It's been a while since my last visit, but at this point in time, it's just too damn important not to point out the urgency and i'm not going to hold back any punches ! All readers of this online permaculture community deserve to know the facts - and yes i'm ringing the alarm bells VERY LOUDLY about this topic. Because: There are three kinds of people in the world: those who "make it happen," those who "watch it happen," and those who say "what happened?" I"ve studied and researched global politics and macro economics extensively, and the time is now, for me to share what i know about what's about to unfold in the days, months and years ahead. Yes this affect you, your families and everyone you hold dear. Yes i've spoken about gold on this website before, but i fear not many people listened. This post will and if i can just lead 1 of you in the right direction with this information it will have all been worth it. The essence of permaculture - is about good teachers, teaching individuals sound practices and principles. As demonstrated below buying gold will to protect you from the horror ahead. The positives about this post far outweigh the negatives in my opinion and the sole reason for me putting it up. What we are witnessing in Greece and Thailand should be a wake-up call for the lot of you, this civil unrest is about to morph across Europe, the UK, America and before to long Australia. The links provided are meant to be viewed in order. They're designed to "tell a story" a very important story indeed. This collection of hyperlinks has condensed about 6 yrs of my research into about 4hrs of viewing and they best outline the situation at hand. I'm expecting mostly positive feedback, but their will be a few moronic statements here also. May i remind those people beforehand that "The opinions of 1000 people, mean nothing if they know nothing about the subject" because the ignorance about gold and the reasons of why to buy it, are absolutely staggering ! On Wednesday, May 19, 2010 Blackstone says sees gold rising to $1,500/oz SYDNEY, May 19 (Reuters) - Private equity firm Blackstone Group LP does not expect a mass exodus of investors from Australia's mining sector if a proposed 40 percent tax on the sector is introduced. Speaking to reporters, Blackstone Advisory Partners Vice Chairman Byron Wien also forecast gold would rise to around $1,500 an ounce from around $1,210 currently as more market players seek safe-haven type investments. Look Out Below - Mortgage Purchase Applications Crash... Applications in the U.S. for mortgages to purchase homes plunged 27.1% last week vs. the previous week. This follows a 9.5% plunge the week before that. The purchase index is now 24% below the same week last year and is the lowest in the survey since May 1997. The refinancing index increased, benefitting from the lower mortgage rates which have resulted from the massive flow of money out of the stocks and into the bond market (out of the fire and into the frying pan?). Here's the news link from the Mortgage Bankers Association: https://www.mortgagebankers.org/NewsandMedia/PressCenter/72905.htm Obviously this does not support the increase in housing starts reported earlier in the week. It leads one to wonder if the National Association of Homebuilders numbers are fraudulent, or if new homebuilders are taking advantage of the extreme moral hazard that the policies of the Obama Administration (Geithner, Summers, et al), in conjunction with the Federal Reserve, have injected into our system with their massive tax subsidies for homebuyers and trillions in "quantitative easing." Don't believe any of the data being released by the National Association of Realtors, the Census Bureau or the Obama people about housing inventories. Recent data from several sources (more on this later) show that bank owned real estate inventories are ballooning up to record levels. By one estimate (more later) shows at least 7 years of housing inventory building up in the system. Draw your own conclusions... https://www.clipser.com/watch_video/1010407 https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/author-and-peak-oil-activist-michael-ruppert https://inflation.us/videos.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=r5zB9g_f-gY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQFzEUBADg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-r8lzKpso8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUvvfJakfI https://www.kingworldnews.com/kingw...10/3/30_Andrew_Maguire_&_Adrian_Douglass.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=7IrR3o7x1ps https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/creditcards/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnkdfFAqsHA&feature=related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY&feature=related https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=9DXI38i_8tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E5uIa4c4TA&feature=player_embedded so grab a coffee, sit back and enjoy the ride All the best sincerely Tom
"... buying gold will to protect you from the horror ahead..." Hmmm, ah dunno, yer caint eat gold. If yer looking for an investment perhaps keeping the "essence of permaculture" in mind one would be more inclined to buy real gold, i.e. soil. More grazing/croping acreage never goes amiss... .
That's the whole point Flying Binghy - the money that i can buy food with (ie: investing in buying land, farm machinery planting food and eating it) has quadrupled in 7 yrs
Of course, one can always follow the advice of this lot - "Green technologies posed the investment opportunity of our lifetime said Deutsche Bank’s global head of asset management, in a study published on Thursday. A Deutsche Bank report found that companies specialising in energy efficiency and renewable energy such as wind and solar power outperformed peers across the wider global economy last year and expected more to come in 2010....." https://sites.thomsonreuters.com.au...nvestment-chance-of-a-lifetime-deutsche-bank/ .
Gold tends to follow other market trends - you still go broke, it just takes longer Pay off your mortgage, and don't increase your debt. That is the only way to "beat the system"
buying gold is an unproductive investment by definition. It does not produce anything. PLants do, businesses and people can. Gold is usually bought to PRESERVE wealth. WIth the possibility of some growth in price, but also the possibility of losing value.
Where can I get the money to buy gold? It sure don't come from growing vegetables. Perhaps I could sell my land? Or grow a cash crop - are there any customers out there looking for a supply?
A very quick & dirty bit of research (google) shows that, If you bought gold about 1984 ($800/oz), the next time it was worth the same amount was in about 2006. That means it took 22 years to come back to the value it had when you bought it. Sorry. mate - I can think of much better things to invest in than yesterdays currency standard. You see, since the US, then the rest of the known world (following like sheep, as usual), decoupled their currency from gold, the precious metal has only been worth what jewellers will pay, and that relates directly to how much spare cash the "glitterati" have. Right now - they don't have much to spare, so gold is (currently, at least) a very volatile (read "unstable") medium.
Reflect on this .......... "PART 1" Don and Blighty ... it may be useful to step back for a moment and take a look at the big picture. The below graph (9 yrs after the gold standard was abolished) highlights what reallywas going on in 1980, you remember the Oil Embargo of the 70’s Don't you (a mock run of both war and Peak Oil if you will). So ask yourself this:- with The Real event of “Peak Oil” happening right now - what do you think the price of gold will do ? View attachment 708 Never in history has the world been in a situation when virtually all industrialised countries are bankrupt. Therefore there is no precedent for what will happen in the next few years. Yes this is it ! We have crossed the Rubicon and events in the world economy are now likely to unfold in a totally uncontrollable fashion. The point is that the cost of living is rising. The dollar is being inflated, and given the way the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world are printing money, it is quite clear to me that inflation is going to get much worse. After all, who can honestly say that their cost of living is declining? Clueless governments still don’t understand that it is their ruinous actions that have created a credit infested and bankrupt world. They will continue to prescribe the same remedy that caused the problem in the first place, namely more credit and more printed money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQFzEUBADg and https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/ The consequences are; we will have hyperinflation, economic and human misery as well as social unrest. Sadly, we are probably not very far from that point. It is already starting to happen in many countries. Today of course the dollar is no longer formally linked to gold, and the money supply continues to soar at double-digit rates. Inflation is the result. https://inflation.us/videos.html Although gold has gone up 5x since the 1999 bottom at $250,* it is nowhere near its peak. Adjusted for real inflation https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts the 1980 Gold Peak in today’s prices corresponds to around $7,200 today. So gold could easily go up 6 times from the current price of $1,220 and still be within normal parameters. Think about it for a moment............... The latest EU and IMF package of $ 1 TRILLION (Euro 750 billion) is yet another futile attempt by governments to abolish poverty by printing paper. Let’s be absolutely clear, this money does not exist and the EU governments are hoping by declaring such a large amount that they can con the Wolfpack speculators. At this point the EU has just picked a large round figure out of the air. But when their bluff is called by the Wolfpack and the next attack happens, EU governments will after initial huffing and puffing start printing unlimited amounts of paper. So the world is now on its road to ruin and there is no action, no leader and no new amount of printed money that can save the world or prevent a hyperinflationary depression. What i can be quite certain about is that events will happen in a seemingly random pattern and that it will be impossible to forecast where the next crises will start. But although no-one will not be able to predict in what order events will take place, we can expect much of what is outlined below to happen. Wolfpack attacks Back in 2007 I studied the very high risk of the CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and the CDS (credit default swap) and Dervitive(s) market. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/ and https://ragingdebate.com/economy/greatest-coverup-in-history This is now one of the primary instruments used by the Wolfpack (expression coined by the Swedish Finance Minister Borg). The Wolfpack, speculators with enormous fire power such as hedge funds and investment banks, use the CDS market to attack any weak financial sector, be it a country, a bank or a company. The combination of the leverage of the CDSs and the massive capital available to the Wolfpack makes it possible for them to bring down or badly maul whatever they attack. It was not the Wolfpack that caused the problem in for example Greece but they can bring down a weak victim quickly and profit immensely and immorally from it. There are so many weak potential victims that the Wolfpack can attack and they will start with the most vulnerable ones like, Portugal, Spain and Ireland etc. But when the time is right they will also attack the US and the UK. So in the coming year we will see country after country coming under attack from the Wolfpack which will lead to acceleration in money printing and higher interest rates. Iceland–Ireland–Greece–Who is next ? The EU support package of $ 1 Trillion is supposed to be sufficient to protect the rest of Europe from another Greek tragedy. The dilemma with such a massive EU commitment is that no government expects to have to pay the money out. If they did the voters in the respective EU countries would throw out their government. Why should the German people, who are also having hard times, pay for the Greeks, Portuguese or the Spaniards, especially since these loans will never be paid back. Greece is bankrupt but is still taking on additional EU loans of € 140 billion. In addition, their austerity measures are supposed to bring the deficit down from 12% of GDP today to 3% in a few years time. But who can be so stupid as to lend to a bankrupt nation which will sink into the Ionian and Aegean Seas in the next few years. With massive cuts in government expenditure, with major falls in output, with unemployment rising fast, with tax revenues collapsing how can Greece possibly be expected to improve the economy and pay a high interest rate on their exploding debt?* In addition, as long as they have the Euro they will be totally uncompetitive. So if they couldn’t manage their economy in the so called good times, it is absolutely guaranteed that they have no chance of surviving in bad times. So Greece will default and so will Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, the UK, the US and many more. But before that there will be the most colossal worldwide money printing exercise which would have used up most of the trees in the world but for electronic fiat money. So, if virtually bankrupt nations don’t cut their deficits, they will definitively go under and if they try to cut, they will also go under due to collapsing output and tax revenues and colossal debts. Thus whatever actions governments take or don’t take, they are damned. The table below shows debt as a percentage of GDP for various OECD countries. The official debts (in red) are massive and unlikely to ever be repaid in real money. Total debts (grey bars) include unfunded liabilities such as pensions and health care. Spain has the lowest total debt to GDP of 250%. Germany and the UK have around 400%, the US over 500% and Greece over 800% debt to GDP. These figures are absolutely astronomical and prove that most governments in the world will be totally incapable of repaying their debts or funding the pensions or medical care which they have committed to. It doesn’t matter however much governments cut expenditure or raise taxes, all these countries are insolvent and nothing can save them. View attachment 707 THIS continues with the following post >>>>>>>>>>>>>
Reflect on this .......... "PART 2" The World Must Permanently Readjust Most governments still believe that deficit spending and money printing is the solution to all their problems. Because the world economy’s expansion in the last 100 years and particularly in the last 40 years has been primarily based on credit and not real growth, governments live under the false impression that money printing will work this time too. But we have reached the point when investors will no longer buy worthless government debt that will never be repaid with real money. We will first go through a period when governments issue and buy their own debt thus monetising the debt or print money. This will be the hyperinflationary phase. Thereafter the world will realise that none of the government debt and very little of the bank debt will ever be repaid. Credit will then implode and so will also the assets financed by credit. https://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/10/29/house-of-cards/ Eventually there will be a new monetary and financial system and the world will start afresh. The adjustment period will be very long and will involve economic and human misery, leading to social unrest and major political change. It will be a horrible experience for the world during this extended period of adjustment. But it will be like a forest fire that clears out the deadwood and creates the conditions for strong new growth. Once the new era starts it will therefore be from a very much lower level and individuals will be rewarded for hard work with* little or no social security safety net. Credit will only be granted for sound capital investment projects, not for consumption or speculation. Ethical and moral values will return and the Goldman Sachs will not be worshipped. But before that, the period of readjustment will be very long and extremely difficult for the whole world. Hyperinflation For several years i’ve understood that hyperinflation is the most likely outcome of the economic predicament that the world is in. But it is unlikely to be a straightforward hyperinflationary period. Precious metals will be the primary beneficiaries of hyperinflation. Certain commodities, especially food and energy, will also go up in price. Hyperinflation will destroy many currencies so paper money will definitely reach its intrinsic value which is zero. Gold and silver will virtually be the only assets that will protect investors fully against the destruction of money. View attachment 710 The next leg of the debt crisis is here: "Sovereign Debt" The Sovereign Debt Time Bomb we are now experiencing with the initial small explosions in Dubai https://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/30/dubai-financial-crisis-debt-uae-data-world1 was the first victim (after Iceland) and now it's Greece. The $1 trillion EU/IMF rescue package was never intended to be more than a headline figure. EU governments were hoping that this would frighten the Wolfpack away. But so far this has failed. The Euro went up 4 cents when the package was announced but is now down to new lows again. How can anyone take a massive rescue package seriously when most of the countries making the commitments are bankrupt themselves ? Spain and Italy have committed tens of billions each. And they are the ones that will be attacked by the Wolfpack next !! This is the bankrupt saving the bankrupt. The IMF has no money but is dependent on its members of which the US is the biggest contributor. And they are bankrupt too. The UK, which is not in the Euro Zone and which has a worse budget deficit than Greece, contributed £15 billion. The new UK government is planning to cut a massive £6 billion of costs out of its next year’s budget which will bring major hardship. But as a last act, the outgoing labour government committed £15 billion which if paid out will never be repaid. The whole thing is a total farce. Governments commit trillions to rescue banks and sovereign states but cannot even make budget cuts of a few billion in their own countries. This shows that the world economy and the world financial system is being run by morons who only have their own self interest in mind and do not understand the consequences of their ruinous actions. When the $1 trillion EU rescue package was announced, the US simultaneously offered European banks dollar Swap facilities (dollar loans) of a minimum $500 billion but probably much more. In addition the US Fed also injected at least $500 billion into the US banking system. These actions make it clear the banking system is under tremendous strain similar to 2008. But this is just the beginning. Things will get a lot worse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=r5zB9g_f-gY Gold In 2002 i was advised to put up to 50% of my cash into gold when the price was $300. To me it was crystal clear that the mountain of debts and derivatives would never be repaid with normal money but would be inflated away by money printing and this is what is now happening. The media are now talking about a bubble in gold and comparing to the 1980 top at $850. Let me be very clear, although gold has gone up 5 times since the 1999 bottom at $250,* it is nowhere near its peak !! Adjusted for real inflation (as per shadowstats.com) the 1980 gold peak in today’s prices corresponds to around $7,200 today. So gold could easily go up 6 times from the current price of $1,220 and still be within normal parameters. View attachment 711 There are many factors that will contribute to gold’s rise from here (in addition to money printing): 1. Gold production is going down. 2. Neither Comex (the futures exchange), nor the bullion banks would be able to deliver more than a fraction of the physical gold for which they have outstanding commitments. 3. Central banks and the IMF probably don’t hold even half of the 30,000 tons that they claim they have. Most likely, at least 15,000 tons (6 years gold production) have been sold to suppress the gold price. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-r8lzKpso8 4. The precarious financial system will lead to a total distrust of paper gold including most of the ETFs which have no physical gold. https://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/3/30_Andrew_Maguire_%26_Adrian_Douglass.html The four factors above will lead to the most massive surge in the gold price. There will be nowhere near sufficient gold to satisfy demand at current prices. I had been expecting gold to start its acceleration in March 2010 and this is exactly what is happening. I expect the move to be relentless during most of this year with very few major corrections but with high volatility. Moves of $100 in one day could easily happen. So gold is likely to make a top in the next few years between $US 5,000 and $US 10,000. But if we get hyperinflation the price could go exponentially higher like in the Weimar Republic when gold reached DM 100 trillion per ounce in 1923. Will gold experience the same type of correction when it has peaked as happened after the 1980 peak Don Hansford ?? Probably not, because gold is likely to be a part of a new monetary system that will be created when the current one has collapsed. View attachment 712 The graph (above) and the table (below) illustrates the total destruction of paper money against gold in the last 100 years and shows how many ounces of gold that $1,000 bought at various times. In 1910, $1,000 bought 40 oz of gold at $25 per oz. Today in 2010, $1,000 buys 0.80 oz of gold at $1,230 per oz. This is a massive decline of 98% in the value of the dollar measured in real terms in the last 100 years. The next significant year is 1971 when Nixon abolished the convertibility of dollars to gold (refer again to the graph @ top of this post). It was this disastrous decision that opened the floodgates for the credit and money creation that we are experiencing currently. The dollar is down 97% since then. But even if we take more recent years, the purchasing power of the dollar measured in gold has declined catastrophically. Since the 1999 gold low, the dollar has declined by 80% against gold and since 2002 (when i got recommended to buy gold) by 76%. View attachment 709 Virtually all currencies show similar declines in value against gold in the last 100 years. This is the clearest evidence of governments and central banks defrauding their people of their hard earned money. Where will it end? It will end when the dollar and many other currencies reach their intrinsic value of ZERO. That time is not far away. View attachment 713 The bottom line; buy some GOLD It is better to be safe than sorry. P.S. Don i love your signature at the end of your posts. Tom.
I see a point as "don't hold on to dollars - they will be worthless" but what is the point of having $100 worth of gold if money is worthless? Better to have the currency of life - food and shelter and a good partner and well educated children.
Somebody once told me that money was nothing more than an idea backed by confidence. When confidence was high, the value of that money was high and so on. There is no confidence in money or those that produce it any more and hasnt been for some time. I dont think that its true, that people Dont know whats going on, more that they dont know where it will take them and are hoping for the best and doing the best that they can with the dwindling little that they do have. Not to mention hoping like hell it doesnt happen just yet cos there not ready yet. While buying gold might actually be a really good idea, I see afew problems with it. 1. Most people I know are just managing to pay their bills and have afew treats along the way. Most dont have spare cash for savings and the savings they do have are there for when the car breaks down or there is an immediate emergency that is going to impact on their ability to get out there and earn enough to pay their bills. This may be short sighted but thats just the way it is. 2.In the past Gold may have been readily available and people probably knew how to get it and how to trade with it. We dont have that knowledge, skill or confidence in it to know what it is worth. This makes it not actually worth all that much to the ordinary everyday person on the street. So while you may have gold and do have the knowledge of its worth, before you will be able to get that worth out in tangible goods, you are going to have to convince your trader of its value. If they cant see somebody else accepting it from them as opposed to just stealing it from them, they wont be interested. Economic collapse is not something we have alot of history to look at and work out the optimum solution. While there are recent examples to study..Russia, Argentina to mention two, getting first hand knowledge of what happened and what people did to survive is not easy to come by and may not actually be that handy to have. They collapsed at a time when other countries were able to invest in them/buy interests in them,asset strip them and so on. The collapses that (I conservatively say) threatens the world will in all likelyhood not be the same, but(probably) will be all countries collapsing around the same time, which will be a different scenario altogether. As the powers that be wont want to loose control or their worth, they Will come up with a solution that suits them very well which may or may not be to our benefit... probably not. So, while you can study and learn from what has gone before, you have to keep in mind that it will not be exactly the same and the solutions you put into place will have to allow for flexibility. What does have value immediately is those things people need. So factor in the ability to trade wisely.
Gold has no intrinsic value. It's just a shiny pretty rock. What you get paid for it depends on how someone else feels about your pretty rock. I'd rather buy a block of dirt that I can grow things on, and build myself a shelter.... Won't matter what anything thinks about it, and it probably won't be pretty, but I won't go hungry.
That's right .. real Gold - real Money - real Bank Acct. What are you people on about !! saying it has no intrinsic value or it's not accepted, you can't eat it etc. I've been buying and selling gold online for Years it really is childsplay and recieving the money that's right - Real Money straight into my everyday bank savings acct. since 2003. YES - it's real money, use my eftpos card with it; Yes - buy food with it, Yes - pay bills with it, Yes - buy anything i damn well want with it; ..... and YES - i've zero problem (none, zip, nada) with people taking (that) money; you say is just a shiny rock (that you can't eat) and i give it to them. Yes ... That money; will buy that block of land i want not it 7 yrs time but in 3yrs (half the time i though poss.) if gold keeps on climbing the way it has (and will). I might even be able to buy (that) land before next year is out, we'll see eh ? I know someone hear will eventually listen and turn their moneyalready saved; in their bank acct - into Gold and get way better returns on their savings than the crazy, stupid interest rate(s) handed out by the bank that's not even keeping up with inflation. I know time and money are VERY precious for every one here but do take the time to learn something worthwhile. Look at the links i've provided in the previous posts. It will not hurt you just save and make you money. I'll say it again for those that missed it just 2 paragraphs above: I've been buying and selling gold online for Years it really is childsplay and recieving the money that's right - Real Money straight into my everyday bank savings acct. since 2003. and ask yourself did your bank pay roughly this much interest (chart below) on your savings over the last 5 yrs. The money you worked BLOODY HARD for. Are we making any progress here people ?? View attachment 714
All the gold in the world can not 'buy' true community. Come the time when we are living in a post-carbon society (peak oil first, then CC), I'll be glad that I used this (the current) time to foster great relationships with other communitarians, because when the poo hits the fan, I'd rather have 100 community members by my side, than 100 ounces of gold (or any other material you might care to convert it into).
I think Kimbo said it best ages ago - abundance is different to wealth. You can have all the gold in the world and still feel poor. You can have no money or gold and have an abundance in your life. Like the 3 pumpkins I harvested today, and the 2 kg of ginger I lifted yesterday. They both gave me a much bigger warm fuzzy than my last pay cheque, and I can eat them!
devaluing currency $$ = Inflation ! Why does it have to either abundance OR wealth; why not both !?!? @ ecodharmamark Would it not be a nice thought that, if these 100 people or so in a "True Community" (as you put it) were actually converting their devaluing, individual community dollars by buying gold; as to secure all "their" future(s), lively-hoods and savings. For those essential projects the wish to undertake in the coming years ? Since we agree that the price of oil is going up = inflation. Gold is a hedge against inflation = devaluing currency $$ seems a no brainer.
G'day Tom When projecting the future, we (visionaries) can see many different scenarios emerging, however (for me, and others like me) one stands out alone from the pack - collapse. As such it seems that we must take a different view of the future than you, and others like yourself. While I would like to think that it would be 'nice' if global humanity could during the C21 all get along, and we can all (9-billion of us?) walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand, I don't think it is going to happen. As such it will not matter if we convert cash into gold today in order to 'hedge' against inflation tomorrow. Nor will it matter if at some future point in time we were to then convert that gold into material assets (land, weapons, cans of baked beans, etc.), because sooner or later someone else is going to want what we have, and will be willing to fight us (to the death) for it! Therefore in our future world we see the value of living in a true community - a small group of people (about 100 or so) with a mutual commitment to the protection and preservation of each other. In order to build the true capital (social, cultural and ecological) that our community will need in an uncertain future, one does not need hard currency (gold, or otherwise) or material assets (we already have those), one needs time to re-learn how to get along with others (breaking down the socially-constructed neo-liberal, individual culture that has come to dominate present society, and replacing it with neo-communitarianism), and how to make a good life living as a band of nomadic hunter gatherers (George Miller's 'Mad Max' is the common analogy used here). It is for this reason that I am right now 'spending' time in conjunction with other community members in doing just that - building the social, cultural and ecological capital as insurance against a future which promises to be an extremely challenging one. Thanks for your thoughts, Mark.
