Mark S:
I can see the savers or prudent people of the country getting screwed by having to pay everyone else’s bills for the hookers and cocaine party that the Fed has thrown the last decade or so.
Those prudent people would be me and my parents and other like us who have lived within our means and not gone out on a “mortgage equity withdrawal” bender. I saw some of my neighbors buying all sorts of crap that they had to get a second mortgage for like new cars, expensive landscaping, $40,000 cherry-wood flooring and other crap just to ape what they see on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” They live in $1 million dollar tract homes, McMansions. And they dress them up like it’s some big estate.
Lower down on the food chain, the “mortgage equity withdrawal” bender is to buy boats, ATV’s, RV’s, etc. for all the recreation on the weekends and no doubt cruises and other expendables. I don’t think they are mortgaging their houses to pay for Johnnie’s Ivy League tuition or medical school.
Meanwhile, my parents, born during the Great Depression, seem to have a pathological trust of government and invest in tax-free municipal bonds and Fannie Mae and other socially engineered investments. They’ve lived in the same house for 30 years, paid off their mortgage, never bought a TV since the 1970’s (all the others were gifts from their kids or relatives), and never took expensive vacations. They are going to be screwed when the currency is debased more than it already is and when the municipalities choose to default on their bonds rather than face up to the municipal workers unions with their gold-plated pensions.
I’m putting my money in gold, overseas investments and foreign currencies and US blue chips. This train wreck will take decades to unwind.
Even the Wall Street Journal is admitting that there might be some losers with free trade. Like, maybe, the middle class? The rich will get returns on their capital and the poor will get government handouts. The middle class will not get Medicare, Social Security or government benefits in any meaningful amount and there will be higher taxes for Gen-X’ers and Millenials.
Get used to it, people. The American Century has ended!
