Pretending that a Depression is coming is giving out some really poor investment advice.
The highways are packed because people have jobs and are making money. Flights are packed. Cars are selling. Home prices are up 12% nationwide in a year.
Major economic revolutions are in play, such as oilfield fracking, hyper-farming, 3D printing, DNA programming for new medical treatments such as benign HIV for childhood leukemia, Cloud Computing and Storage, Big Data, Web 3.0, electric cars, a private Space Race, and entertainment datastreaming services such as Netflix and HBO Go.
High-paying jobs are going unfilled because SLACKERS are too lazy and spoiled to move to work. Look at www.Rigzone.com for *thousands* of 6 figure jobs for people who don’t even have college degrees, for example.
Productivity is up.
...so the bottom line is that the U.S. economy is looking better each day.
However, a couple of great reasons to Prep are:
#1: MERS. Hyper-contagious new viri could change society overnight. And no, you won’t be able to go buy a handgun or ammo if you wait until cities start getting Quarantined. Hope you already bought some N-95 face masks!
#2: Near Earth Objects. NEOs are being discovered weekly, and two have made some disturbingly close passes to Earth so far this year.
One asteroid impact at the height of the Roman Empire changed History.
NEOs are low probability events, yet they have happened before (Tunkansta) and will impact again. If one hits, society will shift into a different sort of place overnight.
You won’t have electricity.
You won’t have gasoline stations.
You won’t have supermarkets.
You won’t have police response.
You won’t have prescription medicines.
Options for evacuating cities will be limited.
So it makes sense to have some level of preparation.
You left out EMP attack, just three or four weapons over the US would send us into a Mad Max Thunderdome world, a year after which only a small percentage would have survived.
Read One Second After. Scary book.
If all those economic positive developments will generate enough tax revenues to pay down our debts and cover all those SWAPS, derivatives, etc etc that banks are liable for (and taxpayers via FDIC) then all is well. Problem is the US has over 60 trillion in liabilities (fed, state, local gov debt) and I have not even started to add Soc Sec/Medicare/Medicaid unfunded liabilities to the mix yet. US GDP is about 15 trillion. Fracking, DNA, high tech innovations and etc is not going to cover these debts/liabilities. Wait till the Fed Reserve eases on the QE programs and bond buy backs and interest rates shoot up. Fed Reserve lost control and are at the mercy of bond vigilantes. Hint no more QE, market and bond prices crash, forcing the Fed to back track. While the US is trying to sort out its financial house the other major powers are not waiting for us. 2.5 percent GDP growth without accounting for inflation will not cover the 3 percent population growth. There are jobs in the fracking zones but not enough to cover the total number of people grad from HS and college. I do not think we will enter a Depression instantly but we are dying slowly. If job creation cannot cover population growth, in ten years what are we going to do with those who have no jobs or underemployed for ten years? The social and economic costs will add up. Gov and corporations do not help.
Pretending that a depression is not coming is really poor investment advise.
Interest rates are rising and even at just the small amount it has is ready bottoming out the mortgage market.
Between the the various city state and municipal governments being in did financial do-do the raising interest rates will soon be eating up the lion share of their tax revenues they will either have to raise taxes, which they already have raised again or again or cut spending to the bone.
The era of free money from eh FED can’t not continue, but when it stops the economic repercussions will be worse than a crackhead going cold turkey.
With nearly 50 million Americans on food stamps, 100 million on welfare, and no economic progress in sight, it won’t be long before the world as we have come to know it changes drastically.
When you go through the real numbers unemployment level– when part-time workers are included– is 14.3%–meaning that one in seven of every potential full-time employee in the U.S. economy is not able to earn a proper living wage–and thereby contribute to the snails-pace of economic growth.
It’s been months since even enough jobs were created to cover new people entering the workforce, much less jobs for those who are out of work the the types of jobs being created are overwhelmingly low paying what we use to call entry level positions and part time jobs. The part time will only grow as business are force to avoid the cost of Obamacare to make ends met.
And every day the Federal government its digs the debt hole just that much deeper, They are so deep now they have just about come out the other side.
I could go on, but believe me you ain’t seen nothing yet like what’s a coming.
You’re wrong and I can prove it.
It seems from what I read that the activity you see as signs of a recovering economy is for the most part built on the Fed’s Quantitative Easing, Stimulus or whatever they are currently calling the funny money being created out of thin air by Bernanke.
Just the mention that the Fed might someday slow down its creation of fiat currency caused a huge panic in the stock market recently.
Of course home prices are up. All of the really low end bargains have been snatched up. If home prices are up 12% that is only after they dropped 50% to 60% or more.
In my area, one of the hardest hit, most of the homes being bought are still from the foreclosure backlog. Most are being bought by large investors and converted to rentals or just being held as investments. This information is from a recent newspaper article analyzing the local housing market.
The sad truth is that the economy is still being proped up by the infusion of money from the Fed and would collapse overnight if the Fed just stopped.
And one way or another, it will have to stop someday.