A little darker now....

The Dow falls 678 points today. People are looking for the bottom and hoping for a quick recovery--I hope they find it and we do turn it around sooner rather than later. But things being what they are, the collapse may continue to surpass our expectations. There is some consensus that this economic event is not the same as the 1929 crash--this assertion is being used to mollify panicked investors; but, what is not being discussed is that today, unlike during the great depression, we are globally connected with many other ailing national economies. This may be a global race to the bottom as the world's major economies pull one another down. The friction between failing national economies may begin to play out on a larger scale than the current situation between England and Iceland. England wants to sue Icelandic banks that folded and took millions of pounds of British savings with them. Now that they have to keep themselves afloat, what happens when China starts cashing in all of the treasury bonds that they have been buying to keep the US in cash during our overdrawn Bush years? It's all a big question mark at this point, but it could get ugly. What is plain is that currently we are not experiencing the brunt of the crisis in terms of a dropping dollar and rising prices. I always thought my grandparents were a little odd for doing things like stashing canned goods under their beds, or patching worn out sweaters, or making so many things from scratch. Their frugality was born of some rough times during the Great Depression.

There is no way to tell if we will be compelled to make the same kinds of sacrifices as my grandparents, but now would be a good time to start thinking about that space beneath your own bed. Should food shortages occur, you would want to have a full pantry to offset periods of scarcity. It's a little extreme, but the Mormons supposedly store a year's worth of food for just such emergencies. There is a calculator that counts up the pounds of food you need for a year's supply-- http://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm --this is something to start thinking about now, when stores are posting great sales to thin their stock in anticipation for lower sales next year. Dried goods and canned goods are ideal for long storage. Here's a link about the shelf life of different foods: http://standeyo.com/News_Files/Food/Extend_Shelf_Life.html