U.S. monetary troubles - very bad

[Scarlett Wampus]

"My fellow citizens, we are embroiled in the greatest financial crisis our nation has ever faced and we will have to take emergency action to keep the entire system from melting down."

Thar She Blows: The Last Hurrah for the Banking System

 

[Sunstone]

"Now everyone is going to pay for the excesses of the few."

That, of course, is most likely true.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Well, its an opinion piece. I posted it to generate some discussion because I think the U.S. economy, and the world economy in general, is in much more challenging position than most of us realise.

 

[Sunstone]

Well, its an opinion piece. I posted it to generate some discussion because I think the U.S. economy, and the world economy in general, is in much more challenging position than most of us realise.

I agree with the notion the economies are precarious. I just don't have any idea what to do about it.

 

[Alceste]

I agree with the notion the economies are precarious. I just don't have any idea what to do about it.

Speed the collapse: Don't have children, grow your own food, and pay off your debts.

It's a crap system, utterly dependent on exponentially increasing consumption of limited resources and endless population growth. It needs to collapse.

 

[3.14]

Dodd's lengthly oratory on the floor of the House on Friday nearly earned him a citation from the EPA for releasing massive levels of toxic gas into the jet-stream and accelerating the rate of global warming.
found this funny

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Speed the collapse: Don't have children, grow your own food, and pay off your debts.

It's a crap system, utterly dependent on exponentially increasing consumption of limited resources and endless population growth. It needs to collapse.

It inevitably will within the next decade. Its a possibility this current downturn will turn into full blown collapse. Who knows? What's more this won't be like the recession of our grandparent's era. That occurred midway in the period of exponential fossil fuel production and we're now at the peak with exponential decline in our future.

As well as diminishing the amount we feed the banking system in terms of debt and becoming more self-sufficient in general I also think its a good idea to look into already present small scale alternative money systems that we could contribute to (like LETS) and consider what we need to know & how we might help organise ourselves in the event of collapse.

The way we will react (and how we are reacting right now) much depends on what we believe is possible, what we expect to happen and how much we know about looking after ourselves and each other without relying on a centralised banking system.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

There is actually an enormous amount we can do. The trouble is looking at the big picture can make us feel helpless. If we look at small scale things we can achieve for ourselves and within our local communities its a lot brighter. And, as I said, we have to believe we can do something first of all.

But I'm going off on a tangent when the topic was originally about the U.S. economic problems.

 

[Sun Myung Moon]

As usual, European nations are catching up with us rather quickly, as far as the states are concerned I would say that the "crisis" is much overblown. Quite honestly it seems that the media plays to spoiled brats that seem to feel mis-used if their cable and/or Internet connection is turned off or they have no cell phones, I cry a two tears for them in a thimble and then my tear ducts dry up like the Mojave desert! It goes in cycles and we are due for an upswing, Europeans feel the pinch while we are on the way up again and they admire and hate us just as they always have and probably will- business as usual over and over again.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Quite honestly it seems that the media plays to spoiled brats that seem to feel mis-used if their cable and/or Internet connection is turned off or they have no cell phones, I cry a two tears for them in a thimble and then my tear ducts dry up like the Mojave desert!

Do you know just how hard it is to find a job? And any more, a job opening is gone as soon as it's posted. The Delphi plant is Kokomo, IN., has laid off at least 800 people. One factory closed, and with it 600 jobs. Chrysler is also always laying off, and not expected to remain open for longer than five years. My dad is transferring to a plant about 30 miles away just to get his final 10 years in before he retires, because the Kokomo plants will probably not last that much longer. That means easily 1000+ jobs more will be gone. Small scale, many small businesses are also closing. They don't contribute many jobs individually, but they add up. A Krogers also just closed. That was at least 100 jobs gone. A few new factors and places have opened, but they do not open fast enough to meet demands.

 

[Reverend Rick]

Do you know just how hard it is to find a job? And any more, a job opening is gone as soon as it's posted. The Delphi plant is Kokomo, IN., has laid off at least 800 people. One factory closed, and with it 600 jobs. Chrysler is also always laying off, and not expected to remain open for longer than five years. My dad is transferring to a plant about 30 miles away just to get his final 10 years in before he retires, because the Kokomo plants will probably not last that much longer. That means easily 1000+ jobs more will be gone. Small scale, many small businesses are also closing. They don't contribute many jobs individually, but they add up. A Krogers also just closed. That was at least 100 jobs gone. A few new factors and places have opened, but they do not open fast enough to meet demands.

Once upon a time, people used to farm. They grew their own food. Some planted their crops on barren land while others planted in fertile soil.

The economy in Huston Texas is booming. Just as the farmer who planted on barren land either starved or moved on to greener pastures, so must people who are laid off travel to find jobs or educate themselves in something that has a demand.

If you are looking for a job and cannot find it, you are searching in the wrong place, or your skills are not in demand and you need to update your skills in something in demand.

 

[Mathematician]

Once upon a time, people used to farm. They grew their own food. Some planted their crops on barren land while others planted in fertile soil.

The economy in Huston Texas is booming. Just as the farmer who planted on barren land either starved or moved on to greener pastures, so must people who are laid off travel to find jobs or educate themselves in something that has a demand.

If you are looking for a job and cannot find it, you are searching in the wrong place, or your skills are not in demand and you need to update your skills in something in demand.

Non-issue. You assume there is a set of perfect conditions that imperfect people can't reach. However, if all of said people did update their skills all they would do is continue the process.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The economy in Huston Texas is booming. Just as the farmer who planted on barren land either starved or moved on to greener pastures, so must people who are laid off travel to find jobs or educate themselves in something that has a demand.

Not everybody has the luxury of being able to pick up and move. Not everybody has the time or money to further there education.
And when your used to making 20+ an hour, and are suddenly struggling to find work that pays 10 an hour, it's a big world of difference. Leases, families, kids, and child custody are just a few of many obligations that can keep a person from packing up and leaving.

 

[Alceste]

Do you know just how hard it is to find a job? And any more, a job opening is gone as soon as it's posted. The Delphi plant is Kokomo, IN., has laid off at least 800 people. One factory closed, and with it 600 jobs. Chrysler is also always laying off, and not expected to remain open for longer than five years. My dad is transferring to a plant about 30 miles away just to get his final 10 years in before he retires, because the Kokomo plants will probably not last that much longer. That means easily 1000+ jobs more will be gone. Small scale, many small businesses are also closing. They don't contribute many jobs individually, but they add up. A Krogers also just closed. That was at least 100 jobs gone. A few new factors and places have opened, but they do not open fast enough to meet demands.

Welcome to the ideal world of trade globalisation, as conceived, advocated and implemented by your nation's "conservatives." I'm afraid your manufacturing jobs have gone to Mexico or China and they are not coming back. Thanks to industrialisation, communities without workers employed in manual labour have no-one to support small businesses. The limited and withering wealth of your community is now exported via multi-national mega-corporations (McDonalds, Walmart, etc) to shareholders in China and Saudi Arabia and no longer remains in your local economy. To make things worse, the tighter your budget, the more likely you are to shop at mega-stores for the prices - meaning your income flies out of the US faster than you can say "cha-ching", supporting everything from punitive price-fixing demands on producers, to union-busting, to local wage slavery and Chinese slave labour.

But you can take heart from the fact you are not alone. Thanks to the global free trade policies of both your major political parties, and particularly thanks to Bush's trillion dollar war and multi-billion dollar budget deficit (much of which currently goes to bailing out collapsing banks, and very little of which goes to bailing out laid off factory workers), the number of jobless and homeless Americans has skyrocketed during the Bush administration. You are entering into another great depression, I'm sorry to say. 90 US banks are on the verge of collapse - 3 have collapsed already. The number of people making "hardship withdrawals" from their retirement accounts has shot up by 61% since 2003. There has been an increase of 20% in the number of people receiving assistance from food banks in the last year alone (and a corresponding 9% decrease in federal funding). In the mean time, 75% of income gains during the Bush administration have gone to the wealthiest 1% of America's population.

If you were living in a sane country I could advise you to start producing your own food, but I understand land ownership is concentrated among the wealthy in the US (like McCain, with his 8 houses), and it's hard (though not impossible) to grow vegetables in the back seat of your car.

Contrary to Rick's optimism - and keeping in mind he is in that 1% who have seen real improvement in their economic situation during Bush's administration - there's no reason to move. There just aren't as many jobs in the US as there are jobless people, and your government's strategy for improving their employment statistics is to force people into homelessness or working poverty through increasingly oppressive welfare policies and the privatisation of social services (AKA forced labour for private profit). This works statistically because the homeless can not be counted, and people who are forced into minimum wage slavery by private placement agencies count as "employed". Also, keep in mind you are not counted as "unemployed" in the US if you have been out of work for over a year. You are a "discouraged worker", and are not tallied for the purpose of employment statistics.

 

[Alceste]

Once upon a time, people used to farm. They grew their own food. Some planted their crops on barren land while others planted in fertile soil.

The economy in Huston Texas is booming. Just as the farmer who planted on barren land either starved or moved on to greener pastures, so must people who are laid off travel to find jobs or educate themselves in something that has a demand.

If you are looking for a job and cannot find it, you are searching in the wrong place, or your skills are not in demand and you need to update your skills in something in demand.

Can I ask, Rick, how often you've moved because you found yourself suddenly unemployed? And what measure of job availability you are using to advocate that America's 17,384, 787 "officially" unemployed people (up from 14,334,824 last year) move to Houston to find jobs? Because according to Department of Labour statistics, Texas ranks a piddly 21st in terms of job availability, with 4.1% unemployment - up 0.4 percent from this time last year. South Dakota comes in first place, with only 3% unemployment. Of all 50 states, only Arkansas, Oklahoma and West Virginia have seen a (small) drop in unemployment in the past year (although there is no way to say whether this is due to an increase in migration, changes in statistical reporting or homelessness). Houston has an unemployment rate of 4.9% (up half a percent since last year) or 110,000 people. All those people are presumably intending to compete with Lone Wolf for that job you promise awaits him in Texas.

You might consider looking into such things in detail before you advocate that the unemployed members of RF uproot their families and move to find work. Moving is a stressful and costly venture, and there is absolutely no reason at all to believe that anywhere else in the US is necessarily a better bet than where people (and their families and friends) currently live. If the economic situation in Texas looks in the least bit rosy, I can guarantee it is entirely due to windfall profits for (employed) oil executives, who are not likely to surrender their jobs to newly arrived electricians (or whatever Wolf does) from Indiana. Regardless, they too will see their assets evaporate with the impending collapse of American banking, so you're all in the same boat, really.

 

[Wandered Off]

...there is absolutely no reason at all to believe that anywhere else in the US is necessarily a better bet than where people (and their families and friends) currently live.

The DOL seems to be telling different stories, so it's confusing. Recent (this week) numbers from the same Department of Labor place three Texas cities at the top for job creation...

Dallas-Fort Worth added the most jobs of any U.S. metropolitan area during the 12 months ending in July, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Labor.

After Dallas, the next best growth rates were in Houston, San Antonio and Seattle, Wash., which all posted growth of 2.2 percent between July 2007 and last month.

Report: Dallas-Fort Worth has strongest job market in U.S. | WFAA.com | Texas Southwest

Regional differences are almost inevitable. For example, as the US auto companies continue to shrink their operations, it has a regional ripple effect on businesses as diverse as nearby part suppliers to construction to restaurants. It's no surprise that Detroit has been much more impacted by that than Houston. On the other hand, Texas went through a terrible time in the 1980s and lost most of its local banking infrastructure to oil and real estate woes, while other areas of the country remained largely untouched.

Of course, all areas will be impacted by a national recession, which may be what you were referring to, but I think that it is fair to say that some areas are hit harder than others. There is definitely a reason to believe that somewhere else in the US could be a better bet than where people currently live, though very likely it would involve some reskilling.

 

[Alceste]

The DOL seems to be telling different stories, so it's confusing. Recent (this week) numbers from the same Department of Labor place three Texas cities at the top for job creation...

Report: Dallas-Fort Worth has strongest job market in U.S. | WFAA.com | Texas Southwest

Well if both unemployment and job creation are rising, it probably means the population is growing faster than the local economy.

Regional differences are almost inevitable. For example, as the US auto companies continue to shrink their operations, it has a regional ripple effect on businesses as diverse as nearby part suppliers to construction to restaurants. It's no surprise that Detroit has been much more impacted by that than Houston. On the other hand, Texas went through a terrible time in the 1980s and lost most of its local banking infrastructure to oil and real estate woes, while other areas of the country remained largely untouched.

Of course, all areas will be impacted by a national recession, which may be what you were referring to, but I think that it is fair to say that some areas are hit harder than others. There is definitely a reason to believe that somewhere else in the US could be a better bet than where people currently live, though very likely it would involve some reskilling.

I imagine a guy who makes 20+ an hour is already skilled. You can't pull that kind of cake at Walmart, that's for sure. Regardless of regional differences, a sensible person would land the job THEN move (assuming the job happened to be in a place she wouldn't mind living), not wander from state to state in search of a job. Anyway, moving requires capital, unless you want to sleep in the gutter. It's hard enough for jobless families to afford breakfast, let alone the expense of moving vans and damage deposits.

 

[Mathematician]

Texas has a strong economy because of capital flight and oil. We don't rely on a state income tax, and that attracts higher end laborers. Additionally, some investors like to follow through with land speculation. North Texas in particular creates a lot of provincial tax exceptions for retirees.

 

[Reverend Rick]

Can I ask, Rick, how often you've moved because you found yourself suddenly unemployed?

Before I started my company, I moved countless times Alceste. I have worked in 17 states and 4 foriegn countries.

I admit that people have visitation issues and such that might make a permanant move nearly impossible. That does not mean one must sit at home idle in dispair however. There are temporary labor providers in this country that will employ you for plant shutdowns and such. They give you per diem and sometimes provide a motel room as well as an above average wage rate for short time employment out of state. They don't call tradesmen journeyman for nothing.

Do the math, if your working locally for ten dollars an hour, you could work out of town one month out of three for thirty dollars an hour and break even. It would not be hard to incorporate some other employment here and there and improve your situation considerably.

Most people who make good money have had to relocate. This is the basic issue here. The "have nots" complain what the "haves" have. The problem is, they are not willing to make the sacrifices to make the big bucks. Who's fault is that?

 

[Alceste]

Before I started my company, I moved countless times Alceste. I have worked in 17 states and 4 foriegn countries.

So did you move first then find work, or did you find work out of state or outside the country first and then move? I ask because you are suggesting that people who don't have work at home should move to Texas and then start looking for work. It's a moot point anyway, because...

This is the basic issue here. The "have nots" complain what the "haves" have. The problem is, they are not willing to make the sacrifices to make the big bucks. Who's fault is that?

This is not the basic issue. The basic issue is that the US economy is in a state of utter collapse, the likes of which have not been seen since the Great Depression. It is estimated that HALF of the 9000 banks in the US are going to go bankrupt . Large deposits in US banks are no longer insurable. The bank shares their employees and investors thought of as "wealth" will soon be worthless, if they are not already. Bankers are finding themselves unemployed by the tens of thousands.

These issues are a much bigger problem for the "haves" than the "have-nots". I am very glad I didn't bother "working hard" and "saving money" right now, as I would only see my hard-earned assets vanish overnight like the illusions they always were. (As it is, I only have debts that will vanish. A much better position to be in, IMO).