United States Heading towards a Depression?

What on earth are you talking about? I work for a living little boy, I don't have the time to run around and play stupid games like you and your cronies.

When I give out red, you'll know it. I sign it! Ask around!

 

On the back of my car my bumper sticker says "Ron Paul was Right".

 

earlpearl:

The United States was founded by people who left a poorly managed continent dominated by statists and bureaucrats. Does that sound familiar?

Over time, we allowed the U.S. to fall into the same pathetic state as the nations our ancestors abandoned.

Leaving the U.S. is the best strategy for free men, at this time. We don't exist to be your slaves.

Be careful about wanting us back. If we come back, it may not be on your terms. Free men won't come back to be slaves to your nationalist socialist machine.

 

Which is why for the life of me I will never be able to understand why so many ignorant and unappreciative Americans choose to go back to what their ancestors have suffered under.

Reminds me of street dogs eating their own puke.

America will choke on that.

Reading some of the posts from people here makes me wish we could exile them to some of the countries they believe have a better system and watch them beg to come back crying.

They are masters at words. Long posts of illusional and delusional thesis.

Unbelievable!

 

I know you enjoy quoting the founding fathers. The big difference between them and you is that they faced a terrible situation and dilemma. They faced an enemy that was many many times bigger and stronger than them.

They stayed, fought, and prevailed against terrible odds.

You quit.

I doubt if the founding fathers would see much merit in your actions.

As for me, don't assume anything. Don't asume I would lean toward "wanting us back" (your words). I don't care. I'd lean toward quitters staying where they are. But if you choose to come back, its your choice. Frankly, I don't set terms with regard to whether you stay or go.

Look for all these politically charged phrases....the simple fact is ...."The US economy broke". That is what occurred and has caused this recession.

People can throw all the politics and blame they want. Here is what happened in pure economic terms.

1. Way way way too much personal debt, chiefly in terms of residential real estate. The financial world/ and real estate worlds fed this growth in an unencumbered way. Prices went up..then boom it became an unsustainable speculative bubble and burst.

That occurs periodicly in free business markets. I seem to recall that through the history of the US it has occurred many times stretching into the 1800's. It is a function of demand and supply. You remember that...it is the fundamentals of economics.

2. The financial institution world took on way way way too much of this real estate debt...in the form of securitized residential mortgages. The investments in these financial stretched world wide. The size of the gross amount of these investments was gargantuan.

3. Un regulated actions by financial institutions, prominently AIG figured out a way to make a bit more money by creating "credit swaps" on this new huge investment vehicle. They insured the value of these investments. When the market crashed, they didn't have the capital to "insure" the loss of value.

AIG's crash along with the huge financial losses around the world threatened the very foundation of the world financial system.

4. There has been an unprecedented loss in "equity"/value--which corresponds to the balance sheet of the world. Real estate values and stock values have lost 10's of trillions of dollars in value around the world.

For all those partisans out there who take an economic situation and immediately twist it into some political slogan, either left or right....that is what occurred.

It is a devastatingly huge problem. The crash has affected every industry in the nation and has impacted the world at large.

I did some calculations on the domestic new vehicle market. We are running at an annual sales rate of under 10 million vehicles/year. Pre recession we were running at 16 million vehicles/year. At an average sales price of about $28,000/vehicle-->that is a loss of about $170 billion in new vehicle sales.

Boom!!! the losses from the recession have eliminated everything tied to $170 billion in new car sales. That translates into probably hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, etc.

Take the same circumstances and tie it to all sorts of other industries. Similar impacts, though probably not as large.

Its a big friggin mess.

Its broke.

The government is stepping in and trying to plug the gaps. The first step was to keep the world financial system working.

For those who forget (typically for convenient political reasons) the world financial system was teetering. I think our friend Bogart, (on the right) who is often the bearer of "bad news" was reporting on the lending rates between financial institutions back then.

At that time, the rates were so high, financial institutions weren't lending--no capital flowing anywheres.

Frankly currently some of the institutions that received TARP money are paying it back to the govt. That is pretty damn good.

As with the past two recessions (early 90's and early 2000's) a burst bubble in one area...was ultimately overcome by a different element of the US economy that later surged.

Hopefully the same thing will occur again. It won't happen quickly. It doesn't occur gracefully or without pain.

Quitters don't contribute to recovery. On the other hand, founding fathers, who worked at what they believed, created a great nation that has the strength to work through difficulties.

Therein lies the difference.

 

I think this email I received from my Mother-in-Law the other day kinda spells out what happened to the US:

I myself believe we are in the Dependence stage, Obama being the biggest dependent of them all leading the charge toward Bondage.

God Bless what once was the USA.

 

earlpearl:

You appear to be missing the obvious. Our founding fathers left the failure that was (and is) Europe and founded a new land. I've left (at least for now) the failure that is the United States.

Are you really so much of an ultra-nationalist that you cannot see that the founding fathers and I are on the exact same side -- the side of moral correctness.

Our founding fathers were not mindless nationalists. The loved America because of the ideals for which the United States stood. It's the ideals of a nation which are important, not the dirt. These are the same ideals which your statist allies have abandoned and now subjugated.

Some day it might be different, but for today my pen remains happily out of reach of the hands of those traitors who now hold power in the United States.

I have quit a piece of land, you have quit the most important and successful ideals ever created by the minds of men. I am engaged in a strategic retreat before the forces of evil, you are engaged in dancing for their entertainment.

Nationalism is a weak substitute for morality.

 

LOL. You finally totally lost it.

Don't tell us that little willy who was pretending to be a general and the warrior supreme of all warriors (while never joining the army or serving his country) now thinks of himself as philosophical genius equal to the founding fathers of USA and is going to use his mighty pen to liberate the world.
I have a news for you, if the writing of your mighty pen is anything like the garbage you post here or in your fort shi*ty, just give it up and try to get a real job instead wasting your life working in burger king.

 

If Obama keeps spending money the way he is we will be in big trouble! cough...we already are!

 

Don't over dramatize, Will. Most, if not all of them, were probably 2nd or 3rd generation sons of immigrants to the new land. They felt they were facing a new level of British tyranny and acted to set up their own nation founded on different principles; the primary one being that all men are created equal. (Modern version-> all men and women). It became the inspiration for other modern democracies.

I see that they created something majestic and powerful. It became a beacon to attract oppressed people from around the world. It became a nation to look up to. It is also a nation that has always struggled to advance in the face of difficulties.

I see you quit. Doesn't look to similar to me.

Frankly, they defined the ideals. There weren't any such ideals until they established them. And they are powerful ideals. They have been the inspiration for many more modern democracies.

As to statist. Statist/shmatist. Enough of this theoretical bull shit language from a quitter. Far be it for you to tell those who live and work in America how to do things. You quit. You left. You ran away. You aren't willing to work at what you believe.

You are over there somewhere telling us what to do. That is pure BS. You have 0 (that is a big ZERO) credibility

Hot air...no substance. You quit!!!

You obviously don't have any feel for America, or its beliefs or what it stands for. You know those founding fathers that you like to refer to....they created a democracy. That means there is voting.

Calling the existing govt traitors, or alternatively calling the voters who in the popular and electoral system voted in the Obama administration and a majority of Democrats in Congress ....calling them traitors.

You literally have no idea what America is about.

I suspect you live where you deserve to live. You obviously can't stomach that which is so fundamental about America.

You can write what you want. In terms of telling Americans what is right and/or wrong....you have ZERO credibility.

 

earlpearl, you have descended to gworld's level of mindless namecalling and meaningless personal attacks.

I give up on you; I have lost all respect for you. You are no longer worth conversing with; you have made yourself no better than gworld.

As Thomas Paine said, "Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul."

 

The same as quoting different generals never made you to a soldier, quoting the founding fathers of U.S.A doesn't make a thinker or a philosopher.
earpearl, is finally seeing the true you, a hot air balloon with nothing of substance to back it up.
As fas as you and your friends leaving the U.S and going to live somewhere else, this is something that any true American should welcome. It is the equivalent of taking the garbage out and making the house clean.

 

If you stay, people get mad when you criticize.

If you leave, people get mad when you criticize.

No win scenario.

 

But if you take over the world and silence them, then no one will be left to criticize.

 

The following quotation from Mia's post above is unbelievable....
The guy who initially wrote this and Mia for posting this need to check their facts, their history, and their sense of who are citizens....

Mia: I don't care one way or another about quoting historical citations. Cripes you can make a case for anything quoting anyone.

Get the facts right.

1. Dems won more states than Republcans in the 2008 Presidential election. Look it up. Count them.

The guy who wrote this lied.

Square mileage doesn't vote. I don't know what more to say about that.

I frankly didn't bother to look up the county statistics, but I have to believe they are as absurd as the "facts" in counting how many states voted for McCain and how many voted for Obama.

Otherwise the following facts wouldn't have occurred:

Popular Vote

Obama 66,882,230 53% of total
McCain 58, 343,671 46% of total.

Electoral Votes

Obama 365
McCain 173

By the way, if you aggregate all the federal government owned land in states like Montana, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, South Dakota, Alaska....that is lots and lots and lots of federal owned land. Seems like the states where the feds own a lot of the land is where the majority of those folks voted for McCain.

I'm surprised the author of this piece didn't inform the citizens of the US that we should bow to Canada and acknowledge they should be leading the North American Continent. After all, Canada has a lot more square miles than the US.

The guy who wrote this basically is labeling people in cities as unworthy and lowly. Its no wonder that the majority of the population turned against the Republicans in this election. That law professor has a racist tinge on every word he says.

And Now BACK TO THE ECONOMY and the theme of this thread.

Hey everyone, the economy broke. Stop coloring it with politics and accept that fact.

Recognizing that fact, the Bush administration established TARP and injected money into the banking/finance system. Recognizing the horror of the problems the Bush administration initially provided money for the automotive industry.

Is the government of the US going to try and own everything?

I think history and recent recessions show us that is absurd. The recession of the late 1980's and early 1990's was created by a financial/commercial real estate mess. Thousands of "local banks" primarily Savings and Loans went bust. The chief culprit was that they invested like crazy in an overabundance of office buildings around the nation. More suburban office space was built in the decade of the 1980's than all preceeding decades before that in the aggregate.

The S&L's failed. The buildings went bankrupt. The federal government set up the Resolution Trust Fund (RTC). It took control of all these bankrupt buildings. The government owned all this private space. Billions of dollars worth of private space.

The RTC sold ALL of it back to private ownership. All of it.

During a crisis, the RTC stepped in to work through the problems. Over time the problems got resolved. Then the government sold it all back.

I firmly believe the same thing is going to happen again. It doesn't happen overnight. It will take years.

Meanwhile, some of the banks(big league crooks? maybe yes maybe no) have already paid the government back for money they took.

In fact in certain cases the money lent has been returned with interest and fees earned. Quick profits for tax payers. Not huge relative to the federal budget...but a positive return on investment.

On the other hand, I've been repeatedly reading that it is highly unlikely that the Feds will get a positive return on the money invested in General Motors. From what I've read, the future stock price of GM will have to soar to unbelievable levels for a positive payoff.

Frankly, I'm for maintaining a US ownership presence in automobile manufacturing for business, strategic, and long term benefits to the economy.

I hope GM rights itself. Its going to be far far far smaller than it was. I hope Ford does great. I hope those two companies become world leaders in auto development, create better cars and use that to sell tremendously to the rest of the world.

I guess we will see over time.

If you truly believe in the primacy of the free markets, I'd suggest you button up your lips about democracy failing, and screaming that the sky is falling.

Go to work. Lead by example. Show people how it is done.

If I go back to see what the popular vote was in the last election its obvious that a dramatic majority of the voters in this nation don't believe in what you are preaching.

Hey. I support positions that are far left of the extremist Right Wing so represented in this forum.

I operate businesses with partners. They are small businesses. None of them gets any government support. None of them.

We work hard to make them work and become profitable. We try and look for certain kinds of businesses "that are under the radar screen" and meet certain criteria we like. We try and find crappy businesses that are failing and then buy them relatively cheap. Then we work to build them up and make them profitable.

We don't win on every case. BUT our overall record is a winning one. We are making money. We haven't laid off a single employee in this recession. We have businesses that are suffering from the recession and amazingly we have a couple of businesses that are counter cyclical and doing well. In those businesses we have added some staff. More people working-> more money being spent and circulating in the economy.

For all those folks who are moaning about government takeovers...Grow up. The US doesn't do that sh!t. Look at the 1980's and 1990's. Every private building that the government took over it sold back to private interests.

 

A company called Costar: http://www.costar.com provides interesting information when looking at commercial real estate. It probably generates the most data on actual leasing activity througout the US on a variety of commercial real estate categories. Its probably most comprehensive on office space, and it appears to have a good fix on retail real estate.

Here are 3 articles having to do with retail real estate.

The first article both describes a significant increase in national retail vacancy and who the most current active retailers are taking space

Hey, the first part of the news is depressing...but the second part is insightful and cool.

The most active retailers taking space are mostly small, there are expansion efforts for tenants that often don't fit typical retail concepts...and there is growth in the world of discounting, amongst other things.

Frankly, the growth thing is interesting. If I had capital and was looking for things that might work, just an overview of who is expanding gives an idea as to what might be working these days.

If I was a vendor of any sort that might do business with these types of industries....I'd check that out to see where there might be expansion.

On the depressing side of the story...the overall vacancy factor in retail that they track increased by over 1.6% in a year. Cripes that is millions of square feet of empty space.

On the other side, rents have to be falling. Good time to make deals, if you are in the market.

The second article describes another high end retailer going out of business.

Well...there is another 200,000 feet of to be empty space, plus a reported 700 more employees who will lose jobs.

I know this chain; very fancy. Its an ultra high end hardware store...sort of like a hardware store for people who don't want to show anyone they are sweating when they work on the lawn.

More bad news.

Much of the world for high end retail in the US is sucking wind. The recession has ripped it apart. They have a catalogue and web business that is also closing.

Cr@p, if one had a yen for really fancy hardware, a knack for an E biz, and could develop a customer service side like Zappos, (which just sold to Amazon for over $800 million in stock and cash) there is probably a great opportunity in buying their inventory at liquidation prices and rebranding/remarketing this stuff exclusively off the web.

In every recession opportunities arise.

The third article probably describes a group that is trying to capitalize on opportunities:

I'm pretty sure the group buying the first part of this huge property sale is buying it for less than they sold it [/quote]

I know the real estate side of the buyers of the first part of this huge sale; First Washington Realty. I worked with the founders years ago. Very sharp folks. I'm almost positive they sold those properties to the current owner in the first place. From the description of the price (cap rate) I'd bet anything they sold it for more than they are buying it back.

They are buying it with money from a huge pension fund. They know the properties, they have the expertise to manage and lease them...and they are buying them at a discount from what they sold them for a while ago.

If they can make these properties work the boys from First Washington will end up making a double killing. jeesh.

Honestly, about 2 decades ago, I was the numbskull that pushed my commercial real estate office away from working on stuff with First Washington Realty and working with a different group and different properties.

Can't look back though...and I gotta give the first Wash team credit.

All I can say is that even in recessions there are opportunities to make things work. You just have to take shots, and apply yourself to make them work.

 

If the guy said that then for the first time there would have been something of value in Mia's post.

 

Here's an excerpt of an email blast by the folks at ContrarianProfits.com.

They are summarizing The End of The End of the Recession.

• The US consumer makes up 70% of US GDP, yet retail sales and wage-based income are steadily declining. And consumer deleveraging continues despite efforts by the Fed and the Obama administration to stem the tide.
• The business outlook remains bleak. May business sales decline a hefty 18% year-on-year. This is clearly a recessionary signal. Other key business outlook indicators, such as the Philly Fed’s Business Outlook Index and the MAPI Business Outlook Index, are pointing down.
• There is no reason to believe that an inventory bounce is in the works. In fact, the decline in UPS package volumes (-4.7 year-on-year in June) show that inventory weakness is accelerating.
• The recent falloff in jobless claims is due to seasonal factors, not an improvement in the economy. “Official” unemployment is under 10%. But the U-6 data (which includes the so-called “underemployed”) is 16.8% – 6.5% higher than a year ago. A consumer driven recovery in this environment is highly unlikely.
• Housing is still in the ditch. It will take at least five years to mop up excess inventory. This means house price deflation will be a secular trend. This will continue to act as a drag on the banking sector and impair credit quality.
• There is no top-line business growth. Better-than-expected earnings in the second quarter were achieved by cost cutting, which will have a negative, not a positive, impact on the economy. Stock holders will eventually want to see revenue growth. When this fails to happen, stock prices will come under pressure.
• State revenues are imploding. The Rockefeller Institute of Government predicts a slide of 20% in the second quarter. California is the first state to go bust. It won’t be the last.
• President Reagan’s low-tax lesson has been forgotten. There are no fewer than three tax increases planned for upper-income households by the Obama administration. We are looking at a top marginal rate jump of 10 percentage points by 2011. This will bring the top rate to 45%.
• Although credit spreads are tightening, S&P downgrades of corporate bonds hit records in June. And credit conditions for small companies remains incredibly tight.
• The overall inflation rate is currently running at -1.4% year-on-year. This is the lowest rate since 1950. There is no threat of real inflation until the excess slack in the economy is absorbed. [Note: We disagree with Rosenberg and Durden here: we see a clear-and-present threat of inflation down the road.]

​

Those of you who don't believe that statism is the solution to economic woes should be preparing for a long depression.

Those of you who do believe that statism cures economic woes, y'all can just sit on your asses and wait for Obama to bring you twinkies and soda.

 

It has to be pretty bad to get to that level... Let me tell you!

"Common Sense"!!! That it is.

 

So why don't the folk here who want a revolution go out and start it?