GeoPolitics

One of the many glaring deficiencies in school these days is the lack of geopolitical discussion and awareness.  At the university level there are usually professors on the Left preaching their political dogma, even when it is inappropriate.  At the high school level, there are many reasons for the dearth of geopolitical discussion, not the least of which is that students are being prepped for the Global History Regents during 9th and 10th grades, then the US History and Government Regents during 11th grade.  For three years, students are being 'prepared' for a high stakes exam that is riddled with errors and propaganda and are useless for post high school life.  Even burgeoning history majors are not helped by these exams as they are barely surface level exams written by statists in Albany, NY.  A serious person would have to unlearn what he has learned for these exams.

Globally, we are in financial trouble.  The US, and much of the developed world, went through a technology bubble during the late 1990's and the early 2000's.  This was 'irrational exuberance' when it came to stocks that ended with a '.com' - a new phenomenon at the time.  Pets.com and the career of Henry Blodgett are worth analyzing for more information on this topic.  The US (the gov't and the Federal Reserve) then repeated the errors of the .com bubble by creating a new bubble in housing.  This meant that people were buying houses (plural) with borrowed money, taking money out with the house itself as collateral, and buying more houses and other things they may not have needed.  This was all predicated on the belief that the price of housing would never go down.  The 'housing bubble' burst in late 2007, and the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average), the main indicator as to the health of the US Stock Market, hit a low in March of 2009.

Here's the problem.  The US government has never allowed the crash to happen fully.  It lowered interest rates, which keeps the price of money artificially low.  It also means that government spending can continue because paying the interest on the debt of the country is artificially inexpensive.  There were huge corporate bailouts - meaning that the large banks were, for all intents and purposes, bankrupt, but they were given taxpayer money to stay afloat.  There were huge 'stimulus' packages, gigantic spending packages courtesy of congress done under the idea that "government spending can juice the economy and get it going".   This is known as kicking the can down the hallway, and it can't go on forever.

The most absurd aspect of this obvious and frightening prospect of economic crash is the ability of the mainstream media to downplay or ignore it.  For the MSM, it is always a sunny day, and the looming fiscal cliff can be handled by our politicians making 'tough decisions' and 'getting things done' and 'working toward a bipartisan goal'.  Over the past years it has been helpful to find people who will talk plainly, about difficult topics, and tell the truth.  Marc Faber, of the aptly named "Doom Boom and Doom Report" is one of the people who is unafraid to speak of bad news.  Here he explains how badly he thinks things will go economically worldwide, and he begins by poking fun at how optimistic the shills at CNBC are.  I couldn't help but notice he politely laughed as the news anchors tried to poke fun at him - as if he were telling the audience that he'll have the last laugh.  It is important for you to learn about geopolitical issues because there is so much financial interconnectedness between countries.  A large crash in a country would cause connected economies to get pulled down as well.

People / sites I've found helpful:
The Aden Sisters
Peter Schiff
Marc Faber
Chris Martenson
Kyle Bass
Michael Lewis
Matt Taibbi

Here Marc Faber insists on telling bad news to people who ignore it: