2021 is Going to be Rough!

News & Current Events Public News & Current Events
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I can’t wait to get away from Covid coverage. I’ve learned a lot, helped many, and yet I’m really anxious to get back to my main work in the world, which has to do with cultivating resilience.

This has been a huge year for us here in the Martenson household.

First, we moved right as Covid was breaking across the world. The closing date on our new 182-acre property here in beautiful Chester MA was January 28th.

My first ALERT to the world about a mysterious virus was on January 23rd.

From that date and for the next 6 months I was producing daily videos. Oh, and writing weekly content for the Peak Prosperity website. Oh, and moving. Oh, and assembling my first ever real estate syndication deal. Oh, and converting our new property to a working farm.

That’s a lot of “ands” for a given year. Thanks 2020! But what 2020 had taketh away (visitors and travel) it also giveth – lots of time at the homestead.

And not a moment too soon!

Look, the world is an increasingly unstable place. It is absolutely correct and right that people should become more resilient.

And that begins at home. Maybe even right on your own garden.

If 2020 has done anything, it has normalized what was once ‘fringe” by making it completely obvious that the systems upon which we depend are rotten, unable to self-repair or reform, and therefore more fragile than we thought.

Our national health “managers” are not leaders, and are completely unable to escape whatever conflicts of interest bind their tongues as well as their hearts. The political system is corrupt through and through and completely uninterested in any sort of introspection, let alone reform.

I’ve had people tell me this was “the fairest election in recent US history.” I show them this map of Chicago’s 4th congressional district and ask them to point to its fairness so I can possibly see it:

Squint though I might, I just can’t see it.

Meanwhile the US Federal Reserve is busy exploding the currency supply as seen in this chart of M1:

Unbelievable!

As a reminder:

M1 is the money supply that is composed of physical currency and coin, demand deposits (savings & checking), travelers' checks, other checkable deposits, and negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts
Looking at M1 in terms of its change from year ago levels makes it even more ridiculous seeming.

The only possibly response here ought to be WTF?

What could possibly be going through the minds of the Federal Reserve to justify this sort of monetary madness?

One more way to look at this is in terms of a percent change from a year ago. How does M1 look under this condition?

This is insane. Simply insane.

On a percent change basis, the entire money stock of the US – which includes all of the money stock built up over its entire history – increased by 65.6%.

In a single year!!!

At the same time the US is doing the worst job out of any country in the world managing Covid. Simply terrible. Awful.

Of course, as you probably know, I respect the hell out of Covid, but I don’t fear it any more than I fear the flu.

Why?

Because of Ivermectin, which has been overwhelmingly demonstrated to all but entirely block the transmission of the SARS2 virus as well as prevent the development of serious cases of Covid the disease.

Nobody at the NIH is interested in this data for some reason. Fauci doesn’t care or want to hear about it. All the US medical establishment wants is a vaccine.

That’s fine to an extent, but what about all the lives lost and ruined while we wait? Is there no accounting for them? How awful of the national health managers that they should not care about the most vulnerable, the weak, and the elderly. At all.

The US Government is out of control in its spending, too:

That gap between receipts and expenditures is as staggering as it is frightening. There’s just no possible way to get any of that back under control, especially not since 50% or more of small and medium sized bushiness (a.k.a. “the tax base”) have been destroyed for completely ill-advised and (as it turns out) completely unnecessary reasons – if only we had been using Ivermectin therapy and prophylaxis all along.

Against this backdrop the US dollar is busy falling, as it should. There’s simply nothing good happening in the US at the moment that should support the dollar:

Crickey that’s a terrible-looking chart!

But it’s well deserved. There really isn’t much going for the dollar right now. The terrible US economy is being destroyed by ill-advised policies and a horribly bad Covid response, out-of-control spending, and a print-happy Federal Reserve.

Add it all up and you’ve got a lot of US dollars floating around. And a lot less to spend them on. So the dollar sinks.

As the USD sinks, other assets priced in dollars rise.

Like Bitcoin. Congratulations Bitcoin Hodl-ers! (that stands for Hold On for Dear Life)

You know what else the dollar has been falling against all year?

Good real estate property, stocks, bonds, gold, and many other hard assets. The press says they are “rising in price” but really it’s not that. It’s too many dollars seeking a place to hide out and be safe.

The conclusion to all of this?

The Logic Of Homesteading

We’re entering a period of volatility and uncertainty.

Like myself and my fiancée Evie, many have come to the (proper) conclusion that the best way to hedge their bets is to build up their homestead, and make it more resilient.

We’ve really thrown ourselves at this project this year and it’s been both challenging and rewarding.

Here on the day of our first and quite significant snowfall, it’s time to sit back, reflect on the mistakes and progress alike, and to share what we’ve done in case it helps to inspire or educate anyone.

Make no mistake. You really should be thinking about growing your own food and building your soil, too.

If any of the events outlined in The Great Reset come to pass, being as close as possible to your food production seems like a solid plan. The closer the better.

Earlier today Evie and I hosted a live webinar for Peak Prosperity premium subscribers where they asked us anything they wanted about our projects here at Honey Badger Farms.

A replay video of the event is now available.

So if watching this Q&A with my fiancée and me is the inspiration you’ve needed to subscribe to Peak Prosperity’s premium service – which costs less than $1/day – click here to Enroll now.

And if you’re already a premium subscriber, click the button below to watch the replay video of today’s live event:

WATCH THE REPLAY

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/2021-is-going-to-be-rough/

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We have to include the G3 banks in this mess.
When their combined (exploding) balance sheets are compared with Bitcoin’s price, well, that’s a mighty big coincidence!

But that more than doubling of the G3 balance sheets is quite the sight to behold.
I really don’t believe there’s any master plan to it. It’s just a pure, panicky reaction by some deeply corrupt and/or incompetent central bankers. All they know is “more printing” and they haven’t a clue how to even slow it down, let alone stop it, let alone reverse it.

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https://theintercept.com/2020/12/18/the-trump-administration-has-planted-a-landmine-in-federal-agencies/

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Chris, Congratulations on the new property and life partner! The work you’ve done on covid this year has literally saved many lives. The graphs on money printing are ominous and clear even though the mainstream doesn’t want to see them. And right on about raising food…potatoes (raised outside) are my calorie crop since I’m in the north but I also put up a 20’ wide by 68’ long hoop house for veg. The last two years I’ve been keenly realizing the difference between gardening for ‘salad’ and gardening for calories, very different things.
But my question is about the obviously gerrymandered congressional district you put up an image of. Congressional districts are quite gerrymandered in the US these days and both sides do it. Although Republicans have done it more successfully such that Democrats have to win substantially more votes just to have equal representation in congress. But I’m guessing that’s not the point you intended to make? A quick google search suggested that the district in question was the result of a court order to allow for greater Latino representation, but that the map adopted was offered by Dennis Hastert, the long term (Republican) speaker of the House (who resigned in disgrace for paying hush money to cover up child molestation charges. But I’m getting off topic.).
My point is: unless there were gerrymandered districts that cross state lines (spoiler: there are not), then gerrymanders would have no effect on state-level tallies for president, right? It’s the total votes of a state, not districts that award electoral college votes. (Ignoring Maine and Nebraska) So how could gerrymandered districts make state level tallies for president unfair in any way? Maybe I’m missing something?
If you argument is actually that somehow Trump was cheated out of a significant number of votes, presenting evidence that would make that case specifically would be better I think. The graphic you present shows gerrymandering but I don’t see how it proves that the presidential election was unfair.
Just wondering.
 

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Good. Unelected Civil service employees ARE the swamp.

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We don’t have the “civil service independent of graft, bribery, patronage, or corporate influence” that The Intercept assumes in its gloss. Quite the contrary: the civil service is composed primarily of left-voting partisans, in part because the “merit-based system” includes the off-books evaluation of every potential hire’s political and cultural orientation, connections, and friends – just as happens in media and the academy; which is why so many right-voters have to hide their political inclinations throughout their careers. That’s something seldom a problem for left-voting employees, academics, and journalists who, rather, take pride in the public exercise of their partisanship.
I agree with The Intercept that the gutting of protective rules runs the risk (I’d say, the certainty) of increased partisanship in the Civil Service. And I agree with Mysterymet’s observation that the unelected civil servants are the swamp. I conclude that the problem is the entrenched partisanship of the civil service corps – that so famously thwarted W’s presidency (to the point he told Glenn Beck that all presidents discover they really don’t have the power to change very much), and that have done their best to undermine the Trump effort at breaking their stranglehold on domestic and international policy and practice. Presidential administrations with an outlook that agrees with the civil servants’ shared progressive goals fare well; those that don’t experience constant frustration - which persistent reality is the epitome of the tail wagging the dog.
This is all Fourth Turning stuff: the failure of institutions to do their appointed duties as intended. Governmental institutional actors no longer have the people’s interests and preferences foremost; they do not see themselves as public “servants,” convinced their personal proclivities and interests are what’s best for the country at large. In reaction to that, a very few public officials show up and do their best to blow up the corrupted system in hopes of settling a more appropriate and subservient institutional culture.
The Trump effort will fail. We are in the Fourth Turning. It will take a more significant crisis than a few thousand federal sycophants losing their jobs to move us into the First Turning. All that’s going to happen, at most, is an experience of frustration by the incoming Biden Administration. But I doubt much of that’s going to happen because I doubt much civil service disruption is going to take place, even though it would be a good thing for our plebian rights to self-governance and personal property if it did.

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I got something completely different reading that article. By allowing former appointees to “burrow in” and hire and fire at will, they can politicize an agency by installing cronies and sycophants. Thus making it more “swampy”. Now, I agree with what I think is your point that there’s lots of deadwood in government jobs. And that the system doesn’t disincentive that. But looks to me like this isn’t the fix for the problem and can even make it far worse.

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My wife and I have been building our homestead for 10 years. Its literally been a labor of love. It was a hunting property for a guy who lived 500 miles away. Just a cabin on 100 acres. We built a barn, cleared many acres, built more fencing than I care to remember, we raised sheep, cows, chickens, etc.
I bought some equipment and learned how to make hay. Spent long summers cutting, raking, baling, and stacking hay. Put in huge gardens which produced incredible crops. Cut split and stacked countless cords of wood to heat our small house.
My beard has gone from jet black to grey over these years. My hands are like one giant callous and my palms have the consistency of sand paper. My eyes have permanent laugh lines and leathery creases that werent there before. Some where along the lines we had a son. He was born in the very early spring like a wild pup.
Now if you were a bird looking down you’d see old farmer Brushhog doing his rounds and behind him trailing a small version of himself carrying wood in winter, riding on the tractor in the warm season, and helping to pull potatoes and greens out of his gardens in the fall.
The homestead is not just an strategy of preparedness [ though it is certainly that ], and its not just a place to live. Its a life lived in harmony with the seasons, near to the source of it all, deep down at the marrow of life.
Whether the world goes to hell or not, homesteading is [ and always has been ] a wise choice.

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The election included more people than just the POTUS/VPOTUS. Although it was a presidential election year, congress people, senators, governors were up for election, among other people like judges, AGs, etc. Why does congress have ~11% approval rating but > 90% re-election rate? Because of district gerrymandering, a la the picture above.
If you gerrymander your district to include mainly republicans OR democrats and then control who becomes the primary candidate (see Bernie Sanders vs HRC 2016, and 2020 as proof of who controls the primary, i.e. the insiders do) then you can almost guarantee yourself re-election unless of course your utterly corrupt or do something incredibly stupid and have to resign.
However, if the district was 50% liberal/50% conservative, there would be some percentage of undecided voters and the candidates would actually have to make a case for why they should be re-elected and likely the incumbents wouldn’t have a 90+% re-election rate. They would have to actually do something to win re-election.
Simply focusing on presidential election misses the entire point of the picture above. Hope that helps.

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Here is a simple fix to the gerrymandering problem: a congressional district (or any other similar border) must include an entire zip code, and must be comprised of contiguous zip codes. It may not contain a portion of a zip code unless it crosses a state border.
This would mean that the parties will have to accept everyone in a given ZIP code. It won’t stop the gerrymandering completely, but it may get rid of the egregious examples like the one one Chris pointed out.
It is clear to me as an outside observer that the political system in the USA is deeply corrupt and self-serving, and that it is unlikely to change for the better anytime soon.

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Simply focusing on presidential election misses the entire point of the picture above. Hope that helps.
Yes, my intent exactly. It's the old magician's trick- hey look at this one small thing I can prove is real....and ignore all these many other things happening too. Fair representation means verifiable voting processes and systems, reasonable districts, and open and fair primaries. The USA is batting 0.000 on those fronts.
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Chris - if your membership could benefit from Ivermectin use I think we’d all like to know where to get some, how much to take, and when if we sense an infection coming on. I’d certainly prefer that vs vaccine.

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Yes it would be lovely if everyone had a homestead. We could all be Amish and that would be even better.
The fact of the matter is the US is over 80% urban. The reasons are many. There is a 30% increase in the 21st century of urban dwellers.
Is it a good idea? yeah. Is it a good collective solution? Not really.
There are numerous hurdles to entry. Not everyone can afford 180 acres. The demographics preclude the vast majority of the boomers to embark on that lifestyle change. Young people saddled with student debt certainly can’t afford it and they have to live where there are jobs.
Good idea for a few as a coping mechanism but long term for the majority meh not so much

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Chris
I live in a state that has voted for the same party for President for my entire lifetime. That means that my vote in National elections is automatically thrown out should I be silly enough to waste my time with the election charade.
Any nation with the slightest pretensions of Democracy must adhere to the One Person One Vote principle. Electors, gerrymandering, voting by state, billion dollar campaign circuses---- all serve only as smoke screens to hide how little they represent the will of the people. And this is before the actual vote count is manufactured by machines designed as open doorways for fraud. In 2020 the Dominion servers in the CIA post at Frankfort Germany stage managed the entire vote count to generate the required distribution of votes. (Statistical margin for error supporting any other explanation is in the million to one range)

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Let’s start with a first ballot presidential field consisting of anybody who can gather 100,000 verified signatures on a petition. After the first ballot, the remaining 20 candidates will be entirely publicly funded, and be required to engage in a series of debates with randomly chosen opponents from the field. The election ends and President chosen after the winner receives 50+ % of votes in a runoff election(s). The entire process should be time limited to 30 days so the country will not be subject to endless circus charades, and can go back to work like people do in parliamentary election nations.

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100% spot on, Brushhog—The virtues of the life style are the reward.
Unfortunately in a Collapse scenario the ability to produce and store food are of secondary importance in comparison to having formed a community capable of uniting and mustering the force necessary to defend itself against hungry armed bands more ruthless than you. Especially if you are with walking distance of a big city like Boston as is Chris’s new homestead.
 

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a Democracy. We vote for people who supposedly work for us! However, once elected, they become ‘politicians’ and govern for themselves, oops, I mean for us.
it seems to me better to understand this then to make up theories that will never get enacted. With clear eyes, we can work around things and work toward resilience.
Being realistic is tough. But you can always make yourself an Old Fashioned. Life is Good!

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Chris - At this point I think it would be very beneficial to put all the information on ivermectin and other prophylaxis protocols meds and vits together and have a very clear link to it near the top of your home page. A lot of people are looking for more info and it is not easy to find all of the great stuff from you and the rest of the group.
Just a thought.
jef

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On my Homestead, I have attempted to incorporate what the late, great John Seymour referred to as “high farming”;
“High farming” was term used in 19th century Europe to describe a carefully worked out balance between animals and plants, so that each fed the other. The plants feeding the animals directly, the animals feeding the soil with their manure and the land feeding the plants.
A variety of animals and plants were both rotated around the same land so that each species took what it needed out and put what it had to contribute back in with the needs of the soil uppermost in the homesteader’s mind. Each animal and crop was considered for what it had to contribute to the soil.
If the same crop is grown on the same piece of land year after year, the organisms that attack that crop will build up in the area until they become uncontrollable. Thus we use a carefully laid out system of rotation once known in old England as the “Norfolk four course rotation”. This was an ecologically sound system of rotation that served as a model for my own homestead. It works like this;

  1. Primary “ley”; A ley was grass and clover sown for a temporary period. The grass is grazed off by animals. The purpose was to increase the fertility of the land with the nitrogen fixed in the root of the clover as well as the dung left behind by grazing animals. This mass of vegetation and manure was plowed back into the land at the end of the “ley”.
  2. Root break. Here root vegetables are planted with the aim of working the soil to depth and improving “tilth”.
    3 Winter cereal break. Typically a winter rye sown at the end of the root break. This holds fertility and tilth for the final cash crop;
  3. Spring cereal break. This was usually a drilled barley crop undersown with grass/clover to begin the next “ley”.
    Now I have changed this system to meet my needs. Im not an 18th century farmer so I dont have need for a cereal grain crop but the basic rotation still applies. My twist is;
    Ley
    Root break
    winter rye
    Vegetable garden
    If it werent winter I could show pictures of my soil. Over time it has improved immensely. It is now deeper, looser, black loam.
    As to some ugly comments degrading the homesteading lifestyle and purpose, I would say these are mostly made by some small minded, bitter people and we shouldnt pay it too much attention. Homesteading is an art, a science, and a worthy way of life that brings the individual into harmony with his environment. I have never, personally, encountered a more substantial way of life or found a better use for my time and efforts.
    It is true that “not everybody can homestead”, its also true that not everybody can walk. We dont aim to live our lives at the lowest possible human standard because some unfortunates are stuck there. If I can’t walk, hobbling you wont make my situation any better. Yet many people do think that way.
    That being said a homesteader does not need “180 acres” in order to be a homesteader. Ive seen well designed, functional homesteads on an acre.
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Mohammed,
I agree.
But there are additional problems to homesteading.
There are many people like myself who - due to age and health issues - simply cannot homestead.
To the people who can homestead, I wish them all good fortune.
It is just not a solution for myself or people like me.