[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') “Perfect Storm” gathers on the horizon as Peak Oil, Economic Instability, Climate Change and Hyper-Population Growth collide within the United States. While Americans watch multiple breakdowns throughout their economic and environmental systems, a gathering citizen armada prepares for an uncertain future—that most assuredly looms on the U.S. horizon.

While we run face first into this growing “Hobson’s Choice”, Washington DC ‘risk mitigation’ experts demand a 20 year plan for coping with a world without cheap oil energy. As anyone with a nose on his or her face can discern, President Bush twiddled his thumbs and stuck fingers in both his ears for the past eight years—as to energy conservation or planning. He treaded water while our civilization stood nostril-deep on its tippy-toes gasping for solutions.

Brownlee told a rapt audience, “It will hit us soon and hard. We don’t have time or capital to avoid economic consequences.”

[jlw61]

First, how I see the situation:

Bush


Several doomers I know personally (as they see themselves)


And as they really are



The Situation


And finally, the future




How I see my future playing out personally:

Either


Or


Or

[patience]

Me? I plan to keep on doing what I've been doing-working in our shop business, gardening, cooking on a wood stove, and (hopefully by then ) raising chickens. I'll leave it to others to do the Chinese fire drill sorta thing.

[eastbay]

I'm with you on that Pops.

What will we do? Stay put.

Initiate what we've done for the past four years. Garden, save, protect each other, remain in peak fitness, meditate, live well with less, connect with community, weapons ready. All in no particular order. I'm sure I left out a few very important elements.

[Pops]

I and some others will hopefully have done what we bragged about in this thread.

To be perfectly honest, if you haven't invested 'time or capital into what you do next' I can't fathom why you are even reading this post.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I')s all this foolishness necessary in the original serious PO forum?

Say simply what you have done to prepare and what you will do as in patience's example.

If you have done neither then put your photos on your wall and throw darts or post them in the Open forum but don't plug up what should be a serious forum.

[ki11ercane]

Nothing other than what I am doing now. (because it won't happen in my lifetime)

But it will happen in my daughters lifetime after I am worm food. (hence back to what I am doing now)

[ROCKMAN]

Since the chat has turned gloomy I’ll offer a very disturbing story I read just this morning. Sorry...didn’t think to save the link. According to a report done by a bond rating agency, we haven’t even seen the worst of the mortgage blow up yet. Most of the current problems have occurred because of the initial 2 to 3 year teaser rates. But there’s a much bigger crunch heading our way in 2009 - 10. Most of the variable rate mortgages are due to reset after 5 years…2 to 3 years after the teaser rate resets start to hurt folks. The report showed there are about 3+X as many loans falling into this group then were in the teaser group. Even worse, many were written as “pay option” mortgages. I wasn’t aware of this neat little trick: the homeowner could choose to not pay the full monthly note with the difference being added to the balance. Brokers were paid twice the commission for placing such loans. Wachovia (who just bellied up) required its loan officer to do 50% of the loans as “pay options” loans. So not only will these loans start resetting over the next 2 years, some may be resetting at higher rates on balances that were greater then the original loan.

Just a guess on my part but looking at the distribution and maturity of these 5 yr ARM’s, if they have a default rate similar to those associated with the teaser rates, we may be seeing 3 to 4 times the mortgage defaults we’re seeing today.

[TheDude]

Is this the Alt-A stuff? Rocc posted here about the whole shebang May '07: 800 BILLION in IO/ARMs to Reset. Pay Options brought up on last page of that thread, it starts off with some flaming btw...there were graphs of the timetable for mortgage resets somewhere in there.

[ROCKMAN]

Dude -- not sure if what I read about was Alt-A but it sounds like it. The story showed a histogram of the reset timing vs. number of mortgages. We're barely half way up the slope to the peak around the beginning of 2010. They did throw some numbers out but nothing like $800 billion. The future adjustment were going to be affecting at least twice as many loans as we've seen to date. Given how much damage that has caused to the economy imagine doubling up. It didn't discuss the rebundling of these loans as the teaser loans were but I can't imagine they weren't. I wonder how much potential bad paper the companies, who have already had big bucks thrown at them by gov't, are sitting on. Those companies certainly know the liability they're sitting on. Makes sense that a rating company would study this future blowup: We might start seeing some major drops in ratings very soon.

[kiwichick]

and how many jobs are about to go in the auto industry?

not just the detroit 3 but all the others as well