Topic: The end is near - page 12. (Read 17380 times)

The amazing thing about such things is the amount of inertia that faith in the system has to keep things going for a time, yet when faith in the system is lost change happens quite rapidly, and sometimes violently.  Look at Brazil over the past several days; they've been having economic issues for a long time, and have a government openly determined to suppress the trade value of the fiat currency for well over a year, but in the end it was a 10 cent hike in the price of public transit that was the trigger.  No leadership to arrest, no common theme, just a million people across the country that suddenly all had enough crap at once.  The United States has been running on public faith inertia since at least 2000, but the rash of federal scandals is severely undermining that faith.  When that 'faith bubble' finally pops, what happens next is anyone's guess.

For some reason, it's encouraging to find this thread, despite the sad theme.

I feel like I've been holding my breath about this stuff since about the turn of the century.
Amazingly, most systems muddle along so far, with one unbelievable patch pasted over another.
Even non-economic crises like Fukushima or Hanford are playing out in very slow motion. Time has stopped, but for how long? (to coin a paradox).

I take some comfort from Bill Bonner's observation "just because something is inevitable does not mean it is imminent."

We may muddle through for many more weeks yet.       

Carpe diem.

Indeed.  Government is the disease that it attempts to cure.

It does not matter who you elect, always will end up like this, maybe some entropy related phenomenon

Democracy is the idea that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

I am guilty too.
Until I figure out why my customers were allowed to go bankrupt, and I had to eat the loss, (I.e. the banks were offloading there moral hazard on me) I kept using Fiat, knowing it had problems. You can't blame the voters you need to blame the users too, most are still oblivious to the problem.

Actually, it's those who keep voting for the idiots that have been elected to political office who are ultimately responsible for what lies ahead.

What's even more worrying is some scientists even believe that DNA is deterministic of human behavior.

While they may be half banana, and behave like bananas, they don't taste or act like bananas.

Just saying ...

I think we are getting close to the precipice again ...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-21/chart-scared-bernanke-straight

... the last two time fails-to-deliver spiked was the Aug '07 credit market seizure and Sep '08 money market seizure ... either of those two events, if allowed to run their course naturally, would have been "the end".

The US treasury market is the big pole in the main tent and the rest of the circus is looking pretty tatty, basically it is the last thing holding it all up ... and the entire capital market 'sentiment' is now hinging on utterances from the lips of fed chariman on whether he will be buying or not buying in this market. After the recent sustained buying to prop this market up the Fed now holds over 25% of the outstanding treasury stock.

The big problem that is out there, and has been for over a decade is the billions in ghost treasuries that are in the electronic form that do not exist in any legal reality. No one is quite sure where all these ghost treasuries come from but think it is mostly naked short selling of treasuries that went into the system, possibly from now defunct institutions, or even just simple criminal treasury counterfeiting. When fails-to-deliver spikes it means that the treasuries market is no longer clearing/settling. It would be like if transactions on the bitcoin network stopped getting confirmed into blocks.

Imagine that the treasuries are the money stock (bitcoin) of global commerce and they have no legitimate mechanism for verifying creation (coinbase) transactions and no reliable means of clearing/settling transactions in such a way that you can prove there are no bad actors gaming the system.

That is what they are trying to stabilise and the fails-to-deliver spike whenever they lose control.

What's more worrying is that we share around 50% of our DNA with bananas!

Just saying...

The sooner the collapse of the society, the better for the planet. A breakdown of the whole infrastructure today is not the same as it was in ancient Aegypt, Rome or the Maya Culture. A breakdown today means 500-fold Fukushima, with 500 nuclear reactors blowing up its inventory around the northern part of the planet, but without being cooled down with the energy of other power stations.
Anyway, it is still better it will collapse today (500 reactors) than tomorrow (5'000 reactors), which would destroy the southern part of the planet as well.
Survivalists, Gardeners and Praxeologists are dreamers.

Society and Progress - a System that works! Ha ha ...

Don't worry, bitcoin come to rescue 

Yes, you are preaching to the choir; but those in this world who have studied Praxeology have seen this kind of breakdown coming for some time.  Ron Paul has been quoted as saying that this is the kind of stuff that prompted him to run for congress, back in 1974.  There is an entire book, website and newsletter series that I know of devoted to investing under these collapsing conditions, and thus profiting from the misfortunes of society at large; and they have been around for some time.  One such website is http://www.chaostan.com/

While none of us knows quite how the 'great correction' is going to play out, some things are certainly predictable.  One such thing is that Americans are going to throw a hissy-fit once they learn that they can no longer afford to drive their pretty SUV's everywhere they go.  Another is that particular classes of investments are forever; such as alcohol, guns, ammo and uncontaminated land.  And strange as it may seem, common table salt if you live more than 100 miles from a shoreline.

Gold, on the other hand, is pretty much useless unless you already have at least one of the first four things above.  It's also wise to stock up on gardening books, and perhaps take up beekeeping as a hobby.

Personally, I've already done all of these things.

Well I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but anyway.

The world is in a serious serious mess. I don't think anybody understands, or will admit, HOW bad things are now (but they will soon). Even the more enlightened on these forums. The problem is, when you realize that the last 10, 20, 30 years - even more - have not been normal, you have to realize that there is no normal anymore. Markets of all nature have been propped up by governments everywhere. Markets are at the root of modern day capitalism, which is the systematic process that allows 6 billion humans (which share 99% of their DNA with a chimp) to exist together peacefully on earth. What governments have been doing in recent history is not normal and is not right. It appears that now we are at the beginning of the end of this "phony capitalism". It sounds almost out of this world to be talking about things like this.

How will the end look like? I really don't want to find out. I guess it's normal to fear the future - but, when the present looks this bad. It's almost better not to think of it. Capitalism has been the driving mechanism for human society, progress and prosperity in modern history. It is this driving engine that is now about to fail completely.

At the very minimum, I think every good thing that we have taken for granted in our western lifestyle - and there are so many things that it's almost impossible to imagine how we would live without them - will soon come under question. At the maximum, we are looking at total social collapse in all countries, anarchy and war never seen before on this planet. It's my opinion that every one of us will feel the effects of the coming economic and social meltdown. What is coming could easily be worse than anything seen before in modern history. The only comparison we have is the 1930's or early 1940's .... well, things can get alot worse than that.

What did we all do to deserve this? Nothing. We just had the misfortune to be alive on planet earth during this deeply troubling period.

The world is starting down the barrel of a loaded gun right now. Every human being is on the verge of having his/her society and social fabric completely destroyed and (taking an optimistic view about the future) re-written.

I really hope something good comes out of all of the pain and suffering that is about to arrive on our doorsteps.

Not sure what good can come from posting this message of doom here on the forums. I guess I'd like to be proved wrong.