Bruxley said:
Have you been away or have I just not been seeing your posts?
No, I've just been lurking. I have posted mostly on THR and KnifeForums lately.
The reason I felt I had to join this debate is that it dovetails my former "adult job," that being saving distressed corporations. The economy is going to get really ugly.
You know the old canard about "the rats leaving the ship"? Trust me, they packed and scurried away weeks ago. Even my conservative banking buddies were dumping debt and being very selective about new investing. Not many are buying large amounts of gold, but we discussed it.
The issue here is the global nature of the down-turn. Yes, Japan and China are becoming very adept players. The problem is the markets in which they play.
Let's suppose I owned all of the food in the world. I'd be rich, right? Well, not if an egg was priced at 1,000 bucks and loaf of bread required a credit check. You need customers. In fact, governments and allies might make things worse for me instead of better.
This isn't a realtively localized "all American" issue. Even during our Great Depression people made money. Corporations were spawned. Look at the innovations of that era. This is the period where televison was being refined for actual marketing.
Yes, we had areas depicted in "The Grapes of Wrath," but we also became a world invester during that period. That economy was so vital and productive that it played a very large portion in curtailing The Axis. And remember, at the peak of The Depression it is questimated that fully 25% of the males were unemployed.
In a global discussion, that's a bump in the road.
In a very dynamic sense, Carter's bumblings, leading to the new idea of "stagflation" hurt this country a lot more.
Now it's on the the world stage, akin to Jimmy Carter running the world economy. There are plenty of products--a sea of gasoline--we just can't afford it like we could only a year ago.
Pay off your credit cards, work some extra hours if you can, float new ideas about revenue streams to your boss, call your clients for discounts on unscheduled sales and maintenance and squirrel a bit of money away in tried and true mainline methods of of old fashioned savings.
A business cycle is faster than a generation ago, but still slow for commerce. The cycle is now about 12 years from high to low to high again.
You're going to have to ride out
two years at least.