Greek Collapse Could Hit U.S. Next! - Peter Schiff

[Ben Mason]

3 facts make another economic collapse within the next 5 years extremely likely.

The rate of capital destruction due to zero % and negative interest rates
The rate of debt monetisation with currency creation/printing
The rate of US dollar rejection in reserve and the increasing international diversification into gold trade settlement

The debt is completely unserviceable, austerity chokes growth, it's inevitable.

[JoeyD]

Looking at one past example I have my doubts about the slow and steady decline. The only thing that will be slow and steady is human disbelief about what is really happening, because in dollar/euro we trust.

To me the current situation is more like the old Road Runner cartoons, with Wild E. Coyote temporarily running and standing on air above the abyss for comedic effect.

Also if even the IMF talks about a big reset 10 times in a 2 minute speech, then I'm not that confident that the big shots are oblivious of the current state of affairs. Actually the foundation of the brics, Great Britain and other western countries joining them and the deals with Russia, Iran and China to no longer take petro-dollars (without their leaders being immediately bombarded to kingdom come as with all previous attempts) plus all the countries stockpiling gold by the truckload, it seems that the end of the dollar has already happened.

While the "confidence" that our entire financial air castle is built upon might seem hard to disperse, doesn't necessarily mean that it will do so slowly once it does. Humans can change their points of view surprisingly quickly at very inopportune moments.

[Buck Fankers]

Here's a different opinion ... http://www.freemansperspective.com/will-last-crash/

[Riverhead]

I've always found headlines with phrases like, "Could Happen" a bit cowardly. Sure, a lot of things could happen. Either believe in what you're saying or don't say it in lights.

donkeypong already said everything better than I ever could so I'll leave it at that. The end will not come with a bang but with a long cyclical decline that will only be recognizable in retrospect.

[donkeypong]

I think we'll have another recession in a number of years, but it will depend on when (and how quickly) energy prices go up again in the U.S. It's hard to see any such trouble for at least 2 or 3 years, perhaps longer, barring some event. And I am not convinced it will be some catastrophic collapse, either. The catastrophic collapse will come when when the demand for affordable energy exceeds the supply, assuming technology and conservation do not contribute much. Even then, I see things moving in cycles of inflation (when fuel prices are low) and deflation (when fuel prices are high) for awhile longer. That's because higher energy prices make some development projects realistic and it takes time to bring their production online; when it comes online, then there is a period again where affordable energy is available for a bit longer.

This thing could play out for 5 or 10 years, even longer. If there is a collapse, it probably will come in phases, where the trend sometimes appears to be going in the opposite direction (seesawing), but those are just growing pains as the economy adjusts to new economic realities. At the end of the day, commodities, real goods, and tangible assets will have value. The derivatives and instruments (and any other fluffy BS tools Wall Street uses to make money) will have a lot less value because they add little to the economy.

[CLains]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKW4UmvbwKU

What do you guys think?

I've been listening a lot to Peter Schiff over the past months, but recently with Greece and Puerto Rico it feels like the pressure is really building.. I'm not the type to be paranoid or gloomy, and I know I only recently got into reading about economy, but the stakes are really high here, so if there's even a small chance it should be given enormous weight. Ron Paul was on the Alex Jones show before Schiff, and he's pretty much saying the same things.

In my experience people are generally bad at facing uncomfortable things, and even when they know something at an intellectual level, their actions are still often rooted in the false reality where everything is still fine. You could see it in Greece; people knew on some level that the banks were going to close well in advance, or at least that there was a good chance, and yet it was only after the banks closed that people seemed to realize the gravity of the situation.