Especially if the white guy is wearing a fleece hoodie from Old Navy.

Scary, scary stuff, Americans.

There was a time, early in the the writing of this website (the digital pen for which I am now picking up again), that I wasn’t certain about the future of our society, our economy or our republic. Those days are gone. Whether the collapse is a slow motion, crumbling, sliding into decay collapse, or a fast, over almost before you know it collapse, it will happen.

My thoughts these past couple weeks have turned to the most recent in our history collapse of Western Civilization, the fall of the Roman Empire. I know that we think of the Romans and the other human inhabitants of the globe at the time, as barely more than barbarians, dressed in tunics swinging short swords with no access to the internet, no iPhones, iPads or iDevices of any kind. People who burned oil for both light and heat, and never knew the greatness of Lady Gaga couldn’t possibly be intelligent stewards of humanity’s gifts, could they?

That’s all nonsense, of course. Our arrogance about the weaknesses, whether mental or moral, of our forbearers says more about us than it does about them. We’re the stupid ones, who believe things like:

There was a local real estate “expert” who in 2006 insisted on telling my wife that I just didn’t understand the real estate market, and that it was heading much higher. My wife and her family shook their heads in condescension at my arguments that real estate values must correct, because if they don’t, all property would eventually be too expensive to own, and the credit market was a mess, that at some point, the bill would have to be paid for all the “lier’s loans,” credit default swaps and other malarky going on.

In 2008, we employed that same real estate mogul to put up our Christmas tree. That’s one of the things he was doing to make ends meet at that time, and recently, he did some minor handyman work for us. I guess the market wasn’t all he thought it was.

But who could have foreseen all that happened?

A lot of people, actually. Reviled at the time, mocked, abused and dismissed as lunatics. Strangely enough, the same “experts” who said virtually all of what has happened couldn’t possibly happen are still trotted out on the television networks and on the internet as experts to help us all weather this storm.

God save us from numbnut “experts.”

As I reflect on this, and begin a new chapter with “WhatComesNext.net,” I wonder what was being written, considered, cautioned and projected during the collapse of the Roman Empire? Were there George Ures, Michael Panzners, James Howard Kunstlers, and Dmitry Orlovs?

Sure, you can read Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but that was written long after the fall. I’d be interested in what was being written during the fall, and will search for that.

I’ll bring to you what I find.

Thank you for reading, and welcome (back?) to WhatComesNext.net.

Just watched a fascinating episode of the PBS series Nova, chronicling the work researchers did over the decades to understand the hieroglyphics used by the Mayans before their society collapsed. Ultimately that collapse was caused, as experts can best tell, by conflict and the shortage of that essential resource (no, not oil), water.

It’s tremendously exciting to see how dedicated researchers cracked the code of the pictograms, which have turned out to represent both phonetic sounds and collections of words representing ideas and phrases.

Watching the piece, I couldn’t help but wonder if a future civilization will be examining our culture through those words and symbols carved into the stone of monuments. In the case of the Mayans, the books, printed on a bark paper, were burned by the Spanish Inquisition, and entire culture’s printed word reduced to four books. Over time, it’s clear our books, printed on the thin and fragile paper, will break down pretty rapidly. I don’t think I need to tell you how I think the digital copies of our culture’s libraries will fare.

I’m not sure what the ultimate message of this particular episode of Nova is, but it’s worth watching.

Review coming, but considering the prescience and brilliance of Michael Panzer’s previous work, I believe it’s a must-read for anyone wanting to prepare for the economic and societal shifts bearing down on us right now.

The above mentioned book, Financial Armageddon, called with exceptional clarity, the problems we’re enmeshed in right now, even though our “leaders” and economic “experts” laughed such talk off. Well, they’re not laughing now, but sadly, still in their “leader” and “expert” roles, pretending to know the way out of the woods.

Most of these “architects of our demise” will attempt to marginalize the concepts in this newest Panzer work as well, but will be on the front lines telling us what we need to do to fix the problems when they show up.

Once I got back to the “business” of WCN, I saw some things that need to change with the site. You’ll start to see some of those changes gradually over the next month. The big change is of perspective. It occured to me that this site has been mostly about the possible branches on the path that our economy and resulting society could travel. WCN.net is going to start being more about the path we’re on and what you can do to survive, thrive and be successful in our new world. Make no mistake, we are in a world that’s much different than the one we were living in 2 years ago.

We are living through a societal paradigm shift that is changing almost everything about the way we live in the U.S. Part of that paradigm shift is that sites like WCN.net, Kunstler.com, Financial Armageddon, When Giants Fall, WorldNetDaily, Urban Survival and others are “suddenly” seem less directed at the “paranoid fringe” and more for everyone. Those sites mentioned haven’t changed their direction, many people are simply seeing the light. Events have played out in ways the writers and editors of those sites (and many more, by the way) predicted. Those who previously scoffed are now getting it, and in many cases, preaching the gospel of dramatic change.

The tenor of WCN.net won’t change. The changes I’ve been writing about for a couple years now are happening, and instead of engaging in the tempting “I told you so” that would be easy to write, I’m going to transition to writing more about what preparations and activities could help ensure survival and success in these difficult times.

The American People have spoken, and what they said was “we choose the message of change Obama and his $600 Million in marketing has sold us.” Think about that. $600 MILLION dollars were raised and most of it spent to acquire the White House. These foolish, foolish people have elected a man no one knows that much about. It’s at times, very frightening.

But it’s done.

I’m not writing right now, because the future is getting so terribly dangerous for Americans, who are mostly asleep. But an abrupt wakeup is coming. It will probably begin not long after the first of the year, after the worst retail holiday season ever, as in the cold, harsh light of the winter of a new year, companies begin their fiscal years gutted from layoffs. In many, many companies across the country, only essential employees will remain. Layoff news stories that will begin in early January will be shocking, and mind-numbing as they roll over us like a tsunami. Chicago Mayor Richard Daly calls it “frightening.”

“We never experienced anything like this except people who came from the Depression,” Mayor Daley said. “When you have that many layoffs early – and they’re telling me this is only the beginning of their layoffs – that is very frightening.”

I believe some of the darker predictions of Kunstler, Panzer and Orlov will come to pass in 2009. I do not believe there is much we can do to stop it. For ourselves and our families, we can only prepare.

So, in that spirit, I’m spending my What Comes Next? time finishing up my special report What You Can Do to Protect Your Family and Yourself During This “Greater Depression.”

I’m also spending some time thinking about whether, as a family, we stay or we go. I’ve always rolled my eyes at those people who say “if so and so is elected, I’m leaving the country…” but this is different. It’s not so much Obama that I’m worried about (though I’m not at all comfortable with such an unknown quantity with his questionable background leading our nation), but the mentality of the people who elected him, whether its a culture of people who feel it’s time for payback of one type or another for one perceived injustice or another, or a culture of tv-fed, clueless liberal magical thinking sleepers who believe in this vague message of “change,” and may or may not soon wake up to realize they’ve brought about a change much different than the one they intended.

In short, my family may decide that it’s time to expatriate, and return to the land of my wife’s parents and my grandparents in the UK. My name will probably tip you off to exactly where that is. We’re currently evaluating the real estate situation in both Glenfinnan on the mainland and Portree on the Isle of Skye, as we consider where it would be best to continue raising our family. It’s kind of heartbreaking to be seriously researching this, rather than just fancifully discussing it as we have in the past, because we’re both proud and loyal Americans. But, day by day, I can feel the America I knew growing up changing into something very different, both structurally, politically and philosophically. It’s changing into something that increasingly, I feel I don’t understand, someplace that’s not really “home.”

Problem number 2 is Iraq. He claims to know what to do, and it’s entirely possible he will get the chance to prove whether he does, or will just screw things up worse.

Problem number 3 will be impeachment. There is no way a candidate for President of the United States can raise $150 million in a month without his organization making some big mistakes. I predict that in the coming months, should Obama be elected, we will hear about a massive donation from somewhere horrifying. I guarantee that Senator Obama’s opponents have already begun investigating where the almost quarter of a billion dollars in donations in August and September came from.

He shouldn’t have taken the money. First, in doing so he broke an agreement with Senator McCain to take public funds, which would limit his outside fundraising. Secondly, studies show once you get to a certain level of money, incremental dollars don’t help that much, if at all. He didn’t need the money.

The problems associated with massive fundraising in my opinion (which I should tell the reader ISN’T backed up by any first-hand experience with political fundraising – just common sense) just aren’t worth the benefit derived from them. The more money rushing in, the more likely it is that some of it will be difficult and/or embarrassing to explain. I think the possibility exists that a President Obama will spend a great deal of attention during his first term explaining not a spot on a dress, but a million dollar contribution by someone he shouldn’t have taken a dime from.

Again, I believe an Obama Presidency, should it occur, will be an ugly time. And that’s unfortunate, because I don’t fear Barack Obama as a person at all. I think, if he were at the head of a complete overhaul of our political landscape in Washington, DC, we could do far worse in a President. But, it’s not a complete overhaul, and a lot of the same players are in charge in Washington. I don’t fear the results of a President Barack Obama, but I am concerned about what can happen with Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Harry Reid in charge with a rubber stamp-providing President in the White House.

They are incompetent and corrupt and will play Obama like a fiddle.

Answers: 2009, and very bad.

We’ve got lots of data about what happens when economies slide into recession, but fortunately, little experience with what it’s like to enter a depression. My view is, we’re about to collect some data and add to our experience level.

Despite our lack of first-hand experience with depressions, one thing is clear – the beginning of an economic event like this can be like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up energy and mass as it goes. That snowball is bearing down on us right now. Believe it.

Here are some important cues:

• The volatility of the market. Been watching the DOW lately?
• Shipping slowdowns – The less stuff coming into “Consumerland” (the U.S.), the less stuff that will be sold, with all sorts of negative results like layoffs, lower sales tax collections (resulting in state and city budgetary shortfalls, resulting in layoffs, and on and on. Stories here, here and here. In short, the Port of Long Beach is showing a 15.8% decline in inbound containers September to September, and a 10.8% slowing so far in 2008.
• The amazing lack of visible results of the $750 Billion bailout Bernanke and Paulson engineered. The problem sucked all that money up in a hurry, didn’t it? Now, there’s talk of another bill.
• Unprecedented demand for Gold, despite the horrible performance of the paper version of the metal, as well as the mining stocks. Try to buy gold coins or bullion. You can’t. Yet the price of the metal is languishing

So, it’s more important than ever to protect yourself and your family. I’m writing a FREE report about how to start the process of doing just that. Click HERE to get it.

Why? We have built our house on the shifting sands of credit, not financially stable savings. We made the mistake of assuming paper profits that were so inflated they weren’t even taxed (how insubstantial must a type of profit be for even the U.S. Government not to recognize it?). Sure, Capital Gains on Real Estate used to be taxed when the property was sold, but no longer. That, as much as anything should have tipped us off that they weren’t real.

Over the next two years, Americans will learn some hard lessons. Among them:

• Real Estate prices cannot and do not go up forever.
• Houses and ATMs are two very different things.
• Our leaders don’t know nearly as much about the economy as they pretend to.
• Spending more than you make doesn’t work for individuals, businesses or governments.

So, Americans are left watching the spectacle devoted to what the government is going to do to fix this. Soon, maybe in the next 3 weeks, maybe in the next 3 months, we as a society will come to the conclusion that the government hasn’t the first clue about how to fix the problem. At that point, Americans’ attention will shift to what they can do individually to protect themselves. My suggestion is that you make that shift now.

Toward that end, I’m putting together a report titled “A New Great Depression: What you can do to prepare your family and yourself for economic disaster.” It’s going to be a free report, downloadable from this site when it’s finished, hopefully by the end of the week.

In it, I’ll lay out where we are right now as an economy, and some of the things I believe we’ll be facing as Americans over the next 10 years. The report will have a set of steps to prepare for the aftermath of the collapse we’re seeing unfold right now.

As soon as I have it finished, I’ll post the link to download the report.

Whether or not what we’re seeing in the Dow and credit markets meltdown is what the web bots predicted for October 7th, the past week has seen a dramatic economic “event” unfold. As of this writing, it is still unfolding as TRILLIONS of dollars are being lost and entire financial worlds wiped out. I believe that in the years that come, we will look back on the week of October 6th, 2008 as when world slowly, groggily started waking up to the reality of the Greater Depression.

Jim Sinclair on today:

Gold is about to VAULT UP.

I am reliably informed that the paper versus bullion gold war is lost by paper gold at a $930 close.

Gold will vault to slightly under $1000 then get pushed back, but not much at all. Directly after that we are off to $1200.

A Bank Holiday is moving from possible to PROBABLE.

• Have you fully protected yourself?
• Have you distanced yourself as much as possible away from financial agents holding your assets?
• Have you gotten paper certificates for your shares or became a direct registration book entry at the transfer agent?
• Have you protected your retirement accounts the same way as your shares above but in the name of the retirement account and the trust holding them?
• Have you closed your Money Market fund accounts regardless of what assurances your bankers offer?
• Have you withdrawn from your Credit Union?
• Have you exited your corporate retirement fund?
• Do you have significant gold and related shares investments?

It is getting UGLY out there as each day an attempt to postpone a bank holiday fails. Almost every other day lately financial leaders of the world have announced new plans that were “the final answer” to the super-glued credit market. All these plans have had no effect. The Dow fell like a rock off a cliff.

This says all efforts have failed.

Once again, Sinclair is short and direct. His counsel is sound.

Next post. Nuts and bolts about what you can do.