As a shaman, I have seen this for a while. I've spoken to Brian about it for a year or more. Others in our sessions have spoken of feeling something. We are all afraid of being alarmists, of course. Who wants to think the worst? But when the wall street journal talks about something as crazy as stockpiling food as a better investment than a CD, you have to take note. What does it mean for us all? When the tsunami hit last year, the animals knew, and headed for higher water. Remarkably, they were saved. My question here is, at what point do we pay attention to the animal instincts? When is it fear? How will YOU know which is which? Can YOU handle a discussion, or does it frighten you too much? Were we to have major catastrophie, what will your shamanic skills offer our world? All just thoughts, but worthy ones, I think. Love, Robin
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/104914/Load-Up-the-Pantry
I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill.
You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120882472974233235.html?mod=yahoo_free">When Neighbors Become Farmers • Racking Up Points on Your Credit Score • You Can't Take Car Envy to the Bank
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.
Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
These are trends that have been in place for some time.
And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.
The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.
Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point.
The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food.
A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply.
You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.
If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age.
The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.
Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com
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3 comments:
I usually manage to kill everything I plant, but I'm learning about composting, I'm tackling tomatoes, lettuces, and zuccini this year (I hear you can't possibly kill zuccini) and I'm on my way to self-sufficiency within two years. I do not think that this is negative thinking. There are big changes coming,and if we as shamans will be here to ease the pain of others, we have to know that we and our loved ones are safe before we can freely give to others. And if change comes in time and we can dream a better world into becoming we will have great gardens and new chicken and goat friends.
I have truly had this feeling as of late. I have been called to truly look at what is of current value and where I am investing my time, energy and money. I am being called to invest more wisely and focus my energy differently.
I have also wondered how I could stay awake to my intuition and also contribute toward creating a new reality. How to stay awake to what may be coming without getting caught up in the fear, allowing myself to dream, introduce and contribute to creating the vibration of a new way of being in the midst of chaos.
As Shamans, with the assistance of Spirit, in times of great catastrophy, I can see the need for the use of soul retrievals and although I hate to think about it even psychopomp journeys, should death be involved.
It may also call for being able to perform these healings without the luxury of having drums in the background or the time to lie down for a 20 minute journey in the case of crisis. All things I have thought about as of late.
Thanks for posting!
These are timely questions. I don't feel skilled enough to make the necessary distinctions to answer them. But I'm curious to know more about what your guides have shared on this subject.
I know I'd like to be responsible for fine-tuning my own intuitive senses and plugging them into the collective as a source of healing and help. I am frightened, but I know that my facing (and not being ruled by) the fear can undercut it.
Those of us with unpredictable parents have no choice but to face a certain type of fear and live with it. I learned to adapt to whatever tidal waves were brewing underneath in their heads and had to be ready for a variety of possibilities every day. Our one collective parent, the Earth, is now sick and becoming inconsolable, so trying to learn how to dodge the bullet is one thing but mental adaptation to the circumstances(and punishments) she will deal out is probably my best answer. Another way to put it, we need to be psychologically agile and flexible to the changes to come and not fixed to our past ways of living--it is what every immigrant must learn to do-- it is what cultural absolutists fear the most.
The winds change unpredictably. Entering into the winter of a civilizational era, knowing that the death of this era may be around a corner is a chapter from a story that modern societies tend to skip over, or have only ever experienced in a limited way--yes, we lose loved ones but the thought of living on as a refugee is simply unimaginable, to some a fate worse than death.
Stocking up food may sustain me physically, but adaptation is survival.
Prechtel witnessed the extermination of an entire culture. The indigenous way of life is all but lost in most parts of the world. The threat of extinction rises elsewhere daily and with terrible fury and we've deluded ourselves into thinking that our society is insulated and immune from such a possibility. It is not.
My hope is that whatever we experience will be felt together, without borders or ethnicities or divisions. And that through collective struggle we can achieve collective wisdom and greater consciousness. I agree with She Who Remembers, that we should be ready for the worst but also the best that is to follow, and to more closely and intuitively listen for spirit's signals-- like the mutant woman in the Australian outback parched for water before she discovers the waterfall's existence. Learning how to live on and adapt to "other worlds" may be the key to continuity.
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