Jonathan Campbell
Research for Empowerment and Survival

Helping people take charge of their lives

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Bad Moon Rising
How We Can Survive The Coming Economic Turmoil

John Fogerty wrote Bad Moon Rising - a ballad of bad times - in 1969, when the Vietnam War was raging and life was difficult for many people in the U.S. The Vietnam War ended, but things have not changed very much. The mainstream media would have you believe that recent times have been great for everyone, but it's been an illusion. Times have been great for the major stockholders of multinational corporations like Mobil-Exxon and Merck, but not so great for the rest of us. Real wages have been falling for most people (80% of Americans) - we are working harder and longer to maintain our standard of living - and millions of jobs have moved overseas. Hundreds of thousands of families are losing their homes to foreclosure. In May 2008 the feds acknowledged that the U.S. was in a recession. But their actions have been to hand us a few dollars in cash (their "economic stimulus package"), and to bail out the banks and investment firms that caused the recent financial mess. In September 2008, the financial collapse predicted by many non-mainstream economists was upon us. The government's response was a bailout of the banks of historic proportions - $700 billion dollars. While it may help to stave off the inevitable for a few months, this is not helpful to us.

What we need to do is find out what is really happening and figure out how to navigate this mess without losing everything. I'm not a financial analyst. I am a health consultant. And for most of my life I have been an advocate and activist for health and economic, social, and environmental justice. I have become very concerned about the financial future of the U.S. and how the coming economic problems will affect all of us. I looked deeper into what was happening, and the more I found the worse it looked.

What's Really Happening?
Predictions for the Future
Actions by the Government and Business
Debt, Debt, and More Debt
The Government's "Response"
The "Economic Stimulus Package"
What We Are Facing
What Can We Do?
Bad Moon Rising Economic Alert
Bad Moon Rising Survival Guides

What's Really Happening?
What I have found is that there are individuals and organizations that have analyzed the U.S. economy and have predicted our current problems for years. These are not wild-eyed survivalists, predictors of apocalypse, or the other purveyors of doom and gloom. They are academics and well-known independent expert financial analysts and auditors who have taken a hard look at the U.S. economy, rejecting the mainstream economists who focus only on the health of the multinational corporations and central banks.

Predictions for the Future
These individuals and organizations have predicted very hard times here in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world where the same mistakes have been made by governments, industries, and central banks. We have already seen many of their major predictions come true, month by month, down to the detail of commercial real estate prices becoming flat during the first quarter of 2008, and they anticipate that things are going to get much worse before they get better. Now even some more mainstream economists are making the same predictions. Some are openly discussing the likelihood of dollar devaluation and even the possibility of hyperinflation, which would wipe out pension funds and life savings.

Actions by the Government and Business
The actions of the U.S. government, multinational corporations and banks have put us all in peril. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have cost an astonishing amount, some analysts say as much as $3 trillion. Oil and gas prices have risen by 200% since 2000. The multinational corporations have moved millions of jobs overseas, where they pay a small fraction of US salaries. Banks and mortgage companies offered adjustable rate sub-prime mortgages that were destined to fail, and then packaged them up as bonds and sold them to the larger banks. The entire banking system is now in debt. The Federal Reserve is lending out billions per day to bail out the banks in so much trouble they can't pay their short-term obligations. This is not sustainable.

Debt, Debt, and More Debt
No one in the mainstream media has reported the alarming U.S. debt. You probably don't know, for instance, that the federal government debt now stands at more than $9 trillion, that total U.S. debt obligations accrued during the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush (Sr. and Jr.) Administrations have ballooned to a historical record of $53 trillion, or that the part of that debt owed to other countries is at a similar historical record, more than $12 trillion. The sub-prime mortgage fiasco, when combined with these other debts, has created a very-long-term credit shortage, and a large collection of banks are borrowing money from the Federal Reserve Board just to keep running. For an economy that runs on credit, this is a disaster in the making.

The Government's "Response"
Unfortunately the Federal Reserve has responded in the worst possible way: printing money. In March 2006 they stopped publishing the size of the money supply (total quantity of dollars), called the M3. Economists and financial analysts have figured out indirect ways calculating it, and James Turk (founder of GoldMoney) reported on May 26, 2008 that the M3 was now expanding by 17% per year. On June 26, Spiegel Online reported that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) informed Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, that the IMF will be carrying out an investigation and assessment of the entire US financial system.

The "Economic Stimulus Package"
People have used their "economic stimulus package" to pay a fraction of their mounting credit card bills, and some are dipping into retirement funds for current living expenses. Home foreclosures are at an all-time record: as of June 2008 there were more than a million homes in full foreclosure. The jobless rate just jumped a whopping 0.5% in just one month, and many more job losses are predicted. "Underemployment" - the term used to include those people who have given up looking or are working part-time instead of full-time, is hovering near 10%. Home and especially condominium prices are plummeting, with no end in sight. Major cities have thousands of boarded-up homes and no buyers.

What we are facing
So we are facing much more than a severe economic downturn. We have a convergence of the sub-prime mortgage failures and resultant bank bailout, a superficial expansion of the money supply, and an economy in shambles because few people have any money to spend that isn't more debt. The predictions of the anticipatory economists are dire. We appear to be destined for serious inflation and dollar devaluation, as we have nothing so show for the increased number of dollars in circulation. The "borrow and spend now and pay later" philosophy promoted by the banks, offering people credit far beyond their means, has put millions of families at risk. Some analysts are predicting collapse of the banking system and the economy.

What Can We Do?
How can we help each other, stay healthy, and strengthen our families, our friends, our neighbors, and our communities in times of economic turmoil? The mainstream media now finally acknowledges that we are in a serious recession, but provides no guidance. The federal government is not about to help. What do we do to survive? Where do we turn? How do we keep up with the changes? How do we get out of debt? If we have savings, should we trade whatever dollars we have for gold, silver, or other precious metals? What about our pension funds?  The answers (or at least the best answers we have to date) to those questions exist, but they are not easily accessible.

Economic Alert Newsletter
That is why I have begun to publish Bad Moon Rising Economic Alert, a free one-to-two page economic email news flash (weekly/bi-weekly/monthly) of important developments that affect us all, written in clear, easy-to-read language without a lot of economic and financial jargon. I am also publishing Bad Moon Rising Economic Survival Guides, a series of more in-depth, focused reports. The Alert will also contain short excerpts of these upcoming reports. Bad Moon Rising Economic Alert began publishing on June 22, 2008.

Please click here to receive a free subscription to Bad Moon Rising Economic Alert.
Email: economicalert-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Website: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/economicalert

You will get an email reply asking you to verify your subscription request. (This newsletter is managed by YahooGroups. If you have an email spam filter, be sure to set it so that emails from yahoogroups.com and cqs.com are not filtered or blocked.)

Survival Guides
The Survival Guides are 10-30 pages (8.5 x 11) each. They contain critical information about what we can do to meet the challenges, with analysis and advice from some of the best academic economic and financial experts in the world, condensed into easy-to-read, understandable language.

The first Survival Guide, available for free download now, is called Navigating the Economic Crisis. This extended list with explanations covers, in summary, everything from saving by tracking and lowering your personal expenses, how to purchase and store precious metals and/or stable foreign currency (including setting up a Euro-based bank account), to helping to organize your community, to dealing with credit card debt and/or home foreclosure, to the dietary supplements you can take to keep yourself healthy while under stress.

Please click one of the links below if you wish to receive one or more of these Survival Guides. I can't guarantee wealth and riches in the midst of turmoil. What I am offering is the best information available, for maintaining your savings and helping you and your family survive the coming economic crisis, including how to keep healthy and deal with the stress of uncertainty.

You may download the Survival Guides below online.

Bad Moon Rising Survival Guides - How We Can Survive The Coming Economic Turmoil

Navigating the Economic Crisis. Available Now for free download: http://www.cqs.com/economicalert/navigatingsurvivalguide.pdf

References:

James Turk, Weimar Inflation in America, http://news.goldseek.com/JamesTurk/1211987475.php

Jim Willie CB, USDollar on Edge, Gold on Verge, http://www.kitco.com/ind/willie/jul022008.html

Gabor Steingart (Speigel Online), The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,562291,00.html

David Galland (Casey Research), Scorched Earth Economy, http://www.kitcocasey.com/displayArticle.php?id=2133

James K. Galbraith, The GOP's December Surprise,
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/december-surprise.html

Alerts

The Storm Rages On

The Storm Has Begun, Takeover of Freddie and Fannie

The Calm Before The Storm

Jedi Mind Tricks

The Meltdown Continues, IndyMac, $100,000 FDIC Limit

The Meltdown Has Begun

Welcome, predictions, Bernanke Bluster

Tips on Buying Gold

Avoid Foreclosure

Standard Disclaimer: The information above, Bad Moon Rising Alerts, and the Bad Moon Rising Survival Guides do not constitute financial advice, but are condensations and distillations of the work of others and a few words of what I believe to be common sense. Please seek out an independent licensed accountant or financial advisor to review the information and references I have provided as well as their own expert knowledge, in order to tailor a financial plan to your circumstances. I cannot be held responsible for the consequences of decisions made based on the information I provide. If I suggest that you stop playing the lottery to save money and your number comes up, don't blame me.

©Graphics, Web design, and content Copyright 2003-2008 by Jonathan L. Campbell.

Jonathan Campbell
Research for Empowerment and Survival
43 Boynton Street, S. 2R
Boston, MA 02130-3263
EconomicAlert: http://www.cqs.com/economicalert

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