New Paradigm....

[daybrown]

There are more disturbing reports about the economy than usual; I dunno if they are crying wolf or not. If you listen to what Comptroller of the US government David Walker has to say, the congress is either going to have to raise taxes as well as reduce entitlements... or deal with ecoomic crisis.

I'm betting on the latter. Walker makes sense, but we all know congress dont. And, we know that crisis adjusts attitudes. Items that sell well now, will be useless trash. Job losses will increase, disposable incomes will decrease, and priorities will shift accordingly.

The housing market has already come off its peak, they worry about the bubble and having foreclosure and bankruptcy rates rise.

But for instance, I can see where those who still have assets will be hiring more people to install surveillance and security equipment. While those working for the airlines will be unemployed. Some will drop internet access. The smart ones will drop cable TV instead.

Some communities which now rely on defense contracts, will go broke. If oil prices rise dramatically, coal mining will take off. Communities that have a diverse local resource base with lotsa small farms will do gonzo better than those which have depended on agribusiness monoculture. And so it goes, amid all the job losses, there will be some few new openings in what are now obscure fields.

LIve near the interstate? mite wanna buy a CB radio and listen in to the truckers, who will have different reports about what has been going on in the places they passed thru than the TV news. Pirate FM stations will prolly proliferate Nobody will be buying new cars, but there'll be more demand to fix whateer they already have. PCs will be repaired, not replaced.

 

[ljcox]

Someone once said - Waste makes want!

We have been squandering resources at an alarming rate for decades, it must catch up with us sooner or later.

 

[Leftyretro]

A optimist will look at a half filled glass of water and say it's half full,

A pessimist will look at the same glass and say it's half empty,

A engineer will look at it and say the glass is twice as big as it needs to be..

Reality, you can't control it but you can deal with it...

Lefty

 

[daybrown]

cAREER & RETIREMENT PLANS.

Thanx for polite discourse gugs. As for soon or later, well... is it now later?

If not, how soon is later? Every week, if not every day, there is some bit of news off the net, that goes unreported on TV. I know that the TV lies; I have personally witnessed an event and then saw how the TV characterized it. I know that these other sources have their own priorities, but sometimes see data from sources that are not connected that nonetheless consistent.

Like Wall Street honcho Cramer talking about how the stock and commodity prices have been, and are being manipulated, along with the jpg scans of newspaper articles about how the M3 will no longer be made public, and the comments by the Chinese that they will ramp down, if not cut off, further investment in the dollar. Which makes perfect sense if they read the same sources and think its time to cash in their chips.

Market & media manipulators have always done well in the short term, but its always caught up with them. The housing bubble is blamed on market manipulation, which left the middle class feeling like real estate was the only thing left they could invest in. Not even the precious metals have been secure. Maybe you all recall the over nite drop in the price of silver last sumer from 15 to 9$/oz brought on by the collusion of the 4 big precious metals houses to dump contracts.

But now the leveraged real estate market is dicey. Jobs that have served that market, financing, construction, home furnishings, media centers, etc will all be lost in massive numbers if the foreclosure rates rise. "jobs" are already being created in abandoned housing that has its copper wiring and plumbing ripped out. I can see where the guys who do snow plowing in winter would be making money in spring by plowing whole long blocks of houses, turning lawns into gardens so that homeowners could reduce the cost of their food budgets. Which will rise dramatically if the price of oil and petrochemicals rises with the fall in the dollar.

Dealing with reality after a real estate crash is going to be much more effective if you see it coming and figure out what the trends are, and where the opportunities will be. Already, deals are being struck to move delinquint owners out *without* an official foreclosure notice so that nothing appears in the local newspapers to start a more general collapse in housing prices. There will be opportunities with banks to go by to mow the lawns of homes they have 'for sale' , deal with broken windows, or whatever so that the signs of vacancy dont result in the rapid abandonment of the whole neighborhood.

There will also be opportunities in installing bootleg satellite dish receivers so folks can keep on watching without having the monthly bill. The satellite outfits wont make a big stink because it is still "market share" at a time when ad revenues are going to be in decline.

I've grown sorghum, and have saved a *lot* of seed. If the proverbial SHTF, I can grow a ton of it. Crush the stalks, extract the juice, ferment it, distill it, and make rum. Which has none of the dangerous isopropyl alcohol from the sour mash corn process. Come hell or high water, *NOBODY* burns down a distillery or hassles the brewmeisters.

Wherever you invest for the future, there will be resources you can organize for some profit now, that will still be useful after economic crisis. Or- you can ignore the whole question and hope Social Security will be there for you when you retire. If you are wrong about that, you still have the option of clasping your hands behind the back of your head, and bend down to put your nose between your knees so you can kiss your ass goodbye.

 

[mneary]

Re-check your chemistry.

Isopropanol isn't created from fermenting of sour mash; the deadly product is methanol, and it's in the mix due to improper distillation. (Actually it's a product of greed, since the first "alcohol" from a batch is Methanol and must be discarded.)

No matter what your source of starch/sugar, if your still isn't working exactly right, you can make deadly methanol.

 

[Hero999]

A optimist will look at a half filled glass of water and say it's half full,

A pessimist will look at the same glass and say it's half empty,

Well for me a glass is half empty when I've drunk half the glass and half full when I've only half filled it.

A engineer will look at it and say the glass is twice as big as it needs to be..

True.

 

[daybrown]

White Lightning....

YMMV. I've lived in the Ozarks for most of the last 30 years, even found the remains of a still half a mile down the creek from my land in Searcy county, and have tasted white lightning.

It is memorable. The guys who make it never mention methanol. They do speak of the importance of a 'snuff box' to catch, if I heard their twang right, "isopropyl'. But whatever. if you produce an acceptable product, they will be happy to let you keep at it.

I am inoformed there are different kinds of sugards, fructose for instance, which is whats in sorghum. I've mad beer with it, and its much more paletable than anything you can make with ordinary sugar- sucrose. I have not, nor do I intend to use the sour mash process. It is far more complicated, and it makes sense to me that the result would need more careful handling.

The advantage of corn is that as dry grain, it can be sprouted and a batch made up at any time. With the sorgum or surgar cane process, you must harvest the stalks at just the right stage and begin fermentation at once, and for hillbilies, this comes during the harvest season when there is lots of other things that need doing.

I dont claim to know the chemsitry, but fructose is also in grape juice, and I've never come across a ref that either rum or a fruit based liquor ever poisoned anyone. I've seen illustrations of Chinese stills, hundreds of years old, that didnt show a snuff box. Course, they didnt have corn either. I also knew a young man, proud of how much Vodka he could hold. The chick who was sleeping with him after a newyear's party woke up with a dead man. Nobody thot it was methanol.

I planted Switchgrass, havent been back to see if it came up, am told the germanation rate sux. But if I can get it going, it is a perennial, and the corms can be divided to help it spread. The growth is so thick, its a Native American tall grass prairy plant, that it chokes out weeds. But like sorghum, at the right stage it can be cut and the juice extracted for ethanol production.

There's reports online that it'll produce over 100 gallons of ethanol/acre. It'll do so with far less energy input than corn. The left over mash is still good cattle feed. Since it'd need less than 5 gallons of tractor fuel/acre to deal with, if gasoline prices keep on rising, the profit potential is enormous. Then too, there are the beverages....