Buffett called it: Recession

[PaKettle]

This is no surprise.
You can't borrow trillions to support a war in Iraq, drive up the price of gas to triple what it was before, and not be in recession.
Hi ho.

[HRx]

The sad reality behind this thread is...many of us didn't need Buffet to tell us that the country was in a recession.

[BankruptPinoy]

Many fear recession, a bank run, a strike on Iran or terror attacks could signal green light for a state of emergency or martial law.

I am reminded by the video and book, " The Creature from Jekyll Island." The Georgia Guidestones anyone? Kissinger calling the poor "useless eaters"? NAFTA/GATT? North American Army? Amero? Global government? This is not fiction and not "tin-foiled" paranoia.

Paul Craig Roberts anyone? Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He recently wrote:

I've been watching the dollar die all my life. I sometimes think I will outlast it.

When I was a young man, gold was $35 an ounce. Today one ounce gold bullion coins, such as the Canadian Maple Leaf, cost more than $1,000.

Our coinage was silver. Our dimes, quarters, and half dollars had purchasing power. Even the nickel could purchase a candy bar, ice cream cone or soft drink, and a penny could purchase bubble gum or hard candy. If a kid could collect 5 discarded soft drink bottles from a construction site, the 2 cents deposit on the returnable bottles was enough for the Saturday afternoon movie. Gasoline was 32 cents a gallon. A dollar's worth was enough for a Saturday night date.

Our silver coinage was 90 per cent silver. People sometimes melted coins in order to make silver spoons, known as coin silver, which can still be found in antique shops. Except for the reduced silver (40 per cent) Kennedy half dollar which continued until 1970, 1964 was the last year of America's silver coinage. The copper penny departed in 1982. As Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, I opposed the demise of America's last commodity money, but I couldn't prevent the copper penny's death.

During World War II (1941-1945), nickel was diverted from coinage to war, and the US mint issued a wartime silver (35 per cent) nickel.

It is not easy to find items to purchase with today's US coins, but the silver coins of the same face value still have purchasing power. The 10 cent piece of my youth contains $1.42 worth of silver at today's silver price. The quarter is worth $3.55, and the half dollar contains $7.10 of silver. The silver dollar is worth 15.2 times its face value. These are just the silver values of coins that might be worth far more depending on condition and rarity. The silver in the wartime nickel is worth $1.10, which is 22 times the coin's face value. Even the copper penny is worth 2.5 cents.

When I was a young man enjoying travels in Europe, the German mark or Swiss franc traded four to one US dollar. The euro, which is today's equivalent to the mark, costs $1.55.

People who haven't accumulated much age have little idea of the corrosive power of "acceptable" inflation. Unlike gold and silver, fiat money has no intrinsic value. When money is created faster than goods and services it drives up prices, thus driving down the value of the money. If freely traded currencies are excessively printed or if inflation, budget deficits, and trade deficits drive currencies off their fixed exchange rates, prices of imports rise as the foreign exchange value of the currency falls.

Today the US, heavily dependent on imports, is subject to double-barrel inflation from both domestic money creation and decline in the dollar's foreign exchange value.

The US inflation rate is about twice as high as the government's inflation measures report. In order to hold down Social Security payments, the government changed the way it measures inflation. In the old measure, inflation measured the nominal cost of a defined standard of living. If the price of steak rose, up went the inflation rate. Today if the price of steak rises, the government assumes that people switch to hamburger. Inflation doesn't go up. Instead, the standard of living it measures goes down.

This is just one of the many ways that the government pulls the wool over our eyes.

With the dollar value of the euro rising through the roof, today a vacation in Europe is far more costly than in the past. Thanks to China, so far Americans have been sheltered from the greatest effects of the dollar's declining value. Our greatest trade deficit is with China. The prices of the goods from China have not risen, because China keeps its currency pegged to the dollar. As the dollar goes down, China's currency goes with it, thus holding down price rises.

The resignation of Admiral William Fallon as US military commander in the Middle East probably signals a Bush Regime attack on Iran. Fallon said that there would be no US attack on Iran on his watch. As there was no reason for Fallon to resign, it is not far fetched to conclude that Bush has removed an obstacle to war with Iran.

The US is already over stretched both militarily and economically. An attack on Iran is likely to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

And from "The Independent" from the UK:

One UK economist warned that the world is now close to a 1930s-like Great Depression...In the UK, Michael Taylor, a senior market strategist at Lombard, the economics consultancy, said on Friday night: "We have all been talking about a 1970s-style crisis but as each day goes by this looks more like the 1930s.

From the Business & Media Institute:
CNN is reporting:

Today's economic condition could likely be seen as "the most wrenching since the end of the second world war," wrote former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in the Financial Times on Monday.

I'm not selling anything nor am I spamming the forum. Some people might find the following two books helpful:



The late Mr. Romney wrote,

The Depression was frightening, and as a youngster I often considered what we would do if we got even poorer. I was fascinated with the woods out in back of our colonial house and thought I would like to live out there like Hansel and Gretel. At about age 4 I ran away from home and had a grand time in the woods until they finally found me.

Prior to 1929, the Romney family had been socially prominent. Some of our friends and relatives snubbed us once we were poor, but others really enjoyed my parents and remained kind and helpful. These people became mentors to me, and I learned much more from them than I ever learned in the context of formal education. (When I entered grammar school, I was disappointed to find that my teachers were not as bright and interesting as the people around my dad.) Among those who stand out in my mind are Roger Babson, our cousin the economist who predicted the crash of 1929 (my dad didn't listen) and founded Babson College and Babson Park in Florida; his friend Igor Sikorsky, who was an early airplane designer in czarist Russia and invented the helicopter; Vannevar Bush, my Uncle Conrad's college classmate who was an MIT professor and the founder of Raytheon; George M. Bryne, another cousin, who built many of the canals and tunnels around Boston, fought with labor unions, and had yachts; Frank Blanchard, the reptile biologist, explorer, and National Geographic writer who could charm snakes and found them everywhere (he was an environmentalist before anyone else was); and Richard E. Byrd Jr., who had explored the South Pole with his late father, Admiral Byrd, and was also a masterful, intuitive self-taught mechanic who loved antiques, boats, and old cars. These people were most inspiring to me, and they played a crucial role in shaping the philosophy and attitude that guided my life and laid the foundation for Living Well on Practically Nothing.

Chuck Harder wrote: Paul Craig Roberts has also said that

the potential destruction of the dollar as the world's reserve currency could eventually return us to a system of barter, completely altering the landscape of the economic structure as we know it.

From Bloomberg.com, we see this:

Barton Biggs has some offbeat advice for the rich: Insure yourself against war and disaster by buying a remote farm or ranch and stocking it with ``seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.''

The ``etc.'' must mean guns.

``A few rounds over the approaching brigands' heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage,'' he writes in his new book, ``Wealth, War and Wisdom.''

Biggs is no paranoid survivalist. He was chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley before leaving in 2003 to form hedge fund Traxis Partners. He doesn't lock and load until the last page of this smart look at how World War II warped share prices, gutted wealth and remains a warning to investors. His message: Listen to markets, learn from history and prepare for the worst.

Mankind endures ``an episode of great wealth destruction'' at least once every century, Biggs reminds us. So the wealthy should prepare to ride out a disaster, be it a tsunami, a market meltdown or Islamic terrorists with a dirty bomb.


``Events move much faster than anyone expects,'' he says, ``and the barbarians are on top of you before you can escape.''

[BKOnce]

I knew... still spamming

[BankruptPinoy]

lol...beg your pardon?