Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
One rule every preparedness expert should go by is to always be concerned when establishment authorities, the media and “shoe shine boys” start volunteering their “expert” opinions on why you should not be concerned about a particular danger. The establishment most likely has an agenda to keep you passive, and the shoe shine boys are simply regurgitating what they hear from the media like good little robots. These people are far too interested in whether or not you are preparing for a threat; in fact they seem hell bent on talking you out of preparation in general. Why is that?
In the past two months I have seen an endless flow of mainstream news stories arguing first, that Covid 19 is nothing to worry, and second, that the public is “in a panic” over the virus.
- The first assertion is obviously ridiculous. With an official death rate of around 6% in Italy alone, I think we are starting to see what the Chinese government has been trying to hide as they continue to threaten their citizens with punishment for leaking “fake news” (FACTS) on the coronavirus. This event is not something to be taken lightly; it is a paradigm shifting scenario which will change the world forever.
- The second assertion seems to be a calculated exaggeration; a form of reverse psychology. Keep telling people they are “panicking” when they are not and maybe they will go to the other extreme and passively do nothing at all just to avoid the label. I have to say, I don’t think people in this day and age know what a mass “panic” actually is, especially if their only point of reference is some empty toilet paper shelves at Costco.
In terms of the stock markets one could say a “panic” has FINALLY ensued as trillions in capital are being wiped out daily, but this does not affect the average person financially in the short term. The stock market matters only in that it is a psychological placebo which keeps people from looking into the deeper problems within the fundamentals of the economy. They see the stock market is doing well, they don’t bother to investigate anything else.
Now that stocks are crashing perhaps the public will look into other more important factors, including historic levels of corporate and consumer debt, the global dollar liquidity shortage and the Fed’s repo crisis, the global plunge in exports and manufacturing, the retail Apocalypse in the US, collapsing Treasury yields, collapsing oil prices, etc. Most of these are problems that existed long before the coronavirus, but maybe now people will start paying attention to them.
These problems will still be lost on the shoe-shine boys, who will continue to call you a “chicken little” for merely taking practical precautions in case of disaster.
A friend of mine was talking with some people at a local gas station about getting prepared just in case supply lines break down during the pandemic. A highway patrolman overheard him and decided to butt into the conversation, smugly telling everyone this is “just another Y2K” and it only kills people over the age of 80. My friend related to me that he tried to present a rational case for why his concerns go beyond just the virus…but the dumb cop just grinned and ignored him.
I had an interesting encounter a few weeks ago myself, when I was surprised to find a box of N95 masks at a hardware store. I went to purchase them to add to my supply and a cashier in a little vest decided to regale me with a long list of reasons why the coronavirus is “no worse than the flu” and there’s nothing to worry about. None of his information was correct, but it’s not really my job to save every all-knowing cashier I come across, so I just told him “I guess we’ll find out in a couple of months…but it’s better to be found prepared than it is to be found stupid.” The box of masks I purchased for $14 is now selling for $100, if you can even find them.
JFK Sr. related a story about how he knew the stock market crash of 1929 was coming when a shoe-shine boy started offering him unsolicited investment tips on the “best stocks” to purchase. He pulled his money out immediately and markets crashed days later. This is what I mean by “shoe shine boys” – These people are a litmus test or warning signal for smarter observers. They represent a focal point of blind optimism and arrogance within our society. They are one of the best contrarian indicators of what you should be doing in the face of a crisis.
The highway patrolman and the hardware store cashier are the same people that will be raging a month from now about how they can’t find anything they want at the grocery store and how they can barely leave the house because of the pandemic spread. They are the same people that will be demanding handouts from others two months from now when the supply chain has completely broken down. All they had to do was stock extra supplies of goods they normally use anyway, but they are more interested in being the “smartest guys in the room”.
This past week, government welfare leach Elon Musk decided to do some pandering for his globalist masters with a Tweet about how “coronavirus panic is dumb”. The special guest attendee of the World Government Summit knows full well what all this is about. It is the job of gatekeepers like him to try to convince the public to be as inactive as possible in the face of a legitimate threat. It’s not only about the virus, which Musk has no understanding of whatsoever; it’s also about the economic collapse that is occurring in the background of the pandemic.
How much do you want to bet that Musk has a grand emergency bunker of his own in case the worst happens? Most of his elitist buddies have them. But you trying to prepare? You’re dumb and panicky…
What we are witnessing is not panic, it is preparedness, and on a relatively subdued scale at that. People stockpiling essentials for emergency situations is something that should be an American mainstay – a way of life. Already the phrase “hoarders” is being used in the media to label such people, so you can see where this is all headed.
When REAL panic ensues you will know it. When the public can’t find an open grocery store, then you will see panic. When there are checkpoints in and out of major metropolitan areas stopping people from leaving if they have any symptoms of illness, then you will see panic. When Covid-19 continues to circulate through the population for a year or more and does not disappear during the summer months as some people theorize, get ready for anger and panic. When your local banks announce a financial “holiday” for an unspecified amount of time because of a credit crisis and lack of liquidity, and all the ATMs are shut down, then you will see panic. When crime rates explode because of lack of supplies and people start fighting over access to the meager food lines at FEMA camps, THAT will be panic.
And don’t think for a second that this is not possible in this country, because it absolutely is. All it takes is for the global supply chain to break down for one month and there will be chaos like nothing the average person has seen in their lives.
Examples are already starting to materialize.
A reader of mine with inside information on Walmart corporate office decisions has recently told me that individual Walmart stores will no longer be able to order stock from warehouses (distribution centers); they will still be sent trucks randomly, and those trucks will only carry what the warehouses happen to have on hand at the time. In other words, Walmart stores will soon have huge holes in their inventories due to the supply chain breakdown.
This might be limited only to Walmart, but I suspect not. The supply chain crisis will probably develop slowly relative to the pandemic situation, in the span of a couple of months, but there are certain items that will disappear rather quickly. For example, there is a legitimate threat of a drought in medicines and pharmaceuticals in the US as Chinese manufacturing has not come back on line. There are also concerns that China may “weaponize” US dependence on their medical manufacturing and deliberately withhold shipments. I would stock any essential medications and over the counter drugs you might need now.
If you want to see real panic, just wait until the nearly 50% of Americans on at least one medication can no longer get their prescriptions filled. Wait until people who are physically dependent on their supply of insulin or heart medication can’t get any. This is not a joke. It is not something to sneer at or look down our noses at.
My purpose here is not to frighten readers, but to put things in perspective and prepare you for what is coming. Lack of toilet paper in Costco is a minor inconvenience. Empty grocery stores and unfulfilled prescriptions is a nightmare.
The way to deal with this is simple – Prepare Now. Don’t listen to frauds like Elon Musk or the mainstream media when they accuse you of being a “hoarder” just for stocking supplies you would have normally purchased and used anyway over a longer period of time. There are only two reasons to discourage the public from prepping for a disaster:
1) Because the establishment is packed with idiots that do not like people breaking with the status quo and they want to maintain the illusion that all is well even at the expense of human lives.
2) Because the establishment wants to keep the masses as unprepared as possible so that as the disaster accelerates they will be unprepared and desperate, and thus easier to control with promises of government “aid” when the time comes.
Take your pick. I’m not sure which one is worse, but given the evidence of past elitist engineered crisis I’m going to say #2 is the true reason behind all of this. As I predicted in my article ‘The Psychological Warfare Of Economic Collapse’, published in 2018:
“Forcing the public to embrace worldwide centralization would require several measures. First, the current system, which as stated is designed to fail, would have to be allowed to crash. Second, the crash would have to be blamed on someone other than the globalists and their ideology of globalism. Third, philosophical opponents of globalism (i.e., conservatives, nationalists and decentralization activists) would have to be demonized or eliminated so that the globalists can build their new world order without opposition. Fourth, the population would need to be sufficiently traumatized to the point of psychological submission and desperation, so that when the new system is introduced, they will be grateful for it, thus preventing future rebellion by making the public a willing cooperator in their own enslavement…”
And, as I noted in my article ‘Globalists Only Need One More Major Event To Finish Sabotaging The Economy’, the Everything Bubble has been so precariously inflated that any freeze in liquidity will bring it tumbling down. That event has now happened and we are witnessing the implosion of the bubble in real time.
The goal here is to conjure maximum chaos. This is why the mainstream media, the White House, the CDC and the WHO have all been consistently downplaying the pandemic threat until the past week. This is why they are now trying to “shame” people who go out and prepare by accusing them of “panic” and calling them “hoarders”. This is about keeping the public in check and immobile until the REAL panic happens, and by then it will be too late for them.
I want to commend the people who stuck with me and the message of preparedness for the past several years despite the ever present “skeptics” and naysayers. We were right, they were wrong. A collapse on a national or international level was not a “paranoid” fear – it was happening in stages under the surface, and all of you were smart enough to see it coming. But now comes the hard part; how to respond?
Be sure to surround yourself with other prepared people of like mind. Be sure you are not surrounded by the shoe-shine boys who will claim they are entitled to what you have. Don’t support martial law and the subjugation of constitutional liberties no matter what rationale the establishment gives. They were the people that dismissed the pandemic threat for at least two months, they are not to be trusted now. Finally, understand that survival is a means to an end, it is not the only goal. The job of maintaining the principles of freedom for future generations falls on our shoulders now. This is far more important than mere survival.
For now, just make sure you have your preps squared away. My rule is, always plan for the worst case scenario. This is why I am not personally “panicked” by the Covid 19 crisis. This is why many people I know are not particularly panicked. One does not panic when one is prepared.