We have arrived

"Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones."
-- Benjamin Franklin

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WOODPILE REPORT
VERBATIM POST

If you're living in fear of collapse, you can relax now. It's here. All around you. Keep those doomer manuals handy, this is what a slide to disaster looks like from the inside.

QE2 has failed to generate any growth in the economy, with both Q2 and Q1 GDP crashing spectacularly to a point where post another revision Q1 will be the inflection point where America re-entered another recession ... the downslope we are already in may convert into a stall from which the global airborne Titanic does not recover.
Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge

Are you convinced yet? The economy has not only failed, any remnants still able to draw a breath are being ferreted out and looted in detail. Europe is going down too, and it's getting ugly. They've seen this stretch of bad road before and the scramble for good ground is ferocious. For us, things are not as bad as they appear. They're worse. The US passed the tipping point some time ago and nothing's going to change it, a tipping point separates what was from what is.

Some analysts—those who are either in the tank for the government or are completely ignorant to the real facts—will claim that while the second quarter GDP is low, it's still positive, which suggests there's still growth. As we have pointed out in several reports previously, this is simply not the case once you factor in price inflation and monetary easing. If it wasn't clear up until today, it should be now.
Mac Slavo, SHTFPlan

It's been one catastrophe after another, and it's all happening even faster than many tinfoil hats predicted. From here things get really bad. Surely you've noticed the bizarre is the new normal. Look for ever-bigger shocks and failures. They'll arrive closer and closer together because everything is leveraged against everything else and the money's gone. We're financing debt with more debt and paying interest on both. Nothing is actually funded, very little ever was. Government's and Wall Street's—but I repeat myself—guarantees and promises have been revealed for what they are, worthless. The covenant is broken. The citizenry is going into shock.

The concentration of wealth is now in so few hands and is so extreme in degree, that the combined liquid financial power of all of those not in this small group is inconsequential to determining the direction of the economy. As a result, we now have the equivalent of centralized planning in global marketplaces... The result was inevitable: gross misallocation across all facets of the private economy.
Jon Robb, Global Guerillas

Like any other train wreck, the damage is determined by how and where it happens. This one sends us off a high bridge, arcing toward the river. Almost graceful so far. Enjoy the ride. Next comes the real panic and then the real pain. How bad it'll be nobody knows, but a glance through history tells us no "worst case" is ever off the table.

The only winners in any of this are government and their employers, it's all about their survival, not ours, which is why citizen involvement has gone from a civic duty to an annoyance to an outright threat. Think not? The Patriot Act, Stimulus Bill, TARP and ObamaCare were all drawn up in secret—"under the radar" they call it. All were loathed and opposed by the citizenry, all were passed virtually unread. We have a secret government which negotiates with itself. Worse, critical parts of some laws are secret, the Patriot Act for one.

There's more. Regulatory agencies have been expanding their mandates by acting on extreme interpretations of the law, or by enforcing laws proposed but not enacted, or otherwise going rogue, the EPA and ATF most conspicuously of late. Regulatory agencies have come to abuse us the way a straw boss abuses his field hands. Uppity ones go to the post. The prudent will avoid unnecessary interaction with government but strictly observe the difference between avoidance and evasion. Render unto Caesar.

Be prepared to do without basic utilities and services. Ensure your water, food, shelter and security on a long-term basis. Be prepared to do things for yourself you never thought you'd have to. Be prepared for lawlessness and lawless tyranny alike. Expect to be menaced and intimidated and threatened in ways not seen since occupied Europe of the 1940s. Stay in touch with friends. Get in touch with like-minded and reliable neighbors, you're going to need each other. Be alert. Stay away from crowds. Keep your head down. Anticipate. Be aware. Be resilient.

Give some thought to documenting everything, especially malfeasance. Don't get in their face about it, it's dangerous even now, malfeasance or not. Hard copy is most durable. Miscreants will have their day of accounting, make a contribution to future prosecutions. And give some thought to rebuilding the Republic. A second Republic could be better than the first. We know where it went wrong. We knew even at the time, or should have. There were voices raised, strong objections were made. But for now it's enough to remember: there's no long term without the short term. We have arrived, ready or not.