Abundant Michael

What the Greek economic collapse looks like up close and personal; is USA next?

More on the current Greek economic collapse. Perhaps a foresight of what might happen in USA and rest of Europe, perhaps later this year.
M/M

If you want to see what happens when a collapse happens and a depression begins, just look at what is happening in Greece....

  • 100,000 businesses have been closed since the beginning of the crisis.
  • About a third of the nation is now living in poverty.
  • The unemployment rate for those under the age of 24 is 39 percent.
  • The number of suicides has increased by 40 percent in the past year.
  • Thefts and burglaries nearly doubled between 2007 and 2009.

Things have gotten so bad that hundreds of families in Greece are abandoning their children. Some are taking their children to charitable institutions and others are handing them directly over to the government. The following sad story of one Greek family comes from an article in the Guardian....

"Psychologically we were all in a bit of a mess," said Gasparinatos. "We were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, the rent hadn't been paid for months, something had to be done."

And so, with Christmas approaching, the 42-year-old took the decision to put in an official request for three of his boys and one daughter to be taken into care.

"The crisis had killed us. I am ashamed to say but it had got to the point where I couldn't even afford the €2 needed to buy bread," he told the Guardian. "We didn't want to break up the family but we did think it would be easier for them if four of my children were sent to an institution for maybe two or three years."

Does that seem shocking to you?

Well, all of this is coming to America eventually. Someday we will see American parents abandoning their children because they cannot take care of them anymore. Someday we will see suicides absolutely skyrocket in America because people have lost all hope. Someday we will see thefts and burglaries soar to unprecedented heights as millions of desperate people attempt to try to find some way to survive.

It is all coming.

The federal government cannot pile up a trillion dollars of additional debt every year indefinitely. We cannot afford to see an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day in the United States shut down.  Eventually there won't be anymore factories to shut down. We cannot afford to keep putting millions more Americans on welfare.  At this point the government is feeding 46 million Americans a month.  Will the government eventually be feeding most of us?

The U.S. economy is getting weaker and weaker and weaker.  All of the long-term trends are absolutely nightmarish.  We are accumulating debt faster than ever, and our ability to produce wealth is diminishing faster than ever. There is no way that things are going to be okay if we stay on the path that we are currently on. So the truth is that Americans should be very concerned about an economic collapse. It is coming and it is going to be very painful.

From http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-number-one-catastrophic-event-that-americans-worry-about-economic-collapse

TSA on trains, buses and highways, Not!

The TSA wants to expand into trains, buses and car searches. But in the case of Amtrak perhaps they went too far and too fast. The main reason I can see for search people after they get off a train is to create a climate of fear, not safety on the journey already completed. Perhaps there is hope for our Fourth Amendment rights...

Attacks on passengers' civil rights is one of the most unpleasant parts of flying. But the cancer is spreading to buses and trains. The TSA's Visible Intermodal Protection and Response (VIPR) teams "detain and search citizens at railroad stations, bus stations, ferries, car tunnels, ports, subways, truck weigh stations, rest areas, and special events." According to the TSA News Blog: "VIPR teams periodically descend on transportation hubs to conduct "random" searches, as they did in [various major cities]; and perhaps most notoriously, in Savannah, Georgia, where train passengers were separated from their luggage and body-searched after they got off the train. Amtrak Police Chief John O'Connor hit the roof when he found out and forbade the agency from ever setting foot in an Amtrak station without permission again

From http://aviationjustice.org/2011/12/05/tsa-american-trains-and-buses/

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