NEW!! THE Q&A SECTION.
STUFF that's HARD TO UNDERSTAND about THE MELTDOWN---
HOW TO SURVIVE THE GREAT AMERICAN DEPRESSION
by ANITA SANDS HERNANDEZ
A smug, wealthy senior told me: I used to hear the argument that I was losing money having my funds in bank accounts. They said I could gain 10% and even 20% in stocks. So, I took my money and invested in stocks, letting my brokers be my guide. Well, so much for THAT Lost money. Next year, I put my newly earned dollars in banks at 4% and 5% interest. My savings slowly got fatter but life didn't get sweeter. Now, I realize that at low interest rates like that, money is lost to inflation, but I don't care. I look at my money, and it continues to grow. Each year I take out $5000 or $8000 and visit Europe. And when I come home, the interest has built up more than I had when I left. Of course, that includes all the Social Security checks and teacher retirement checks. But I maintain savings in excess of $100K. And it soon grows to 125K and maybe even $150K. JUST BANK INTEREST GROWING IT. So, on your website, THE AMERICAN MELTDOWN, you say that I should take my money and buy real estate. And the experts say that we still haven't hit the bottom of the real estate market. What are you thinking? Sign me SMUG in So Calif.
DEAR Smug: YOU ARE CORRRRRECT SIR! Not to worry though. Your bank will have closed its doors (and vaults) way before that lowest real estate price thing happens.PS.This was the year 2000 and houses quickly doubled in value. If he'd bought a 4 unit building, he'd have tripled his money. His son, back from a US NAVY submarine could have painted and plastered and landscaped. What else can you do with a SUBMARINE MECHANIC LICENSE?
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DEAR MELTDOWN: I heard that someone's buying up all the flopped banks , Securities houses, the IMF or FED or Gov or something. Somebody out there who thinks along these lines: "YOU BROKE IT, WE BOUGHT it." The real question is, WHO IS THE WE in that sentence Someone is wrapping themselves sin the flag, saying sanctimoniously "We had to rescue WALL STREET to protect MAIN STREET. Whazzup? Are they? Profiteers? The UBERWEALTHY?THE ILLUMINATI, some say, The 14 Families. Venetians, Phoenicians, Brit Traders, Rocks, Rothchilds and Harrimans -- you know, Bush's old employers. They get to own the cow, milk the cow for a while, make the cow's decisions giving them HUGE POWER. As you know, tycoons are a tad MORE creative doing it on another man's DIME.. Ferinstance, --say you are a billionaire invested in PARAGUAYAN BEEF or VIETNAMESE OIL and you want some fast R&D done that would be way way costly. You maybe need to find an electric cow clone, invent a large udder with a small cow attached. Or maybe explore for oil, gold, diamonds in ANGOLA or CONGO and maybe you gotta kill all the intellectuals and journalists there to get in, bribe a Prince or two. A general, some crumbum politico.
Now, what could be handier than some funding for that? To own some quasi defunct bank? Or better, SECURITY-VENDOR/ DERIVATIVE ISSUING BANK. When these rich bozos get their paws on the tattered remnants of the CRIPPLED SECURITIES company holding it by the ruby begonias, they get it to write a little trick called a "bond issue " Fools buy in where angels fear to tread, they always do. Saves the tycoon all kinds of R&D dollars. See? Power is Fun. Other people's money in your hands, very motivating, inspiring and efficient. You get to direct the MONEY HOSE like a laser at any of your pet projects and never worry about a water bill.
Meanwhile, it will be the bond investors or TAX DOLLARS from the SHEEP flock in Kansas that paid for it. So that's why you'll see THE IMF/ FED/ US GOV and the guys in cahoots pick certain kinds of corporations over others. Securities Banks that can legally issue bonds are real ripe plums. You watch, nobody cares if NABISCO FOODS goes down. What does that mean to WALL STREET BANKERS? Only person gets hurt is stock holder little guys. So these guys are very selectively picking THE BIG FISHES. Yes, that's a good second metaphor: if you're a fisherman, they're like barndoor halibut. Or if you're a hunter, it's like an eight point stag. Or if you're ...well you get the picture.
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DEAR MELTDOWN. I'm hearing news items about Selling short, Short sellers or short buyers, can't recall, only these short sellers are being blocked from buying not only in America but abroad. To keep speculators out. What does all that mean? Are short people being discriminated against?
Well, you see, if these sharks could get their hands on everything, the OCTUPUS couldn't. So they have to be stopped. Worry more about the OCTUPUS. Most news items don't point to the octopus. They point to the octopuses' ENEMIES. You never ever saw the real face of an octopus. They live in France. Who wouldn't? If you could live anywhere I mean.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~DEAR MELTDOWN. Why do you recommend buying property? I have ten friends who lost everything in the last few weeks as they couldn't pay house payments. Signed, Impatient with you!
DEAR Impatient:
'REAL ESTATE bought when prices bottom out are always good deals. They're pretty near bottom now. Hollywood cemeteries are filled with movie stars who invested in stocks, mansions, travel, furs & never kept a cent. Except one man. Folks like to say that Bob HOPE bought up the whole San Fernando Valley. But he only bought a hundred properties or so. Key areas, key boulevards so they all became office buildings. His holdings, being prime, appreciated over the decades. For instance, in the 40's, he might have bought a huge corner for the 30k profits that he made in a single season of his NBC comedy radio show. Not a whole lotta money, but he didn't need a whole lot. He had a house in TOLUCA LAKE in the valley, neighbors, the simple life. In terms of the times, he earned more than anyone else and had discretionary income. That land became worth 30 million --His estate was estimated to be worth a half billion or more when he began selling it off. And except for a few guest star billings here and there, he didn't work much after the last BING CROSBY movie in 1950.
The only woman who APPROACHED Bob's real estate savvy out of all the actresses was a realistic woman, Earthy Miss MAE WEST who bought a HUGE apartment building. Her film roles were few after that, but she acquired it during the DEPRESSION -- a building that was was breathtakingly GORGEOUS! the Ravenswood apartment building on Rossmore Avenue. 1920 build but VERSAILLES PALACE STYLE apartment building. It was a magnificent 3-story stucco building with dozens of apartments earning her rent on each floor. Her apartment overlooked a golf course. Never again had to pay rent, the woman never lacked for money as the BUILDING WAS FULL. I saw her at a drug store with two weightlifter guys on full-time salary. One was Mariska Hargitay's father, Mickey. Later I had occasion to visit Jayne Mansfield's Holmby Hills home and bounce Mariska's brother on my knee. Sadly, shortly after that, Jayne and Mickey ran out of cash. The penalties of earning a living with youth and beauty. She had to go on the road to pay the mortgage, doing nickel gigs, got in a car accident on a Southern Highway and died. She should have put all her FOX STUDIO salary over the years into apartment buildings. Why don't they think of it? I believe it's because Business managers embezzle so much, they want you to have your money available in checking accounts.
A famous rock star I know, inherited her hubby's cash,
his was an even bigger estate, annual receipts in the twenty to forty million area. This poor dipstick gal had 40 million embezzled by a bookkeeper, slowly over a decade. A trickle became a hemorrhage. Daily, checks went to 'spooks' with mail drops, names unknown to anyone, money that vaporized. Soon, all she owned was the HOUSE and a stack of canceled checks to people nobody knew. Then, her house went. A year later, she realized that the cheating' bookkeeper hadn't paid the annual property taxes on the dead hubby's mother's home. It was sold out from under the old mother. The rock star was screwed by financial advisors and that's very hard to prove as those checks went out daily and being a blonde, I guess, she never caught the trend. She never studied her check stubs! Two decades of 20 million a yr, often more, she could have been another Bob Hope. And I coulda had my whole paycheck from her instead of half.
So don't be a blonde for crissakes. LET WISDOM into your head. Think of it this way. A private home costs you daily in fixing, taxes and doesn't earn a penny. Always get cheap land on key corners to be developed down the line, or get apartment buildings. Or buy a farm 1 gas tank from city, with ten pals, build ten 'worker' villas with just bedroom/bath on it. .COMMUNAL KITCHEN.
DEAR MELTDOWN- I know somebody's writing this damn web site and I suspect that YOU, like all cynics, nihilists, anarchists, radical war-mongers and bull terrier yapping critics of decent people, have a real problem with authority. You resented your father's manliness and his entitlement to be obeyed, at home, didn't you?
CORRECT AGAIN! You should be the CASSANDRA, not me. My Dad was caught with broads, lied, cheated, and when I sided with Mom, disinherited me but hey, I was ready for it. At that point it was the last in a long line of insults and abuse from him, all done with a smile mostly. He'd smile while he tore you a new one. And those weren't the only insults, just the early ones if you count a Basque Spanish husband with a gun pointed at my head, later a BF who took 30 yrs of my adoration and loyalty yet died intestate. That means no balls to leave me anything. However that doesn't change the accuracy of my eyesight. My romantic sufferings, current poverty, instability for the four offspring of that marriage, and intense grief with my landlord's heiress daughter are nothing compared to the sufferings of the families of the dead soldiers of WWI, WWII, KOREA, VIETNAM and IRAQ, AND AFGHANISTAN. Imagine their surviving relatives, grieving and starving. Or, if you will, the soldiers shot to pieces and hurting for a while waiting for death and knowing what would happen to their families without them.
My real point is always that WALL STREET drags bought politicos into those wars. The Bankers' and CEO's thievery requires a "correction" which politicians gladly make, the way W did with IRAQ.
And don't ya just hate it when countries that have just been hauled through the economic grinding mill by bankers, as GERMANY was in 1918, after WWI, with half their soldiers dead, and the other half crippled, go into another two decades of horror, this time mega inflation. As we are now with Iraq twice in a row.
Germans had to bring a wheelbarrow of money to the store for a loaf of bread, my grandpa went thru it in Leipzig, later Berlin. He wrote a brief summary of what MEGA INFLATION IS LIKE, like the one you're about to go through, where jobless, you have to buy a chicken and potato for fifty bucks or get shoes for your sons for 300$ but you don't have money for both.
And what else happens is that after years of that kind of gruesome slow starvation, the national temper is such that they go right into HITLER worship and they voted that baddie in, with an election. And then the HERO HITLER has to go kill another 40 million people for reasons of his own. Imagine the grief of surviving moms, wives, kids who lost fathers, husbands, sons, daughters, children. Gimme a break.
There's one more great loss you don't see. It's "the path abandoned". By that I mean the BEAUTY that all mankind could have brought to the world in 1914-1918, in 1939-1945, when there's a planet wide lack of money to pursue the right things, health, education, art, fun, play, delight, growth, science overcoming all the nasties, everyone stagnates. Everyone who SURVIVES that is.
But during the 1914 to 1945 period NOBODY ANYWHERE could have art, culture, a sturdy family life. Finance and industry got sloppy, CEOS built bombers, bombs, guns, bullets, jeeps and WAR polluted the earth. Well, the earth loves blood, seeds grow real well in it. I suppose you could say that. AND CEOS love war as their banking accounts grow under it. But the people? Every family lost someone. I lost 14 relatives though I didn't know them.
DEAR MELTDOWN - I know it's dangerous to leave my money in the WAMU bank but I don't want to start a run. I want the bank to be OK. So I'm not pulling it out. I'm patriotic. And FDIC will cover it. (within 20 years.) I am more loyal to the economy than that! Fear and pullling money out of the bank WILL produce the collapse for sure. Fear is what is producing everything dark that is coming to this country... I will be prudent, yes, but panicky? NO!
ANSWER: Your Patriotism is really a strong desire to PLEASE & be loved by an UNLOVING PARENT. This is a baby feeling. You are attempting heroic feats of loyalty, no matter how self destructive, so that the Mommy or Daddy figure starts to love you. Honey, I been there. I recognize a twin! From your current stance I get that on some subtle level, your parents were junk! Now let's get healed, get real. That bank took greed-engendered RISKS with other people's money and lost the bet! FDIC will take twenty long yrs to pay you back. It sez so in fine print of their code. Now i know you do not have l00 thou, but ten thousand bucks lost is ten thousand bucks. Get this: they do not have to pay back in two decades! And who knows what horror show is ahead. Jobless, homeless. So if you have people in your family who don't eat fairy dust, folks you care about, pass this info on. Blind loyalty to the gov that LET REAGAN DEREGULATE banking industry then LET CLINTON, nay PRODDED HIM To abrogate the LAW that FDR had put in place separating banking from securities vendors......the GOV DID THAT. cmon' you gonna be loyal to count dracula? Have some standards! Stop being infantile. Get real! If your own parents were so unloving, imagine how unloving Gramm, Clinton, Bush, Paulson are. And LOYAL TO THE ECONOMY? That's like my PRAYING to a ham sandwich!
DEAR MELTDOWN: We rent, so have no money in real estate. My husband has 100k, sizeable savings, he has his SS & teacher's pension and soon there will be my SS. but all that is just paper! Not even paper, just a representation of money that gets transferred electronically from one account to another. What if the system crashes? Should I worry?
ANSWER: Absolutely. This is the MOST UNSTABLE economy ever, dwarfs the 1929 economy like Jupiter dwarfs Earth. With more mouths to feed, 7 billion? Hunger makes madness. People angry at American CEO's also makes for madness. BUY an apartment building. You live in one now, with hundreds of units, how much more comfortable will you be in a four unit building. You have four children, grown, married, none of them own property. Cmon. Take a leap. Sure, you can't go to Europe annually for a while but soon enough.
DEAR MELTDOWN - Re this bail out of $700 Billion that the 'taxpayers' will pay for w/ increased taxes (that of course will never later on decrease).....'they' say that altho taxpayers will front the needed money those same taxpayers will recoup a profit further down the road when the bailed out assets are sold.... so if I'm (and everyone) is buying this junk my question is: when it's sold for a profit WILL I (and everyone) GET A CHECK??????!!!!!!
ANSWER: The men they're giving that money to are the most untrustworthy humans that have ever walked the planet since the GOTHS. They will use those billions for their own golden parachutes. Every one of them came to a securities or banking corporation losing money, hemhoraging dollars onto the street, with huge corporate debts. The executive in every case left a few months later leaving corp with bigger debts, much more lost money and yet took golden parachutes of up to 60 million each. The entire 700 billion and any other future billions given will fall into a true BLACK HOLE. That HADRON Particle Accelerator in Switzerland started bombarding the world the very same day of the NEW DEPRESSION's START. An apt metaphor. Synchronicity at work! There is a new, terrible black hole being ripped on WALL STREET and it's already begun to suck in America, eating through WASHINGTON first, then it'll take down NEW YORK and points West will follow. Get your lifesavers ready. Bags of Silver quarters under every bed in the house, lawns torn out and planted to food, bare root tree stock for nuts, fruit usually l9$ a tree, some livestock, garage sale fishing equipment, stored food.
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