how to eat wheat

This is article two of two posted this evening.  Please read the article "blog reformat" for important information ( okay, important to me ).

HOW TO EAT WHEAT BOOK

Here is your practical concise guide on how to eat wheat.  Not just the obvious way of throwing berries into the grinder and making flour and then bread or pancakes, but all the various  ways and means of preparing to give you so much variety you will never look at other sad and pathetic grains with anything other than sneering displeasure.  Wheat is the staff of life.  It is your every meal base calories, it is affordable, it stores literally forever and it just tastes good ( if you have been a life long white flour eater, you won’t believe how much better whole wheat tastes.  Slowly introduce whole into your white flour recipes, adding more each time.  After you get used to the different taste you’ll crave whole and eat a lot less white.  No need to give up white bread, in some things like pasta or French bread white tastes so much better.  But you will probably find you enjoy whole wheat in a LOT of dishes ).  Most of this information comes from two invaluable books, “Live On Wheat” by John Hill and “Passport To Survival” by Esther Dickey.  “Passport” is almost forty years old and the new edition is going for insane prices, but they printed a LOT of the older ones and you should find reasonably priced copies.  I’d highly recommend both for your library.

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SPROUTING

Sprouting wheat will not only keep you alive, as plain flour after a time will kill you from lack of vitamins and other nutrients only produce provides, it can also eliminate less severe allergies you might have from eating wheat.  If someone thinks they can’t eat wheat, try them on a few sprouts.  Sprouts don’t grind well in a grain grinder.  All that moisture will probably rust out the thing unless you are coating the parts with oil ( and you can ONLY use a metal burr grinder, not a stone one ).  A meat grinder works well for grinding sprouts, or you just cook it into other dishes without grinding.  You can dry the sprouts and then grind it, but while you’ve gained the sugars you’ve lost a lot of the vitamins.  If you are living on wheat, sprouting must be a daily part of that diet.  You can sprout a little and choke them down, or throw them into a low temperature bread ( call Essence Bread-covered right after this ).  Or, just use sprouted wheat in recipes calling for wheat flour.  You kill some of the vitamins but not all.  Either way, eat your sprouts!

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HOW TO SPROUT

Soak your wheat berries in water overnight.  Drain and place in a sprouting jar.  The near universal one is a glass Mason canning jar.  Now you need a breathable lid.  I hate cheese cloth, myself, and prefer a screen, or you can use a pair of nylons, but whichever. Your sprouts need to breath.  Now you need to rinse them three or four times a day.  Placing the jar on its side seems to work better.  Once they are from an eighth to a quarter inch long, and taste sweet, they are done.  That usually takes from two to four days depending on temperature, which, if too low needs to be increased.  If you need to, place jars of hot water alongside the sprout jars in an insulated container.  You don’t want sunlight for spouting.  And that is about how easy it is.  It is so easy that if you don’t sprout you are kind of a moron.  You shouldn’t even be stocking wheat to try to survive.  Anyway, once you get your sprouts you’ll be eating them as raw as possible every day.  They alone are probably lacking in ALL the nutrients you need but they are a damn Skippy close enough effort you need to make anyway.

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ESSENCE BREAD

This is an easy bread that uses low temperatures to retain almost all the fresh sprout vitamins.  Take your sprouts and grind into a paste ( you don‘t have to put them through a grain grinder, just mash them up ).  Wet your hands and kneed to remove air pockets and then shape into very thin circular loaves.  The ancient method was to place in the sun all day, turning the loaf over at noon ( start at sunrise, done at sunset ).  To use an oven, grease a cookie sheet and cook on low 180-200 for around two hours.  Press on the bottom and if it springs back it is done.  They come out soft and gooey but will firm up on cooling.  You can experiment with a solar oven but I would imagine you need to do so WITHOUT the reflectors or it will get too hot.  You can also make regular bread this way.  Just add a one to five ratio of flour to spout paste, a sweetener and yeast and bake at 300 for 45 minutes, after you’ve prepared as in normal bread.  Adding dried fruit would change the taste of the sprouts.

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For sprouted sourdough bread, the ratio is one to four, flour to wheat sprouts, with one of sourdough starter ( covered later ), the time and temp baking the same as sprout bread.  For biscuits, two sprouts to one and a half flour.  Add one teaspoon baking powder for each one sprouts or flour, a smidge of salt and about one half tablespoon oil or butter per cup of sprout or flour.  Make dough balls and put on a sheet and bake 15 minutes at 400.  For sprouted pancakes, one and a quarter flour to one sprouts to one liquid, baking powder and sweetener and cook as a regular pancake.  For a hot spouted gruel ( think Cream Of Wheat ), take your spouted wheat kernels and add sweetener and a pinch of salt, amount of milk to taste and boil for a few minutes until soft.  Anything you can make with flour you can make with spouted wheat.  Just remember to include some fresh uncooked sprouts in your daily diet, or as much as possible.  If your body begins to crave fresh vegetables the taste of sprouts suddenly ceases to be an issue ( until your body no longer needs it and then they go back to tasting nasty, if that was the case at the beginning ).  Otherwise just keep putting a good portion of sprouts in to be cooked recipes.  The takeaway here is that you can sprout not only for health but to reduce the amount of fuel needed to make a bread.  The hot desert sun was all that was needed, even without modern solar oven materials ( that just helps ).  That is a nice Fun Filled Fact.  Continued.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

blog reformat

This is article one of two this evening.

BLOG REFORMAT

Okay, here we go reformatting the blog.  Nothing bad, just better things.  I’m doubling the amount of posts every day.  That is it, nothing bizarre.  Now you get one at 7am and 7pm, Pacific Time.  Why, you ask, as you recall all the times I’ve whined and complained about running out of article ideas?  Because I’m writing three hours a day and nobody is reading two of them.  If I publish a book and I get five readers, out of my 750-1,000 regulars, I’ve toiled away for absolutely zero reason.  And a whopping $2 for twenty hours of labor.  Even I’m not so foolish as to think that is a good return on investment.  I’m already publishing over two posts a day, it is just that they aren’t read.  I’m as egotistical as any writer you’ll ever find out there.  I need my rantings, tirades, blatherings and babblings to be appreciated. 

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I thought my shamings would compel a few of you to buy my monthly books but nobody has responded outside a very few.  I thought my pleadings would compel a few to make donations, but only the regulars did so.  So I’m taking this step.  I’m going to double your reading material, after I already jacked it up 40%, in order to deliver before you respond.  I’m saying, in effect, here is your book, on credit, now send me my money.  Because now you are getting a novel size book every month, but full of much better entertainment and hopefully some important teachings.  A friggin buck a month is all I’m asking for, of all but those without any income. 

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Amazon purchase commissions are down 30% on the same sales, as the commission rates was slashed.  I’ve already seen Amazon sales drastically falling over the last decade as it is, and now those that remain are paying less ( prior to the 2009 I was seeing $300 a month Amazon and $100 a month Google ad revenue, but less folks are buying [ my Google income went from $100 a month to that in a year ] ).  2015 I was seeing Amazon commissions at an average monthly $220, and in 2016 they were closer to $180.  If I still see the same sales, I’ll only get $120 a month now.  Amazon commissions paid me for ten years.  All that writing you got from me was free, all you had to do was buy what you normally bought through my blog page link.  But now even as the commission rates shrinks so are the total gross sales as less folks can buy from Amazon as incomes shrink. 

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I’m looking at $100 a month wages here.  How can anyone live off of that?  I’m not asking for any unreasonable amount.  I’m happy at $200 a month, total.  $300 a month I’d be rolling in clover.  So, I’m asking for you to pledge on Patreon, or setting up a PayPal monthly donation.  A buck a month.  For a book worth of blog posts a month.  Not two short articles a week like Kunstler, or one a week like Orlov.  Two long articles a DAY.  About one and half cents an article.  For my regulars who’ve already sent $5, or $10 or $20 or more, I expect NOTHING from you.  You’ve already been more than generous.  Wait before you donate again.  Please.  I’d feel like a dingus taking more right now.  The rest of you have no excuse.  Pay a very reasonable amount for so much more than what you were getting.

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I’ll probably still put out a book a month, it will just be from the blog, already posted.  It is just a way to pay if you don’t want to pledge.  Remember, you can mail me a buck with your e-mail address if you don’t buy through Amazon, or buy the CD through the mail.  There is a way to pay for everyone.  Don’t be a typical free rider.  If you return here, pay a buck a month. 

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

derivatives 2

DERIVATIVES ARE GROSS 2

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note: LMDO! My former workplace just cut hours 40%!  Ah, how sweet to savor!
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note: very important.  Come on back at 7 PM.  I'll be posting two articles a day now, one in the morning and one in the evening.  You East Coasters can now have something to read with your coffee before work.  I'll yammer on incessantly for my reasoning and motivations soon.  Full length articles both times, my usual 1k words. 
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The gross derivatives amount in existence to date has been estimated at between 800 and 1,200 TRILLION dollars.  I don’t know what they call that were you come from, but to me one and a quarter QUADRILLION dollars is a fair bit to the right of Bat Crap Crazy.  Or would that be to the left?  Anyway, since the bankers have gamed the system for these kinds of “investments” or “insurance” ( to call these derivative scams insurance policies is akin to calling your $300 a month with a $5,000 deductible while on minimum wage medical, pharmaceutical and banker industry bail-out tax an insurance policy ), and love them so and continue to put the global economy at risk by playing this game, we can bet that rather than being far more cautious than the last time the odds are fair to assume instead they would actually gamble in a fair more exponentially hazardous manner as has been the case all along these last thirty years.  If for no other reason than there are less assets to bet, and so the ratio assets to exposure must increase.

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So if we take the last exposure ratios of 300 to 1 that both LTCM in the late ‘90’s and the Too Big To Fail banks in the late ‘00’s employed, and we take the lower number of total gross derivative instruments guess-ti-mated to be out there, in theory around two and a half trillion, give or take a large African nation Gross National Product amount, is the assets bet that are in danger.  No big deal, right?  The Fed can create that out of thin air and it isn’t but the equal amount of the yearly budget deficit.  Well, that doesn’t sound so bad, right?  If you accept the fiction that net derivatives are all that matter, but how could it?  Because the derivatives markets are not regulated ( exactly how the banks and investment houses and the insurance companies want it, and paid the politicians to make it so ), nobody knows how many derivatives bets are out there.  If you don’t know the risk, how can you arbitrage against it?  You are pretending every bet has a counter-bet and no one is in danger of defaulting because the government will bail everyone out.  But that is playing a game of chess.

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The derivatives markets are actually a 3-D game of chess, with twice the squares and pieces.  Try to stay with me here.  If a bank makes a bet and then buys a counter-bet to insure the first bet, everything equals out.  But if the counter-bet is counter-bet with a bet and then that bet is insured by buying another bet from a fifth bank that buys a counter-bet from a sixth bank who buys a counter-bet from another, and no one knows how many previous bets there are except their once removed bet, you can’t insist that only the net derivative is important.  The entire gross amount is dependent on the one initial bet.  Let us say that Goldman Saks buys a $1 billion swap from Citibank.  Goldman agrees to pay an overnight interest rate on a currency in exchange for a fixed five year Treasury interest rate.  The spread between the two is the profit.  To protect itself from market uncertainties ( the markets are rigged, obviously, and have been since Reagan authorized the Plunge Protection Team, an aboveboard and well known move that has nothing to do with conspiracy theories, but only to a certain degree ), another swap is necessary.

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Goldman goes to BofA and buys a reverse of the first, it buys the Treasury two year and receives the overnight rate ( all this crap is barely understandable, but if you look at it from the old style buying long or short you can approximate ).  This means the bet has actually doubled to $2 billion even though the claim is made that the two cancel each other out.  The reason is that Citibank took out a $1 billion bet to counter the risk of the Goldman bet with Bank D and Bank D took out a counter-bet at Bank E, which took out a bet with F to cover their ass betting with E.  But F has no idea that E is covering a bet with D, they only know that E is the ORIGINAL party seeking a bet, because of the lack of transparency.  Nobody is checking anybody else’s books.  Meanwhile, BofA is doing the same thing, going to Bank G to cover their bet with Goldman, and Bank G goes to H to insure itself against the insurance with BofA, and then H goes I who goes to J, and J thinks I is the original party bettor and has no friggin clue that by this time there are tens of billions of dollars in bets circulating on the instrument they thought they were insuring for $1 billion.

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That is how the system sees a single spark threaten to burn down the whole forest.  Which covers the continent.  There isn’t pennies on the dollar covering this market.  There are pennies on the thousand dollars.  And no one trader that is working for these Too Big To Fail banks has any incentive to do anything but embrace as much risk as he thinks he can get away with, to maximize profits.  Which are increasingly made up on playing about with matches alone since real economic activity has been falling with the net energy supply.  You look and see waves of retail store closings, it doesn’t mean Amazon took all their business ( sure, Amazon cut their incentives to get extra sales because they are doing so well on their own ) but rather that customers have less money to buy.  Why?  If they aren’t being cut in their hours it is because mandatory health care costs have doubled or quadrupled.  And who gets those profits from the medical industry?  Are there even any?  Or is it all being desperately sucked in to patch the sinking financial ship?  More bets to make more returns, more fixes for the last derivatives implosion? 

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I understand that it is embarrassing to admit you panicked and nothing happened last time.  But assuming the worst and moving in an extremely paranoid manner is not panicking.  It is being prudent.  I think it is prudent to assume the entire teetering financial sector is Too Big To Save next time.  Not without sacrificing you to save them.  You are actually making that bet by continuing with Business As Usual.  Continued and concluded next time.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there
 

derivatives

DERIVATIVES ARE GROSS

The information in this article comes from a book I got at the library, “The Road To Ruin” by James Rickards.  I don’t really recommend any of his books, as they are a bit on the irritating side.  All “One World Government” and financial celebrity name dropping and a lot of repetition needing to be skipped over.  Don’t get me wrong, you could do worse things with your money, as he does cover a LOT of interesting items  seen few other places.  I just have my reservations.  Get a library copy before you buy any, to make up your own mind.  I did that in reverse because I’m bullheaded and such.  This article is about derivatives, as his reasoning and background information is quite good and I wished to pass it on ( any failure to translate properly is mine alone-the source material is impeccable ), but before we go there, a bit of his history on the cascading failing of complex systems is also worth sharing.  It is worth it as it has a lot more relevance to our current situation than the oft used Roman or Mayan collapse sprouted about by the legions of Uber Slow Collapsers. 

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From a 1300 BC wreck it was determined that the Bronze Age civilizations were engaged in “international” trade.  An area of some 16 million square miles, from the Baltic Sea to Sudan and from the Indus river to Spain was involved.  These were multiple civilizations.  The Hittites, Egyptians, Mycenaens and Mesopotamians.  For whatever reason still undetermined, a cascade failure caused all these kingdoms and empires to collapse ( most likely climate change, probably drought in an area mostly hydraulically challenged to begin with ).  All the issues that cause problems were exasperated by the change and the proverbial Perfect Storm gathered.  It is never one thing that causes collapse, but many.  Here is the important part.  It only took about fifty years for the collapse to play out, and that was followed by 300 years of Dark Age, only ending with Athens and Rome rising to power.  This was anything but a slow collapse.  Of course the fifty years is approximate and just because we’ve been in decline the same amount of time doesn’t mean our time is up based on this example ( although, for other reasons… ).  It just means not all civilizations get centuries to collapse like Rome did.  And it does mean that Dark Ages are part of the collapse process.

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Another divergent path the author took was examining the family fortunes of some pretty low key Europeans which lasted seven or nine hundred years ( in the books section on preserving wealth ).  It is rare to find an American family that keeps its wealth for much more than one century, so nine of them is pretty amazing.  You have to withstand empires crashing, Black Plagues wiping out half of the population ( the 25% cited statistics do not account for the initial 70-90% mortality as they average the rates over fifty years.  The last years of the plague only took 10-20% of the population, owning to immunity, so the Plague should really be feared far more than it is lead to believe ), communist purges, famines and invasions and all the rest.  The formula for parking wealth, outside of your income stream investments, is a third gold, a third art and a third land.  Obviously this is an elite level investment strategy not easily duplicated by any middle class folk, but it does highlight portable wealth  alongside food production as time tested investments.

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Okay, enough of that.  Let’s look at the history of derivatives ( the history begins with the Orange County collapse and the late ’80’s Black Monday, but those where just warm-ups to the following ).  Solomon Brothers almost went bankrupt in ’91, the result of getting caught in their attempt to illegally corner the market on Treasury bonds.  They used the standard derivatives complex trading strategies ( best left undetailed as there is a bunch of arbitrage and counter bets and shorts and longs and carry trades and then it just really gets complicated from there ) already introduced in the last five plus years.  Well, long story short as part of the plan to contain the mess the CEO Meriwether was forced to resign.  Then, like an ex-wife or a bad penny he reappeared a few years later leading LTCM, those of the Russian Debt Default fame ( for those who hate finances as much as algebra, most of you, I’m sure you didn’t follow these events.  No matter, as the details aren’t important ).

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LTCM was really the first true global meltdown scare.  The others were just pre-game warm-ups.  The scary part to keep in mind was that these rocket scientists pretend to be smart and edu-macated but are really at base just greedy whores without the street sense of an illegal bookie.  They leveraged their financial bets at 300 to 1.  Let’s put that into prospective.  If I have thirty five cents in assets, and have pledged that as collateral in multiple bets adding up to $100, if 36 cents in bets goes bad the whole $100 is in danger.  These are moronic levels of leverage.  So, LTCM thought they were smarter than the average bear, made these insane levels of bets in the derivatives market, and then acted all surprised and butt hurt when those sneaky commie bastards said, hey, western oligarchies, suck my junk, you can shove those post-collapse loans up your ass.  As you may or may not have finally come to realize, I am no fan of central banks and their thievery and was rooting for the Russians. 

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Now, keep in mind that the one company just described was almost responsible for a global financial crash.  No big deal, right?  We had just gone through the Asian Flu financial meltdown and other than all those pesky little Ornamentals losing their life savings, the Very Important People over in American weren’t really affected by and large ( not that we noticed, even if behind the scenes there was the Tech Wreck issue and the Y2K issue which might have been an Intelligence Industry false flag which might have targeted older systems for these financial shenanigans while the new, supposedly upgraded for Y2K systems weren’t as hackable, although I freely admit that scenario might be way too Tinfoil Hat ).  But the takeaway point is that every Fix And Fail event just gets bigger and bigger, the contagion harder and harder to stop.  Orange County to Stock Market crash to Solomon Brothers to LTCM to the 2008 crash.  Each was exponentially larger than the last.  Because nobody in power is remotely interested in stopping this immensely profitable money machine.  They just go back to Doubling Down On Derivatives.  And why stop?  There is literally no other way to make money financially anymore, as real economic activity has pretty much stopped.

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Tomorrow, we finally cover the meat of this article, the danger of gross derivatives exposure as opposed to net.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

definition of insanity

DEFINITION OF INSANITY

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HT in OZ, got your PayPal donation.  Many thanks, bro!
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First Patreon pledge-$5 a month.  I feel like a diabetic kid in a candy store! Thanks!
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I think the saying “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results” was attributed to Albert Einstein, but it could have been another notable.  The same thing can be said as “when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging”.  And failing empires or civilizations are notorious for violating this simple rule.  Rather than look back at obvious examples such as the Mayans or the Romans depleting their soil faster and faster to counter population growth and military decline, look at our present day with our Industrial/Petroleum Agriculture.  Overly optimistic prophets of the Happy Future think because there is slight growth in organic farming we can all live happily ever after.  But organic growth is driven by market demand which is driven by economic surplus and in a lot of cases organics aren’t even all that much organic other than by lawyer weasel wording and in 99% of the case they are mechanized farming and long distance hauling, so they are for all intents and purposes unsustainable.

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And even if we all went Victory Garden and had the skills and time and space to grow our own stuff, which we don’t ( who is going to VG for the 8 million people in NYC? ) it would be salad produce with only a marginal amount of potatoes and eggs in a best case scenario.  Most calories are missing, back there in Iowa in the corn fields.  Most of our grocery spending is at restaurants, which means most of our calorie production is centralized in the Midwest AND most of the storage and processing and serving is centralized also.  With 333 million legal and illegal citizens to feed, we MUST stay centralized all up and down the supply chain.  We need the military to guard the shipping lanes to allow the ships to bring us our oil, from countries we occupy or lurk near with the threat of occupation, and we need oil to equip our military, from the Military Industrial Complex because colonizing the world takes a lot of ordinance, all powered by a central bank that needs a national economy to support it, and an economy that must perform enough activity to require loans that need interest to support the bank, and all THAT is required before you even can build equipment to farm, or ship fuel to farms, or import artificial fertilizers for the farms or ship and store and process and then ship once again to retail stops all the food.  At what point in this tangled web can you go from centralization to decentralized, non-petroleum, organic permaculture?  Without starving those millions for the transition period?

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That is one example of why we can’t go from centralization, petroleum addiction, heavy handed political masters to anything approaching sanity and sustainability.  The system only works the way it is already set up, and yet it is clearly failing doing things the way it was set up, so what choice do you have but to keep digging in your hole?  For a hundred years the solution to any and every single problem was to apply petroleum to it for an answer.  And obviously, to apply petroleum you had to keep centralizing ( the same worked with coal until the primacy of oil.  The fact that China is trying to reconstruct a global empire on mostly coal doesn’t speak for its feasibility but of its desperate nature ) because to control the oil you needed the oil only sized institutions that enabled you to do so.  It is a Catch-22 like needing money to make money.  Like all things that start good and turn horridly putrid, wasting oil at first was a very good thing.  It allowed a waste product to replace what was dear, from fertilizer to human labor.

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But it didn’t take long to become an addiction and once the drug became scarce, a death warrant.  But at the start, it was an intelligent addiction.  The robber barons needed to invest all that coal wealth into other investments after the coal powered everything market was saturated, and oil was so much superior in every way, from compact BTU ratios to extraction ease to ( relatively ) clean burning that our entire economy went through a sort of extra wealth the Hollywood industry gets when going from VHS tapes to DVD’s.  Everything old is destroyed and everything new and improved is a whole second set of profits, plus a whole lot extra ( going to DVD’s also generated digital content for TV and Internet viewing, for instance.  Or, coal fired locomotives replaced by diesel pushers lead to more freight ).  The central bank needed wars to generate demand.  The military needed to become a colonizing force once again after demobilizing from the South’s Reconstruction fiasco.

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Tremendous profits were realized from switching our entire nation over to oil use ( the CCC might have kept potential dissidents from rebelling but you know the corporations made lots of coin off public spending projects.  How many millions in profits per drowned in cement worker at the Hoover dam, do you think? ) and that did include most of the population sharing in some of the profits, at least those who survived the wars of colonialization  ( although their families did profit off of their deaths- the term “bought the farm” meaning “to die”  was used when life insurance policies from military personnel dying were used by the parents to pay off the mortgage on the family farm.  He bought the farm for his parents ).  Who was there to oppose such an orgy of resource extraction and dependence?  Nary a soul I would wager, until after it was a done deal.  But once the system was installed, More Of The Same was the only solution for any problems because the existing system, Plan A, was the only possible plan. 

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Running out of metal ore?  Use more oil extracting less productive ores.  Except every year we need more energy to extract less ore.  Running out of crap metal?  Use oil derived plastics.  If the parts break because they are plastic, use more plastic on replacements.  Running out of plastic?  Use oil to recycle plastic ( never mind no one recycles ).  Roads crowded?  Build more, wider.  Then they fill up faster because we need more immigrants to buy more cars, so build even more roads.  Running out of affordable gas for all those cars?  Build an entire new fleet of lighter cars, with oil of course.  Then keep replacing the entire fleet quicker and quicker as the cars become disposable when nobody can afford to replace the plastic on the car under the cost of another car ( or at least its equity ).  Can’t afford an Industrial Army?  Use lots of oil to replace with technology, which then uses less oil, until it doesn’t because we sent our high tech overseas and now must ship it home then ship it to war, but now the high tech doesn’t work at all because we went way past the point of diminishing returns.  And etc.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

oil collapse 2

OIL COLLAPSE 2

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note: the BBB no.11 is now available. 
“Barter Town” ( 18 pages ) the many issues with survival bartering. ( was posted to this blog )
“How To Eat Wheat” ( 18 pages ) how to prepare your favorite storage food, plus purchase and storage. ( first half the different ways of using wheat, with or without a grinder )
“PODA Living” ( 32 pages ) a small scale anthological look at daily life ten years after PODA.
click here
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note: you'll notice over on the right I've listed my "Patreon" page.  I'm not going to argue with HOW you donate to me.  Cash in the mail, buying a monthly book, PayPal, Amazon purchases.  I love you all for your support.  Patreon is just another option if you prefer to give monthly rather than yearly.  Thank you!
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note: J N Morgan is doing another single day of some free books ( Living Amongst The Dead, etc ) if you didn't already take advantage. click here
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Yesterday we talked about the PetroDollar standard and how it was been failing.  We invaded Iraq to preserve it, and that was all fine and dandy as it bought everyone a half decade of swilling at the trough of a real estate bubble surpluses, but now we have no more middle class home assets allowing them to be good little consumers which has killed the global economy and we are still wasting money occupying the place.  We didn’t have a choice, you kick the can down the road when you have to, but if all those unintended consequences flowed from preventing the collapse of the PetroDollar, can you image what is going to happen when the standard completely collapses?  Good times, buddy!  It will make your pulp novel macho men MRE eating mall ninja men’s adventure series tales seem rather quant and optimistic. 

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Anyway, everyone wants to think gold or presidential elections or fracking oil or whatever ( notice how we went from the hydrogen economy to the corn alcohol economy and now the fracking economy, each “when England ran out of trees they found coal” fairy tale meant to sooth our jangled nerves over the end of Happy Motoring, and now nothing else seems to be taking frackings place even as it is obviously failing.  Now even propaganda seems to be beyond their abilities ) will save our economic slide but I believe that since the economic contraction thus far has been merely a result of net energy decline then when the volume of oil is severely curtailed on top of that we will see a disaster.  It doesn’t even have to be the PetroDollar crashing.  We might not even see that event.  It could be as simple as imports declining every year as oil producing countries need more and more energy for their own populations ( Saudi declines are due to production failing AND more needed for their civilians.  A bit of an overpopulation issue over there in the middle east ).  It needn’t get to zero imports before our economy takes a bit squishy.

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You might look at me all slack jawed and drooling when I state that food is everything in human affairs and since oil underpins all of our food production meaning oil is food, then it is All About The Oil.  But surely you would at least agree that the economy itself is run and determined by oil inputs?  How hard is that to admit?  Capitalism runs off interest on loans and interest can only be created by introducing a surplus.  And for some time that surplus is increased oil production and use, and when oil production or use dipped we had a recession and when it stayed down we got our last Depression.  It ain’t no damn Great Recession and it certainly was never recovered from.  We are in a Depression where mortality isn’t from starvation like the last time ( yes, there was.  The claims of such are hotly contested but you can bet it happened-common sense alone dictate it but since the worse offender of any President must be elevated and kept on his pedestal nothing bad like that could have happened on his watch  ) but malnutrition and drug and alcohol slow suicides. 

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You put a happy face on the economy to pretend your job won’t be delivering you a pink slip any day now, but that is no way to face the economic collapse.  Because we are right now set in stone on the way towards the bottom on this slow track but could jump over to the faster one if anything else disrupts the oil supply.  Like Something Wicked Coming this way if internal affairs in Saudi Arabia turn for the worse.  We’ve already talked of their peak production and I shan’t belabor that point other than to say that at a MINIMUM their production is down a quarter and they are following our lead introducing less energy rich fuels into the mix.  But overpopulation there is causing a lot of issues ( overpopulation in our country is doing the same, and yet moronic scumbags want MORE damn Latinos and Muslims to be invited in ).  There is no employment, worse there even if it is bad everywhere ( China has already been kicking the can down the road on that one ).  Unemployed people can leave to go fight for Allah elsewhere, and plenty do since while you might die at least you can share your pain and make a difference, but plenty more are left in the country to add to the resource depletion and the dissent.  Right now welfare payments buy off the population from rioting which would be terrible to the elite.  That might endanger their wealth flow.  Just as an American CEO will put people on public welfare for an added quarterly bonus, the Saudi royal family puts the whole population on the public teat to shut them up.

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But when you can’t raise the price of oil, at the same time you are pumping less ( I think we pretty much all assumed raising prices going along with decreased production, but since manufactured goods demand fell before the oil supply-or perhaps they were in tandem-we have a current glut ) then your welfare scheme is in grave danger.  We could get a real, rather than the defacto engineered, Arab Spring there soon.  And one of the targets there is the mostly centralized oil processing facilities.  Centralization is wonderful for lining the pockets of the rich and monopolizing the power, but it sucks engorged elongated monkey member when it comes to forth generation warfare.  Centralized facilities which are so big they are militarily unprotected ( think about how easy it would be for local cadre all over the Midwest to simultaneously monkeywrench sabotage all the giant combines and other farming machines just before harvest and the effects of that ), such as pipelines or pumping facilities are very vulnerable.  The pipeline damage in the fighting in Iraq knocked down production in that country, what?  25% or something.  Think of that happening in Saudi Arabia.  If 10% overproduction slams the price of oil downwards, what would happen in a sudden ten percent shortage?  And most of that percentage is the oil most in demand, light sweet crude?  That should be enough food for thought.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

oil collapse

OIL COLLAPSE

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note: BP, got your very generous PayPal donation-thank you very much!
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Yes, yes, I know sometimes I just annoyingly repeat myself.  Some days the blog entries are just rehashes or repeats or reminders.  I can’t be “on” every single day even if I do try to meet that impossible goal, nor can every day bring priceless nuggets of wisdom.  Some days you just need to glory in my vastly entertaining writing style and be content with that.  Today I’m covering Quick Oil Collapse.  Perhaps some of my New And Improved Army Of Loyal Minions ( newbies ) haven’t already read on my musing on this subject.  Otherwise, see the above proviso.  The one thing, amongst many, I hate about most other bloggers is their propensity to focus on only a VERY slow collapse of centuries, or ONLY a quick collapse which allows them to keep their well paying urban jobs until the very last second, the better to buy Yuppie Scum Survival Treats, with a then improbable recovery quickly following.  Quick Collapses are convenient.  Too much so.  Zombies, asteroid strikes and EMP’s clear out the deadwood quickly and allow intrepid survivalists freer reign to rule their kingdoms.

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Which is a bit too fantastical, obviously.  I tend to favor longer declines with a sudden collapse eventually, the Waterfall Collapse ( we‘ve been in one for fifty years, so the over the lip part should show up shortly ) followed by centuries of Dark Age.  Italian doomers call it the Seneca model.   But while improbable, quick collapses aren’t impossible.  Hence, the sudden oil collapse scenario.  Peak Oil didn’t turn out to be about running out suddenly but rather about rapidly decreasing net energy, but you can still get a quick collapse out of oil in other ways.  The PetroDollar is suddenly crushed or fails.  The Saudi fields halt production.  Economic collapse halts trade.  These are all very easily achieved, and have all already happened in embryonic form.  That obviously doesn’t mean they WILL happen, just that they CAN.  I don’t mean that you need to prep for this as much as I mean you shouldn’t listen to the idiots out there that assure you the oil can’t ever possibly run out.  Prepping for this is easy, AND saves you money rather than costs you any, but none of you want to make those sacrifices ( give up the car, reduce electrical use, build your own super insulated hovel, etc. ).

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The PetroDollar standard is where Saudi Arabia in the early ‘70’s agreed to price its oil in Dollars.  Everybody had to have dollars on hand to buy oil, since Saudi Arabia was at that time the swing producer.  There are not enough physical dollar bills printed to pay for tens of millions of barrels of oil trading hands every day, so US Treasury Bonds were used as trading currency.  And as we know, those suckers can be created at will.  In effect, foreign countries bought our debt to buy oil, and we started buying more and more imported oil with debt since that was cheaper than drilling for it ( not that we have much left to drill, to include Alaska and the Gulf Of Mexico ).  It was a sweet deal, free oil.  Well, as you might imagine other countries didn’t share our enthusiasm as they had to produce real goods to get those oil trading tokens.  So, we threatened the world forcing them to take those tokens ( invading Iraq was about Suddam threatening to drop the PetroDollar ) while at the same time the world has been trying to sidestep the standard.

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As it turns out, Libya was the last régime change to halt the Standard Rejection that was successful.  Since then, under the protective wing of a Chinese-Russian partnership, many countries have evaded or replaced trading in Treasuries for oil ( almost no one buys our bonds anymore-most of the activity is our own central bank ).  Our biggest oil import comes from Canada now, and that isn’t even for real oil but sand slop ( hence the very real threat to Net Energy Totals ).  We HAD to monetize the debt since foreigners no longer want the crap.  Not because we won’t repay-no one ever believed we would ( we just paid the interest ) but because they no longer NEED to pay the penalty incurred.  Buying oil in dollars was a cost, not a convenience.   Treasury bonds were NEVER a safe investment as the propaganda claims but a necessity for buying oil.  Now it no longer is mandatory for everyone.  It is only a matter of time before nobody props up the system.

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Why do you think that Saudi oil production is a god given right that is never allowed to cease?  Nobody has heard of entropy?  Nobody knows about Black Swans?  They have several problems over there.  Peak Production, population pressure, Arab Spring type dissent only silenced by welfare payments ( if American Blacks can shut down local areas in protest, why can’t poor Saudi’s? ) and centralized vulnerabilities.  Granted, Saudi oil is only a bit above ten percent of global production now rather than the old twenty percent or so, and right now oil demand is so low that Saudi oil disappearing at this time might actually be beneficial in the very short term, so the dynamic isn’t the exact same, but the fundamentals remain.  Saudi oil is less energy intense as it used to be, and economic contraction is killing oil demand, but Saudi oil is still some of the better oil available and it would have a disproportionate effect on the market if it disappeared.  Not everyone can distill the heavier more sulfur laden oil and prices going up right now would just kill more demand.  Nobody wins with no Saudi crude.  Before, without it the machines would grind to a halt from lack of fuel, but now without it more machines would be shut down from lack of affordable fuel.  Not a huge difference in the end.  I’ll continue and conclude tomorrow with detailing the Saudi chokepoints and talking about economics killing oil delivery.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can support me through Patreon ( go to www.patreon.com/bison )***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you.  Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF.  I’ll waive this fee if you order three or more books at one time ).  My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***   Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there