The economic crisis timetable...here's your chance to say when/what will happen!

Yesterday, I received a snail-mail letter from Nicor, the gas supplier for my suburban Chicago community (it used to be Northern Illinois gas, so it supplies gas to many communities).

"In just the last 4 months, the Nicor Gas price of gas (GSC) has increased from 65 cents (Dec) to 97 cents (March); an increase of nearly 50%"

The company is offering "Lock 12" that locks your gas bill at one set amount for 12 consecutive months.

Note the guarantee: "The bill is guaranteed not to change regardless of fluctuations in the price of natural gas or weather".

Not that I'm becoming cynical, but these thoughts immediately came to mind:

1. This is the equivalent of *prepaying* gas costs, since we're moving out of winter usage levels, which means Nicor can invest those funds (in the stock market??) for a possible additional source of revenue.

2. This feels like "insurance" that may or may not exist in 6 months.

3. What happens if natural gas costs skyrocket in the next few months and Nicor cannot pass those costs on to Lock 12 subscribers? Do the non-subscribers have their rates go up twice as fast? On that basis, should I subscribe?? Or does Nicor go out of business?

4. What happens to those *prepayments*, if Nicor does go out of business/gets bought out?

5. What happens to those *prepayments*, if the person sells or loses the property? Will there be a refund? Hah. How likely is that?

6. What happens if usage increases, because multiple families are sharing the same property vs. single family during determination year?

7. Can people afford to increase their cash outlay much more now to (possibly) minimize significant jumps in cash outlay later?

Not a prognostication, but an observation of the phenomenon:

UBS to Write Down Another $19 Billion

Quick quotes:
PARIS — UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said Tuesday that it would write down another $19 billion related to the American real estate market and said that its chairman, Marcel Ospel, would step down.

(...)

The news came as the biggest German lender, Deutsche Bank, warned Tuesday that market conditions “have become significantly more challenging during the last few weeks,” and said it expected to write about 2.5 billion euros, or $3.9 billion, on real estate loans and assets from the United States.

Whatever forecasts any of us make here, I expect the time line for financial events is being very quickly sped up.

I believe that Ron Paul is correct to believe that a major economic crisis is on its way. I also believe that Edgar Cayce's prediction that catastrophic earth changes are on their way. The question is: When? Both phenomena, economic and environmental are cyclical and ultimately fractal, in that they flux in cycles within cycles within cycles. Looking forward, we tend to extrapolate the cycle we're most aware of, but we are wise not to confuse the little cycles for the big ones, lest we dedicate all our available resources unnecessarily to embrace/brace for the best/worst-case-scenario.

There seem to be lots of people on these posts affirming a worst-case-scenario, and such affirmations increase awareness of the Big Picture reality that the U.S. economy is circling the bowl. We're on our way down, but not directly down. I must admit that I actually get a rush out of these posts. I hear my inner dialogue, "Yah, man this is IT! It's coming!" And I think I get excited because I don't like the way things are. I crave social change, just like I can hardly wait for the earth's polarity to shift, triggering major earthquakes and volcanoes, maybe because I see the system is crashing and in need of rebooting, no matter how terrible the cruel reality will probably be. We tend to do things differently - and often at high personal cost - when we think everything is about to change. I speak from experience...

My point is this... Take time to wisely and practically prepare for the next 4-10 years. Don't spend all your money on precious metals that you will have to store for years and years before they're useful, or on super-hoards of food that will likely perish before you really need it. Things will get "worse", but not entirely worse by tomorrow. If anything, practice being balanced - internally balanced - despite perceived world turmoil. You will make better decisions now and be truly ready to adapt whatever the world throws your way when things actually do get "bad".

I know I will probably be the only one thinking this, but I actually believe this is part economical and part political. I believe everything we are saying here and what Paul argues is all good and true. However, I believe our economic troubles are largely connected to just the Iraq war and only that.

In other words, before the Bush administration's cruelty destroyed everything, we were relatively well off. I know some may argue differently, but that is why I say relatively. I would just say before Bush things were okay in the grand scheme. Bush enters and things go to hell. Actually, it wasn't even when he entered. The real destruction seemed to begin in 2003 with the the Iraq war and subsequent callous and cruel decisions by the Bush admin.

So what's my point? Everything can be brought back to the Iraq situation. Why? Because it is the one place we are overextended. Everything else we would wish not to be in this country like social programs or what not have largely been apart of the country for some time. These have been "problems" per se, but that is exactly the point: they have existed. The iraq situation is an aberration. The other problems have been apart of our country. The Iraq war doesn't exist within that dynamic. It is an aberration and an aberration that has overextended its welcome.

In fact, even throwing in the initial endeavor I could forgo in the grand scheme. In other words, the majority of the country at least felt ambivalent about the war. It wasn't a mistake yet, in a manner of speaking. However, once it became a mistake but yet continued and the cruelty and negligence of the Bush admin became undeniably clear, there we have our problem. It is that conflict between the insanity of the Bush admin and the sanity of the country (and our exhaustion of the Iraq occupation) that I believe is at the root of the current economic trouble. We are depressed as a country essentially.

We miss the point focusing on domestic issues. And the more I think about it the more I am convinced the occupation of Iraq will essentially come to a close by Obama or Clinton by the simple fact that they will have no other choice economically. The alternative for them is complete economic chaos and rioting and civil unrest. Something will be lost and the country will realign into stability or chaos depending on the next President's decision, but either way it will realign.

about 40 by mid-2009. I have bet on it in fact. As far as a genuine widespread crash (and I'm talking about widespread economic devastation), my current guess is in the 2011 period, give or take. Nobody can be truly precise on such a thing. We all have to watch day to day. One of the cues that I'm taking will be when the treasury bond market really starts to head south. The only really truthful answer I can give is: I do not really know when. An economy built on fiat money is a society on its way to ashes.