One of my favorites from ally Lesta Frank…

The tomato seeds in the compost have taken over one of the garden beds here at the office in Hickory Valley, outrunning the seedlings we planted. At first, we were going to shift the individual toma…

Franklin’s Grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. Harvey Baldridge

By Franklin Sanders

As I was writing this newsletter, on Monday, my brother called to tell me that my mother had passed away. She was 95,…

My magnolia trees started to blossom this week. I also saw my first honey bee of the season. It was big and fat and seemed very opinionated!

It keeps happening. Animals keep showing up.

Yesterday there was a electric blue bird that I had never seen before.

Last night, I was driving back from Top of the World Farm and there was a lamb w…

A Gecko appeared today traveling about the fireplace mantel in my office.
I have decided it is a sign of great good fortune.

~ Catherine Austin Fitts

I have said it 1,000 times. I will keep saying it. At the root, it is very simple.

The Popsicle Index is the % of people who believe a child can leave their home, go to the closest place to buy a pop…

I just noticed that stocks high on my list of “least socially responsible” started dropping in April relative to general market levels.

Here is a stock chart comparing the S&P 500 over the last s…

The strawberries are ripening in the beds behind my kitchen. They are delicious. The birds think so too!

“and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit…”

– James 5:8

When I break my own rule about avoiding big banks I live to regret it.

Two years ago, Solari tried to work with RBS for processing on line payments. That was a gruesome experience. The relationship w…

Go to Harper’s Magazine. . .

View the video at YouTube. . .

The Common Project of Humanity: Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the name of a-six-thousand year history. This makes her one of the oldest cities in the world. Jerusalem is special and holy for the three Abr…

This is the year when Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year fall on the same day. And for you sports fans, February 14 is also opening day of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada! And it’s a new mo…

Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Lunar Calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditi…

It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small s…

By Anais Starr

I know in some parts it may not seem like Spring is just around the corner but in northwest Montana today it’s 40 degrees. That’s just over the cusp of allowable Spring thinking. Back…

Dear Catherine:

Hope y’all didn’t suffer any problems from the ice storm and that your fruit trees are OK. Things here are fine, just shut down for a while. I’m been meaning to write to thank you …

To:

CorporateCommunicationsAmericas@barclayscapital.com, Corporate.Communications@barclayscapital.com

Ladies & Gentlemen:

I was distressed to read that your head of global investment banking, H…

We are in a period in which volatility is rising and is going to keep rising.

Markets are centrally managed. Economic warfare has overridden the capital raising and allocation functions of currency a…

By Anais Starr

At the Financial Permaculture workshop in Hohenwald in 2008, I had the great pleasure to meet and work with Bob Woldrop. You will find Bob’s finger in almost every pie in sustainabilit…

And can you believe it was in ENGLISH ONLY!!!!!!

Ooooby is a food growers club and a social network. Check it out!

Here is the message from their new year’s newsletter:

Hello.
How was the festive season for you?

Welcome to a new year.

Feels to…

“For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug — push it a li…

View full article. . .

This year is going to be a goodie. As you make your New Years resolutions, consider some of the steps we’ve outlined in our comprehensive guide to Coming Clean. You’ll find valuable suggestions in t…

Continue reading Sting – Soul Cake 06.11.2009

David Liechty took a break from Hickory Valley and work with Solari to travel to Jerusalem and Bethleham.  I asked him for a photo from Bethleham on my birthday, the day before Christmas. Here it is …

View Happiness Revealed

(Please be patient, the clip may take a moment to load depending on the speed of your internet.)

See Catherine’s meditations at Christmas, 2003, “Angels Watching Over Us.”

Vermont Royster’s Christmas message of 1949 has been republished by the Wall Street Journal every Christmas since. As I can not think of a more beautiful way to celebrate the birth and life of Chris…

Click the image to view the PBS video.

Jim and Linette Crosby are fighting to win the Crosby Mint Farm from the bank that has foreclosed. The Farm was auctioned last week, with bids totalling $365,000, which is significantly less than wh…

SCWAG ~ Scientifically Calculated Wild Assed Guess. An estimate calculated using sound mathematics and science which is, never the less, little more than a wild guess. Generally because one or more of…

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for t…

“It wasn’t scary at all.”

Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn on the plunge in Goldman’s stock price from $207.78 in February to $47.41 in November 2008 as reported in the latest Vanity Fair.

View at YouTube

“We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record. I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There’s not much reason …

[La Grâce du Ciel is a French interpretation of Amazing Grace (literally:The Grace of Heaven) written by David E. Marcantel andperformed by Southwest Louisiana singing group, Les Amies Louisianaise…

There is nothing like cheering for your cousins on a crisp Fall evening in Tennessee. Our team won, 42-0. Both teams were just perfect!

“Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It’s…

Halloween

Dear Ms. Fitts:

I listen to you on Coast to Coast AM.

I have noticed the number of Chase Banks that have popped up all over the place.

When a Washington Mutual is taken over by Chase, it is give…

Business continuity exercises at the big clearing houses and banks this weekend have rumors flying. Combined with the White House declaring a swine flu emergency on Friday and the web bot project pred…

In from the Internet

The Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara, California caused these two to take shelter together.

The fawn is three days old and the bobcat about three weeks. The fawn came from somew…

“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”

~ Henry Kissinger in 1970

When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the
hearts of men.

~ Epitaph of Persian poet Rumi

Continue reading about the Persian Poet and Philosopher Rumi

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion —
when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing —
when you see money flowin…

“I don’t understand why you have to pay to live on a planet you were born on.”

~ Comment on the US taxation system attributed to Vissaeus, an Andromedean, by Alex Collier

Labor Day differs in every essential from other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflict and battles of man’s prowess over man…

The fusion of two distinct evolutionary lines is not supposed to work – but the seas are teeming with chimeras that prove it can.

Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysterie…

“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
~ Sir John Harrington

Continue reading Sibel Edmonds Deposition: Deep Corruption Beneath the Surface

Why are state and local governments despositing funds with JP Morgan Chase and other banks that refuse to accept California IOUs?

Why are the state pension funds investing in stock of JP Morgan Chase…

“The public finances are one of the best starting points for an investigation of society . . . The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare—al…

Paul Atkinson died on August 4, 2009.

Paul was one of my favorite people. He was an excellent business leader having served for many years as the President of Sun Shipbuilding in Chester, Pennsylvani…

Photo by Melissa Brandts

By Susan Krashinsky

Like a starlet plucked from anonymity, like the moment Norma Jean became Marilyn, an Alberta ground squirrel who has languished in obscurity in Banff Na…

Click the image to get a better view!

Carnation milk – 65 Years Ago. This is Priceless.

A little old lady from Wisconsin had worked in and around her family dairy farms since she was old enough to walk, with hours of hard work and litt…

Oh, I am so relieved that we are seeing the beginning of the recession’s end, and now embarking on a jobless recovery. This is such good news! Vaccine, anyone?

~ Ann, Private Investigator

James Turk Founder and Chairman of GoldMoney

Politicians can put the gloss on this economic contraction and call it whatever they want. But given the depth and breadth of the decline, it seems clea…

From:

What we are watching price out through the political process is life vs. death. More specifically, the financial value of the life and death of various groups and ages of people vs. the life and death…

Recognize these words? Want your kids to have a fun way to learn the preamble to our Constitution? Click the image to play Texas songwriter and singer Tom Darilek putting the words to a tune.

“We th…

Charles Schultz

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.”
       ~ Charles Schultz

Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistan…

By Sue and Pete Hill

The sculpture, In the Garden of Dreams, was made by brother and sister team Sue and Pete Hill.This sculpture was created as a sister to the Mud Maid which can be found at the Lo…

By Sue and Pete Hill

The sculpture, In the Garden of Dreams, was made by brother and sister team Sue and Pete Hill.This sculpture was created as a sister to the Mud Maid which can be found at the Lo…

A little boy and girl in American Patriotic clothing at the Fourth of July fireworks celebrations.

Photo by Baseball Hound

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”
–  Satchel Paige

Continue Reading Romancing the Road

We are bearish on the renminbi. On the other hand, we are also bearish on the US dollar, euro, pound, Swiss franc, and Zimbabwean dollar. We hate them all, with appropriate analytical nuances. Show us…

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Mary Harris “Mother”…

The heart is the master and the head is the servant. That is always the case, except when it isn’t the case we are in deep, deep trouble.
– William Gibson

By: Hub Pages

[Catherine’s Note: I originally published this piece in 2007. Because of the California and other state and local fiscal challenges, I thought I would republish]

In the early 19th cen…

Recently, I have been getting questions about how I first learned about my home Hickory Valley, Tennessee.

In 1978, after graduating from business school, I decided to ride a bicycle across the cou…

Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.
– Proverbs 22: 24-25

Artist: Antoine Ausustine Preault

“What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t invent with your mouth.”
— Jewish Proverb