Has the economic nightmare that America is now entering been completely and totally foreseeable to anyone who was willing to look at the facts objectively? Has the generation now running the United States recklessly destroyed the financial future of us all? Will future generations look back and curse those who lived at this time for saddling them with so much debt? When it comes to the financial condition of this country, most people want to make it into a Republican/Democrat thing, but the truth is that both parties have done a miserable job of managing the nation's finances. It would have been very helpful if at least one of the political parties had been the least bit interested in getting America's financial house in order, but that was not the case. Instead, both Republicans and Democrats worked together to pile up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. They worked together to build a "global economy" that shipped a huge percentage of our manufacturing overseas. They worked together to build a system that highly favors the biggest corporations and the international banking elite. Now American stands on the precipice of a devastating economic collapse, and many of our politicians seem actually shocked about what is happening.
But they shouldn't be. All of this has been building for a long, long time. All of this was avoidable. The fact that the economic problems of the United States have been so clearly foreseeable and yet nothing was done to stop them has a lot of people very, very upset. Among those who are extremely upset are some of our readers.....
Suetonious:
How long has this been obvious? Certainly was obvious to me even in the 80’s. The demographics just weren’t there to support my generation. But I knew implicitly that we would be the ones stuck with the bill – with the scumbags in DC turning around, right about now, to tell us with feigned shock – “Gee, there’s no money for you guys! How did that happen?”
I could lay all the blame on these criminals, and most of it DOES lay with them. However, I have also directly and constantly experienced wilful obtuseness and ignorance on the part of Americans, with their fingers in their ears and their tongues flapping about with “LaLaLaLaLa” – every time anyone tries to point out the blatantly obvious regarding the financial End Game.
Americans are about to get what they have denied as impossible because it was not pleasant. Now there’s some real good thinkin’. Hope they get a clue in a hurry. Americans may be decent people – but that don’t count for much when it’s coupled with voluntary pig-ignorance.
Steve:
So many people missing the point…
There are no GOOD jobs out there. People work for money not for jelly beans. Young people are “lazy” because they don’t want to flip burgers for minimum wage or less? Are you Kidding? What percentage of people over 35 are willing to do this? The kid that made my BigMac today looked to be all of 14 so I’m guessing not too many. It’s about the money people! The generation that came before us is the one responsible for rampant inflation, the trade deficit, and the general dismantling of a once great nation and the so called family unit. YOU have left us with NOTHING! YOU have sold our birth right to the highest bidder. YOU have made us the future slaves of Chinese overlords. YOU are the people unwilling to hire the young at a wage they can actually live on.
If you are over 50 and you are reading this have the decency to feel shame for what you’ve done to your children and grandchildren. We are certainly ashamed of YOU!
DavidB:
Wake up – it’s not bloody marxists – it’s your own financial, industrial and political leaders that have caused this mess and you all sat back and revelled in it. For years, America has lived high on the benefits of globalisation (heaps of cheap imports) while not realising that there is a price to pay. That price is the wholesale export of your manufacturing to Asia and Mexico – along with the jobs. These have largely been replaced by low wage service jobs. The only alternative in order to maintain your standard of living has been to resort to debt – hence the credit crunch. The credit crunch is only a symptom.
As a non American – I can only wonder at how you spend more than the rest of the world combined on defence while your economy and financial stability collapses around you.
Dan:
It is clear that it is a combination of many things that have brought us to this point in US. Illegal immigration, huge government intrusion, over-regulation, health care costs, frivolous litigation, etc., I can understand why companies move overseas. Ridiculous taxation, regulation, intrusion, health care mandates, loss of freedom, etc. Just some of the things contributing to US economic trouble.
Get govt. out of the way and private sector would fix most of the problem and most Americans would benefit from the fix. Those left out of the prosperity of America, usually want to be left out. There are exceptions, and injustice it out there. But it isn’t Govt. that should deal with the social ills of our world. Where is the Church?
Lunatic Fringe:
From the edge, a brief explanation…
Anyway that’s the problem. USA debt has the same problem. At 100% debt to GDP, the Fed manufactures money out of debt. The problem is supply. When the world’s greatest economy starts to crater it takes the collective action of every nation in the world to prop us up. So far, Japan, China, and Great Britain have done so. If their economies continue to deteriorate, they won’t be able to. Japan and China are in a death dance with us. To save their existing treasury investments they must continue to invest in us or lose what is on deposit. The USA has an ungodly pipeline debt of 60 trillion coming due and payable in the form of Social Security and Medicare payments. California it seems, is a petri dish, a sneak preview of our coming collapse.
That’s why expressing debt to GDP is really a pretty antiquated way of seeing the problem, although that has been a universally accepted practice. Can we survive at 125% or 150% debt to GDP? Sure. As long as the Fed isn’t audited.
If that audit ever occurs, and TRUST ME IT NEVER WILL, the world will suffer a complete and total collapse. What we don’t know, it seems, isn’t hurting us yet.
Cat Callahan:
One thing that is not allowed is for people to wipe the slate clean and begin again. The republican congress enacted DRACONIAN bankruptcy legislation so that if you declare bankruptcy, your creditors can still come after you indefinitely for collect! Check it out! My husband and I are physically disabled and my husband has a fatal illness. My parents had left a small inheritance for our medical expenses. It is now confiscated before I have even ‘inherited’ it! They want us to have a good life? Bolderdash! Or they wouldn’t allow medical bills that bankrupt the average working person./ Try finding a could where the husband works 2 jobs and the wife three, who live frugally, and still can not pay off medical bills. If I get sick again, I think I will just welcome death.
Rick:
I’m back in school myself working on an associates degree because my “hard-working” and “genius” parents knew exactly what career I was going into. Then, when that didn’t pan out and I wouldn’t continue taking their marching orders, they threw me out on the street to fend for myself. I did that successfully for three years and put up with all their bitching and abuse about not working “hard enough” or “expecting other people to take care of me.”
Fortunately, I discovered that I have a great aunt and uncle who have been letting me live with them and go back to school. I’ve got a decent part time job at the school, but I am barely making enough money to pay rent to them. My advice is don’t give up and don’t be afraid to ask for help from family and friends. I would probably be living in a card board box if not for my aunt and uncle helping me.
For all those people saying why can’t you get 3 or 4 jobs to support yourself, I hate to break it to you, but employers are not going to hire someone who is working at another place and plan their schedule around them. They are only going to hire employees that are available 24/7 and not have to pay them above minimum wage.
This is the major crisis of our times right now. Instead of blaming and bickering, let’s do what we can to help everyone out.
This all started when we started to blow-off parts of the Constitution, mainly the part that says money shall only be of gold and silver – that right there sealed our fate which is finally after 80 years coming due.
Welcome back you were missed.
I am over 50. I have preached to my dumbed down idiotic tv addicted sheeple friends for years that this country is going down, just look at the federal deficit, not to mention numerous other factors. 90+% of them to this day see no evil. And my friends ages vary from their 20′s to the 70′s. It’s not JUST my generation. The younger generation votes, they stood by as the criminals in DC shipped our jobs out to China, Mexico, fill in the blank.
I have voted Libertarian for many years to no avail. I have given up. I have no money, and very little income. I am not expecting anything good to happen to me, or any american, except the elite.
A revolution, we tried that with Ron Paul, how did that work out? The sheeple love their servitude. They are so dumbed down, they don’t the difference in a gold coin and a brass coin. Who’s on American Idol tonight?
We are so screwed.
Can’t wait till the collapse! It has to happen to clear out the dead wood. Better plant a garden right away.
The gov’t knows full well that its policies have been hurting many Americans, but it’s too corrupt to do anything about it, because politicians are dependant on special interest groups to finance their campaigns.
They also watch polls and know that most Americans are unhappy about the economy, the rising cost and quality of health care, and the bailout of Wall Street crooks.
So they try to convince us that they are on our side and have enacted “reforms” to make things better.
The only way to change the situation is to vote for 3rd parties.
The current crisis is about 30 years in the making and you can thank first our government and secondly the corporations. You know the litany:
1. deregulation of industry, allowing them to do as they please and get rid of all competition despite monopoly laws
2. trade agreements that screw us
3. giving tax breaks to corporations that move their headquarters outside the U.S. and which outsource jobs
4. allowing millions of illegal aliens to come across the borders
5. busting unions
6. allowing corporate raiders to dismantle productive companies, fire all the workers, and steal their pension money–and making it legal
7. allowing the financial industry to charge usurious rates for credit cards
8. allowing savings banks to become investment banks so they could risk other people’s money rather than their own
9. Watchdog groups like the SEC, which is really an old boys club, so instead of doing it’s job it enables fraud and risk
10. Knowing the problems, like toxic derivatives, but doing nothing about it because the insiders make a lot of money while municipalities and school systems go broke.
11. spending money on the war machine because contractors get rich while people die
And this is only a partial list….
1. Peter Schiff of EuroPAC(see “mortgage bankers speech, 2006″ on youtube)
2. Michael Burry of Scion Capital (see his blog)
3. Congressman Dr. Ron Paul (see and speech on fiscal or monetary policy before 2008)
Steve, you are correct, there are fewer and fewer quality jobs in the United States today.
However, you are incorrect to blame all of this on those Americans over 50 years old for the problems this country faces today.
Most current adults 50 and over, about 99.99% of them HAD NO SAY in what the “elite” have managed to do to this nation over the last 40 years.
The bailing out of the Wall street elite banksters is, in my view, one of the most shocking crimes I have ever witnessed. It has cost this nation and all of you younger Americans trillions of dollars. Your future was stolen by these people.
Whoes fault is it? I have a question for you? Where the heck has your generation been while this has been going on?
Why were all of you not out in the streets stopping this. Real change always comes from the young.
I’m over 50. I am irritated with our country’s economic situation but I feel no personal shame. My wife and I live within our means, if we can’t afford something, we don’t buy it. The only exception to this is a mortgage and we saved and paid off our mortgage last year. We have no debts other than monthly credit card bills (which we pay off every month). We’re not wealthy but we have savings (for now at least).
My wife lost her job last year, she worked several years for a large trust company but didn’t survive a huge layoff. She is looking for work. She is in her early 50s and it seems like a wasteland out there.
I have a modest state job. I am eligible to retire now and draw state retirement pay, but it wouldn’t be very much (about 50% of what I make now) and I am worried about the state retirement system surviving the current economic mess. I’m going to continue working as long as the job is available for me. At least we have insurance through my job.
We live a comfortable life but it’s definitely not an extravagant life. A few years before the economy crashed I considered quitting my govt job and working as a consultant because many of my friends were doing this and making a lot of money. I never did this and now I’m glad I didn’t, many of these friends are unemployed now.
I don’t know what the future will bring for us. We aren’t miserable but we are concerned.
Fractional reserve banking is the cancer that killed the host. Virtually every new dollar is borrowed into existence, and therefore has debt attached. Banksters have continuously attacked the U.S. and won in 1913 with Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Era (funded by the Morgan Banking Interests). The 16′th (Income Tax) and the Federal Reserve, work together, where the Income tax is the reserve requirement of a private bank, the Federal Reserve. Tarp is a good example, of how the taxpayers back up this private banking system. Ellen Brown’s book, Web of Debt, goes into the history is detail, and should be read by all American’s. The book also describes the way out of our predicament. Abraham Lincoln used Sovereign Banking Principles, saving our country, under conditions more dire than today’s. Read the book or go to her website, WebofDebt
@sharonsj
A few points, on a lot of things I agree but…
Unions are NOT always a good thing. The garbage workers in Seattle want to make on average $105,000 a year… No education, no real skills needed. I have 4 years of trade school and 8 years or experience. I barely clear that amount. Teachers don’t get anywhere near that, then again I don’t allow my kids to be made stupid by our education system either.
On your point #7, you are borrowing money from them, they dictate the terms. Don’t like it? Don’t use them. I use credit cards like cash, I’ve never carried a balance because I know how to manage my money. Though stating this makes me a rare person in the US based on what has been happening. Though now I will have to get rid of my credit cards because I was good and used them properly. Now if I don’t carry a balance I will have to pay a fee. Thanks. I’ll stick to cash/silver!
The problem isn’t either party its BOTH. They both sold us down the river. It’s time to retake the country by peaceful ways. But we’re screwed. More then half of the people in this country do not pay any federal income tax. That means they won’t want to change the system. Nor will all those on food stamps want to bite the hand that feeds them. Retaking the country would involve making them spend within their means. Flat tax! Everyone pays into the system, you’ll see how small it can get very quickly when everyone has to pay in. And the yearly tax rate is based on what “features” people wanted the previous year. So when it ends up 50% of your income is going to pay for government “services” you’ll see people flip out.
In 1999, I read a book called “The Coming Economic Earthquake” by Larry Burkett. He outlined exactly what is happening now, except he thought it was going to happen ten years earlier. I pulled it off the bookshelf just last week and re-read it. It’s unraveling just as he explained it would. Too bad MANY people laughed at him when the book first came out 11 years ago…since the USA then seemed to go on a bull run. So yeah, there were people who warned us and KNEW this was coming. But did most of them listen? Nope. Just like now.
I, too, am 52 years old, and lately I’ve been reading more & more about how it was ‘our’ fault.
Our generation brought you the computer, the world wide web, and a whole host of other economic engine drivers. I ask generation X: What is your contribution to America’s future? Sexting and Playstation are’nt real good income generators!
I hear the rumblings of angry Americans, but will they have the fortitude to do what is necessary?
Example: Forced repatriation of all illegals, bankers-looters go to jail, politicians actually held to account or tarred a feathered.
This will get ugly.
Odds are the government will get us into a wider war to divert attention. Expect it.
how in the **** Im responsible for the economy failing just because iam 55 years old. i did nothing but was a dedicated worker and provided for my family. with 27 years of service and 18 years perfect attendance record. was laid off in 2003, with no severance pay and lost my pension due to the laws of the company filing bankruptcy. I feel sorry for the younger generation, once they get the time to look up from viewing their ******* x box all day and night. This whole cluster **** we call usa is going to hit them square in the ass. i proud to be a soviet or an american its all the same. have a good day