U.S. Treasury and Fed Determined to Destroy Dollar and Force Savers to Spend: Investing in a Government Hoping for a U.S. Dollar Collapse.
Tuesday’s action by the Federal Reserve has placed us into the history books. The Fed cut the federal funds rate to an unprecedented 0.25% and gave a rather firm statement that they are prepared to keep the rate at this low level as long as the markets deem it necessary. When asked why they didn’t cut rates down to 0 a Fed official replied that it would help the credit markets run more smoothly. The markets don’t believe that. In fact, the markets have been trading near the zero percent mark for some time now.
Gross Domestic Product: 40 Percent of the United States GDP comes from 5 States; California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois.
Our gross domestic product contracted in the third quarter of 2008 and is contracting in the forth quarter. There is very little doubt surrounding that. The National Bureau of Economic Research put the start date of our current recession at December of 2007. Simply looking at the employment patterns and trends it appears that this recession will be the worst on record since World War II. Another reason why this recession will be so painful is that 40 percent of our national GDP comes from 5 states, many that are in painful contractions.
Recessions: The Last 5 Recessions and Measuring how long we will have job losses. This will be the worst recession since World War II.
Forecasting is a tricky road to walk on in the investing world. That is why trying to predict future job losses is more of an educated guess. In fact, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) only recently stated that we were in fact in a recession. I have put out an estimate that by the end of 2009 we will see the U-6 unemployment number shoot up to 19%.
How to get out of Debt: Can it be the American Consumer is Contributing to Deflation by Paying off Debt?
The Federal Reserve flow of funds report was issued this week and for the first time since 1951, when records started being kept household debt has actually declined. The larger meaning of this? Many Americans simply cannot take on anymore debt. What it also means is that many Americans are more reluctant to take on more debt onto their balance sheets. That is an important shift in consumer psychology. Even if the government tries to encourage spending by giving banks and lenders easy access to money this does not necessitate that people actually use the money or use the money to spend.