Zombies?

How Well is Your State Prepared?Yesterday I posted a video that describes one theory about the coming crisis and Monday I will post a video where it is claimed that America has ceased to exist. While I think it is obvious that a crisis is coming, I do not think it will be the zombie apocalypse nor do I think it will happen soon. 

Instead I agree with the following quote from a LA Times article: 

Lawrence Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University and President Obama's economic advisor in 2009-10, has warned of "secular stagnation," the risk of the U.S. falling into a Japan-style funk marked by weak consumer spending, anemic economic growth, minimal inflation and low interest rates.

Summers' scenario is a more dire version of the "new normal" that investment giant Pimco in Newport Beach described beginning in 2009. The firm, led by bond guru Bill Gross, foresaw a long period of struggle for the debt-saddled global economy instead of the usual rapid post-recession rebound in growth.

Pimco was mostly on target. The U.S. economy grew at an average annual rate of just 2.3% from 2010 through 2013, compared with an annual average of 3.7% from the 1950s through the 1990s. 

So no, the zombie apocalypse is not coming. Things will decline slowly until sometime around 2017 President Hilarity will have to deal with a crisis similar to 2008. Are you ready for our stagnation nation? 

Is the Dollar Doomed?

I think that a lot of "hard money types" do not properly evaluate the state of the dollar. While the outlook is bad, the catastrophic school forgets that the outlook is even worse elsewhere. As one wag put it, American has the cleanest dirty shirt. 

So while I do not expect the dollar to "end" in the next 6 years, I do expect a crisis worse than the one in 2008. 

Here is an interview with a hard money type that expects the dollar to "end." 

Stockman Interview

For the latest David Stockman interview click here. 

The Slow Burn

Just ignore the modest amount of conspiracy stuff, otherwise this interview is "spot on."

Interview With Marc Faber

Is This Me Soon? How can you invest if you can't trust any of the numbers you need to understand where to make a rational investment? Leverage, i.e. overborrowing, continues. Japan is just a hair away from diasater. China is in a credit crunch. On a personal level I could live very well, if only I could cancel my health insurance! Bizarre as it seems to me, it may make sense for me to immigrate to avoid this expense. My copay would pay for my medical expenses abroad, and after the expense of a foreign insurance policy I could actually live on what I would save on insurance. 

Dr Faber talks about how odd and dangererous everything is in this short interview.