One of the steps in a societal collapse is a loss of faith in financial tools. The stock market has seemed like a casino for a long time to me, yet it is still cranking out money for the upper crust. It is the primary driver for business decisions that produce short term gain, but reduce long-term viability for the companies and for the environment.
Currently, there are no other real vehicles for the average US citizen to invest in for their retirements. In my parents’ generation, there were more. Heck, they had a lot of money in CDs and even those earned a decent rate of interest. Yet everything now is such a low return, or boom/bust like housing, so little guys like me are pushed into getting retirement accounts that are stocks. I’m not keen on that.
What’s even worse is that many jobs will employer match if you put into one of the stock market based retirement funds. But if you want to just put your money into a savings account, you miss out on the employer matching. So there’s strong incentive to keep putting your money into the stock market.
So I keep trying to read the tea leaves to figure out when the casino is going to collapse. …or even if it will. I think there are some folks that just assume that it will keep making money for the wealthy and the rest of humanity will just get left behind.
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Read J for Junk Economics & Killing the Host by Michael Hudson.
Read Economics: A User’s Guide by Ha-Joon Chang.
I don’t think you can use this to predict the future, but here is an interesting graph showing that the current bank failures follow a similar pattern to 2008: https://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/bank/index.html
But it’s only a matter of time imo. I have a feeling money won’t be playing an as large role as you would imagine. Prices can rise, but if things are just not available anymore no amount of money can help you.
I remember years ago when Enron and Worldcom collapsed. People who were retired/nearly retired lost a lifetime of investments. They found themselves on the cusp of their elder years and thrust into poverty overnight.
If (when) the stock market fails everyone is going to be in that same boat because all other avenues of saving money other than shoving it in a mattress or burying it in your yard is ultimately tied up in the market. I have to contribute to a 401k and pension plan to get employer contributions. So instead of a safe CD or savings account…my extra money is “playing” the market. I don’t like this and predict it’s going to get really ugly for lots of folks when finance buckles. I’m 10 years out from retirement and on edge just thinking about this. Then again, I know I won’t be alone.
Until some earth destroying, population decimating event takes place. I mean a market crash is inevitable, it’s kind of baked into Capitalism and is an essential part of the system. If you are talking about collapse as in full collapse, then it probably won’t happen within our lifetimes. If you are talking about a market crash, then probably within the next few years. Much more likely to be after 2024 since this is the point where a lot of very large economies (US, UK, India, South Korea) have their elections, and governments (especially so in the US and UK) are likely to want to postpone a market crash until after the completion of the next elections.
A stock market crash or decline in economy isn’t really caused by anything more than people, collectively, thinking the economy is going to crash, like a self fulfilling prophecy. However a full financial market collapse would, in my opinion, only come after a huge world changing event, that most likely has to happen all at once (not climate change related disasters since the events won’t instantly happen all at once). It would have to be something along the lines of asteroid/comet collison, supervolcano eruption or nuclear winter.
governments (especially so in the US and UK) are likely to want to postpone a market crash until after the completion of the next elections.
That didn’t happen in 2008 or 1992, so I’m not sure why you think governments are able to postpone market crashes.
Good point. I am from the UK so my knowledge is best based around the UK (though I am no expert). But I think if governments can feel a crash coming then they can make short term policies and decisions that can push the inevitable off a bit more. In the case of the UK you see the government make questionable decisions on policies that may help in the short term but make things worse in the slightly longer term. Since the Conservative party are likely confident that they won’t be in power come next year, they are trying to delay a crash until then to save face. But in the process they make decisions which are very short term and will likely lead to economic decline. However, I want to doubly reiterate that I am no expert, barely an amateur. And if I am glaringly wrong anywhere please correct me and explain how I am so I can know better for next time. Thank you :)
The one thing that I take heart in is that I will probably drop over dead before I have to worry about retirement. I’m doing the best I can to set things up for my family, even though I know that there is little chance that there will be enough for them to get by.
