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It was good to read the article from Dr. Paul Craig Roberts about bailing out of the US, especially coming off of our article outlining the same circumstances.
To use a poker analogy, Obama was delt a 7-2 offsuit and must make a winning hand. Of course, this is the most UNLIKELY hand to win with (in Hold’em). There are no good solutions for the US and the recovery will be long and painful – and the recovery is still a ways away.
Fortunately, the economic fundamentals now overpower political ideology. It is my hope that readers see these articles as sincere attempts to inform them about opportunities for more possitive living experiences. Whether it be Costa Rica or another country with optimism, Americans really should consider an alternative to the declining US.
JH
Unfortunately, a vast segment of the population utilizes the “head in the sand” approach and the majority of the population does not understand fundamental economics, including our congress. I believe there is a significant amount of people looking to live elsewhere, myself included, but most of us have the majority of our wealth tied up in homes that cannot be sold, thus are in essence trapped until the real estate market improves…or win the lottery. Dr. Craigs article was poignant and blunt. I forwarded it to as many people as I know.
Like Paul Craig Roberts?
“Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US government are terrorist organizations.”
You gotta luv that guy.
William Blum: “Just leave them alone. There is no “Iranian problem”. They are a threat to no one. Iran hasn’t invaded any other country in centuries. No, President Ahmadinejad did not threaten Israel with any violence. Stop patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with American warships. Stop halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas. (That’s generally regarded as an act of war.) Stop using Iranian dissident groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. Stop kidnaping Iranian diplomats. Stop the continual spying and recruiting within Iran. And yet, with all that, you can still bring yourself to say: “If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.”2
Iran has as much right to arm Hamas as the US has to arm Israel. And there is no international law that says that the United States, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. Will you continue to provide nuclear technology to India, which has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while threatening Iran, an NPT signatory, with sanctions and warfare?”
If you are a fellow US citizen have any self respect left or any concern about what is happening to our once fine country then you gotta read this article Barack Obama: “America’s First Jewish President” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21449.htm
His first appointment for Chief of Staff – Rahm Emanuel, his father Dr. Benjamin Emanuel was a member of the Jewish terrorist group, Irgun (led by Menachem Begin) that was responsible for killing both British citizens and Palestinians. Irgun famously massacred an entire village, Deir Yassin. Menachem Begin even boasted of this terrorist massacre of the village in his book “The Revolt”.
What a great message that appointment sends to the rest of the world. Obama will not make things better, he will make things much worse.
And just 4 days after he’s made President, our forces are again attacking a killing more women and kids in Pakistan cept when their Pakistanis we call them militants…
Same old slaughtering/murdering/torturing/rendering s*** ….
There should be better reasons to consider moving to Costa Rica than just financial. Many people are simply ill equiped to take on life in a foreign culture. I have seen too many Cuban refugees in Miami who left Cuba for economic reasons and regretted their move. I wish there were reliable statistics on how many expats return to the States after living in Costa Rica for a year or two.
It seems sensible to me that in order to make a life in a new culture, one would require a strong interest in that culture and the willingness and ability to, at the very least, learn the language. So many expats speak little or no Spanish in Costa Rica.
The last thing I would want to see is a horde of impoverished American refugees flocking to Costa Rica with nothing more than a social security check and a lot of erroneous ideas and silly expectations about what life is like in Central America. A short visit or two may not be enough to understand what it means to live away from everything to which one has grown accustomed. And not having a good deal of money might make the transition even more difficult.
You mean the LATEST $900,000,000,000 “bailout package” they’re taking out of my pocket isn’t going to fix everything? Good thing they don’t have to actually print money anymore for these deals… we’d have a shortage of cotton and linen!
When the total cost of all these moves is calculated (I think it’s near 3 trillion now) and people realize how much has been lost into this giant black hole… they’ll flip! By then it will be too late… and the US dollar will be worth NOTHING!
Which currency do you see being the next star of the world economy? I think most of the developed countries are going to be in a similar situation. Hopefully not in as deep as the doo doo the US is in but everything is relative.
Forget currency…. I vote we dump “money” and start trading in canned tuna! The toughest part will be making change!
I’m not even sure metals are the place to be these days… just too high… and when it comes down to it… you can’t eat them!
Edited on Feb 05, 2009 21:37
Canned tuna is a great bartering tool.
It seems funny to observe so much focus and effort on financial markets when we all may be looking at Armageddon coming down the pike. Currency fluctuations? Gold? I wish I knew the avergae 401K or retirement account balance for average Americans. Maybe they should all be looking into survival gardens. We have a year round growing season in Costa Rica.
The culture, among other things, is why I would choose Costa Rica as opposed to SE Asia and I won’t live on an island. As the son of an Argentine mother, I adore the latin culture and it is what I was surrounded by as a child. According to Fidelity, the average 401k lost 27% in 2008. Unemployment jumped another .5% and at the rate it is going we should see 10% by June. Interesting to note that only 37% of the population approves of the bailout. How out of touch is our government?
How out of touch with reality, grb, is a public which continues to follow a really bad ideology for decade after decade until they are already over the cliff and falling?
Politicians are scrambling but there isn’t much they cando now.
Sprite… interesting that you mention a survival garden… this month’s AARP magazine has a great article on growing your own food! No doubt they see what’s coming and are attempting to get folks moving towards being a bit more able to provide for themselves!
As for the whole 401k mess (or should we be calling them 201k’s now!!)… there was a MASSIVE amount of wealth lost… be it “paper” wealth… but the sad part is that this all happens just as the baby boomers are entering retirement. We all knew this would be a VERY difficult time with the shifting demographics… but now… it’s a total disaster!!! People unable to retire, no jobs, half a nest egg that was much too small to start with, health care out of reach, and the cost of everything getting out of control!
There’s some BIG pain coming… much more then we’ve seen already! These bailouts, which must be settled up at some point in the future, will keep the US and most of the world in a depressed state for some time to come! There’s a good reason most people are not in favor of these packages! They know now that at some point you have to pay up, as they’ve painfully discovered, and with the TRILLIONS of dollars being thrown around, it’s a debt from which the US may very well never recover! Once Uncle Sam’s credit is no longer the gold standard in the world, and our trading “partners” that have been milking us dry but have kept us on life support (by buying our debt) in order to harvest our organs stop doing so…. what then?
I was luck enough to have moved all my funds to cash equivalents at the start of last year and missed the big fall, in part thanks to reading articles and reviewing information from sources such as this site (thanks Scott) and many others. I’m no smarter then the average bear, I just focused the 10% of the brain we all use towards what was important. But now… even sitting on my intact nest egg, holding good investments, carrying a low debt load, and having a great pension and medical coverage I worked very hard for… it’s a very scary world. I’ve made a number of purchases in CR and feel they will not only provide the lifeboat for my family, but will also have a much better chance of surviving this storm, even if a good part of the world doesn’t! Even those of us sitting on a solid footing that have missed the carnage are concerned… and that’s not a good sign at all!
Like you, I LUCKILY moved my stocks to cash in the first half of last year. I am still not in as good a shape as I was but am holding my own(and keeping the CR property as a very last resort).
I have been trying not to sound like an alarmist but as I am telling people what I believe will probably come to pass (in general terms), I am being called “chicken little”. I don’t understand how people can be so blind as to not see this HUGE catastrophe on the way. I listened to Obama’s speach last night and he couldn’t keep the anxiety out of his tenor. When the president is frightened, and he is notably so, it should be obvious tyo everyone that there is something very bad afoot.
Even for those of us that believe in the coming catastrophe,, it seems most of us are paralyzed into inaction. Like death, extreme deprivation is a hard reality to accept and nobody I know has taken the drastic steps in their personal lives to mitigate this.
I am unwilling to pull my son out of high school, move to costa rica, get to work on putting in a healthy good sized vegrtable garden and doing the many other things necessary right now. We are like deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming Mack truck.Sounds like some of you might enjoy reading Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers. And no I am not Peter Schiff and no I have no financial gain by selling Peter’s books…however, I have profited by reading them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGdj3Gx4A8w&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_kLqxbtcg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSlGmnfADYUI’ve read both his books and recommend them both…definitely not for the faint of heart.
Jim Rogers is another interesting fellow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtVX2Mfawxcgrifz77… Thanks for the GREAT links to those Youtube clips! I wonder if all those “experts” are laughing at Peter now? I think anyone who follows those guys should have to watch those clips over and over and see how they were laughing at Peter and saying HE was the crazy one… it looks like he was RIGHT on target! Even Ben Stein looks pretty foolish saying things are all good and that the market is strong and that sub-primes are a “very small” problem! All that while the stock ticker shows a 13,000+ dow on the screen…Oh, the “good” old days! I have to wonder how many of these guys are laughing now!
Edited on Feb 07, 2009 21:57
Peter Schiff is terrific. No one wanted to listen to him when he was warning of the approaching hangover, the commentators only wanted to speak to party planners (money managers). I happen to agree with Imxploring…even though i was an Obama supporter, printing this much money will essentially triple the money supply in a 2 year period. If you tripple the supply of anything in a two year period, you can be assured that the value will drop rapidly.
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