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For some investors, it feels a lot more like 1999 than 2013. Third-quarter earnings have not been spectacular. The U.S. isn't expected to grow at anything close to breakneck speed next year. And there are few industries experiencing huge profit expansions. Despite all that, a number of high-profile—mostly technology—stocks are soaring. The heady advances are making shareholders of these companies big money, but they're also raising serious questions among some analysts about whether the unusual trading is a troublesome sign for the overall market. Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record on Tuesday, but closed up just...

Rodney Dial is crafting hefty waterproof containers that can store all his preps safely underwater where no one can reach them.

WASHINGTON — Inflation is widely reviled as a kind of tax on modern life, but as Federal Reserve policy makers prepare to meet this week, there is growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough. Some economists say more inflation is just what the American economy needs to escape from a half-decade of sluggish growth and high unemployment. The Fed has worked for decades to suppress inflation, but economists, including Janet Yellen, President Obama’s nominee to lead the Fed starting next year, have long argued that a little inflation is particularly valuable when the...

EXCLUSIVE: Terry McAuliffe has promised voters he is committed to transparency, but in the final days of a Virginia governor’s race he leads, the Democrat has steadfastly refused to explain a complicated financial arrangement involving several family trusts and a union-owned insurance and investment company. For the arrangement... Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/24/mcauliffe-silent-on-union-connected-loan/#ixzz2ijYL0ikj Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

The collapse of American society is accelerating. For the moment, much of our social decay is being masked by the tremendous level of affluence that we are experiencing. It has been reported that 4 out of every 5 adults in the United States “struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives”, but in general Americans still enjoy a debt-fueled standard of living that is far beyond what most of the rest of the world enjoys. When that debt-fueled standard of living permanently disappears, it is going to unleash chaos unlike anything that America...

"The question is not tapering. The question is at what point will they increase the asset purchases to say $150 [billion] , $200 [billion], a trillion dollars a month," Faber said in a " Squawk Box " interview. The Fed-which is currently buying $85 billion worth of bonds every month-will hold its October meeting next week to deliberate the future of its asset purchases known as quantitative easing . (Read more: Treasury yields will still spike to 5%: Societe Generale ) Faber has been predicting so-called "QE infinity" because "every government program that is introduced under urgency and as a...

Under the POS’s presidency, the number of Americans receiving food stamps (now called Electronic Benefits Transfer or EBT) exploded. Today, one in five U.S. households are on food stamps. Worse still, we are taking two steps back for every step forward: For every new job that’s been created, two new recipients (let’s call them food-stampers) are added to the food stamps dole. Given our exploding national debt and the impending bankruptcy of, first, Social Security Disability (in 2016!), then Social Security itself, followed by Medicare, anyone with half a brain whose head isn’t plunged deep in the River of Denial,...

If you ever wondered why we recommend prepping, and stockpiling food and emergency supplies, one look at what happened this weekend Springhill and Mansfield, LA should tell you everything you need to know – and will give you a glimpse at what this country will look like during a nationwide crisis. Over the weekend, the debit system that allows people on government assistance to buy food, temporarily went down. The resulting chaos is a small glimpse at what I believe will happen, should the government plunge this country into some sort of economic collapse. A couple of Walmarts in Louisiana...

How I saw it. Through the scope on my 30-30 I kept the reticule steady on the first of the insulators I was to destroy tonight. The Power lines leading away into the distance from the Niagara Power station to the Cities of the south were thin lines in the bright moonlight. I thought about what had brought me to this spot… Cold, hungry… Ah who am I kidding, I still had another twenty pounds of fat I could stand to burn through. My spotter hadn’t had a good meal in two days and I had given her my Jerky...

I am a member of BJ's wholesale. They have this emergency food supply available: http://www.bjs.com/augason-farms-emergency-food-storage-kit-1-year-1-person.product.211362?dimId=8052 Any thoughts? I have a supply of food that I've been building up over time. About two months for my family of four (two adults - two children). I want a compact supply and something I can build further on. Thanks in advance.

Will Obama Stop the Music This November? The current “shutdown” of 17% of the federal government has primed America for chaos with constant left-wing rhetoric and news media reports couched in apocalyptic terms such as crisis, brink, catastrophe, hostage, arsonist and terrorist. But a catastrophe is useful to a would-be tyrant only as long as it can be blamed on a hated enemy. In 1933 Hitler’s agents burned the Reichstag, not just to sow fear and confusion, but primarily in order to charge his Communist enemies with treason as an excuse to obliterate them. The German “mainstream media” dutifully parroted...

Some grocery and food shoppers who were trying to used government benefit cards to pay got a rude awakening on Saturday morning: their EBT cards were not working. A check here in Central New York, however, showed that grocery chains were apparently unaffected. We are being told that a technical services vendor (Xerox) had a power outage which did affect being able to pay with a benefits card in several states. As of early Saturday afternoon, the debit system was back up and the SNAP program was being rebooted, with expectations that all services would be back up shortly.

So the zombies are at your door. Death is upon you, but the gun shop is just a block away. You make a run for it, and you make it to the most extensive armory for miles. Time to make a decision: Which guns do you grab? Contrary to popular belief, not every gun will do the job the same, so to help make up your mind on which guns will save your life, here are my eight best guns for the zombie apocalypse.

Mimicking the 'bump fire' technique that can be utilized to fire a semi-auto rifle nonstop (from the hip), a new $6000 rifle from Slide-Fire keeps the stock (and your trigger finger) steady while the rest of the gun moves with the recoil, pulling the trigger against your stationary finger and producing the desired hail of gunfire...  The weapon utilizes loopholes in federal firearms law, whereas the stock of such a gun is simply not regulated as to it's movement/or lack of, nor how this is now being utilized to produce a full-auto effect... just the traditional mechanical elements of...

1). Don't go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things. Simple but often ignored. Listen, we do not live in a fair world where everyone respects everyone else. Nor where everyone gets along. You may in fact be totally color-blind in a socio-ethnic sort of way, but not everyone is. So even if your liberal sociology professor thinks it is a cool thing to take a stroll at midnight through a ethnically homogenous part of town (different ethnicity that you), it is still a stupid idea. 2). Always have a method to defend yourself. Even if it...

Oath Keepers is instructing its 30,000 members nation-wide to form up special teams and sub-teams in each Oath Keepers chapter, at the town and county level, modeled loosely on the Special Forces “A Team” (Operational Detachment A ) model, and for a similar purpose: to be both a potential operational unit for community security and support during crisis, but also, as mission #1, to serve as training and leadership cadre, to assist in organizing neighborhood watches, organizing veterans halls to provide community civil defense, forming County Sheriff Posses, strengthening existing CERT, volunteer fire, search-and-rescue, reserve deputy systems, etc., and...

If you haven’t been in a bubble cut off from all forms of media lately, it would be impossible to have missed all of the warnings being issued about the impending loss of our electrical grid. This isn’t just coming from so-called “gloom and doom” sites or from alternative media. Major mainstream media sources such as ABC News, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CBS News have all issued the alerts. Unfortunately, the hordes seem to be brushing these warnings off as something that cannot happen, because the reality is too unpleasant to even contemplate. Many seem to...

For someone in an urban area who plans to hunker down and doesn’t plan to bug out with country cousins, one thing that should be at the top of everyone’s list but that’s very much overlooked is… if you’re in a situation where you have power because you have photovoltaics but your neighbors don’t, you really should concentrate on black-out curtains for your windows. You need to black out your house completely, without any light leaks so that your house will look just as black as any other on your block. Otherwise you’re going to be targeted as the rich...

Within our group, we form a whole. No one person can be or buy everything. No one person can know it all or do it all. In this sense, it really will take a village to survive. Among the 10, two are specialists in the medical field, one is an engineer, others fit into the slots of scientist, former school teacher, active detective, great organizer, mechanic, accountant, DIYer, builder, writer, welder, seamstress, general repairman. Nearly all of us garden and cook – even the men – except for one whose cooking makes dog food look great. Most of the women...