Gyroscopic Investing

By my crude calculations, the current economic crisis (which goes by lots of names) became apparent to economists sometime in 2006 or 2007, depending on whether they're considering the real estate crash or the banking crash.  Now that it's 2013, we've been in this thing for 6 or 7 years!  That's the greater part of a decade, but it feels like it started just yesterday.  It's nowhere near to being over.  Soon we will be 1/3 of the time that Japan had been in their deflation when ours started-- which is a convoluted way of saying this mess has lasted a lot longer than I would have predicted. 

smurff wrote: By my crude calculations, the current economic crisis (which goes by lots of names) became apparent to economists sometime in 2006 or 2007, depending on whether they're considering the real estate crash or the banking crash.  Now that it's 2013, we've been in this thing for 6 or 7 years!  That's the greater part of a decade, but it feels like it started just yesterday.  It's nowhere near to being over.  Soon we will be 1/3 of the time that Japan had been in their deflation when ours started-- which is a convoluted way of saying this mess has lasted a lot longer than I would have predicted.

Do you really feel like we're in an economic crisis?

AdamA wrote: Do you really feel like we're in an economic crisis?

Holding assets in a Permanent Portfolio, and working in tech or medicine, and not being heavily indebted with too much house, one probably wouldn't see it that way. Sadly, that doesn't describe a lot of people.

AdamA wrote: Do you really feel like we're in an economic crisis?

Kind of feels like being in the eye of a storm.

I'm not describing the members of this forum, but the general population (net worth at a 43 year low).

And the economic malaise is  ongoing:

Some 15% of the population is on food stamps, a record. 

The unemployment rate is over 20% when long-term unemployed (which the gov stats exclude) are included:  http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_da ... ent-charts

Foreclosures are still high in much of the country:
http://www.realtytrac.com/trendcenter/u ... atmap.aspx?

And that's just a few of the variables.  There are banking problems in Europe, Britain, and the USA that still threaten global economies, and while there are some efforts to address this, too big to fail,too big to jail is still the order of things in the USA. 

I meant to write "meek efforts to address this" for banking problems, but I can't edit my post.