Ah Merv on economy, everything will be revealed, where was his wisdom when he was chairing BOE leading to the credit crunch and the aftermath?
I agree, we’re heading for a collapse sometime in the same way that all of us are dying. I don’t go around in a fuge state about either though. The topline number of national debt is meaningless, by that logic I’m drifting further and further into the abyss because I’ve kept buying more and more expensive houses as my income allows and my mortgage total keeps going up and up. Not sure what a bail-in is, are you upset about the economic impacts of the 2008 bail-outs, the ones that netted the taxpayer $15.3B (http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/news/companies/government-bailouts-end/)? And “wage and price controls via Obamacare”? First of all, what wage controls? Second, I’ve got news for you. We have had price controls in this country for 100 years. On electricity distribution (and generation still in half the country), a $344B/year industry. Gas distribution. Local phone service. Taxi’s. And yes, insurance has been highly regulated for decades before Obama was even born. They’re not ideal; I love the idea that self-generation and storage may finally give electricity users a choice in who they buy their electricity from for example. But they haven’t led to the end of the Republic either. Of course if you insist on believing that we’re all doomed, I’d suggest considering a move to a place that has none of the things you listed as the cause of our impending decline and fall. For example, the 10 countries with the lowest debt to gdp ratios are Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Oman, Lybia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, Algeria, and Swaziland (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-debt-to-gdp). You might throw Somalia in there as well, I’m assuming they didn’t make the list because of a divide by 0 error, but with them you get the trifecta of no taxes, no debt, and no gun control. Yay! Cheer up dude, all is not lost. We’re living in a great country with great opportunities. A country that will still be great even if Trump is elected, or Hillary, or even if we brought back Dick Cheney from his undisclosed location.