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Options For American Serfs
Here at the Dollar Vigilante we are always stressing the importance of denationalizing your ass and assets, before the inevitable crash of the Federal Reserve Note. During the lead up to the Great Default the local, state and federal tax feeders will grow hungrier and for those of you with assets, it is incredibly important that you protect yourself through obtaining second passports, and internationally diversifying into hard assets that minimize your geopolitical risk. But for millions of Americans, not only do they not have assets, but they are actually enslaved by debt. For those who can see the cliff ahead but don’t see a way out, the future must seem grim indeed. But for even those without assets to protect, there are ways to free yourself. In this post we will explore some options for American Serfs. Swimming to the Surface After the Krugman requested, Fed fuelled housing bubble exploded, millions of US citizens found themselves underwater on their mortgages. That is, they owed more money on the house than it was worth in the open market. According to Doug French: "First American Core Logic estimated that nearly a third of all mortgages (32.3% exactly) were under water in June of 2009. . . . That’s 15.2 million loans, and the negative equity position totaled $3.4 trillion. A Deutsche Bank report predicted that by 2011 nearly half of all mortgaged Americans, or 25 million homeowners, would be “under water.”" You may not have heard of the term “strategic default”, but if you are underwater, it is something you should consider. Strategic default is when homeowners stop paying on their mortgages when, in fact, they can afford to make payments, but choose not to because the house that serves as collateral for the loan is worth considerably less than the loan balance. It is also known as walking away. The beginning of freeing yourself from the indentured servitude of debt begins with letting go of the possessions that you have mortgaged your future to secure. A house may have sentimental value, plans for the future were made in it, a family to raise. But when it comes down to it, if you are underwater on your mortgage, that house is a millstone around your neck, undermining your quality of life. The sooner you realize that, the better. Many States in the USSA are non-recourse when it comes to mortgages. Non-recourse meaning that the lender cannot pursue the borrower’s other assets if the value of the home doesn’t satisfy the note. Even in states where mortgage contracts contain recourse provisions, the cost of litigation versus the limited prospects for recovery keeps many lenders from pursuing judgments. What this means is that if your mortgage is valued at $500,000 and your house is valued at $250 000 on the open market, you can simply mail the keys into the bank and walk away. In fact there are now companies dedicated to helping you does just that – http://www.youwalkaway.com/ is one of them You can also check out sites like http://www.strategicdefault.org/ for advice on the ins and outs of strategic default and bankruptcy if necessary. The government that was supposed to be operating in your interest betrayed you, the banks that are the evil stepchilds of the statist financial system loaned recklessly and have lived off of government bailouts. Large corporations have been walking away from their “investments” since 2008. You should feel no shame in acting in your own best interests. Getting Out of Dodge and Building Yor Assets The city of Las Vegas in 2012 has an official unemployment rate of 12% and numerous cities in California have over 20% unemployment. During the great depression of the 1930s, you saw mass migration of populations in search of work – but at that point, there was only an average of 46% homeownership, so it made for a far more mobile population. Within the United States, after a decades-long plan to incentivize homeownership, the average was 69.2% in 2004 as the housing bubble approached its peak. Coupled with the unrelenting attempts by the Federal Government to keep people in their homes, through the extension to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, welfare payments, and the offering of “loan adjustments”, we have a situation where there are still opportunities in the USSA to make a living, but the government is standing in the way of people making their move. If you are in this situation, you need to face up to reality and go where the opportunity is – don’t wait for the government to make things better – it can and will only make things worse. Bakken Boomtown
Due to the shale oil revolution that has been made possible by the process of fracking, North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the USSA. It leads the nation with the lowest state unemployment rate at 3.4% for November, more than 5 full percentage points below the nation's average 8.7% rate. There are nine North Dakota counties with jobless rates at or below 2% for November, and Williams County, which is at the center of the Bakken oil boom, boasts the lowest county jobless rate in the country at 0.9%. In a normal economy, you would see people streaming into that region in order to pick up the slack and make the oil patch even more productive – instead we see people chained to their underwater homes and slowly losing their ability to be employed due to the years spent out of the workforce. Texas Tea Texas is also having a new renaissance surrounding the oil industry – in the last year over 5000 wells have been drilled. Based on the industry’s plans, shale and other “tight rock” fields that now produce about half a million barrels of oil a day will produce up to three million barrels daily by 2020, according to IHS CERA, an energy research firm. Oil companies are investing an estimated $25 billion this year to drill 5,000 new oil wells in tight rock fields, according to Raoul LeBlanc, a senior director at PFC Energy, a consulting firm. Midland Texas, in the Permian Basin has an unemployment rate of 3.7%. Bring Home the Canadian Bacon
"Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project, no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydroelectric dams." The Canadian Government is bound and determined to actually allow the utilization of the resources in the ground to improve the quality of life of its tax cattle – unlike Obomber who wants them to suffer for the planet. But, due to Canada’s system of interprovincial wealth redistribution, few Canadians are willing to leave their handouts (welfare/unemployment insurance) for high paying jobs in Alberta working in the oil sands – the problem is so great that there are actually propositions to entice 100,000 unemployed Irish to travel to Alberta to fill ranks of the productive. In fact we have just gotten a request for workers in Alberta to work in the oil patch from a good friend who spends his winters in Acapulco at AcaCondos and operates a safety company in the oil sands. He has one basic labor position readily available. His preference is Americans or Mexicans who speak good English. The job pays $20/hour with little living expenses because you live on site. Contact us at [email protected] if you are interested in gainful employment in the Canadian oil sands. The dollars pouring out of the printing presses are ending up in oil wells around the world – it is time to grab your share. Emigration The USA was once a beacon to the world. A place where you could come and have a chance to build a better world for yourself and for your family. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the the United States to do just that, make their place within the free market. There was no nanny state, no social security ponzi scheme, no income tax. Immigrants expected to come to America, work hard, and enjoy the fruits of their own labor. In comparison to the war torn European nations, ruled by monarchs and tyrants, the USA truly was the land of the free. The melting pot was just that, your previous life was shed and you became an “American” and the opportunity to succeed and of course to fail was open to all. There was sound money, high growth in the economy, very low unemployment and a consistent, real, improvement in the quality of life for those who arrived on it’s shores. Capital could be accumulated and put to productive use without the grasping hand of the state forever robbing from you. But something has fundamentally changed in the USSA over the decades. It is now a state driven by envy and fear. The “American Dream” is now a nightmare. Locked into stagflation, the American Empire that was built on the prosperity of the hard work of those immigrants and true capitalists, is now in a terminal decline. The dollar that once was good as gold is a broken tool of the political elites. Those residing within the territorial monopoly of the Federal Government are coming to the realization that their future is no longer bright in the land of the enslaved. “Citizens” of the United States, now must face the fact that greener pastures lie elsewhere. They may have to do what their ancestors did – pick themselves up and emigrate. Build a better life for their families in another country. This isn’t something that only the wealthy can do. Ordinary Americans, who have skills and work experience can find their abilities in demand around the world in places where there is high growth but a lack of capable bodies to fill the offices and factories. In the coming weeks and months, the Dollar Vigilante will be coming out with research on how ordinary Americans without many or any assets can “Get out of Dodge” and find success and freedom from Serfdom.
Redmond Weissenberger is the Managing Editor of The Dollar Vigilante and TDV Golden Trader. He is also the Founder and director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada. www.mises.ca Subscribe to TDV today to be kept abreast of all facets of surviving and prospering during and after the collapse of the western financial system and the socialist-democratic nation states.
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