Do you think there could be a second Great Depression?

[jamespowers]

Some parts of the country just weren't hit as hard by the economic downturn as others. Nebraska suffered relatively unscathed - we didn't have a housing bubble, so we were okay there. The mall had a few empty spots a few years due to businesses closing, but they've already been filled. Construction is booming. New houses, new businesses, etc. Of course, this is all Eastern Nebraska - western Nebraska, which suffered much worse with the drought than we did, is suffering more. Plus, they are mostly an agricultural-based economy, so the effects are going to be felt for awhile.

States have their own micro economies that are largely dependent on local policies more than national influences. There can be some things coming that will get all the way down to you though.
If China gets intot he oil market big and buys oil only in Yuan then we might just have a problem with our price of oil going up. We have had it good for a long time with the dollar being the unit that oil transactions are settled with. If we have to go out and buy Yuan to settle our oil needs then the price will go up for sure. It will be an unmitigated disaster.

 

[AmateisGal]

States have their own micro economies that are largely dependent on local policies more than national influences. There can be some things coming that will get all the way down to you though.
If China gets intot he oil market big and buys oil only in Yuan then we might just have a problem with our price of oil going up. We have had it good for a long time with the dollar being the unit that oil transactions are settled with. If we have to go out and buy Yuan to settle our oil needs then the price will go up for sure. It will be an unmitigated disaster.

Agreed.

 

[Undertow]

AF, perhaps the entire claim is bloated and there truly are not symptoms of a declining economy. It could be that your region isn't seeing the decline. Or it could be that you're just not noticing it personally.

I can say that Des Moines has remained relatively "eh". Our homeless level seems to have increased. We just built a new homeless shelter because we've had folks living in tent cities and clap-board shacks along the river. The police came through and tore down their homes, burnt their structures and started patrolling the area. Plenty of bridges are already inhabited by the homeless and there is a particular drive down by the river that is home to homelessness, drugs and pandering.

We're not seeing an awful lot of new businesses opening but most places aren't closing just yet either. The job market in Des Moines is lukewarm at best and relies heavily on Blue Cross, Wells Fargo, Nationwide and Principal Financial - all very corporate employers doing alot of temporary hiring.

Home sales have plummetted. Home building, too, has only just now picked back up, and it's certainly not at full steam - meaning many of our laborers are still out of work. College grads are getting hired at the corporations getting paid the same as non-grads. I work with a guy who makes as much as me and still has to work part-time at a grocery store sacking to make ends meet - and he lives alone.

One thing I've definitely noticed is an exponential increase in shoppers at the Salvation Army, Goodwill and the DAV. Whereas I used to hunt those places for great vintage items, everything is picked through and there are people queued up around the store. What's not purchased for the family is quickly sold on eBay. Garage sales have also become ridiculous around here.

 

[Atticus Finch]

Please don't get me wrong. I understand that the national economic situation could be better. But North Carolina should be a tad worse off than most areas. Indeed, our state unemployment rate remains a couple of ticks higher than the national average. And we're not a wealthy state to begin with. Trust me, I'm hardly insulated from the bad things that may be happening in our local community. On a daily basis, I personally see stuff that would probably cause most here to shake their heads in disbelief. I've seen homeless people. I've seen prostitutes. Heck, I know many of our local prostitutes by their real names. But I've been seeing homeless people and prostitutes for twenty years. They were here during the ninties when our economy was booming and there's no more of them here now than then. I'm just not seeing much local evidence of a declining economy. In fact, dare I say, things actually seem to be improving.

Just saying...

AF

 

[vitanola]

I find it interesting that the same folks who went all through the mortgage market's implosion, and who referred to the banking crisis as a "mental recession" indulged in by "a nation of whiners", (for "misery sells newspapers...Thank God the economy is not as bad as we read in the newspapers everyday") now aver the economy is in the process of rapid collapse. If the election is decided their way, their view of the economy will magically and immediately improve. If the other, well a 2% unemployment rate and an 80% increase in the Dow couldn't convince them that the economy was holding its own.

[video=youtube_share;abcR8OzyTwg]http://youtu.be/abcR8OzyTwg[/video]

 

[ButteMT61]

Like AF, I don't see much difference here where I live. We only (I've looked in the records) lost a couple homes in the foreclosure landslide. But we finally are seeing some local shops close down - including some of the big names (chains). No doubt this is happening, but it certainly is regional, and even neighborhood by neighborhood.
One positive thing is that the areas where huge numbers of illegals (and therefore crime, litter, noise, etc) have declined. That makes me happy.

 

[jamespowers]

I find it interesting that the same folks who went all through the mortgage market's implosion, and who referred to the banking crisis as a "mental recession" indulged in by "a nation of whiners", (for "misery sells newspapers...Thank God the economy is not as bad as we read in the newspapers everyday") now aver the economy is in the process of rapid collapse. If the election is decided their way, their view of the economy will magically and immediately improve. If the other, well a 2% unemployment rate and an 80% increase in the Dow couldn't convince them that the economy was holding its own.

[video=youtube_share;abcR8OzyTwg]http://youtu.be/abcR8OzyTwg[/video]

Thanks for politicizing the topic.

 

[sheeplady]

My work normally puts me in a position to see the worst aspects of our community...and I know that what you say must be true...but for some reason I don't see our local people in worse financial condition than they were, say, twenty years ago. In fact, it seems to me that there is more wealth in my area than I ever remember...even though there really shouldn’t be.

Try as I may, I can't seem to reconcile the national economic news I'm hearing and the way I'm seeing people live in my area. Kids still go to their private schools. Heck, a new private school just recently opened here. Families still buy new cars and trucks. Houses are beginning to sell again. Even our local boat dealerships are still in business. I don’t see families dumpster diving to survive. I don’t see many…if any…involuntarily homeless people. I haven’t even seen an increase in property crime.

And I think I should be seeing it all…

AF

Well, my area isn't really that much worse off. We typically hovered around 8% unemployment pre-2007. We're up to 10%. We have some of the lowest priced homes in the country to begin with (we've had a 3% drop in home prices). We have low wages, little opportunity, particularly little opportunity for college or tradeschool graduates. We didn't have far to fall. Although we have been affected, we've been this way for so long, we don't notice. The only thing I've seen is a few of my neighbors have lost their homes.

I can remember my friends going "grocery picking" when I was in elementary school. So I don't see it as any different.

One of my friends likes to say to people complaining about how hard their economy has fallen from when they had high priced homes and good paying jobs "Welcome to our world. Sit down, it's going to be at least 30 years by my experience."

The area where we will be moving next is the most abject poverty stricken area I have ever seen in my life. It's basically the northern most area of Appalachia, and we are talking poverty. Tar paper shacks, people living with farm animals in their homes for warmth, etc. It's really sad. I'm pretty sure that the recession has meant nothing to them, and I'm pretty sure they do see people complaining about how their homes are worth only a couple hundred thousand dollars as whiners. I honestly wouldn't blame them for feeling that way.

 

[vitanola]

Well, I believe that You and Mr. Cannon took that step back on page five or six.

Besides, I thought that 1928 election ephemera would hardly excite anyone these days.

Now as for 1932...

We'll just skip that one for the time being, won't we::eeek:

 

[LizzieMaine]

The only thing I've seen is a few of my neighbors have lost their homes.

See, that's the thing. Those of us who are thirty or forty or fifty years old, stop and think a minute. Did you ever know anyone growing up who lost their homes to foreclosure? I grew up on a working-class street full of small, cheap houses and nobody who lived there had much money. But I never saw a single person in our neighborhood lose their home to foreclosure. Not that it was ever easy to pay the bills, but I never saw someone's stuff piled in the dooryard, a slug in the lock and a sherriff's notice nailed to the door.

I live in the same kind of neighborhood today, and have seen two foreclosures in just the past year. The family of one of the kids at work lost their home to foreclosure this summer, and the same week they were dispossessed the mom lost her job. Drive thru just about any neighborhood around this town and you'll see those BANK OWNED signs stuck in front of houses. I never used to see that, not even in the early '80s when the poultry industry collapsed or the early '90s when the fishing industry collapsed. In both cases unemployment spiked over 20 percent -- but you didn't see people losing everything they own the way they're doing now. Something very very unhealthy is still going on, and it's not "the same as it always was."

To think the solution to the problem is going to be achieved thru politics is like thinking painting your car a different color will fix the engine. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

 

[sheeplady]

See, that's the thing. Those of us who are thirty or forty or fifty years old, stop and think a minute. Did you ever know anyone growing up who lost their homes to foreclosure? I grew up on a working-class street full of small, cheap houses and nobody who lived there had much money. But I never saw a single person in our neighborhood lose their home to foreclosure. Not that it was ever easy to pay the bills, but I never saw someone's stuff piled in the dooryard, a slug in the lock and a sherriff's notice nailed to the door.

I live in the same kind of neighborhood today, and have seen two foreclosures in just the past year. The family of one of the kids at work lost their home to foreclosure this summer, and the same week they were dispossessed the mom lost her job. Drive thru just about any neighborhood around this town and you'll see those BANK OWNED signs stuck in front of houses. I never used to see that, not even in the early '80s when the poultry industry collapsed or the early '90s when the fishing industry collapsed. In both cases unemployment spiked over 20 percent -- but you didn't see people losing everything they own the way they're doing now. Something very very unhealthy is still going on, and it's not "the same as it always was."

To think the solution to the problem is going to be achieved thru politics is like thinking painting your car a different color will fix the engine. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

That's been pretty common my entire life, though. I'm 31, and as long as I remember, I've known people who lost their homes. One of my friends growing up was homeless for about 2 years- while I was in 2nd and 3rd grade- her mom lost their home and they were living out of her car and couch surfing (my friend ended up repeating 2nd grade). Nobody knew it at the time, because the mom was pretty good at hiding it, but I learned about it in high school. It was really common to lose farms to the banks in the 1980s, complete with auctioning off the machinery that was heavily under debt. That's one of the reasons why FarmAid exists.

I do think there is a greater frequency, however, and it's not as isolated. I don't think that most people in the suburbs or even towns were affected by the farming crash/ crisis in the 1970s/1980s. And we do talk about it more- people are much more open about it. And it's started to affect people all over the socio-economic spectrum, which makes it more acceptable to talk about.

 

[ButteMT61]

People never talked about bills, income, divorce, or losing their homes. We live in a different world today. Nothing appears off-limits. Good or bad? Dunno. But it's depressing.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

People never talked about them in what context?

 

[LizzieMaine]

See, we did *talk* about it. We *feared* it. I can remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table, chain-smoking and swearing over the phone at a collection officer from the bank, and understanding what she was swearing at him about. But as scared as we were of it, we never actually saw it happen. There was always a way to keep it from happening, always some way we could get the bill paid in time. And it was the same for all our neighbors. Even the poorest people we knew, those red-headed O'Briens on the other side of the block, never got put on the street by the bank.

In retrospect, that might have been for a couple of reasons. Our mortgage was a VA loan thru a local bank, as were the mortgages of most of the other people we knew -- the parents were all of the generation where the men had served in the military and enjoyed GI Bill benefits. Plus, we knew the bank manager, he knew us, knew our families, knew our situations Our fate wasn't in the hands of some rapacious investment firm in India or someplace else where we didn't exist as human beings. That's no longer the case today with most mortgages.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

See, we did *talk* about it. We *feared* it. I can remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table, chain-smoking and swearing over the phone at a collection officer from the bank, and understanding what she was swearing at him about. But as scared as we were of it, we never actually saw it happen. There was always a way to keep it from happening, always some way we could get the bill paid in time. And it was the same for all our neighbors. Even the poorest people we knew, those red-headed O'Briens on the other side of the block, never got put on the street by the bank.

In retrospect, that might have been for a couple of reasons. Our mortgage was a VA loan thru a local bank, as were the mortgages of most of the other people we knew -- the parents were all of the generation where the men had served in the military and enjoyed GI Bill benefits. Plus, we knew the bank manager, he knew us, knew our families, knew our situations Our fate wasn't in the hands of some rapacious investment firm in India or someplace else where we didn't exist as human beings. That's no longer the case today with most mortgages.

Underwriting was much MUCH more stringent back then. Banks generally didn't loan people money for houses they (lender and borrower) knew they could not afford. People didn't gamble on adjustable rate mortgages. Houses were homes as opposed to stepping stone investments to be "flipped." I also don't know how many people used their houses as ATMs with HELOCs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Underwriting was much MUCH more stringent back then. Banks generally didn't loan people money for houses they (lender and borrower) knew they could not afford. People didn't gamble on adjustable rate mortgages. Houses were homes as opposed to stepping stone investments to be "flipped." I also don't know how many people used their houses as ATMs with HELOCs.

That's exactly right. In our neighborhood people bought houses with the idea of living in those houses for the rest of their lives -- and that's exactly what most of them did. My grandparents bought their house in 1945, and they died there. My mother bought our house in 1967, and she still lives there today -- next to the same family she's lived next to since we moved in. The phrase "starter house" didn't exist in our world -- it's the creation of an industry that gets more sinister by the year.

 

[Atticus Finch]

See, that's the thing. Those of us who are thirty or forty or fifty years old, stop and think a minute. Did you ever know anyone growing up who lost their homes to foreclosure?

No. In fact, I can't remember anyone in Beaufort who lost their home to foreclosure other than a few people whose homes were foreclosed upon in the wakes of bad divorces. But in the fifties, sixties and seventies, banks generally loaned money only to people who could reasonably be expected to repay those loans. This was not true from the nineties to the crash in 2008. Beginning sometime in the late eighties, banks started loaning big money to people who could barely service their loans each month. The idea seemed to be that the economy would always expand and real estate would always appreciate. Of course, that turned out to be a very bad premise.

To think the solution to the problem is going to be achieved thru politics is like thinking painting your car a different color will fix the engine. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

I couldn't agree more. The American public has vacillated back and forth between the two major parties during the last four or five elections in an effort to "elect" our way out of the economic problems we face. Well, I don't think we will be able to elect our way out of what we have faced since 2006 or so. I think it will ultimately require much more individual sacrifice than to simply mark a ballot on election day and expect someone in Washington to make our problems go away.

AF

 

[AmateisGal]

My family got hit by the farm crisis in the 80s - I remember the farm sale where we had to auction off all our machinery. My dad ended up getting a job with the post office, though thankfully, we were able to hold on to the farm (and my brother now farms it).

We had some lean times in those days - my mom would literally get sick when going to get groceries because we didn't have enough money. Still, we got by, thank the Lord.

 

[sheeplady]

Well, I think a lot of things have changed, from the lending industry to some people's morals and ethics. There are people now who can pay their mortgage but are choosing not to- and squatting- waiting for the bank to come and take the property and living there free for a couple years because the banks are so behind. While I am sure that happened decades ago, most people would have been horrified by the idea of backing out of such a commitment. Houses and property were hard earned- and hard lost. Now it's much more easy come and easy go. (I'm not saying that the majority of the people who are being foreclosed on are squatting, but enough people are doing it to make the news, and it doesn't take very many to significantly add to the crisis.)

Growing up, nobody talked openly about it when a foreclosure happened. But you knew when the for sale sign went up on so and so's farm that it was a foreclosure, it was whispered that the people were losing their farm to the bank. The people I knew would never in a million years ask the family about it directly, nor would the family ever tell anyone outside of their close circle of friends. It would never make the news, except for their being an advertisement in the paper about a property, livestock, and machinery auction. The for sale signs never said foreclosure. If you didn't know what was happening, it looked like a normal sale of a quaint little country place.

But everybody lived in fear of being next.

The area where I lived as a kid also lost a military base when I lived there, and that meant the loss of about 60,000 jobs over the next several years (not just base jobs, but jobs in the community). There was a flood of housing on the market after that, and a lot of foreclosures because the population was dwindling and no one was there to buy them (and the families had to move on where they were transferred or to new places with work). But even then, they didn't put foreclosure signs out front.

 

[sheeplady]

My family got hit by the farm crisis in the 80s - I remember the farm sale where we had to auction off all our machinery. My dad ended up getting a job with the post office, though thankfully, we were able to hold on to the farm (and my brother now farms it).

We had some lean times in those days - my mom would literally get sick when going to get groceries because we didn't have enough money. Still, we got by, thank the Lord.

I'm sorry to hear that, but I am glad you were able to save the farm. I can remember a lot of families losing their farms. My parents had just started their farm in the 1980s, and they were really scared that it would happen to them. The fear was enough to cut with a knife in my community. It was just under the surface where ever you went and there were a lot of farm families.