The future of the United States includes...

[Trader666]

Oh please... it's all there in black and white. Grow up.

It's Saturday evening and unlike you I have much better things to do. Parting comment: think about learning to admit when you're wrong... not only will you be more successful, you'll look like much less of a fool when you are (which is often).

Quote from Mom0/pH0x:

never did any argument morph in either thread, i was just conveying my experience in alabama, it's not up for any debate, they are facts, it is simply what happened and i witnessed it, both the encounter with the police, and i went to court as a witness, i heard the judge, the prosecutors and the cops... there's nothing to agree or disagree with... i was recounting the facts about my experience...

i didn't "morph" any point in this thread either, my points, and point of view has remained consistent... sorry you fail to understand...

 

[short&naked]

NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE.... make it stop!!!11

 

[Hombre]

Quote from morganist:

it is through their own observations. they have just looked around and seen it for themselves.

i am twenty six and feel the same way. the world is turning to sh1t because our parents generation have sold us out. it doesn't take long to appreciate the generation above you is selfish when you seem them buying multiple homes and not helping their own kids financially through college or with a deposit for their first home.

also they are angry with their parents generation for neglecting them the main reason young people commit crime is either to get attention from their parents or to get attention from their peers to compensate for the lack of attention they get from their parents because their parents want to do what they want all the time rather than spend time with their kids.

not all of that generation are like that but most are. think about how many people own more than one house, think about how many parents put their kids into nursery so they can get double income so they can buy more than they need. think about all those 4 by 4 and designer clothes. this self interest did not exist fifty years ago when they were growing up all they had to worrying about was themselves and what they could get out of people.

it is no wonder they are pissed with the older generation, it is just retaliation for being crapped on their whole life. it surprises me you are so out of touch with what is going on it is as if the older generation think they have done nothing wrong.

Even though I am 50 years old, I agree with you.
Baby boomers fucked up America for good to the point of no return.
No question about it .
After Reagan it was all over.as globalists dismantled american manufacturing, created larger underclass of indebted voters and here we are now with absolutelly no legal means to reverse the slide .

 

[Little Joey]

Quote from the1:

I was at the bank the other day to make a routine visit and I got mauled by a personal banker and then their investment advisor. Both of them had Vice President on their business cards - go figure. We got to talking about the economy and the banking system (no surprise there eh?) and these two characters were more clueless than your 30-something crowd. Working at one of the biggest banks in the world, they didn't have a clue how the banking system actually worked. I wasn't surprised really. Most people have absolutely no clue. Even in the midst of the catastrophe we find ourselves in people still don't have much of a clue why or how we got here. They all think it's a few deadbeats who got wrapped up in a sub-prime mortgage.

i'm just a stoopid kid but in skool the teachers say that. that sub prime stuff got us in trouble and is the cause of why parking lots at fast food places and stuff dont have as many cars as before...

so my question is what did get us here?..if it wasnt like you said few deadbeats wrapped up in subprime mortagege?

and to southamerica...i like reading some of the things you post about and also the replies from others.

 

[Xspurt]

Parts of this thread were very interesting and eye opening,but the level of research on whom to pin the blame on is as thorough as the standard of investment analysis applied by the average ET member.

That is amazing considering we have an almost free information source available to us all if anyone is prepared to dig.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from Little Joey:

'... so my question is what did get us here?..

What started the housing mess was Government (specifically the Democrats in 1999), passing legislation which demanded that people who were not financially qualified for a mortgage loan be given one anyway... all done to buy political favor.

Bigger troubles and offenses followed, but "Affirmative Action Lending" was the root of it all. Had the damage been limited to only sub-prime mortgage defaults, our current problems would be a mere shadow of what they are.

 

[SouthAmerica]

.

Little Joey: …so my question is what did get us here?


*****


July 12, 2009

SouthAmerica: The major problems started with deregulation of various industries and massive deficit spending during the Reagan administration.

I don’t know how old you are, but you be paying for a long time interest on the moneys that the Reagan administration pissed away in defense spending a long time ago.

George Bush Senior also pissed away a lot of money during his administration that was added to the tab that your generation is going to get stuck with.

George Bush Jr. was the most reckless of the bunch, and during his administration he added another $ 5 trillion dollars to the tab that future generations will have to pay.

I would recommend that you read the following thread if you want to have a better understanding of the bill that your generation will be stuck with:

U.S. Economy – Budget Deficits – GDP and Defense Spending
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2422515&highlight=budget+deficits#post2422515

Things will be even worse than the information that you will read on that thread since the Obama administration inherited a collapsing country from the prior administration and to keep things afloat they will have to run $ 2 trillion dollar annual deficits for many years to come in their effort of turning things around.

The current generation is the most incompetent and corrupt generation that this country ever had and they are leaving behind a bankrupt country to your generation.
.

 

[Specterx]

I know enough not to say that an actual dictator would be a good thing... but it does seem to me like we're witnessing a major systemic failure. That alone wouldn't be so much of a problem, but at the moment we seem to be utterly paralyzed when it comes to dealing with it.

I mean, everybody knows that SS and Medicare are huge problems, nobody has any faith in Congress, many institutions and the 'old way of doing things' seem to be ossifying or breaking down, but few people have any idea as to what can or should replace these.

It must be a lot like how people felt before the Civil War. North-South tensions were building for decades, and we tried to resolve them in various ways, but nothing was successful and ultimately it became impossible to kick the ball any further down the road.

I really have no idea what will emerge, but it seems to me that the most likely paths are:

a) Some kind of (peaceful) libertarian revolution. At least in theory, power is devolved from the elites and institutions that have mishandled it and returned to the people.

b) A wave of right-wing authoritarianism or fascism. As people no longer have confidence in the old narratives, the elites use fear, hate, and force to distract public attention in order to maintain their privileged status.

I would prefer a) but I think b) is far more likely. People turn on each other in times of crisis, and any charismatic figure who can find the right scapegoat will also find themselves a path to power. Imagine how people would respond if there was a terrorist attack involving WMDs, 5-10 years or so into this period of economic malaise...

 

[SouthAmerica]

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July 12, 2009

SouthAmerica: Reply to Specterx

You said: “I mean, everybody knows that SS and Medicare are huge problems, nobody has any faith in Congress…”

I was 100 percent against the US government bailout of last October to the tune of $ 800 billion dollars – the scare, bait and switch business that the scam artists pulled out last year. I was also against the massive amount of US government guarantees to the tune of trillions of US dollars that the government gave away to these swindlers.

Since they first started talking about US government bailouts, and all kinds of US government guarantees I have been writing about that this is the strategy that the Neo-Cons had all along to raid the coffers of the US government, and place massive amounts of all kinds of debt on the books of the US government – and the end result would be the dismantlement of all the safety nets regarding the US economy such as S.S., Medicare, and so on…

The American people are not aware of the implications and the magnitude of the damage that these scam artists have inflicted into the population of the United States. In future years, because the US government has assumed so much debt from the Swindlers from Wall Street and also from the big US banks this will be the excuse that they need to destroy the remaining social safety nets in the US – resulting in massive poverty in this country, because the scam artists in Wall Street, mismanaged and destroy all safety nets from the pension system, to Social Security, to Medicare, and so on…and at a time when wages have been declining for decades, and the baby boom generation has started retiring by the millions every year.

The destruction of the US economic system will be more apparent to everyone in the coming years after the dust settles from all the cumulative mismanagement and the economic implosion that has been going on for many years.

 

[Specterx]

Quote from southamerica:

this is the strategy that the Neo-Cons had all along to raid the coffers of the US government, and place massive amounts of all kinds of debt on the books of the US government – and the end result would be the dismantlement of all the safety nets regarding the US economy such as S.S., Medicare, and so on…

I don't know about these conspiracy theories. No doubt the political system has been captured by the special interests of bankers etc. but the bigger problem is that people naturally put off dealing with problems that are perceived to be difficult (procrastination). Unless the political system is constructed in such a way as to discourage this, problems are not dealt with until they become an immediate crisis, and by then it's much harder to deal with them. Sometimes you just can't.

Unfortunately, right now we don't have one crisis but a half-dozen or more: falling wages/global wage arbitrage, unsustainable economic patterns and structure, and looming crisis in the pensions system (both public and private). I'd also add immigration to that list. You could also reasonably add excessive resource consumption, energy problems, global warming and such, but the nature and severity of these problems isn't so clear.