Mormon Index rising...Alpha Strategy in effect?

Now I must confess my issues with Mormon Theology, however on the whole I've found such differences to be no barrier to friendship and good natured conversations with my fellow Mormon Americans.

That stated, I must say the "Mormon Way" of preparing for one year of hard times with no commercial food or personal care products is a great and wonderful example of what Americans of any creed or even no creed or faith should practice if possible:

A contrarian view of what is really happening in the US Economy is Mormon Index, a compendium of the utilization of the services of a Mormon Warehouses:

.....Winona and Kevin Black began stocking their shelves a couple of years after their 1985 wedding. When they moved to St. Louis, in 1990, they had two small children and began their food storage in earnest. Kevin Black was a resident at Barnes Hospital at the time, and the family was spending $30 a week on food.

Today, with seven children, the Blacks have increased their food budget to $100 a week, and they've abided by the church's food-storage suggestions for two decades.

One of their daughter's twin mattresses was set up on boxes filled with cans of powdered milk, potato flakes and red beans. Shelves in an upstairs closet of their Crestwood house are balanced on the large No. 10 cans used in the church's cannery operation and filled with wheat.

In a separate storage room downstairs, more boxes of wheat, pasta, sugar and oats sit next to multiple jars of mayonnaise, boxes of soup mix, bags of popcorn and cans of refried beans.

Winona Black keeps a black marker in the room to help her keep track of the rotation of supplies

The Bishops Warehouse also provides services such as resume writing and faux interviews that are video recorded and played back so any flaws in the interviewee's performance may be crtiqued and improved.

Quite impressive, and everyone whether atheist or other, could take a lesson from those remarkable preperations.

Another odd one, Hanging Pheasant

Recently ran across a different Blog about Hunting and found another long forgotten practice:

Hanging Pheasants, or for some Dry Aging Beef.

Basically once the bird is reduced to possession, it is left to err "age" until the tissue begins to break down (better known as rot slightly) in order to enhance the flavor of otherwise a nondescript version of Chicken.

I can recall reading about that practice in James Clavell's Shogun, but thought it was sort of created merely by a lack of refrigeration, apparently I was incorrect:


"

The great Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarindoesn’t give a timetable, but says, “the peak is reached when the pheasant begins to decompose; its aroma develops, and mixes with an oil which in order to form must undergo a certain amount of fermentation, just as the oil in coffee can only be drawn out by roasting it.” Sounds pretty hardcore.

Roy Wall wrote in 1945: “The flesh of either wild game or domesticated animals and fowl can certainly be improved by aging, but it is my opinion that there must be a limit to the aging process…aging in the open air for 10 days or a month, according to weather conditions, is, in my opinion, most beneficial to domestic and wild meat alike."

Hmm...well..mmkay...

As for the Alpha Strategy, right now prices seem to have stabilized, I would however point out that food producers sign contracts in advance, sometimes years in advance, with the decline in prices of commodities there will be less production of those commodities, meaning prices will rise sometime in early 2009.

Now the other thing to keep in mind is Government introduced scarcity, there are less then 50 days until the real possibility exists that items such as rifles and ammunition and magazines will increase in price even moreso then Alpha Strategists are seeing today, add in the real possiblity of precious metals becoming a safe haven until political leadership sorts out how much inflation they wish to introduce into the US and indeed World Economy...