Many economists have been mystified that even though the recession is “over”, American consumers have not opened their wallets and started spending again like they normally do at the end of a recession. News report after news report has encouraged Americans to grab their credit cards and to head out to the stores and start spending again, but it just is not happening. So why are things different this time? Well, for one thing there is a lot of fear in the air. Poll after poll after poll shows that faith in the economy has collapsed and that large numbers of Americans fear that things are going to get even worse for the economy soon. But for millions of other Americans there is another problem – they couldn’t spend more money if they wanted to. The truth is that living on credit for decades has caught up with us as a nation. Americans are absolutely drowning in mortgage debt, car loans, credit card debt and student loan debt. As wages have stagnated, credit has enabled many of us to pursue the American Dream and to live far beyond our means, but that doesn’t last forever. Now tens of millions of Americans are completely and totally tapped out. But without the return of the voracious American “consumer” there is not going to be a full economic “recovery”. (Read More...)
10 Reasons Why Barack Obama’s “It’s Not A Stimulus” Package Is A Cruel Joke On The American People
As election season 2010 draws near, the Obama administration has finally realized that the Democrats could actually lose both the House and the Senate in November. Suddenly all Obama wants to talk about is his wonderful new plan for the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, what he is suggesting is far too little and far too late. Anything Obama is proposing now will not be passed by Congress before the upcoming elections, and that is bad news for the Democrats. The American people tend to vote based on their wallets, and right now the American people are not happy. They desperately want someone to “fix” what is wrong with the economy. Obama is running around the country trying to convince people that he is the man to restore the American Dream, but at this point the American people have less faith in his economic policies than ever. The White House is insisting that Obama’s new economic plan is not a new “stimulus package”, and that is actually true. Obama’s new plan will not stimulate much of anything. The truth is that Obama’s new economic plan is really just a cruel joke on those who are willing to have faith in Obama’s ability to somehow turn the dying U.S. economy around. Unfortunately, throwing several hundred billion more dollars at the problem is not going to do anything to fix the foundational problems that are destroying our economic system. (Read More...)
15 Reasons Why Young Americans Should Do Whatever They Can To Avoid Getting Sucked Into The Student Loan Debt Trap
America has created a student loan debt bubble that is inflating at a staggering pace and that is destroying hundreds of thousands of lives. For the first time in U.S. history, Americans owe more on their student loans than they do on their credit cards. Millions more young people are getting sucked in to the student loan debt trap each year. They are told that “an education” is the key to achieving the American Dream and that they won’t be able to get a good job without going to college. They are told that they should get into the best school that they can and that they will surely get a good enough job to easily pay off their student loans. In fact, most American high school students don’t have anyone warning them about the dangers of the student loans that they are about to commit to paying off. But they should, because the system of higher education in the United States has become a money making scam. Those who get sucked into the student loan debt trap often end up regretting it for the rest of their lives. (Read More...)
Just One Really Bad Year Away From A Horrific World Famine
The shocking announcement by the Russian government of a 12 month extension of its wheat export ban and the outbreak of food riots in Mozambique are stark reminders that the world is just one really bad year away from a horrific world famine. As you read this, the world is already really, really struggling to feed itself. Approximately 1 billion people throughout the world go to bed hungry each night. Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five. And those are the statistics that we have seen while North America has been producing record harvests. So what is going to happen when the United States and Canada have really bad harvests for a year or two as world demand for food continues to skyrocket? That is a very sobering question. (Read More...)
If Everything Is Going To Be Okay, Then Why Is The Number Of Preppers In The United States Absolutely Exploding?
A rapidly growing number of Americans believe that the United States has veered very far off the right track in recent years and they have begun preparing for “the end of the world as we know it”. For many of these “preppers”, the complete and total collapse of the U.S. economy is now such a certainty that it would be foolish not to get prepared. For others, the prospect of another major natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina is motivation enough to stock up on food and supplies. Still other Americans are deeply concerned about potential terror attacks, the outbreak of deadly pandemics or even the start of the next world war. The truth is that there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the state of the world, and as Hurricane Katrina and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrated, the U.S. government is not often very good at picking up the pieces once disaster strikes. Millions of Americans are starting to wake up and are realizing that when the chips are down nobody else is going to take care of them. Instead of moving to Montana and building a nuclear fallout shelter like the hardcore survivalists of old did, many modern preppers are converting extra bedrooms into food storage pantries, they are learning how to grow survival gardens and they are stocking up on everything from gas masks to auxiliary generators. (Read More...)
Living In Fear
Can you feel the rising fear in America today? It has gotten to the point where it is almost palpable. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs and fear what is going to happen when their unemployment benefits run out. Millions of others fear what would happen if they lose the job that they still have. A rapidly growing number of Americans are getting behind on their mortgage payments and fear that they might lose their homes to foreclosure. Still others are looking retirement directly in the eye and are realizing that they aren’t going to have enough money to make it. So why all the fear? Well, over the past several decades an increasing number of Americans have come to define their lives by the amount of stuff that they have accumulated and the amount of money in their bank accounts. For these Americans, living the American Dream is dependent on these material possessions. So what happens when these material possessions are threatened? What you get is millions upon millions of Americans living in fear. (Read More...)
50 Random Questions
If you are a big fan of The Office on NBC, then you probably know that Michael Scott considers autumn to be “the most contemplative of seasons”. Well, while that may or may not be true, what I do believe is that Friday is one of “the most contemplative” days of the week. Here in the great Pacific northwest there is still a couple of hours of daylight left before the sun goes down, and as the sun relentlessly continues its trajectory towards the horizon it makes me stop and reflect on how rapidly the world is changing. In just about any field that you want to name – technology, politics, economics, education, entertainment and even religion – the pace of change these days is absolutely astounding. We live at a time when we get to watch the world literally change right in front of our eyes. In the age of the Internet our attention spans have been reduced to approximately that of a squirrel, but sometimes it is good to sit back and think about the bigger picture. What does all of this change mean? Is it good? Is it bad? What kind of a future are we headed for? (Read More...)
The ABC’s Of The Great American Housing Crisis
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a horrific housing crisis in unfolding right in front of our eyes. Yesterday it was announced that existing home sales plummeted 27 percent in the month of July. Today it was announced that new homes sales dropped to the lowest level ever recorded in July. But why is this happening? Why is the American Dream still dying for millions of American families? Wasn’t the recession supposed to be over by now? Weren’t home prices supposed to be moving back up by this time? Well, in this article we will attempt to succinctly break down the ABC’s of the Great American Housing Crisis. Hopefully this will help people understand why all of this is happening. (Read More...)