Plan B.

[Scrappah]

Currently ... things seem to be looking up where i am. ( Coastal Maine ) The wealthy are spending a little more liberally and it's even starting to show in the upper middle class & middle class. The market for new things is picking up. The market for used/refurbished is sluggish & prices are dropping.

There is still a strong demand for used vehicles and prices seem to be a bit higher than they ought to be. Probably has more to do with the effects of government regulation here. ( Long story )

Globally ....it seems iffy. They had a bailout plan in place for Greece but it was saying on the news today that things aren't looking good there. The weakest member of the European union may collapse. Question is: Will it create a domino effect ?



Spain would probably be next, soon followed by the UK & a number of smaller nations. Germany would probably be left as the "last man standing."

Is there a shift in economic power to Asia ? Yep .... you betcha ! They've made some pretty good decisions and have positioned themselves to surpass even our economy.

If you define war as simply being "a competition for resources" then a state of war exists between our two nations. The battlefield is in the board rooms and the generals are the CEO's of major companies. Unfortunately .... our guys became lazy,corrupt, incompetent,and complacent. Their guys are lean & hungry with a will to win at all costs.

As in any war there will be winners & losers and the outcome is never assured.

We really ought to think about a plan B in case things don't work out for us. The guvmin't is the guvmin't and it's gonna do what it's gonna do. There's not much we can do about that but we can try to position ourselves as individuals so that we don't get hurt as badly.

What i would say is to think about the hierarchy of needs. If you had to cut back to just the basics of every day survival what would be those things most important to you ? Would they be water,food,shelter,medical,fuel ? What other things are vital to keeping things running at minimal levels ?

Think of how this applies to your business. Obviously, if you had a party supplies & decorative items store it would be one of the first victims of a recession. What if you owned a grocery store -or- gas station ?

Think about your skill set. Highly skilled people that are uncommonly good at what they do are more highly valued than general laborers without skills.

I remember a story from the Great Depression: The gist of it is that for the first fifty years gasoline had to be pumped by a service station attendant. ( That was law.) During the depression many service stations would only hire someone with a college degree. It's not that you needed an advanced education to do the job. It was simply that there were 1000 applicants for every job opening and it was a way of cutting down their numbers. Being a " grease monkey " didn't give you a lot of status but it might have made the difference between getting through the rough times and starving to death.

IDK ... long wandering post but the Old Dude has a point. Have a something to fall back on in case things go sideways.

[EcoSafe]

I can only add that I truly hope we are totally wrong. But before you call us crazy remember the definition. Doing the same thing over and over the same way and expecting a different result. The very thing our government has been doing for over 50 years.