Tag: Great Depression

Does An “In Your Face” Crisis Change One’s Worldview? Rarely for the Masses

Crisis events does tend to make one a bit reflective, at least for me. As I reflect on a couple of my previous “crisis events”, it was evident that my resulting worldview change took years and then took a crisis for me to make the final step into my own new land and new worldview.

I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.

I have wrote about this just last month when I said:

May a new generation and a new remnant of Americans see though the infectious nature of government and decide for the future that they will take responsibility for themselves, their livelihood and the education of the next generation and never trust any government again.

However, I do not think that the masses ever achieve this kind of mind shift, for I think there are limits for the typical broken person to make that transition well. What I mean by that is, that in time, to be “well” on the other side means to actually be grateful for the process. That the new land is much more freeing than the old. I call this being gratefully disillusioned.

The fact that the masses typically can’t or won’t make this transition is why in my quote above I used the word “remnant”. That word came to me over five years ago on one of my journeys through the political path that included people like Ron Paul and Jeffrey Tucker. Jeffrey had a libertarian hub that I was a member of for a few years that allowed me to purchase books at either free or $X levels. One of these was Albert Nock’s books written during the Great Depression that acknowledged that the masses were not to be prioritized in expending energy towards opening their eyes to a new worldview. Here is a quote from Gary North in his 2002 article about the remnant:

Nock warned against deliberately appealing to the mass-man. There is no audience there, he said, for any developer or defender of ideas on liberty. Individualism does not appeal to the mass-man. This is why he is a mass-man. Any attempt to whoop up the troops will fail to attract the Remnant. Indeed, it will alienate them. They will go elsewhere.

Nock took as his starting point God’s call to the prophet Elijah after Elijah’s public confrontation with King Ahab, when Elijah’s temporary victory in front of the assembled representatives of the nation backfired. Elijah was now on the run from the king. He despaired. God told him this:

Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him (1 Kings 19:18).

His ministry was to them, not to the masses, God reminded him. He had failed to persuade the masses. He did not need to persuade the Remnant, which already agreed with him. He merely had to speak the truth in the name of God before the Remnant.

So as you may see, a prophet in these days (not foretelling but forth-telling) is one who sees things differently than most, and yet to them, it is crystal clear.

I have done this truth-journey thing two or three times in my six decades of life here on this planet. The beauty of this is that there were overlaps to these journeys chronologically, which in a way helped with the process for me in hindsight.

My first worldview change journeys started for me as a 5 or 6 year old. I was not totally aware yet, but my parents were going through a huge change in their marriage complete with lies and distrust. For me, at this naive age, all I knew was that I had a new baby sister, but beyond that I was pretty clueless as my world was small and included just a few compartments.

  1. Faith (is God real, what is this church service thing, what is this mid-week catechism thing and Sunday school thing)
  2. School (what is this friends thing, why do some of the richer kids talk to me sometimes and not other times, playground unwritten rules all at a Christian school)
  3. Home-life (parents who facilitated “home” but were not on the same page offset by an awesome 1960s freedom to play outside ALL DAY long on weekends and after school on weekdays).

In my youth then there was church and school, and what to believe about these two areas which was mandatory for me verses my free-range suburban neighborhood freedom which came naturally.

In today’s post I only offer one of these journeys and will cover the other two more major ones in subsequent posts.

My formal day school journey was probably the quickest one to unfold. Like I said before, my K-4th grade experience was at a Christian school which had an underlying caste system in place that separated at times the more wealthy middle-upper class kids from the ones whose parents struggled to pay the school tuition. My whole demeanor during those years was one of hiding in the shadows, hoping that the day passed quickly so I could get home to my neighborhood for my daily dose of free-range freedom. Besides my 2nd grade teacher who on the 1st day told the class to look at the ceiling and notice the holes in the tiles followed by “that is where I pinned the ears of the kids last year who misbehaved”. These were 10 foot ceilings!!! Other than that, most teachers were fine except when it came to reciting Bible verses in front of class, graded on the exact word for word repeating of various combinations of these verses every week. I guess I would have appreciated some context for each of these verses but rote memorization apparently is what this religion wanted. Most all complied and thought nothing of it, I myself thought that the exercise was misguided, but who would listen to a 6 year old?

The crisis that would finally diffuse my own distaste for much of the school environment would be the decision of my parents to separate, with my mom, sister and myself moving to another state (California) for the school year. To underscore my distaste of my K-4th grade experience, my first question to my parents when they broke that news on that August Sunday afternoon just a few weeks before school was to start was NOT .. “Can I see my school friends before we go?” BUT “Do I have to go to Christian schools in California?”.

The answer was “no” and with that I had no more questions actually. I felt so free and ready for a cross-country trip to arrive in a totally new neighborhood and a totally new school. This “re-start” allowed me to be who I was in this new environment. This fresh start overnight changed my personality so much that I did not really care for what others thought of me or my ideas. As Popeye would say “I yam what I yam”

This is a remnant characteristic, as Albert J. Nock would admit later in his life:

“And so it was that at the age of thirty-five or so I dismissed all interest in public affairs, and have regarded them ever since as a mere spectacle, mostly a comedy, rather squalid, rather hackneyed, whereof I already knew the plot from beginning to end. I have written a little about them now and then,”
― Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

The journey out to California in a 1963 Chevrolet Impala towing a U-Haul trailer was eventful in itself, as my mom was not too good with directions, so my role as a co-pilot was great for my self esteem. I was needed.

I always love maps, and so this was an epic drive:

As a 5th grader, being ten years old, I then experienced my best grade in school to date. I met new friends from all over the spectrum (red, yellow black and white as well as Christian and non-Christian) and I was fine with all that. I walked home from school past strawberry fields, cow pastures and a golf course to our apartment and then proceeded to pick up my 5 year old sister from her babysitters, feed her a late lunch and then go to the apartment complex pool for a few hours of swimming. Livin’ the dream!

At the end of that school year my sister and myself would fly back to the Midwest on a TWA 707 to be with my father that summer.

Shortly thereafter my parents would divorce and I would complete my schooling in the Midwest, but I always treasured my school year out in California in the late 1960s! I was now part of the “remnant”, even if I did not know it yet.

Below at the end of this post are the words of Albert Jay Nock (available in MP3 from the Mises Institute) explaining the role of a prophet verses that of a promoter. The financial rewards of being a prophet are few, however, being true to one’s own soul is priceless!

Just be you! You have been made for a unique imprint on this earth for a time.

-SF1

Nock’s wisdom on display:

Here is what Nock wrote about the prophet’s job. He used Isaiah as his example. The prophet’s job is not the job of the promoter.

Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses’ attention and interest. . . .

The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one’s doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message. . . .

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.

If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. . . .

We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great reknown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.

1933: Depression, Election of FDR to Lead the United States to Prosperity

A slight rabbit trail is needed for me to see the parallels that will converge in 1940 as another world war breaks out in Europe. Since I am slowly reading the book “Appeasement”, as I posted about last week, I decided I needed some background on the American front towards balancing what really happened in the months and years leading up to a big fight on a global scale.

I also posted yesterday about the rift between two US heroes, FDR and Charles Lindbergh, and remembered that at one time I read the book “The Roosevelt Myth” by John T. Flynn that I felt would fill in the gaps I had in making a good run on the real issues and decisions of the 1930s.

I have seen this time and again in my lifetime, a presidential candidate makes promises, only to break them time and again when in office. FDR was no exception to the rule as he set the tone for stretching the executive branch’s power, like his cousin Teddy Roosevelt did, to the max.

FDR, sworn in on 04MAR1933 had stated this just under a week later:

“For three long years,” he said, “the federal government has been on the road toward bankruptcy. For the fiscal year 1931 the deficit was $462,000,000 . . . For the fiscal year 1932 it was $2,472,000,000 . . . For the fiscal year 1933 it will probably exceed $1,200,000,000 . . . For the fiscal year 1934 based on appropriation bills passed by the last Congress and estimated revenues, the deficit will probably exceed $1,000,000,000 unless immediate action is taken.” Then he warned: “Too often . . . liberal governments have been wrecked on the rocks of loose fiscal policy. We must avoid this danger.”

Then the kicker:

He declared “the credit of the national government is imperiled.” And then he asserted: “The first step is to save it. Recovery defends on that” The first step was a measure to cut government payroll expenditures 25 per cent. The second step, incredible as it may sound, was to authorize a bill providing in effect for the biggest deficit of all—$3,300,000,000 ..

Ouch. Seriously?

.. [by JUN1933] The “spendthrift” Hoover [previous president Herbert Hoover] was in California at his Palo Alto home putting his own affairs in order, while the great Economizer who had denounced Hoover’s deficits had now produced in 100 days a deficit larger than Hoover had produced in two
years.

You cannot make this stuff up. The USA is still paying on that debt!

If we were to compare the character of Herbert Hoover and FDR, the events in last few weeks of Hoover’s lame-duck administration sums it up quite nicely:

.. In his [FDR’s] speech of acceptance of the nomination he talked about all sorts of problems, including the woes of Puerto Rico, but never mentioned the banks. In his discussion of the Democratic platform in his first radio address he ignored the banking question. He delivered a group of addresses on various specific problems—agriculture, labor, foreign policy—but none on the growing banking issue…

.. After his election when the fatalities among the banks became critical, he remained quite unmoved by it. There can be no doubt about this. Ray Moley, who was at his side through these days, has written that between February 18, when he got Hoover’s ominous warning, and March i, he could not discover how seriously Roosevelt was impressed with the seriousness of the crisis. With this in mind, let us return to the alarming letter which Hoover sent to Roosevelt. Hoover wrote that letter on February 17. He sent it by a Secret Service messenger who put it directly in Roosevelt’s hands on February 18. It was the morning of February 19 that Roosevelt went over to the Inner Circle dinner. And all that day he never showed it to anyone. He did not hand it to Moley until hours after he got it. Twelve days later Hoover had not yet received
even an acknowledgment of the letter. Then, on March 1, he got Roosevelt’s reply with this curious explanation. Roosevelt said he had written an answer over a week before but through some oversight of his secretary it had not been sent. When he did reply, twelve days later, he indicated there was nothing he could do…

This trait would be one of FDR’s strongest, outright lying. Is that a 20th century “add-on” for US presidents?

.. By February 19, gold withdrawals from banks increased from five to fifteen million dollars a day. In two weeks $114,000,000 of gold was taken from banks for export and another $150,000,000 was withdrawn to go into hiding.
The infection of fear was everywhere. Factories were closing. Unemployment was rising rapidly. Bank closings multiplied daily…

It was now dawning on Hoover that he and Roosevelt were talking about two different things. Hoover was talking about saving the banks and the people’s savings in them. Roosevelt was thinking of the political advantage in a complete banking disaster under Hoover. Actually, on February 25, Hoover received a message from James Rand that Rexford Tugwell had said that the hanks would collapse in a couple of days and that is what they wanted…

FDR sacrificed other’s investments, American’s savings, for his own political expediency. If you want big, central government, you will have this immorality on a grand scale. The hope that the republic, the federated states and the three pillars of US government would somehow keep things in check totally failed in the 20th century, all because of an “emergency”. Between that and wars, leading nations can be pretty heady stuff, with plenty of money and plenty of power.

In a rare moment of clarity, Abraham Lincoln said:

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

In the middle of crisis, noble men weep, but political SOB’s laugh. But I digress:

.. The following day the situation grew worse. New York and Chicago banks were forced to pay out $110,000,000 in gold to foreigners and $20,000,000 to others, while another $20,000,000 was drained away from the interior banks. At this point the panic spread to the Federal Reserve Board officials. Bankers in New York and Chicago had been in practically continous session. Fatigue had done its work. Panic spread amongst them.

On the eve of FDR’s swearing in as president of the United States, he outright lies yet again:

That night Roosevelt’s quarters in the Mayflower were filled with callers. At 1130[PM] the telephone rang. It was Hoover. He told Roosevelt he was still willing, with his consent, to issue the proclamation against hoardings and withdrawals. He asked Roosevelt if he agreed with him there should be no closings. Roosevelt answered: Senator Glass is here. He does not think it is necessary to close the banks—my own opinion is that the governors of the states can take care of closings wherever necessary. I prefer that you issue no proclamation
of this nature. There the conversation ended. Roosevelt then told Glass that the Federal Reserve Board had urged Hoover to close the banks, that Hoover had refused saying most of the banks still open were solvent, and that he told Hoover Senator Glass agreed with him. Then Glass asked Roosevelt what he was going to do. To Glass’ amazement, he answered: “I am planning to close them, of course.” Glass asked him what his authority was and he replied: “The Enemy Trading Act”—the very act Hoover had referred to and on which Roosevelt had said he had no advice from Cummings as to its validity. Glass protested such an act would be unconstitutional and told him so in heated terms. “Nevertheless,” replied Roosevelt, ‘I’m going to issue a proclamation to close the banks.”

A political animal the likes the US had not seen since Abraham Lincoln. (Possibly with the exception of the pastor’s son, Woodrow Wilson)

Unbelievably, FDR was indeed an economic moron, who had no grand plan and had no clue how to reopen the banks. In the end:

.. To the great audience that listened to the [12MAR1933] fireside chat, the hero of the drama—the man whose genius had led the country safely through the crisis of the banks—was not any of the men who had wrestled with the problem, but the man who went on the radio and told of the plan he did not construct, in a speech he did not write.

So we have come full circle. Stupid masses elect a stupid man as their messiah, and they are fully in love with the leader of their democracy. Mod rule (i.e. democracy) is not a pretty sight.

For years and decades men and women all over this nation will have been convinced of the righteousness and noble nature of this man that led them through the Great Depression, including my own grandfather, a small land owner with 25 cows to milk, who saw FDR give hope to Americans, electric to their homes, and safety in fighting WWII. He defended FDR to his dying day!

The chart below says more accurately what really happened:

The hypocrisy was heavy in the air during the passing of the Congressional bill to reopen the banks when FDR shared:

.. The next day Roosevelt sent his now famous message to Congress deploring the disastrous extravagance of the Hoover administration, uttering many of those sentences about balancing the budget, the fatalities of government spending, etc., which were to be quoted against him so many times, and calling for powers to reduce salaries and government expenses. As one reads that message now it is difficult to believe that it could ever have been uttered by a man who
before he ended his regime would spend not merely more money than President Hoover, but more than all the other 31 Presidents put together—three times more, in fact, than all the Presidents from George Washington to Herbert Hoover.

Quite the negative legacy, once you are aware of the real story behind the narrative, the history books and the teachers that take those history books at face value. What can a person do but hope that this might help convince some people that collectivist governments (democracies, Marxism, Socialism and Communism) are a bad road to travel.

I will continue to read the book “The Roosevelt Myth” as that book starts to unpack the “New Deal” (all versions) as I dive back into the book “Appeasement”.

Stay tuned.

-SF1

2019: Is This Anything Like 1929? Same Thing, Only Different!

With history disappearing before our eyes (note the latest purge from You Tube of history lessons related to Nazi Germany and Hitler because – “Hate Speech”), it probably good to remember what your grandparents, or great grandparents said about the Great Depression. Possibly, you have only learned this from a history teacher, or from history books .. or, maybe you are unaware of what happened in 1929 that rippled out from the United States to the rest of the world.

However, history repeating itself has been a saying for a long time, but is it actually true? Sometimes it does, but it seems that there is a little different spin on it in every age. As a wise man said years ago:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Context does matter, but this does not mean we can’t learn from history, we just have to be smart about it. We have to be able to discern those “red flags” and take appropriate action to be prepared.

So when I read this post from Doug Casey I thought to myself, ‘this is why so many people don’t get it’ .. it is because there are certain things that don’t add up. What can make the Stock Market go up on bad news when in 1929 it went down on bad news. This is where we need to consider a few things without drawing our conclusion too soon.

Doug’s examples up front help set the tone:

During the American Revolution, the British came prepared to fight a successful war—but against a European army. Their formations, which gave them devastating firepower, and their red coats, which emphasized their numbers, proved the exact opposite of the tactics needed to fight a guerrilla war.

OK, so what worked in the past, did not work on the American continent. Next:

Before World War II, in anticipation of a German attack, the French built the “impenetrable” Maginot Line. History repeated itself and the attack came, but not in the way they expected. Their preparations were useless because the Germans didn’t attempt to penetrate it; they simply went around it, and France was defeated.

OK. Same thing .. only different. Now on to economics:

Investors, unfortunately, seem to make the same mistakes in marshaling their resources as do the generals. If the last 30 years have been prosperous, they base their actions on more prosperity. Talk of a depression isn’t real to them because things are, in fact, so different from the 1930s. To most people, a depression means ’30s-style conditions, and since they don’t see that, they can’t imagine a depression. That’s because they know what the last depression was like, but they don’t know what one is. It’s hard to visualize something you don’t understand.

True. We saw this before the last bubble ..

This brings me to another post, also put out today by my favorite independent financial guy who has a heart for the world, Jesse Colombo. His frustration is that most people conclude that he is sayin’ the sky is falling over and over again:

I have been criticized literally thousands of times as the stock market surges year after year and the economy continues to grow. The criticisms typically take the form of “you’ve been warning about bubbles for years – you’re a broken clock!,” “you’re a permabear!,” and “you’ve been missing out on tons of profits!” I’ve heard every criticism in the book and I’m completely unfazed by them because those criticisms are based on misunderstandings of my approach and because I know that my analyses are correct.

He was correct about the 2008 bubble, and his stats show that we are on a similar path since there has been nothing else the Federal Reserve can do but QE (Quantitative Easing) all over again as it is the last card they hold.

Jesse’s message is two-fold, and that is where many get confused. On the one hand is his message to the average person (get your own financial house in order) and on the other hand his message to investors is different:

I am able to separate anti-economic bubble activism from tactical trading and investing. I am fully aware that shorting a bubble too early (such as when I make my warnings) would completely wipe out any trader who is foolish enough to do so. Furthermore, I have publicly stated for years that I believe in “trading with the trend and not against it,” which is an approach that helps economic skeptics like myself avoid the bad outcomes experienced by typical “permabears” who are short all the time.

Back to Doug Casey for a moment. What can we learn about the 1930’s Depression that needs to be adapted to today’s situation?

First, we need to understand the foundational difference between then and now in the financial world when it comes to businesses and their relationship to the federal government:

1930s

Banks, insurance companies, and big corporations went under on a major scale. Institutions suffered the consequences of past mistakes, and there was no financial safety net to catch them as they fell. Mistakes were liquidated and only the prepared and efficient survived.

Today

The world’s financial institutions are in even worse shape than the last time, but now business ethics have changed and everyone expects the government to “step in.” Laws are already in place that not only allow but require government inter­vention in many instances. This time, mistakes will be compounded, and the strong, productive, and ef­ficient will be forced to subsidize the weak, unproductive, and inefficient. It’s ironic that businesses were bankrupted in the last depression because the prices of their products fell too low; this time, it’ll be because they went too high.

You catch that? No deflation, but inflation, because of government interference in the “free” market.

But wait, there’s more:

UNEMPLOYMENT

1930s

If a man lost his job, he had to find another one as quickly as possible simply to keep from going hungry. A lot of other men in the same position competed desperately for what work was available, and an employer could hire those same men for much lower wages and expect them to work harder than what was the case before the depression. As a result, the men could get jobs and the employer could stay in business.

Today

The average man first has months of unemployment insurance; after that, he can go on welfare if he can’t find “suitable work.” Instead of taking whatever work is available, especially if it means that a white collar worker has to get his hands dirty, many will go on welfare. This will decrease the production of new wealth and delay the recovery. The worker no longer has to worry about some entrepreneur exploiting (i.e., employing) him at what he considers an unfair wage because the minimum wage laws, among others, precludes that possibility today. As a result, men stay unemployed and employers will go out of business.

Wait, you get that? Lowest unemployment statistics in years, so the economy MUST be buzzing. Hogwash!

WELFARE

1930s

If hard times really put a man down and out, he had little recourse but to rely on his family, friends, or local social and church group. There was quite a bit of opprobrium attached to that, and it was only a last resort. The breadlines set up by various government bodies were largely cosmetic measures to soothe the more terror-prone among the voting populace. People made do because they had to, and that meant radically reducing their standards of living and taking any job available at any wage. There were very, very few people on welfare during the last depression.

Today

It’s hard to say how those who are still working are going to support those who aren’t in this depression. Even in the U.S., 50% of the country is already on some form of welfare. But food stamps, aid to fami­lies with dependent children, Social Security, and local programs are already collapsing in prosperous times. And when the tidal wave hits, they’ll be totally overwhelmed. There aren’t going to be any breadlines because people who would be standing in them are going to be shopping in local supermarkets just like people who earned their money. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of it is that people in general have come to think that these programs can just magically make wealth appear, and they expect them to be there, while a whole class of people have grown up never learning to survive without them. It’s ironic, yet predictable, that the programs that were supposed to help those who “need” them will serve to devastate those very people.

So what happened in 1865 when the slaves were free? They were UNPREPARED for real life. Ditto here with all the social programs that have made so many dependent on the Nanny State. This will not end well.

There are many more examples, but one more before I conclude:

THE FINANCIAL MARKETS

1930s

The last depression is identified with the collapse of the stock market, which lost over 90% of its value from 1929 to 1933. A secure bond was the best possible investment as interest rates dropped radically. Commodities plummeted, reducing millions of farmers to near subsistence levels. Since most real estate was owned outright and taxes were low, a drop in price didn’t make a lot of difference unless you had to sell. Land prices plummeted, but since people bought it to use, not unload to a greater fool, they didn’t usually have to sell.

Today

This time, stocks—and especially commodities—are likely to explode on the upside as people panic into them to get out of depreciating dollars in general and bonds in particular. Real estate will be—next to bonds—the most devastated single area of the economy because no one will lend money long term. And real estate is built on the mortgage market, which will vanish.

Everybody who invests in this depression thinking that it will turn out like the last one will be very unhappy with the results. Being aware of the differences between the last depression and this one makes it a lot easier to position yourself to minimize losses and maximize profits.

So much for the differences. The crucial, obvious, and most important similarity, however, is that most people’s standard of living will fall dramatically.

Ouch! Didn’t see that coming right?

So when Jesse’s stats show this:

You have to see the difference. Look at that Federal Debt level. We have built the largest military on the planet, probably in the hopes that the elite can remain safe under its protection in the years to come.

Sorry for all the Friday “Debbie Downer” news, but this was too important not to share.

Your mileage may vary

-SF1