Depression

[RonL]

Are we headed for a depression? Every time I think things are beginning to turn around there is more bad news.

RonL

 

[Phils]

It was on the news this morning that it's predicted Armageddon will start next Thursday, beginning with a nuclear blast, so we'll never make it to a depression.

Of course, the "prophet" that's predicting this has been wrong twice before, but he's in a huge fenced compound in Texas and....

... wait, what's up with that? How many fenced little towns inhabited by religious sects can there be in Texas anyway?

( I had guessed this thread had to do with RonL stopping by to fill up his pickup )

Phil

 

[bigshovel]

Are we headed for a depression? Every time I think things are beginning to turn around there is more bad news.

RonL

As long as everyone gets on that bandwagon we will. As long as you continue to spend and carry out your life as normal we won't. You recieved a stimulus check that was borrowed from China, right? Well good then all is well.


Brad

 

[RichZ]

From what I see, as a farmer, I think it's very clear that we're heading into a depression. Due to the demand for corn for ethanol, livestock feed has doubled or tripled in the past year. Hay prices have almost doubled due to the rising cost of diesel and gas. We all know what fuel prices have done. Where I live (upstate New York), family farms are going out of business at an incredibly rapid rate. My area is mostly dairy farms, and milk prices for the farmer are about the same as they got in 1974. Yes I know the price of milk in the supermarket keeps going up, but the farmers don't get any of that. Around here, dairy farms are going out of business, because they just can't meet expenses. The same is true for other types of livestock farms.

My wife and I own a goat dairy farm. We were shipping our milk to a cheese processor that is about 75 miles away. Dairy farmers are always responsible for the transportation costs to get their milk to the plant. My wife and I got certified to ship our own milk, but the cost of fuel is now so high, shipping costs ate away at our profit, until we had to stop shipping. We're trying to find a more local cheese processor, but so far, we haven't had any luck.

If the family farm in this country goes out of business, everything will be affected. Milk and meat will come from either corporate farms or from Asia. The quality of their products is nowhere near the quality from small family farms. Corporate farms typically use hormones to get their animals to produce milk or grow quickly. I'm sure you've read about young girls going into puberty too early. That's one of the outcomes of this situation.

And food from Asia, is most like the rest of their products. There are few if any health regulations for food production. I wouldn't want to consume anything that came from there.

On top of that, the family farm is the backbone of our economy. As we go out of business, so will the businesses that are related to us, which will cause more businesses to go under.

If things don't turn around very quickly, I think we will be seeing a repeat of the 1930's.

 

[Soundguy]

Corn for ethanol.. what a rip... it doubles feed and food prices.. and isn't as good a biosource for ethanol as switchgrass... go figure!

soundguy

 

[RichZ]

You got that right, Soundguy!!! Corn for methanol is just creating another problem by raising feed prices. You can make ethanol out of anything organic, even garbage. Switchgrass is one of the best crops to use for ethanol, and it won't keep raising our feed prices.

 

[Soundguy]

Yep.. we live in a backwards country... weeds can make ethanol.. but we insist on using a huge food/feedcrop to do it...

heck.. even sugarcane...works for other countries..

soundguy

 

[Egon]

Hemp makes for a good product to. Oil from the seeds and ethanol from the rest. After the ethanol process the must can be used for animal food. It even makes excellent paper, easier process than wood, and also produces fibers that make good clothing.

 

[N80]

Are we headed for a depression?

I know I am.

I think it is a strange thing to be sitting here, watching all this happen and everyone being aware that it is happening, knowing why it is happening and doing nothing about it. I suspect we started circling the drain a good many years ago and did not realize it. Probably some time during the first Clinton administration, maybe even Bush I. But now we realize it and it probably isn't really too late to fix it, or at least start fixing it.

But we've become so soft, greedy and short sighted that we won't. I think ANWAR is the perfect example. Regardless of how you feel about drilling there, or regardless of how much it would actually help, one of the main political arguments about not doing it had less to do with polar bears and penguins than the fact that it will take ten years to get any production from it. Well guess what, that was 10 years ago folks. Again, I'm not making a case for drilling there, I'm just pointing how how short sighted we are. If a measure can't fix things (and line someone's pockets) right now, then we don't do it. Or if it looks like it is going to cause some short term pain to achieve long term benefit, then we don't have the guts to do it.

Make no mistake about it, this is not an accidental decline. This is not like the weather. All of this has been man made and precisely orchestrated. I'm not saying any one group or party is trying to push us into a depression. What I'm saying is that there have been plenty of smart and thoughtful people who have been telling us all along, for the last 10 or 20 years (and in some cases 50) that we have been hoeing down the wrong row. Its like telling a child that if he keeps on eating the candy he's going to get a stomach ache. And as a nation, we're behaving just like you'd expect Augustus Gloop to act.

Augustus Gloop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the original story Gloop falls into the river of chocolate and is sucked into a huge tube. The trauma of being sucked through the tube changes him from short and fat to tall and thin.

And that's what's going to happen to us. Many people ask why bad things happen. Sometimes troubles and hardships are what make us better and stronger. I hope we come out the other side of this better than we are. I think we will. But its going to hurt a little.

For starters its going to take some leadership we can get behind as a nation. I don't think we've had an inspiring leader since Reagan. In fact, I bet its safe to say that in the last 20 years our presidents have been elected more because people were voting against their opponent than for them. And that's a sad state of affairs.

 

[NuBota]

I think the "new culture" of our country is the biggest culprit. The "keeping up with the Jones' " gave us the housing crisis. Most expect an instant solution/gratification for everything. Were fine with the war till it got tough and long. Don't want Gov't involvement in their lives till they feel a little pinch in their wallet or lifestyle or a disatster of their own making - then it's up to the Gov't to bail 'em out. Makes me nuts. Expect they are "owed" something simply because they exist.

Ethanol is a non starter IMHO - will never produce enough cost effectively. Even if it does, and some conservation kicks, all it does it prolong the problem. Need alternative energy, and only way it will ever happen is to run out of oil or price it so that new forms become more cost effective.

I dread a depression - but sometimes wonder if it is simply the economy trying to reset itself. The global impact scares me though.

Just some rambling and a little venting......

 

[callen]

I'm from south east louisiana and south west mississippi area. The area used to be called the dairy capital of the south. Now every local small towns stores are going out of business due to all the farmers selling out of the dairy business. My family sold out after Katrina. Seems to me thats when it really got bad around here. My family and many other southern families have been farming all their lives. About 15 years ago their were aprox. 400-500 dairys in a 200 mile radius, now theirs only about 30 in that 200 mile radius. There is defintly something happing to this country!!! With No farmers!!! There will be NO USA!!!

How do they expect a farmer to make it with fert. almot 1000 ton, diesel 5.00 gal (7.00 by the end of sumer), etc...

 

[N80]

And a protracted drought brewing in the south east.

 

[scott_vt]

My wife and I own a goat dairy farm. We were shipping our milk to a cheese processor that is about 75 miles away. Dairy farmers are always responsible for the transportation costs to get their milk to the plant. My wife and I got certified to ship our own milk, but the cost of fuel is now so high, shipping costs ate away at our profit, until we had to stop shipping. We're trying to find a more local cheese processor, but so far, we haven't had any luck.

Good Afternoon Rich,
Good to hear you on !

When I visited your operation last year, I felt for sure you and your wife had found a niche market in the goat milk/ goat cheese market ! Then all of a sudden fuel prices went through the roof ! I can only hope that you can find a processor closer to your operation, I was very impressed with your milk house !

Good luck, btw we need to hook up again !

BBtw, maybe you need to call my neighbor Neil on some hay prices if you can deal with small rounds, his prices are very good !

 

[Wayne County Hose]

Funny, I'll bet these conversations have been going on for a hundred years. Just now we have the internet.
Could you imagine the internet conversations during Vietnam, the Carter years(double digit inflation and interest rates), Korea, Oct. 1929, the real depression. Given everything going on, I think we have it pretty good. Don't listen to the news. How is your life right now?

 

[RichZ]

No, I don't think this is like anything but the great depression. If you were a farmer, you'd see that. Family farms are going under at a rate greater than anytime in US history. Case in point, my friend is a 4th generation dairy farmer. He's smart, and knows what he's doing. But the price of fuel and feed, plus milk prices (to the farmer) being the same as they were in 1974, has destroyed his farm. He's closing up this November. Think of that!!! He's a 4th generation dairy farmer. He farms the same land that his great grandfather did. And that is example is being repeated again and again throughout the country.

Our economy is in a collapse.

 

[MossRoad]

Are we headed for a depression? Every time I think things are beginning to turn around there is more bad news.

RonL

I've been on vacation the last week. The highways are packed, hotels are booked and attractions are crowded. Gas was averaging just under $4.00 a gallon, yet there was a constant flow of folks at the pumps. SUV's are everywhere. People are just spending their money on pay t.v., pay radio, pay bottled water, toys, cars, houses that they never should have bought in the first place, etc...

So, in my opinion, it doesn not appear that we are in a depression.

People are just very unrealistic about what they can afford. As frugal, middleclass, average workers, we were able to save for a vacaction this year because we did just that.... saved up for it before we left. $25.00 a week for two years gives you $2600 dollars to blow before you leave home. $2600 dollars on a credit card gives you a boat anchor around your neck.

 

[browns40]

We are not headed for a depression. We are headed for an awakening.

This nation was built on the backs of farmers... on grit, work ethic and determination... with some exceptions, these traits are being bred out of subsequent generations by an overindulgent parenting model, and educational system.

Each generation is guided to "reach higher" which in America has somehow come to mean get as rich as possible... it all falls back to the almighty greenback... and the real money is not work where you use your hands, it's where you use your head. Lawyers, accountants, administrators, CEO's, doctors... our "best & brightest" are pushed to a professional life, which provides a service, and generally consumes rather than produces... they are not "value-added" careers...

Throw any 17 year old a cell phone, camera, laptop--they'll begin running it effortlessly... throw them a tape measure, a chainsaw, or a pickaxe... what will you see?

We continue to diminish the importance of productivity, work ethic, creation of value in favor of material wealth... we shift our talents away from the foundations that built the economy to the areas that benefit the most personally.

We have created this problem ourselves, and we will come to a solution, but lifestyles will change, and conveniences we take for granted will diminish into necessities. We will re-learn to do for ourselves more & more the tighter the dollar gets.

The world that has been shrinking for so many years gets just that much bigger with every hike in oil.

I'm not by any means saying there will be some resounding crash, and the "depression siren" will start blaring... it will be an atrophy, in some cases nearly imperceptible, that will eventually bottom out to where the "new" standard of living will ultimately be... we will ultimately shift away from a broad service economy based on consumption to more localized economies.

My stimulus check went to a deep freeze, a rifle, and my biggest garden to date... I am blessed to live in a place where hunger & warmth should never affect any able-bodied person.

Who knows really... only time will tell.

 

[bigshovel]

We are not headed for a depression. We are headed for an awakening.

This nation was built on the backs of farmers... on grit, work ethic and determination... with some exceptions, these traits are being bred out of subsequent generations by an overindulgent parenting model, and educational system.

Each generation is guided to "reach higher" which in America has somehow come to mean get as rich as possible... it all falls back to the almighty greenback... and the real money is not work where you use your hands, it's where you use your head. Lawyers, accountants, administrators, CEO's, doctors... our "best & brightest" are pushed to a professional life, which provides a service, and generally consumes rather than produces... they are not "value-added" careers...

Throw any 17 year old a cell phone, camera, laptop--they'll begin running it effortlessly... throw them a tape measure, a chainsaw, or a pickaxe... what will you see?

We continue to diminish the importance of productivity, work ethic, creation of value in favor of material wealth... we shift our talents away from the foundations that built the economy to the areas that benefit the most personally.

We have created this problem ourselves, and we will come to a solution, but lifestyles will change, and conveniences we take for granted will diminish into necessities. We will re-learn to do for ourselves more & more the tighter the dollar gets.

The world that has been shrinking for so many years gets just that much bigger with every hike in oil.

I'm not by any means saying there will be some resounding crash, and the "depression siren" will start blaring... it will be an atrophy, in some cases nearly imperceptible, that will eventually bottom out to where the "new" standard of living will ultimately be... we will ultimately shift away from a broad service economy based on consumption to more localized economies.

My stimulus check went to a deep freeze, a rifle, and my biggest garden to date... I am blessed to live in a place where hunger & warmth should never affect any able-bodied person.

Who knows really... only time will tell.

Well said and extremely truthfull about today's youth and their parents.
I paid into the system of the government more than most last year and for that I will not recieve a borrowed stimulus check, go figure.

Brad

 

[N80]

I paid into the system of the government more than most last year and for that I will not recieve a borrowed stimulus check, go figure.

Brad

Which makes no sense at all. If that money is supposed to provide stimulus for the economy then the government intends for you to spend it. So why is there an income cut-off? Can't a rich guy spend it just as well as a poor guy?

And if the government intends for us to spend it in order to stimulate the economy, why don't they cut out the middle man (we the people) and just give it to GM, Ford, United Airlines and Home Depot? They all need it more than we do right?

I personally think that economic stimulus dole out is the most socialist thing I've ever seen this country do. Makes me gag.

And like someone said, if we do go out and spend it, most of what we buy will come from China. Should have just sent the money directly to them.

And browns40, you got it right. Its going to be an awakening and it will be a rude one, both for our spoiled youth, our spoiled baby boomers and you and me too. But, its going to be like that shot of penicillin back in the old days. Its going to hurt real bad, but its going to help in the long run.

Gotta go. Blood pressure is going up and I'm turning purple.

 

[bigshovel]

Funny, I'll bet these conversations have been going on for a hundred years. Just now we have the internet.
Could you imagine the internet conversations during Vietnam, the Carter years(double digit inflation and interest rates), Korea, Oct. 1929, the real depression. Given everything going on, I think we have it pretty good. Don't listen to the news. How is your life right now?

That's what i'm screamin. Turn off the radio and tv, move forward and quit dwelling on speculation of others.

Brad