—Gearing for a Wartime Economy!DO 20267/85

1. I THINK REAGAN IS NOTHING IN THE WORLD BUT A POLITICIAN & HE DOES WHAT HE'S TOLD! I think he's a puppet, a front man, a perfect actor, the works! Once in awhile he's come out with his own personal opinion & they slapped him down.

2. HE'S PUTTING ON A BIG SHOW RIGHT NOW AFTER HIS OPERATION, & I'll tell you, it'll take a miracle for him to live out his 3-1/2–year term! He's trying to put on a big show to convince everybody not to worry, & I think everybody knows that. Most people with a little sense would think he should take a little better care of himself so he can last awhile, & most people with good sense can tell he's putting on a show, that he couldn't possibly feel that good one week after major surgery. And most people with good sense know that with a 50% chance of living, there's also a 50% chance of dying! So it's 50/50: "Heads I win, tails you lose!" He has just as good a chance of dying as he has of living!

3. PARTICULARLY THE FOREIGN INVESTORS ARE GOING TO HAVE SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW LONG TO LEAVE THEIR MONEY THERE, the ones who have been big dollar investors & loaning the U.S. the money to live beyond its income. They're a little uncertain about the future of the country, especially since the economy is going down, Reagan's going down, the dollar's going down, interest rates are going down & it looks like just about everything is going down!

4. IF YOU WERE ONE OF THOSE BIG MULTI-BILLION-PETRODOLLAR FOREIGN INVESTORS, WHAT WOULD YOU THINK? Those guys are no dumb bunnies! They're pretty well-educated now on what causes crashes! And contrary to "Roll Over," they're not going to just pull their billions out in one big hunk & let the thing collapse, they're going to try to get them out secretly, slowly, little by little while they can still get something for them.—Sell their dollars, sell their stocks, sell their bonds, each one trying to get out slowly & sneak out before the others find out what's going on.

5. THEY'VE LEARNED A LOT FROM THE FIRST DEPRESSION & FROM PREVIOUS CRASHES‚ they've learned a lot from history, & they've been scared to death in the 50 years since the last one—over 50 years! They've been so scared that they have done everything they can to prevent another one‚ including going into several wars. War is the last resort after they've done everything they can, & tried all kinds of economic brakes & governmental guarantees & safeguards & failsafes & all kinds of stuff. So they have learned to handle it a little better‚ & they're also guarding the news so they don't get the public in a panic like the big scare headlines did back before the Depression. I don't think you'll hear about this Stock Market crash till after it's happened!

6. THE STOCK MARKET DIDN'T JUST DROP LIKE A ROCK ON BLACK MONDAY, IT SLID A WEEK BEFORE & WAS ALREADY ON ITS WAY DOWN! But the big boys & the smart ones saw it going down, so they started dumping their stock, & I mean dumping big blocks of stock! When the Stock Market closed on Friday night, the big smart guys saw what was likely to happen Monday‚ so they got in there real quick & decided the same day to dump their stocks. Then the word got around over the weekend, & by the time Monday came they were banging at the doors of Wall Street to get rid of them!—But it was too late, because everybody else was banging too.

7. THIS TIME THEY'VE BEEN A LITTLE SMARTER: THEY'VE STAVED IT OFF & SLOWED IT DOWN. They're so scared of having another Crash so that every time the economy declines the least little bit they've gotten all nervous & done everything they can to stop it‚ even to the point of going into another war!

8. THEY WERE READY FOR ANOTHER BIG DEPRESSION BEFORE WORLD WAR 2. Roosevelt with all of his Socialism & emergency measures & alphabet soup started helping them out of it a little bit, but he saw he couldn't pull the U.S. out without a war & that wartime economy, spending billions for arms & stuff like that.—Besides getting his Jews out of hot water & getting rid of Hitler, which he seemed to be much more concerned about than the Communists!

9. ROOSEVELT WAS THE ONE WHO ESTABLISHED DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA FOR THE FIRST TIME, & Mrs. Roosevelt was especially chummy with the Russians. She was having delegates over from the Komsomol, the Communist Youth & everything. Both of them were pro-Socialism to the core—they called it Socialism—& he was buddy-buddy with the leaders of Russia & all the rest of them. So when it came time for the war he wasn't about to begin to side against Russia.

10. THEN WHEN THINGS STARTED TO SLIDE ANOTHER FIVE YEARS LATER AFTER THE WAR, THEY SAW THEY NEEDED ANOTHER WAR, so they got into a little one‚ supposedly a little one‚ the Korean War. Then Eisenhower got elected on a ticket that he was going to get them out of that war, & he did. He just did it by quitting, by being willing to compromise & divide the country between them. So it was a draw, a tie, it was over, & the small war had done its job & pulled the country out of another slide. Then by the time the economy started to slide again, LBJ got'm into another war in the early '60s—Vietnam!

11. SO IT WAS 20 YEARS BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS, FIVE YEARS BETWEEN WORLD WAR 2 & KOREA, THEN ABOUT TEN YEARS BETWEEN KOREA & VIETNAM.—And that war lasted over ten years too, the longest war the U.S. has ever been in, & one of the most costly—probably the most costly of any the U.S. has ever fought. They dropped more bombs in Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia than they dropped in both World Wars! It's a miracle of God that those poor people ever pulled through it at all, & shows the judgement of God that the U.S. lost! The U.S. couldn't claim any tie that time like it did in Korea, they just plain lost! They keep using other words for it to try to avoid that expression that the U.S. lost a war, but they lost it, totally! They didn't save a thing. They could hardly even save all their people, & certainly not all their friends.

12. SO THE VIETNAM WAR IS NOW TEN YEARS AGO & THE VIETNAMESE WAR BOOM HAS ABOUT PLAYED ITSELF OUT. See, the recovery always follows the war, & by the time the so–called recovery or boom, whatever you want to call it, the measure of prosperity has played itself out & it starts turning down again, then they're going to have to have another war.—And if it weren't for the atom bomb, I think they'd have it! But this time they're afraid to have it!

13. THEY'RE ALREADY INVOLVED IN SEVERAL MINOR WARS. The U.S. is behind the Afghan rebels as clear as can be, it's undoubtedly the Communists who are stirring up the rebellion in South Africa, & Reagan wants his bandits to start a war in Nicaragua. But he knows any of these little wars—if he can just keep them little wars—will kind of help the economy to come up by persuading the people to spend more money on armaments & bombs & blah blah blah!—That means more manufacturing, more jobs, more money, & things kind of come up a little.

14. BUT EVERYBODY'S SO DAMN SCARED OF ANY TYPE OF WAR FOR FEAR IT WILL DEVELOP INTO SOMETHING BIG, THAT THEY'RE DOING THEIR BEST NOT TO LET HIM GO TO WAR! Almost everybody's fighting against this war in Nicaragua. They're a little more unconcerned about the one in Afghanistan because that's where their stooges are fighting the Russians directly & they love that, to cause them all the trouble they can. But frankly, I think he plans to get into a war this term, as soon as he can whip up sentiment against Nicaragua. He's already got things going in Afghanistan, but it's a little hard to win that one. But you don't have to win a war in order to whip up public sentiment & get them to spend more money on arms, blah blah.

15. SO WHAT I'M SAYING IS WE'RE NOW TO THE POINT WHERE THEY HAVE GOT TO FIGHT ANOTHER WAR, which is what he plans, otherwise they don't know what to do, because that's the only way they ever solve their economic problems.—Because the economy of the whole Western World is a war economy & is only solved every time with war. There's no other way!

16. BUT THIS TIME THEY'RE SCARED OF HAVING A WAR, SO THEY'RE DELAYING & DELAYING AS LONG AS THEY CAN!—Until probably the Crash is going to hit'm under the belt before they can start one!—And there's every sign of it! It's getting more & more public & they're beginning to come out more & more frankly about it all the time. Today's paper I think was the most frank.

17. AND NOW THIS REAGAN CANCER HAS REALLY JERKED THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER THEIR HOPES THAT MAYBE HE COULD SOLVE THE PROBLEM. If anything happens to him & he can't operate—or they can't operate on him—compared to him, Bush is a weak character. Regan, the White House Chief of Staff, is a tough guy & he's now in charge of the White House while Reagan's sick, he'd make a better President than Bush. He took over right away too, not Bush. He's a real hardliner, & has been a hardliner on the economy in the wrong way. That's why they kicked Stockman out. Because I think Stockman recognised it had to be done & announced it & embarrassed the administration politically.

18. YOU KNOW, I'VE LIVED A LONG TIME & I'VE BEEN READING THE NEWSPAPERS SINCE I WAS 13 OR 14. They've been talking about lowering taxes ever since I can remember & the taxes are higher every year than ever before! They've been talking about disarmament ever since I can remember & it's worse than ever! They've been talking about peace, ending all wars, & they've had more wars than ever! So it just never happens. Raising taxes is not popular. Lessening benefits & spending is very unpopular, but that's the only way you can cut down your expenses. You've either got to have more income or you've got to have less expenses. Just to put it simply so any child could understand, in order to cut down the deficit you've either got to spend less or make more! That was one of my brother's problems. No matter how much he made, he never could live within his income, he just didn't know how to manage his money.

19. AND YOU KNOW THAT'S MY HARD LINE, BROTHER, WE LIVE WITHIN OUR INCOME, WHATEVER‚ & WE DON'T BORROW A PENNY, PERIOD! So when everything falls apart we're not caught with a bunch of big debts we can't pay, like all these little countries have done. Well‚ they're going to get together & declare a moratorium on their debts, because they just can't pay'm. The IMF is getting too tough. They're rescheduling debts right & left trying to make it a little easier & give them a little more time to pay & all that stuff, but do you know what's happening now?—Banks consider the debt situation so bad that they're selling debts, the real bad ones, for as little as ten cents on the dollar to whoever will buy them!

20. THAT'S THE SAME WAY THE OLD PAYMENT COLLECTORS USED TO OPERATE. My father-in-law, Mr. Booth, was a collector.—A real tough guy‚ a New Yorker. He could really talk tough & threaten & cudgel & what they call "brainbatter'm" without actually hitting them, about what he was going to do if they didn't pay up! He'd go around to these companies & buy up the unpaid debts, & that was his usual price, ten cents on the dollar. He'd buy up the bills, ten cents on the dollar‚ & then he'd go around & collect'm for several times what he paid for them!—And he was good enough at it that he made pretty good money!

21. SO A LOT OF THE BANKS HAVE GIVEN UP HOPES THAT THEIR DEBTORS WILL EVER PAY, SO THEY'RE SELLING THEIR DEBTS FOR ONLY 10 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR, some of them as high as 50 cents on the dollar. They're losing money‚ but they're selling them. It's finally coming out that the banks are doing this. They've been trying to keep it hush–hush because they know that when it gets out it's going to continue to cause people to lose faith in the economy & lose faith in the banks, that they're not going to make it, but they've decided they'd rather get a little something out of them than nothing.

22. EVERY SIGN POINTS TO IT! EVERYTHING'S GOING DOWN‚ NOTHING'S COMING UP!—Except the deficit & the balance of payments.In other words, expenses are going up & income's going down. About the only other thing that's going up is unemployment! They're not saying much about it, but the poor guys that are getting fired & getting let out, they know‚ & it's going on in the U.S., Europe & everywhere! So regarding the economy, everything wrong is happening now, & it's beginning to get out publicly! It's tucked away here & there in this item & that item in the paper, but it's getting more & more into the headlines, therefore more & more people are finding out.

23. THE LITTLE GUYS ARE ALWAYS THE LAST TO GET OUT, BUT THEY HAVE THE BIGGEST HOLDINGS. Despite the big boys, the 5% who have so much money, it's the little fellows who actually have more on the aggregate, & it's not until they finally wake up that things really go boom!

24. FIRST OF ALL THE BIG BOYS ARE TRYING TO SNEAK OUT THE BACK DOOR UNNOTICED IF THEY CAN WITH THEIR MONEY & THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS, because the faster other big boys know, the more of them will try to get out too. But above all they don't want the little fellows to know because they want to leave them holding the bag!—Exactly what they did in the last big Crash. It always happens. They're smarter now than they ever were! They must be smart or they wouldn't have as much as they do & they wouldn't have kept it as long as they did & made so much money!—And they're smart, so they're the first to desert the sinking ship—the rats!

25. THAT WAS ALWAYS A SIGN THAT A SHIP WAS SINKING, WHEN THE RATS BEGAN TO RUN OUT OF THE HOLD & JUMP OFF THE DECKS INTO THE WATER! Even if the captain didn't tell you there was a hole in the bottom & the hold was filling up with water, the rats knew it, because that's where they lived, & they began running up the steps to the decks & jumping overboard into the sea! So if nobody else told you, at least you saw the rats running & jumping. They're the first to leave because they live in the bottom.

26. BUT IN THIS CASE, THESE BIG BOYS HAPPEN TO LIVE AT THE TOP, BUT THEY'RE THE FIRST TO LEAVE‚ & they're trying to sneak out without everybody knowing it.—Because if they do it too fast, prices will go down & they'll lose money on their dollars & on their stocks & bonds. So they want to sneak out slowly & quietly‚ & the slower it goes down‚ the better for them. Once they're out & only the little guys are left they won't care so much, they'll be off & away! So that's when the bottom falls out, when the news & conviction sinks down to the little guys who actually have the greatest holdings of all, all put together, & by the time they find out it's too late!

27. SOME OF THEM BEGIN TO FIND OUT, BUT THE GOVERNMENT STEPS IN REAL QUICK & PATCHES THINGS UP AT THE BANKS & HERE & THERE & reassures them, "Don't worry‚ it's all right, we'll fix it all!" But one thing they can't do very well is patch up the dollar on the international markets. They also can't patch up their stocks & bonds on the international markets.

28. IT'S THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS WHO HAVE BEEN PAYING THE BILL FOR AMERICA'S EXTRAVAGANCE & ITS MILITARY BUDGET, SPENDING MORE THAN ITS INCOME. They're the ones who have been footing the bill withloans, & they're already starting to get out. Pretty soon the U.S. is just not going to have the money to spend & nobody's going to want to foot the bill. They've already exhausted the domestic money markets, they could hardly borrow any more at home, & they've been borrowing billions abroad. So if those guys lose confidence in the country like they are now, in the President or the leadership or the dollar, & they start clearing out, then that's it! That's where it's going & every sign points to it. How many times do I have to say it? I'm just telling you it's more convincing than ever!—And nearer too!

29. ALL OF THESE INVESTORS DO LIKE THEY DO ON THE STOCK MARKET, THEY KEEP WAITING & WAITING‚ HOPING IT'LL STOP & GO BACK UP. But now the dollar's been sliding for six months & gone down far enough that they're beginning to be convinced it's not going to go up, in fact, that it's going to keep going down, & that's good in some ways for some things. But it doesn't do their economists & the country any good & this time they're afraid to start a war to stop it, which is what they've always done before—every time! Just read recent modern history—World War 2, the Korean War‚ the Vietnamese War, even these little wars.

30. THE ONLY THING THAT EVER RESCUES THE ECONOMY & KEEPS IT GOING IS IF THEY HAVE ENOUGH WARS TO SCARE THE PEOPLE INTO SPENDING MORE MONEY, even just a cold war to scare people that they're going to have to fight Russia sooner or later so they'd better spend more money on arms & build more factories & produce more goods & have more jobs & pay more money to keep the economy going! Well, it's going‚ all right, but down!

31. WHY DO I ALWAYS GET ON THIS SUBJECT?—TO TRY TO CONVINCE YOU GUYS THAT WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO ECONOMISE! All I can say is it's coming & it looks more like it every day, & I'm glad we're getting ready for it & the quicker the better! I've never studied a situation more carefully than I have lately, & all the signs point the same direction, all the roads are leading to Rome, & the fall of Rome!

32. SO I WANT YOU TO DO WHAT THEY USED TO CALL GEARING FOR A WARTIME ECONOMY.—Not a military war, I hope, but an economic war. Because the U.S. is doing all the wrong things. It's just like they're sailing ahead regardless of the reefs or the rocks or anything, "All things continue as they were, don't confuse me with the facts!" They don't dare think about it or they'd go crazy & everything would go boom! They don't know anything else to do‚ so they just keep on sailing no matter what. They refuse to raise taxes, they refuse to cut spending, they refuse to cut the deficit, they refuse to leave the trade balance alone, of Japan & Europe, & they blame it on the other countries instead of themselves, creating ill will & ill feeling between all their friends.

33. THE U.S. IS JUST A MESS, IT'S ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE! Even some of their own authorities & economists are shocked at the stupidity & inaction & ineptness of the administration, the government & the whole works. They're blind leaders of the blind!—And it's going to be a very big ditch, the biggest one they ever hit! Didn't you ever hear that verse about the blind leading the blind? Do you know what happened to them? (Maria: They fell in the ditch!)—Both of them, the leaders & the people! (Mat.15:14).

34. WELL, THAT'S A BLACK PICTURE, BUT AGAINST THAT I'M SO THANKFUL THAT IT LOOKS LIKE WE'RE GOING TO BE ALL PREPARED, Lord willing, as best we can at least, & geared down to a wartime economy, ready for it!—And not just ready for it, but already on it, which is the best thing we can do.

35. I THOUGHT OUR LITTLE "HEAVEN'S GIRL" WAS QUITE ATTRACTIVE & NICE WITHOUT ANY FANCY COVER, & if those teenagers don't know how to take care of them I'll be surprised. Let's just recommend to them that they go down & buy a notebook to stick'm in. That's what we used to do. That saves us the money & it doesn't cost them much either. That'll protect them better than any kind of cover we could afford.—Amen?

36. HOPE WROTE A REAL RAVE ABOUT "HEAVEN'S GIRL," SHE SAID IT CHANGED HER LIFE!—That it was a tremendous inspiration & encouragement. You know how down–&-out she so often is about her talents & abilities, etc. She said when she saw how the Lord could use a real frail weak girl like Heaven's Girl‚ there was hope for her! So I thought that was a pretty good reaction & I expect it to have that effect on a lot of people. I'm sure that's why the Lord gave the picture to begin with. It was the key & the keynote, all we're doing is following suit.

37. WELL, I WANTED TO ASK YOU ONE LAST QUESTION: IF YOU KNEW TOMORROW WAS YOUR LAST DAY TO GET OUT PUBS, WHAT WOULD YOU DO TOMORROW? If you knew next week was your last week, what would you give priority to? You might have to make a choice between pubs. If you knew you only had a week left & that would make any difference in what you're doing‚ I think you ought to do it!—Because at the rate things are going, the bottom could fall out any day. Just like a balloon, any little tiny pin prick could tip the balance‚ & boom! Everything's in a too-stretched & too-delicate condition, I just don't see how it could stand any more. Things were already bad enough‚ Reagan's ill health was almost the last straw!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family