Things Are So Bad It Isn't Funny

Here’s proof:

• Who the hell would fly into DC on a $40M jet to ask for a multi-billion$ bailout…would that even cross your mind?
• We have job losses that are unprecedented.
• Mayors are warning the public to arm themselves.
• Ammunition is flying off the shelves faster than it goes on…this has nothing to do with Obama…and everything to do with social-stability as my NYC acquaintances are loathe to admit.
• I have original research that demonstrates that morals erode exponentially when the economic foundation caves.
• The press is underplaying this severity, although US News is beginning to get the picture.
• The big 3 automakers will fail—if we give them $34B we will just be flushing that down the toilet. Every carmaker in the world is in trouble—the most efficient and the least efficient—who the hell is going to buy a new car right now?
• Nobody understands that in the United States, there are more guns than people (registered+non) and that this is isn’t distributed proportionately. For example, in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana (hardest hit by the auto debacle) there are more guns than people.
• Real estate, long a bulwark of the US economy, is in trashes, and is eroding net worth by the second.
• Oil is below $50 per barrel which some welcome, as I do, but it will hit <$30 before 2009 ends and this will destabilize economies like Russia (the #2 producer), and this will have a global impact.
• Retail sales, bricks and mortar and online suck and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Retail health has buoyed our economy for longer than it should have.
• The Fed Chairman (the man behind the curtain) manages to use the phrase “Great Depression” in a seminal speech…why would he make such a comparison if it weren’t on his mind?
• Restaurants are empty in NYC except for those that cater to the ultra-rich…I can attest to this first-hand although I do not frequent those beyond my modest surroundings. My minority interest in a Cupertino place, right across from Apple, isn’t worth shit right now even though it has paid me the original investment each year for 20+ years before now.
• If you haven’t lost your job yet, you will.
• Innovation in America is stifled because there is no credit and no capital.
• Your credit card available balance will be cut in half; no matter how credit-worthy you are because lenders are scared stiff right now.
• Universities and colleges are burying their heads in the sand for now, but there will be a massive out flux of students from prestigious private universities (aka Harvard) to public institutions. Harvard just announced a 22% diminution in their endowment (from investment performance,) analysts peg it more like 30% and I suspect it’s 50%.
• IF (and big IF) we manage to pull out of this thing, all the Monopoly money that is being printed worldwide, including China will cause the most massive deflationary inflation seen in world history, and will make the Weimar Republic seem like a picnic.

Sorry to be such a jerk but I have too much time on my hands and I have been studying this thing for far too long, since it won’t go away.

Good luck.

JMA