🚀 go-pugleaf

Here are some things I've noted:

# rising crime: in the past year, auto breakins have occurred
with greater frequency at my (gated) apartment complex;
escalating to the first apartment breakin within the past couple
months.
# housing slump:the housing market froze up here early last
spring and hasn't recovered. In my neighborhood (inside the
perimeter, a choicy district), it seems every fourth home is for
sale. When a home sells, it seems one or two new ones on the
same street take its place.
# retail squeeze: the local cluster of shops, serving this
affluent residential neighborhood, a major university, the
headquarters of a major health care complex has essentially
become a blighted ghost town. About half the shops in the past
year and a half storefront have closed and remained vacant.
# Solution to the retail squeeze? "Upscale it". They're going
to say "to hell with the students" and move to a more upscale
motif so that businesses can cover rents. I hope there are
enough locals who have money leftover after paying inflated
mortgages.
# vagrants: I'm running into more panhandlers and sundry
vagrants (even some who claim they are not vagrants but just
"down on their luck" and need bus fare etc.), even out in the
residential areas. Indeed, panhandling has been encouraged
downtown -- pushing the problem around.
# gini effect: everyone seems to either have tons of money or
none. The large number of those I know involved in defense
contracting have a relative plum.
# strained public infrastructure: roads are crumbling, bus and
rail schedules are getting cut back even though they're already
insufficient; water, sewage, and power networks are all in
dismal condition. It's too bad the tax base for all these things
has been sucked up and shipped out by Washington.
# rising costs: File this in the "yet another example of
inflation" category -- the other day I looked in the paper and
noticed that basic cable rates had been increasing for about 6%
per year for the past half-decade. No one has put two and two
together on this -- how a tightly-regulated utility which in
theory benefits from technological advance has had to raise
costs twice as fast as the official level of inflation. One
party is lying.

# small cars and scooters: there is a huge contingent of
mostly young people that have gone to light and more energy-
efficient transportation with the fuel price surge last year and
never gone back. Still plenty of SUV and Hummer holdouts, of
course.

Because of all this evidence, I've known for quite some time
we were headed for recession (or were already in it, in my
opinion). I think a lot of people see the evidence around them
and agree, maybe subconsciously. It's probably why consumer
sentiment numbers never recovered to the pre-2000 stock market
crash levels.

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Buy guns and ammo while you still can. A
race war is coming.  http://tinyurl.com/3xla5y