What you should be doing to prepare for upcoming global economic depression.

[AAAgent]

Here are some key indicators if you're having a hard time grasping some of the data headwinds forecasting the coming depression.

- US savings have dwindled from $2 trillion end of 2021, to $500bn as of July 2023, and is expected to be $0 as of last month (October 2023).
- Credit card debt surpassing $1 trillion
- Although GDP numbers are higher, consumer tech spending is dropping quarter over quarter. Apple has had 4 consecutive declining quarters. Leisure spending is also declining.
- What is driving GDP higher is spending on food is increasing (inflation), housing (rent, property taxes, property insurance), car (insurance), and government spending (wars). Unfortunately not much trickle down from war spending to the masses as this gets locked up into politicians/UHNW pockets while the average joes spend everything they have just to survive and pay down their bills.
- Interest rates increasing meaning people can't easily borrow to buy things. This slows down the economy, and drive markets (stocks and all other sectors) down. Majority of indexes are down, especially Russel 2000 by more than 20%. A handful companies are currently still propping up the market, keeping the overall markets just out of the redzone, otherwise markets would be considered full on recession.
- Real Estate is forecasting a major crash. Supply and demand are both very low. Sellers are limited do to not being able to transition to making a new home purchase due to high rates, therefore are locked into their current homes. Buyer demand is also low as rising rates are causing bank instability making lending difficult, affordability low, and overall macroeconomic environment is making taking on such a heavy financial burden extremely risky. Eventually, demand will likely dry up, even if rates come down causing a cascading drop on real estate value as people will be forced to sell.
- Dollar value dropping. This im the least sure of as the dollar still maintains the global reserve currency status and times in uncertainty it does typically hold up well as countries flock to the dollar to preserve value as their currencies decline. Unfortunately with the rise of BRICS nations banding together to move away from the USD as they consider USA a potential threat to their own economic stability as America tends to weaponize the dollar if you don't do what they want by embargo's, sanctions, war, etc. It's safer to not have to rely on big bully USA. You also have economic pressure on Japan/China who are the largest holders of US debt who are being forced to sell US debt to be able to address their own internal pressure headwinds driving down bond values and driving up bond yields forcing our own government to spend to buy our own debt to stabilize the bond market. However, on the flip side countries currencies are depreciating everywhere due to hyper inflation (USD also hyperinflating but we're the cleanest dirty shirt in the fiat currency hamper), this is still driving other countries to temporarily buy USD, gold, silver, and even BTC.
- Countries have already started nationalizing and withholding certain natural resources/goods they deem strategic from exporting. China is no longer exporting rare earth minerals, Mexico to stop oil exports, and many more.
- Food bank demand continues to increase across western nations.

TLDR:
In summary, people have run out of savings, piled on debt, are living paycheck to paycheck just to get by while the economic numbers are still showing "healthy". The buffer and safety net that was accrued previously will no longer be able to prop up the economy much longer and while the government attempts to address all these headwinds and they will likely fail to address enough to prevent a cascading decline on the global macroeconomic level leading majority of nations connected to the global economy into a depression.

---

So what should you be doing?

The name of the game is wealth preservation. The time for accumulation has passed. You should be focused on saving what you have, surviving, and safety.

1.) Building a strong tight network of close and reliable people around you to support each other. Safety in numbers. You can always bounce strengths and weaknesses off of each other to fill gaps.

Example: Friends have stay at home mothers that are willing to watch kids. Dad's/men in the group that have lots of tools and can help fix household appliances/cars, etc. Some gardening some home grown vegetables and plants. Some are wealthy.

2.) Get rid of unnecessary expenses, pay down debt to alleviate financial burden. Worst case is if all corporate profits continue to decline as people can no longer spend as previous levels, layoffs will increase. Layoffs have mainly effected Tech & gaming but will start to spread into all industries. If you don't survive this wave as many will not, you may not be financially able to stay relevant with your payments. Prioritize paying off the necessities like the baby car. Let the joyride car be repossessed. If you can pay off the house, otherwise it's at risk of being repossessed or you can sell the house and rent. Renting is better during these times if you aren't financial stable as you don't need to deal with property tax, insurance, or HOA fees and it's cheaper than mortgage.

Example: I have friends that carry no credit card debt, making double payments on cars, and selling their rental property. They are sitting in cash waiting for a crash to scoop up when blood hits the streets.

3.) Gold, silver, some emergency cash and bitcoin. This will help you preserve value during these inflationary times.

4.) Take care of your health. You will need to be physically and mentally strong during these times of turmoil.

5.) No only should you aim to be prepared financially, physically, and mentally but you should be armed for worst case scenario situations.

 

[EyeBRollin]

I’ve been hearing about the “next economic depression” since 2010. Still waiting…

 

[kavi]

Inflation will prevent recession imo. We even be having recessions in real terms, but the inflation helps everything.

People dont understand how positive an impact moderate inflation has on the economy. Inflation can erode debt, maintain business profits, basically keeping an economy stable.

In the past Inflation was too low, hence there was lots of boom and bust, too much financial 'investments' without real world impact driven by low rates. But now we are in a higher rates higher inflation era and I think things will be much different.

 

[AAAgent]

Inflation will prevent recession imo. We even be having recessions in real terms, but the inflation helps everything.

People dont understand how positive an impact moderate inflation has on the economy. Inflation can erode debt, maintain business profits, basically keeping an economy stable.

In the past Inflation was too low, hence there was lots of boom and bust, too much financial 'investments' without real world impact driven by low rates. But now we are in a higher rates higher inflation era and I think things will be much different.

You're missing the fact of moderate inflation already having come and gone. We're at the point of hyperinflation now.

Moderate inflation was lowering interest rates to 0% or negative (Japan/Europe) and inflating the debt from $8 trillion in 2008 to $20 trillion in 2020. We've taken on more debt than that period in less than 1/4 of the time and we're at 5.5% fed funds rate.

 

[BillyPilgrim]

I’ve been hearing about the “next economic depression” since 2010. Still waiting…

There's certainly less homeless people these days.

OP is correct on inflation. When businesses spend half their time trying to best adjust their prices, panicking over supplies, etc, inefficiency abounds. Anything contractual is phucked.

 

[AAAgent]

I’ve been hearing about the “next economic depression” since 2010. Still waiting…

This is due to many contrarian economists aka Austrian economist thought process thinking that governments will do the reasonable method of addressing the problems instead of kicking the can down the road. Keynesian economist which are the majority of government politicians just focus on keeping the people happy short term and passing off the problems to the next administration (via inflation, lowering interest rates, etc.). This is only ideal for the people currently in power and not ideal for the people as a whole.

Too many pieces in this house of cards now that are coming down to be able to kick it down the road.

Canadian housing market is already collapsing. US housing market is only up roughly 2-3% this year, and thats mainly being propped up by new home sales which builders are subsidizing purchases via buying down rates for buyers from 7-8% down to 4%. Realistically, without the finessing of numbers, US real estate is probably already down 10%+ this year. In my local market, one of the hottest areas in the country, it's down 20% from the beginning of this year. Most houses are on the market for 5 months+ after dropping prices 20% and still not being able to sell, then they remove the listing. If they would listen to their realtors and just dump the properties, that's probably the ideal move as prices will likely continue lower.

 

[BillyPilgrim]

This is due to many contrarian economists aka Austrian economist thought process thinking that governments will do the reasonable method of addressing the problems instead of kicking the can down the road. Keynesian economist which are the majority of government politicians just focus on keeping the people happy short term and passing off the problems to the next administration (via inflation, lowering interest rates, etc.). This is only ideal for the people currently in power and not ideal for the people as a whole.

Too many pieces in this house of cards now that are coming down to be able to kick it down the road.

Canadian housing market is already collapsing. US housing market is only up roughly 2-3% this year, and thats mainly being propped up by new home sales which builders are subsidizing purchases via buying down rates for buyers from 7-8% down to 4%. Realistically, without the finessing of numbers, US real estate is probably already down 10%+ this year. In my local market, one of the hottest areas in the country, it's down 20% from the beginning of this year. Most houses are on the market for 5 months+ after dropping prices 20% and still not being able to sell, then they remove the listing. If they would listen to their realtors and just dump the properties, that's probably the ideal move as prices will likely continue lower.

You think this is bad, imagine what will happen if there is extraterrestrial disclosure and/or mass vaccine prosecutions terminally crippling the Deep State. Great Reset one way or the other.

dj jr. you liked a completely different comment. Allow a man time to edit lolz.

 

[DonJuanjr]

You think this is bad, imagine what will happen if there is extraterrestrial disclosure and/or mass vaccine prosecutions terminally crippling the Deep State. Great Reset one way or the other.

dj jr. you liked a completely different comment. Allow a man time to edit lolz.

Keeping it, because I like that one too!

 

[jaygreenb]

I’ve been hearing about the “next economic depression” since 2010. Still waiting…

There is some truth to this and people have been claiming this is right on the cusp for decades. Personally never thought it would have been able to go on this long. However, there are a number of indicators that it is getting worse and historically these type of events have a lot of similar markers that are repeating. I do believe a lot of what AAA does happen, what time frame, I am not going to claim I know. In the moment, decades seem like a lot of time but it pretty insignificant looking at the big picture. What I do know is you want to be prepared for when it does and a lot of the action items he listed will be beneficial weather it happens or not or to what degree. There are no real downsides to getting your house in order but major downside if it does happen and you are not prepared.

 

[kavi]

Recessions, like the Great Depression in America, were designed by the elites to keep the people in fear and have power over them.

There is never any reason for a real Civilization to have significant recessions leading to joblessness. This can only happen in immature or poorly managed socieities but not in civilizations with resources. If a Civilization has resources it can simply give jobs to everyone and keep things running. But ofcourse if that society runs out of resources then it cannot continue, and this is the only scenario where this should be recession or collapse.

If you have a team of x number of people, and resources like land, water etc, then you as a manager can just allocate jobs to everyone and things will be fine, just like how a CEO manages his employees, or a tribe manages their people, or a sports team manages their people, in some cases like teams or businesses, you can remove people you dont need, or get more people, but in a tribe you cannot really do that.

Americans should be ashamed they went through a great Depression in the 30s or whatever, instead of thinking ppl are lucky to have jobs today, you should be demanding to live in a civilized way, but many are being played by the capitalist elites so they work hard and so the rich and capitalists can have more power.

You just have to demand a competent government that is all.

 

[kavi]

Now look, in time clarity develops. It is very simple. In Capitalism, when the market was acting alone, America had the Great Depression, and it took Socialism ie the New Deal to get you guys out of that.

So Americans need to wake up and look past all this Nationalism stuff and hating on China and Russia (Communism/Socialism whatever) and stop being played for fools. It was Capitalism that gave you the Great Depression and Government action that took you out of that.

Ofcourse there is no doubt that arrogance and lack of knowledge will lead the people to suffering and failure.

 

[jaygreenb]

Recessions, like the Great Depression in America, were designed by the elites to keep the people in fear and have power over them.

There is never any reason for a real Civilization to have significant recessions leading to joblessness. This can only happen in immature or poorly managed socieities but not in civilizations with resources. If a Civilization has resources it can simply give jobs to everyone and keep things running. But ofcourse if that society runs out of resources then it cannot continue, and this is the only scenario where this should be recession or collapse.

If you have a team of x number of people, and resources like land, water etc, then you as a manager can just allocate jobs to everyone and things will be fine, just like how a CEO manages his employees, or a tribe manages their people, or a sports team manages their people, in some cases like teams or businesses, you can remove people you dont need, or get more people, but in a tribe you cannot really do that.

Americans should be ashamed they went through a great Depression in the 30s or whatever, instead of thinking ppl are lucky to have jobs today, you should be demanding to live in a civilized way, but many are being played by the capitalist elites so they work hard and so the rich and capitalists can have more power.

You just have to demand a competent government that is all.

There is no way to avoid recessions, expecially when society and technology is constantly changing an evolving. Will say, there is a lot of inefficines and waste do to politicians, banks and monetary policy though

How does one "demand a competent government" and enact that. When has that happened over a long period and maintained in all of history?

 

[CAPSLOCK BANDIT]

What I learned from dealing with my families financial advisors is that there are people in certain industries who profit greatly from economic downturn, for example because of the lack of supply, inflation has to be used to keep food on the shelves, if things were all the same price they were today, it would be like the toilet paper fiasco during Covid except with everything and all we saw was just toilet paper, wait till you see what people will do for food.

As a result, companies that create more name brand products for shelves will end up being out competed by all the subsidized no name brands, make no mistake, these no name brands are designed to take over the market and its an effective strategy, they simply piggy back off preexisting concepts, see what people want and meet the demand at a better price point. They box your ass out and gate keep now... Basically a license to print money when you can just steal customers.

My families financial advisors told us a recession would happen in 2022, so we pulled everything out in 2021, began investing into companies that would benefit from economic downturn. Only other thing im still sitting on is s couple choice stocks and silver.

I live cheap anyways, I don't have internet at my house anymore or else I'd never leave honestly, anxiety and memory can get bad but this forces me to get out more and puts money right into my pocket since high speed internet is so expensive in Canada.

 

[AAAgent]

You think this is bad, imagine what will happen if there is extraterrestrial disclosure and/or mass vaccine prosecutions terminally crippling the Deep State. Great Reset one way or the other.

dj jr. you liked a completely different comment. Allow a man time to edit lolz.

Yeah, i follow those too. Likely coming in the next 1-3 years but don't think these guys are ready for that discussion yet. Gotta ease them into it.

 

[AAAgent]

There is some truth to this and people have been claiming this is right on the cusp for decades. Personally never thought it would have been able to go on this long. However, there are a number of indicators that it is getting worse and historically these type of events have a lot of similar markers that are repeating. I do believe a lot of what AAA does happen, what time frame, I am not going to claim I know. In the moment, decades seem like a lot of time but it pretty insignificant looking at the big picture. What I do know is you want to be prepared for when it does and a lot of the action items he listed will be beneficial weather it happens or not or to what degree. There are no real downsides to getting your house in order but major downside if it does happen and you are not prepared.

in a perfect Austrian economically run world, assuming no more shenanigans outside of what has already been instituted, we'd likely be facing the music immediately but we don't live in that world so who knows. Indicators are pointing to the house of cards falling piece by piece for the next few months. Pieces have already been falling. This will continue perhaps for half a year or less until the foundation is completely gone and we collapse entirely. We'll see what governments try to do. War is currently on the table to mitigate the horrible economic numbers, to kill/spend our way out of it but this doesn't work when the private sector is already on its last legs.

 

[AAAgent]

You just have to demand a competent government that is all.

In this environment, that isn't even realistic. The system is corrupt and broken. The majority of the people are calling for a ceasefire while politicians drum up war invigorated. Definitely not acting on behalf of the people. You have lower level officials being bribed to ignore and or change laws by wealthy elite George Soros. You have senior level officials being blackmailed via exposure to child sex trafficking rings, rigged elections, just to name a few. This doesn't include the billions spent on brainwashing through DEI, hollywood, education, or vaccine mandates.

All this power comes from manipulation of the USD and its on its last legs. When the elites main tool to bribe and control people loses its effectiveness, the cronies stop doing the work.

 

[AAAgent]

What I learned from dealing with my families financial advisors is that there are people in certain industries who profit greatly from economic downturn, for example because of the lack of supply, inflation has to be used to keep food on the shelves, if things were all the same price they were today, it would be like the toilet paper fiasco during Covid except with everything and all we saw was just toilet paper, wait till you see what people will do for food.

As a result, companies that create more name brand products for shelves will end up being out competed by all the subsidized no name brands, make no mistake, these no name brands are designed to take over the market and its an effective strategy, they simply piggy back off preexisting concepts, see what people want and meet the demand at a better price point. They box your ass out and gate keep now... Basically a license to print money when you can just steal customers.

My families financial advisors told us a recession would happen in 2022, so we pulled everything out in 2021, began investing into companies that would benefit from economic downturn. Only other thing im still sitting on is s couple choice stocks and silver.

I live cheap anyways, I don't have internet at my house anymore or else I'd never leave honestly, anxiety and memory can get bad but this forces me to get out more and puts money right into my pocket since high speed internet is so expensive in Canada.

Industrials will likely do well and any industry that supports things. Rigs, bulldozers, drills, etc. Anything to do with digging up natural resources. If we're unable to import the materials we need due to all these countries nationalizing resources for themselves to keep industry going, we will need to dig up our own. US/CA have tons of gold/silver/oil/farmland/etc.

 

[jaygreenb]

in a perfect Austrian economically run world, assuming no more shenanigans outside of what has already been instituted, we'd likely be facing the music immediately but we don't live in that world so who knows. Indicators are pointing to the house of cards falling piece by piece for the next few months. Pieces have already been falling. This will continue perhaps for half a year or less until the foundation is completely gone and we collapse entirely. We'll see what governments try to do. War is currently on the table to mitigate the horrible economic numbers, to kill/spend our way out of it but this doesn't work when the private sector is already on its last legs.

Right, we would of had multiple normal recessions the past few decades, cleared out the inefficncies and moved froward. Instead of manipulating the markets creating all sorts of perverse incentives creating dysfunctional govts, corps and individuals and growing the problems exponentially. My only question is how long they can keep the music playing. Could be a year and also could be a decade. I think it is prudent to be prepared for both and there are so many variables do not think any specific time or outcome is set in stone. Agree with a lot of what you say just not sure about exact time frame and severity. I'm 43, and a have learned the painful and sometime expensive lesson multiple times that things rarely happen on a timeline or outcome that is logical and makes sense.

That being said, if you looked at how my life and assets where structured, I would look like a tin hat psycho ready for it all to collapse

 

[HaleyBaron]

I have always supported the removal of the Fed. Centralizing money was the worst thing we could have done. Watching the value of the dollar drop after the removal of the gold standard and comparing what we make to today versus what we made back before then will make you sad [around 25% effective wages]. Economics were never meant for infinite growth. We let the bankers come in and dictate how we spend our money. The people became poorer while the government got to keep fighting its fights and get involved with multiple countries. And now those countries are angry and pulling out. I for one am not going to fight another banker's war.

I am doing some of the things you have listed. Just about done with student loans and about to pay off the car. No matter what, the first thing that I will have to do is not be around the inner city. Cause if there is rampant crime, being prepared won't matter if I cannot protect my assets. Due to circumstances, I cannot leave just yet. We also have an election coming up next year, and that is going to be the pivot of where our country will be heading.

 

[AAAgent]

I have always supported the removal of the Fed. Centralizing money was the worst thing we could have done. Watching the value of the dollar drop after the removal of the gold standard and comparing what we make to today versus what we made back before then will make you sad [around 25% effective wages]. Economics were never meant for infinite growth. We let the bankers come in and dictate how we spend our money. The people became poorer while the government got to keep fighting its fights and get involved with multiple countries. And now those countries are angry and pulling out. I for one am not going to fight another banker's war.

I am doing some of the things you have listed. Just about done with student loans and about to pay off the car. No matter what, the first thing that I will have to do is not be around the inner city. Cause if there is rampant crime, being prepared won't matter if I cannot protect my assets. Due to circumstances, I cannot leave just yet. We also have an election coming up next year, and that is going to be the pivot of where our country will be heading.

Definitely also recommend getting out of the city. That's likely the worst place to be. Too many drugs, crime, and people. The city exposure may bring you close to too many people with nothing left to lose. You will want to be in less populated areas like suburbs or country even as those areas are more manageable.