The richest most powerful nation on earth, god help us!
Richest? Have you seen the amount of money being lend and the -gigantic- budget deficit?
This country is heading for bankruptcy. Not many people seem to realize that. There is a sky and there is a limit, it took some time but it will fall.
Almost one out of four Americans (25%) is unemployed. Stock markets again back at levels of 15 years ago. Thats not really a good sign is it.
The richest countries are China, Eastern Europe and Russia because they didn't 'capitalize' and lend/created enormous amounts of money out of dust due to the strict Communism principles. Remember that for the near future .
ok, not a factually correct statement. More a generalisation, they have both extremes of the scale in the US; from disgusting levels of wealth to appalling poverty, but that can be said of most "developed nations". You are obviously a lot more aware of the world markets than me. Economics and politics have never been my strong subjects, so rather than derail this topic further, I shall stand corrected
When you are lending you are not rich, you are just pretending to everybody else that you are rich but actually you are not. It's like saying you are 'buying' a house while you are actually not buying it but asking the bank to buy it for you. In case of the USA, it's China which has lend enormous amounts, took all factory production, exporting everything -to- the US. The US basically fooled themselves and are now going to pay an price of epic proportions.
Same for 'us'... Some idiots have to crazy idea to help the lying and cheating Greece.
Public debt against GrossDomesticProduct. It's a nice word for the complete economic production of a country.
See it as a salary... So you have salary and you have debt. If the total debt is higher then your yearly income, you can never pay of your debt. The only thing you do is paying interest over the debt until you reach a point where this isn't also possible anymore.
Still a long way to go.. Japan is the worst country in the entire world with a 220% percentage but the Yen has become pretty worthless as a result. It's getting a little troubling when the same happens to the dollar. (Which is going to be the case in my opinion). Devaluation will increase debt even more and well.. Chain reaction of global problems basically because oil for example is traded in dollars... Maybe the Maya's are right about 2012 in the end
How do you know money is devaluating? You have to look at the price of gold for that. Keep in mind that it's over 1900$ right now when you look at this graph.
In the early eighties we had a total collapse of the financial system, a global collapse of economics, an oil crisis and major problems on the housing market. It basically was a very dark time. It seems we did not learned from history. It will affect the capitalized countries more because the higher you are, the higher you fall. Because I've seen this coming for a long time already, I took some timed precautions, sit tight and hold that sucker out
Since economics revolve around fictional numbers - shares for example. For example.. you have company that buys some other company, but share prices drop - how is it possible that company that now has extra assets is suddenly less valued? Same goes how those prices change. It's all just a gimmick. It does not show true value of anything.
Than go much, much lower. In my company we have around 1000 employees. It's interesting how often you hear words like 'CAPEX is good', 'OPEX is bad'. In the end it turns out as - paying one more person to work is BAD, as that goes under OPEX. But, paying some hardware that is useless priceless amount, or if you're lucky pay some consultants also crazy amount is GOOD if it can fall under CAPEX. And similar crap...
Lastly, the monetary system is done in a way that banks control the world. And they actually do. The way it works, every country has to be in debt.
It's so strange to learn that most of the "Western" countries are the ones which are the most in debts :S. Not so long ago they were considered economically superior. But, as Nick7 said, figures are strange. How can you measure the quality of life of citizens of a country? Basically, the map shows that Serbia, for example, is less threatened with economic collapse and would be a more desirable place to live than Holland, for example. But common sense says different.
How can you measure the quality of life of citizens of a country?
Well.. This debt2GDP is not a bad indicator.
A baby in Holland is being born here immediately with 20.000 Euro debt.. Didn't do anything yet, just checking out the world.
For a long long long time this debt pyramid worked out (about 40 years when economic powers decided to let go the Gold Standard)... People making huge lending deals on their houses, now there is a problem because that pyramid is going to collapse. Housing has become so expensive that people start to realize that the asking price for a house isn't real anymore. There is money being made out of thin air, money that does not actually exist. There is money being spend which wasn't there in the first place.
Nice, simple explanation I still remember 1993 when we had inflation exceeding a 100% a day (meaning: you get paid 10 dinars in the morning which was worth 10 EUR, for example, but if you were not able to rush immediately out of work to exchange it for solid currency or buy some goods, you'd loose half of it by the end of working hours and be able to buy only 5 EUR or goods worth that much). Printing money was the reason and my parents have lost most of their nerves in that period due to such a stressful circumstances.
As a souvenir, I still have a few of these: It was worth about 10 Deutche Mark in the morning and less than 5 DM in the evening. In a week, you couldn't buy even a chewing gum with it.
Hope we didn't start a global trend?
What are your predictions, if you have any, how will it be?
Worst of all.. You could re-adjust your mortgage to higher standards and use the extra money to buy a car for example. So you buy stuff with money which actually does not exist.
I have a very simple example what a lot of young kids are doing right now. They go to a mobile phone provider like Vodafone. They sign a contract for a 'free phone'. They sell the phone on Ebay and use that money to buy... Well.. Other crap... I think thats the best small example of whats going on here.
The problem is, that there was no 'free phone' in the first place. The phone actually is calculated in the monthly subscription bill so you actually just borrow money.
What are your predictions, if you have any, how will it be?
I have really no clue... Nobody has... The current situation is not thinking about the future, just go on and lets see where it ends...
USA raising debt ceilings Greece asking for enormous amounts of new debt money Italia which is next, finally after all those years want to do something about it => riots / protest Spain / Portugal in big trouble Ireland
Basically one big mess in the countries which used to had so called 'great economic prosperities'.
Yeah same thing happened here, neighbour , but on a bit bigger scale. Predictions... if the current situation doesn't get fixed capitalism will die, but to be a bit cynical if more crap happens how wood me know the difference.
Well... don't know about Russia, but I wouldn't count much on Eastern European countries. All of those countries gravitate towards EU (which is led by countries already in deep debts), some of them already in, others looking forward to be in. Also, GDP of those countries is not high even though they have better ratio to debts. Their economies are still not developed enough to represent any significant potential.
I look on this through my country, as well. We borrow more and more money (went searching on our debts data when read your debt-2-GDP ratio post) and we are getting more into debts too + corruption is still a very big obstacle and that's not only in my country, but at least in other Balkan countries (ex YU, Bulgaria, Romania...) too. I just don't see the potential.
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So, the whole mess started when average, decent Joe got fuc*ed? And greedy busta*ds wanted more and more? And they've finally killed the goose that was bringing a golden egg each day? The key to resolving this problem would be bringing back respect for the Joe and passing laws that would protect him from such skims in the future. But will they do it? The thing is that power is in the hands of those who betrayed him in the first place, at the moment. But if they don't do it, the whole thing will eventually explode to pieces. I don't know... , there isn't a simple solution.
@sermilan I'm from Romania and I do know what u talk about, it's true, unfortunately. And if u brought Russian in to the topic I have a message for them, give me my gold back ! and I will stop there bcz if I get USA in it will get messy.
Just for the record.. I was at Bristol (you know the place where 160,000 retards gather) and that was just about the time of my life. Racing, is racing, is racing, and even if you're not smart enough to see that that's all road course racing is as well... then I feel sorry for you.
I enjoy all kinds of motorsports by the way I'll defend just about every single one of them.
Also, just for the record, America is full of dumb people, but I myself sat beside an Aussi and a Canadian at the Bristol night race. Take it as you wish, but until you've been somewhere to watch an oval race, don't knock it. There might be more there than what you'd ever think there to be. In the end, it's still racing
I was once an "oval disbeliever", then I sat down and watched a race. Even though it is a different kind of racing, it felt just like a road race: close encounters, skilled drafting, competitive overtaking... It's all there. And believe me, just about as fun as it gets.
Meh tbh. The worst/best thing about the current system is that whenever something gets in the way, the system just circumnavigates the problem entirely, or in fact changes to a degree that the problem becomes acceptable and in many cases, even profitable.
My prediction: USA will just invent a way to make their currency more valuable. No body will argue, because it's the USA and everyone has far too much invested in the USD/USA to argue.
China will continue to grow, Russia will laugh, and finally everywhere will continue to have individuals that accumulate wealth, whilst making those around them even more poor.
yes, the rich will get richer and poor will get poorer. The fat cat bankers who essentially steal from the workers will continue to embezzle their way through life above any repercussions of the laws they are breaking or lives they are destroying. That is essentially the capitalist world we are living in
This materialistic world we know, we live in, we were taught that is great, is changing. Around the world you can see nature speeding up destroying what mankind has built over the last thousands of years and what is now destroyed by mankind itself.
We will have to depend even more on what this planet has to offer us and we will learn that we need to be carefull with resources, our fellow human beings and ourselves. We will learn that life in itself is worth much more when we finally see that empathy is the keyword and not currency.
End of times next year people. NOT the end of the world, as most ignorant scientists and others claim to have understood from our ancestors (Maya's) but the end of the time we live in. Time to build a new one, based on respect and understanding. To ourselves, others around us, this planet.
Speedy(Praise be upon Him) my friend, very eloquently put
Bring it on, I've been ready for longer than I care to mention.
No great empire/civilization lasts for ever, they never have and they never will. We are currently in the Empire of The Banker, run by corrupt individuals who have enormous levels of greed, bordering on worship for money. It will consume itself. The current system cannot be sustained. All systems collapse, nothing is stable, entropy.
So yeah, bring it on, things need to change.
P.s. I think research should be started to identify and isolate the "greed gene", so that some form of treatment can be found to eradicate it from the gene pool once and for all.
I believe the world would be a much nicer place to be.
Christmas 2012 is about the "turning point" in time and the way we live yeah. So will it be a turning point in LFS-reacing? Who knows
About LFS: think about what makes racing in LFS nice. Is it purely the winning part or is it also about nice, respectfull, considerate racing and communication between racers? And if we win, do we really win something or is it just about fun?
That's very much wishful thinking Speedy J (I'm not referring to LFS here :p) We're never going to see a global community like that in our lifetimes, not unless someone invents a cure to human greed.
Well I would be too optimistic if I said that we would reach that in our lifetime but I really think the new(-er) generations are going to act in that direction. If anything is leaned at the moment, it is that greed brings nothing than trouble. But yeah, I am wishful here, I know
only kidding, if only everyone shared your views and wasn't motivated by "whats in it for me?" Sadly greed is what makes this world go round If only everyone was a little more considerate to each other
About LFS: think about what makes racing in LFS nice. Is it purely the winning part or is it also about nice, respectfull, considerate racing and communication between racers? And if we win, do we really win something or is it just about fun?
For me I would rather loose a race to more skilled racer who has passed me fairly after a close respectful battle. There is another victory I like though: when you finish ahead of an ignorant & inconsiderate racer who barge passes his way through the field only to run out of talent later in the race. That always pleases me
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. Or at least pretend, as not many of us are RL racers such as yourself 
... but it seams others started popping out. Welcome to the club! 
