Plus Scary New Evidence That We’re Heading Off The Fiscal Cliff
Several months ago we featured Terry Ingram on Off the Grid Radio, the Illinois beekeeper who had all his hives confiscated by the state of Illinois, had years of research destroyed by the state, and endured all this without due process or a search warrant. Well Mr. Ingram has had his hearing and since many of you have asked for an update on his situation, we’ve invited him back for the first segment of Off the Grid Radio today, to share the outcome of his ordeal. Please join Bill Heid and Terry Ingram as they discuss the April 1st hearing on his case, the outcome, and the steps he’s taking to rebuild his hives.
In the second half of our program today, we’re pleased to have Greg McCoach return and offer us a look at the current state of the cultural and financial situations as they exist in the United States. Americans are the proverbial frogs sitting in the pot of water on the stove, slowly being burned. Our financial and cultural chickens are coming home to roost and they’re demanding a heavy price.
Off The Grid Radio
Released: August 24, 2012
Bill: Greetings and welcome, everybody. It’s Bill Heid with another episode of Off the Grid News. Our first guest today—Terry Ingram from Apple River—Terry is a beekeeper. Terry, we talked to you a while back about your bees and you were having some trouble with the Illinois Department of Agriculture and why don’t you fill us in a little bit on what’s happened since the last time we spoke?
Terry: Well, as far as the Department of Ag goes, I have not heard anything. We had the hearing on the first of April and they’d taken my bees before the hearing. At the hearing I was able to prove to the hearing officer that the inspector—neither the inspector nor her boss—needed to know anything about bees to be hired as an inspector. And she demonstrated her lack of knowledge about bees at the hearing tremendously.
Bill: What did she say at the hearing that led you to believe that she didn’t really know anything about bees?
Terry: Well she said that in October the bees were sick and lethargic as if that was due to foul brood. Well foul brood of honeybees is the young bees die before they hatch but it does not affect the adults. And she was looking at the bees on the 23rd of October and saying, “They’re sick and lethargic” and actually, the bees have shut down for the winter and then have to conserve their energy so they can live until next April.
Bill: Yeah, they’re all clustered up inside. They’ve kicked a few of the drones out by then and they’re just kind of hanging out.
Terry: Yep—sitting around spending as little energy as possible.
Terry: Until she comes in and disturbs them. But that’s one of the things… I asked her when she could inspect for foul brood and she testified that you could inspect for foul brood anytime of the year.
Bill: Okay—even in January or something when it’s…?
Terry: That’s what… She was out there twice in January and I wasn’t here.
Bill: And her boss, the chief inspector—Steve Chard—does he know…? This is from the Department of Agriculture. Does he know anything about bees?
Terry: Well he knows a little bit but not enough to know what he was doing. He’s taken a course on beekeeping or something like that.
Bill: Maybe online—an online course. That would be…
Terry: I don’t know.
Bill: But did you notice his…? You probably weren’t watching his body language as this gal that came out to… as Susan came out to work on yours. Was he cringing at all listening to her demonstrate her lack of proficiency or couldn’t you tell?
Terry: I didn’t pay too much attention to him because I was trying to question her.
Terry: And get the answers out of her and she… And they presented pictures of the bees. They took pictures when it was three degrees and six inches of snow and she was trying to demonstrate to the court that my healthy hive has bees out at the entrance where the other bees didn’t.
Terry: And I had to laugh. I said, “God, you don’t understand bees. There was no bee in his right mind at three degrees is going to be away from the cluster. He’s going to be up in the cluster keeping warm.” I said, “Those bees were dead down there. Two months later they’re still there.” She can’t tell a dead bee from a live bee.
Bill: How did that go over in court?
Terry: Not too well.
Bill: Yeah. How about the hearing officer? Was he…?
Terry: I thought she was sympathetic to what my position but she decided that they had sufficient proof that foul brood had been detected and they didn’t understand that foul brood… It’s like a person having shingles. When do you have shingles? Well you may have the symptoms or the virus maybe in your system all your life but until it breaks out you don’t have shingles.
Terry: I’ve never had shingles but I’m probably carrying the virus for it or the bacteria or whatever. And that’s like if they disturb the comb and send it to a lab, the lab may be able to detect foul brood spores and that’s all they look for—with a microscope. And if they detect foul brood spores—“Oh, you’ve got foul brood.” No, you don’t have foul brood. The bees have it covered up. They have it covered with propolis or honey or beeswax and it’s not affecting the bees so the bees are healthy.
Bill: So every beehive almost could have the potential for foul brood at any time.
Terry: Every single commercial hive has the potential. Every single hive has the potential because the foul brood’s all around. But whether it comes down with it is another story. Many bees are resistant to it. They clean it up. When they find a dead bee they’ll clean it out and throw it away and there’s no problem with them. But to have a colony and say that all my colonies had foul brood, that’s hogwash. I’ve had people give me equipment. I’ve had people… I’ve purchased equipment but I’ve had many people just give me equipment when they get out of beekeeping. Because I helped them get started they turned around and gave me the equipment that they had. So I’ve got the potential for having foul brood spores on my equipment but that’s one thing I watch for all the time—my bees—to make sure they do not have it.
I had to bring out different equipment that they hadn’t taken. They just took my good stuff—my best outer covers, inner covers, hive bodies and so forth—that I had cleaned up and ready for new packages and splits this spring but they just took that and so I had to bring out my second… my B equipment instead of my A and my second line equipment. I’ll put the packages in the spring. And right now I’ve got 14 hives and some of them have produced 300 pounds of honey. Some of them have… One of them has produced that’s going to be over 400 Ross Rounds. Bees do not produce that kind of honey if they’re sick.
Bill: Sure. Sure. So has the inspector been up to see you lately?
Terry: No. I’ve told them that I will consider it a criminal offense if they come to my property anymore.
Bill: So earlier in the year you were actually ordered by—this was before we had talked to you—you were getting ready to go down to Springfield and so you were actually ordered to pay $500 for violating, I think it’s Section 2 of the Illinois Bee and Apiary’s Act by not abating the nuisance, as it were.
Terry: Right. Right.
Bill: So how did they prove that you…? I mean given what you just told me…
Terry: They didn’t.
Bill: How could they possibly prove that you didn’t abate because…?
Terry: They didn’t. There was no proof. This is what… When the hearing officer rendered her decision I sent a petition for reconsideration back to her and I demonstrated and pointed out that they did not prove anything. They did not prove I had not abated. All they had were a couple pictures of a couple frames and a hive. Didn’t say it was… Couldn’t prove it was my hive that the frames came out of. It was just… and which hive it was. There was just this inspector’s word and she could tell the hives because she could see the numbers through the white paint where I’d repainted everything without knowing she’d been there.
Bill: Well do they…? Did she tag hives in any certain…?
Bill: Is there any kind of protocol for this… for the Department of Agriculture?
Terry: No. None. None.
Bill: You would think that you would… I mean if you were going to do it properly, you’d want to say, “Okay…” You come up and do the inspection and you want to tag a hive and you’d say, “Okay, Hive 1 is…”—you’d assign it a number and then you’d say, “We’ll be back to see if you had abated Hive 1 and Hive 2 and Hive 3”—whatever—on and on and however many the inspector had decided. But they didn’t even really… They…
Terry: They had pictures to show frames were still in there. They had no proof that they were the same frames that she had inspected. No proof whatsoever.
Bill: So at the hearing then—the hearing officer—do you feel like the hearing officer was intimidated by them or just overwhelmed or maybe didn’t understand the nature of evidence in this case?
Terry: I don’t think she understood the nature of evidence and plus the lies. The constant lies. This woman… Well she knew the hives. She knew the numbers. Hogwash. She didn’t know the numbers. You couldn’t see the numbers through the paint. She knew where they were located. No she didn’t because I had moved hives. I had taken some hives in and replaced them with other hives. So she couldn’t… There’s no way that she could say that she knew the numbers or knew where the hives were because they weren’t even the same hives she had looked at.
Bill: Yeah, and it would be also an interesting precedent for the hearing officer to set if she had indeed sided with you because then that would have… It would change dramatically how the agency operates with respect to bees at least.
Terry: Right. But I… It’s been three months now and I have not heard one peep about my reconsideration petition.
Bill: Do you get something in the mail that says you owe $500?
Bill: Well how do you know…?
Terry: Other than her statement that she agreed that they had the evidence to show that I had the disease.
Bill: But there’s no formal documentation?
Terry: No. Just her letter saying that because of that she felt that I was in violation. And then I submitted a petition for reconsideration to her and pointed out the things and… We’ve got a real problem here is the fact that they never took a transcript. They only have a recording and the attorney that volunteered his time to take on my case, he has tried to listen to the recording and he said you couldn’t hear anything except the hearing officer. Everybody else is too faint so you can’t hear the questions. You can hear the question from… maybe from the hearing officer but you don’t hear the answers from anybody else.
Bill: So there’s no transcript? I mean it’s not really a hearing then, is it? I mean if I…
Terry: Supposed to be.
Bill: Any time that I’m in court there’s always a stenographer or somebody doing court transcription.
Terry: I know. I know. Every time I’ve been… This is the first time I’ve run into this.
Bill: So it’s been a few months and you’re… You haven’t heard hide nor hair of them and that’s probably good from where you stand, eh?
Terry: I don’t know but I’m just thinking that any day now they’ll come in and take what equipment I’ve got here now. They had been informed before that if they came—any one of their department came into my property—I’d consider it a criminal trespass. They still came on and took the equipment.
Bill: So are you going to call if they come again—if they come again will you call—who are you going to call? The Sheriff’s department? I mean are you going to call Joe Davis County Sheriff?
Terry: I’m just going to see what they’ll do but I… My attorney… We’re going to go back at them. We’re kind of waiting to see what happens… what the hearing officer says of my petition for reconsideration. But I… I may not get a response back from it. You know? They could try to let it die on the vine. I don’t know.
Bill: You know what you might do, Terry—they have these trail cams that hunters use—you might want to set a couple of those up around the hives and then they would maybe take pictures if sometimes you’re away from home or something. If somebody was going to mess with you, you could get some pictures of whoever it was—just a thought—I don’t know.
Terry: Yeah. I know. I’ve got these different suggestions and it all cost money. You know?
Bill: Yeah, sure.
Terry: And I don’t know if it’s worth it and I’m not sure whether I’ll even keep bees another year because it’s getting to be quite a job for me to try to handle the hives then the heat—I don’t take the heat very well.
Terry: And then get inside the bee suit. I can work about one hive or two hives and I’ve had it for the day.
Bill: Yeah. Well you’ve been doing it a number of years so it’s not as if…
Bill: It’s not as if it was just your first year so you’ve had a lot of years and it’s harder… As you had said before in our first interview, it’s—the whole bee industry—it’s harder and harder. Not only do you have inspectors but you also have these other issues of spraying and so forth and it just makes it hard for a guy to produce honey.
Terry: Well, I was doing great. My hives were bringing in six to seven pounds a day for six weeks—six to seven weeks—and then on the 21st of July the crazy farmer comes in and sprays his soybeans. He said, “Well I used insecticide.” But then he mixed a fungicide into it just in case—just in case. Well it was a lethal combination. It was in the fuel oil—was the source or carrier. My wife… Inside the house we could smell it—the fuel oil from that spray—quarter mile away. So it was covering a great area. It killed our birds. It killed… We had three pairs of nesting wrens—gone. They had been waking us up for weeks with the roosters and they were gone. The chimney swifts that we had here all summer were gone.
Bill: That is very sad.
Terry: It killed all of our red wings. It killed all the insect eating birds that were in here. One advantage was that we could sit out on the deck for a whole week and never have a flying insect bother us.
Bill: Yeah. Well it’s like dumping napalm on you.
Terry: I used to… You know same difference. I used to sit out there and watch the birds in the evening—listen to them and everything. It’s quiet. It is quiet. And it killed most of my [inaudible 0:15:19.0]. My honey flow just stopped right now and it’s just… The bees are getting the populations back to where they can start to do something again. But it took three… four weeks now for the bees to get back on their feet.
Bill: Yeah, but it takes a little bit longer than that for your birds to get back.
Terry: There are only birds because… I mean they’re dead. The only birds come back are birds that… If the population is great enough the birds could move in from someplace else.
Bill: So Terry, I don’t want to stray too far but what’s the answer for this kind of thing? I mean you know I think we live in a free country and a guy to be able to work his acreage the way he wants to work his acreage as long as he doesn’t send a lot of stuff downstream… But what’s the answer? How do we get people to stop this death from above thing?
Terry: Yep. I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s… Every time you turn around they’re talking about “Well you’ve got to have no-till farming. You’ve got to have no-till farming.” In order to have no-till farming you’re going to have sprays and if you have sprays you’re going to have insects getting resistant to the sprays, you’re going to have weeds getting resistant to these sprays and those things multiply a lot faster than anything else. And I was hoping that maybe our honeybees might be getting somewhat resistant to it. You know? Some of them, hopefully, but that’s… Those were the queens I had that they took—my best hive—last year. They said, “Oh, she was contaminated.” Had to destroy… Why…? It was one that had survived for three summers. If it was sick with foul brood it would not survive three summers and three winters and still be one of my strongest hives. It just makes me mad.
Terry: But these people don’t know… Hey, I gave at the hearing—I gave her a frame of brood—a brood frame that bees had raised young ones in before. I said, “I’m a beekeeper up here. I want to know if this frame has foul brood.” Well she looked at it and said, “Well I don’t know. I have to send the sample in to find out.” I said, “No. I’m a beekeeper out here. I can’t wait for a lab to tell me. I’ve got to be able to identify this disease out here in my apiary. Now you tell me what you’ve got to look for at least. Tell the hearing officer and people here what you look for as to whether or not that frame has foul brood.” She couldn’t tell them. Didn’t know the symptoms of it. And yet she says that I’ve got foul brood so bad that they had to destroy my equipment and she didn’t even know what the symptoms were. She couldn’t… She testified that you could check for foul brood any time of the year. Foul brood is a disease of the young bees. Don’t you look for a disease of young when the young are there? You don’t look into the aged population to find out if you’ve got a disease of the young. It just…
Bill: It’s pretty frustrating, isn’t it?
Terry: Oh, it was. Still is.
Bill: But I think, Terry, what’s always very interesting to me is you have a case in microcosm of sort of a reckless bureaucracy and it’s not just in the bee industry. It’s not just with respect to the biology of what you’re doing. There is a lot of different areas that you’ve got folks that just really don’t know what’s going on and then… But they have the authority to whack you.
Terry: That’s right. That’s right.
Bill: So that’s, to me, that’s where I see the tyranny and the danger here. It’s you’re…
Terry: They were after me from the word “go” because she came in on a Sunday afternoon. Now the state law says “normal business hours.” Is a Sunday afternoon normal business hours for you?
Terry: For any person working? You know?
Bill: Let alone a government bureaucrat.
Terry: That’s right. So… And they came in after my bees had shut down for the winter. Oh shoot.
Bill: Well the next state, I guess, is you just kind of sitting back and going through the rest of the season with your bees and then kind of waiting to see what happens next, right?
Terry: Well, right. This is the first year in 16 years we’ve extracted honey. I decided—made a decision a couple… a month or so ago—I’m going to extract this year. In past years the bees have produced honey but I had to put it back on them in order to try to have enough honey to get through the winter. Well, I figured if the government’s going to come in and take my equipment anyway I might as well extract the honey and get some money out of it. So this year I’m extracting honey. I’m getting up to 300 pounds per hive.
Bill: That’s pretty good.
Terry: Out of my sick equipment—contaminated equipment.
Bill: Out of your sick bees.
Bill: Well I would say you’ve got a pretty good sick bunch of hives there, Terry.
Terry: Well, if you take care of bees right they’ll always do that.
Terry: And you can take care of them right without chemicals and she… She just… She stated at the hearing—“You cannot keep bees without using chemicals.” Shoot.
Bill: Yeah and how long had you been doing that?
Terry: 58 years.
Bill: And how old is Susan?
Terry: Oh, I don’t know—32 or so. I don’t know.
Bill: Yeah. So 20 years before she was born you were working with bees without chemicals and she comes along and has a disagreement with you.
Terry: She destroyed more comb in her visits because she cut up to six by eight inch pieces out of the comb—the center of the comb—and of these frames. And frames are only eight and a half by sixteen. So you take a six by eight piece out of the center, you’ve got a big chunk out of the comb. And she takes it right out of the center. It ruins the comb. So she ruined more combs than I’ve had ruined with wax moth and mice or any other problems in the last 50 years.
Bill: Well Terry, as we…
Terry: But she’s doing her job.
Bill: And she’s doing her job. We’re starting to run out of time here but we’d love to come back again and just check in. Maybe we’ll have somebody check in and see if you’ve heard from anybody. But we really do wish you the best. Like I said, we appreciate what you’re doing up there and you’ve always had great bees and I’ve been a customer in the past. So I appreciate you and just hang in there, man. We’ll check in on you soon.
Terry: Okay. Thank you, Bill.
Bill: All right. Thanks again. We’ll be right back.
Bill: We are back with Greg McCoach of The Mining Speculator. Greg, welcome.
Greg: Hi. Glad to be here, Bill.
Bill: Hey, I wanted to chat with you a little bit about the August issue of The Mining Speculator. As you know, I am a subscriber, and of course we’re still… “Gold stocks are still the place to be” is the title. We’ve taken kind of a hit. I know I’ve taken a little bit of a hit on some stuff but I also know that you can’t spend more money than you have—as I look at what the federal government’s doing, state government, municipalities and so forth. So I’m with you on it. It’s just there’s a psychology associated with it, I think, that probably a lot of us have. I mean as the writer or the author of a lot of the materials you probably go through some sort of psychological hills and valleys as well.
Greg: Oh, for sure. No, this is… The newsletter business in junior mining shares is one minute you’re sucking gutter water—the next minute you’re flying high. It’s just the nature of this market. And the precious metals, the physical bullion side isn’t as volatile as the stocks but it’s been a rough ride the last couple years with the stocks. And there certainly is a very, very strong case at this point—I don’t think many people who follow this stuff don’t agree at this point that gold and silver have been manipulated again. So that used to be conspiracy theory. I think that’s a matter of fact now. It’s so blatantly obvious, some of the things that have gone on in the CDNX. And then you see the rest of the corruption that’s going around the world with the theft of segregated customer accounts and things like this and you just understand that that’s just part of business these days.
Bill: It’s part of business these days and when MSNBC starts talking about manipulation you know you’re home, right? I mean… But now what? How do we…? It’s really… Greg, it’s almost enough to drive you crazy because it’s like they’re flaunting it in your face. Everyone knows it and they’re saying, “Yeah, so what are you going to do about it?”—kind of—I mean they’re not that… But doesn’t it kind of seem to you like they’re just…? They don’t care.
Greg: No. I mean it’s shocking. The development of the last eight months… We’ve been… Bill, you and I have been following this trend. We’ve seen this coming. If anything, we’ve gotten the overall, big picture right but we’ve gotten the timing off a little bit. We maybe were a little early in talking about some of these things. But here are gold prices for eleven years in a row now, making a new high each and every year for eleven years in a row. That tells you something’s wrong in this system, right? Even though the powers that be have been able to do all kinds of shenanigans with fiat currencies, trying to stem the tide here, stem the tide there—they’ve been able to pull off miracles, really. When you look at some of the financial crises that have already occurred that could have taken the financial system down it’s a miracle they’ve been able to get to this point.
But now it looks like we’re at that end of the road, getting ready to go off the cliff and it’s… We’re seeing it from so many different standpoints. We’re seeing legislation being passed that looks like… with these Obama executive orders that are just shocking. And I talk with people who don’t even know that these things have occurred, in particular the NDAA bill that basically says the US government can take you, stick you in jail, do whatever the heck they want with you for no reason. You don’t have to commit any crime. All they have to do is basically not like you and they can take you and make you disappear. How can that be in America? How can the media not cover that? Why? It is shocking.
Bill: It is shocking how the media can not cover that. Well, there are some places… I know you cover that in your newsletter. We try to cover that. But what’s the answer in terms of for the average person? I think…
Greg: Well here’s… Go ahead.
Bill: No. No, go ahead.
Greg: I just… I’ve always… I operate my life under the basis of I hope for the best of things—I prepare for the worst. That’s been a good strategy for me over the years. I think it’s the only way to really live life, especially in conditions like this. I really hope that things work out somehow but I can’t bury my head in the sand with all the evidence that’s there. How much more do people need to have before they get it, right? It’s… To me, there is so much evidence there that tells you this is what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to hunker down. You’ve got to protect yourself monetarily because it looks like the politicians and the banksters are going to steal from the American public, from the European public—from citizens of their own countries, right?
This latest seventh circuit appeals court—was it last week, a week and a half ago? Basically states that… Let me just figure here. Okay, the seventh circuit court of appeals just published last Friday. Okay, what that decision said—unbelievably—is that all property rights in the United States are gone—up in smoke. The court ruled that if you have money with one of these banks or like an MF Global and they’re the custodians of your funds but if it’s in a segregated account of your funds… Let’s see here. I’m just trying to… The court… “The seventh circuit court of appeals just ruled that using customer segregated funds as collateral on your own loans to fund your propped up trading is completely legal and doesn’t constitute fraud.” In other words, their derivative trading debts—let’s say JP Morgan blows up… they’re financially ruined—customers’ accounts at JP Morgan, even though it’s segregated cash, is their money. That’s what the seventh circuit court of appeals just ruled on. It’s shocking. How can this be happening, right? If someone would have told me this could happen in the United States just a year ago, I’d have said, “Oh, that’s crazy. That’ll never happen.”
Bill: Well it did just happen though with Corzine and MF Global when they took everybody’s money and then they said, “Well…” Did he even apologize? He said, “Well, you know these things happen in finance” and it just kind of… Did it all go away? I mean I know a lot of people, even Gerald Celente who was on this show, was telling us about he lost $100,000 because the money… his account wasn’t segregated or something and it just evaporated.
Greg: Yeah. No, it’s… And what it looks like now—and I remember I talked about this issue a couple years ago—that our retirement monies aren’t going to be saved. And people thought I was crazy. Well here you go. This is it. This is the basis for all this. This is the beginning of the theft of everything, right? They can take whatever they want. If their financial institution—the mega banks—get in trouble and you have funds with them, I don’t care if they’re in stocks, 401K, IRA, deposit accounts, they’re going to be able to take your money and legally take your money. So what else can you do? You get your money out or it’s going to be stolen from you. It’s a Ponzi scheme.
Bill: Do you think, Greg, community banks are a little safer? I know community banks, at the end of the day, are… Their money has to go someplace at night, right?
Greg: Yeah. No, obviously. Yeah, smaller banks… People that don’t have derivative liability is what you’re really looking for. I don’t know how you look at things anymore because after the 2008 meltdown they legally changed it so that the banks don’t have to report their real derivative liability. So the public doesn’t have any way of knowing. You’re in the dark. Now we do know most of the derivative liability is with the big banks—the Bank of America, JP Morgan, Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank—all the known suspects that are basically part of the Federal Reserve. They’re the largest fractional stockholders of the Federal Reserve. So this is where it becomes very problematic.
We know that the total derivative liability, when it was last counted, was $228 trillion for the nine largest banks in the United States. Most of that’s even within the top five that we just mentioned. We have a current account deficit in the United States of $17 trillion and we have another $112 trillion of unfunded liabilities in the United States. So these numbers are all so absurd and then you have all the issues related to Europe, right? You have $70 trillion worth of sovereign debt associated with these various countries but what makes it even a bigger problem is that that $70 trillion is associated and connected to $700 trillion—with a T—of unfunded derivative liability. I mean it’s just…
Bill: That’s Europe’s exposure?
Greg: That’s Europe’s exposure—yeah. $700 trillion associated with the $70 trillion. In other words they attach derivatives to different financial products and these were loans to these various countries in Europe. So that $70 trillion is connected to this $700 trillion in derivatives and the fact that the people can’t pay the $70 trillion causes all these problems for the derivatives. So it’s just… It’s like one thing leads to another and it appears, from what we’re seeing in the news—you know you start to see statements from Jacob Rothschild saying he’s betting against the euro now, big-time. You’ve got Soros saying… Who knows what Soros says in the media? A lot of people say do the opposite of Soros but here he is clearly selling all his bank stocks.
Bill: Buying gold.
Greg: Buying gold—yeah. You know is this all a ruse? No. It looks like there’s something… Something’s coming up, either late this year or early next year, related to this derivative liability. There was a very prominent… Gosh, I wish I knew the guy’s name. I remember talking about it when it happened. He worked the JP Morgan-Goldman Sachs derivative trading desk. He was one of the guys that sold this toxic garbage to various countries. After that he managed a big fund in London and now he’s retired, living on the coast of Spain somewhere. But he wrote… He’s writing a newsletter and he just… He’s predicting that the endgame for this derivative situation is either late this year or early next year. And he said this back in like April or May. No one really paid attention to it. Now all of a sudden you see all this legislative… executive orders—looks like the government’s trying to buy all this ammo. For what? Why are they buying all…? Massive amounts of ammo and shipping it to 41 different locations in the United States along with riot gear and moving personnel armored troop carriers around the country—what’s going on?
Bill: What is going on? Especially, Greg, you know I think that… I don’t know how many people caught this but when they were questioned people started saying, “Well why are you buying all that ammo?” everyone said it was standard issue and for practice but people don’t buy… Well, maybe the government does but you don’t use hollow points for practice rounds. And I think they got caught in another surprise under Obama administration faux pas, right? They… Who uses hollow points…? I think the Geneva Convention has even made hollow points illegal on the battlefield. But you don’t buy hollow points to practice with. You buy hollow points to shoot people with and you…
Greg: Right. Right, that’s not target practice. That’s not ammo for target practice so…
Bill: Yeah, they can get away with telling people in New York City that because nobody knows what hollow points are and it all sounds like bad stuff. Anybody that carries a gun is bad and so forth. But anybody that has been around guns knows you don’t buy hollow points unless you want to kill people.
Greg: Right. No, that does… The hollow point ammo does the most… inflicts the most damage on organs and tissues.
Bill: Yeah, there’s a little hole where it goes in and there’s a much, much bigger hole where it goes out.
Greg: That’s right.
Bill: And the quantities they’re buying, Greg—what…? Homeland Security—700 million rounds of hollow points?
Greg: Well, first it was 450 million rounds announced like two months ago and then 750 million rounds announced just a couple weeks ago. So that’s a lot of ammo. And I have a gunsmith friend that I know who is a subscriber. He recently called me and he said, “Greg, if you need to get any ammo you better do it between now and the end of the year because the government’s needs…” What we’re being told is the government’s needs are going to be taking over, in other words. All the producers—the ammo producers—are going to go after these lucrative government contracts and there’s not going to be enough ammo being produced for the public. So I mean this comes from a guy that… His assistant is part time—that works with him—he works for one of the big county SWAT teams and he is a captain and orders the ammo for that particular county here in Colorado. And he told me… He said, “Greg, this is what we’re being told.” Get all the ammo we need now because the government is going to be dominating that industry.
Bill: So certainly for our listeners—anybody that wants to have a little ammo laying around the house for self-defense, I think now is another… It’s a good time, before you go into another election… Especially, as you said—with this year… coming into this year there is going to be a little bit of confusion and uncertainty and it never hurts to have a little bit of ammo around for self defense, for your own purposes. So it might be a good time to check into—if you haven’t done that before—check into buying a little bit of ammo again.
Greg: Yeah. Some of these conversations—to some people—are going to sound absolutely crazy but you have to begin to understand all these executive orders, which haven’t been fully reported in the media and then you have to understand what’s happening politically, economically—what these debts mean. In the newsletter I gave those links this month to show people—graphically—what 17 trillion means as a current account deficit, what 112 trillion looks like. They start out with a brand new $100 bill and then they show you stacks of $100 bills and then they show you pallets of $100 bills.
Bill: That’s in your list? Tell people where that comes from—the graphics that you make reference to in the new newsletter.
Greg: Yeah. Those links are at Demonocracy.info and…
Bill: Those are great.
Greg: I mean when you look at these… When you see this, I don’t know how anybody could walk away from that graphic after understanding it and looking at it. And they have one… They do one for each one of… the current account deficit, the unfunded liabilities of the US government and the derivatives. And it’s just so astounding. There is no possible way this can be paid back. So what does this mean? Where does it all…? How does this end? Well, it looks like the endgame is coming. But you know people don’t want to hear this. I don’t really want to hear it. I want to be able to go with my family and go have a nice meal and live life in America like I have. I don’t want to have this change. But it’s not my choice. Other people have made horrible decisions that are going to affect all of us and it’s been coming for a long time but to me, it looks like we’re finally going to see the consequences of all this abuse—of all this absolute insanity. So you hope for the best—yeah, that’s a great way to live life but at this point we’re on a wing and a prayer, hoping that somehow we’re going to muddle through this and not have any consequences.
Bill: Well and I’ve given up, Greg, the idea of sort of trying to mute my conversations because the people that don’t pay any attention to it don’t pay any attention… I mean if it sounds crazy saying you ought to have a little ammunition around—anybody that conversation sounds nuts to isn’t going to take action on it. They’re just going to write me off as a kook, which is fine and… But I mean our listeners especially, have some ammunition on… Greg, you know we poo-poo Greece but I’m looking at debts as a percentage of GDP. We actually, as a percentage of GDP, owe more than Greece. We’re over 250% of GDP. You know this… As you said, that doesn’t include all this derivative debt if things start to unravel. So my goodness…
Greg: Well, and really over in Europe, when you look at Europe Greece was just the first one to have problems. The real bugaboo over there is going to be France. No one is even talking about it yet but that’s… Their banks in particular are so screwed up with this stuff and they’ve just been talking about the lesser countries and trying to politically play hot potato saying, “Oh, we’ve got the problem fixed.” Well you know don’t listen to any of that garbage. It’s just all nonsense. There is no fix to this. The numbers are too gigantic. All it is is just playing political hot potato. Merkel is the one that’s leading the charge and the head of the euro—that individual… These statements they make are just trying to keep the public at bay from understanding what is really happening.
And it appears—again, as a public it’s very difficult to really get to the bottom line on this stuff or the timing of it—but from everything that we’re seeing it looks like something big is happening with this derivative stuff that’s causing major problems for the banks. And the last time around, in 2008, they stole money from the US taxpayer. They said they had to do it—blah, blah, blah. The Federal Reserve created $15-16-17 trillion out of thin air that we didn’t even hear about at that time. We found out about it years later. But when you look at how much money they needed to sidestep the problem and kick it down the can for another few years it’s… That was absurd. Now it looks like the whole kit and caboodle is going to go sky high, which is going to make 2008 look like a picnic. This is where the big problems are going to hit and where there is no possible way to create that kind of money out of thin air to kick the can down the road anymore.
Bill: Greg, we’re talking about a major catastrophe. If you look at Ireland, they’re at 500% of their GDP. Japan—no one’s talking about Japan. Japan’s almost as bad as Ireland. Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands—and as you said, France—these countries will never pay this back and so they have to kind of play hot potato for a while. What’s interested me is that the markets… Every time a politician releases a statement the markets seem to react and even if someone says, “Well, it’s going to be bad but not as bad as it could be,” the stock market in Europe goes up based on any… It’s like we’ve all…
You know this old thing about hot water and the frog and all that? It just keeps getting hotter. We adjust our psyches to the hot water and it makes it difficult for us to make decisions because there’s all this adjustment over time because you don’t get a sudden collapse, as you’ve said earlier. We begin to talk about these things. We… Folks like you and I and others are throwing—Ron Paul—throwing these red flags out, crying “Foul!” for years and it’s never really happened but it’s been a slow burn and it’s hard for folks to really get a grip on this because you just keep getting closer and closer and closer to the edge but it doesn’t seem like you’re at the edge.
Greg: Right. Yeah. What it looks like… I mean the… There are multiple issues here, right? We have a government—it doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat because it’s the same thing—they’re all just puppets. The two-party system of Republican and Democrats is just a puppet system for the elitist bankers. And you see that and particularly in the George Bush and Barack Obama administrations. There is a Republican and a Democrat and it’s basically all the same thing. Protect the banks at all cost. Well, these elitist bankers—they’re the ones causing the problems. And so it’s… You’ve got these unregulated derivatives that—how did these ever get created to begin with?
This was something… a product that got started back in the ‘80s and it was to be used by like big insurance companies to manage high risk that they have to manage. But then this got all distorted and everyone started using these and selling them like they were financial products—creditworthy financial products—and it buried so many people. There are states within the United States, like the state of New Jersey, where they would invest the employees’ state pension monies in these things and of course they got burned and now they’re bankrupt and they can’t pay their bills. This is a… Multiple states are in that situation. So we’ve got this derivative thing. It’s like this gigantic pink elephant in the room and no one wants to admit that there is a pink elephant in the room. Everybody has to quietly walk around so you can pretend like it’s not there.
Then you’ve got this situation with our current account deficit where no one wants to buy our T-bills anymore. In the United States we’ve been able to get away with so much crazy nonsense for decades, living beyond our means because foreigners were always willing to buy our T-bills. Why? Because we still had the biggest economy, we still have the strongest military—blah, blah, blah. But in the end, right now we have no one that wants to buy our T-bills. The fed is the buyer of last resort for T-bills. That’s a total Ponzi scheme. So we’re coming to the end of the ability of governments—not just in the United States but around the world—to borrow money, in particular Europe, the United States, Japan—like you mentioned. And we’re going to stop misallocating capital to government spending. This is what we’ve been doing that’s wrong. Governments are never credible for spending money wisely. Look at any example you want of where government takes over from a private industry and what do they do with it? They run it into the ground. Look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Look at Amtrak.
Greg: Solyndra. Look at any… Look at the post office, for crying out loud. They have basically an unlimited checkbook and they still can’t get it right. It’s just shocking. Social Security—totally mismanaged. Totally mismanaged. And guys, I’m 55. I don’t ever expect to get a dime from Social Security. I have to figure this out on my own. It’s just crazy. We’re going to start… Once this crisis happens, unfortunately it does look like there’s going to be civil unrest. And this is why you and I have talked about preparedness issues. But we’ll get through this and hopefully better heads can prevail to lead us and guide us through this—somebody that’s not oriented to the banks. We need somebody who is oriented towards restoring America—not some political nonsense that is just puppets doing the bidding of the elitist banksters, right?
Bill: Well we need an honest man. I think Luther, when Luther went—his priest sent him to Rome when he was a young man and he went there and he came back and he said, “I found everything in Rome except an honest man.” That’s been said about Rome from Augustine’s time onward but you could almost start to make the case for Washington DC, right?
Bill: There are no honest men.
Greg: There haven’t been any honest people there in a long time and the only two Presidents that actually… You can’t even say they’re honest but you could say they did try to do some of the right things—not all of the right things—but just… a Democrat named John F. Kennedy and a Republican named Ronald Reagan. In my lifetime those two Presidents actually tried to do something to help the American people and they both got a bullet. One of them was assassinated from the bullet and the other one was injured but recovered. Once he recovered he capitulated. He gave up. He just said, “Okay, I’ll go along with…”
Bill: You know Greg, that’s funny you said that. John Kennedy could… He could not make the ticket on the Democratic Party because he was way too conservative. I’ll bet he couldn’t even make the ticket on the Republican side. If he were to run as a candidate today as a Republican I’ll bet he’s too conservative. He would have been too conservative—financially at least—to even run as a Republican.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s… I mean when you look at politically… Politicians are not trustworthy people. Why is it that we, in America here, have put so much trust in these people? Most politicians, they’re just power seekers. You have to know the lessons of Rome that you just spoke about to understand what power seekers do. They’re bold-faced liars. They are very… They’re the best liars in the world. And you look at what we’ve seen just in the last eight years in the White House and it’s just shocking. Because the guy’s got a good smile I’m going to vote for him? Because he can read a teleprompter well?
Bill: He’s a handsome man and he’s…
Greg: One day one lady said to me… She goes “Oh, Greg, I like George Bush. He’s a nice man. He has a nice smile.” I’m like “Oh my gosh.” How do you respond to that?
Bill: Well it’s changed… Do you think George Washington could get elected with wooden teeth in today’s world? He couldn’t get on TV today. There’s another guy that couldn’t make either party because he doesn’t have… He didn’t have the sort of facial qualities necessary to be on the ticket. But the founder—ostensible founder of our country—can’t make the grade because he doesn’t have the right catch phrases probably, the right looks and really that’s just telling, isn’t it? And it’s just telling about where we’ve come.
Greg: Yeah, our culture, our society is just in utter despair because good doesn’t rise to the top. Evil rises to the top in this system and the media promotes it. Of course the media is owned and controlled by the banksters, right? So it’s just… It’s a shame. We’re going to have to correct this. We’re going to go through, I think, a terrible time as we go through this process of coming to grips with reality. That’s… When people lose their savings and their cash accounts and their pensions and things like this then that’s going to get their attention. Then they’re going to wake up. Then they’re going to be upset. Well at that point it’s too late but how do we get through this process? Preparedness.
Bill: We’ve got to prepare. We’ve got to prepare now, Greg. We’ve got to get our cash now. We’re big advocates of saying look, you’ve got to take care of yourself and your own family because when times do get tough—that you and I are both making allusions towards—you’re going to want to go help other people but you can’t help other people if you’re in a horrible squalor. So what is it that you can do now to get ready so that you can be of help?
You know I was listening to some old Earl Nightingale stuff over the weekend and this has every application towards this preparedness concept, Greg. Earl said in one of his… I actually had it on cassette—when he said, “You know God put you on Earth to serve mankind and you serve God best by serving others well” and so how are we going to serve others well as times do get harder? And I think everybody needs to focus on that. I think that’s really… We look back at the Depression and say, “There was opportunities.” Some people jumped out of buildings. They were the folks that only knew that money was the only thing that mattered. But other folks really kind of figured out—and I think this is where you’re going with this—other folks figured out how to make it.
Greg: Yeah, that’s what you have to do. You have to focus on what you can do. Focus on the positive and to me, that’s preparedness. If I’m prepared, “you shall not fear,” right? “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.” That’s the best I can do. I can get my money into another format other than paper money, which is of course why I’m so involved with precious metals, first as bullion, I think owning the physical gold and silver. And you know when this kind of bankster theft occurs even the banks know possession is nine-tenths of the law. So you want to own physical metal. Take delivery of it as your ultimate bank account, as the ultimate protector of your hard work and your life long savings account. Otherwise it’s going to evaporate. It’s going to go up in smoke. Where to go? Physical metals—obviously if you’re an American citizen gold and silver eagles—but anything physical gold, take delivery of it. Don’t let other people store it for you or you won’t see the benefit of it. Gold and silver prices are going to levels people can’t even comprehend when all this occurs, when all this goes down.
You get the food storage. You do your preparedness stuff. If you want a currency that I think is the best out of all the fiat currency that’s the Canadian dollar. Why? Because their country is based on so much resource—oil and gas—their country is amazingly blessed with unbelievable deposits of oil and gas. Precious metals, base metals. They own almost two-thirds of the entire world’s fresh water supply—resides in one country, Canada. So we know these things are going to be sought after in these troubled times.
My hope is that I think there are groups within the military—they’ve been watching Washington do their thing but at some point I think there’s a portion of the military that just says, “Enough is enough.” And we have to hope that these aren’t tyrant type of people—these are people that are going to try to hold things at bay until the American people get educated and wake up about what’s going on. And where do we go with this? We’re all going to be a part of this and it’s not going to happen overnight so there’s obviously going to be terrible time that we’re going to have to deal with—terrible civil unrest—and it’s not just here in the United States. It’s going to be a worldwide event.
Bill: It is in fact going to be a worldwide event. When it’s going to happen? Neither Greg nor I can tell you. Greg, that’s a good place to end up. I certainly appreciate your time. We know your time is valuable Greg and I appreciate you spending the last half hour with us.
Greg: Always a pleasure, Bill.
Bill: Thank you again. And for our audience, we know your time is valuable as well. Thanks for spending the last hour with us. We’ll talk to you again on the next episode of Off the Grid News.