Does your family have an economic disaster plan? If not, why not? By now, most people know that very hard economic times are coming. No, America is not going to turn into a post-apocalyptic war zone where motorcycle gangs ravage the populace next week, but the truth is that it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the U.S. economic system (and indeed the entire world economic system) is in the process of dying. For decades we have lived far beyond our means by borrowing insane amounts of money, but the party is ending and now many of us are going to get to experience what it means to live below our means. The golden days of the U.S. economic machine are gone, and now we are moving into a time when we are going to reap the fruit of the incredibly foolish economic policies of the past hundred years. Meanwhile, the two major political parties will continue to play the American people against each other. The Democrats will insist that everything will be great if we just give them control. The Republicans will insist that everything will be great if we just give them control. But the truth is that both political parties have had numerous chances over the past 50 years, and each of them have blown them badly. Both parties have had a hand in piling up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, both parties have been complicit in shipping our jobs and our factories off to China and to dozens of third world nations, both parties have dramatically expanded the size of government and the welfare state when they were in control, and both parties have continually handed more power to the big banks and to the Federal Reserve. We built an entire economy based on paper money and a gigantic spiral of debt and now the wheels are starting to come off and people are starting to panic. We are truly going to pay the price for decades of foolish decisions. (Read More...)
Will Thousands Of Police Layoffs Unleash Chaos And Anarchy Across America?
Thousands of police officers have been laid off all across America since the current economic crisis began. Thousands more are getting ready to be laid off. So could we be on the verge of a new era of chaos and anarchy in America as crime runs wild and there are just far too few police to respond to it all? That is the message that one blood-smeared billboard in Stockton, California is trying to get across. Paid for by the Stockton, California police union, the message of the billboard is chillingly clear: “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying off cops.” As state, city and local governments across the United States continue to be devastated by the ongoing economic crisis, budget cuts are becoming much deeper and police forces have suddenly become a very popular target. (Read More...)
The U.S. Economy Is A Dead Horse And The American People Are Starting To Get Really Pissed Off And Frustrated
The economic frustration of the American people is reaching a fever pitch. Millions of Americans can’t seem to get a good job no matter what they do. Millions of others are working as hard as they can but find that they keep coming up short at the end of the month. Record numbers of Americans are still going bankrupt. Record numbers of Americans are still losing their homes. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is a dead horse at this point. It just doesn’t have any more to give. At this point the U.S. economy is like an aging rock star that requires larger and larger doses of drugs each night just to be able to perform. The U.S. economy is addicted to “drugs” such as debt and government stimulus, and years ago those things really supercharged the U.S. economic system, but at this point they aren’t provoking much of a response at all. In fact, the things that once “stimulated” the economy are now slowly killing it. But the vast majority of the American people do not understand this. All they know is that the economy is broken and they want someone to “fix” it. (Read More...)
What Does The Financial Reform Bill Do Other Than Being Completely And Utterly Worthless?
Is it possible to write a 2,300 page piece of legislation that accomplishes next to nothing and is pretty much completely and utterly worthless? The answer is yes. Barack Obama has been trumpeting the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill as the “biggest rewrite of Wall Street rules since the Great Depression”, but the truth is that after the Wall Street lobbyists got done carving it up, the bill that was left was so watered down and so toothless that it essentially accomplishes nothing except creating even more government bureaucracy and even more mind-numbing paperwork. The bill is so riddled with loopholes for the big banks that it is basically the legislative equivalent of Swiss cheese. The Democrats in the Senate were ecstatic when they announced that they had secured the 60 votes needed to pass this legislation, but when they are asked about what the financial reform bill will do, most of them are left stammering for some kind of cohesive response. The sad truth is that most of them probably don’t understand the bill and none of them will probably ever read the entire thing. (Read More...)
Economic Problems?
With each passing news cycle, it seems like the economic headlines just keep getting worse. And unfortunately, the highly integrated global economy that we have constructed means that what happens on one side of the world is going to very likely have a big impact on the other side of the world. A meltdown in New York or Los Angeles is going to affect London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo. That is just the way the world works now. Back in 2007 and 2008, the financial crisis that began in the United States devastated economies across the globe. So are there any economic problems brewing out there right now that could send another wave of panic across the globe? (Read More...)
What To Do
Today, more Americans than ever are absolutely convinced that we are headed for an economic collapse. After all, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in economics to understand that American consumers, American businesses, local governments, state governments and the U.S. federal government are all drowning in debt. It would be hard enough to deal with all of this debt during good economic times, but these are not good economic times. In fact, right now the U.S. economy is being pounded by an unprecedented number of economic problems. Tens of millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed, 40 million Americans are on food stamps, the U.S. real estate crash continues to get worse, and the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to drag that entire region, and perhaps all of the United States, into a devastating economic depression. So these days it is fairly easy to convince Americans that really hard economic times are coming. But now an increasingly large number of people have a new question. They want to know what to do about all of this. In fact, probably the biggest group of questions I receive from readers is regarding what to do in order to prepare for the economic collapse that is coming. People are tired of just talking about all of these problems and they want an action plan. (Read More...)
The Russian Bear Awakens
Today most Americans consider the United States to be “the sole remaining superpower” – absolutely unparalleled economically and militarily. But the truth is not anything close to that. As we detailed in a previous article, China has become a very dominant economic and military superpower. But there is another world superpower that the American people and the American media are not taking seriously. The Russian Bear has awakened, and yet most people in the U.S. think of Russia as a Cold War opponent that we “defeated” and which is now a shell of its former self. The recent Russian spy case is a perfect example of the tremendous lack of respect which the American public has for Russia these days. It is almost as if the media is saying: “Oh look, isn’t it so cute that these little Russians are spying on us as if the Cold War was still going on?” But the truth is that it is a massive error to underestimate Russia. Today it is a fact that Russia is stronger both economically and militarily than it ever has been before. (Read More...)
Recession 2010?
If you watch any mainstream news program these days, it is almost a certainty that someone will mention the word “recession” before a half hour passes. In fact, it seems like almost everyone is either predicting that we are going into a recession, or they are warning of the need to avoid a recession or they are proclaiming that we are still in a recession. So will the U.S. economy once again be in recession in 2010? When you consider all the signs that are pointing that way, the evidence is compelling. The truth is that there is bad economic news wherever you turn. There is bad news in the housing industry. There is bad news in the financial markets. There is bad news in the banking system. There is bad news coming out of Europe. There are even signs that the bubble in China may be about to burst. Plus, the economic impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could end up being the straw (or the gigantic concrete slab) that really breaks the camel’s back. So there are certainly a lot of pieces of news that “gloom and doom” economists can hang their hats on these days. There is a very dark mood in world financial markets right now, and it seems like almost everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. But does all of this really mean that we are looking at the start of another recession before the end of 2010? (Read More...)