Gold is spiking in price

Gold has suffered a surprising upward trend, almost 80 dollars in a single week.

Normally Central Banks then sell gold to depress the price, however in this case, a rising gold price means the Central Banks now have more assets on hand and that helps to keep them solvent.

Silver, or poor man's gold, has also seen a upward trend, however not as large percentage wise as Gold has, there is perhaps still some room to purchase Silver in expectation of a rising price and a profit, however Silver is purely an investment as no Central Bank holds silver reserves.

Buyer beware on silver purchases for anything other then a small fast profit or as a minor hedge against inflationary presssures.

There will be no Hunt Brothers this time out, and the commodity bubble bursting effected silver.

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.

Individuality, Privacy, and the need for effort

I'm occasionally struck by the reality of modern Internet Communities and the amount of private information they can reveal.

From Facebook to Twitter, people are literally taking their most private details, and making a public spectacle out of them, which seems a bit foolish. The Internet is "forever" meaning 10 or 15 years down the road, what is youthful behavour now, will be cringe worthy later as people, believe it or not, change over time.

And it should also be mentioned that Officials frequently look for MySpace pages during the course of investigations, or when they are merely fishing around, and there has been two cases of such information leading to people's deaths at the hands of law enforcement simply because some well meaning, but misguided soul posted pictures of themselves with firearms on their myspace pages, in one case in NC, a poor slob simply had pictures of his friend holding firearms and he was killed in a incompetent SWAT raid on his home near a college campus.

It makes some sense to participate in such social sites, it makes even more sense to publish as little actual person information as possible and still participate with ones friends.

In Biblical terms, "Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves, be ye wise as serpents, and gentle as doves"

Over a month with no posts..dressed up for the New Year.

It's been a month, but no time lost per se, Deflation is beginning to emerge into the US Economy, and that is one tough thing to deal with effectively.

For the Alpha Strategist, this is a prime time to load up on long term storage items, prices will not be lower then they are now, add in a staggering 7.2% unemployment rate, and things are beginning to become "interesting".

It would make sense to acquire supplies for the larder now, as when unemployment hits, not only will one be broke, one will also be unable to purchase personal health items, or food supplies, or motor oil, or any of the things that make life move forward.

This downturn happening in the Winter only makes matters worse, but if one shows forsight, like the Ant in the parable, and gathered in the Fall, or gathers now, especially if one is employed in a Tourist or Travel business, one will be able to ride out a rough patch.

SWAT team confiscates families food supply in Ohio

On the surface, this could be a hysteria inducing story for an Alpha Strategist, the local county SWAT team raids a small family business and home and carts off food stuffs and leaves no paper work or inventory documenting their actions.

Could your larder be next?

Ewww...scary..scary...like FDR and Gold in 1933

But alas, nothing quite so dramatic:

"On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse http://www.mannastorehouse.com on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years"

Basically they sold or donated uninspected beef to a college, the beef was free of both steroids and the normal massive doses of anti biotics that some beef are currently injected with, which of course tipped Inspector Cleseau, who was denied membership in the Co-Op so he came back a week later with men armed with fully automatic weapons, bullet proof vests, and flash bang hand grenades...over a paperwork issue.

Spam..it's what's for dinner

A recent article mentioned that sales of the canned meat product Spam have shot up 10% since September.

Spam is sort of a platypus of food, and to be frank, relying on it for nutrition over the long haul is dubious, but that increase in sales when added with the increase in the sales of seeds for DIY food production, America clearly sees some hard times on the horizon.

It requires hundreds of pounds of food to feed a family of four, solid nutrition is actually inexpensive to purchase in bulk, foods such as Barley and Split Peas or even Oats are good values and available in bulk.

5 best and 5 worst deals at Costco

For using a stockpiling strategy to defeat the corrosive tax of inflation, Warehouse Clubs are hard to beat...in theory, if one watches prices places such as Sams, BJ's and Costco sometimes have great bulk deals, other times, not so much.

So helpfully, MSN money has provided a small portion of insight into the best and worst deals at Costco and presumably the other Warehouse Clubs as well:

The Best, Meat, Electronics, Dairy and Eggs*, Alcohol, Prescription Drugs.

The worst, Designer Clothing, Frozen Foods, Products purchased in Bulk and wasted via shrinkage, Paper Goods and Gasoline.

Now far be it from this humble AS to disagree with the mighty MSN Money, but they are off base, people who stockpile in anticipation of hard times learn the skills needed to make buying Bulk and Frozen foods productive and not deductive.

Bulk Foods are broken down into smaller air tight containers, Frozen Foods are broken up into smaller units and used more quickly, in my area Eggs are actually a dollar more expensive at the local Sam's then they are at the local discount shopping retailer and key storage items like Spaghetti Sauce are also more of a value at the local discounter.

Gasoline is difficult to purchase at the local Sam's as they have a strange pay now, drive over to pumps with the receipt to fill up the tank, with local Gas and Kiosk retailer EnMark doing business in the area, such a inconveinence is not worth the effort and EnMark also has Water and Air to top off your vehicle with.

So as per usual with such articles, knowing local conditions is the key to winning the retailing game, look at prices and inconveince and decide at what point saving money in small amounts is not worth the effort or trouble, and choose accordingly.