[mindfarkk]

dammt MQ i just posted a bunch of this information on another thread. you aren't allowed to post anymore at the same time i am. /grumbles

[maverickdoc]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ECM', '
')
The individual debt in this country is estimated at $10,000,000,000,000

Local and state governments may have up to twice the debt of the federal.

The estimates I have seen places the U.S. total debt at $30-$35 trillion or about 3 times GDP. Per capita debt therefore exceeds $100,000. In other words we owe more than we are worth.

This is much the reverse of the situation during the Great Depression.

The U.S. and much of the Western European standards of living are subsidized by the other nations of the world and after the collapse that subsidy will be gone. That means a permanent drop in living standards.

[Tyler_JC]

Do you have a mortgage? You may not, but our fellow citizens have spent the last 5 years emptying out that equity piggy bank to buy China-Mart shit. It's not that hard to rack up lots of debt in a short period of time. Low interests rates allow stupid people to borrow more money than they could ever pay back.

Get ready for a massive "Rebalancing."

[maverickdoc]

Interest rates are going to raise to at least 3.5% (greenspan announced ) it might go even higher

MonteQuest made some interesting points on this thread :

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic4835-0-asc-0.html

[threadbear]

My mother's father was a banker who had to foreclose on family farms in the GD. He came home one night, at the age of 42, and died of a massive heart attack. My mother was 5.

My father's father was a builder and extremely frugal. He emigrated from Sweden in 1912. My father tells stories of how his father was always moaning about how poor they were. One night he found his dad in his office with an open steamer trunk full of cash, gold, silver, etc... He left Sweden during very bad times and I think it prepared him for the Depression. The guy would have been a peak oiler had he been around today.
His favourite expressions if dining in a fancy restaurant "You can't eat atmosphere". His first trip to the West Coast, everyone else is blown away by the beauty of the mountains. His response. "What a pity!" Meaning, too bad they can't be farmed!

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('maverickdoc', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ECM', '
')
The individual debt in this country is estimated at $10,000,000,000,000

Local and state governments may have up to twice the debt of the federal.

The estimates I have seen places the U.S. total debt at $30-$35 trillion or about 3 times GDP. Per capita debt therefore exceeds $100,000. In other words we owe more than we are worth.

This is much the reverse of the situation during the Great Depression.

The U.S. and much of the Western European standards of living are subsidized by the other nations of the world and after the collapse that subsidy will be gone. That means a permanent drop in living standards.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mindfarkk', 'd')ammt MQ i just posted a bunch of this information on another thread. you aren't allowed to post anymore at the same time i am. /grumbles

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pea-jay', 'T')he coming depression is not going to be triggered by economic events as institutional safegards prevent against that.

[rerere]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'T')here are no institutional safeguards to prevent a collapse of the housing market and for people to lose their homes through loan defaults and foreclosures.

[threadbear]

Monte, Congress has either passed or is moving to pass bills that overhaul bankruptcy laws. It will be much more difficult to shelter a primary residence by filing a chapter 7, and much easier for credit card companies to collect from your equity or from the proceeds of a foreclosure or forced sale through chapter 13. Of course it's being framed, in the wake of Enron, Tyco, World Com type meltdowns as a way of preventing guys like Ebbers, from doing hard time in billion dollar mansions.

The creditors desire, hidden behind a veil of faux indignation, is to grab the house of the guy who charged emergency surgery, and had to declare bankruptcy because he could no longer afford his minimun payments to the hospital. Bye bye housie.

Credit card companies like nothing better than to capitalize on the righteous indignation of decent people, to further screw them into the ground.

The middle class are going to lose their homes. It's going to be like a corrupt HUD programme writ large across the US. Joe Sixpack has been etnticed to load up on as much debt as he can, then bankruptcy laws are tightened just before the shtf,. Then the sh**heels move in and buy his property for cents on the dollar. At this point the transfer of assets into the hands of the upper 5 % will be complete. Perhaps he will be allowed to stay in his home and rent it. You have to wonder at what point the neocons are going to pass laws that allow you to sell your children to pay off debt.


ECM, I don't know about hyper-inflation, but hyper-ventilation is assured

[MonteQuest]

threadbear,

Yes, and with the advent of the reverse mortgages aimed at people over 62, it allows them to get the houses of people who have them paid off!

[Tyler_JC]

Don't call everyone in the top 5% rich. The definition of top 5% means 125,000 a year in family income. That's not a lot of money. Try living in Boston, NYC, LA, or San Francisco on 125,000 a year and you won't feel rich. Throw in college tuition for the kids, health insurance (1000 a month+), car payments, an overpriced house and you're barely living better than the average person did in the 60's.

The top 5% aren't going to be taking anyone's house. Does a doctor need 400,000 a year? Not if no one can pay him that. That doctor isn't going to be taking anyone's house. Is a lawyer worth $250,000 a year? Not really. There does that guy's pay check.

If you want to talk about the people who will be taking stuff, look at the top .5%. They own the big money. They own about 1/3 of the stuff. I have a feeling Warren Buffet is working on doubling that fraction.

[Tyler_JC]

Sorry, I really need to get those Conservative rants out of my system.

[pea-jay]

Monte:

My institutional reference was largely historical. Tossing out energy of the equation for the moment, my point was since the GD institutional safeguards exist now to prevent bank runs (FDIC), abject poverty (welfare, social security), and collapses of economic activity (government infrastructure projects). In a world where energy is not a concern, these things I mentioned above will prevent any recurrances of the 1930s style depression or 1880s era panics.

Of course as we know geology trumps economics so those safeguards are history sometime after TSHTF, but before then I consider them in effect.

[jato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')an anyone come up with some reasons why a future GD might be less severe ?

[ECM]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('maverickdoc', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ECM', '
')
The individual debt in this country is estimated at $10,000,000,000,000

Local and state governments may have up to twice the debt of the federal.

The estimates I have seen places the U.S. total debt at $30-$35 trillion or about 3 times GDP. Per capita debt therefore exceeds $100,000. In other words we owe more than we are worth.

This is much the reverse of the situation during the Great Depression.

The U.S. and much of the Western European standards of living are subsidized by the other nations of the world and after the collapse that subsidy will be gone. That means a permanent drop in living standards.

[tokyo_to_motueka]

Just gong back to the original theme of this thread, I think the GD had a huge impact on the people who grew up during this time. This applies almost everywhere in the industrial world: USA, UK, Japan, Australia, NZ, Canada, western Europe, etc.

My mother was born in 1927 on a dairy farm in NZ. As I wrote on another thread, they didn't have any electricity until after the Second World War. They had maybe one tractor and one car on the farm when she was a kid. They went to school on horseback (primary school) and by bicycle (high school). All the roads were gravel. She had four brothers. One died when he was eight when he fell off a wagon. The others all lived to old age (her eldest brother is now 88 yrs). When I was a kid in the Sixties/Seventies, we hardly had any new books/toys/clothes. Why? My mother's Depression upbringing taught her to never throw usefull stuff away and things back in the Fifities were built to last a long time. My brother is 11 years older than me but i got his toys and his clothes and books. My mother preserved food when I was a kid and she made a lot of our clothes. In the 70s, plastic still wasn't that common. She always washed, dried and stored away all the useable plastic bags and containers that food from the supermarket came in. My mother still buys a lot of second hand clothes, because it's cheap and so many people discard suff which is perfectly good (and we would never pay the inflated prices for new).

Because she lived on a farm and they had cows, sheep, hens and pigs, an orchard and vegetable garden, they didn't go hungry. Thet didn't buy much food. Maybe flour, oats, sugar, tea, salt, pepper and a handful of other things, but not many "treats".

You also have to remember that former British Empire countries (and the UK) not only had the GD, but just as that was ending they got the War, and another six years of food and petrol rationing! Anyway, in total you had 15 years of forced frugality, which is still ingrained on most of those people.

One GD survivor who could see all of this coming (PO, resource collapse) was Masanobu Fukuoka. If I can find any writings or interviews covering the GD, I will post them later.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')asanobu Fukuoka

[tokyo_to_motueka]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')asanobu Fukuoka