Here is a good article with all the links dealing with the on-going bank collapses in Europe. For example, the sixth largest bank in Spain, Banco Popular, failed in early June this year, with emergency funds being offered, which were burnt through in a mere two days. A sale was eventually arranged by frantic EU regulators to Santander, which held off the evil day of financial reckoning for a time. Other Spanish banks are facing similar vulnerabilities, such as Liberbank.
Spain is just the beginning. The Italian financial system is unhealthy, showing that all of that pasta and high carb food, really is not that good for you. That site is primarily a financial one, but it has this interesting observation about the ultimate breakup of that artificial construct, Italy:
“Doug Casey: The EU was built upon a foundation of sand, doomed to failure from the very start. The idea was ill-fated because the Swedes and the Sicilians are as different from each other as the Poles and the Irish. There are linguistic, religious, and cultural differences, and big differences in the standard of living.
Artificial political constructs never last. The EU is great for the “elites” in Brussels; not so much for the average citizen.
Meanwhile, there’s a centrifugal force even within these European countries. In Spain, the Basques and the Catalans want to split off, and in the UK, the Scots want to make the United Kingdom quite a bit less united.
You’ve got to remember that before Garibaldi, Italy was scores of little dukedoms and principalities that all spoke their own variations of the Italian language. And the same was true in what’s now Germany before Bismarck in 1871.
The chances are better in the future that the remaining countries in Europe are going to fall apart as opposed to being compressed together artificially.”
Over a trillion dollars worth of Italian bonds have negative yields, and the European Central Bank has been printing money to keep the bankrupt Italian government afloat. When it stops doing this, Italy will collapse.
The stage is set for the next Global Financial Crisis, which will be bigger and “better” than anything we have seen since the Great Depression. There are plenty of fringe people saying this, but now their tiny voices are starting to be drowned by the shout of the mainstream giants. It would be foolish to ignore the signs.
Even unconventional money, such as Bitcoin, is facing an impending crash, as Mike Adams has argued in a series of articles. I am basically uneducated about this debate, but I am still impressed by Adams’ point that the Bitcoin community is wanting to end the 21 million coin limit, by changing the mathematical algorithm, so that a “quantitative easing” operation would occur, taking away most of the advantages of Bitcoin. Bitcoin supporters are, I have found, absolutely fanatical about their decentralised currency, and probably will not see this crash coming until too late, which is too bad. Such are the laws of survival of the fittest.
What then to do? Obviously, the social credit folk operating in the upholstery department are not yet ready to step in and take over the global economy, and if they are, apparently the rest of the society, for various reasons is not. Surely, stating the obvious will not upset those with gentle digestive systems? What then can be done before the great change? I asked John Steele, who lives in the Victorian scrub in a tent, using a special smoke signal code, done by lighting a fire on the roof of my house in Melbourne, and making the signals with a hessian bag.
For him, it is survivalism all the way. Learn useful apocalyptic skills, such as how to turn your old washing machine into a water-powered generator. YouTube has an enormous amount of practical videos just like this, so in the countdown to economic Armageddon, spend time looking at this, rather than mindless entertainment on TV. As well, explore back to basics options, such as how to cook without electricity, off grid cooking. John Steele, and Uncle Len are in the intellectual vanguard of this right now; John living in a tent in the Victorian scrub, and Len in a shed in some forgotten corner of Adelaide. Uncle Len has even come up with a mouth-watering recipe for cockroaches and other insects, which he is perfecting and will report on if he lives. So, don’t experiment with this at home, children.
Stockpiling everyday items is a sensible thing to do, something I call investing in commodities, as the basics of life, such as toilet paper, food and weapons are increasing in price all the time. Thus, stockpile items now. One cannot lose putting away in bulk things that you will need in the future. Here is a list of 100 items which disappear first in a crisis; print of the list and start stockpiling. Thank God the Americans are as paranoid as me!
I am working on getting together a supply of cheap clothes from op shops, and cheaper shops, to see me out until I am worm food. At the moment I am saving up for a large woollen jacket which I saw at Target for $ 69, and I hope to get this item this winter so that I won’t freeze to death and die in my flat when the power is turned off because I can’t afford to pay the bill. In this context, a good sleeping bag can help save your life. Just forget about the peak oil nonsense, the only peak is peak oppression and peak debt. We are strong enough to visit sites which we don’t fully agree with to collect otherwise useful information. It’s better than dying, and as my dear old mum said “beggars can’t be choosers.”
Having a supply of food on hand is important, as South Aussies learnt when the big power blackouts knocked out supplies. Supermarket shelves emptied mighty quickly. People brought up battery powered torches very fast. A supply of dry goods and tinned food gives one a great sense of security.
Here is a really good article about the shelf life of canned food, saying that cans last longer than we think. In this context, I came across an article: J. A. Dudek and E. R. Elkins, “Nutritional Composition of Historical Canned Food Samples,” Journal of Food Science, vol. 48, 1983, pp. 654-655, which reported on a food science analysis of 40 year-old cans found aboard the sunken ship USS Monitor. Although vitamin C levels were low, the food compared well nutritionally to modern tinned food. Obviously, common sense is needed to examine for bulges and leaks in tins, and other ways that food poisoning could arise. The article tells you how to do this.
The usual caveat: I am not offering food storage/health advice, merely directing attention to the literature, and no more, all risk on you, as it should be. Ok, all the legals are fine.
With the storm clouds on the horizon, it is important to take in all such knowledge, because the first lesson for any soldier, even those in Dad’s Army, is to survive.
https://www.ft.com/content/6f32eca2-4c62-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43?mhq5j=e3
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/06/10/liberbank-spanish-bank-about-to-bite-the-dust/
http://www.internationalman.com/articles/this-super-bubble-is-about-to-pop
http://naturalnews.com/2017-06-09-bitcoin-advocates-bubble-store-of-wealth-argument.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ieFZI4-6K8
http://melissaknorris.com/11wayscookoff-gridwithoutpower-2/
http://www.thepowerhour.com/news/items_disappearfirst.htm
https://www.target.com.au/p/mr-big-wool-blend-jacket/60074980
http://survivepeakoil.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/bargain-hunting-in-post-apocalyptic.html
http://skilledsurvival.com/survival-cache/
http://melissaknorris.com/pioneeringtodayacademy/
https://survivalblog.com/debunking-myth-canned-food-expiration-dates-t-l/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dad%27s_Army