Price collapse or 5 dollar gas…

[Robert Edmonds]

Just the other day I was going through a used book store. I came across books that all said the dollar was doomed. For example I remember something about the threat of the yen(I don't remember that currency in the "stages"). All I know is that there is value in the us economy. There are many things we still make that countries want (like weapons to name one). I'd just relax a little...

 

[Scott Weberpal]

Long post, but an important one...

Wow, what a grim outlook. Fortunately, there's little chance of the US completely collapsing as your post suggests. I'll put $50 on it that there is never a complete, unrecoverable collapse of our economy. Heck, if it happens, you could be a rich man on $50. If it happens, I grow/hunt my own food and distill my own ethanol.

The economy has grown so much into a world economy that essentially all major developed countries would have to collapse in order for the US economy to completely collapse. It's not going to happen.

 

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

Wow, what a grim outlook. Fortunately, there's little chance of the US completely collapsing as your post suggests. I'll put $50 on it that there is never a complete, unrecoverable collapse of our economy. Heck, if it happens, you could be a rich man on $50. If it happens, I grow/hunt my own food and distill my own ethanol.

The economy has grown so much into a world economy that essentially all major developed countries would have to collapse in order for the US economy to completely collapse. It's not going to happen.

I don't think the USA will go through all 5 stages of the collapse. We may only go through 3, but who knows. I know that a lot of people have compared our situation to 1929. I think it is worse. Back then we only had 1 bubble burst, now it seems that everything is crashing: banks, investment houses, the stock markets, commodities, state/local governments, etc. The USA was a creditor nation in 1929. Our people did not have much debt, especially unsecured debt. Now the USA is in very deep debt and our people are almost all in debt. Another important difference between then and now is our people. In the '30s about 90% of people were rural and knew how to take care of themselves. They even helped people when they could. Churches were strong community helpers that people could turn to. Now nearly 90% of people live in big cities, have no idea how to grow food and don't have the land even if they did. People today are alot more dependant on the government and are more likely to commit a crime on one another than to help (in the big cities). Yes I think times are grim and we really are not being told about it and it is going to get worse before it gets better. The president-elect has even proposed adding $1 trillion more debt as soon as he takes office and has promised $trilliion+ deficits for years to come. I am not being political, just pointing out what he said.

 

[Chad Cowan]

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for "kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.

LOL! You and Jim S have been watching too much Fox News... seriously, that's just not healthy. We're in a recession, and you may not know this but we've been in 7 of them since 1929. There are two things you can count on with a recession: 1) The economy is CYCLICAL and will recover eventually and 2) Crazy conspiracy theorists will claim that the end of civilization as we know it is near. Good luck with that forecast, for the sake of mankind and sane individuals everywhere, I hope you bust, I don't want to have to eat my little brother.

 

[David Drummond]

The recent increases in gas prices have more to do with the fighting in the Gaza area more than anything else. Perhaps a little optimism thrown in for the new year and a new President coming on board.

The National Reserver report came out today showing it up, and right on cue, oil priced dropped like 12% already (still heading down).

Demand is still weakened and drivers showed they are quickly willing to cut back again as the little recent spike we saw also saw a a coinciding cut in demand. Investors will pay attention to that.

There will of course be the regular seasonal spike that will occur right around spring break as producers switch from the winter to summer blends. This is always a yearly thing and expected.

I still stick with my forecast and say, barring any major natural disasters that affect oil production, or a major war conflict, we'll see oil prices swing around back and forth in the $40s and gas prices under $2.00 for all of chase season.

Look at it another way. Compared to last year...more than half price gas for chasing this year!

 

[Jason Boggs]

Look at it another way. Compared to last year...more than half price gas for chasing this year!

I sure hope you're right. Hopefully because of the half price gas, we won't have twice the traffic on the roads. I hate to say it, but it's going to be a road clogged 09 season.

 

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

LOL! You and Jim S have been watching too much Fox News... seriously, that's just not healthy. We're in a recession, and you may not know this but we've been in 7 of them since 1929. There are two things you can count on with a recession: 1) The economy is CYCLICAL and will recover eventually and 2) Crazy conspiracy theorists will claim that the end of civilization as we know it is near. Good luck with that forecast, for the sake of mankind and sane individuals everywhere, I hope you bust, I don't want to have to eat my little brother.

LOL... I don't think we will be eating anyone. Like I said in a later post I feel we will probably only got to stage 3, maybe 4 in a worst case senario. Let's look at just TODAY'S news:

A report on Wednesday showed private sector job losses of 693,000 in December, far greater than economists had expected. Small businesses accounted for an unusually large 40 percent of the decline, according to the figures from ADP Employer Services and Macroeconomic Advisers. (http://www.adpemploymentreport.com/pdf/FINAL_Report_December_08.pdf)

693,000 jobs lost in ONE MONTH. How often has that happened? Add those losses to the 470,000 jobs lost last month and the USA has lost well over 1 MILLION JOBS IN 2 MONTHS! That is huge. I am not sure, but that must be a record.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Volatile markets have saddled U.S. companies with a $409 billion deficit on pension plans, reversing a $60 billion surplus a year earlier, and will cut into earnings in 2009, consulting firm Mercer said.

This will lower profits and affect companies ablity to hire and to continue employing people.

See this mess is well beyond any wacko theories. Too bad for us, it is the truth. I would have to say that everyone that visits this site regularly has an above average intelligence. I strongly suggest people here use some of that gray-matter to study this crisis for yourselves so that you might be able to prepare yourselves and your families. I have more to write, but I need to go learn how to fire my new Springfield Armory 1911 45 ACP. It may be up to me to defend myself when IL goes broke...

 

[David Drummond]

As I suspected, even the fighting and OPEC threats could only generate a small short time rally. Prices currently are at $33/barrel on news of oil and gas reserves STILL increasing, and unemployment reports.

Even I never thought before we might see oil in the $20s but I am now considering that is a definite possibility.

Oddly enough gas around here has risen to $1.75/gal lately. I suspect it's just now catching up to the rally last week, as some places are dropping into the $1.50s again.

We get oil down in the $20's, there is a distinct possibility we will be buying gas on the plains very close to $1.00/gal.

 

[Dann Cianca]

Gas has shot up about $0.15 per gallon over the last week here in SE Denver. Thought it was funny that last night it went up ten cents when oil has been falling. Maybe a little lag time?

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Annoyingly here in central Illinois we've seen a jump from $1.42 to $1.99 in about 10-14 days.

Hopefully that's in response to the little jump in oil prices last week, though it's hard to justify jumping it up 57 cents just like that. We'll see if the trail back off later this week...