Tyler Durden
via Zero Hedge

Either in anticipation of QE2 which will cut the value of the dollar by another 50% once another $2 trillion in toxic crap becomes the “assets” backing the viability of the dollar, or just because they are sick of Fed policies, mid-Michigan has taken monetary matters into their own hands, and in one simple act, completely bypassed the destabilizing influence of the domestic currency printers.

As ConnectMidMichigan reports, “New types of money are popping up across Mid-Michigan and supporters say, it’s not counterfeit, but rather a competing currency.  Right now, you can buy a meal or visit a chiropractor without using actual U.S. legal tender.” The plan is so simple, it just may work – after all if one can’t get away from the Fed’s probing and pickpocketing long fingers, all one has to do is learn to live without its parasitic pieces of paper. And not just paper: “I sell three or four every single day and then I get one or two back a week,” said Dave Gillie, owner of Gillies Coney Island Restaurant in Genesee Township. Gillie also accepts silver, gold, copper and other precious metals to pay for food.” So yes, you can eat gold…. and load up your gas tank with it.

“Do people have to accept dollars or money? No, they don’t,” Gillie said. “They can accept anything they want or they can refuse to accept anything.”

He’s absolutely right.

The U.S. Treasury Department says the Coinage Act of 1965 says “private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash, unless there is a state law which says otherwise.

That allows gas stations to say they don’t accept 50- or $100 bills after a certain time of day in hopes of not getting robbed.

A chiropractic office in Lapeer County’s Deerfield Township allows creativity when it comes to payment.

“This establishment accepts any form of silver, gold, chicken, apple pie, if someone works it out with me,” said Jeff Kotchounian of Deerfield Chiropractic. “I’ve taken many things.”

Jeff Kotchounian says he’s used this Ron Paul half troy ounce of silver to get $25 worth of gas from a local station.

While the government and banks don’t accept them, many others do.

So why is there interest in these competing currencies?

Is it just novelty or is there something deeper?

If the ruling kleptocrats, demand on being such an intimate part of everyday life, and procuring all of the population’s real wealth and cash producing assets in the process, said population has a choice of either going with this sheepish approach, and meekly allowing the loaded gun to be parked at its temple, or do what Michigan, with its 99.9% real unemployment, has decided to do.

You can reduce your outstanding debt with just one easy rule. The “Plus 1 Percent Rule” accounts for the monthly interest charged in each payment you make.

Trying to figure out how many payments you have left in your head can be tricky because you debt is still acquiring interest. Also when you just go along paying whatever you feel like is okay, you don’t pay much attention to fee’s and interest being accumulated and it’s very easy to fall into a trap where you pay much more that the amount you planned on.

For a long time my rule was to take the minimum payment then just pay a little extra, basically whatever I felt like I could afford at the time.

I found that my outstanding debts was not going away as fast as I felt like they should be.

Every time I made a payment to reduce my debts I would try and choose a nice rounded number, I would later come back to see that the interest charges would bump the debts back up to a higher level.

So I found a way to get ahead of the interest charges by factoring them into the payment ahead of the charges.

An easy rule of thumb to use is the “+1% Rule“. Take your initial payment and add 1% of the principal.

For this example we’ll assume 12 pct APR

If I owed $7,500 and I wanted next month to show that I only owed $7,000.

Before I was just paying off $500 and feeling pretty good about that payment.

At that rate it would be paid off in 15 months according to the in my head calculations.

However the next month I came back to see it was something more like $7075.

It was kind of discouraging to think I had felt like I just paid off a big chunk, considering the monthly minimum payment is something closer to $300, but I still didn’t hit my goal.

As a matter of fact by only paying the min. $75 goes to the interest and only $225 goes to pay down the principal. That’s 25% of the payment sucked off by interest.

I sat down and looked hard at all the money I was wasting on interest alone and decided to start knocking it out before I even considered how much to pay each month.

So now to keep on the schedule I’ve set, I pay the original $500 + 1% of the total (assuming that nice even 12% APR).

But adding 1% of the total amount you owe to each payment is a good rule of thumb to get ahead on your loans. If you’re paying a higher rate like 30% APR for example then 2.5%. Which is a little harder to do in your head, so just add 1% twice then round up.

How To Add 1 Percent In Your Head:

Adding 1% in your head is easy, just use the 10% rule and knock off an extra 0, and if you can’t figure out 10% of a number in your head then you should turn in all your credit cards, and let your parents, wife, husband, or random middle school student handle your finances from now on.

Instead of $500 now I pay $575.

That way the outstanding total is reduced by the amount I had intended it to.

The good news about this method of payment is that by accounting for the interest in the payment, the amount I pay each month actually gets smalller as I pay it down.

Next time I’ll only owe $7,000 like I intended so I will only have to pay $570 this month. In 5 months I’ll only be paying $550. If you could knock off $25 off your cell phone bill you would consider this a big savings!

This method is helpful if you can afford to pay extra on your debts in the short term and it helps you set a standard for your monthly payment instead of casually paying whatever feels right. It’s also rewarding to see your principal amount go down incrementally in while your monthly payments actually get smaller.

Even if you’ve been stuck paying minimum payments then you should still consider this method, monthly minimum payment + 1% of the total (or your APR / 12 months for higher interest rates ) or else you will never be able to pay it off.

The goal is to pay more today so that down the road your payments will be smaller. If left unchecked you could be paying the same or even more later on due to interest charges.

Not to long ago I clicked on an ad for a free investor’s kit from Goldline International. I was skeptical at first entering my phone number and address to a web form for a company I knew very little about. I was afraid of being spammed not only with unwanted emails, but advertisements in real life or even worse phone calls from telemarketers.

Despite these risks I took a chance and filled out the forms. The current climate here in the US has given me some serious concerns about the safety of the U.S. Dollar and my investments in the stock market. I felt like I needed to protect my savings with something I could physically put my hands on like gold or silver.

Within 2 weeks I received my Investors Kit along with only one or two emails, one confirming my sign-up and another monthly newsletter.

I was blown away by the quality of the Free Investor’s Kit. It came in a large envelope packed full of papers and information. Inside was a folder with several high quality full color pages printed on High Gloss paper and several brochures and documents with all the information that YOU NEED TO KNOW.

What Comes In The Goldline Free Investors Pack?

1. Precious Metals and Rare Coins Investors Guide

Tables of Contents:
I: Introduction to Precious Metals
II: Advantages of Owning Gold & Silver
III: Most Popular Coins & Products
IV: Why Investors & Collectors Choose Goldline
V: How To Acquire Precious Metals & Rare Coins

2. Coin Facts For Investors and Collectors to Consider

Facts, risks, and policies collectors should know:
Diversification, Holding Period, IRA Accounts, Buy Back Policy, Delivery, Storage, Risks In Precious Metal Investing, Pricing, Bullion Purchases, Exchange Transactions, Refund Policy

3. Account and Storage Agreement Information

Any and everything you need to know about Goldline International’s Terms and Conditions.

4. One-Time Special Offer Coupon for Free Shipping on my order.

5. Complimentary Issue of The American Advisor Newsletter
Goldline’s newsletter, American Advisor, provides timely news and information about our economy, precious metals and rare coins. The Investor’s Kit also included an offer for 1 Year Free subscription to the American Advisor.

Listen to the American Advisor Radio Podcast Here.

6. Pre-Paid FedEX Air Mail Envelope

7. Vintage Copy of 1933 Executive Order Gold Confiscation Act.

Under Executive Order Of The President issued April 5, 1933 all persons are required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all GOLD COINS, GOLD BULLION, AND GOLD CERTIFICATES now owned by them to a Federal Reserve Bank, brand or agency, or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System.

8. Personalized Letter written to me from my Goldline Account Executive.

How was the customer service at Goldline?

About a week after receiving my Goldline Investors Kit I got the first phone call. Normally I don’t pick-up unknown phone numbers so I let it go to voicemail. It was from the same acount executive that left his business card in my free investors kit.

He was polite and basically said:

Hi John, we’ve got your phone number here because you requested some information online. I’d love to get a chance to talk with you about how we can help you with your investments at Goldline. Give me call back at this number…

It was a short message and not too pushy. I actually did not call them back right away, but my account executive called me two more times in the span of about 2 weeks and left a message each time. After that I did not hear back from him again.

Overall I would say that they were very professional and courteous. I was afraid to give out my ‘real’ phone number, but you can trust not to have problems with Goldline.

How Can I Get A Free Goldline Investors Pack?

1. Call Goldline at 1-800-827-4653 to speak with a Account Exec.

2. Sign up on the web here

3. Follow the links in the side bar.

The books on this list take you down the darkest paths in uncivilized worlds, from cannibalistic gangs to vampire infected corpses. If this list doesn’t get you thinking on the quickest way stock your basement full
of water, canned goods and rifles. I don’t know what will.

World War Z

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a post-apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks. WWZ is a collection of individual accounts in the form of interviews with characters conducted by the author. Brooks plays the role of an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission who published the novel a decade after the Zombie War.

The United Nations left out much of his work from the official report, choosing to focus on facts and figures from the war rather than individual stories; these form the bulk of the novel. The interviews chart a decade-long war against zombies from the view point of many different people of various nationalities. The personal accounts also describe the changing religious, geo-political, and environmental aftermath of the Zombie War.

The outbreak, which started somewhere in China, spread throught the world, causing distruction and chaos. While the zombies are never completely irradicated, some symblance of life does appear to go on, after an eventual move of the US Capital and millions of lives lost.

Brooks used World War Z to comment on social issues like government ineptitude and American isolationism, while also examining themes of survivalism and uncertainty.

Blindness

Forget world wide pandemics of flesh eating bacteria or a zombie illness! Portugese author Jose Saramago took one of the most common afflictions, loss of sight, and turned it into my worst nightmare! in “Blindness”, a mass epidemic of sight-loss sweeps an unidentified city, causing a break down in society, civilization, and everyday function. The books main characters band together, forming a family unit, comprised of a doctor and his wife and his patients. The wife has somehow been spared from the epidemic and helps the unit function. They are placed in an asylum where the infected are being contained, which eventually detiriorates to filth, due to everyone’s lack of sight.

The family unit escapes and attempts to build a new life in the outside world, just as sight is returned, just as quickly as it was taken away.

I don’t know who I felt worse for reading this book. The people who lost their sight, who began living in their own filth and scrounging for food, or the doctor’s wife who had to take care of them all and see everything that was happening around her.

The Road

If you are a parent, or a person who doesn’t wish harm upon children, you might find this book slightly disturbing. ‘The Road’ focuses on the journey of a father and son, after an unnamed apocalyptic event wipes out a majority of the earth’s population, as well as the ability to grow plants. The father and son, only identified as the “Man” and the “Boy”, are attempting to make it to the coast, to an undetermined hope. The pair encounter several disturbing sights along the way, including a cannibalistic “army”, a baby roasting on a split, and humans who are being kept locked away and used for limb-harvesting (for food obviously).

There are some high points in the book, but overall, it paints a pretty grim picture. Towards the end of the novel, the father gets ill and dies, leaving the boy to be taken in by a couple who has been observing the pair for some time. It isn’t a happy ending, but it does keep you from wanting to kill yourself!

The Postman

This post-apocalyptic novel is about a drifter who finds himself taking shelter in an abandoned postal van. Gordan Krantz, the protagonist, takes the uniform of a postman only to keep him warm, but when he begins carrying mail on his journey, he begins to restore hope to survivors. Eventually, Krantz encounters a small community led by Cyclops, an artificial intelligence created at Oregon State University that managed to survive. Krantz learns however that the machine was destroyed and that it’s appearance is being maintained by a group of scientists who are trying to “keep hope, order, and knowledge alive”. Krantz eventually pairs up with the Cyclops scientists in their war against the hyper-survivalists, who have begun and extreme version of life.

By the end of the novel, the impression is given that the three groups rally together to help revive civilization.

This novel begins after yet another collapse of civilization, with the protagonist, Snowman, living as a hermit. He lives near by a community of what he calls “Crakers”, which appear to be strange human like creatures. It is revealed in the story that the crakers, as well as beasts like wolvogs, piggons, and rakunks, are the products of genetic engineering.

Through flashbacks, the reader learns that Snowman grew up as Jimmy in the mid-21st century. His parents were both scientists who lived in privileged compounds that separated them from commoners, or pleeblands. When Jimmy’s family moves to a compound, he meets Glenn, or Crake as he is referred to through out the story. The boys play games, smoke weed, as well as other slightly disturbing activities such as watching live executions and child pornography.

Jimmy and Crake eventually become obsessed with a young asian girl they see in a child porn video. Jimmy seeks the girl out and eventually meets Oryx, who could be the same girl, but it is never clarified. Orxy becomes highly involved in the lives of both young men. As time goes on, Crake becomes a bio engineer while Jimmy focuses on the arts and literature.

Crake soon embarks on an endeavor to create peaceful human-like creatures which he calls Crakers. Crakers are leaf-eating herbivores who only have sex during a mating period, therefore eliminating several “human” disputes. Eventually, Crake releases a world wide virus, which wipes out a huge percentage of the population, except Jimmy, who was unknowingly vaccinated. Crake is soon painted as a “Mad Scientist”, and eventually kills Oryx.

The reader is transported through out an incredible series of events and begins to feel sympathy towards all characters, including the “villain”, Crake. The book ends leaving the reader wondering whether Snowman will return to life with humans, or continue to look after the Crakers, as he promised Oryx before she died.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

“A Canticle for Leibowitz” spans thousands of years set in a Roman Catholic monastery. After a devastating nuclear war, the novel follows along while civilization makes attempts at rebuilding itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz take on the mission of preserving and protecting the pieces of human’s scientific knowledge until the world is ready for that kind of information again.

The apocalyptic event in this story is a backlash against advanced technology and knowledge. During a time that is referred to in the book as “simplification”, any one who had any learning, and eventually anyone who could even read, was killed by angry mobs, with books being destroyed and illiteracy taking over the world.

Isaac Leibowitz had been a Jewish engineer working for the US Military, but converts to Catholicism and begins the Albertian Order. Their mission becomes to protect,memorize, and preserve any books, from before the Simplification. The novel is separated into three different parts, “Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man)”, “Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light)”, and “Fiat Voluntas Tua (Let Thy Will Be Done)”.

The novel is an interesting look into what our world would become if communication, science, technological advances, and knowledge were suddenly cut off from every day people.

Alas, Babylon

Published in 1959, “Alas, Babylon” was one of the first post-apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age. The story focuses on the small town of Fort Repose, Florida and the effects that a nuclear war had on it. The protagonist, Randy Bragg, is a former Korean War vet who becomes a hero after the Soviet Union starts a nuclear war with the US. Several towns in Florida, including Jacksonville, Tampa and Miami are reported as being destroyed, leaving the citizens of Fort Repose to their own measures. Communication is limited, and the city is quickly emptied of money and supplies. People in the town quickly learn how to survive, with Bragg leading the way. In the end, the Air Force offers to move the remaining families of Fort Repose out of their survivalist world, however, non accept.

Alas, Babylon shows how quickly the world could deteriorate if a Nuclear war started. Don’t be alarmed if after you read it, you feel the need to go to Costco for bottled water and dry goods!

Lucifer’s Hammer

If you’re one to quickly oppose scientists, then Lucifer’s Hammer might be just the post-apocalyptic book for you! Even after several reassurances by astronomer Tim Hamner that a new comet won’t be crashing into the earth, people still begin hoarding and collecting food. Scientists realize that they have mis-tracked the trajectory of the comet, which eventually breaks into several smaller pieces and devastates the earth with its collision. The strike causes volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and endless weeks of rain, which cause food and other survival necessities to be lost.

After the “Hammerfall”, Hamner steps up from a quiet astronomer to a “determined survivor”. He fights to keep he and his new wife, Eileen safe, in such a tumultuous world.

This book particularly got me thinking, just because we rely so much on what scientists tell us. What if they really did get it wrong?

Swan Song

Swan Song doesn’t start out on a particularly happy note. The world is in turmoil, with the U.S. and USSR fighting all around the world. When all of the bombs are launched, the world is covered in mushroom shaped clouds. The novel follows several main characters, including a NYC bag lady called Sister Creep, Josh, aka Black Frankestein, a 7 foot tall wrestler with a heart the size of Texas, and Roland Croninger, an incredibly smart kid. Of course good vs. evil is prominent through out the novel. The bad lies within “The Man With the Scarlet Eye”, who is a shape shifter, always up to no good. The very refreshing good however is a blonde girl named Swan, who possesses the ability to replenish the earth.

The book is pretty big (950 pages!), and if you can get through it, its probably the most terrifying post apocalyptic novel out there!

On the Beach

“On the Beach” doesn’t only qualify as one of the best Post-Apocalyptic novels, it qualifies as one of the most depressing. If you’re looking for sunshine and rainbows, this isn’t one you’ll want to check out! The novel starts in the mid-sixties, after the air in the Northern Hemisphere has been polluted with nuclear fallout, killing all animal life, including humans. Air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere, where the only humans live, slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning. The Australian government makes arrangements for its citizens, providing free suicide pills and injections, allowing the people to avoid the slow and painful death of radiation poisoning. A submarine crew is dispatched to Seattle to respond to a signal, only to discover that the wind was blowing a coke bottle onto a telegraph machine.

The crew then realizes that the results of the nuclear war aren’t dissipating, and that the people living in the south will die shortly. The characters in the novel then try to happily live out their final days, some returning to their hometowns, others taking classes and staying busy. In the end, the characters don’t continue to run, but accept their death once the radiation reaches them. Probably the most depressing point in the book is when one Australian officer must explain to his wife how to euthanize their baby daughter and then kill herself, should the radiation reach them.

Like I said, not all sunshine and rainbows.

Z for Zachariah

“Z for Zachariah” starts by introducing the reader to Ann Burden, the protagonist, who has been living alone in a valley for over a year after a nuclear war, which has rendered all other places inhabitable. One day, Ann sees a stranger in a protective suit entering the valley, which changes her life forever. When he determines that the valley is safe, he takes off his suit and swims, but unfortunately, the water is contaminated by water being brought in from the outside. Once he is sick, Ann decides to try to help him.

Once he is better, he introduces himself as John R. Loomis, a scientist who was helping to design the protective suits underground when the war began. The sickness soon takes over his body completely, sending him into a coma, during which Ann continues to look after him.

He begins to recover and becomes highly possessive of Ann. One night, he attempts to rape her, and Ann decides she must leave the comfort of her home. She attempts to coexist in the valley with Loomis, but he makes it difficult, cutting her off from food and supplies, and even shooting her in the leg.

Eventually, Ann tells him she is taking the suit and the cart and leaving. She tells him that if he kills her, then he’ll truly be alone. Ann sets of in the direction of birds, hoping to continue her life.

This novel is popular among young adults, because the main character is a strong willed young person. There are obviously sad portions, but there are also light, almost comical moments that keep you turning the page.

I Am Legend

If the only opinions you have of ‘I am Legend’ come from the horrible movie adaptation starring Will Smith, erase them all. Probably one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever written, much less in the “post-apocalyptic” category, “I am Legend” deals with the idea of becoming obsolete, which plagues so many people.

After a bacterial pandemic wipes out the entire human race, Robert Neville, the novel’s main character, is the only human left in a world of vampires. Neville attempts to study and cure the disease, to which he became immune after a bite from a bat that was infected. Neville eventually discovers that the strain of bacteria is able to infect both the deceased and the living, leaving the living slightly human, although exhibiting signs of vampirism.

Robert comes across a woman who appears to be uninfected and captures her. He becomes suspicious of her after her reluctance to kill the vampires. She finally agrees to a blod test and just when Neville realizes she is infected, she knocks him out. She leaves him a note, sharying the adaptations that the infected have made towards sunlight and how they have even developed pills that keep their desires at bay. She tells him that they are attempting to rebuild society. Eventually the vampires come for him, and he is wounded and captured. When he knows death is near, Ruth comes to visit and gives him some pills that will make his death easier. He asks Ruth not to let society get heartless and after a kiss, she leaves. Neville finally realizes that he is the only survivor and is therefore feared by this new race. As he realizes that life with infection could be normal again one day, he chuckles before he dies, thinking “[I am] a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.”

Faced with a shortage of small banknotes, people in Myanmar are resorting to bartering cigarettes, shampoo and other items.

The bartering illustrates the effects of surging inflation and the curious decision to stop printing small notes.

How shall I give it to you? You want coffee-mix, cigarettes, tissues, sweets or what?

That question is heard often in shops and restaurants in the former Burma, where coins and small notes disappeared years ago and other notes have now started to follow suit.

State banks were main source of small notes for shop-owners, but they stopped issuing new currency several years ago. Today, beggars who collect money on the street now provide shops with the bulk of their small notes, often in return for food.

Rampant inflation also plays a role. Consumer prices rose by an average 24 percent a year between 2005 and 2008, according to the Asian Development Bank. That has taken a toll on Myanmar’s currency, the kyat.

Officially, the kyat is pegged at 5.5 per dollar. But it fetches nowhere near that, trading instead at about 1,000 per dollar. The cost of printing small notes is now far more expensive than the face value of the notes themselves.

A Yangon government high school teacher said most of her pupils had never even seen coins or small notes.

SWEETS AS CURRENCY

In the commercial capital, Yangon, 100 kyat (around 10 U.S. cents) is worth a sachet of coffee-mix or a small container of shampoo. Tissue packets or a cigarette or sweets are the equivalent of 50 kyat.

“The shopkeeper gave me three sweets for change of 150 kyat when I bought a bottle of cough mixture last week,” said Ba Aye, a Yangon taxi driver.

“When I told her that sweets would make my cough worse, she offered me a Thai-made gas lighter. When I said ‘I don’t smoke’, she then asked me to accept three packets of tissues that would be useful for my runny nose.”

General-store owner Daw Khin Aye said most of her customers preferred small items like sweets to notes.

“The small notes that are in circulation are in very bad shape — worn out, torn, stained, dirty and in most cases stuck with tape,” she said.

In Sittwe, the capital of western Rakhine State, teashop owners manufacture their own coupons to use as currency.

“It’s far more convenient to use these self-circulated notes instead of small items,” teashop owner Ko Aung Khine said.

“But you need to make sure coupons can’t be forged. Mostly we use a computer to print it with the name of the shop, face value and signature of the shop owner,” he added.

Officially there are 13 denominations of notes in circulation — starting from 50 pya (one cent) up to 5,000 kyat. But only the three big notes (200, 500 and 1,000 kyat) are common. The rest are growing scarcer by the month.

“So far as I know, they print only 1,000 kyat notes now,” said a retired economist from Yangon University. “The cost of printing is far higher than the face value of most small notes… so they now print just the biggest ones.”

How much money is in circulation is anyone’s guess. Myanmar has not publicly released money supply data since 1996-97, when it put the value at 179.82 billion kyat.

When asked for the latest figure, a senior government official replied: “We cannot tell you. It’s a state secret.”

Remember when eating out didn’t require keeping a careful eye on the right-side of the menu? Tight budgets have forced many of us to select restaurants and menu selections based on cost, rather than taste preferences.

A recent study by Zagat, the restaurant and review guide, indicated 33 percent of Americans polled now pay more attention to restaurant prices than they have in the past and 28 percent of diners have switched to cheaper restaurants. In an even bigger blow to restaurants’ bottom lines, approximately 20 percent have cut out booze, appetizers and desserts. As a result, analysts expect 12,000 to 18,000 restaurants will close this year, ending a decade-long expansion in the industry.

In a desperate effort to make it through the recession, American eateries of all types have drastically cut back on expenses. Here are 23 changes you may have noted. (Note not all restaurants use these cost-saving methods.)

1. Reduced Portions
From bread baskets to entrees, portions have shrunk while some niceties have been eliminated altogether. That complimentary breadbasket may feature the cheaper breadsticks and a scant few pieces of bread. Some restaurants no longer automatically bring bread unless asked or charge extra. On the plus side, perhaps this is part of the reason the obesity epidemic is slowing down in America.

2. Disappearing Condiments and Fixings
Some sandwich joints have actually charge extra for more than the minimum of condiments and/or such basic fixings as lettuce, tomatoes, olives, etc. Apparently $5 only buys just the meat and bread.

3. Reconstituted Meats
We used to laugh that “parts was parts,” but fast food joints are no longer the only places inclined to feature unidentifiable parts. Reconstituted meats have been ground down and mixed with water and other by-products, then pressure assembled to look like real steak or chicken. For some time now the FDC has required processed cheese manufacturers label products containing less than 50-percent cheese as “cheese food.” Perhaps menus should start indicating when they’re serving “chicken food” and “beef food.”

4. Veal Substitutes
What you think is Veal Parmesan may actually be “Pork Parmesan. The look-alike meat is an easy cost-cutting substitution for diners who rarely taste veal. Look for your veal to be grey or light brown in color when cooked. A fried cutlet that’s still white in the middle is a swindle.

5. Weaker Drinks
Restaurants and bars mark alcohol up 200 to 300 percent, but many still want to stretch their investment further. Tricks include stretching with seltzer water, using smaller glasses, increasing ice content and, of course “short pouring,” or reducing the percentage of alcohol in your drink. Don’t bother sending your drink back for more alcohol, either, as the bartender likely will just pour additional booze into the straw to fake a stronger drink. While we’re on the topic, have you noticed those nice, comfortable wedges of lemon and lime are now wafer-thin slices.

6. Magic Plates
Check underneath your entree and you may find a porcelain hill that makes it look like you’re getting a larger pile of food. Another popular trick is the “incredibly shrinking plate.” The standard 12-inch plate is steadily shrinking until, ultimately, entrées will be served on dessert plates.

7. Adding Surcharges
Rather than raise prices, restaurants like to add a surcharge for an increased in fuel expenses, employee health care and serving us on holidays. Because the law allows restaurants to limit notification of surcharges in the fine print on their menus, you may not be aware of this extra cost until receiving the check, at which time it’s too late to downsize your order…or walk out.

8. Recycling Buffets
Is the lettuce brown around the edges? Are the tomatoes rather tired. Does that tuna dish look awfully familiar? Then you’re eating at a leftover buffet. Rather than toss uneaten food from yesterday’s or last week’s buffet, more restaurants are freezing everything for future use.

9. Iceberg Salads
Remember the days when salads contained arugula, watercress and colorful touches of red radicchio leaves? Today you could sink the Titanic on the iceberg chunks in our dinner salads.

10. Á la Carte Sides
Before you fork over $20 for an entrée, ask if that price includes any side dishes. You may need to budget another $5 to $10 if you want dinner salad or the formerly standard potatoes and vegetables.

11. Mystery Fish
The bottom-feeding catfish used to be one of the cheaper fillets. Now even the classless catfish is being replaced with the cheaper grouper. Last August, two teenagers in New York City collected 56 fish samples from stores and restaurants. Testing revealed 14 of the samples were mislabeled as a more expensive fish.

12. Shrinking Menus
It’s expensive to keep ingredients on hand for a wide variety of dishes, so restaurants are cutting down the number of dishes offered. You’ll also see more cross-pollinated dishes that feature the same ingredients in a variety of forms.

13. Cheaper Ingredients
Starting down the road to cheaper substitutions is a nasty one. The menu may mention butter but the kitchen recipe calls for “margarine.” That whip cream may just be Cool Whip (aka whipped lard), the seaweed is really cabbage and instant potatoes have stretched the mashed potatoes.

14. Is it Fresh?
Food distributors are charging restaurants fuel surcharges these days because of high gas prices. So, restaurants are trying to cut back on the number of deliveries they get. Instead of getting fresh produce every day, they order more food and less frequently.

15. Recycling Food
Preparing for a dinner rush requires a lot of extras, like rolls, desserts, side dishes, cuts of meat, etc. What happens to all those extras on a slow night? They end up in the buffet, reworked into meatloaf or worked into bread pudding. It’s criminal to throw these foods away, but rumors are rampant some restaurants are removing leftover foods from plates and recycling them. Yuck!

16. Cheaper Paper Goods
I’m all for cutting down on the number of napkins thrown into a take-out bag and using cheaper take-out containers, but I really hate it when restaurants skimp on toilet paper!

17. Begging for Sympathy
More restaurants are posting signs asking us to appreciate they’ve had to make cutbacks and raise prices due to higher commodity and fuel prices. Understandably, they want diners to understand they’re not just being greedy. I prefer this up-front approach to sneaker methods used by some restaurants.

18. Adding Comfort Foods
A restaurant I frequent serves a macaroni-and-cheese entree with lobster that is to DIE for. The New York bistro Artisanal recently launched Comfort Food Night and introduced a grilled-cheese bar to help bring people back to their childhood days. It’s a brilliant concept as we tend to crave comfort foods when times are tough.

19. Upselling
Your server suggests a loaded potato instead of a plain baked potato or adding a salad to your dinner. What they may not mention is these changes add to your bill (and the waiter’s tip). Watch out for upselling and ask about any price additions.

20. Menu Engineering
According to The Independent, restaurants use a combination of pictures, bold fonts and careful positioning of items to upsell diners. For example, restaurants like to box off high-profit items and avoid extensive straight lists that allow you to easily compare prices.

21. Trendy Buzz Words
Truffle oil, heirloom tomatoes and cedar plank salmon sound scrumptious and tend to induce customers into shelling our more dough.

22. Credit Card Surcharges
Luckily this is not common, but the occasional restaurant may sneak in a five-percent surcharge if you’re paying by credit card. By law, this will have to be mentioned in the menu but the print may be tiny, tiny, tiny.

23. Paying for Water
Under the guise of environmentalism, restaurants bring water only when you ask for it. This saves wait staff time while cutting down on water bills and dishwashing expenses. In addition, more servers now ask if you’d like bottled water, at a hefty mark-up, of course.

@couponsherpa

What is the Credit Crisis?

It is a worldwide financial fiasco involving terms you’ve probably never even heard.

• Sub-Prime Mortages
• Collateralized Debt Obligations
• Frozen Credit Markets
• Credit Default Swaps

Who is Affected By The Credit Crisis?

Everyone

How Did It Happen?

The credit crisis brings two groups of people together. Homeowners and investors. Homeownwers represent their mortgages and investors represent their money.

The mortgages represent houses, and the money represents large institutions like pension funds, sovereign funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds.

These groups are brought together through the financial system normally known as WALL ST.

How is Wall St. connected to Main St?

Years ago investors were sitting on piles of money looking for a good investment, to turn into MORE MONEY. Traditionally they would go to the Federal Reserve, where they would buy treasury bills. However, in the wake of the dot com bust and the attacks on 9/11 . Federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan lowered the borrowing rate to only 1% to keep the economy strong.

1% is a very small return on investment so investors said “No thanks.” On the flip side this means banks can borrow from the bank for only 1%. Now add to that a large surplus of money from China, Japan, and Europe, and you have an overwhelming abundance of cheap CREDIT.

This makes borrowing money easy and causes them to go crazy with LEVERAGE.

“Leverage is borrowing money to amplify the outcome of a deal.”

How Does Leveraged Investing Work?

In a normal deal someone with 10,000 dollars buys a box for 10,000 dollars. He then sells that box to someone else for 11,000 dollars, making a $1,000 profit. Using leverage someone who has $10,000 will go and BORROW $990,000 instead. Using the original $10,000 as collateral.

He now has $1,000,000, and he can buy 100 boxes. He sells them to someone else for $1,100,000. Now he has to pay back his 990,000 plus 10,000 in INTEREST. After you subtract the initial $10,000 he is left with a $90,000 PROFIT

Leverage turns good deals into GREAT DEALS.

“This is how banks make their money”

Wall Street takes out lots of loans, makes great deals and gets really rich and then pays it back. Investors see this an want a piece of the action. This give Wall street an idea. They can connect their investors to homeowners with MORTGAGES.

Here’s how it works?

• A family wants a house, so they save for a down payment.
• They then contact a mortgage broker. The mortgage broker connects the family to a lender who gives them a loan.
• The broker makes a nice commission, the family buys a house, the banker makes some interest, and everyone is happy.
• One day the lender gets a call from and investment banker who wants to buy the mortgage, the lender sells it to him for a nice fee
• The investment banker then borrows billions of dollars and buys thousands of mortgages. He puts them into a nice box. Every month the investment banker sits back and collects the monthly payments from thousands of mortgages.

But the process doesn’t stop here.

What is a Collateralize debt obligation?

Each box of mortgages is cut into 3 separate smaller boxes named: Safe (AAA), Okay (BBB), and Risky (Unrated). They once again package these up and call it a COLLATERALIZED DEBT OBLIGATION (CDO)

As money comes in the top rated, safest investments are paid off first, then the okay loans are paid off, and whatever is left over goes into the risky loans.

If some homeowners don’t pay on the mortgages and go into default then less money is coming in and the risky box will not be filled with as much money. To compensate for the higher risk, the bottom risky tray pays out a higher interest rate, while the top safer investment receives a much lower rate.

To make the top tray even safer banks will sell insurance on it, called a CREDIT DEFAULT SWAP.

Now the investment banker can sell each piece of the pie to different investors who have different levels of risk and everyone is happy and making money.

The investment banker calls up the mortgage broker for more home loans, but everyone who is loan worthy already has a home.

Taking on more risk.

When a homeowner defaults on a loan, the investment banker is left with the home. Since homes are always increasing in value then banker is covered from any losses. Because of this he can start adding risk to his investments.

No down payment, no proof of income, FREE MONEY.

So instead of loaning to responsible homeowners called PRIME MORTGAGES.

they started to get people who were less responsible, these were SUBPRIME MORTGAGES.

TURNING POINT

Like usual the mortgage broker connects the family with a lender who writes the mortgage and the family buys a BIG HOUSE.

The lender sells the mortgage to an investment banker.

The investment banker turns it into a CDO and sells it in slices to the others

This works nicely for everyone, and everyone gets very very rich.

Except this time the model could not go on forever. Like playing a game of hot potato with ticking time bombs, each person has to pass on the risk to the next person.

As predicted the home owners defaulted.

Then the home is now owned by the banker who forecloses and one of his monthly payments turns into a house.

As more and more of his monthly payments turn into houses, the housing market gets saturated with too many houses for sale and houses start to drop in value.

As house prices plummet in value more and more families start to walk away from their mortgages once their home value are turned UPSIDE DOWN.

Now the investment banker is stuck with boxes of worthless houses.

The banker can no longer sell the CDO’s because everyone knows there is no money coming in anymore.

The investment bank goes into a downward spiral because the bank itself has borrowed Billions of dollars and sometimes TRILLIONS of dollars and he cant pay it back

The investment bank is not the only one in trouble because the investors have bought thousands of these junk bonds and the lender tries to sell mortgages but the banker has no more money to lend, the whole financial system is frozen and things get dark.

Everybody starts going bankrupt.

Welcome to the CRISIS OF CREDIT.

I recently made the switch from cotton socks to wool socks, and I have been very impressed with the difference.

I’m an active person and spend alot of time outside, and I usually wear boots. Normally I would wear normal store brand cotton socks, but by the end of the day they would always be damp and squishy. I hate the feeling of having wet feet. Plus over time I found that even the most expensive brand of cotton socks eventually wore out and became paper thin. After just a few washes I could tell that all of the padding had worn out for the most part.

In the colder months I used to try the “double sock” method. Even that didn’t do the trick for me, because after a few steps out in the snow my feet would just be twice as damp and my shoes would be twice as soggy.

I always passed on the more expensive wool socks because I thought that a sock was a sock, and I thought there was no point in spending more as long as I had a good pair of shoes. I can see that I was completely wrong.

Even though the cost more, they last much longer. Also wearing expensive shoes with bad socks nullifies any comfort that you might be hoping to get from your shoe.

What are the advantages of wool socks

1. Wool does not absorb moisture.

Instead it ‘wicks’ away sweat and water away from your skin. Also since wool does not absorb the water they will dry faster than cotton and be more resistant to bacteria and bad smells.

If your feet sweat alot, then you may think about switching to wool socks.

2. Wool socks provide more padding.

Having a good layer of padding on your feet is not just important for the bottom of your feet where you are stepping, its also just as important around your ankle’s and base of your foot.

One of the most important factors to keeping your feet warm in the winter is blood circulation. So if you tie your boots very tight it can sometimes cut off circulation to your feet and cause them to be much colder than your core body temperature.

Cotton socks provide almost no thickness and provide little buffer between your skin and your boot. However wool socks are much thicker and give more space. So even if you tie you shoes tight there is more room for blood circulation.

3. Wool lasts longer and is more durable

At my most active times I found myself going through store brand cotton socks as if they were made from paper towels, It felt like I was melting them right off my feet. Even though I was spending less money for a pack of 12 cheap cotton socks I had to buy new ones every other month.

Finally after switching to wool socks, I can tell the that the extra money spent goes into making a quality product. The material feels better, is more comfortable, and feels much more durable. Spending a little more money up front may actually save me money over the long term because I won’t be constantly replacing them.

How to wash wool socks?

Warning: do not toss your wool socks in the dryer, they will shrink.

Wool can easily lose its shape and become less defined if washed without care, and worst of all, it can shrink.

• Make sure your woolen item really needs to be washed. Unlike cotton and man-made materials, wool does not need to be washed frequently – even wool socks can be worn many times between washing if allowed to air out between wearings.
• Soak woolen items in cold water for a few hours before washing. Do this until all the woolen fibers are saturated. This method will help to stop the woolen item from shrinking.
• Use the right product. There are products specially made for washing wool. Dissolve the cleaner in the water first, to prevent agitating the wet wool. Alternately, you can try using baby shampoo or light detergent. Do not just assume you can machine wash with “woolite” or other detergent with “wool” in its name. Whatever soap you use, use very little as soap increases felting.

• Wash in sink by soaking and squishing being careful not to rub the wool against itself or it will felt. Heat, agitation, and detergent are the enemies of wool, aim to soak and rinse the dirt out. Wool is extremely easy to clean with just water.
• Dry flat in desired size/shape. A folding clothes rack can help here. Remove excess water with a towel by laying the item on a towel and rolling it up, squeezing and pressing gently. Unroll then leave in fresh air to dry.

Tips for washing wool:
If a wool item shrinks, wet thoroughly with cool water and stretch to former size. It helps to add hair relaxant to water, and rinse. Lay flat to dry.

Warning:
Hot water or a hot dryer will shrink wool. Even warm is too hot.

Friction will felt wool. (Meaning it will shrink and turn from a soft, woven, textured quality to a smoother,
harder material: felt.) Heat and soap will increase the amount of felting.

In addition to ruining your wool garment, running wool items through the wash cycle of your machine can also damage the machine as wool fuzz can detach and felt up forming hard clumps inside the pump.

Here the scenario, hours ago your President announced that the currency will be devalued by half. Soon everything in the country will be double the price of what it was today.

What do you do? What do you buy? Where do you go?

This actually just happened in Venezuela. Peoples response was not what you might expect. Thousands of people ran to the Spanish version of Best Buy, “Mejor Compra” to buy up all the TV sets and other imported electronics they could get their hands on….

Shouting “Buy, Buy, The World Is Going To Die!” Venezuelans went on a frantic shopping spree on Saturday following a sharp currency devaluation that is expected to drive up prices.

Shoppers crammed into electronics stores, eager to snap up imported televisions and computers ahead of the anticipated price hikes.

“I’ve been lining up for two hours outside to buy a television and two speakers because by Monday everything is bound to be double the current price,” said Miguel Gonzalez

Watching TV while my country goes to hell is not exactly what I had in mind, but if you didn’t know any better, then you might be prone to make the same mistakes.

It’s true that all imported good are about to get a whole lot more expensive. So buying ANYTHING at all will be better than waiting for your savings to be cut in half by the devaluation. However before you buy that new TV set you had your eye on, there are probably quite a few more things

I mean wouldn’t you rather be buying guns, bullets, socks, underwear, generator, food, or water??

You could make a run to the local coin or jewelry store and buy up all the gold and silver coins too…..

Nah, screw it lets get that new LCD Screen TV we wanted before the price goes up, make sure you throw in the Blu-ray player and HDMI cables.

Online currency exchange offers a massive money making opportunity to the savvy investor who is prepared to take a risk and speculate on the currency market.

Also known as the FOREX or foreign exchange market, this is a global trading arena that is open 24 hours a day from Monday through Friday. This is because no matter what time it may be where you live, there is always somewhere in the world that is open for business.

The Forex Market is the largest financial market in the world. The current amount of daily trading done in the Forex market is around 3 Trillion dollars. By comparison, the New York Stock Exchange trades around 30 billion dollars a day.

The 24 hour market provides many opportunities for traders that do not exist on the normal stock market.

For example, you can still have a day job and trade currency from home in the evenings or early mornings. You are not limited to trading your own country’s currency either. This can be an advantage during times of economic crisis when price movements in one currency pair may be difficult to predict, but others are relatively stable.

Currently the U.S. Dollar is going through a time of great turmoil. With much inflation on the horizon due to stimulus and the printing of trillions of dollars, FOREX can be one way to invest your money outside the realm of the U.S. Dollar.

How To FOREX Trade

Currency is always traded in pairs because you have to give one currency in order to buy another. You will see the different pairs written with their three letter codes, such as EUR/USD for the euro and US dollar. Prices will depend on the economic situation of the relevant countries.

If you are used to dealing in stocks, this may be confusing at first, but you can think of it as if you were buying stock in a whole country.

If you live in Canada then you would need to find out the Canadian exchange rate against the US Dollar or if in Europe the best Euro exchange rate again against the US dollar as the green back is the principle currency of the foreign exchange market.

To get started you just need a computer with a good fast internet connection. You cannot trade forex
with a dialup connection, it would be too slow. Your computer will need to display prices that are changing very rapidly, and you will want to act while the price is in the right zone.

In previous times you needed thousands of dollars to open a FOREX trading account with a broker but that has all changed now. As well as the old style standard accounts, many brokers offer mini and micro accounts where you can trade position sizes that are just 10% or 1% of the standard lot size. This means you can start out with just a few hundred dollars.

How to Practice Currency Trading

Fortunately, you do not have to start right out risking real money. You can sign up for a dummy or demo FOREX account with most brokers. This allows you to try out their trading platform, opening and closing dummy trades according to the real time FOREX prices. You can also test out systems in demo mode and keep track of your gains and losses.

Online currency exchange is fast moving and high risk. You must expect some losses and if your risk management is not good, you may see your start up funds wiped out. Be careful not to risk too much on one trade, no matter how confident you are.

Also there is no substitution for traditonal learning. There are many online courses that promise you the ability to “GET RICH” over night, with no experience, and no need to do any learning on you own. The truth is you WILL be able to make lots of money on FOREX, but only if you take the time to learn what you are doing. Online courses may be good but nothing beats reading the book first. The same way every college course comes with a professor AND A BOOK. Get a good FOREX training course or book and follow it until you are confident enough to risk real money.

In these tough economic times, there aren’t many things I wouldn’t do to save money or make my dollar go further.

When it comes to shopping this coupon mom is not playing around. She shows you how she was able to get 100 dollars of groceries for only 25 cents using coupons, price matching and her strategic shopping method.

“It’s not about changing what you eat, is about changing what you buy and which brands you like.”

Top Shopping Tips:

• Always check out the stores sale flyer.
• Always buy whats on the front page, they will have the biggest discounts
• Plan your shopping trips ahead of time so you will make more informed decisions.
• Know which stores have double and triple coupon programs.
• Look for internet coupons and unadvertised deals
• Buy the store brand for big discounts

Do you want to know how to get 100 dollars of groceries for just 25 cents?

Stephanie Nelson the founder of www.couponmom.com presents The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half: The Strategic Shopping Method Proven to Slash Food and Drugstore Costs

Coupon Mom’s Book Description

Americans are hungry for bargains these days, but one woman has developed the ultimate strategy for enjoying a feast of savings. Taking the nation by storm, with appearances ranging from The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today and Good Morning America, Stephanie Nelson has shown countless women and men how to save thousands of dollars by becoming savvy coupon clippers-without sacrificing nutrition or quality. Now, in The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half, Nelson demonstrates all of the tricks of the trade-beyond coupons and tailor-made for a variety of shopper lifestyles. Whether you’re a “busy” shopper and have only a small amount of time each week to devote to finding the best deal; a “rookie” shopper who is ready to put more effort into cutting bills; or a seasoned “varsity” shopper who is looking for new ways to get the deepest discounts possible, this book offers techniques thatw ill make it easy to save money at any level and on any timetable.

Extending her Strategic Shopping protocols to mass merchandisers, wholesale clubs, natural-food stores, drugstores, and other retailers, Nelson proves that value and variety can go hand in hand. With meal- planning tips, recipes, and cost-comparison guides, as well as inspiring real-life stories from the phenomenal Coupon Mom movement, this is a priceless guide to turning the checkout lane into a road of riches.

By Puru Saxena

Make no mistake the developed world is drowning in debt and there are only two viable options – a global economic depression or very high inflation. It is our contention that the policymakers have chosen the latter option and over the following years, we will experience the trauma of severe inflation.

The American government is staring at total obligations of US $115 trillion, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is off the charts and the American public is also up to its eyeballs in debt. Under this scenario, you can bet your bottom dollar that the American establishment will try to reduce this debt overhang through a process known as monetary inflation. If you have any doubt whatsoever, take a look at the chart below, which captures the incredible expansion in America’s monetary base.

Expansion in the money supply

As you can see, over the past two years, the monetary base in America has expanded from US$827 billion to an astonishing US$1.93 trillion! Until now, this surge in the monetary base has not produced a highly visible inflationary impact…yet.

But it is notable that America is not alone in pursuing inflationary policies. All over the world, the developed nations are printing money and debasing their currencies. In this era of globalization, no country wants a strong currency and everyone is engaged in competitive currency devaluations. This massive money and debt creation will cause an inflationary boom over the coming years.

In fact, those who erroneously believe that deflation is unavoidable should review Figure 2, which highlights the mind-boggling expansion in the balance sheets of various central banks. As you can see, America is not the only nation guilty of printing money; the Europeans have also jumped on this train to Inflationville.

Inflation vs. Deflation

Now, we are aware that many prominent commentators are still calling for deflation. “After all,” they argue, “how can inflation be a problem when bond yields are so low?” Well, these deflationists seem to be missing the point because the US Treasury market is no longer an entirely free market. We would argue that the Federal Reserve’s intervention is largely responsible for keeping bond yields artificially low. Over the past several months, the Federal Reserve has purchased most of the net new issuance of Treasury securities. The American central bank is engaged in this desperate act in order to keep interest-rates low. However, it is buying these Treasuries by creating money out of thin air. This is inflationary.

If our assessment is correct, somewhere down the road, the Federal Reserve will lose its battle and T-bond yields will soar. As more and more bond investors wake up to the looming inflationary menace, they will start demanding a higher rate of return on their capital. When that happens, the dyke will break and the Federal Reserve will become irrelevant.

America has run out of choices. If the Federal Reserve does not inflate away this mountain of debt, the biggest sovereign default in history is guaranteed. Now, given the ability of the Federal Reserve to create confetti money, we are convinced that it will opt for the inflationary solution. Inflation would certainly make America’s debt more manageable, but it would also dilute the purchasing power of the dollar. Of course, this inflationary agenda is not a secret and this is why many creditor nations with huge reserves are beginning to diversify away from the American currency.

Where should position yourself

In the past, when inflationary episodes spiraled out of control, hard assets were the prime beneficiaries and this trend is likely to remain intact in this inflationary episode. If our assessment is correct, over the coming years, stocks, precious metals, commodities and real estate will appreciate in value versus paper currencies. Furthermore, on a relative basis, we expect precious metals and commodities to outperform all other asset-classes. Conversely, we anticipate that cash and fixed-income instruments will probably turn out to be the worst assets to own over the next decade.

Bearing in mind the looming inflationary nightmare, we urge you to protect your purchasing power by allocating capital to precious metals and commodities-related businesses. Finally, we suggest that you consider allocating a portion of your capital to the fast-growing economies in Asia, like China, India and Vietnam. Such investments should prosper during the low-growth, high-inflation environment to come.

via: The Daily Reckoning

History of the United States National Debt

The United States has had public debt since its inception. Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly reported value of $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. Over the following 45 years, the debt grew, briefly contracted to zero on January 8, 1835 under President Andrew Jackson but then quickly grew into the millions.

The first dramatic growth spurt of the debt occurred because of the Civil War. The debt was just $65 million in 1860, but passed $1 billion in 1863 and had reached $2.7 billion following the war. The debt slowly fluctuated for the rest of the century, finally growing steadily in the 1910s and early 1920s to roughly $22 billion as the country paid for involvement in World War I.

The buildup and involvement in World War II plus other social programs during the F.D. Roosevelt and Truman presidencies in the 1930s and 40′s caused a sixteenfold increase in the debt from $16 billion in 1930 to $260 billion in 1950. After this period, the debt’s growth closely matched the rate of inflation where it tripled in size from $260 billion in 1950 to around $909 billion in 1980. Public debt in dollars quadrupled during the Reagan and Bush presidencies from 1980 to 1992, and remained at about the same level by the end of the Clinton presidency in 2000. During the administration of President George W. Bush, the total debt increased from $5.6 trillion in January 2001 to $10.7 trillion by December 2008, rising from 54% of GDP to 75% of GDP. During March 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that public debt will rise from 40.8% of GDP in 2008 to 70.1% in 2012.[8] The total debt is projected to continue increasing significantly during President Obama’s administration to nearly 100% of GDP, its highest level since World War II.

What is the National Debt ceiling

The Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 established a statutory limit on federal debt. Congress had previously approved each debt issuance separately. The debt limit provided the U.S. Treasury with more leeway in the administration of debt, allowing for modern management techniques in government finance.

The U.S. Treasury Department now conducts more than 200 sales of debt by auction every year. The Treasury has been granted authority by Congress to issue such debt as was needed to fund government operations as long as the total debt (excepting some small special classes) does not exceed a stated ceiling.

The United States Congress has raised the debt limit several times in recent years. The debt limit was most recently raised to $12.104 trillion by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R.1), which was signed into law on February 17, 2009

As recently as December 2009, there has been a push to raise the Debt Ceiling again, this time by as much as 2 Trillion dollars.

Did You Know?

# U.S. official gold reserves, totaling 261.5 million troy ounces, have a book value as of 30 November 2009 of approximately $11 trillion, vs. a commodity value as of 17 December 2009 of approximately $288.5 billion

# Foreign exchange reserves $134 million as of October 2009

# The Strategic Petroleum Reserve had a value of approximately $69 billion as of December 2009, at a Market Price of $104/barrel with a $15/barrel discount for sour crude

# The national debt equates to $30,400 per person U.S. population, or $60,100 per head of the U.S. working population, as of February 2008

# In 2008, $242 billion was spent on interest payments servicing the debt, out of a total tax revenue of $2.5 trillion, or 9.6%. Including non-cash interest accrued primarily for Social Security, interest was $454 billion or 18% of tax revenue

# Total U.S. household debt, including mortgage loan and consumer debt, was $11.4 trillion in 2005. By comparison, total U.S. household assets, including real estate, equipment, and financial instruments such as mutual funds, was $62.5 trillion in 2005

# Total U.S Consumer Credit Card revolving credit debt was $931.0 billion in April 2009

# Total third world debt was estimated to be $1.3 trillion in 1990

What Are Risks to the U.S. Dollar

A variety of factors are placing increasing pressure on the value of the U.S. dollar, increasing the risk of devaluation or inflation and encouraging challenges to dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. If another currency or basket of currencies replaced the dollar as the reserve currency, the U.S. would face higher interest rates to attract capital, reducing economic growth for the long-term. The Economist wrote in May 2009: “Having spent a fortune bailing out their banks, Western governments will have to pay a price in terms of higher taxes to meet the interest on that debt. In the case of countries (like Britain and America) that have trade as well as budget deficits, those higher taxes will be needed to meet the claims of foreign creditors. Given the political implications of such austerity, the temptation will be to default by stealth, by letting their currencies depreciate. Investors are increasingly alive to this danger…”

One year ago, Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage like a comet. Yet even now, few Americans know who this remarkable woman really is.

On September 3, 2008 Alaska Governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention that electrified the nation and instantly made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

As chief executive of America’s largest state, she had built a record as a reformer who cast aside politics-as-usual and pushed through changes other politicians only talked about: Energy independence. Ethics reform. And the biggest private sector infrastructure project in U.S. history. And while revitalizing public school funding and ensuring the state met its responsibilities to seniors and Alaska Native populations, Palin also beat the political “good ol’ boys club” at their own game and brought Big Oil to heel.

Like her GOP running mate, John McCain, Palin wasn’t a packaged and over-produced candidate. She was a Main Street American woman: a working mom, wife of a blue collar union man, and mother of five children, the eldest of whom was serving his country in a yearlong deployment in Iraq and the youngest, an infant with special needs. Palin’s hometown story touched a populist nerve, rallying hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to the GOP ticket.

But as the campaign unfolded, Palin became a lightning rod for both praise and criticism. Supporters called her “refreshing” and “honest,” a kitchen-table public servant they felt would fight for their interests. Opponents derided her as a wide-eyed Pollyanna unprepared for national leadership. But none of them knew the real Sarah Palin.

In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Palin paints an intimate portrait of growing up in the wilds of Alaska; meeting her lifelong love; her decision to enter politics; the importance of faith and family; and the unique joys and trials of life as a high-profile working mother. She also opens up for the first time about the 2008 presidential race, providing a rare, mom’s-eye view of high-stakes national politics—from patriots dedicated to “Country First” to slick politicos bent on winning at any cost.

Going Rogue traces one ordinary citizen’s extraordinary journey and imparts Palin’s vision of a way forward for America and her unfailing hope in the greatest nation on earth.

Going Rogue: An American Life

Sarah Palin Biography

Sarah Palin grew up in Alaska towns, from Skagway to Wasilla to Anchorage, while her dad taught science and coached high school sports. She and her future husband, Todd Palin, graduated from Wasilla High School in 1982, and she went on to earn her college degree from the School of Journalism at the University of Idaho. Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council, then two terms as the city’s mayor and manager, and was elected by her peers as president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. She then chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. Palin was elected Alaska’s youngest, and first female, governor, serving from 2006 to 2009. While serving her state she was tapped as Senator John McCain’s running mate in 2008, becoming the first female Republican vice presidential candidate in our nation’s history.

The Palins reside in Wasilla with their five children, including a son in the U.S. Army, and one grandson. They enjoy an extended family throughout Alaska and the Lower 48.

On the cover of the October 19, 2009 issue of “Time” magazine ran this headline: “Why It’s Time to Retire the 401(k).” The cover picture was ominous, showing a 401(k) sinking like the Titanic.

I recommend reading this entire article, especially if you do have a 401(k). My concern is that the flaws of this retirement plan will grow into personal tragedies as the first of approximately 75 million baby boomers retire, leading to the biggest stock market crash in history.

But in spite of the apparent problems with the 401(k) plan, the darlings of financial media continue to tout its benefits. The same month “Time” ran its article, “More” magazine’s financial guru, Jean Chatzky, wrote an article about using low-interest savings to pay off high-interest credit cards. In the article she states, “There’s no better guaranteed return on your money (except, perhaps, a 401(k) match).”

Countering Jean’s wisdom of “no better guaranteed return,” the “Time” article stated, “At the end of 1998, the average 401(k) balance was $47,004. By the end of 2008, the average balance was down to $45,519.” If that is a great guaranteed return, I’m glad I don’t have a 401(k). The “Time” article pointed out that $100 in 1998, after inflation, was worth about $73 in 2008, a loss of $27 after ten years. So whom do you believe…”Time” or “More” magazine?

If you are unsure as to whom (and what) to believe, the “Time” article made two more statements worth considering. They are:

1. “The older you are the riskier a 401(k) gets.”

2. “Forty-four percent of all Americans are in danger of going broke in their post-work years.”

Now, I can hear some of you saying, “But the stock market is going back up. Green shoots are appearing. Everything is fine. The crash was just a correction.” For those optimists among you: I wish that all of your dreams come true and you live happily ever after.

I do not criticize the 401(k) plans just to criticize. I write because I am concerned. Let’s say “Time” magazine’s estimates are correct. Let’s say 44 percent of all Americans will go bankrupt after retirement. For approximately 75 million baby-boomers preparing to retire, that means 33.8 million of them will go bust once they stop working. To me, this is disturbing.

While many think the financial crisis is over, I believe the worst is yet to come. In spite of the green shoots in the stock market, the fundamentals of the U.S. government are worsening. I doubt Social Security can afford the avalanche of retiring baby boomers. The Social Security fund is empty, underfunded by approximately $10 trillion. For the first time in 35 years, Social Security will not pay a cost of living increase. And Medicare is projected to face a shortfall as well, of between $65 and $85 trillion.

In 2009, interest payments on our national debt are about $380 billion, which is $1 billion a day in interest. At the same time, the national debt is projected to climb to $20 trillion by 2012, which means the U.S. will have to borrow money just to make the interest payments.

I know the Federal Reserve Bank can continue to print more and more money…but city and state governments cannot. This means your city and state taxes will have to go up. If you think your property taxes are high now, just wait five years. I predict that, even if your home’s value does not go up, property tax rates will, and higher taxes will do wonders for property values. This means people counting on their home as their biggest asset may be disappointed.

In 1913, when the Fed was created, and in 1971, when President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard, the ultra rich were allowed to siphon off our wealth — via our own money, the very thing we work hard for and do our best to save. In other words, with every dollar the Fed prints, our wealth is being drained via increased taxes, debt, inflation, and savings.

A Cash Heist

There are four expenses that keep the poor and middle class struggling financially. They are:

1. Taxes — both apparent and hidden

2. Debt — mortgages, credit cards, and student loans.

3. Inflation — rising food and fuel costs

4. Retirement plans — 401(k) and savings

It is via these four expenses that the rich get richer. In other words, all four of these expenses are a cash heists, the ways the rich use the government to get into our pockets, draining us of our wealth.

The Silver Lining

The silver lining of all this: With a more sophisticated financial education, rather than have taxes, debt, inflation, and retirement accounts as drains on a person’s wealth, a person can convert those government-sponsored expenses into elements that work in one’s favor. By using the same rules of money the rich use, those four expenses will make you richer. In other words, taxes, debt, inflation, and not needing a retirement plan can make you richer if you use different rules of money. As stated earlier, in 1971 Nixon changed the rules — and so should you.

In closing, the 401(k) has a few good points…but not good enough, in my opinion, given the financial challenges that lie ahead.

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