The Worst is Yet To Come

The Worst is Yet To Come

www.counterpunch.org

A third of the population lives below the poverty line. As in thousands of American towns across the country there’s no slack in the family budgets here to accommodate a fuel bill here that’s suddenly shot up 300 per cent.

A family of four that decides, as many will this summer, that it can’t afford to drive 1,200 miles down Interstate 5 from Seattle to Disneyland is making a decision that spells slim business for motels, roadside restaurants and the tourist industry overall. Americans routinely drive huge distances, starting with the long distance truckers. It now costs well over $1,000 to fill the tanks of an 18-wheeler with diesel fuel averaging around $4.20 a gallon. Over 1,000 trucking firms have already gone bankrupt this year and the independent drivers – about a fifth of the industry overall – face imminent ruin.

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Seriously...Something has to break soon...There are just too many obstacles piling up upon american families:

*The Gas and energy costs soaring through the roof

*The food prices skyrocketing

*The Housing Crisis

*Lack of any decent paying jobs

It is getting to the point where we are fast starting to resemble a third world country---Yet you would never know it based on the rose-colored lenses the gov and economists view their reality through...

I have spent a lot of time pondering things with what is going on, and the first thing that hit me beyond family suffering, is what this is going to do to the TOURISM industry, which especially has garnered a large section of national income during the summer months. Nobody (outside of the Elite) can afford to travel long distances anymore, so this literally is going to DECIMATE this industry--Which equates to a huge amount of businesses closing up shop and an exponential rise in more unemployed people...

How much more of a beatdown can this nation take before something breaks?

It appears that the suffering will only be getting worse, not better...

Across the past generation American incomes, below the very rich, have remained essentially static, or have actually gotten worse. Year after year Americans work harder, longer, for less money in real terms. Political tranquility has been maintained by cheap gasoline, cheap food and, in recent years, the seemingly easy credit and tax deduction on home mortgage interest allowing middle-income families the illusion they owned a home. Gasoline is no longer cheap. The cost of food is going up. The subprime crisis has pitchforked thousands of Americans into forfeiture.

There’s worse to come. Since the subprime meltdown there’s been a lull. But now the so-called “Alt-A” loans, made to supposedly more credit-worthy borrowers and amounting to a trillion dollars, are allegedly about to go down the tubes, carrying banks and insurers with them. And this time Ben Bernanke, chairman the Federal Reserve, has no bail-out strategies left. He can’t lower interest rates to banks below the current 2 per cent, a level partially responsible for oil costing almost $130 a barrel. Round the corner looms hyper-inflation.

www.counterpunch.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


And it's going to get even worse than that as more real estate sectors fall; not only will people paying mortgages lose their homes but landlords will lose rental property as well--or have to jack the rent so high nobody can afford it. And what of the developers who helped pump up this bubble in the first place? How long before we see half-million-dollar new homes going for five figures, just to make up some of the investment? And even if it goes that low, will banks ever loan out to anyone to buy them?

Maybe it's time to buy a third-hand RV, take what you've got in the bank, and head for Mexico where American money still means something.