A Snapshot of Various Factors

This is going to be a snapshot of things that I've seen over the past few weeks and months that concern me. I feel that people wish to know the timing of a global collapse; my private opinion is that we are not likely in the middle of a global catastrophic event on the level of a comet or something.

However, I do think that there are serious things that are all converging that signal a challenging future within the next six months or so. My first place to visit is the economy, obviously.

Economy

The financial situation in much of Europe remains bad, with youth unemployment in countries like Spain and Greece still ridiculous. Goldman's model finds that Europe is likely in a triple dip recession.

Housing markets are mixed if you do a Google search, but first time buyers in the U.S. are abandoning the market in droves. However, the situation is much clearer in the Chinese markets, as there's little ambiguity that the housing bubble is probably popping all over China.

Basically, tough times are ahead.:

Ah, this is where a post-QE world gets a little scary. Everyone (and I mean everyone) is expecting higher interest rates in 2015. When this happens, banks will see how offering loans increases profitability. And, class, when the banks begin, ahem, easily lending to firms and households, we will also see an increase in the money supply and added inflationary pressure.

The end result for the U.S. economy in a post-QE world: Tough times ahead.

Politics

Spain is moving the military into the area before the secession vote by Catalonia on the 9th.

I mean, there's not really much to say about this other than that Spain really needs Catalonia to not secede, and it looks like it will be an interesting weekend for everybody.

Russia is saying that it is necessary economically for the world to go off the dollar as the reserve currency. There's been a lot of talk in the last year about this, and with oil prices plunging and costing economies all over the world, oil producing economies like Russia for example, I look for this kind of talk to escalate and explode into the new year.

Water

N ASA Warns California Drought Could Threaten U.S. Food Supply: “There will be some definite changes”

I know that some may not like the source that much, but they seemed to have done a fair job of citing some decent sources.

The groundwater at some of the world’s largest aquifers — in the U.S. High Plains, California’s Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere — is being pumped out “at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished.

That is one part of the article that most interests me. It's not just California's aquifers being taken much faster than replenishment rate, but China and in India as well. This lack of water in California is already effecting produce prices and farming activity in California from what the article says. Other, just as concerning points in the article, talk about how Sao Paulo, a city with 20 million people, has 5% of its water supply left and may run out of water completely within the next few months.

Ebola

I am not one that things that the United States is likely to see that many ebola cases. My main concern is that, going into winter, it may be extremely hard for people to tell the difference between the flu and ebola until symptoms are well out of control, which could aid in the spread. The flip side of this is that I worry much more about the general populace freaking out about ebola and the panic forcing the deployment of the military in some areas.

That being said, NYC is currently monitoring over 350 people for ebola, most of which have had direct contact from being in the effected West African countries.

The threat to the United States and most other non-African countries is not that great, but the main threat will be those that go to Western Africa and could potentially spread the disease. I am not concerned for many industrialized countries; it is the developing world that I worry for.

Nothing like what I worry for Western Africa, though. Cases in Western Africa are vastly underreported, by a factor of about 2 times in most places The article does point out that the needed supplies are vastly outnumbered by the amount of supplies that is actually available.

Summation

This is by no means mean to say that the end of the world is upon us and to stock up on beans and bullets and such. It is, however, merely a few of the threads in the global chain that I am watching and that I think you should watch closely as well. I do not believe that an economic collapse or a world war or anything is inevitable. I do believe that hard times are ahead for most of us and that we need to take precautions and be aware of the mild to moderate pitfalls ahead.

S and F'd! I agree with everything with a few additions: Word is out that Chinese millionaires are buying up properties in California, Portland and Seattle that Americans can't afford anymore (expensive foreclosed properties). They're also buying up with cash more modest homes for rental purposes. How much you wanna bet that as soon as the land has been bought up by out of towners, the weather patterns will change back again?

Basically I think we're in Howard Kunstler's 'Long Emergency' now, not so much caused by peak oil as by a combination of factors but mostly the Bush Boys ransacking the Treasury before they hightailed it out of town, and shoring up Wall Street with a fake Hail Mary Quantitative Easing pass that enriched their buddies still more but didn't do what it was 'supposed to do'; (they knew it wouldn't work all along, it was just more of the scam... Ben Helicopter Bernanke is part of the can-kicker gang).

It's all falling apart now globally but the bright spot is that there are millions of unemployed, seething angry (see today's Million Mask March) educated and socially uber-connected young people that are one hairbreadth's away from putting a guillotine on every street corner.

They can see the future and they hear it breathing. Now to give birth to it.

some guy on tv was saying that cheap oil is really bad for Russia and might provoke them to something.
Ebola? never happen in the US. Oh wait, it's here. Well it'll never spread. right? um. I worry that Ebola is a precursor to a future disease that will be equally deadly but much more communicable.
global economy will probly perk us with the US one...if ours gets better. I see a bump wi the Republicans in, esp if they can get Keystone going.
The water issue is real and troubling. Somebody said, the veggie supply will go way down, so US consumers will be paying more, and folks in other countries might have to do without.
And the Oglalla aquifer in the heartland is draining faster than it's being refilled. That could be devastating. Aquifer depletion is much more real and serious (imho) than so-called global warming.
A buddy of mine studies Bible prophesy and concluded 'It's not going to get any better'. Hard to be optimistic (unless you're waiting to be raptured!)

Imagine slow motion "controlled demolition" applied to the global monetary system in tangent with the investment sector for a partial stressing to absorb the weaker entities, INCLUDING the national government corporation.

Now there is much possibility in a gradated collapse that will keep core elite functionality getting stronger, as nation-state system are "naturally selected" in the process.

So even a 10% abruption to dysfunction of the whole global system would be severe enough for people to think "the world is ending!", but in fact even a 20% dysfunction is manageable. It would take quite an orchestration to totally destroy the global system of even current global management.

Thus it is doable to bewilder many with a controlled crash, no matter how it develops, that results in world government centered eventual recovery and thus all the uncertainty instead aids the overall process, and this is why plenty of confusion and guesses are present in these areas.

Losing 7 to 70 million people in itself, aids the process, they just want to make sure the bottom percentiles are who is sacrificed overall, they need the rest to help them implement the "solution", so imo it is far harder to "end the world" than people imagine, and they plan to rule the world, not shoot off their own feet in the process.

It will be severe, but it will be recovered over 7 to 14 years from full cycle activation, imo. The objective is world government, and it always has been the objective, everything else is the distraction.