http://www.zerohedge.com/article/dark-years-are-here Expecting others to trade "real goods" for pieces of worthless paper is a pipedream....Sooner or later...THEY catch on.... ...................................................................... The US has to start producing needed "things"....not paper....
Unemployment has been easily that high for 'producers' for the past decade. You know, factory workers, engineers, etc. The people who should be working their asses off producing goods to export to China and to OPEC, but who have been laid off because of the belief that financial 'profits' can supplant real production.
At some point, sooner rather than later, the unemployment and resentment rate will be so high in this country, attacks on Wall Street types will be common. Rich man-Poor man U.S.A. With the working class types who got the shaft loaded to the gills with guns. It won't be pretty.
Mostly phony. Here's an example: let's say we get together over coffee sometime, and give each other mortgages on our own houses. I'll let you borrow $200k against my house. You let me borrow $200k against your house. We charge each other $10k to set up the loan. No money actually changes hands since one transaction nullifies the other. Voila, we've just created $20k (+ the cost of coffee) in GDP. Even though our transaction amounted to nothing more than a hill of beans. The US economy is chock-full of such examples, the worst being what happens in the investment banking and insurance industries. No kidding. The worst part of this economic collapse is that the banking elite are actively trying to suppress real production, not enhance it.
its the Peter Schiff school of economics, if it isn't hard and solid its not good for the economy. The US economy will be 'phony' to them until NY is producing shirts and bags in a massive scale
.......................................................................... 1000% Correct..... Simple test......... Go out and buy 10 things under $100.... Where was it made ....? When one can go out and buy 10 things and see that most things were made in the US....problem solved.... Or Go into Cost....WMT....where was it made....? The other item.....energy .....what % is US ? When the majority of E is made in the US....problem solved.... ................................................................... Another puff up vs real estate ? Medicine.....What % C is the avg procedure in non US countries ? 1/4....1/10 ? ............................................................................ Sustainability.....US GDP....sustainable ...? real ...? Of course not.....the list just gets longer and longer....
Not just the US. Study any world history and you'll see that it happened over and over again in the form of revolutions, though not as frequent anymore. It all started from the oppressed lower class.
I don't want to sound like a broken record by mentioning Peak Oil again - but that is the one thing that can kill off global trade in manufactured goods. Services (call centers, software engineering...) that can be transported through the internet will still be international in nature. So... what would $300 a barrel due to global manufacturing? What products can still be shipped around the world and still make a decent profit? What products will need to be made closer to their markets in order to maintain a good margin? What effect would that have in America? Would we need to build industrial parks once again closer to cities? Of course, there are other consequences to expensive oil... and they are disasterous to our economy. But I can't ignore the fact that it is not just cheap labor that caused America to de-industrialize - but it was cheap oil too.
...................................................................................... Regarding oil in general..... What happens to oil prices if the dollar were to crash ? And who could buy any of it ? The demand equation certainly would be chaotic....