What I take issue with is fear mongering, and telling people that its past time they start preparing to live like the Waltons is just that.

You have got to be kidding me. You must be living in a different economic universe from the one that the rest of us live in.

And what happens if you lose your job and can't get another one?

Moving in with your parents or a sibling sounds like a good "Plan B" to me, whether they have a garden or not.

Fear mongering?

If the converging economic, climatic and energetic problems civilisation now faces doesn't scare the **** out of you, seek help.

I've been trying to live up to westexas ELP recommendations and so far it worked out very well for me. I needed a new roof on my small house, created an extra storey in the process, and paid cash thanks very much.

...telling people that its past time they start preparing to live like the Waltons is just that (fear mongering)

"We’re going to keep trying to strengthen the American family, to make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons."

- George Herbert Walker Bush, 1992

Actually, at least a couple of years ago, I wish there had been more fear mongering, and I wish this fear mongering had been in the main stream press. As bad as I thought the financial system might be, it is worse that my worst fears. Actually, the Waltons lived in a pretty big house as I recall.

Fear mongering? Holy Crap. Does it even enter your thoughts that there is a huge difference between now and 1929. How many people make or sell things that people NEED???
This is going to be worse than you seem to understand. 533,000 jobs in a month. What are they going to do? A job selling holiday trinkets?
Just how easy is it to predict the future? Close is far better for everyone than what I see Paulson et al doing. Put your faith into the panic stricken leadership we have now if you want. Good luck - you'll need it. I think Jeffery has been insightful.
D

It's not only way past time that they start preparing but it is past time they actually started. Living life king size is all very well on borrowed money till the lenders realize that the IOUs they've been issued are little better than Charmin.

Srivathsa

I was once told I was fear mongering, too.

It seems to be a reaction that occurs when the person making the statement isn't yet operating in the same context as the person providing the warning.

It's clear to me that you don't see what some of the rest of us see so Jeffrey's advice makes no sense to you. Of course, if and when your context changes, his advice will seem both prudent and prescient.

I stumbled across a remarkable CNBC clip, filmed almost a year ago. CNBC's Closing Bell interviews the CEO of Overstock.com, Patrick Bryne. (It gets good about 2:45 minutes into the video):

Dec 2007: 'We are living in a house of cards'

Bryne: I think that we're living at the edge of a 1929 kind of disaster... I think that we've been living in a house of cards for about 6 years. The American economy is like an old man in an oxygen tent that you flood with oxygen, but when you turn off the oxygen, he fades very quickly. Well the oxygen in our system has been cheap credit... We're on the edge of global financial meltdown.

The hilarity comes when the co-host, Dylan Ratigan, tries to steer the conversation into happyland. Ratigan's stammering rationalization says a lot about how and why humanity finds itself in the predicament it does.

Ratigan: But I always judge the market based on what it does. It's a self-evident machine. And if you look at the past five years, they have been spectacular. Not just in terms of the stock market performance, but in terms of the emergence of lifestyle on the Earth. Meaning that we've watched the construction of billions of large buildings etcetera. And the emergence of a digital culture of consumption and technological commerce, to which, by the way, you have been a tremendous beneficiary. So I find it curious that you don't give [this economic prosperity] more credit.

Bryne: Well I think that prosperity has largely come from [the fact that] we've been writing checks on the bank account of future people. In one way or another, the FED and the Treasury have been inflating this economy with cheap credit for about 5 years longer than they should have, and I think it's all going to come to a pretty ugly end.

Do you think he'll be able to get financing? The bank may impose ELP, whether he likes it or not.

Maybe he should do a Donald trump on the bank. Check this out. Chutzpah takes on a new meaning.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/28069720 See an excerpt.

"Those assertions are made in a fascinating lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump, the real estate developer, television personality and best-selling author, in an effort to avoid paying $40 million that he personally guaranteed on a construction loan that Deutsche Bank [AG 18.69 -0.66 (-3.41%) ] says is due and payable.

Rather than have to pay the $40 million, Mr. Trump thinks the bank should pay him $3 billion for undermining the project and damaging his reputation."

Apparently the Great Combover in the Sky is at the root (pun not intended) of his problems and he should be allowed a force majeure on his loan.

Srivathsa

P.S. I think I managed to post this inadvertently down below where it is completely irrelevant

I often mentioned that if we enter a big depression the price could fall and buy us some time. Sometimes I didn't say it, though, and sometimes people forget that I said that. In any case, nit-picking the messenger wastes everyone's time and usually is done only to satisfy the ego of the person doing the nit-picking.

It's not the price that is important it is affording the price - forget the price in isolation, it just balances supply and demand - think affordability, that determines the actual flow rate! An out of work person can't afford much gasoline whatever it's price.

Post peak oil the downslope implies economic contraction - whether this is the final peak or not we are now in a post peak situation - as Westexas says a different set of rules will likely apply to the way we all live (for a while at least, and maybe a long while) - try spending a little of your day on contingency plans that you may need to enact quickly at some stage - thought costs very little.

What I have a problem with is middle and upper middle class people who haven't been touched by the problem suggesting that common sense things like sharing housing with your family and growing food to cut your budget is wild-eyed radicalism. Have you visited your local food pantry lately? How many people are in line? How full are the shelves? Checked out the soup kitchens? Noticed the folks losing their homes? Had they gotten Jeff's advice ahead of time, they might not be in this situation.

Sharon

Hey! I grow tomatoes in my front yard...what of it? And I share housing with my non-nuclear family.

Frankly, you seem so sure things are not going south, you sound every bit as dogmatic as those you criticize.

You may not need to yet, but it already happening to some people. Here in relatively-less-affected Midwestern College Town USA, one of my employees was just telling me that she and her son are moving into the basement of her sister's house to reduce her utility and rent costs, share on grocery bills, and so that what she is paying in rent will help her sister (just lost her job) and brother-in-law (construction worker/no work) to try to keep making their house payments. So it may be premature hyperbole to some, but definitely not to all.

Antidoomer;
Maybe there's a better way to describe people who are issuing warnings than to call it fear-mongering, a term which is clearly overused and underdescribed.

I have to say that your well-established reputation for 'hit-and-run optimism' by issuing unclarified posts about possible tech-developments has probably earned you the title of 'Dream-mongering'

Either kind of 'mongering' would seem to be hollering out an ideology without evidence or reasonable backing.. but these warnings aren't unreasonable, unreasoned or unwelcomed.. WT and others provide no small amount of the evidence of smoke they are looking at before choosing to tell the other theatergoers that there might be a fire.. that it might be a good idea to find a seat closer to the exits and consider an evac plan.

Saying that it's irresponsible to consider this possibility and set up some contingency plans sounds to me like it is itself a fear response. But believe me, I understand.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."