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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;passantgardant, post: 1140564, member: 30033&quot;]I strongly disagree.&nbsp; What do you think has been happening in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, among others, throughout the past year?&nbsp; These are your canaries.&nbsp; Ignore them at your own peril.&nbsp; The whole world is running into sovereign debt problems related to Keynesian stimulus spending and the bubbles and crashes which have resulted.&nbsp; So far, it has taken massive bailouts from larger economies to save the first to reach an impasse with bond markets.&nbsp; There is no country or combination of countries in the world that could bail out the United States.&nbsp; And from a debt-to-GDP perspective, among other measures, we&#039;re on no more solid fiscal grounds than Greece or anyone else.&nbsp; So far, our reserve currency status has indeed buoyed us a little since it has served as a &quot;safe haven&quot; versus the Euro, thus perpetuating government debts a little longer.&nbsp; But that will not last long.&nbsp; All fiat currencies are on a race to their intrinsic value (zero), and the Dollar merely fell a little less quickly this year than some of the others.&nbsp; But all are falling relative to gold and other commodities.</p><p><br /></p><p>Japan (even after the disaster) and Germany will outlast the U.S. as long as they don&#039;t go bailout crazy because both are strong exporters.&nbsp; Germany will have to dump the Euro though.&nbsp; The U.K. is in much the same boat as us and will probably fall at about the same time.&nbsp; Our currencies and economies have been heavily intertwined since WWII.&nbsp; The British sold off their entire gold reserves and went to war in the Middle East with us trying to maintain the value of the Dollar.&nbsp; Our fates are joined.&nbsp; I think most of Europe will go into hyperinflation or bankruptcy with the collapse of the Euro currency.&nbsp; That may be before or after the U.S.&nbsp; If after, probably immediately after.&nbsp; The only countries with any hope are those whose economies are primarily commodity focused -- Canada and Australia come to mind -- or never bought into Keynesianism -- perhaps Hong Kong, Singapore, and Switzerland.</p><p><br /></p><p>As far as financial transparency, you&#039;ve got to be kidding.&nbsp; The U.S. government&#039;s practices are Orwellian -- changing the definition of terms, misdirecting blame, cooking the books, etc.&nbsp; Yeah, we can talk about this stuff, but we have no accurate official numbers, which makes sites like Shadowstats necessary.&nbsp; Misinformation is worse than no information.&nbsp; At least the North Koreans know that they know nothing about their government.&nbsp; Americans believe they do and bought into all of the rosy projections of 10% annual growth forever in order to save Social Security.</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t think many people are prepared at all.&nbsp; We&#039;ve had 50-60 years of relative economic growth and stability (to the extent that bubbles have popped, they&#039;ve always been reinflated elsewhere).&nbsp; So everyone has a normalcy bias.&nbsp; The last people to have suffered in the Great Depression are almost all gone.&nbsp; Nobody in this country -- unless they immigrated from South America or the ex-Soviet Bloc -- has suffered from hyperinflation or knows anyone who did.&nbsp; To most people&#039;s minds, the idea of it is just myth.&nbsp; It could never happen here.&nbsp; I fear that millions will suffer and/or perish.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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