I think my generation is getting the shaft. The United States of America is dying economically, and her retreat as a world economic and political power is inevitable. It owes to imprudent fiscal and monetary policy, and trying to pay for bread and butter (i.e., the welfare-warfare state) on credit. Collectively, Americans are heavily indebted to foreigners—so much so, that they depend upon them to finance new rounds of successive debt, and foreigners are buying up U.S. economic assets. America's political leadership cares little of nothing about the well-being of their people, and effectuates policies that continue and exacerbate the economic stagnation of the United States, and her cultural deterioration through runaway immigration. Free-market and free trade are scapegoated, because people are unable to correlate monetary policy with the decline. We need a gold standard to fill the vacuum, following collapse of the present corrupt Federal Reserve system.

One of the ironies of economic decline, is in a credit card culture, it's easy for individuals and couples to rationalize getting ahead of themselves by borrowing during the tough times, believing that there would be some light at the end of the tunnel, and that they would be able to pay off in the end. Before you know it, a bad economy translates into marriage deterioration because of financial ruin. So, bad government economic policies are anti-family.

When I hear news reports about how spending is down, and how if only some stimulus were given by the government for consumer spending, it illustrates how the idiotic Keynesian economic logic still haunts us. Consumerism won't shore up our economy. Our jobs are leaving America, and the new jobs being created are pittance wage jobs. It all owes to imprudent fiscal, monetary and regulatory policy, and years of borrowing. The Federal Reserve cannot prime-pump economy for perpetuity. The U.S. Dollar is taking a tumble, and will continue to do so. Unfortunately, because of the prestige it held for decades as the reserve currency of central banks and as OPEC's denominated currency for petro exchange, the number of Dollars circulating abroad far surpasses those within the U.S. Eventually, as the Dollar deteriorates, foreigners will dump their American Dollars onto American soil, and it will exacerbate the inflationary spiral. A sudden shock-wave like in 1929 isn't inevitable, as the decline could come about like a deflating balloon, but economic indicators are not sound. The Federal Reserve discontinued the M3 monetary measure to conceal its sins, and remember reading the old logic of its importance as a monetary measure when I started studying economics in the 1990s.

Unemployment is not accurately tallied, and many Americans are underemployed doing day-labor and temp-work to make ends meet. The Middle Class is imploding, and though many Americans have the Middle Class outlook, they might not have the income. Social mobility between classes is lessening. Many American college graduates find that their degrees no longer translate into success whether a Bachelor's degree or a Masters.

Data paint dark picture of economy - LA Times

OPEC May Drop Dollar for Euro

US Economy Worse, Stimulus No Savior For Spending: Survey - SmartMoney

Symptoms of an economic depression: The signs are pointing to a crisis -- and a crash for the GOP. - Los Angeles Times

U.S. labor market worsens, sinking Wall Street - Wall Street Journal

Why the job market is worse than you think: An unemployment rate of 5% is low by historic standards. But the number of people out of work for long stretches is rising dramatically - CNN

Che flag sends 'disturbing' message about Obama: Candidate attracts 'people who think mass murderers are romantic revolutionaries' For those not keen on history. This pop culture icon of the Left, which is often seen on the shirts of young idealistic Leftists and Democratic Party supporters was the guerrilla fighter Che Guevera. I once confronted a student at a college campus and told them what that character on his shirt stands for, but people are naive. Che murdered innocent men, women and children, and razed whole villages trying to foment Marxist revolution in Boliva. He was finally cornered by the Bolivian army and eventually killed.

Related Reading:
The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand
THE CHE GUEVARA MYTH: And the Future of Liberty

"A recession is when a friend loses a job. A depression is when you lose your job.
—Ronald Reagan

I foresee a serious long-term economic and political decline of the United States of America, and right now, it's irreversible. I hinted at it in 2006. Corrective action in public policy could only alleviate the extent of how deep and lingering the coming soft depression will be. In any case, it's almost inevitable. Economic fundamentals are not sound, irrespective of how the DOW Jones average may be performing. Assets like precious metals will probably be one of the few advantageous investments in the next two decades.

The U.S. Dollar has been worn ragged, by the hidden tax of inflation as the government monetizes its debt and spending. Expansion of the money supply, and the Fed cutting the interest rate by 75 basis points is proposed as the cure for the recession. The Fed doesn't have the discipline to ever curtail credit.... it's too more political pressure to always inflate, inflate, and inflate. Moreover, inflation is always proposed as the cure for an economy soured by inflation. It's a melancholy fate. So, what may we foresee amidst these policies? Countless families losing their homes, because they cannot afford their mortgages. Scarcity of capital, and the diminishing of economic opportunity in terms of gainful employment. The proliferation of an overeducated work force being relegated to low-paying, menial jobs to make ends meet, that is if they can find employment.

Earlier, the WSJ reported that getting a job at the new Wal-Mart in Oakland, California "was statistically tougher than getting into Harvard, with 12,000 applicants for 400 jobs." That was three years ago.

What brought this economic downturn about? In part, the business cycle is cyclical and subjected to vicious cycles of boom-and-bust as the result of our inflationary fractional-reserve monetary system. The system itself is inherently unstable, and built on a stack of cards. Because, the U.S. Dollar enjoyed prestige on the world market as a reserve currency for years and has been the currency of choice for petroleum exchange, the U.S. had found it advantageous to have a loose monetary policy for many years. Monetary inflation would not be immediately felt, and too many Dollars, chasing too few goods in the U.S., naturally left our porous borders and went onto international markets. The Dollar would naturally gravitate to where they could find the cheapest goods and services: overseas. In turn, foreigners steadily accumulated enormous U.S. Dollar reserves in their currency exchanges. They used these U.S. Dollars to purchase interest-bearing American bonds and equity investments, eventually owning 40% of American debt. An indebted nation eventually becomes an enslaved nation. Second, the U.S. government is an extremely irresponsible, ill-managed body, and its influence over the economic health of the U.S. is frankly deleterious. There is no efficient mechanism to check spending. U.S. policymakers have at least acknowledged that too much taxation is disadvantageous to the economy, though it hasn't stopped the public sector from consuming 40% of GDP. What they have failed to grasp and take serious is that America is not immune from economic laws related to monetary inflation.

The future is bleak for my generation. Technology won't save us. We're going to grind down into a European-style unitary welfare-state. Immigration will accelerate the proletarianization of the body politic—and more radical social legislation and entitlement programs will be proposed, and eventually entertained. Economic stagnation will ensue.

Ludwig von Mises describing the problem posed by inflation notes:

The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse. In the opinion of the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have brought about. (Human Action, pp. 574-576)

"Legalize the Constitution..."
—Rep. Ron Paul