End of America?

[MARIS61]

I've got a friend of FB who posts about every third day about his growing stockpile of guns, ammo and (to a much lesser degree) food. I mean I seriously think the dude has dropped upwards of 30k on the Armageddon.

He's got 30k in guns. I've got 30k in the S&P500. I wonder which of us will look like the smarter investor a decade from now.

You should both put it in real estate if you want to look smart in ten years.

 

[mook]

Says the realtor.

I've never met a realtor who ever advised me it was a bad time to invest in real estate.

 

[maxiep]

Corporations have record profits this last year and we are headed for a collapse...was Marx right then? When the capitalistic beast gets so strong that it bleeds the government dry through endless lobbying to lower taxes, get subsidies for just about everything, and create tax loopholes it threatens the very security of the nation. We have reached that point, especially with the Bush bank bailouts, and then the follow-up bailouts by the current administration. Greed has taken away our ability to educate, employ, and house our citizens. Pretty sad.

The marriage of big government with big business and big unions is killing this country. Big business is privitizing gains and socializing losses. Unions--especially public ones--are sucking this country dry. Both keep people in power in government to perpetuate draining the rest of us.

 

[Denny Crane]

I posted this pie chart in another thread, but there's something relevant in it to this thread.

We're already at a $1.4T deficit with this level of spending. Look at the yellow "Interest 187 5%" slice. The fed has been monetizing debt by printing money and using the dollars printed to pay off T-Bills. The debt is artificially lower than it looks like on paper, for one. The interest rates are ridiculously low, for two. And $1 a year ago is worth $.92 or so this year. At some point, the people buying T-Bills are going to want to spend $.92 to buy $.92 worth of T-Bill instead of spending $1 to get $.92 worth. To entice people to keep buying the bonds, to make up for the $.08 built-in loss, the govt. would have to offer higher interest rates. At 2% interest rate, that "Interest 187 5%" becomes "Interest 374 10%" and at early Reagan era levels, it becomes 50% of a HUGE HUGE HUGE budget with much less left to spend on the other things.

At Jimmy Carter levels, it becomes 100%.

Tick, tick, tick.