The Hidden Cost Of Credit

As a participant with American Preppers, I’ve learned about long-term survival tactics, food and food storage, bugging out, and some of the special equipment that would improve your chances at survival success. But, I know that some of you who want to do what is necessary to protect self and family are not able to do as much as you’d like. The reason comes down to one word – Debt.

Just as our country’s debt could plunge us into chaos, personal debt is at the critical stage. When I released my book, THE CREDIT DIET back in 2002, personal debt was just over a trillion dollars. Today that number is $11.4 Trillion or a 10 fold increase. And it’s what you can’t see about debt that really costs.

This column would like to share the benefits as well as the methods of eliminating debt without risk. Without disguising what you owe as a single payment stretched over 30 years. What you’ll find here are some easy to follow tips regarding credit, debt, and the elimination of monthly payments from your life.

For example, how long would it take to pay for a set of furniture costing $2,000 if you charged it using a store credit card making just the minimum payments? Some of you would be shocked to learn that it would take over 30 years. Others would shrug it off as the cost of getting what you want. However, let me share what you probably wouldn’t know.

The minimum payment on a charge like that would be about $38. (In all examples we will not be compounding rates, calculating tax consequences, or quoting specific interest charges. We will use worst case or best case examples to share the point. Every situation is different but principles are universal.) Taking that same $38 and investing it in silver, gold or for preppers, coins of real value (silver and gold) could be the difference in being able to trade with others.

If your metal investments earn 8% over 30 years you would earn a total of about $55,000 at $38 a month. If you found a way to earn 10%, just 2% more, you would end up with $85,000. At a rate of 12% your final total would be $132,000. And gold and silver go through the roof at 18% the total after 30 years would be $536,000. Folks, that’s a half a million dollars in the future for a couch you had to have today.

This is what I mean by the hidden cost of credit. It’s not what you see that can hurt you. It’s what you don’t see. Credit has two costs that can alter your future and neither of them is really talked about. You just saw an example of future cost for today’s comfort. You’ll never see these numbers on a financial disclosure of any loan document. They’re important numbers that you need to see and understand before you make a buying decision.

The second one is what I call the net payback. What that term means is that your payments are made in net dollars (earnings after all tax and other deductions). What you need to look at is how many hours you have to work to “net” enough to pay for a particular purchase. (To see if you’re in potential trouble with debt, email dealerresourcegroup@gmail.com and we’ll send you a free debt quiz. 7 simple questions to see if you’re in trouble.) In this case, let’s say your mortgage payment (not including tax and insurance) is $1,000 a month. If we assume that one third of your earnings are deducted for taxes (I know some are higher depending on state and local deductions) you would have to earn $1,500 to make that payment.

Since banks and other sources advertise the effective yield of potential earnings, you should calculate the “effective” interest rate you’re paying. To do that, find out what rate of interest you would be paying if your mortgage payment was at your gross earnings. For example, if $1,000 a month was reflective of a 7% mortgage and you had to earn $1,500 to make that payment, calculate what the rate would be on the same amount borrowed to reflect a $1,500 payment. In this case, the effective rate would be approximately 11.5%.

I’m being extreme to share what you may not have been considering when it comes to borrowing. After learning the hard way about the consequences of debt, I can conclude that all you do when you borrow is travel to your future earnings to pay for your past pleasures. Unfortunately, you can’t relive the past but you will have to live in your future.

Five Dollar DIY Survival Shelter

Jack: “What’s going on guys? Black Scout Survival here today and I’m gonna show you how to make a 5 dollar shelter, survival shelter or bug out shelter kit. All you need is just a few items.

“You can put it in a bag just like this so it’s all contained but you’re gonna need duct tape, an emergency blanket. You can use a cheap Mylar. Para cord and a 55 gallon drum liner.”

“With these few really cheap items you can make a very good shelter that will keep you warm and dry in a multitude of different situations.”

“So let me put it together. So the next thing is, you’re just gonna open up your bag and find the bottom of it. So this is the bottom there and the opening is here. So what I’m gonna need to do, and this doesn’t have to be pretty. Lets fold it in half and I’m gonna take my Leather-man multi tool trauma sheers here but you can just use a knife. Just cut this bottom portion off and it doesn’t have to be pretty like I said. It doesn’t even have to be even just as close as possible. By doing this you are essentially going to be making a tube tent.”

“Now that you’ve cut that whole you now have a tube tent you can run your para cord through and have it rigged to the tree already. This pretty much is how your gonna make your ridge line for this shelter.”

“Ok, now I have rigged this up through the tube, the trash bag we made into a tube shelter. I put a truckers hitch on this side and a bowline on this side. The next thing you’re gonna do is kind of situate it where you want it at. Then take your duct tape, this is single side duct tape. I mean not single side, its stuck to a piece of paper so it’s a flat pack. That’s what they call it.”

“Now what you’re gonna do with that is just tape up the top of your edge here that way it stays in place. You’re just gonna kind of run your finger across the top to make sure that it is very on the line.”

“So now its not going to move there. So now we have the shelter all put together. I just basically ran para cord through the inside of the shelter and then I used tape to keep it up. I used stakes but you don’t have to. You can make your own in the field. I’m gonna get in the shelter and show you.”

“Do you see how there is a little bit of room underneath it. It has a lot of room. So basically that is for you to put debris under the shelter so you’re not sleeping on the ground. It will give you insulation. You definitely want that in a cold whether environment. So just pack as much debris, make sure there’s no sticks or anything like that. Just some leaves or pine straw. Give about four to six inches thick.”

“Also, if it is raining or something like that you will notice I put it at an angle so the head is higher than the feet. You can tape with that duct tape, the whole front end closed so you still have ventilation in here so you’re not gonna suffocate yourself. You can keep it pretty much water proof or keep the bag together sealed up and just run the line through it and make a whole for the line and duct tape the hole up.”

“Now also, another thing you can do is taking the emergency blanket and wrap inside this top guideline, this ridge-line and drape it through there so you have a complete water proof, wind proof shelter and also have that 90% reflective of the emergency blanket. I’m gonna go ahead and get in here.”

“And now I’m just gonna go ahead and open up this emergency blanket and show you how easy it is to wrap this inside of it. Now you want to have the doorways open because of the insulative, I mean the condensation in here. It will give it a breeze so you don’t get wet.So now you see we have the reflective Mylar on one side reflecting that heat. It’s gonna keep us warm.”

“So guys that was the $5 bug out or survival shelter. You know survival shelters should be small and easy to carry with you. This one, depending on what bag you use and stuff like that you can actually wrap it down small enough to put in your back pocket. The thing is if you also get a fire going out here it will kind of simulate the old war Kochanski super shelter because this side is open or doesn’t have the blanket on so it will reflect off that other side and keep you warm. This thing was so hot for just a few minutes I’m pouring sweat now. It’s definitely for very cold environments. Nonetheless I hope this helps you.”

“Please check us out on black scout survival.com. Make sure you subscribe to our channel. I try to put out a few new videos every week. Thanks for watching.”

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Picking Locks as a Survival Skill

Certainly we all regard lock picking as a rather nefarious activity used by criminals and spies, but under true, live-or-die survival situations including this skill and the necessary devices in your survival kit may be worth consideration. In a large-scale disaster there will be plenty of abandoned commercial, industrial and residential structures. Even sheds and barns can provide emergency shelter that is far superior to tarps and tents.

While breaking into someone’s home or business is not something we want to do, it may be absolutely necessary to get out of the cold, wind, rain and other hazards. Entry should be achieved with the minimum of noise and damage. A broken window or door will attract unwanted attention. Carrying a lock pick gun and/or small pry bar in your survival pack may be worth the weight. If you enter someone’s home be respectful of their property. If you must “borrow” food or other items to survive leave them a note and an IOU for future reimbursement. Just because civilization has broken down does not justify your becoming a looter. Most importantly: be sure it is truly an unoccupied structure before approaching or attempting entry. Carefully observe, call out and even knock first. Going from a desperate survivor to an intruder could result in disaster for you and the occupants. 

The lock pick gun below with its instruction should get you past most locks, but you should practice ahead of time. Lock picks alone are much smaller and lighter than this gun, but take longer to learn. There are also special master keys and jiggle keys made for padlocks and automobiles. You can get these devices online and through many survival supply catalogs. The one below is made by Scorpion Defense Products and is sold byBUDK.com for $49.99. Plain picks are just $9.95 while jiggle keys go for $19.00

Valentines Day Invitation!!!

China Crash: $28 Trillion Debt Load Forces Credit Crunch

The trading year started with a bang in China.

On Monday, China’s blue-chip stock market — the CSI 300 — fell 7% in the worst trading day in four months.

The sell-off saw about $590 billion wiped from Chinese shares, according to Bloomberg. The fall was so steep that it triggered a break clause that suspended trade for the day.

The government has managed to slow the drop to a crawl Tuesday by pumping money into the stock market.

But according to analysts from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, things could get a lot worse. They see the Chinese stock market falling by 27% in 2016, and it’s all because of debt.

Wilderness Survival Skills Pt 3/4: Hand Drill, Tarp Shelter, & Resource ...

Hand Drills:

Matt: “Hi, I’m Matt with Boulder Outdoor Survival School and what we are gonna talk about here this early afternoon is hand drill fire. We are gonna go ahead and make a fire, I think its tea time so I think we are gonna boil up some water and make a natural tea. To do that we are going to use and hand drill set to light the fire.”

“Hand Drills are a very, very universal, very ancient way, to make fire by friction. Some of the benefits of making a hand drill over a bow drill are that it is much simpler to make. Not as many moving parts and not as fidgety. On the flip side of it is one of the cons is that it takes much more practice and really perfect material and perfect form to be able to perform hand drills reliably.”

“So, here are some various iterations of a hand drill set. What I recommend and what I teach in the field is usually starting with some sort of spindle that will be from arm pit to wrist length. Much longer than that and you will get to much play at the top. Almost like trying to spin a car antenna or radio antenna. It wants to whip around. Any longer than that is not ideal. Shorter than that is going to be harder for someone just learning. The material that I am using for these spindles is generally some sort of flower stalk that has a piffy center and this ones been used so it’s a little harder to see.”

“The other component we are looking for is what we call a hearth board. A hearth board is these three items here. You’re looking for generally looking for things on the softer side than you would for a bow drill. So, something like yucca or our local material, my personal favorite, is the root of the cotton wood tree. I am going to go ahead and do a demonstration.”

“With anything fire, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a match, or a lighter, or a Ferro rod, or a hand drill. Proper prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. (Editor’s note: Say that five times fast. Lol) The old military saying, so, everything that I want to make a sustainable fire needs to be ready to go before I start putting this into service.”

“So, we’ve got our tinder bundle ready, we’ve got kindling and a fire lay ready to go. I’m going to get myself in a comfortable, level position. Get myself in a nice comfortable tri-pod and I’m actually going to wet my hand slightly to give me traction on my spindle. Seat my spindle and then I’m gonna start warming the board. So, what I am doing, this technique is called floating. Floating is kind of a modern, aboriginal innovation as far as I can tell, but it is very useful. The reason being, I don’t have to migrate down the spindle and then quickly move back to the top. I can continue spinning just by adding a little rocking motion with my hand. I can keep my hand stationary and actually warm up the board and start creating. 

You can see already I have a notch full of dust and it’s smoking pretty heavily from the periphery of the spindle. It’s not an ember yet. I am basically just building my heat and budgeting my energy.”

“At this point I’ve got a full notch and I’ve got some good heat so I am gonna go ahead and start adding some more speed and downward pressure. You can see I just have to move my hands back up to the top really quickly. And now, I have an ember and the reason I know that is because that smoke is coming from the pile of fuel I created. So at this point I am actually not in a hurry. A lot of people see that ember and get excited, they’re tired, out of breath, and their hands are probably shaking. “

“You have time with this. What I’m gonna do is gently pull the board away from the ember and let that ember collet into a nice solid material. Right now it is basically a pile of powder or piled dust.

If I gently fan it you can see it starts to glow. So I want to bring my nest to my ember. At this point it is held together well enough that you should be able to gently lift it up without it falling apart. Then I will gently tap it in to my tinder nest.”

“Here is where this little glowing ember becomes a flame. It’s got more fuel to grow into but it needs oxygen so I’m just going to gently start blowing on it. There we go.”

Making Teas:

Tyler: “To make tea one of the things we are gonna use is pine needles which has a lot of vitamin c in it. We have what’s called Brigham tea or Phedra tea, which is a stimulate and then some elder berry. This is a little prudent so they kind of balance themselves.”

Matt: “So there’s some wild tea brewed on a fire made with a hand drill.”

A-Frame Poncho Shelter:

Kirsten: “What we have here is an A-Frame poncho shelter. To start with you want to make a very taught ridge-line. I’ve connected it between two trees here. In general you want to start at at least a waist level in height. If it’s lower it will keep you warmer. If it is higher it will be a little more spacious but you’ll have more wind flow through it so it could be a little bit colder.”

“On each corner of this you want to pull out from the grommet to about a 45 degree angle, once again making sure your poncho is very taught so that you can have water slide off of this and wind not blow your shelter everywhere. So making sure things are very tight is important in any shelter but particularly in an A Frame.”

“I’ve gone ahead and tied off the hood. Tied it off so no water or precipitation can get in there, but also tied another piece of P-cord to the hood and extended it to the nice tree behind me, once again creating even more tension in this poncho.”

“With two ponchos like this you can fit about three people in there comfortably. The more you put in there the warmer it’s going to be from shared body heat, but two people, one person, this would be a good size for any of them.”

“So when you’re sleeping directly on the ground the biggest problem is the heat transfer from your body to the cold ground that wants to rob you of all your heat. The easy way to take care of that is to build up what we like to call a BOSS duff. This could be anything from dried grasses, leaves, pine needles like they have on the ground here. Bows of trees would do. What you want to do is create insulation to get yourself off the ground to slow down that transfer of heat and allow it to kind of sit around in those empty air spaces so the air pockets in the duff below you.”

“So now that I’m all set up, my shelter is taken care of, I’m gonna go walk the area and look for resources I can eat and use fore other crafts that I have in mind.”

Foraging:

“When we are in survival situations we don’t always have a book telling us all of the wild edibles of the area but those types of food may be really important in your diet if you’re only living off mice and a few greens.”

“So if you’re testing a new plant the first thing you want to do is take a tiny bit of it and rub it on the inside of your wrist and then you want to wait a number of hours to see if you have a reaction. If you don’t have a reaction, you believe it to be something edible you can take the tiniest of bites. Leave it on your tongue for a few seconds and then spit it out and then rinse with some water. See what happens after a few hours, if you have anything going on. If you don’t then maybe you want to take a tiny piece, chew on it, actually swallow it and take it down with some water. If you don’t have a reaction in a few hours go for a small, but larger gathering of that plant. Have that, and then wait a full day and see what your system actually does. Anything that gives you diarrhea, anything that gives you an itchy throat, anything that gives you a stomach ache maybe that food isn’t even poisonous but it is new to your body. If it is causing you harm then maybe you shouldn’t be eating it. That is part of the progression.”

“Alright, so here we have a Ponderosa pine that has been struck by lightning actually. A couple things that are great. One, we have all these fantastic pine needles here on the ground. Nice, duff material right? So we would gather all these perhaps in a large cloth, take them to our camping sight and have bedding material. If we take a closer look at this pine, we actually find that there is a lot of pitch wood on here. Remember that pitch wood is great for flames and making fires and holding onto it. Then throughout all of this we are looking at sap basically. Sap has a lot of uses. I will take pitch and fill in different wounds that I have, cuts or things that are bothering me. Just to patch it and be done with it. Then these pine needles themselves, these larger pine needles are very high in Vitamin C so when you come across this tree with green needles on it you can take off the needles and make a tea. It taste good to. It’s a little bit sweet.”

“So this is a great plant. This is a big sage brush. Its foliage is a anti-microbial. So just by rubbing this in-between my hands it is sort of like hand sanitizer which is fantastic. If I take a bunch of it and have a pile of it we are looking at some fantastic toilet paper and when you look at the shape of this particular one and find a larger example you will find nice straight pieces that don’t have the curvature of the older sage. This is what I use for my bow drill fire kit. Pieces of sage brush. It also has some nice pealy bark on it which we know is great for nest materials. A lot of uses from a big sage brush.”

Knife Sharpening:

“Nice. So this is a good example of something that is getting close, but not quite what we are looking for for a sharpening stone. Sand stone out here works great to sharpen our Scandinavian bevel knife anyways. But you want a very flat surface and of course you need to get to the grit that is appropriate for your knife. These would rip them up and not quite a flat surface. “

Tyler: “Can we grind them out?”

Kirsten: “Yeah you can do some grinding for sure to flatten it a bit but it is nice just to get the perfect stone. Nice, flat and easy to carry. We have so much around so if you keep your eyes peeled you should be able to find something naturally.”

“So when we are looking for sharpening stones a nice place to start might be in the bit of a washer or drainage. Something like this where there has been more abrasion from water. Until you can find smoother pieces, flatter pieces or potentially something you can sharpen your knife with. Consequently out here we are able to find a lot of silk stuff which we use for our socket rocks very frequently. It’s grind-able but holds enough durability that your spindle isn’t actually going to burn into your hands and through the rock.”

“Another thing that is great about these larger slabs of sand stone is they will work very well for dead fall traps. This isn’t a good size or anything but you can see it is fairly flat in surface so we should be able to have a solid drop against another hard, durable surface and really compress and compact the animal for a death blow. Then there is also a little bit of texture to it so I might be able to get my bait sticking in a little bit of a nook without having to use a knife tip or something like that to actually create a little notch on the bottom of my trap. So, our sand stone slab works very well for dead fall traps.”

Cordage material:

Kirsten: “We have some examples of milk weed here. I use this plant for cordage material but what we need to find is dead, second year stalk. This is a small example, but this is a second year stalk from a milkweed plant. So what it can do is crush the plant all the way up to the tip. Open it up, take one half, and bend off all of this hard stuff we don’t want. What we are looking for is the fiber right here and you just peel it off. Once I’ve gotten all of my fiber clean I can twist it in a reverse rap cordage method and ultimately come out with some rope.”

Hand drill:

Matt: “So I mentioned that the hand drill and the technique for the hand drill is deceptively simple and it is. It is basically rubbing one stick against another. But when you get into trying to do this and learn this, especially the beginner. It is extremely difficult to get the technique down and the muscle memory and also just the hand toughness essentially. It is hard on your hands and also hard on your muscles. There are muscles you use doing this that probably never get used for anything else. So, you have to kind of develop those muscles over time and build up to it and not burn yourself out in the process.

World faces wave of epic debt defaults, fears central bank veteran

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned.

"The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

"Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem, too."
William White, OECD

"Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief," he said.

"It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something," he told The Telegraph on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians."

The next task awaiting the global authorities is how to manage debt write-offs - and therefore a massive reordering of winners and losers in society - without setting off a political storm.

Mr White said Europe's creditors are likely to face some of the biggest haircuts. European banks have already admitted to $1 trillion of non-performing loans: they are heavily exposed to emerging markets and are almost certainly rolling over further bad debts that have never been disclosed.

The European banking system may have to be recapitalized on a scale yet unimagined, and new "bail-in" rules mean that any deposit holder above the guarantee of €100,000 will have to help pay for it.

The warnings have special resonance since Mr White was one of the very few voices in the central banking fraternity who stated loudly and clearly between 2005 and 2008 that Western finance was riding for a fall, and that the global economy was susceptible to a violent crisis.

Mr White said stimulus from quantitative easing and zero rates by the big central banks after the Lehman crisis leaked out across east Asia and emerging markets, stoking credit bubbles and a surge in dollar borrowing that was hard to control in a world of free capital flows.

The result is that these countries have now been drawn into the morass as well. Combined public and private debt has surged to all-time highs to 185pc of GDP in emerging markets and to 265pc of GDP in the OECD club, both up by 35 percentage points since the top of the last credit cycle in 2007.

"Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem too," Mr White said.

Mr White, who also chief author of G30's recent report on the post-crisis future of central banking, said it is impossible know what the trigger will be for the next crisis since the global system has lost its anchor and is inherently prone to breakdown.

A Chinese devaluation clearly has the potential to metastasize. "Every major country is engaged in currency wars even though they insist that QE has nothing to do with competitive depreciation. They have all been playing the game except for China - so far - and it is a zero-sum game. China could really up the ante."

Mr White said QE and easy money policies by the US Federal Reserve and its peers have had the effect of bringing spending forward from the future in what is known as "inter-temporal smoothing". It becomes a toxic addiction over time and ultimately loses traction. In the end, the future catches up with you. "By definition, this means you cannot spend the money tomorrow," he said.

Federal Reserve

A reflex of "asymmetry" began when the Fed injected too much stimulus to prevent a purge after the 1987 crash. The authorities have since allowed each boom to run its course - thinking they could safely clean up later - while responding to each shock with alacrity. The BIS critique is that this has led to a perpetual easing bias, with interest rates falling ever further below their "Wicksellian natural rate" with each credit cycle.

"It was always dangerous to rely on central banks to sort out a solvency problem ... It is a recipe for disorder, and now we are hitting the limit."
William White, OECD

The error was compounded in the 1990s when China and eastern Europe suddenly joined the global economy, flooding the world with cheap exports in a "positive supply shock". Falling prices of manufactured goods masked the rampant asset inflation that was building up. "Policy makers were seduced into inaction by a set of comforting beliefs, all of which we now see were false. They believed that if inflation was under control, all was well," he said.

In retrospect, central banks should have let the benign deflation of this (temporary) phase of globalisation run its course. By stoking debt bubbles, they have instead incubated what may prove to be a more malign variant, a classic 1930s-style "Fisherite" debt-deflation.

Mr White said the Fed is now in a horrible quandary as it tries to extract itself from QE and right the ship again. "It is a debt trap. Things are so bad that there is no right answer. If they raise rates it'll be nasty. If they don't raise rates, it just makes matters worse," he said.

There is no easy way out of this tangle. But Mr White said it would be a good start for governments to stop depending on central banks to do their dirty work. They should return to fiscal primacy - call it Keynesian, if you wish - and launch an investment blitz on infrastructure that pays for itself through higher growth.

"It was always dangerous to rely on central banks to sort out a solvency problem when all they can do is tackle liquidity problems. It is a recipe for disorder, and now we are hitting the limit," he said.

the official “unemployment rate” has become so politicized and so manipulated that it is essentially meaningless at this point

Last April, we learned that the official “unemployment rate” has fallen to 5.5 percent. Since an unemployment rate of 5 percent is considered to be “full employment” by many economists, many in the mainstream media took this as a sign that the U.S. economy has almost fully “recovered” since the last recession.  In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, some Federal Reserve officials believe that “the U.S. economy is already at full employment“.  But how can this possibly be?  It certainly does not square with reality.  Personally, I know people that have been struggling with unemployment for years and that still cannot find a decent job.  So what in the world is going on?  How can the government be telling us that we are nearly at “full employment” when so many people can’t find work?  Could it be possible that the government numbers are misleading?

It is my contention that the official “unemployment rate” has become so politicized and so manipulated that it is essentially meaningless at this point.  The following are 10 reasons why…

#1 Since February 2008, the size of the U.S. population has grown by 16.8 million people, but the number of full-time jobs has actually decreased by 140,000.

#2 The percentage of working age Americans that have a job right now is still about the same as it was during the depths of the last recession.  Posted below is a chart that shows how the employment-population ratio has changed since the beginning of the decade.  Does this look like a full-blown“employment recovery” to you?…

#3 The primary reason for the decline in the official “unemployment rate” is the fact that the government now considers millions upon millions of long-term unemployed workers to “no longer be in the labor force”.  Just check out the following numbers…

The number of Americans participating in the labor force has been on a decline for the past few years. Nearly 33 percent of the Americans above age 16 are not part of the workforce, the highest number since 1978. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report issued recently has found 92,898,000 Americans above age 16 not a part of the labor force of the country as on February 2015.

When President Obama took over the office in January 2009, nearly 80,529,000 Americans were not a part of the labor force. The number has increase by nearly 12 million over the last few years.

#4 Over the past couple of years, the labor force participation rate in this country has been hovering near mutli-decade lows…

The labor force participation rate hovered between 62.9 percent and 62.7 percent in the eleven months from April 2014 through February, and has been 62.9 percent or lower in 13 of the 17 months since October 2013.

Prior to that, the last time the rate was below 63 percent was 37 years ago, in March 1978 when it was 62.8 percent, the same rate it was in February.

#5 When you add the number of “officially unemployed” Americans (8.7 million) to the number of Americans “not in the labor force” (92.9 million), you get a grand total of101.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.  Does that sound like “full employment” to you?

#6 The quality of our jobs continues to decline.  Right now, only 44 percent of U.S. adults are employed for 30 or more hours each week.

#7 Millions upon millions of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs because that is all they can find, and wages for American workers are at depressingly low levels.  The following numbers come directly from the Social Security Administration…

-39 percent of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.

-52 percent of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

-63 percent of American workers make less than $40,000 a year.

-72 percent of American workers make less than $50,000 a year.

#8 The average duration of unemployment for an unemployed worker is still about twice as long as it was just prior to the last recession.

#9 Most Americans feel as though the Obama administration has done little to nothing to help the middle class.  Just consider the following poll numbers…

According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, Americans see government policies under the Obama administration as having mostly benefited wealthy people, large corporations and financial institutions.

Seventy-two percent of respondents said government policies have done little or nothing to help the middle class, and 65 percent said they have done nothing to help the poor. Sixty-eight percent said the policies have done nothing to help small businesses.

Meanwhile, 45 percent said the policies have done a “great deal” to help large banks and financial institutions, 38 percent say they have helped large corporations, and 36 percent say they have helped the wealthy.

#10 If the unemployment rate was calculated honestly, we would all be talking about the horrific “unemployment crisis” that we were currently enduring.  According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, the real unemployment rate in the United States right now is above 23 percent.

Markets suffer their worst start to the year since Great Depression

The start of this year has been the worst for financial markets since the onset of the Great Depression, with stock prices slumping around the world amid mounting concern over the situation in China. 

A wave of selling has swept the world’s leading financial centres over the past two weeks, with the value of Britain’s leading companies falling by more than £110 billion since the start of the year.he year. 

The FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest quoted companies fell 114 points, or 2 per cent, to 5,804 yesterday — the lowest close since November 2012. Indices in Europe and America have fared even worse: the Shanghai market was the worst performer, closing down 3.6 per cent, taking its total losses to 18 per cent for 2016. This was prompted by the price of a barrel of Brent crude dipping below the $30 mark, for the third time this week. In America the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 391 points, or 2.4 per cent, at 15,988. 

The FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest quoted companies fell 114 points, or 2 per cent, to 5,804 yesterday — the lowest close since November 2012. In America the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 391 points, or 2.4 per cent, at 15,988.

The Shanghai market was the worst performer, closing down 3.6 per cent, taking its losses for the year so far to 18 per cent. This was prompted by the price of a barrel of Brent crude dipping below $30 for the third time this week.

David Buik, of Panmure Gordon, the investment bank, suggested that the “financial carnage” in stock markets in the first two weeks of the year was the worst since 1928.

Investors seeking safe havens have turned to gold, sparking a 2 per cent recovery in its price to $1,094 an ounce.

George Osborne underlined the pessimistic mood by warning last week of grave threats to the British economy, the chancellor saying that it could be “the year we look back at the beginning of the decline” if the country abandoned his agenda. Fears of another crash were heightened by a research note by an economist at RBS advising clients to “sell everything except high-quality bonds”.

Some economists have said, however, that the risk of contagion from China has been exaggerated. It is only Britain’s sixth-largest export market, representing no more than 3.6 per cent of overseas sales, behind the Republic of Ireland.

In China, interventions by the Communist party to prop up markets have done little to reassure investors, and the plight of the world’s second-largest economy is gripping markets. There is strong evidence of a slowdown, after an unprecedented boom between 2000 and 2014, when the size of the Chinese economy ballooned by a factor of eight. The Beijing authorities have set a growth target of 6.5 per cent for this year, but scepticism over the accuracy of its economic data is growing.

Fathom Consulting, an economic forecaster, thinks that growth in China could be as low as 2.4 per cent, rather than the official 6.8 per cent. The difference between those figures, in dollar terms, equated to more than the entire economy of the United Arab Emirates, suggesting that a severe jolt is in store for the rest of the world.

The Chinese government’s botched interventions in local stock exchanges have heightened the nervousness, and added to the steep fall in the price of oil. It tumbled to below $29 a barrel yesterday, its lowest since 2004.

2016 CERT Class Dates

ESEE 3 Long Term Review

Manny: “I’ve got a lot of knives. You might have seen the 30 minute video I did on YouTube a couple years ago that shows pocket knives and survival knives and all kind of cutting tools, but one thing I didn’t have was a knife that I could deploy horizontally off the belt. So, now I’ve got one of those and I’ve had it for several months and using it. I am going to review it for you today.”

“Whenever I had a knife on my hip it was always getting tangled up in my seat belt when I sat down or poking into the chair or somebodies leather couch or the seat of the car. I wanted to find something horizontally at the belt. So what I got is the ESEE 3. I’ve had it for six or eight months now and been using it really hard. It’s my go to knife now. I wear it all the time, every wear I go because it is so handy. Yes, it’s short but you can get it longer if you want.”

“The ESEE 3 is 3.88 inches from tip to the handle and its got a 3.38 inch cutting edge. The four is longer. The five is longer than that and the six is the longest. If you want to wear it horizontally I think a three or a four is as long as I would want to wear comfortably at the belt. If you’ve got to much stuff in your pocket or your belt it’s gonna pull your pants down and be uncomfortable, but this is not bad at all.”

“So I can take it out one handed like this, but then when I put it back I can hold the sheath and as long as I can I do it visually to make sure the tip is going into the sheath and not gonna cut into my hand. So I watch the blade go in there and then I pop it in.”

“You can do it one handed okay. Put it in like this and then grip up here on this grip and squeeze it in. So now it’s in there.”

“When you get the knife you get the knife and this ABS plastic sheath. Now I have read on the forums that there are people complaining about the fact that it’s not Kydex but ABS is perfectly adequate for what this needs to do. You don’t get this clipthat is a separate item you have to buy separately. You just get this clip that closes down over your belt. These things you can adjust up or down narrower for a smaller belt or wider for a bigger belt like mine. To open it you just pull this and then squeeze these open.”

“The sheath has this drainage groove in case you get water in the sheath which is important because the blade is made of 1095 Carbon Steele which does rust. As you can see I’ve already got some rust on the cutting edge. On top where this protective coating has worn off from all the batoning I’ve been doing. So there you see a little patina.”

“So is it a problem for it to rust? Well, yes. You don’t want your carbon steel blade rusting. But you can prevent it by using rust inhibitors or like you can buy a cloth you rub on the blade and it prevents rust or you can oil it.”

“So why carbon steel? Why not get stainless steel and not deal with the rust? For me, it’s a practical issue. I have had a lot of 1095 knives all my life and I know how to sharpen them and that really is the issue because when I go for my knife I am not reaching for an ax, or a hammer, or a screwdriver or a pry bar. What I need is this thing to cut. I’ve pretty much got it down as to how I can get a good cutting edge on it.”

“I like it relatively for the factor of the whole thing. Just because of the way I carry it, horizontally. When you first get the knife the mycarta smells. It’s got kind of an offensive burnt plastic smell to it that is pretty unpleasant, but it wears off after a time and no it has no odor whatsoever.”

“It’s a one eighth inch thick blade. If you get the mill model it is gonna come with a sharpened spine and a partly serrated edge right here. A sharpened glass breaker pommel. It also comes in another model that has a rounded pommel. This one comes with a good coating on it, but it’s wearing with all the batoning I’ve done on it.”

“This finger toil is good if you ever need to do any very close carving work right here near the end of the blade. It always makes me nervous to do that because I’m afraid I am going to cut myself so I’ve just learned to grip it like this and keep my index finger on the grip and then get what leverage I can like this.”

“The blade is wide and instead of cutting off this belly and going straight to a point right here you have this big rounded piece of metal. Now what does that do? Well. Let me demonstrate. Okay, because of this belly, if I wanted to feather out a fire stick carving it like this. I can work using the belly near the tip of the blade and use all this longitude force and what that does is it doesn’t tire out my wrist so much. Here is what I mean, I am feathering out here using the big fat belly on the blade.”

“An interesting thing for you guys is it actually comes with more of a belly than you see here, but I’ve used it so much I’ve sharpened it down so now it is flattening out a little bit.”

“If you do break it, these guys guarantee it for life. So if you break it, send it, they will replace it. About this coating wearing off, I would say that is probably normal wear and would not be covered by a warranty. I don’t know if they would charge you to resurface it but I don’t think it would be a problem to put a new surface on this. The thing is, it is kind of pointless because as soon as I get it I will wear it off again. So, I’m just gonna live with it like this.”

“Well, that is my long term review of the ESEE 3. I am really pleased with ESEE knives. I have found nothing about it that I don’t like. I have no hesitation recommending it to you. If you don’t like this kind of knife, if you don’t like 1095 steel just leave a nasty comment OR go find a knife you do like.”

Wilderness Survival Part 2/4

Wilderness Survival Skills Pt 2/4: Flint Knapping & Atlatl 

Heath:” Hi, my name is Heath and today I am going to be giving a short demonstration on flint knapping. Basically taking hammer stone and striking them against some obsidian, or some other type of crypto crystal and quartz like jasper. Hopefully making a blade of some sort. A tool that we can use to make some other piece of equipment we might use in the field.”

“People have been flint knapping ever since there were people. Just about everything that our natives used to survive with had to do with sharp rocks needed to make for hunting food, make tools for farming, for skinning animals, to processing meat, to making cordage, to making fire sets, to making back packs to making t-pees. Everything they did had to do with how much of this sharp rock was in their area.”

“Flint knapping was something that man has done for a long, long time. Basically you take a round stone that fits in your hand really well. You strike it against a bigger piece of obsidian like this here. Trying to knock of edges, flakes to shape into simple tools like a knife or arrow head.”

“They also use animal hides as safety equipment. I wouldn’t want to just put this thing on my leg and start banging on it because it could cut me and could still cut me. This stuff is really, really sharp. It is just like glass. It basically is natural glass.”

“So what I am looking for is a platform. A platform is two faces of the rock that make less than 90 degrees. So either 90 degrees of less. So I see an angle that is less than 90 degrees and there is a flat top on the rock I call that a platform.”

“So what we’re doing is not just banging on the rock. There is actually a lot going on here. A lot of hand eye coordination is involved, the speed of the hit, how far back you hit, how hard you hit. One thing I like to show people that are learning is to try on your hand first. Just getting the feel where my arm is in relation to where my hand is and the rock in my hand. I am just hitting the edge of my hand. I’m trying to keep my upper arm in the same spot and using my lower arm like a pendulum. Letting the rock fall, letting gravity do most of the work. But this is just letting my hand guide that rock into the right spot. This is the big challenge for me and any flint knapper is making those really, really nice flakes. Which comes from really, really nice swing consistent swings, hitting the spot you want to hit and getting the result that you want to get.”

“Shattered it. Would have been a pretty good one but it broke into a bunch of little bitty pieces. That’s breaking rock. It doesn’t always go as planned but the key is to get at least something out of the chunk of rock.”

“Alright, just a while ago I had it down to a flake about this big around and sort of an oblong round shape. I just sort of started shaping it with pressure flaking which is basically just putting the projectile point on top of your hand with a leather pad. Finding the little high points and just lightly, with not very much force at all, taking off little bitty flakes to fine tune this edge.”

“There are a couple of thick spots earlier on that had to remove, that I actually had to go back to some percussion stuff. Back and forth and I was knocking off larger flakes like this size right here. The shape I want is basically sort of a tear drop or sort of a triangular shape. Very thin at the bottom on the corners and what that allows you to do is put notches in there for hatching on an arrow shaft. Just have to cut more of a grind in the arrow shaft. Extend that further up and just latch it down with some sinew. Then you will have fletching made for turkey feathers. This is just to give you an idea of what an arrow head is used for. “

Kirsten: “We’re gonna look at some Atlatls and some darts. The Atlatl so far as Ive been able to tell is the oldest hunting tool used on all continents and pre dates the bow and arroe. Basically what it is is a leverage device where a spur fits into the knock of my 6ish ft dart. As it leaves it adds extra power and force so I have some blanks for us, I have some turkey feathers and we’re gonna go harvest a quicky atlatl and make this using the awesome bark river go locks knife. In general the atlatl in length should be about from your arm pit to a little past your wrist. The biggest deal is also that you want the bottom of it to end where it is comfortable in your palm. If it gets to low it gets caught on my wrist.”

“So we’re gonna go grab some willow by the creek but instead we came across this beautiful service berry tree. A great wood to make arrows and darts out of when you can find straight limbs but we found something that will work well for a quickie atlatl. I am gonna go ahead and harvest it.”

“The field expedient version this can be done in a matter of minutes. All I went ahead and did is billowed it out at a 45 degree angle and cut about a third of a way into the wood. Then very carefully without wrecking this sharp tip right here, the knock and the spur fit together that way so you don’t want to wreck that tip.”

“One difference you’ll note between these two is this one actually has a bit of a dip where as this one is flat. It is a faster load of my dart to have that extra bit taken out. This one I have to fidget around a bit to actually get it to lock in. So it is mostly a timing thing.”

“Other things to note are sometimes you’ll see bone or different type of stone attachment for your spurs and they can come out at different angles.”

“Alright, atlatl is done.”

Tyler: “Now I just need a rabbit.”

Kirsten: “Let’s make a dart.”

“So Tyler is gonna go ahead and make a 2 feather fletch on the top of his dart. One thing to know when making an atlatl dart is actually the fat end is the point that is going into the animal you’re hunting whereas the skinny end is where we are gonna put the atlatl attachment.”

“The first thing we are gonna do is find 2 feathers that are of the same wing. In other words they both have their mass and curve in one direction.”

“First thing to do is shave off the back of it. So the next thing we need to do is remove some of the feather from the top of this so we have the spine to actually bind around.”

“Alright. Before we actually go ahead and fletch what I’d like you to do is use your knife to carve out the tip of this so that your atlatl has a place to rest into. Not a lot. A little hole.”

“Take some of our fake sinew. This piece of cord. What I want you to do is make a loop. You’re going to want to go all the way to the feather.”

“For the tips, you actually have a lot of options. What I’ve done on the end of this one is actually add a piece of bamboo that is just a tad wider in diameter. A little bit bigger than the actually dart itself, bound it a few times. It is hollow on the inside. Then I have the opportunity to switch tips. I have something like this I can throw into hay bales for practice. I can make a proper sharp point to go hunting with. Or I can shove a bunch of sticks in side and have a fishing prong style tip.”

“Alright should we go throw darts?”

Tyler: “Let’s go do it.”