Uniontown Pennsylvania Message Forums - WWW.UNIONTOWN.COM

This was in an email I sent to some friends and thought I'd post it here too so more friends could join in without a giant email thread. Anyone else interested in chiming in feel free, this is a public forum.

Here's some doom and gloom talk for you.

First, let GM die. Let the banks die. Anyone who took risk should pay
the price. Anyone else who goes down with them, too bad. We need to weed

out the bad/dead so the strong can have the best chance to survive. But
that's not how they are playing it, and it's going to be costly. Obama
has mortgaged our future, and there's nobody who will bail out the US.

You guys know we are headed into a depression. The fatcat US sold off
all our meat and potatoes by offloading all the labor and manufacturing
to other countries, and making temporary profits off of their labor and
product. This has effectively sold our core, the vast bulk of our
economy for the last 20+ years was self-feeding cyclically off of all
the consumerism on top of the process of selling out our foundation.

Problem is that you can't have a country full of just consumers that
doesn't make anything, or guess what happens? Once the pyramid scheme
gets too big it pops like a big bubble. That's where we are now, at the
mere beginning of this popping process, most people not yet realizing
that the worst is yet to come.

The US manufactures much less than it did before. A society based on
"consuming" is like a pyramid scheme. There's nothing really being
produced, hence there is no base on the pyramid.

It won't be better until our wages/unemployment/everything are back to
levels where it's worthwhile for us to start making steel here, making
cars here, making televisions here, making widgets here. Luckily,
China's standard of living is going up so fast their wages will continue

to rise and likely meet us in the middle as ours is on it's way down.
Then we can start building our foundation again.

2010/11 will be known to our kids as the great depression.

I saw the housing market coming, I saw it happening. Lee can back me up
on that. I kept saying that houses have gone up too fast, there must be
a correction and prices are headed down. I saw the first ticks in Vegas
and threw concern emails to Lee. Even a skeptic like me didn't think it
would be quite this bad though.

I'm sure you guys heard me bitching about how the "average American
spends more than he makes", how I used to quote that statistic, and
followed it up with "how long can that continue"? That was another train

I saw coming.

Now take my word on this one. We are headed into a Depression. I think
we will have a slight pop upwards first as most of the fools try to
create the same bubble, but it won't fly this time and Depression City
is where we will end up after one or two promising bounces.

-MC

Well

Not so sure if I 100% agree to just let GM or the auto indstry die. Total demand of restructuring is the key.
I know many will hate me saying this. But UNIONS is what killed them. I side with the "right" wingers, so I watch FAX NEWS mostly, but I also watch CNN to get my balance. Unions in my point of view were GREAT back in the 20's and 30's. Companies took advantage of blue collar workers with low pay and long work days. But this is today. If ANY of those UN-FAIR practices were done, the people have ways to bring them out in the open. Just look at any local new station, they all have acrack team of reports dying for that stuff to report on.

And School Unions, Please dont get me started. Never should we as a State or Country use our children as a bargining chip for the teachers to use for their gain. Sure they don tdo it on purpose, but when they strike. Well they do.

As for the banks. Well them failing was completely on crappy loans granted to folks not able to make good on the debt.
Sure I knwo if bank "A" didn't give the l0an to someone bank "B" probably would have. Better policies and practices screw up this. Yes, many American DO live out of there means. And It's not totally all their fault. They were given credit by stores and major credit card companies. These poeple could request the plastic, BUT why was it given.
Sure I could have 12 credit cards with the potential of $5,000 dollar max. I in theory could MAX out at 60K. If I was in the market for property and I had that potential "plastic" in my hands, I should NOT be granted the line of credit for the property. Policies and practices should be adopted. Reduce your credit then your l0an for the property may be granted.

I guess its a DOG eat DOG world there. All these companies banks and credit card companies want your busines, and they dont care HOW bad you may screw up your life OR with 100's of thousands of people over and over the US economy.

Problem is BUSH takes the blame becuase this economy meltdown happened on his watch. It wil be Interesting how the new "left" winger Obama handles. I watched his "address to congress" 2 weeks ago. The one where Nancy "the bitch" Pelosi kep tstanding up and down Ithink 94 times during his speech. Obama has a good plan and what he spoke of was good. But will it work??????????????????

Ok, I agree with most of what you said, and you had me up until this point quoted above, but this is where we part ways. I couldn't disagree more. This is like saying McDonalds shouldn't sell the Big Mac to the fat guy. McDonald's clearly sees the man is fat, and this is harming/killing him, so they shouldn't sell to him?

It's the corporate world's job to try to sell us as much as possible, and it's the consumer's job to decide what to buy, and how much.

The only "fault" the corporate world bears is the risk they take by giving a high risk person a l0an, and if they lose money then too bad. But it's still not the bank's "fault", the borrower signed a contract promising to pay back the money, and they didn't. It's the borrower's fault.

Since when is it (or should it be) illegal or wrong to part a fool and his money? Of course the car salesman is going to do everything he can to get your application to look like you can afford the car whether you can or not. It's not "his job" to decide what you can and can't afford. It's the consumer's job to decide what to buy and how much. Or in the McDonald's example, how much to eat.

It's a free country!