Click here to order Debt Hope: Down and Dirty Survival Stratgies.

An e-book meant for individuals with serious, defaulted debt problems, Debt Hope: Down and Dirty Survival Strategies takes you inside the businesses that try to collect from you and provides intimate knowledge of their strategies and tactics, as well as telling you what you need to know in order to devise strategic and tactical responses of your own.

It includes the collectors’ dirtiest tricks and your most important secret weapons as a debtor. For those contemplating bankruptcy there is a chapter that provides a framework for making that decsion, and for those faced with court a chapter also provides the considerations that go into defending a court case. Included in the book are examples of approaches to debt that are either unworkable or that will not produce the best result for some debtors. 140 pages, 180 footnotes hyperlinked to explanatory and source material on the Web.

Maybe you are one of the 3 million plus people that lost a job in 2009 or maybe even one of the 5 million plus people that lost a job the year before in 2008.  Either way, you are probably very happy to learn that in 2009 the Federal Government spent $787 billion dollars to create just 600,000 jobs.

Actually, according to their own numbers, ALMOST 600k jobs.

That means the government spent $1.3 million per job!  That stimulus money may be helping someone, but it sure isn’t helping the majority of people that lost or are losing a job from getting a new one or saving their current job.

What could $787 billion purchased that would have been a better investment in America?

At that rate, the US government could have sent all 8 million unemployed workers from 2008 and 2009 back to college for 3 semesters to retrain and had $70,000 left to pay them a salary to work doing ANYTHING!

Seven states received a wakeup call this week as new unemployment statistics confirmed that depression era level double digit unemployment has already struck.

Seven states posted unemployment rates larger than 10 percent in January, according to figures released Wednesday morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Michigan was saddled with the nation’s highest jobless rate in January, 12.5 percent in statistics that were not seasonally adjusted. It had been the only state to rise above 10 percent during the previous month, December 2008.

Also topping the 10-percent mark in January were Rhode Island (11.4 percent unemployment), Oregon (10.9 percent), South Carolina (10.9 percent), California (10.6 percent), North Carolina (10.3 percent) and Nevada (10.2 percent).

7 states post jobless rates above 10% – Business First of Buffalo:

During the depression unemployment didn’t just stop at the 12% level.  It accelerated to the 20% levels around the world.  Twenty percent levels are still not the norm, but these 7 states have a head start and might feel the worst of the depression early on.

Currently the National Unemployment rate is at 8.1%.  This does not include what is considered the ‘real’ unemployment numbers of people that the US government has stopped tracking all together, typically because their unemployment insurance benefits have expired. 

When governments and economies can’t pay for resources any more, they start preparing to take resources by force.  China has been locking up contracts on a number of key resources around the world, but they are also hedging their bets by increasing spending on their 2.3 million person military.

They do not spend as much as the US directly on their military, but they do own majority stakes in the businesses that operate in China which positions them to ramp up for total warfare faster than any country in the history of the world, even faster than 1930’s Germany.

China will boost military spending by 14.9% this year despite the economic slowdown, continuing a run of double-digit increases that have unsettled the US and Asian neighbours.

The spokesman for the National People’s Congress – China’s rubber-stamp parliament, which begins its annual session tomorrow – told reporters it was a "modest" increase which would increase capabilities and improve conditions for the 2.3 million members of the world’s largest army.

Li Zhaoxing said defence spending will reach 480.6bn yuan (£50bn), 62.5bn yuan more than 2008. But the rise is slightly below last year’s 17.6% increase – and the total is still dwarfed by US military spending.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that even when comparative buying power is considered, China spent the equivalent of $140bn (£99bn) in 2007, to America’s $547bn. The UK spent the equivalent of $54bn.

Guardian

Resistant versions of Influenza are now the norm and not the exception.  Drugs created to combat the flue, seem to have actually made the ‘flu’ (influenza Viruses) stronger.  This year almost all strains of the Flu are resistant to the treatments available.  All those stockpiles  of drugs created to fight a possible pandemic like the one seen just over 09 years ago that killed about one third of the people in the Western world are probably junk.

The first in-depth analysis of Tamiflu resistance during last year’s flu season found that about 12% of people with one of the three strains that caused the most illness, influenza A/H1N1, were infected with resistant viruses. One in five of last year’s patients caught the strain, doctors reported Monday. This year, Tamiflu resistance in that class of viruses has reached almost 100%, turning the tables on a drug designed to defeat resistance. "They’re the most common viruses circulating this year," says flu expert William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. "There are calls coming in from all over the country to infectious-disease doctors and public health specialists asking them how to proceed.

Flu viruses growing resistant to key weapon Tamiflu – USATODAY.com

Your best bet is to try and find ways to keep distant from population centers and people that might be exposed to them.  This is a tactic right out of the 1800’s, but currently modern science has done just enough to make things worse and pushed are safety net back over a hundred years.  The drugs that have been created so far have temporarily helped people heal and recover, but in the long run have worked like steroids for viruses making them stronger, while humans on the whole are now weaker almost crippled by our reliance on drugs that no longer work.

Odds are you are not going to buy a new car, truck, SUV or van this year. Most people are getting their vehicles repaired instead of just replacing them with easy credit like they have for years now. The credit has dried up and we don’t have that option as a country any more.

The good news is that vehicles are lasting on average up to 8 years these days. With tender loving care, regular maintenance and a major repair or two, those vehicles can last 3 – 4 times as long. Taking your vehicle to the shop to get it fixed, might not be an affordable option or might not be an option at all if the economy continues to evolve so here’s what you need to do to prepare now.

• Get a repair manual for each of your vehicles so that if you need to make basic repairs you have a guide in your hands. (don’t count on the internet, you may end up without a connection or even a home!)
• Stock up on some essential parts for your vehicle such as: oil, gas & pcv filters, stock up on a full set of gaskets and several sets of air filters and spark plugs, plus a set or two of spark plug wires. Buy an electric gas pump in case yours dies. Also get some patch kits for your tires, and an air pump. Then buy several cases of oil and some antifreeze. This is the basic stuff you need to be prepared for the long haul if you have that luxury.
• Buy a set of tools! You are going to need them, you should have them already, get them if you don’t have them already. Bonus if you have a toolbox that can be carried in your vehicle or SUV, you now have a critical tool that is mobile.
• Stock up on fuses for your vehicle – Especially if you are a cigarette lighter happy user that likes to plug inverters or other gadgets into your car, those things kill fuses quickly!
• Cargo Gear – Make sure you have hitches, trailers, tie down straps, nets what ever it might take for you to transport your worldly possession in case you have to hit the road (not talking Armageddon but you might be faced with a sheriff with a foreclosure eviction notice L don’t wait till it is too late)

The FDIC has long been viewed as the thing that made banks safe again following the last global depression.  During the Great Depression of the United States, if a bank went bust, depositors lost everything.

Today, when a bank goes bust, the FDIC steps in, assumes control of the bank, provides insurance for a portion of the deposit up to $250,000 through December of 2009, (then the insurance rate drops down to $100,000), and works to transfer assets (such as outstanding mortgages and loans) to a different bank.

“…unfortunately, we’re going to have to charge more for it," Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) Chairman Sheila Bair told reporters on Thursday

FDIC likely to double fees charged to banks – WSJ | Deals | Regulatory News | Reuters

In general people tend to think that the US Federal government is so rich with cash, that it can afford to do anything.  They feel that it can save any failed bank, or any failed industry, or any failed country.  Iraq, Katrina, and the banking sector have rapidly taught all of us how false that assumption really is!

The US government is now having to seize financial control of banks like Citigroup, raise rates for all banks, and raise taxes for the first wave of Americans to fund the trillions of dollars that are being spent each month.  This comes just a few days after China told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that they too could not loan the US money indefinitely.

How to Survive the Global Depression When Banks Are Not Safe

It does not take a Wall Street banker to figure out that if banks are not safe, if the US Government can not pay the bill, if there is no bottom in the market, then people have to find an alternative way to protect their future income and their wealth.  (Wealth is by far the most difficult thing to protect during a time of economic turmoil.)

But wealth alone can not keep you alive.  You have to employ that wealth and put it to work to either earn more money, sustain its current level, or at least keep you and your family under a roof, eating food, and staying safe and warm.

So start thinking about how you can diversify your money.  Consider stopping direct deposit payments, or at least gathering up the forms to stop it someday.

If your company requires Direct Deposit, then set up multiple allotments that will send smaller batches of money to multiple different banks.  The FDIC might not be able to protect all banks some day, so you will need to spread your eggs around.

The obvious answer is to pull some of that money out in the form of cash.  True its difficult to manage paying your bills when you have scattered accounts.  However, you need to consider whether or not, now is the time to pay yourself first, and wait to pay other bills when there looks like there will be a future where paying bills will be an important thing to do.

Consider a future where you are out of work, your neighbors are out of work, and most of your town or city is out of work. How do you survive? How do you support your family? How do you eat or stay warm in the winter?

We do not live in an age of self sufficiency. We do not make or create all of the things we need to survive. We are specialists.

As a global depression sweeps the land, it will not be easy to un-specialize. But we may have to. We will need to raise part of our own food. We will need to collect wood for fire and warmth. We will need to make modifications to our homes to switch from a heavy energy consumption household to one that can keep us safe and warm without electricity or gas arriving with dependable regularity.

Now, if you raise food, a garden you may find yourself in a position of having extra food to barter with at the end of the growing season. In the early years, you will not be expert at understanding how much food you can truly can, store or keep through the winter. Apples and Potatoes can keep for a long time if stored in a cool relatively dark location free of vermin. Other vegetables will need to be canned.

Canning vegetables does take as much work as growing and harvesting vegetables so prepare yourself for a lot of work. It also takes some skill, so while you still have some credit left on your credit card invest in some books that can help you learn how to can those vegetables that you may need to survive and possibly even barter with.

Alcohol also is a commodity that has a high value in a barter economy. It can be used both for medicinal purposes (cleaning wounds and preventing infection) as well as for the type of consumption we are more familiar with today. Once you distill alcohol or brew beer, it becomes relatively portable. It can also be stored for a significant period of time. While it can be relatively easy to make alcoholic beverages, it is not always as easy to make ‘safe’ alcohol, which is why many people suffered brain damage from alcohol in previous centuries. So again, if you are going to consider making alcohol for a bartering commodity make sure you learn how to do it right, and buy a couple of the many guides available today that explain the how to of distilling alcohol or brewing beer.

It is all to easy to get caught in a debate over the causes of the current global depression instead of doing something to fix the economy or even protect yourself and your family so that you can survive the recession, and the perils to surface next.

Years ago I served in the Army. One of the first lessons that I learned in the Army is that there are people that talk about how to do something and there are people that DO something.

The people that do things and avoid talking about things too much are the ones that thrive and survive. The ones that talk about things are bureaucrats and usually cause more harm than good.

The world is rapidly falling into a global depression. When this site was started, that was not a fact and more of a speculation on the future. Now, there are few people that would argue to the contrary.

Unfortunately, the people that used to throw up walls about the reality of what was happening to the global economy are now all to quick to stand there and do nothing. They choose to belabor the question of “How did we get into this mess?”

Well the answer is that it doesn’t really matter too much. We are here and the situation is so dire that there is not time to stand around debating it. If you must debate it at all, then plug your ear into a ear bud on a cell phone and work while you complain and debate.

This is no time for anyone to sit still, sit at home, or mill around without a purpose. If you have a job, make sure you are spending your spare time tightening up your home, your apartment, your car, your possessions. Stock up on food, on batteries, on necessities. If you do not have a job, spend time finding a job, but do not neglect to make some money while you are doing it.

Think that President Obama or the US government is going to solve your problems for you?  Consider that the smartest people in the world just reviewed his plans over the last few weeks and no one thinks those plans are good nor sufficient. 

Need more proof? Here’s a simple number.  The US government has given or promised almost $3 trillion dollars to Wall Street.  This was for the mortgage melt down.  This week President Obama rolled out his BIG plan to bail out people with problems with their mortgage or home value.  It was $75 billion.  That’s $8k for the 9 million people that Obama thinks have financial problems with their mortgage.  That number is so pitifully small that it is insulting. 

Your average person that did nothing wrong and bought an average priced house in the last 8 years, has lost more than 5 times that amount already!

Read the rest of this entry »

Hurricane Katrina made believers out of many people in the United States and around the world. If there’s a big enough problem, the United States government can not solve it.

The unfolding global depression is rapidly turning into a problem that the United States government can not solve.

Congress is barreling towards gridlock over a stimulus package that even if passed seems to be utterly devoid of any real stimulus. There are many notable and worthy social programs in the package but rarely any economic stimulus segments that will put people to work or back to work in the United States and nothing that seems to be strong enough to turn the economy around or turn the tide of the financial collapse that grows daily.

In fact if anything the stimulus plan seems to be both a step in the wrong direction and an expensive one at that that might just waste the governments remaining financial ammunition.

This is why the US savings rate has gone from negative to 4.6% and why many economists expect that rate to double or even go into double digits. People are learning to hoard their money and in some cases they are doing that literally in cash. There comes a point where if you know that the banks are corrupt and incapable of managing their money and that the government is incapable of supporting those banks or helping them recover, then it doesn’t make sense to leave your money in the bank.

This was one of the lessons learned during the former Great Depression. True, it did make things worse for financial markets, but there is a big difference between helping financial markets survive when they are corrupted to the point of failure in all circumstances and your own personal survival or the survival of your family.

This is the thing that is causing Americans to save money and in some cases even saving money at the expense of paying their medical bills, their house payments, and their credit card debt.

Let’s face it if you don’t have 6 months of emergency funds on hand in the form of cash, you are not in a good position to survive a Katrina like economic disaster. If 99% of your earnings are going out the door to pay bills and monthly expenses, then you can not save up 6 months of emergency cash.

This catch 22 can only be canceled out by paying yourself first and paying your bills later. Sometime later, assuming the banks are still in business to receive your payments after you have protected yourself.