This is from an article by Clif Droke, dated July 16.

"On 16 June 1998, the Navy and Marine Corps were conducting their annual strategy meeting entitled "Current Strategy Forum". This year's meeting was held at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. A source who was in attendance at the meeting reported that he was shocked by a sentence uttered by the Under Secretary of the Navy, if only for its remarkable candor.

Our source reports, "After speaking for about 30 minutes from his prepared notes, the U.S. Under Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Jerry MacArthur, then began to answer questions. After answering several questions, Mr. MacArthur made this statement, apparently off the cuff: "Senior Military Pentagon officials have been working closely with senior officials at Wall Street to perfect several scenarios that could quickly be put into action once Wall Street crashes."

Notice the Under Secretary did not say "could crash" or "may possibly crash." He emphatically stated that the Pentagon is fully expecting it to crash.

The Coming Financial Collapse And How You Can Prepare For It

-- Max Dixon (Max.Dixon@gte.net), July 25, 1998

Answers

Oops! Wrong URL! Here is the correct one...

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/y2k/TWB19980722S0011

(and I thought that I was doing so well...)

-- Max Dixon (Max.Dixon@gte.net), July 25, 1998.

Now I'm really embarressed.

This one is THE REAL THING, I swear!

http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_98/droke071698.html

-- Max Dixon (Max.Dixon@gte.net), July 25, 1998.

Hmmmm....this brings back to mind a post from about a month ago concerning a construction site next to the Pentagon. One of the Washington Papers, (sorry, I forget which one) in response to a reader's question, reported that it was a 25KW solar generator. I haven't seen anything more about it.... has anyone else?

I have another comment...which really has nothing to do with this particular thread (but my mind doesn't seem to stay terribly focused...just one of my charms, what can I say??!) Its amazing to me to consider that whenever there is the slightest hint that something "newsworthy" is about to happen, the press decend in hordes and inundate us with endless reports, commentaries, speculations etc. concerning it. For example, El Nino. By the time El Nino became a "fact", most of us were sick and tired of hearing about it!

However, with Y2K, we have a mountain of evidence that it will hit, and most likely hit HARD, we have "experts" in almost every field listing the problems ahead, we have Congress and the Senate holding "hearings", a President making speeches, and many many citizens preparing for the "worst", and yet the press barely seems to notice.

This cannot be by accident, IMHO. Any comments?

Sheila

-- Sheila Ross (sross@bconnex.net), July 25, 1998.

Yes Sheila...the press is financed by the advertisers (ad space they purchase) that push products for all of us to keep buying. The advertisers do NOT like it whan the media paints a fgrim picture about anything....it makes people stop spending money on trinkets.

-- Greg Benesch (gbenesch@earthlink.net), July 26, 1998.

I'm not terribly convinced about how "rock solid" Mr. Clif Droke is, regarding his comments about the Pentagon and Wall Street. He could do himself a world of good in credibility, if he didn't use such an absurd font ("Comic") that makes himself look amateur-ish. And... if he didn't plunk such "news tidbits" (anonymous of course!) right in the middle of his investment letter's reccos. Whether he is a white hat or not, putting it together like this, makes me smell something fishy. (Maybe I'm just a bit cynical these days.)

Besides, if Droke *really* takes seriously such a disaster scenario, then why on earth would he be recommending to leave your money in *any* of the debt/equities markets?? That's nuts. If you are convinced that the market will crash, the only sane thing to do is to pull your money out ahead of time, and spend it on property (location!), a safe home (preferably off the power grid), and of course... long-term food supplies. If after all that you still have money left over, then buy more hard goods and keep a good stash of easily-spent cash (bills over $20 would be pretty conspicuous), and barter/exchange items. Silver coins would be more-easily used (and much less conspicuous) than large-value-store gold coins.

And after all THAT, if you stil have money, then fine; leave some in the market if you're feeling really lucky. (Good luck trying to liquidate it to cash out your bear-market profits...)

-Tim Hoogasian

-- Tim Hoogasian (timh@juno.com), August 04, 1998.