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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>And anyone who thinks that politicians can fix it are drinking or  
smoking really good stuff.

The US saying that tax revenue can cover the losses incurred by Fan/Fred is 
our mouth making promises our colletive a**es can't keep.  If your 
conversations have been wide ranging, over the past half decade you will have 
heard many 
times that the Congress wouldn't allow entitlements to go south because all 
the 
retiring geezers would not vote for them, or that Congress can't allow 
housing prices to fall precipitously beacuse consumer spending depended on 
it.   
Such a view is as naive as saying Congress will not allow Hurricane Ike to 
make 
landfall because people would be upset if it caused any damage.  

>Bob, the brightest economists in this country are disagreed on how bad  
the bad economy is going to become and they are disagreed on what can  
be done to soften the fall.

If one deducts the cheerleader factor, this isn't quite so true.  One example 
is the housing bubble (which is really behind all this).  When real estate 
"values" began to rise unrealistically in the early part of this decade 
fueled 
by low interest rates and shady loans, most sober economists predicted the 
housing bubble and the current (and continuing) aftermath.  Others, under the 
guise of being economists, such as the economic spokespersons for the NAR, 
kept up 
a tatoo of "bottom is just around the corner", "they ain't makin' any more 
land!", "it's a GREAT time to buy."

It is tempting to look at those and say, "Ah, well you see, the economists 
didn't agree so nobody really knows, do they?"  It wasn't that economists 
didn't 
agree, it was cheerleaders and mouthpieces didn't agree with the economists 
and there was an effort to lump them together as all being experts alike.

For example, the infamous David Lereah wrote (retitled and republished) in 
2006, weeks before the housing bubble burst, "Why the Real Estate Boom will 
not 
Bust".  Many people are currently financially ruined from taking Lereah's 
advice and that of the throughly discredited NAR. But if they had done their 
homework, they'd have known better.  Lereah also published a book in 2000, 
mere 
weeks before the dot.com bust, "The Rules for Growing Rich, Making Money in 
the 
New Information Economy."

I have followed the numbers and "facts" behind the housig bubble, peak oil, 
etc for years now.  Economists, geologists, and others who had a good track 
record in the past have predicted the unfolding of peak oil and the housing 
bubble with eerie, uncanny, down right spooky accuracy. 

I don't lump all the "economists" in the same basket.  I put a great deal of 
credence in those that have been accurate and disragrd the cheerleaders, 
whistlers past the graveyard, and those with their fingers in their ears 
singing 
"la la la, I don't want to hear any bad news."


> Near as I can tell....It would have been a good year  
> to have a garden, next year it will
> even be a better year to have a garden.


At this point I would tend to wax ecclesiastical and say (as ends 
Ecclesiastes) "Let us hear the conclusion of the matter ...."

Having a garden is ALWAYS a good idea.

It is only that now the wisdom of the idea stands out starkly.

Having debt is ALWAYS a bad idea.

So the advice has been from the clay tables of ancient Sumer to Shakespeare 
('neither borrower nor lender be') to the present and it has always been the 
best advice.  The problem came in the 'irrational exuberance' of the early 
part 
of this decade when some became convinced that having debt was a GOOD idea.  
After all, if you owned a $50K house that was rising in value 20% a year, you 
were only "making" $10K.  But if you borrowed $200K for a bigger house, you 
would be "making" $40K a year.  A no brainer, eh?

But some of us took the long view of history and realized that raising a 
garden is always a good idea.  The benefits of it never change.  Or if they 
made 
the movie about the Casablanca Homstead what you'd hear from Rick's American 
Organic Garden would be:

"Just remember, Bud,
 A spud is still a spud,
 A bean is still a bean,
 As time has seen."

(Grow it again, Sam.)


Likewise debt is always a bad idea.  But some people have to go into debt to 
have a farm, you say?  A pity, that.  True, but a pit, not a good thing.  And 
some people can't have a garden.  That's a pity too.  A bad thing.   </HTML>