Is the American Empire on the brink of a swift and total collapse?

[LEAPup]

I experienced the 70's first hand. I remember my Dad sitting on the hood of our station wagon in a large gas line outside of where we lived in New Orleans.

He had to sit on the hood to keep people from jumping the line, and sadly I remember seeing numerous people fist fight/brawl over who's turn it was.


Those were tough times...

 

[Larson]

Quote from LEAPup:

I experienced the 70's first hand. I remember my Dad sitting on the hood of our station wagon in a large gas line outside of where we lived in New Orleans.

He had to sit on the hood to keep people from jumping the line, and sadly I remember seeing numerous people fist fight/brawl over who's turn it was.


Those were tough times...

So did I and I never saw any gas lines in my location. The lines were caused by crowd behavior and hoarding. It was a contrived shortage and gov't controls exacerbated the situation.. It will be far worse if the situation arises today. jmo.

 

[LEAPup]

Quote from Larson:

So did I and I never saw any gas lines in my location. The lines were caused by crowd behavior and hoarding. It was a contrived shortage and gov't controls exacerbated the situation.. It will be far worse if the situation arises today. jmo.

Oh no question!!!!! If we were to repeat the 70's with gas lines like we had in New Orleans, there wouldn't be fist fights like then. We would be seeing people getting shot as our kids have to duck for cover.

I'll have to say, I think we are going to repeat problems of the 70's, but they will be far, far worse this time around, and I'm usually an optomist.:eek:

 

[rew]

Quote from endsongs:

I agree totally. The 1970's were actually America's last great decade. Personal and gov't debt levels were reasonable. Everybody could afford a house and a decent car. Inflation was a little high temporarily but because debt levels were so low, even if interest rates went up to compensate, the savings rate was high enough to offset it.

Then Reagan came in, tripled the national debt, and used that money to create the illusion of good times. People to this day still put Reagan on a pedestal without realizing that all he really did was triple the debt to create the facade of a good economy.

I agree. The worst thing Reagan did was make debt respectable to conservatives, so that 20 years later Dick Cheney would say, "Reagan proved debt doesn't matter". The 400 billion dollar deficits of the Bush administration were then used by the Democrats to justify their 1.4 trillion dollar deficits. ("You guys didn't balance the budget so why should we?")

 

[rew]

Quote from Retief:

I'm saying Reagan's legacy is the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The economy of the 1980's wasn't a peacetime economy - it was a cold war economy.

Obama's legacy will be the last helicopter out of Kabul.

And war with Iran. He pushed through sanctions designed to cripple Iran's economy. That is an act of war. The clear intent is to push Iran to the wall so that they feel compelled to retaliate against the U.S. somehow, probably through an act of terrorism or perhaps by sinking a U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf. That will then serve as the pretense for the full scale shooting war that Obama's masters were planning for all along, regardless of which puppet became President.

 

[endsongs]

Quote from rew:

I agree. The worst thing Reagan did was make debt respectable to conservatives, so that 20 years later Dick Cheney would say, "Reagan proved debt doesn't matter". The 400 billion dollar deficits of the Bush administration were then used by the Democrats to justify their 1.4 trillion dollar deficits. ("You guys didn't balance the budget so why should we?")

The last two budgets signed into law under Bush II had $1T+ deficits( the bailout was $800B alone). The $400B numbers don't include everything.

 

[rew]

Quote from endsongs:

You are making an apples to oranges comparison. The below link shows that JC started supporting the Afghan rebels in 1978. If the Afghans had to wait over 2 years for support to start from 1978, until Reagan was elected, they most likely would have lost. This is not Germany invading Poland. The communist Afghan govt in power ASKED the Soviets to come in to help fight the rebels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan

Those "rebels" are now the people who make up the Taliban and the Afghan/Pakistan branch of Al Quaeda. Which goes to show the wisdom of Ron Paul's policy of non-interventionism. Whether it was the coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran in 1953, the support of the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan in the late 70s and 80s, or the support of our buddy Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran, also in the 80s, our interventions have a way of coming back and haunting us.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from endsongs:

The last two budgets signed into law under Bush II had $1T+ deficits( the bailout was $800B alone). The $400B numbers don't include everything.

bush ran the wars off budget. obama put them on budget.

 

[endsongs]

Quote from LEAPup:

Oh no question!!!!! If we were to repeat the 70's with gas lines like we had in New Orleans, there wouldn't be fist fights like then. We would be seeing people getting shot as our kids have to duck for cover.

I'll have to say, I think we are going to repeat problems of the 70's, but they will be far, far worse this time around, and I'm usually an optomist.:eek:

I agree that things might be much worse now. People actually had money saved up then. The relatively high interest rates encouraged people to sock some of their earnings away, unlike now where good savings rates can't be found, and the stock market is kind of risky to all except short term traders.

THe 1970's inflation might have been due to the FED and the banks printing money like there was no tomorrow to drown everyone in debt. This was possible since Nixon freed the banks from the gold standard constraint a few years earlier. I've seen graphs that show the explosion in absolute debt here and elsewhere.

The graph I'm having a hard time finding has the debt to asset ratio from the 1970's until now. Someone posted that America has ~57T in assets and ~55T in debt now. If those numbers are accurate, I'm sure the 1970's had a better ratio.

 

[rew]

Quote from Mr Pain:

It was the Republicans who gave us the dynamic choice of an unstable McCain and an idiot Palin. If you disagree with McCain being unstable, just look how he handled his vice presidential pick.
I miss the republican party of Eisenhower and Goldwater. What would they say about the Republicans now and more importantly this chart http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

Regan and Bush 1 were the worst thing ever to happen to this country. Bush II wasn’t far behind. Obama may not be far behind but the slope hasn’t changed from W.

I can't stand Obama but I put the blame for him squarely with the Republicans. Big spending, war mongering, Constitution shredding Dubya destroyed any credibility the Republicans may have had, and McCain was his senile clone. No wonder most people voted for the socialist. I voted third party myself.