fascinating to watch

When your government encourages the average citizen to invest their life's savings into a bubble, they certainly have every responsibility to do whatever they can to stave off disaster when the bubble pops.

We'll be fine, but anyone that believes that China is poised to 'eat our lunch' economically, knows absolutely nothing about economics or the true state of the world's economy, fear-mongering aside.

The Chinese government created this mess all by themselves and they are terrified of the implications, as well they should be.

The US still has the strongest and safest economy on the planet.

Cheers. - Frank

With all due respect, I have to disagree with the U.S. having the strongest and safest economy on the planet. Granted, I haven't had the time to check the books of the rest of the world economies recently, but the fact is that the U.S. is pushing 20 trillion dollars in debt with nothing to back it with. The government just keeps on printing money.

Many long term financial experts have been predicting that the economy will finally implode in the next 1-2 years and we'll fall into the worst long term depression in history. Much worse than what happened in 2008-2009.

These aren't all guys just trying to make a buck either. I see Ron Paul as genuine and trustworthy. Also, I can't imagine him promoting some scam offer while his son, Rand, is running for president.

I'm not in the habit of joining the "doom and gloom" party, but I know firsthand that our economy is struggling right now and has been for the past couple years.

As I mentioned in another post a few months ago, I speak to people in sub-niches of the building, construction, etc industry on a monthly basis and many of these business owners have begun to lay off employees in some areas of the country for lack of work. That's very rare in the summertime.

Of course, there are other areas of the country where these markets are working steadily. Some areas are okay.

However, a constant theme I've heard recently (5 times in the past week alone) is that they're not getting paid on time. Customers are in a huge rush to get work done, but they're taking months to pay their bills.

I've had a few customers tell me recently that they simply can't buy anything right now - even if they need it. One guy told me that they have a line of credit they use to get them through winter and it's usually paid off by now, but not this year.

Once again, I'm not trying to be the bearer of doom and gloom. I just wanted to share what I'm hearing from small business owners that are actually out there doing stuff. Not some manufactured crap statistics the government puts out to try to convince everyone everything's gotten so much better.

I also chat with other suppliers and read trade magazines to see what other companies are advertising so I'm "in the know". I've heard the same things from other suppliers, too, some big companies. I've also noticed a massive reduction in advertising, with the exception of a couple long term companies using Adwords. Even the products I'm seeing advertised are more like clearance items rather than putting the more popular brands and products on sale.

That tells me a couple things:

1. They're trying to bring in customers by using clearance inventory almost exclusively to try to pay for their advertising without having to reduce their profit margins on bestselling items.

2. They're feeling the effects like everyone else.

As I said, I just don't see us as being very stable right now. If my household bills, business bills or both hit a certain plateau, which isn't out of the realm of possibility, I'd be screwed just like most other Americans would. The only difference between Uncle Sam and I is I don't have the convenience of printing more cash when I need it.

Enough said. By the way, nothing personal against anyone. I'm just kind of ticked off and moody today. Maybe I'm going through "Man-o-pause"? :-)

The US is doing, or at least WAS doing, a LOT to prop things up! One reason given for the 1920 depression was the newly made FIAT money, HIGH VOLUME LOW COST LOANS, and a CALL!

1913, "the FED" CREATED, together with a NEW tax code and structure.
In the 1920s, the spigot was OPENED WIDE! Margins were 7:1 to 9:1 depending on who you talk to.
http://www.newworldeconomics.com/arc...12/112512.html In THOSE days, 6% was a FORTUNE! Anyway, with people so easily buying, the stock market did well, and all were buying stock. Many did so on MARGIN! THOSE people had to sell, and may have had a margin call in one day. If they didn't make it, the stock would be sold as what they owed went up. THAT depressed the stock and caused it to feed off itself and people were so worried about bank runs that they ran to the bank to pull their money out FIRST.

So YEAH, this type of government is FAR from new, and it is not a stranger to the US.

Steve

I also disagree with the US being one of the more stable economies. We could be, but it's not going to happen until the corruption of the top financial institution leaders get slapped (maybe put them in jail when the commit vast ranging financial crimes, like Iceland did?). Right now we have reserve currency status which has buoyed us no matter what criminal activity has been allowed by our financial institutions. However - the foundation is cracking on that prop. Russia, China, and a few other countries are in negotiations that will take us out of reserve status. The petro-dollar is another support in the wall that might be starting to shake loose. At this point, though - I'm not really sure with our status as #1 global producer, if that foundation crumbles if it will be a boom or bust for us. China can definitely put a chink in our armor with their RE monopoly, but not forever - we do have resources for RE minerals that could be exploited within a short time span, relieving us of any profiteering at that end. Then, too, China holds major amounts of US debt. So we've got one tangled mess going on at the time.

The best thing we could do for ourselves (I'm talking about everyone, globally, is to pull out of World Bank. Let them fry on it - everything about them stinks of illegal anyway. A lot of the financial check mates and tyranny going on today would not be possible without their fiat currency pyramid they've built via the petro-dollar reserve.

Way before we, the average citizen, knows anything about it.

No.


Joe Mobley

It seems that since the Chinese government intervened, the big investors have pulled out leaving the smaller investors. Then China suddenly decided to devalue its currency and the stocks fell again. One must suspect that the cronies got tipped off and sold their holdings before the devaluation. Now stocks are falling everywhere in the world.

Kay, nobody really knows how bad the situation is in China. It must be quite serious though or else they would not have devalued. Their stock market was a bubble and so is their property market. There is also a mountain of bad debt with their state owned companies and local governments. People there are conditioned to believe that their government can and will support the markets effectively. It will be interesting to see how things will go if the government fails.