Kiss your assets goodbye

If it hasn't hit you over the head like a sledgehammer yet, just wait. The "experts" are saying that this whole thing is in our heads. Apparently it is all our fault that the economic situation is so bad. Because you put off buying that new pair of shoes or stopped eating out at Red Lobster last week, the economy is doomed to be in a recession for at least the next year or two. Unless you get back to spending your money like never before, we're all doomed... It's your fault that the banks are in trouble - if you had gone on with your life - business as usual - despite being upside down on your home, cars and credit cards, things would be just fine. Basically, if you would just shut up, go back to your cubicle and make your minimum payments, the banks would go back to making money and be happy. But no, you stopped spending. You saw your down payment disappear. You saw that you would be handing over most of your paycheck to the bank for 30 years while the home they sold you depreciated faster than you could have ever imagined. Now the banks are pissed off and going to get your money any way they can. If they can't get it from you directly, they're going to get it through your taxes. Which is what they would prefer anyway - less chance of default that way...

We are the idiots that handed over 1.4 trillion dollars to the banking system so far. It looks to me like that is about the amount that the stock market has dropped... So, your assets are nearly directly being funneled into the banking system. It's sort of like putting out a fire with gasoline isn't it? The more money we funnel into the banks, the faster we burn through our future resources. We're already looking at a 500 billion dollar budget shortfall for next year. What government programs will be cut this time? Something has got to give and it certainly will not be the banking sector. Will it be education? Healthcare? Social Security? State funding? Bridge maintenance? Non-profit organizations? Welfare? Food subsidies? Right at the height of the unemployment & housing crisis - wouldn't it be the worst time to cut back on any social safety net? But something has to give, and it historically has never been the ones that took the most, so it will not be the banks, mortgage companies, investment firms or the Fed itself.

You are unlikely to see relief for the next 10-15 years, and even that is a bit optimistic considering all of the other critical things we've neglected. All it will take at this point is a relatively minor catastrophic event to push us past the point of no return - and by no return I mean you will never again have the opportunity to live life as you have grown accustomed to. Short of us retracting back into our borders and bailing on our debt obligations around the globe, we're pretty much looking at the kind of things that will plague us for the rest of our lives.

The US is in debt far beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Oil is past it's peak and there is no real capital available right now to go poking around in the bedrock of the seismic hot spots off our coasts anyway. Even the government is too broke to pay for an oil program now. We've systematically destroyed our farmland, oceans and most critically our fresh water supplies. We've screwed up the atmosphere and permanently changed the climate of our planet. We've distanced ourselves from the many allies that we once had and re-established old conflicts. We've screwed up our educational system and neglected our best and brightest. We've shifted all of our assets into the hands of a few and given up our freedoms under the guise of safety and security, and that's not even the worst of it all...

Keep your head out of the sand and pay attention - one of the largest rapes of society is taking place right before your eyes and the media is too well behaved and too busy making money off the campaigns to bother with something that doesn't make them any money and might make them unpopular (at least in the short run)...