Well here we all are, in the middle of the new normal for the US, with 8% unemployment, government debt ballooning past GDP, rising taxes, increasing regulations, and rapidly growing medical costs.For a lot of people, the new normal is starting to feel, well, normal. It's something a lot of us are learning to live with.
Tempering that sense of new normalcy is, for many people, a persistent and growing sense of anxiety. If you feel it, that's your "spidey sense" at work. Spidey sense for bad times coming.
Past downturns have conditioned us to expect that things will get better soon. Some day they will, eventually, but in my view we are on a long, slow, downhill slide that could suddenly get steeper, or hit the wall, without much warning.
The unsustainable debt and demographic bomb is not going away. The "Sequester" and how it unfolded should convince you that that avoiding a financial and societal collapse is well beyond our politics. Politics in America has become a reason-free zone.
Now is NOT the time to assume that a turnaround is near. Now is not the time to become complacent. Do not put off your preparations for what is coming. Our dependency culture is getting worse, not better. The rift between the makers and the takers is getting bigger, not smaller.
We're not coming out of the woods, we're going deeper into them. Keep prepping.
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Pete Ferron
