Some might call it the Deja Vu War, the same war happening all over again. The same accusers and the same accusations, the same threats and the same predictable UN sanctions, the same script and timetable.  The same Shock and Awe air attack. The same stalemate. The same wasted lives, wasted resources and squandered billions by the exact same culprit, the state.  

Since I wrote Day One - The War With Iran, I’ve noticed many more columnists predicting some sort of attack on Iran .  Even Pat Buchanan penned a scenario (The American Conservative to The Weekly Standard: Challenge Accepted) mirroring the scenario I had outlined. Say what you will about the rogues running our government but they are nothing if not predictable.

BRAVE NEW WAR?

Now I’m not a big believer in numerology or the Illuminati but the statists in power (some say Satanists) seem to love the cleverness of numbers. Also, I lack clairvoyance regarding such mundane things as possible Super Bowl scores or the exact days until the End Times. Admittedly, some numerologists have a better spin on the whole numbers thing than I (UPDATE II: TERROR ATTACK NUMEROLOGY) but what they offer makes more than a little sense.

So, according to numerology (if you are keeping score at home), there might be 1,111 days after the beginning of the Iraq War until the possible beginning of the war with Iran . Or 1109, or 1107 or 1066, if the shooting starts earlier than expected.  Who knows.

What does this all mean to you sitting at home, with no more voice in the inner workings of the state than a fruit fly has on a bushel of rotten apples?  Time to look at things the way an intelligent man might have looked at the New York stock Exchange a month before the Crash of 1929. 

Only this time the US government can’t bail anyone out, not even itself.

GOLD , SILVER & POT METAL POLITICIANS 

Is it just my imagination or does everyone in the Bush administration and US Senate appears to be a gold-plated, pot metal trophy? I stare at the faces of Rove, Rice and Rumsfeld and see sociopaths, a sinister dishonesty. The same for the shifty Cheney and the smirking Bush.

The leading Democrats look even worse. Joe Liebermann looks like Chucky on ecstasy. Warmonger Hillary strikes me as the Lizzie Borden of presidential axe murderers posing as presidential candidates. What would Diogenes make of such a dishonest cast of characters?

So if we cannot trust our national leaders, who or what can we trust? 

Since I wrote my essay Buy Gold—Before They Sell Out for STR , gold has risen approximately $120 per ounce. Silver sold for approximately $6.50 when I wrote a follow up essay, Silver: The Precious Metal That Spurred the Conquest of a Continent for STR and now it approached $10 an ounce. Of course, in that same amount of time, if you had been buying real estate and “flipping” houses—buying and reselling them a year or two later for 50-100% profit—you would have profited even greater.

But are we reliving those nostalgic, heady days of yesteryear, reliving the summer of 1929, when speculators bought stock on margin without a care in the world, weeks before the crash?  Is it déjà vu all over again?

Imagine being the last one standing in a game of musical chairs. Imagine being one of those hapless stock speculators on Black Monday - 1929.  Lots of very smart people--smarter about money than me--say the US is overdue for just such an economic meltdown.

What happens if BushCo starts another war and petroleum supplies are slowed to a trickle? Anyone been on a freeway in Houston or Phoenix lately? The entire US economy depends on a steady surge of oil, a non-stop Niagara or the gears of our economy grind to a halt.

I just got back from that big casino called greater Phoenix . I spent a couple days working on tract homes in that booming real estate roulette game in the big beige valley.

Spoke to a woman who bought 20 acres of desert scrubland five years ago at a thousand an acre and now its worth 60 grand. Per acre!

I suggested she sell an acre or two (or ten) before the war with Iran happens. If the mad mullahs in Tehran and Washington DC start trading missiles in 50-60 days, and close the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf , oil might get a little scarce.

And real estate, especially in the far-flung desert scrublands, might be less desirable. Fewer tract home feeding frenzies if an oil shortage causes inflation.

Buy gold, silver, euros, bicycles, cartons of chunky soup, shotgun shells or whatever (I can afford the chunky soup and bicycle). 

WHY WAR WITH IRAN ? 

The probable war with Iran is not about nukes. Repeat: The War With Iran Is Not About Nukes. It is all about the US dollar, however. Propping up the weak US dollar against the threat—by those shifty Iranians—to open their own stock exchange and sell oil in euros and weaken the dollar.

The nuke scare is an excuse, an ingenious government propaganda device for control of the masses. Scare ‘em and terrorize ‘em but nary a word about the Iran Oil Bourse. The Real reason why Iran is the next target has nothing to do with nukes. But nukes might be used, of course, by us or Israel .

In the very first day of a war with Iran , I expect the Neocons to mini-nuke the new Iran stock exchange. A literal shot across the bow and a warning to any other upstart country ( Venezuela ) to toe the line. Or else.

In the meantime buy gold, silver, euros, chunky soup, shotgun shells or whatever. Regarding the real estate market: “Caveat emptor.” Let the buyer beware.