Oil prices are down to about $47 a barrel and the stock market is plunging. Rich people are worried, and poor people are more resentful. The wealth gap widens and the dogs of war are barking. In 2015 we might be able to hold the flood tides back, which could be a bad thing – just like in 1928, things might not hit the fan until after the election, and that means we’ll have four years of incompetence before Populist ideals sweep the crooks out.
What’s been going on in the world is a shame, but there’s nothing you can do about it…except follow the lead of your kids, and become minimalist and anti-consumer and just like your parents – Depression-era folks that knew how to squeeze shards of soap together and make a loaf of bread last ten days.
If you haven’t tightened your belt already, you will be. I’ve got no retirement and most of my generation is the same, so we’re not concerned. Buy you, well, you’re lying in bed awake at night.
I’m assuming you have your retirement in some index funds, for I’m assuming you’re smart enough not to pay the extra 2% or so in fees for mutual funds. But either way, your retirement is pegged to the market, and if the market does badly, so do your golden years. What a pity.
What’s been going on in the world is a shame, but there’s nothing you can do about it…except follow the lead of your kids, and become minimalist and anti-consumer and just like your parents – Depression-era folks that knew how to squeeze shards of soap together and make a loaf of bread last ten days.
If you haven’t tightened your belt already, you will be. I’ve got no retirement and most of my generation is the same, so we’re not concerned. Buy you, well, you’re lying in bed awake at night.
I’m assuming you have your retirement in some index funds, for I’m assuming you’re smart enough not to pay the extra 2% or so in fees for mutual funds. But either way, your retirement is pegged to the market, and if the market does badly, so do your golden years. What a pity.
Of course you have no plan to get that market up, mainly because you have no plan to get oil up. For you’re not one of the yahoos that’s stupid enough to believe that falling oil prices are good for you, that paying 1/3 less for gas over the past year helps America. Sure, it might give you a few more cheap, plastic objects to put in your home, but isn’t that just adding one more straw to the camel’s back? How much do you owe in credit cards these days?
But it’s not the credit cards that are giving you grief, it’s that mortgage debt. Why on earth you feel paying something off over twenty or thirty years is better than two or three years, but it’s probably because of your sense of entitlement. Mommy and daddy always said you’d have a better life than them, after all, though you haven’t quite found the nerve to say that to your own kids in awhile. You also haven’t found the ability to quit shopping.
But it’s not the credit cards that are giving you grief, it’s that mortgage debt. Why on earth you feel paying something off over twenty or thirty years is better than two or three years, but it’s probably because of your sense of entitlement. Mommy and daddy always said you’d have a better life than them, after all, though you haven’t quite found the nerve to say that to your own kids in awhile. You also haven’t found the ability to quit shopping.
Maybe Putin has something to do with that. If the bastard just never would have invaded Ukraine, and perhaps Georgia back in 2008 as well, then maybe we never would have had to sic the Saudis on his ass. So let’s take stock for a moment and see what that’s accomplished:
What a mess. And yet the market will rebound, and when it does, complacency can set in once again. If we’re “lucky” we might even make it through February unscathed, and then it’ll be pretty obvious that the GOP will just run with it and get their boys out front.
Hillary will of course continue giving speeches until her hand is forced. National Democrats have made it clear they’ll tar and feather anyone that forces her hand, which is an empty threat if there ever was one. National Democrats have no power.
Two times Obama has used his veto in six years, not necessarily the kind of stuff that inspires fear, dread, or even a second thought when it comes to putting forth bad legislation. Obama is a loser, and only got into office because of the color of his skin…and how easy he is for the overseers to push around.
- The complete wrecking of Putin’s massive energy deal with Europe;
- The reduction of Russia’s GDP from a positive to a negative;
- Alienation of the Russian middle and working classes as we cause their prices to rise;
- The dusting off and strengthening of the Russian/Chinese relationship, effectively doing away with whatever remnants of the Sino-Soviet split still remain;
- The mothballing of Montana’s and much of America’s burgeoning oil boom, causing wells to be capped, new drilling to stop, and mergers & acquisitions to become the golden child of the new industry.
What a mess. And yet the market will rebound, and when it does, complacency can set in once again. If we’re “lucky” we might even make it through February unscathed, and then it’ll be pretty obvious that the GOP will just run with it and get their boys out front.
Hillary will of course continue giving speeches until her hand is forced. National Democrats have made it clear they’ll tar and feather anyone that forces her hand, which is an empty threat if there ever was one. National Democrats have no power.
Two times Obama has used his veto in six years, not necessarily the kind of stuff that inspires fear, dread, or even a second thought when it comes to putting forth bad legislation. Obama is a loser, and only got into office because of the color of his skin…and how easy he is for the overseers to push around.
Alas, what’s left of the middle class has had to suffer because of that, although thankfully we’re ending the drug war and actually lowering the number of people in prison in California for the first time in decades. So there are some successes, it’s just that these are the kind of successes you dig for when talking about these types of presidents, our Buchanans and Hoovers.
The financial controllers – the remnants of the Medicis and Fuggers and Rothschilds – might be able to steer us to the 2016 Election, but then we’ll be screwed until 2021. The good news is that when Americans are forced to live like Iraqis – with rolling blackouts, no internet, and food shortages – political winds will change fast.
Already we’re cutting more people off the food rolls this fall, at the same time fewer people are working. On the one hand we have seniors dropping out of the work force, and on the other we have younger people doing the same. There are no jobs for either, unless we want to send them to Asia where those jobs went. And mechanization and robotics? Say goodbye to another 10% of the workforce over the next decade…at least.
The financial controllers – the remnants of the Medicis and Fuggers and Rothschilds – might be able to steer us to the 2016 Election, but then we’ll be screwed until 2021. The good news is that when Americans are forced to live like Iraqis – with rolling blackouts, no internet, and food shortages – political winds will change fast.
Already we’re cutting more people off the food rolls this fall, at the same time fewer people are working. On the one hand we have seniors dropping out of the work force, and on the other we have younger people doing the same. There are no jobs for either, unless we want to send them to Asia where those jobs went. And mechanization and robotics? Say goodbye to another 10% of the workforce over the next decade…at least.
We’ve got $18 trillion in federal debt, so there will be no way to take care of those people. The last few Congresses before the 2020 elections will try as best they can to get as much money off the sinking ship, but with markets all over the world in the dumps and offshore accounts now virtually useless, what’s the point?
Rich men in suits on the side of the road selling a car for 2% of its value. We’ll be seeing that again here real soon, and I honestly think it’s part of the plan. A plan, however, that might have already gotten away from them, like a virus in a lab that’s in the air, its creators its first victims.
So if you’re feeling down that you’re not there in the Capitol, Helena or Washington, just realize you won’t go down in the history books as one that brought the whole circus down. You don’t hear much about the legislators and congressmen that were serving in the mid- to late-1920s, and there’s a reason for that – they were bad Americans.
I’ve no doubt we’ll consider our current crop in the same breath when the wheels roll around once again. And they always do.
Rich men in suits on the side of the road selling a car for 2% of its value. We’ll be seeing that again here real soon, and I honestly think it’s part of the plan. A plan, however, that might have already gotten away from them, like a virus in a lab that’s in the air, its creators its first victims.
So if you’re feeling down that you’re not there in the Capitol, Helena or Washington, just realize you won’t go down in the history books as one that brought the whole circus down. You don’t hear much about the legislators and congressmen that were serving in the mid- to late-1920s, and there’s a reason for that – they were bad Americans.
I’ve no doubt we’ll consider our current crop in the same breath when the wheels roll around once again. And they always do.
