A Snowball’s Chance?

Rhetoric aside, a great many well respected people in finance and public policy believe a great financial drop – let’s call it for what it is: a disaster – is on the near horizon for the United States. Certainly no one with an open mind can honestly say things are going well and definitely not up to the promises that were made during and soon after the 2008 elections.

Many factors play into it:

- 10% unemployment (U6 is over 17% as of writing this)
- Soaring commodities
- Increasing taxes during an economic stall
- Real estate – both homes and businesses – at all time foreclosure highs
- The value of the dollar falling like a stone (and on purpose by our government!)
- The Federal Reserve openly pursuing a policy of trying to encourage inflation(!)
- $13.8 trillion in national debt (as of writing this)
- $1+ trillion in annual Federal budget deficits projects for the next 10 years at least
- Individual states with multi billion dollar budget shortfalls, include but not limited to state pension liabilities

And so on.

Nothing new to report for anyone who’s been awake these past 2 years or so.

But the fact also remains that bad things rarely happen in singular events. They saying that bad news comes in 3’s often is true (though the act figure varies). That is, very rarely is it that just one single bad event happens. Usually one bad events dominos into another, then another, etc. And that’s presuming everything else in the surrounding environment is stable and benign.

But what if the rest of the world isn’t so passive and non-threatening if/when trouble does come?

What if China or Russia or Iran or Venezuela or Al Qaeda see an economic crash as an opportunity to move against the U.S. and/or U.S. interests?

Kick ‘em when they are down is a strategy.