Surviving a Financial Meltdown

spear

Thanks for the link.
Not good,not good at all.
Dig out the lawns,set up a greenhouse like I did.
I posted a link way back on greenhouse geothermal heat.
Stock up on firewood NOW.Fill the garage,to the top.Fill half the yard if you can.You can always barter it for whatever you need.
Oh,btw,
you might want to think about boobytrapping the freezer...
if nothing else,maybe an alarm.
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ΜΟΛΩΝ-ΛΑΒΕ

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1521

Great ideas guys! Thanks. I'll work on it. I saw the Optima batteries at Sam's Club. Think I'll shop EBay for some small solar panels, too, and go see a couple coin dealers, too, about junk silver.

seahorse2 · Expert Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 1916

Hey Spear,

Here's a link to the European group forecasting major depression.

Leap2020

goodmaj · Tar Sands Joined: Feb 01, 2008 Posts: 23 Location: Utah

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1521

Thanks goodmaj, Will do! Didn't know they sold it on Ebay.

seahorse2 · Expert Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 1916

There have been several threads started about food riots throughout the world. Now, the first news reports that there are rice shortages in the US starting to "pop up" at local grocers.

Check out this forum started on US food shortages.

PO topic on U.S. Food Shortages

One of the pieces of advice given on this thread was to buy food with your gov't hand out when it arrives. Still good advice!

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1521

Here's an excerpt from an old book on buying and storing goods and food as inflation protection. I thought it could be useful to beginners here, and has some thoughts for all of uswith regard to financial meltdown.

Alpha Strategy

The website is full of essays with money advice, mostly a "hard money" outlook, FWIW.

edit: Many thanks to Seahorse for the headsup by starting this thread!
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Local fix-it guy..

Nickel

BigTex

Ludi

There's also good old Possum Living if no one has posted that yet...
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No original ideas are contained in this post.

seahorse · Expert Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2196 Location: Arkansas

What are the lessons to be learned from the first US regional bank failure (ANB)?

The first regional bank failure occured here in my hometown. I was aware of its issues and many problems for a year or so now due to a couple of lawsuits that my clients and ANB were involved in. Here's what I've learned:

(1) Lesson - the banks and FDIC will give no warning about a bank being in trouble; When the FDIC becomes involved with a bank, it is never made public. I only knew ANB was in trouble with the FDIC based on the litigation I was involved in, and only then bc a document from the FDIC was produced in the discovery process;

(2) Lesson: there is no announcement when the FDIC is going to close a bank; obviously, they don't announce it to avoid people running on the bank and taking their money out. Interestingly, the FDIC, apparently, always closes a bank after hours on a Friday so as move in stealthily and avoid a panic. They wait until the bank closes its does as usual on Friday and then the FDIC moves in and announced the closure. This is how the FDIC operated in the 80s and how they operate now (at least with ANB). What should you do? If you are going to pull money out, do it before COB on Friday.

(3) Lesson: many employees had all their retirement savings invested in ANB stock. DON'T DO THIS IS YOU WORK AT A BANK. DIVERSIFY NOW. Apparently, the banks and all big companies can put a lot of pressure on high level employees to invest in their own company's stock. I know of two high level ANB employees that lost 500k and 800k bc it was all in ANB stock. Further, once a bank gets in trouble, they may not allow you to sell your shares (FDIC). So, get out now.

(4) Loan Closings - in several incidents I'm aware of, people lost a lot of money with ANB shutting down. For example, a home was sold on Thursday before the bank closed. The purchase price, $500k, was deposited into the seller's account with ANB on Thursday. ANB closes on Friday. Seller lost all but $100k. Another example, business sold and sale proceeds deposited in seller's account with ANB. All funds in excess of the $100k were lost with ANB closing. The report I heard, unconfirmed, is a seller lost $14 million from the sale of a business.

To add more pain, keep in mind that the seller's of the business and potentially the home still have a taxable gain even though the funds were wiped out with the bank closure. What can one do? First if you are going to sell something and the proceeds are in excess of the FDIC insured limits, have the money electronically deposited into multiple accounts at different banks all within the FDIC limits. Second, don't close late in the week. Close early in the week to give you time to move money before a Friday when banks are shut down by the FDIC.

(5) Business loans, constructions loans, lines of credit etc. If you have business accounts, lines of credit etc., do not keep them all in the same bank. For example, I know a builder that was building five homes. All the construction loans were with ANB. The loans are frozen and unfunded until the FDIC can find a buyer for the loans. They tell him this will take 2-6 months, which means, its wiped him out. He has outstanding bills, materialmen, employees etc that have to be paid and he can't pay them. Further, the houses won't be sold on time; futher, the houses may not be worth anything sitting there half finished either bc of deterioration or vandalism. Try to diversify your business' accounts to various banks. The days of doing all your business with one bank are over. There is too much risk out there to do business that way.

ANB was the first regional bank failure in awhile. It will not be the last. Earlier, people suggested pulling cash out of the banks. In light of ANB's closure, that may not be a bad idea.

Jack · Dark Lord Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 5088

Good advise, Seahorse. Thank you.

BTW...some time ago, I did a transaction that required moving some money around. Part of the transaction involved a financial company issuing a check, which was then deposited to a different (non-bank) financial institution. They delayed the accursed thing 12 days...

Moral: don't take a check - not even from a high-quality, secure firm. Wire the funds. If you take a check, you may be trapped.
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Dieoff. Fun to watch. Better with hot buttered popcorn! new_popcornsmiley

roccman

Excellent SH !!!

Two things:

1) we are coming up on a long weekend...playing hide the sausage seems to be intensified after hours and during long weekends.

2) FDIC is broke - you will get ZERO money back.

Best to put your money in "Bank of Sealy".
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"There must be a bogeyman; there always is, and it cannot be something as esoteric as "resource depletion." You can't go to war with that." Emersonbiggins

"... hope is a rotten-thighed whore" Niko Kazantzakis

We are going back to roccland - me

dunewalker

Twilight · Expert Joined: Mar 02, 2007 Posts: 2971 Location: UK