Southwestern Energy to cut 44% of workforce.

Don't forget the oilfield has a big influence on manufacturing too. Lots of stuff isn't being made or shipped anymore. And the influx of oil field trucks to the general freight hauling isn't good.

 

Don't forget the two wars, we were tricked in

 

Let's see you enlist then. Physically sign up and go and fight.

And if you claim to have a son or daughter "over there", then that doesn't count; after all, they're the ones making the sacrifice... not you.

And if you're too old or infirm, then send your money (above and beyond the 50% out of every tax dollar that all of us are forced to pay to support the military; while our infrastructure rots).

Anybody that supports all these wars without actually making any type of personal sacrifice is nothing short of a coward; both to our perceived enemies and also to all our fellow countrymen.

 

im not allowed to talk politics or oil prices as I tend to offend everyone, even though I'm right.

 

Interest rates affect the cost of credit not the supply of money.
The Fed has been easing the economic decline in the last several years not with cheap credit (meant to stimulate commerce) but by diluting or cheapening the money supply. These are two different objectives; the second as a last resort since the failure of the first. That's what "quantitative easing" is.

The Fed bought worthless investments by creating new money. They have pumped over 4 trillion "new" dollars into the economy in this way - the effect of which is to spread the losses of investors to all of us.
It is a strategy for managing our economic decline.
Rather than a crash, we get a slow devaluation of spending power.
This is why houses and rents and cars and education are getting steadily more expensive. Value of our dollars is only relative to available product. Since the money supply grew faster than production, the money is worth less. The lost value to all of us is off-setting the losses of those who made bad investments.

It is a very smart strategy and it is saving us from immediate ruin. But it is a strategy for treating symptoms rather than the disease. The Fed is providing "hospice care" to our economy, not a cure.

 

Fairly fair points. I would ask, "do we really need to continue to garrison Germany and Japan? Do we really need military bases in 63 foreign countries and military "presence" in 150 countries?"

The other side of the coin is entitlements. We spend even more on entitlements than on the military. I never see these two outrages spoken of simultaneously. Everyone picks one side and lays all the blame on the other.

I see both as problems but the growth of entitlements I see as our ultimate peril and for this reason: people like free stuff and have the power to vote themselves free stuff - this is a major weakness of democracy. I am not the first to point out that a democratic nation is doomed when the people learn they can vote themselves the treasury. This is the slippery slope of socialism.

 

There is nothing more offensive than the truth, to those easily offended.
I find the screechy unpleasantness provoked by facts and reason to be outweighed by the pleasure of being proven right by events.
Also, the comparison of one's character, by these efforts, with one's callow contemners is a nourishment to self esteem.

So, by all means, testify!

 

Way too late on entitlements, and we are on a path to certain economic collapse. This is most likely to happen when the last of the Boomers are draining money from the system, or shortly thereafter. The Federal government alone has more than $210 trillion in debt, an amount that simply can never be paid. Here is a link to a document presented to Congress last February outlining this massive debt; http://www.kotlikoff.net/sites/default/files/Kotlikoffbudgetcom2-25-2015.pdf

 

You need to read that a little more carefully. 210 trillion is not what the author claims to be debt but rather what he claims to be the "Infinite Horizon Gap" for all future planned spending and revenues.
So, it is not real. It is a purely theoretical number and very speculative. He actually claims the debt is $38 trillion; since the overwhelming consensus of economists do not believe that is true, why should you or I?

I have heard of this term before (Infinite Horizon Gap) and I can't find any clear and consistent explanation of this rather mysterious accounting method. So, we don't need an economics degree to be skeptical about speculative claims based on predictions of societal behavior decades into the future using some strange accounting neither of us understands. No one knows what will be going down in half a century - the author's claims on this point are therefore hypothetical to the point of fortune telling.

I will continue reading the report - thank you for sharing.

There is no doubt we must change our ways but a sudden catastrophic collapse looks very unlikely for the reasons I already explained and also some other reasons:
1) The U.S. has the world reserve currency - which is a very stabilizing advantage.
2) We are not likely to lose the reserve status of our currency any time soon since the U.S. economy remains in much better shape than all our big competitors (with the possible exception of Germany)
3) No other better performing economy is any where near the size needed to take on reserve status for their currency.
4) We are the least corrupt of the largest economies (I know, faint praise)

These are the reasons that investors the world over continue to prefer parking their money in U.S. investments and government bonds over those of all other major players.

So, things are not as imminently apocalyptic as many believe (or want to believe - we are somewhat hysteria prone as a culture).

Still, in a Machiavellian sense, this danger may be the exception that proves the rule: fear mongering in this case may be exactly the sharp prod we need to get this lazy, lumbering beast off it's fat welfare a55 and start moving toward a more inclusively productive public participation. The wealth of the nation is the productivity of it's people. If enough get genuinely scared, then there will be a lot less tolerance of laziness and a lot more motivation for young people to choose education that gets them a paycheck instead of a masturbatory "degree".

Thanks if you read my long post - I resist the urge to go on.
Do we agree on some of this ? Can I get an "amen" for the last part maybe, or a "hallelujah" at least?

 

I have heard the 'infinite horizon gap' argument quite often. While the debt projection may include interest charges or some other some other debt hundreds or thousands of years into the future, the amount is minuscule and of no concern. What is going to cause our downfall is that an overwhelming percentage of that $210 trillion is owed to Boomers and the revenue will not be there to pay them all that has been promised. There are debt bombs going off already throughout the system and we're just getting started paying out some of the entitlements that have been promised.

And that's just the Federal government. There is currently no mechanism to total the debt of all other government entities and I have read reports that the states, counties, and local government have an additional $40 to $100 trillion in debt.

If you do some research on Kotlikoff and the group that prepared that report, there are quite a few Nobel Laureate economists and several hundred US economists that prepared it; quite a distinguished group. I have read both sides of the argument and I have no doubt Kotlikoff and his group are correct and that collapse is inevitable.