The U.S. Isn’t Prepared for the Next Recession
What they addressed at the end of the article is the key point to me. There are reduced nations left to fuel the worlds economic engine in a recession. Previously events like 2008 we had India, Middle Eastern and Chinese economies doing massive development, so while the western countries went to recovery mode, the could benefit and hold themselves a bit better from these other nations growth.Today if we hit a trade/financial crisis its likely to spread across the major global economies. African areas and India seem to have ongoing growth potential but I dont see them coming to the rescue.And should a major economy like US have a crisis this could have a global impact compounded further by; 1) The massive global debts being accumulated at personal and state levels pretty much everywhere. This is setting ourselves up for potential contagious failure of our systems. Not just inter country finance but imagine there was significant defaults and how that would spread to pension funds and back into the economy. Small business lending etc. Our globalised and finance heavy economies dont have adequate circuit breakers. Further 2) I suspect developed nations urbanisation will make any significant downturn harder on the masses than previous recessions. In the 1920's you had 30%+ of people on farms. Now you have something like 2%. Back then people could more easily tighten belts and become increasingly self sufficient over a few hard years. Today it would be a significantly more difficult position for the government to manage, both by volume of people that would need full support and back to their indebtedness. This could spell real trouble if the wheels fall off. And given history, the wheels will fall off occasionally.Anyway, I'm not trying to scare or convince people to buy bunkers. I do feel we should demand better long term governance from politicians vs this 'whats gets me in next term' politics we see today. With the tribalism and instant gratification of today's politics it doesn't seem to offer the best hope. But really who knows...