Woah! A real SHTF thread on a LASER GEEK FORUM??!!! Regardless who started it or why. IMHO the paranoia is a bit justified. Never before has the American gov't taken such drastic measures to save it's self since the CIVIL WAR. Take it as you will , put bluntly, we are all in way over our heads:
Fact 1: We are currently losing 500,000 jobs a month. The unemployment dip, according to the person writing the piece, occurred because 600,000 people were paired from the workforce (tired of looking, benefits expired). Real unemployment is NOW over 20%. Note the cleaver uses of words to casually omit this fact from many newspapers.
Fact 2: US deficit stands at 1.3 trillion dollars and GROWING! that's DEFICIT, not NATIONAL DEBT, to give you an idea how much money that is, You may want to see here:
Visualizing One Trillion Dollars | MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice
Fact 3: The stock markes are being kept alive by a shell game! Go and check the daily trades, the musical chair trading stands out like a sore thumb...
Fact 4: The feds continue to monetize the debt by participating in their own little ponzi scheme of having others buy our debt, and quickly (secretely) re-purchasing the debt from them. (see above)
Fact 5: 72 banks have failed, many more are so deperate for CASH that they will give you 50, 100, 150, 200 Dollars to open a FREE checking account and keep it open for a year! The FDIC is in such dire straits, that they have asked for even more money.
Fact 6: Foreign nations have been releasing longer term treasuries, and are now purchasing short term notes, watch the after hours markets on kitko lately???
Fact 7: Fannie Mae just released info that they lost $14.8 billion in the 2nd quarter. OUCH!
Fact 8: Alt A loans begin resetting this year. Another housing collapse is imminent, this time it will take COMMERCIAL real estate markets with it too...
Fact 9: in case you missed it above... The commercial real estate loan bubble is to begin collapsing later this year.
Fact 10: A watchdog group says the cost to the US to save the failing banking institutions could cost $24 trillion! That is $80,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US! NOTE: that is EVERY ONE, not just TAX PAYERS!
Fact 11: The proposed cap and trade legislation AKA ACES bill, will bankrupt energy producing states (Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma), raise energy rates across the nation, and cost many thousands of jobs in the energy sector. Cheap energy is the key to a thriving economy, cheap and clan all the better, but the bill is not designed to do this- if you read it... It has one purpose, to artificially rise the cost of consumer goods and services so the inflation can be justified!
Fact 12: The proposed health care reform will destroy the insurance sector, and the many thousands employed in this sector. Not many tears for it, but without insurance what then? Ever been to a welfare office? You get what you pay for. The cost of mandating small business to provide health insurance will result in many more lost jobs too.
Fact 13: As of mid-July, there have been 1.5 million foreclosures: that is one foreclosure every 13 seconds. Are you one of them?
Fact 14: Through 2012, economists expect 9 million more foreclosures. That equals to another 2 trillion dollars of lost property value, not to mention a small city of HOMELESS people...
Fact 15: By the end of September, roughly 500,000 people will have exhausted their unemployment benefits. They will then be removed from the register as unemployed...
Fact 16: 33.8 million americans receive food stamps. That is 10% of the population, not counting the 4 million people in prisons around the country.
Fact 17: Latest economic news concerning the housing market say that there is a 5 year glut of unsold homes on the market today.
Fact 18: $108 Billion in commercial loans are in default since the 1st of the year. Default means more than 60 day PAST DUE! That's BILLION with a B people!
Fact 19: Advanta Corp (the credit card people) said their default rate hit 57%!!! And so it begins < better try and pay off your DEBT!!!!
Fact 20: The US GDP contracted at almost 6% in the FIRST QUARTER of this year. Anyone care to do a little algebra on that to project the slope/rate of decline??? OMFG!!!! The great depression didn't even do THAT!
Now, you can believe what you want. I believe facts.
I can list more, but it shouldn't take a degree in math to crunch the numbers a little and conclude we are SCREWED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!