Last Shopping Trip To Prep Before Recession SHTF Hits in 60 days— What To Buy With Only One Chance Left?

[Miker12]

I love 'Fear Porn' as an example of what could be and setting up the old 'what would you do if' scenarios. I use the fear to not quake and shiver but to look at the scenarios as 'what ifs' and to see what I might not have paid attention to in my preparations.

"The extent of the crisis will become much more clear in the next two months to the majority. The result will be civil unrest in the summer, likely followed by extreme poverty levels in the winter. No measure of “reopening” is not going to do much to stop the avalanche that has already been started. The solution is always the same: localized trade and production and removing yourself and your community from dependency on the establishment controlled economy. It's certainly difficult, but it is possible."

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/pandemic-and-economic-collapse-the-next-60-days_04242020

So even though I live in a rural community in northern AZ for the last 20 years, prepped pretty deep over the years (my neighbors also) and definitely are not dealing with the same issues as Phoenix or other big cities, there are some things lacking. Examples:

- the propane refill stations and propane tank exchanges are not being restocked
- the propane standards apparently changed in 2017 in that old tanks are not compatible anymore
- lines outside the grocery stores for the little bit of items left
- the meat is starting to get more expensive because of nationwide shutdown and closures
- my part-time job as a paramedic is pretty much non-existent because of the lack of calls
- noticed that my neighbors (and I) are locking our gates to our acreages due to the number of roamers showing up from Phoenix.
- the number of sheeple being afraid and unwilling to challenge authorities on their false agenda has allowed further economic downturns and heaven forbid you call them out on their bulls&@T.

So now that I have warned you all that you have 60 days to prep for your next 60 days, what are you going to do?

 

[TacMedic]

Not worry because I’ve been prepped for longer than 60 days for years....

Gotta love all that the Mormons have taught me.

 

[Suck My Glock]

Regardless of what happens in the short term,...there is no flippin way the dollar doesn't crash (eventually) as a result of the taxation that will be required to cover the billions and billions of Trump bucks handed out. The inflation of the Carter years is gonna look like kindergarten playtime compared to the economic devastation coming our way. Invest your $1200 wisely, because it won't be worth that 6 months from now.

 

[Pale Rider]

"as a result of the taxation that will be required to cover the billions"....not quite, they just create it out of thin air; that's why inflation is on the way big time. The dollar is already dead man walking. Every fiat currency that has ever existed has eventually gone to it's intrinsic value.....zero, and the dollar will be no different. Time to look at the debt clock, it's a hoot!

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

[Miker12]

Forget The Propaganda, We’re In A Full-Blown Depression

June 24 (King World News) – Jeff Snider at Alhambra Partners: I guess in some ways it’s a race against the clock. What the optimists are really saying is the equivalent of the old eighties neo-Keynesian notion of filling in the troughs. That’s what government spending and monetary “stimulus” intend to accomplish, to limit the downside in a bid to buy time...

Americans have skipped payments on more than 100 million student loans, auto loans and other forms of debt since the coronavirus hit the U.S., the latest sign of the toll the pandemic is taking on people’s finances...

Not only that, according to the same WSJ article, 106 million have “enrolled in deferment, forbearance or some other type of relief since March 1”, a level that is triple what was estimated at the end of April just one month prior...

One hundred and six million in the default pipeline, though, that can only mean the clock has already started ticking. The output of that pipeline is bankruptcy and loss, and wide distribution of both. A consumer who wins bankruptcy relief doesn’t extinguish their obligation, they’ve simply redistributed the loss to the bank or financial firm who first extended the loan.

Same for companies filing bankruptcy protection.

And that means already today banks as well as markets for, say, risky corporates are preparing for the possibility – likelihood – of pain only beginning in several months’ time. That’s how long a missed payment takes to become an impairment. Neither needs an actual default for liquidity to just vanish, a lesson everyone (but Economists) learned very well from GFC1.

Even if 90% (or even 95%!) of that 106 million gets worked out before default, that still leaves an overwhelming blow to first the financial system.

That’s why I wrote yesterday Jay Powell’s magic word program in especially corporate credit is at best temporary. There’s a looming showdown (watch what hedge fund lawyers are up to right now, sheltering assets) and more than one wave to it (a second wave of GFC2 is far more likely, and likely far more damaging, than a second hit from COVID-19).

So, in Powell’s mind what he has to do is get the business sector high on “money printing” and the 100% guaranteed, no-question-about-it, don’t-you-dare-fret inflationary environment this will bring...
A whole lot of happy thoughts for a future not yet written. Lacking any effective money, that’s monetary policy today.

Except, the future is already partially written; the clock started ticking the moment GFC2 completely surprised Chairman We Saw It Coming. Loan officers have said so as have that 106 million-strong group.

the task is much more basic. Just get everyone, or as close to everyone as humanly possible, back to work by next month, next week. If only it was that easy.

The “V” people all seem to think that it is; the government flipped a switch turning off the economy, so just toggle it in the other direction and stop worrying.

Not only that, the rate of indicated contraction in June remains rather steep – it’s only when compared to the absolute collapse in April that it seems a remarkable improvement.

Rate Of Economic Contraction In June Remains Steep

...they are making that assumption based on what they are led to believe is tremendous “stimulus.” Even the Markit press release cautions on both accounts:

Any return to growth will be prone to losing momentum due to persistent weak demand for many goods and services, linked in turn to ongoing social distancing, high unemployment and uncertainty about the outlook, curbing spending by businesses and households. The recovery could also be derailed by new waves of virus infections...

But Markit’s data also illustrates how – even if you believe in “stimulus” – the odds are already stacked against the economy. The two words you never, ever want to hear under contraction conditions, let alone historic contraction conditions, are “cut” and “costs.” These are the very essence of dreaded pro-cyclicality.

The June survey meanwhile signalled [sic] further cuts to workforce numbers across the private sector, albeit at only a modest rate. Where an increase was noted, some businesses reported the return of furloughed staff. That said, hiring freezes and relatively weak demand led many other companies to shed employees in an effort to cut costs.

If companies are in cost-cutting mode, and they obviously are, then that immediately puts a ceiling on the right side of the hoped-for “V” (arguing dead against the straight-line extrapolation) and then sets up the potential second wave of GFC2 and economic contraction. How? A weak labor market means instead of 90% of the 106 million work out their loan (or rent) situation before it goes too far, only 85% maybe even just 80% do!

Heaven forbid something like 75%. Ninety percent would already be big trouble.

Being unable to get close to everyone who has lost a job (or just lost income from wage or salary cuts plus those working less hours) back into their former groove is the real bogeyman lurking out there just over the visible time horizon. And that horizon is shrinking with every added missed payment due to a lost or shrunken paycheck.

Less consumer spending means curtailed revenues, no pathway to restore profitability, and therefore even more, say it with me, cost cutting by businesses.

It’s not the waves of bankruptcies that spell doom, such comes long before them. All you need is for markets, credit markets, to begin suspecting it’s a good probability. If that happens, like 2008 or March 2020, just watch how quickly it unravels and market liquidity up and disappears (again), how fragile things really are even though there’s that whole “flood” thing.

More at source plus numerous charts:
https://kingworldnews.com/forget-the-mainstream-propaganda-were-in-a-full-blown-depression-and-its-scary/

 

[Doc]

4/24/2021

Did your supplies get you through the year? I admittedly just kept shopping like society didn’t collapse.

You doomsday guys are funny.

 

[Suck My Glock]

4/24/2021

Did your supplies get you through the year? I admittedly just kept shopping like society didn’t collapse.

You doomsday guys are funny.

I think the key to this is that the death toll was nothing like what we all thought it was going to be. The initial reports of how lethal this supposedly was had us all assuming that we might well have to truly quarantine ourselves from each other for a spell.

When it turned out to not be nearly as bad as projected, the less timid of us all started to go on about our lives and businesses as best we could. THAT more than anything else is what kept this schit show from becoming what it could have been.

 

[AZ_Five56]

I think the key to this is that the death toll was nothing like what we all thought it was going to be. The initial reports of how lethal this supposedly was had us all assuming that we might well have to truly quarantine ourselves from each other for a spell.

When it turned out to not be nearly as bad as projected, the less timid of us all started to go on about our lives and businesses as best we could. THAT more than anything else is what kept this schit show from becoming what it could have been.

I think the death toll could have been as bad as they were saying if it wasn't for some good medical staff speaking up (even at the expense of their jobs sometimes) to say that things like ventilators were killing people. I would not be surprised if people like Fauci were trying to kill that many people intentionally to further big gov power. Remember, EVERYTHING Fauci said has been wrong about this so-called Covid crisis.

 

[smithers599]

That's an easy question.

 

[What]

Lemon bars.

 

[samnev]

THat's a really bleak picture being posted here. I'm hoping it does not get that bad but am prepared as well.

 

[Old Jeff H]

Dr Pepper

Pretty sure I'd completely lose my mind if I ran out of Dr Pepper.

 

[Electric303]

For myself, 2020 provided quite an education in prepping. While I had food supplies, I began increasing them in January by hitting grocery stores at opening time. This was about 2 months before the morning lines started. It was interesting to watched how the shelves emptied slowly at first then very rapidly until they became bare. Of course TP, paper towels, masks, sanitizer, and disinfectants went first, then dry goods and canned goods were next. Frozen meat disappeared for a short while when a few meat packing plants shut down. Fresh produce supplies stayed fairly constant except for a brief period when there was concern that migrant pickers were getting sick. Bottled water got scarce there for awhile which pushed me to find new sources and filtration (long overdue). Online Amazon's food prices skyrocketed but to Walmart credit, they did a much better at keeping their food prices more reasonable. In my area the grocery stores with lower prices such as Frys and Walmart emptied first while stores with higher prices like Sprouts had stocked shelves much longer. Smaller stores such as Dollar General seemed to be overlooked by everyone for months and had stocked shelves. All things considered, US food and agriculture production and distribution showed remarkable resilience in 2020.

 

[xerts1191]

Jolly Ranchers and Slim Jims

 

[A65453]

For myself, 2020 provided quite an education in prepping.

I was also surprised to see bare grocery shelves in April 2020. What was gone was interesting too: many of the frozen meals, canned soups, and almost no pasta or pasta sauce on the shelves. But dried foods were as plentiful as always. After that there was a shortage of flour as people got accustomed to staying home and took up baking as a hobby.

My family only keeps about a week of food at the house at any given time and we weren't really interrupted. Bought a few extra pounds of dried beans and rice just in case we needed to stretch a day or two before the stores restocked.

We also live in Texas and will be moving to AZ at the end of May. The freeze in February was a much bigger issue than Covid. We lost electrical power for four days and water for six due to three burst pipes in the house. I moved to Texas from AZ and am looking forward to getting back; it's a poorly run state.

 

[Electric303]

For myself, 2020 provided quite an education in prepping.

I was also surprised to see bare grocery shelves in April 2020. What was gone was interesting too: many of the frozen meals, canned soups, and almost no pasta or pasta sauce on the shelves. But dried foods were as plentiful as always. After that there was a shortage of flour as people got accustomed to staying home and took up baking as a hobby.

My family only keeps about a week of food at the house at any given time and we weren't really interrupted. Bought a few extra pounds of dried beans and rice just in case we needed to stretch a day or two before the stores restocked.

We also live in Texas and will be moving to AZ at the end of May. The freeze in February was a much bigger issue than Covid. We lost electrical power for four days and water for six due to three burst pipes in the house. I moved to Texas from AZ and am looking forward to getting back; it's a poorly run state.

Dried beans and rice disappeared here from the shelves for quite some time. Even though people tended to shy away from Asian stores for awhile, (given COVID's origins) but even their pallets of 25-50lb bags of rice soon disappeared. However, the Asian stores did remain much better stocked with groceries than other grocery stores throughout the period of panic buying.

I have friends and family that live between Austin and San Antonio. They were hit quite hard by the Feb freeze as were many in the middle states. A similar weather event in the AZ desert would be disastrous even from the narrow perspective that water lines here are not buried deep enough to withstand a hard freeze. Parts of the Phoenix metro did receive up to 4in of snow back in 1937. A similar snowfall event in modern times would shut the Valley down.

I was living in OK in the mid 1980's when they were hit with -10F temps. It actually froze the natural gas lines and everyone in town lost gas pressure, but the power stayed on. Most there (at that time) used natural gas as their only heating source. As in Texas, a few tried unwise heating alternatives and their family paid the price in carbon monoxide deaths. We were fortunate to have a plug in electric heater that got us through the worst of it.

Welcome back to AZ at the end of the month.

 

[A65453]

I was living in OK in the mid 1980's when they were hit with -10F temps. It actually froze the natural gas lines and everyone in town lost gas pressure, but the power stayed on. Most there (at that time) used natural gas as their only heating source. As in Texas, a few tried unwise heating alternatives and their family paid the price in carbon monoxide deaths. We were fortunate to have a plug in electric heater that got us through the worst of it.

Welcome back to AZ at the end of the month.

Thanks for the welcome.

The natural gas lines freezing is partially what did Texas in this February. The Joule–Thomson effect meant that the pressure regulators in the pipelines froze and couldn't deliver the needed flow. Another factor was that Texas' backup power generating capacity is all natural gas too, and it's generally mothballed over the winter and only brought online to help with AC demands through the summer. Whoever owned/operated these plants didn't think the cost of de-winterizing them would be worth it given the forecast so they remained unavailable.

But Arizona doesn't share Texas' biggest electrical grid blunder: the Texas grid isn't connected to the rest of the US because Texans don't want to deal with the Federal Energy Regulator Commission. This lack of connection meant we couldn't buy electrical power from neighboring states to make up for our inability to generate it locally.

A similar freeze could hit southern AZ cities hard from a water perspective, but not as bad as it did in Texas. Southern Texas also has shallow pipes, but the burst pipes were primarily inside houses. If the houses had electrical power to maintain heat (and you need a little electric to run a gas furnace) then the houses could have stayed above freezing and prevented pipes in the walls from bursting. It took some areas a week beyond the cold snap to get electrical power and water back.

In short, Texas' woes all boiled down to having an independent and unprepared electrical grid.