CHESSNOID

At this point in time, I do believe we are at the beginning of the Bush-Obama Depression.  The government only recently acknowledged that we were officially in a recession but most of us already knew that for a bout a year.  I do see more homeless people around town when I step out. The foreclosure crisis is still continuing.  As for unemployment,  I believe the reports under report the true numbers and that we already have national double digit unemployment.

The latest George Soros’ comments are something I completely agree with.  We may already be going into a global depression and that the US is the source.

NEW YORK (Reuters) –

Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.

“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”

His comments echoed those made earlier at the same conference by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who is now a top adviser to President Barack Obama.

Volcker said industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.

“I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world,” Volcker said.

We just passed the stimulus package and extended the previous bailouts by giving out more money. You know I don’t believe in any of it will work because it is based on spending money that we don’t have. The Obama administration is following the same steps as the Bush administration. We are doing massive deficit spending which is putting our economy in greater risk and triggering the economic depression.

I believe foreign investors are wising up and losing confidence in the US. We do depend on them to loan us money by buying our treasuries and bonds. In the past, foreign investors would have never thought about possible US defaults let alone ask for extra guarantees.

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) —

Asian investors won’t buy debt and mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac until they carry explicit U.S. guarantees, similar to those given on bonds issued by Bank of America Corp. or Citigroup Inc.

The risks are too great without a pledge that the U.S. will repay the debt no matter what, according to Hideo Shimomura, chief fund investor in Tokyo for Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management Co., and other bondholders and analysts in Japan, China and South Korea interviewed by Bloomberg. Overseas resistance may hamper U.S. efforts to hold down home-loan rates and shore up the nation’s largest mortgage-finance companies.

Even after President Barack Obama vowed on Feb. 18 to sink as much as $400 billion of capital into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, double the original commitment, “there is still a concern that there is no guarantee” from the government, said Shimomura, who oversees $4 billion in non-yen bonds for the arm of Japan’s largest bank.

“Looking at the risk, they’re not so attractive,” he said. “We need a guarantee before we’ll buy.”

Back in college, micro and macro economics were my favorite classes. I would have never imagined that I would actually live through a severe recession and possible depression in my lifetime. You look at the old pictures taken from the dust bowl and figure this is just for the history books. We have computers, the internet, and cell phones so a depression seems unbelievable. Yet here we are. We will survive this economic cycle but it will be a painful process.