Beans and Bullets and Bear Markets. Oh my!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 08 Aug 2006 10:24:38 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Wendy McElroy at JPFO - even mainstream economists are realizing that the American economy is headed for a train wreck, compliments of gummint spending gone wild. They're starting to sound like survivalists. [jpfo]

It used to be that only survivalist "cranks" and their sympathizers expounded on 'the coming economic collapse' that would devastate society. Intellectually-speaking, people would cross to the other side of the street when they saw such an exponent coming.

Now the Comptroller General of the United States David M. Walker is ringing the fiscal alarm bell by using phrases like "going broke" and "out of control". Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, chairman of the economics department at Boston University, has co-authored a book entitled The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America's Economic Future.

...

Neither Walker nor Kotlikoff use the incendiary language of survivalist 'cranks' nor do they suggest options like living in the woods with a good supply of ammunition. Instead, they extend governmental solutions to a governmental problem. To the extent individuals are offered advice, it is about which investment strategies will best protect assets. Nevertheless, the essence of their economic message is remarkably similar to that of survivalists. Very bad times -- perhaps even economic collapse -- are just around the corner. But a detailed vision of how individuals can best ride out an economic storm remains the purview of those with survivalist sympathies.

The vision is sometimes reduced to the phrase 'beans and bullets', meaning that people should provide for themselves both the means of sustaining life (e.g. a stockpile of food) and of protection; usually, protection translates into owning a gun which is the most effective form of self-defense.

In times of crisis, a gun may not only not save your life it may also be necessary to preserve those things upon which staying alive depends: food, currency, a car, a dwelling. Society need not dissolve into a nightmare scenario with roaming bands of desperate looters for this to be true. All that is necessary is for crime to increase and, during economic crisis, crime predictably soars. Criminals -- who may be decent people in other circumstances -- will target those people with resources and without defenses. After 9/11 for example, many of the businesses located near the World Trade Center were looted because they contained valuables and lacked security.

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