The Great Depression Of 2008? It can't happen to us...Can it?

The Great Depression Of 2008? It can't happen to us...Can it?

www.marketoracle.co.uk

“ In the 1920s, Americans consumers and businesses relied on cheap credit, the former to purchase consumer goods such as automobiles and furniture and the later for capital investment to increase production. This fueled strong short-term growth but created consumer and commercial debt. People and businesses who were deeply in debt when price deflation occurred or demand for their product decreased often risked default. Many drastically cut current spending to keep up time payments, thus lowering demand for new products. Businesses began to fail as construction work and factory orders plunged.”

Sound familiar anyone? See any price deflation going on? The Wilshire 5000 has only lost about 2.5 TRILLION dollars in value in the last two months or so. What about the loss in home equity? Another trillion or two? Who knows, but I think you get the point. We are seeing almost to the final utterance the same play we saw unfold in 1929. Were those folks any more prepared for the Great Depression than we are today? I'd argue that while they were perhaps a bit better equipped to provide for their own sustenance that American society in the 1920's was as complacent as we are today. When the realization of history's coup de grace hits, we will be caught as unaware as our ancestors were back in 1929.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 11-2-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

Some very good points made. Complacency, and people's refusal to think it can happen again are STILL common place. In fact I see people on this very board shrugging off our economic situation like it's just some small road bump that will go away and is nothing to worry about.

These wheels have been set into motion for some time, and there are many similarities here that preceded our last great depression. I for one am VERY concerned for our country.

www.marketoracle.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 11-2-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective

I for one am VERY concerned for our country.

That makes two of us. We are about to face some tough times ahead. I would encourage everyone to prepare as well as possible. I would also suggest buying some gold or silver in you can. The dollar ain't looking too strong as of late.

reply to post by DimensionalDetective

I cannot say that I know too much about the history of the great depression. But I am aware of a few trends that lead to it. The fact is, we are going right back. Americans have a short attention span, which allows them to be easily fooled as tey easily forget. Americans also have a problem accepting the fact that they live in a dreamworld of fantasy security. Even after 9/11 Americans still have this "Untouchable" arrogance, and ignorance about them. And this will aide in catching the nation by surprise when the proverbial poo hits the fan.

Originally posted by kleverone

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective

I for one am VERY concerned for our country.

That makes two of us. We are about to face some tough times ahead. I would encourage everyone to prepare as well as possible. I would also suggest buying some gold or silver in you can. The dollar ain't looking too strong as of late.

I second that motion. Buy gold. Gold doesn't lose value that easily, and lately it's only going up.

All the numbers seem to point towards a depression. The current level of U.S. debt is historical. Here is an interesting link that paints a fairly accurate picture.

www.alkalizeforhealth.net...

And it's not a pretty picture.

The Great Depression Pt. 2?

Who knows? We'll see.

reply to post by projectvxn


Where can you buy gold besides jewelry stores? Sorry for being ignorant, I've never looked into just buying gold..

Not to be a gloom and doomer but we can't deny this is a probability. If the Middle East dumps our dollar in favor of the Euro (and so many signs seem to be pointing to this), it looks like that would devalue the dollar in a heart beat. Companies also outsource so much and there are many illegal aliens that take what they earn back home. Both cause money to be spent in foreign economies while very little is cycled back into the American economy.

Then it seems there will be more taxes implemented in the near future while previous taxes that were abolished will be put back into place. Having to pay more money to the government means less money for the people to put into circulation by purchasing commercial goods. And of course interest rates and insurance. And here is an interesting little factoid: It costs more to make a penny than it is actually worth. You would never think about it but all those little pennies people save in jars actually cost the government quite a bit to mint more because people aren't putting them back in circulation. Not to mention social security is in shambles, our deficit is astronomical, and the welfare system is a joke. The list goes on.

We're basically digging our own grave because all of these little things are adding up and no one is doing anything effective to stop it.

Many will tell you that such events are just ramdom, market forces etc. well know its not its planned and executed on a regular basis and has been fo avery long time. The parasites who are running the show do this to fleece all of us just so they can get richer and more powerful. So yes it will happen again to America and very soon, once the parasites have rung the country dry they will move on to a fresh victim.

Originally posted by kleverone
... I would also suggest buying some gold or silver in you can. The dollar ain't looking too strong as of late.

Originally posted by projectvxn
... I second that motion. Buy gold. Gold doesn't lose value that easily, and lately it's only going up.

what you might consider when youy get in the market for gold
Is that the IMF (international monetary fund) in their meeting last week
decided to sell some of their stash of gold bullion, which is a sizeable stash of the metal...
some 3217.5 Tons of Gold.
I didn't read just how much gold they will sell on world markets,
but the word is that the IMF will be selling gold starting in April '08...

so if they try to flood the market like the central banks used to do, the
price should go down maybe $50-100 bucks an ounce...
that sounds like a Buying opportunity to me!

but after the IMF sell off, probably lasting 2-3 months or even longer,
but definitely within a '1 year window'...the price of Gold should return to the upward trend towards +$1,000 per oz.



but on the other hand, this whole thing may be a ploy to help reduce global inflation, and the IMF actually only meant they intended
to sell a certain percentage of the 3,217.5 tons of gold reserves they hold...
instead of actually selling it ~~ and busting the market bubble in gold value

Google search money markets. Or look for gold refiners on line and you can buy pure gold from them directly at market cost.

I have to admit that this has been on my mind for some time.

We had the great internet stock bubble burst in the late 1990s. The fed lowered the interest rate and fueled by this low interest rate we had the great real estate run up in prices, well into the redicioulous range.

Now, we've had that bubble burst. Home sales have dropped along with the prices of houses.

The economy is slowing and companies are not hiring.

I don't know what the future holds but right now, it kind of looks glum.

The real question is how does one prepare for a depression?

Should we stock up on food?

Should we convert some of our money into gold and silver in case the dollar becomes useless?

Should we make sure that our veggie garden is planted?

How can we learn from past depressions?

LOL! And here we have our ever-delusional Decider giving a speech today on how our economy is "sound over the long haul".

Bubble-boy-Bush at his finest, completely insulated from reality.

reply to post by Wildbob77


Food - beans, vegi oil, rice - if properly contained and stored will last several years

Water
Ammo
Guns

Gold and Silver will only get you so far... and you can't eat it... but you can sling lead

[edit on 11-2-2008 by pityocamptes]

Ladies and Gentlemen our economy is going down the tubes. I've been saying this since the February 2007 and finally the poo is hitting the fan.

Ill do this by 2 steps one telling you why I think the economy is going in the tubes and 2 telling you why I think people are hiding info. Ill start with the reasons.

Reason 1 in the past 10 wages for the top 3% has gone up close to 20% while the other 97% wages have gone stagnant. I feel thats off because the people on capital hill have voted for wage increases 7 times since then. Voted for one minimum wage increase. Hmmm.

Reason 2 energy prices have soared over the past 10 years. Gas, Oil, Natural Gas, Electricity...and so on and so forth. I think it was 10 years ago i was paying .89 a gallon for gas now Im at 3.25.....its odd cause yet without this minimum wage increase people would have to work an hour just to pay one gallon of gas.

Reason 3 the dollar is tanking and it is only going to get worse. Especially now that China (Our great friend in the east..NOT!!) has come out and said they will be dumping our currency...we all knew this was coming. I dont think I need to explain what a weak dollar does as far as the negatives if you need me to let me know...but I will say on the flip side it does help exports but overall a weak dollar is not good for the economy.

Reason 4 Food and housing prices have soared Im not going to go into to much details on this but hopefully with this crappy housing situation we are in now we will see some nice corrections on the housing prices.

Reason 5 alot of our industry jobs are being sent over to china and alot of our customer service jobs are being sent over to India. This causes alot of good paying jobs to go somewhere else. Most of the big corporations do this I dont need to list names but Im sure if you have looked on a toybox you will see where it is made or if you have called for customer service you have got John Smith with an Indian accent.

Reason 6 The credit crunch is for real and banks are hurting right now.


I personally think that unemployment is way higher than the government plays off also.

Can it happen to us? It already is. Here are some essays to consider:

The Planned Collapse of America

The research revealed that there were a multitude of crises that were about to intersect in America's near future. Not the least of these converging catastrophes was a rapidly approaching breakdown of both American capitalism and democracy. The collapse was a natural result of globalism and monopoly capitalism. The basic greed that powers the system eroded the American political and economic structures, exposing the foundation of immorality and unfairness that amplifies the social unrest. The Stanford researchers clearly predicted that the American economy was destined to collapse from its own dead weight. The data also showed that that economic collapse was to be accompanied by disastrous social repercussions, such as rioting and upheaval, which would lead us into a "garrison state."

The thing about this research is that this work has confirmed that our economy based on parasitic capitalism, where the small elite sits atop the heap of men and gorges on their lifeblood, is destroying the social fabric of America. This system is based on a stacked deck, where the top elite always reap the profits that are made to rise to the top through the corporate profits-based system. The research confirmed that the growing inequities of such a system were ever increasing and with them, elevated social tensions. A system based on usury and putting everyone in the "poor house" is an economic order that is guaranteed to produce a democratic revolution, whenever the misery index of the armed populace exceeds the limits that they are willing to peacefully bear, without striking back at the source of their misery

Jim Kuntsler

This new depression, which I call The Long Emergency, will play out against the background of a society that has pissed away its oil endowment, bulldozed its factories, arbitraged its productive labor, destroyed both family farms and the commercial infrastructure of main street, and trained its population to become overfed diabetic TV zombie "consumers" of other peoples' productivity, paid for by "money" they haven't earned.

Life After The Oil Crash

"Is the banking system entirely dependent on ever-increasing amounts of cheap oil?"

Yes.

The relationship between the supply of oil and natural gas and the workings of the global financial system is arguably the key issue to understanding and dealing with Peak Oil. In fact this relationship is far more important than alternative sources of energy, energy conservation, or the development of new energy technologies, all of which are discussed in detail on page two of this site. In short, the global financial system is entirely dependent on a constantly increasing supply of oil and natural gas.

The Long Road Down

To see past mythology to the hard realities of the future takes a clear sense of our predicament. More than six billion people live on a planet that can support one billion indefinitely. We can't meet everyone's needs now, and the resources to maintain even today's standards of living are running short. Resource wars have already begun - the 2003 US invasion of Iraq may someday be recalled as the first of the Oil Wars. Meanwhile global warming boosts the cost of natural disasters so fast that one of the world's largest reinsurance firms, Swiss RE, warns that this all by itself will bankrupt the world economy before 2060.

The Slow Crash

...the crash will be slower and more complex than the kind of people who predict crashes like to predict. It won't be like falling off a cliff, more like rolling down a rocky hill. There won't be any clear before, during, or after. Most people living during the decline and fall of Rome didn't even know it. We're told to draw a line at the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, but to Romans at the time it was just one event -- the Visigoths came, they milled around, they left, and life went on. After the 1929 stock market crash, respectable voices said it was a temporary adjustment, that the economy was still strong. Only years later, when we knew they were wrong, could we draw a line at 1929.

I suggest we're already in the fall of civilization. In 2004 the price of oil doubled, bankruptcies and foreclosures accelerated, global food stockpiles fell to record lows despite high harvests, an apocalyptic religious cult hacked an election to tighten their control of the world's most powerful country, and we had record numbers of hurricanes and tornadoes -- and a big tsunami to top it off. If every year from here to 2020 is half as eventful, we'll be living in railroad cars, eating grass, and still waiting for the big crash we've been led to expect from watching movies designed to push our emotional buttons and be over in two hours…

As energy gets more expensive and the electrical infrastructure decays, blackouts will be more frequent and last longer, but power will come back on. By the time the big grids go down permanently, the little grids, patched together from local sources, will be ready to take their place. They will be weaker, less reliable, and more expensive, and they won't cover the slums, but by then we'll all be experts at living without refrigerators and running laptop computers from car batteries scavenged from junked SUV's and recharged with solar panels. Electricity is a luxury, not a necessity. When the lights go out, we won't go berzerk -- we'll go to bed earlier.

Likewise with gasoline. The oil's not running out -- it's just getting more scarce and expensive. People who want it will not form motorcycle gangs that chase tankers and fight to the last man. They'll do what my dad did in 1973 and what they're doing now in Iraq -- wait six hours for a fill-up. If you already know how to get by with a bicycle, you just won't have as many cars to deal with.

Water supplies are mostly gravity-fed. If something stops the flow, someone will be fixing it. Even the worst places, like Phoenix or Las Vegas, will not suddenly and permanently run out of water. As with electricity and fuel, water will get lower quality, more expensive, and unpredictably available. People will learn to store it and to stop wasting it by watering lawns and washing cars and #ting in drinking water. Adaptable people will learn to catch rainwater. With only 12 inches a year, a 10 foot square metal roof feeding a storage tank will gather 100 cubic feet, or about 800 gallons, enough for one person to have more than two gallons a day.

Food is more difficult. It rarely falls from the sky, and industrial agriculture can't possibly continue to feed everyone. It would be easy to feed even our present bloated population if we all learned how to grow little gardens and trays of sprouts and bathtub algae, but that's not going to happen. Populations have died in famines before and will do so again. The lie here is that the food supply will end suddenly and permanently, when really, like everything else, it will end in a series of small collapses and partial recoveries…

This is my personal experience with the failing economy.

I have been in business for 25yrs designing and manufacturing various products targeting individuals with disposable income; Ceramics, Jewelry, custom musical instruments, furniture, fine art sculpture etc.

I market my work thru wholesale trade fairs. This year the markets that my business hinges on, were down more than anytime since I have been in business. I didn't even cover my expenses. Normally I can take enough orders to cover my entire year.

Anyone that believes the financial propaganda put out by Fox News is a damn fool.

It's a brave new world, welcome to the monkey house.

With what little disposable income I have left and my tax rebate check; I'm buying ammo.

reply to post by kosmicjack


I'm glad you posted that. It is a fine reality check...Ammo and MREs here I come.