Brad’s Take

It occurs to me that the 1930s depression is called the “Great Depression”. Will what seems to be coming be called GDII (Great Depression II)?

I think it has started. Wal-Mart here in Ponca City is gearing up the garden center for the spring rush. And there are a few empty shelves, products that were projected but not available. Products that should be in stock, but aren’t here.

Play sand. The bags of natural sand used for sand boxes, mixing with potting soil, making a foundation for laying stepping stones and pavers, or for leveling under a planter or water tank. None. Or the companion Red, Blue, or Purple Crayola sands (at nearly double the price for a slightly smaller bag) — except the red ran out and hasn’t yet been replaced. In a month.

Potting soil? Some is plentiful. But there are a couple of gaps. A couple of gaps in mulches, too. Not many — but it didn’t happen that way last year.

The intermittent outages, I think, are starting to show up at Wal-Mart. The other day they were down to three boxes of Great Value Fudge Brownies. I bought two of them. Where will it end?

I respect the argument that modern wealth is generated initially by applying cheap energy to transform resources into expensive resources. With the rising cost of energy, due to rising oil prices and manipulations by B. Hussein Obama (President of the United States this year), I think the fundamental economic collapse currently under way might be called the “Energy Depression”.

The “leverage” multiplying the dollar values assigned to intangibles today that look somewhat similar, if less tangible, to the root causes of the 1929 stock market crash. All the government tactics and strategies that blew that crash into the Great Depression, and prolonged it a decade longer than necessary, are all very much alive and striving to repeat their historic achievements once again. In some ways, this time around the oncoming debacle could rightly be called the government’s Next Great Depression.

But this time around it is engineered. President Obama is aggressively demolishing the engines of wealth in America. He is undermining the production and value of oil and gas, while colluding with speculators to funnel “green energy” money to friends and allies. He is actively denigrating the US Government, both Congress and the US Supreme Court. This is an intentional disruption of democracy in America, and intended to wrest control away from the nation and into his and his cronies’ hands.

President Obama calls it a “Buffet Rule”, assuring that the wealthy pay high taxes. When Congress has determined, over the years, that certain investments and incomes are worth more to the nation than the tax revenue they would generate — President Obama calls Congress “Stupid” with a capital S, when he instead insists that “they have to pay their fair share”.

Who is next? Will President Obama decide that churches, other religious organization, the Red Cross, are “hoarding” tax dollars? What about corporations that oppose unfair labor practices (by labor unions)? Who would be willing to stand up and shout, “Hey, if the guy ain’t working, his wages shouldn’t make my car more expensive!” At least, no one does today about sweetheart labor deals that idle 4-10% of employees at full (union) pay.

Think of it this way. President Obama does *not* want the truck that brings bread, frozen food, potato chips, and shampoo to your grocery store, to Target or Wal-Mart — he doesn’t want them to be able to run every day.

What will you do, when you need a new laundry basket, and it has been a month since any store in town has had one available?

What will you do, when your grocer gets ice cream enough for a couple of days — once a month?

What will you do, when none of the stores in your town have shoes in your size, for a couple of months at a time?

What will you do, when the gas station doesn’t have enough gas for all customers, most of the time?

I foresee this all coming, the intermittent deflation interruptions made worse by increasingly erratic weather and increasingly erratic regulations and arrogant government.

This coming Energy Depression.