Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 Hurricane on August 25. The wind and flooding caused massive destruction. The news mentioned one hundred billion dollars as a preliminary estimate of the damage.

WD: That’s $25,000 per person (using 4 million population). The population actually affected was probably  1/1000th that. So you would have $25,000,000 per person actually affected physically. When the bullet hits your heart, the damage can be viewed as infinite. This too will pass … and frankly, it will show that Bastiats broken window fallacy gets it wrong. I know many many contractors who were sitting on the sidelines that are now being called into service. And that money they will be earning was not doing anything in the economy before this calamity. When such a small percentage of us really have to work … “make work” becomes a strategy. We need a way to keep score when robots do all the work. We need to create work robots can’t do. Lawyers have been doing it for years … but are now being crowed out by word processors (boiler plate) and artificial intelligence … plus the proof that laws don’t work. First, West Law will show you every statute has been decided every way possible. And with 40,000+ new ones each year, there is no knowing what the law is.

At MD we know it is all about principles … not men … not laws. We start with the golden rule and really don’t have to go beyond that.

Eight days before on August 17 Harvey became a named storm. There was no apparent cause for alarm on August 17.

Two days later it was upgraded to a tropical depression. Harvey reached hurricane strength on August 24. Much can happen in eight days.

MD: Much can happen in 8 seconds … witness the mysterious collapse of WTC7.

• August 17: Harvey is named
• August 21: Total eclipse of the sun. The path crossed the contiguous 48 states. Read “Total Eclipse of Sense.”

MD: Don’t bother to read it. It’s nonsense.

• August 21: President Trump announces a revised and renewed war effort in Afghanistan.

MD: Which changes nothing. Just another lie confirmed … as anticipated. Trump has still not mentioned WTC7. He “is” one of them.

• August 25: Category 4 Harvey makes landfall, destroys buildings and dumps trillions of gallons of water on Texas. Houston, the 4^th largest city in the U.S. flooded in many areas.

MD: Luckily, it hit ground zero at Rockport … which if you ever visited it was a dead community … because of previous hurricanes. The first port in Texas was originally Indianola … which no longer exists. It lasted until the first hurricane after its creation. You don’t build your nest on a highway.

MUCH CAN CHANGE IN 8 DAYS!

SO WHAT?

 

• Are you prepared for drastic changes in your physical environment? Harvey, Katrina, Rita, and 9-11 show that our world changes, sometimes in deadly ways.

MD: If you are dependent on government or PM (precious metals), the answer is an emphatic “no!”.

• Are you prepared financially?

MD: Yes. By minimizing finances. Everything is bought and paid for. My toughest task is protecting my real property … which is un-protectable as is evidenced by the IRS putting a lien on its free-and-clear state in just 19 days … with no due-process whatever … after I  told them I couldn’t pay their demands if I wanted to. The RICO statues prohibit my financial support of criminal enterprises. Thank you very much USA Constitution and the rule of law!

• What will a stock or bond market crash do to your life style and retirement plans?

MD: Nothing. It will make that store of wealth disappear for me … just like it did when the IRS paid a visit. You can only remove your self from the trading field to every extent possible … or you have to be all in and subject to any government encroachment government chooses to employ.

• Given their extreme valuations, a crash is possible.

MD: Their value is to the gamblers and the duped. Buy raw land. Learn to live on it and from it. Learn to protect it from encroachment (which means invite others of like mind to join you on it and help you expand it … and to arm themselves for “self” defense). Iterative secession will grease that skid.

• In 2008 we experienced a credit crunch, a destructive event because the economic world depends upon credit. It could happen again.

MD: Wrong. “All” money is credit … because all money represents a promise … and promises are credit.

The destructive event was leverage and failure to mitigate defaults with immediate interest collections. The process was infested with highly leveraged gamblers. An “improper” MOE process is always a house of cards. One card tumbles and the problem cascades.

A “proper” MOE process doesn’t suffer this contagion. If one trader fails to deliver, no other trader (defective processes call them “counter parties”) is affected at all. It only affects new trading promises creating money … and only those by irresponsible traders. It is far far  more stable than any other process.

• The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency. The U.S. military and the petrodollar support that status. Change is coming.

MD: A proper MOE process has no reserves … let alone a reserve currency. Once instituted, all the worlds currencies will copy it … or disappear from lack of users.

CONSIDER PAST CHANGES IN 8 DAYS

 

Gold Market: From January 21, 1980 to January 28, 1980, (seven days) the price of gold dropped from a high of $873 to a low of $607. Down 30%!

MD: Seems it had a similar dip in 1987 … and took 15 or 20 years to recover. I knew people who bought that really good $800 gold then.

DOW Index: From October 12, 1987 to October 20, 1987, the DOW dropped from a high of 2,505 to a low of 1,616. Down 36%!

MD: That index is totally worthless. Institute a proper MOE process and that index might be of some value. Now …  it’s just a measure of speculation … measured with a rubber ruler.

NASDAQ 100 Index: From March 27, 2000 to April 4, 2000, the NASDAQ 100 dropped from a high of 4,781 to a low of 3,525. Down 26%!

9-11 Attack: Three buildings collapsed at “free-fall” speeds after being hit by two airliners. An official story was created, but let’s not quibble about details. The United States was a different environment eight days after 9-11.

MD: 9-11 false flag … not attack. And the USA government didn’t change. It was just more obviously revealed to be the occupied government it was the day before the false flag. But to this day, a full 94% of the USA population still don’t get it.

S&P 500 Index: From October 2, 2008 to October 10, 2008, the S&P 500 Index dropped from a high of 1,160 to a low of 840. Down 27%!

Hurricane Harvey: A category 4 hurricane was a tiny storm only eight days earlier. Houston will recover and rebuild for eight months, or perhaps eight years following the incredible flooding. Houston, you have a problem!

MD: We had a different model in New Orleans. The areas cleaned out were infested by poor people dependent on government. Normal society would have pushed them away long ago … probably to higher ground. Those areas are now being repopulated by the wealthy … with little better, but far from perfect, resistance to a returning calamity.

In Houston, we earlier had a mayor who was a real estate guy. He was able to dismantle most of the obstacles to improvements of the inner city (and displacement of the riff raff to the periphery … as was the norm before we became over civilized by those who now call themselves “progressives”). Further, insurance specifically excludes “rising water” from covered damage. So those with loses will just plain lose.

But now in Houston they are wealthy … and just as the poor are able to go to wealthy (after winning the lottery or making it as a professional basketball player) and back to poor very quickly, the wealthy have a way of doing the opposite.

Houston will have no trouble like New Orleans had. And Bastiats observation will be proven to be wrong in this era of more people than work (caused by robotics).

Have you noticed, the slums in Rio de Janeiro live up on the hillsides away from the city center. A flood would bother neither the rich nor the poor there … but for different reasons.

Yes, much can happen in only eight days.

 

According to Charles Hugh Smith, “Next Stop, Recession: The Financial Meteor Storm is Headed Our Way”

“The next recession – which I suggested yesterday has just begun – will be more than a business-cycle downturn; it will be a devastating meteor storm that destroys huge chunks of the economy while leaving other sectors virtually untouched.”

MD: “All” recessions are business cycle downturns. Business cycles are purposely caused by money changers. It is their farming operation. Remove their control of the MOE process and the problem goes away instantly … poof. Money is properly in perpetual free supply with a proper MOE process. The money changers farming operation can’t work with a proper MOE process.

His description of coming economic destruction parallels the devastation in Houston. If you live in the flood zones, you’ll see vast destruction. Higher areas will get rained on but could be virtually untouched by the massive destruction.

MD: And higher means 50′ higher! Give you a clue why coastal houses are built on piers? Why they have blow away walls underneath the living quarters?

 

WHAT CAN WE DO TO PREPARE FOR FINANCIAL STORMS?

 

• Self-reliance. Find your own answers.
• Possess real money. Don’t depend entirely upon the debt based digital and paper stuff that can vanish as quickly as a Cadillac in a Houston flood.

 

MD: He says without defining real money … and being clueless about what real money is, always has been, and always will be. He thinks precious metals are real money. This was proved conclusively in 1965 when they removed silver from the coins. Nothing changed. The quarter dollar coins without silver traded for the same gallon of gas as those containing 90% silver. The silver wasn’t involved in the trade at all! It proved that the money represented a trading promise … not something of intrinsic value. But these PM bugs still pedal their lore … as do all religions which are continually crowded by reality.

• Minimize counter-party risk and off-load assets that will be destroyed in a credit crunch, debt reset, dollar devaluation, or crash in the purchasing power of the dollar.

MD: There is no counter-party risk with a “proper” MOE process. Is that minimal enough?

• Possess assets that will be less affected by counter-party risk, a credit crunch, and massive inflation in the supply of dollars. Gold and silver come to mind.

MD: Yeh … and cinder blocks are an even better idea. You can’t build anything with PM. And when people are not accustomed to trading with it … and they certainly aren’t now … your education (indoctrination) problem will extend far beyond the calamity.

• Find your own answers. This story went viral. “Dog Carrying A Bag of Food”
• 

MD: Anyone who has carried a bag of dog food knows that isn’t a bag of dog food.

• Otis (the dog) relied upon himself, knew what he needed, and did what was necessary. A bag of food was his “gold” in the storm.

MD: Anyone who has fed a dog knows they will eat all you put out there for them. They will eat until they can eat no more … which is two or three times what they should regularly eat. Left to themselves, you can give them 60 days of open food and they will live 15 days and die of starvation in their own dung.

Gary Christenson
The Deviant Investor