Very nice find. Thanks.

Like anything in life, it's what you make of it!

The Fed actually can drop interest rates below 0%.

That is an interesting read. Thanks for sharing. I think this guy is hitting some important points here...

LOL!
Fortunately I have no need for a vicarious existence. My life IS a soap opera!

and Facebook and Twitter for all those world shaking comments about (and by) "celebrities."
It's like standing in the grocery checkout line without even leaving home.

What the advent of computers and the internet did for advanced societies is create and save time so that we might spend our time in more productive endeavors (like creating products with our excess time).

What has ACTUALLY happened is that these little devices actually STEAL our time and keep us from being more productive because we can now talk to anyone anywhere at any time for any reason and unfortunately too many people have nothing productive to say.

Thankfully we have the Gulch.

The REAL purpose of "Christmas" is for the gullible little people to go out and Buy! Buy! Buy! themselves into serfdom to the bankers... hopefully by buying cheap, plastic Chinese-manufactured junk sold at, what; a hundred times its manufacturing and shipping price? Plastic Chinese Jesus' and plastic Chinese wise men! Oh well; that's why them call them sheeple...

I think that the baby Jesus should be replaced with a baby (Chinese plastic) John Maynard Keynes... that would be SO much more appropriate! The wise men could be replaced with football team members in uniform... and then we would have a much more real portrayal of "the season" and a display with REAL emotional significance, for the Boobus Americanus! Ah, what the heck! Let's throw in a Chinese plastic "Dear Leader" (Obama) figure too, as he is the REAL messiah, no?

Anyway, that's why, decades ago, when the world was sane, I insisted on calling the season "Costmas" and still do. Go out there, sheeple, and buy, buy, buy!

Scepticus Americanus

I'm not sure either, Robbie, but it's so convenient, as many business failures have been in the past.

Its already negative for customers with euros. They are being charged by banks for holding their money.

...at the request of the bankers who financed the oil men (with money created from nothing) to gain control of the resources.

A point for you. You're right. I forgot about watching Glenn Beck talk about FDR and Truman when he had his TV show on Fox News in the afternoon.
He also spoke of the stock market crash of 1920 that libs do not like anyone to know about.
What did the federal government do about that crash? Absolutely nothing. What very quickly followed? The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties.
FDR was all over the next stock market crash. What did the USA get? The Great Depression that dragged on and on and on.
I also recall reading that the Nazi Party's use of propaganda was inspired by its previous use by the U.S. government.
Do not recall the particulars and I have someplace I need to go. Bye.

Mark this post, come back on December 25, 2015 and see if the article is right. I doubt it. The article gives no credible reasons why these problems should all come to a head in the next 365 days. The comment about gasoline is especially short-sighted: Savings in the cost of energy, created by fracking (another new and disruptive technology) will drive down the cost of most other necessities. Other disruptive and revolutionary technologies, such as 3D printing and personalized medicine, will lower costs still further as their effects ripple through the economy.

you want to know how we're doing? . check out
the "FRED" chart in this article!!! -- j

Hmmm. Maybe the last 'mercantile XMas' in a while...

It will not break my heart to get more home made gifts - I have talented friends.

Jan, back to stonecarving now

No, dino. We were doing it even then - and before your era as well (WWII). This is nothing new. What is new is the Internet, which is doing a surprising job of catching people in the process of manipulation.

jan

I remember a time when (while old dino, hatching in 1947, was growing up) "manipulating data" was something only Communist countries did to mislead the "stupid" masses.
Think of Comrade Gruber when you read any government Obamanation put out about how well off we are.

he may very well be right. all that we see if we look is a larger welfare state, less employed people because those who chose not to work get welfare. the country is in free fall and we are like a black hole pulling every other country down with us.

Same comments as made on internet apply. Undoubtedly those devices have improved productivity, but that advance is buried under the weight of corporatism and socialism.

Actually $5Au meant smartphones, tablets and so forth.