From another blog ... pretty well sums up where we are right now.

Folks,

So, I ran into an old friend the other day. He is a small businessman in a rural town here in Alabama, and he was buying a couple of cases of 5.56mm in a local gun store. He's never had the time to be an activist like me, given the constraints of his work load, but he is like-minded. I hadn't seen him in probably five years or so. He recognized me first and came over to chat about the present crisis and where I saw things heading.

He said, "I always thought you were an alarmist when you talked about being prepared for a shitstorm, but I was in Sam's Club a few weeks ago and I saw something that scared the bejeezus out of me."

"What was that?" I asked.

"I saw (NAME REDACTED) and he had one of those big flat-bottom carts stacked with big bags of rice, beans, salt, cases of canned meat and tuna, you name it."

"Who's (NAME REDACTED)?" I asked.

"He's my banker."

I laughed, but neither of us really thought it was particularly funny.

So, he told me, he asked the banker what was up, and the guy (who he's known almost all his life) looked sheepish like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Initially evasive, he said he was just "stocking up on a few things." When my friend pointed to the industrial cart and told him he had a funny concept of "a few things," the banker broke down and told him that he believed that the debt crisis was going to put a premium on tangible property. Talking about the value of the dollar, "he said he didn't want to get caught unprepared in a game of musical chairs when the song stopped," my friend related.

"Well," I asked, "what makes him think that he's going to hang onto his chair when the room's full of big hungry desperate guys with sledgehammers? They'll either break him and take his chair, or break the chair out of sheer spite."

"Why do you think I'm here buying ammo?" he replied.

Folks, when button-down, precise folks like the Congressional Budget Office issues carefully-worded but stark warnings like this, and small town bankers are in Sam's Club buying food staples like there's no tomorrow, you'd better be getting ready to deal with the gangs of big hungry desperate guys with sledgehammers.