Post by dgriffin on Mar 1, 2009 7:07:07 GMT -5
Illusions of Prosperity
This piece argues for gold investment, but otherwise is an interesting view of where the economy is today. It's from The Daily Reckoning, whose motto I chuckle at, "More Sense In One Issue Than A Month of CNBC."
by James Turk
During the final two decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. economy was the envy of the world. It created 30 million new jobs while Europe and Japan were creating virtually none. It imposed its technological and ideological will on huge sections of the global marketplace and produced new millionaires the way a Ford plant turns out pickup trucks. U.S. stock prices rose 20 fold during this period, in the process convincing most investors that it would always be so.
Toward the end, even the federal government seemed well run, accumulating surpluses big enough to shift the debate from how to allocate scarce resources to how long it would take to eliminate the federal debt.
The answer is that everything has changed, and nothing has. The spectacular growth of the past two decades, it now turns out, was a mirage generated by the smoke and mirrors of rising debt and the willingness of the rest of the world to accept a flood of new dollars. Just how much the U.S. owes will shock you. But even more shocking is the fact that we’re still at it. Like a family that has maintained its lifestyle by maxing out a series of credit cards, America is at the point where new debt goes to pay off the old rather than to create new wealth. Hence the past few years’ slow growth and steady loss of jobs.
CONTINUE AT:
www.dailyreckoning.com/illusions-of-prosperity/
And Don't miss "Financial Pigs at The Government Trough."
www.dailyreckoning.com/
