Once in awhile if one is to fully grasp reality, one needs to step back from the trees and look at the forest. The trees in this case are all the individual events that have happened, that are happening, and that are likely to happen.

The fact that the U.S. government just took over Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac should be sending thunderous shock waves throughout the nation. What is everyone saying instead?

Everything's okay. The stock market just went up as a result (of the FM & FM rescue). Things will start getting better now. The worst is over. The GDP was up 3% last quarter, and that indicates things are returning to normal. Inflation is low (although up a bit). The stock market is getting ready for a bull run, so BUY NOW!. Housing prices are bottoming out and will start rising soon, so hang in there and BUY NOW! The price of gas is dropping and, since people are driving less and buying more fuel-efficient cars, will continue to drop. Unemployment at 6.1%? That's really not very high, considering. Mortgage rates are rising? Well, that's to be expected after the very low rates the past several years, so things will soon balance out on that front. No more home equity loans? That's okay, I'll just put it on my Mastercard!

When you leave out the cheerleading by the media experts that is supported by nothing but wishful thinking, you actually have:

• A slowly crashing stock market (just look at overseas stock markets to see what will soon be happening here)
• A housing market decline that isn't even halfway to the bottom, plus a commercial real estate market crash that is just getting started
• A looming credit card debt crisis on the same order of magnitute as the mortgage crisis
• The fereral government altering the measurement of inflation so that the biggest causes (e.g. price of petroleum) are left out in order to give the perception of a much lower rate (and give lower Social Security payouts). If you use the same standards of inflation measurement that were used in the 1980's our inflation is over 10%!
• Foreign nations holding trillions of dollars of American debt getting ready to dump it at a loss which will make the dollar much more worthless.
• The U.S. Treasury is ramping up the printing of currency. This will also decrease the value of the dollar and stimulate inflation much more.
• Increasing worldwide political instability and oil consumption that will soon drive the price back up towards $200/barrel. On top of that, Peak Oil is now here.
• Major industries that are on the verge of bankruptcy (e.g. auto, airlines and travel, construction, banking, homebuilding) that will result in massive layoffs and greatly increased unemployment
• Cities and even states getting close to backruptcy
• Continuously increasing food prices

Most of this stuff has been happening only for a short while (1-2 years). If you have noticed, nothing has gotten any better, has it? Sure the price of gas stopped rising, but you're still paying about twice the price compared to only a few years ago. Real incomes continue to fall (i.e. we're all getting poorer even though we get raises).

We've been able to ride this out more or less over the last couple of years because most of us either have used savings or else have cut back on the painless-to-remove extravagances in our lives. Soon we will increasingly have to reduce our standards of living, slowly but surely, until one day in about two or three years we'll look back and realize just how bad things have gotten. It's just hard to perceive slow change when you're immersed in it.

I'm not making any of this shit up. It's ever-so-slowly happening right in front of your eyes. If you block out the opinions and suggestions of all the experts in all the financial industries, all the real estate agents telling you that there's never been a better time to buy a house, all the auto dealers practically giving away their low-mpg vehicles, and all the news reports that tell you, "Hey, look, [fill in the blank] was better last month, things are turning around!", then you will get a crystal clear view of what's really happening.

It turns out that so many of the crackpot doomsdayers who told us, several years ago, that the housing market was poised to burst, that FM & FM were going to become insolvent, that oil would become prohibitively expensive, and that you soon wouldn't be able to give away an SUV, were actually the ones who did step out of the forest and look at everything. You can't blame them for trying to tell us.