Will It Be Soup?

It's the end of another day on main street USA, and it sure is looking bad. I've lived and worked in Southern California since July of 2000 after having moved from Vancouver. My brother had been living down here for the past 21 years until his move to Calgary last year.

The two of us and a friend would often meet on weekends over a few beers and talk about economics, gold, the stock market and what we all believed was the coming collapse of the US economy. It wasn't going to be just another recession, it was going to be a major collapse, if not a full blown depression. We were watching history unfold.

We all thought it would happen towards the end of this year and my brother and friend had been preparing for a very long time by investing in gold and silver and the stock market. I on the other hand had not. I was much more optimistic and thought that we would somehow pull out of it before it collapsed completely. My brother and friend were much more obsessed with this coming collapse than I ever was. They lived and breathed it. I thought I would have much more time if and when the apocalypse came. Not so.

I now sit and watch as my 401K disappears along with millions of other Americans and it's tough to take. I work for an automotive dealership and although we are in good shape financially, many other dealers are not and most will not survive this storm. We have had to go through cost cutting like most businesses and that's led to staff layoffs.