 
holding US debt dumps it (or even a sizeable percent of it) there is NOTHING 
Congress can do.  Nothing.  Whatever claim any of us have to US dollars 
simply 
won't buy much any more.  Doesn't matter if the Government or a pension plan 
or 
a stock portfolio promises to pay you $XXX, when we aren't making anything 
and other countries no longer extend us credit, it won't buy anything.

Don's right.  It's time to hone homesteading skills because if you put that 
spinach seed in the ground the odds are very much in your favor that you will 
get some spinach to eat.  All other prospects are iffy compared to that.