It is obvious we are no longer practicing fiscal sanity, debt for generations, and no desire to even care about it, the only answers are tax us to death or print money..what ever happened to no debt now!!! I mean sell off washington dc first, the ones that sell the people the BS we have got into..cut off all rights of the federal “g” to raise any money, make states have balanced budgets and any savings from a fiscal responsible state could then be “allocated” by the state for specific federal programs..now federal programs is short for waste and rob you..lies and deceit..let me hold your cash..the federal “gangsta” is out of control...
I think the reason it was so easy for me to become a doom and gloomer back in 2007 is that it has always been the direction I've leaned.
I remember when I was in high school (graduated in 1972) I would tell my friends that the economy was like a family that always spent more than they earned to enjoy the life style they did. I said that if it was just a little more than they earned it could go on for a LONG time, especially if their wages kept increasing. But eventually, there would be a day of reckoning. Eventually the interest alone would be more than they could pay with their income.
I called it a hyperbolic curve then. What I meant was exponential growth. It is described really well here:
Imagine a magic pipette. It is magic because every drop of water that comes out of it will double in size every minute. So the first minute there is one drop, the second minute there are two drops, the third minute four drops, the fourth minute eight drops and so on… This is an example of exponential growth. Now, imagine a normal sized football stadium. In this stadium you are sitting on the seat at the very top of the stadium, with the best overview of the whole stadium. To make things more interesting, imagine the stadium is completely water-tight and that you cannot move from your seat. The first drop from the magic pipette is dropped right in the middle of the field, at 12pm. Here’s the question: Remembering that this drop grows exponentially by doubling in size every minute, how much time do you have to free yourself from the seat and leave the stadium before the water reaches your seat at the very top? Think about it for a moment. Is it hours, days, weeks, months?
The answer: You have exactly until 12:49pm. It takes this tiny magic drop less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water. This is impressive! But it gets better: At what time do you think the football stadium is still 93% empty? Take a guess.
The answer: At 12:45pm. So, you sit and watch the drop growing, and after 45 minutes all you see is the playing field covered with water. And then, within four more minutes, the water fills the whole stadium. This means that you think you are safe because it seems that you have plenty of time left, whereas due to the exponential growth you really have to take immediate action if you want to have any chance of getting out of this situation.
Personally, I think we are at 12:45 but are quickly approaching 12:46. That is, EVERYONE is starting to notice and panic is setting in. Europe is in trouble, China's cracks are finally becoming quite apparent and now the city bankruptcy dominoes are starting to fall (San Bernardino is California's third - they should start coming fast and furious now). We are living in very interesting times, but by this time next year this month will seem downright boring. I'm actually quite confident about that "prediction". It's really not rocket science.