I can give you a clue........ready.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin
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I thought this was an interesting article.
Inflate Or Financial Tsunami by Jay Taylor
http://www.gold-eagle.com...

It would be wise to try and buy a used VW diesel. You can run them on biodiesel with no conversion troubles at all....warm weather is best. I'm not too sure if you can run straight vegetable oil through a normal diesel engine...but the inventor of the diesel ran it on peanut oil back in the old days. There are places that do the conversions for about $1100 or so...but like I said, you won't get far on vegetable oil in the winter, it'll congeal like biodiesel will unless you have some fuel line heaters and insulation. My VW Jetta TDi is an automatic, and gets 600 miles per full tank...so about 44.77 MPG. Not too shabby for a full size sedan! :)

The Retrocon
Hope for America, Ron Paul for President in 2008!

If some of your business is through the internet then sell only of course. However, if you are face-to-face with clients who all need a way to install (do-it-yourselfers, trade-shop, friends, etc.), offer this service to compliment and add profit to each sale. Many like businesses in my neck of the woods do this because its highly profitable and most customers are not inclined to self install.

Love (consciousness) is in everything including the void.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin
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I found this article to be very interesting. I think it gives further insights to this thread.
Why Have Gold and Silver Fallen? by Gary North.
http://www.lewrockwell.co...

I also found this data to be very interesting.
http://research.stlouisfe...

My business, especially this past week, has been fast money.

Trading the S&P, with it's sharp moves and long strides has been a trader's dream.

The more mess the NWO team makes the better the trading.
No issues with employees...
No customers to sell or deal with
The seasonal effects are welcomed, most holidays provide a week of time off.

In my hobby, prices are going down. Hot rods and collector cars are coming into the market at greater numbers and lower prices.

But I was a little shook this summer when I saw how many people stayed away from races and other events due to the economy and travel costs.

I see an opportunity in retro-fitting luxury, collector and restomod cars with alternative fuel devices, buying these cars at depressed prices and developing the delivery systems of alternative, fuel sources to power them.

"Committed To The Eradication Of Poverty Among Patriots"

"Those Who Strive For Excellence Refuse To Fear Mediocrity; They Eradicate It."

for the greater depression. Get storable food, water purification system, guns/ammo, and get off the grid if you can. Nothing else matters

I'll add some nostalgia to your dilemma. I'm absolutely no CARTER fan but as PRES he froze prices which as a businessman myself at the time, I thought worked pretty well. As you can see for yourself oil prices have come down some & may trend down which means the increases you're seeing now should be taken off later . Well that never happens .I believe this is why CARTER's price freeze worked. The fact that a fluctuation in oil can mean a temperary condition which the markets & producers pass along too quickly. People are hurting.
says

You know it wasn't all about materialism once upon a time.

I hope your business improves.

I have a natural food company. I am spending my entire Saturday going through ALL my pricing. Some of my ingredient costs have increased 100% over the past month.

I run a seasonal sports membership company.
We had a customer call in to purchase a $149 membership, and asked if he could split the charge up using three different credit cards.

My first thought was that this customer should be buying groceries instead!

Also, last summer, my company hosted five separate sporting events with $55 entry fees for members. We averaged 80-100 entries per event.

Last week, our $45 per entry event had a dozen entries.

Number of sales per google ad dollar for our USA manufactured goods is way down. Click throughs are way down overall.

However, sales to European customers is up. We have developed a regular revenue streams from Switzerland, Germany and Sweden with sales sprinkling in from other countries.

Another observation is the great majority of applicants for our shop help positions are qualified in other fields rather than just not being qualified for anything.
A lot of unemployed network administrators and tattoo artists out there.

We're tickled because for years unemployment was non-existent and the only apps we got were from bottom dwelling losers, thiefs, comp claim scammers, sleep in the back types. The whole gamer generation is utterly useless.
They don't know how to put air in a tire, forget changing one. We've had two guys here didn't know "righty tighty, lefty loosy".

We bought faster equipment rather than hire an unknown.

Parts prices are up some but spot shortages are common because suppliers have moved manufacturing overseas and the resupply chain is much longer.

D.

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty" TJ

I own a tool & equipment rental business. It is Saturday morning, a pretty day, good forecast, no special events in town, not hunting season yet. . . . .
I shouldn't have time this morning to be typing this.

It was like someone flipped a switch in November of last year. You know about the same time everyone except one guy was saying the economy was great.

Thank you Dr. Paul for making my act on what I already knew was right.

business in building. It has been getting bad for two years now. It has always been bad during recessions, but now we have the increased prices of fuel and other materials to further reduce profits. He used to be able to travel to find work , but now that is getting increasingly difficult to find too. We are eating our stored food, and selling things just to pay the bills. It is going to be bad for the rest of you. I hate to say it but some younger relatives of ours are in a job which would be considered a lousy job with a lousy company, a food distribution warehouse for Walmart, but with the way things are going, since food is needed by all, they probably should stay there.

I agree on the economy involving stone and construction (building) products.

I set up an appointment with the largest player in my industry for Friday morning. When I got there, the secretary seems confused, and said to come back after lunch, even though I had a 10:00 appointment. Why...

Big Layoffs. The guy I needed to talk to was let go. I still got a factory tour (after lunch - thanks to a personal relationship with the owner and solid service over the years), and there were only 2-3 people working, whereas normally, there should be 15-20 people.

Our company had their layoffs last Friday, as we've moved from 119 people in year 2000 to about 30 today.

Sick to my stomach when I hear people say, the government needs to do something. The government doesn't create jobs, wealth, or prosperity. The government needs to get out of the way!

And, waking up today, I realized something. During the week, my laptop was in my room, one morning, I forgot to put my contacts in (I realized when I started driving). So, I pulled in back of the hotel, and went in the back way to my room. As I was walking down the hall, the maid (who spoke perfect English [rare - if you travel much], stopped me to say that she was sorry, she moved my mouse on the desk and it fell on the floor. Hmmm...
How did she know which room I was going to?
Why would someone even mention that to a guest?
Why was my screensaver off?

Need to catch my flight back to Boston.

take I have owned my co. for 20 years.. I have been oporating in a depression environmnet for 3 years now.. and yes even thos houses are not being built like they were.... not even close our prices are still rising! as you said.. its insane...!!! so much for "deflation"... its all an illusion folks! things are going to get much worse!

as for me and my home, we shall worship the LORD

Shoe retailing is in freefall. We saw it hit the price-pointed market first two years ago, and in the last six months it has hit the quality branded market. Fortunately for us, shoes are, to some degree, a necessity. There will always be some level of purchasing going on, even if it is only replacement business. On the other hand, retailing (and retail malls) greatly overexpanded in the past 20 years and is burdened with enormous debt, so many retailers will not survive the downturn if it continues much longer.

While the pay cuts and the staff reductions we have experienced recently will help a little, I have run the numbers and concluded that cutting more may have the result of further depressing sales. Our survival will depend on improved sales, and that will result only from being sharper and better than our competition. If we disappoint customers because we are understaffed, we will lose sales and negate any cost savings. If there is any bright spot it is that our debt-to-asset ratio is moderate, so we may be able to weather the storm better than our competitors. I hate to say it, it will only be our competitor's failure that will allow us to survive.

Retail is suffering today because of a number of factors, but one that is rarely mentioned is the local and state government "encouragement" of retail expansion in the recent past. Through various tax subsidies or special tax breaks (that only applied to new development, not existing retail), the use of (or sometimes just the threat to use) eminent domain to create new mega shopping centers in every community, governments encouraged the development of retail centers on every corner in order to reap sales tax dividends. Now there are not enough customers for all of these subsidized shopping centers, retailers are going broke along with their landlords, and communities will end up with no tax income and lots of empty and abandoned retail outlets.

email me please America_Freedom@comcast.net

I have an interest in custom cars, restomods etc.

"Committed To The Eradication Of Poverty Among Patriots"

"Those Who Strive For Excellence Refuse To Fear Mediocrity; They Eradicate It."

deals with providing slot machines. We are based in Las Vegas and distribute throughout the world but mostly in Las Vegas and Native American Casinos.

I would say that Vegas is a better economic indicator than the dow jones which are completely faked values.

Early retirement was offered to about 500 employees yesterday. It was completely voluntary though.

We have seen our revenue drop sharply these last 2 months. The Casinos are seeing less traffic and if you walk the strip there is less and less people.

When we were being told about the early retirement the vice president was saying that nobody could have known the economy would have been doing so bad. Of course I smirked to myself and the person sitting next to me who has heard my rants about our monetary and economic systems for months, gave a knowing smile.

you just don't hire new ones when they quit? I used to work in advertising sales and the department always had high turnover rates. It might be different for car stereos though. I don't know. I think it's cool that you're letting your employees know. My company would always lay off people and not explain that they were doing it because advertising revenues were down. We thought they were just malicious and going after the bottom line instead of the fact that they actually couldn't afford it and they weren't really making any profit.
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"We will never give up. We will never give in." - Dr. Ron Paul

lay off masses of the little employees. My suggestion to you is to give all employees a choice: (A) Would they prefer layoffs and take their chances? or (B) Would they prefer across the board salary cuts? If the majority vote (B) then ask what maximum per cent reduction in salary would be acceptable. This could be played off against raising retail prices as in "will not be undersold." Beyond this, ask for input from all employees on how to improve their business. Nobody has better insight than those doing the job. Volvo was going down the tubes several decades ago, but after the CEO brought in workers from all levels with a no-holds-bared roundtable discussion, good ideas were implemented, and the company literally turned a 180. Even today, Volvo's are among the safest, quality assured cars. If you do not have a suggestion system, consider starting one. Offer 10% of the first year's savings for any suggestion that is utilized. It can be done anonymously by assigning numbers rather than names to each suggestion form to eliminate any suspicion of bias.

Love (consciousness) is in everything including the void.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin
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you described are trying to buy these items. What drives them to buy these items?

www.dvds4delegates.com the newest and possibly the greatest weapon the Revolution now possesses.

and the biggest thing that worries me is that countries overseas are buying up our used cars, and shipping thousands of them to Africa, Russia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, just to name a few. Since when can Africa pay more than we pay here for our used cars and ship them in a container overseas which costs about $1,400.00 a car, not to mention somekind of customs tax which supposedly runs in the thousands. These people are paying around $7,000 American for mid 90's import cars. They are shipping them by the thousands. When I go to auctions, I am competing against immigrants and they pay more than anyone for used cars than people that are trying to sell them here. I have been selling cars for about twelve years, and noticed this started happening about 5 years ago. There is definitely a decline in the American way of life happening here. I hope we can all make it through this. Good luck with your business, I hope you can work it through.

you better diversify right away. My dad was a businessman years ago things got real bad had to let everyone go and tried to run the business just with family. It's rough but had to be done and boy do the workers get PO'd. They were treated like family. It doesn't matter that there were more workers than customers. Don't expect this to go well, keep it real.

You have a heads up on what is happening be ready to sell what works in hard times coming, such as solar radios, small solar generators, security and safety products. Around where I live there are several vacant businesses . Only the strong survive, good luck to you. Just my 2 cents

I had the same thing happen in my business in Jan and Feb. I decided it was not going to happen. I did borrow some money from the bank, fixed my lighted sign, and had a bit of "breathing money", and they even lowered my mortgage payments. Then I had a meeting at work and told everyone to be POSITIVE and convinced, that we were going to have a fantastic July and August and it would keep on from there. Guess what? We had a fantastic July, beating last year by 2000.00 and then we had a RECORD August, that beat all previous sales records, for any month in the 8 years I owned the business. SOOooo..it is going to be a TERRIFIC christmas for you and a GREAT November and everyone there has to believe it. Period. It works.

although we have seen growth, at the end of the month I see less income. My gas expense is eating up every dime I make and then trying to live off what's left has become difficult.

I am making more but earning less!