gold777, I think you especially should appreciate this in light of your recent post about how American's just don't see this coming. They have been "conditioned" by too much prosperity, not to see...

From Richard Russell's comments yesterday, September 23, 2008 -- Subscribers have often heard me say that the last two generations have never seen what I call "hard times." I grew up during the Great Depression, and those were really hard times. I saw families living in make-shift homes in New York's Central Park, huts made of crushed cardboard boxes and flattened tin cans stapled together. I saw "Hoovervilles" on the West Side near the railroad tracks. I saw long lines of men standing outside employment agencies. I took a youth hostel trip to California in 1939 when I was 16. At one point while I was biking along the freeway, a police car stopped me. The officer asked, ""Son, are you looking for a job here in California?" I told the officer I was traveling with a youth group. The officer said, "Kid, if you're looking for a job here in Southern Cal I'm going to put you in the back of my car and ride you out of the state. We don't want kids from out of town looking for jobs in California. Our people here can't find jobs of their own. Get it?" Frightened, I continued biking South toward South LA. Those were the dark days.

Back in NY, a friend got me a union job loading trucks in Harlem. The job was five days a week and half a day Saturdays, and the pay was $18.75 a week. I was very proud of that job, none of my high school buddies had a job. I also worked for the old Postal Telegraph, delivering telegrams. That job would pay as much as a dollar a day, mostly from tips when I delivered a telegram.

I mean those were hard times.

Back in the early '80s when the stock market was flat on its back, the times were tough but nothing like the '30s. At the 1974 market bottom, I saw tough times again, but nothing even close to the '30s.

Anyone under 50 years of age in the US has never seen what I call hard times. Two generations have grown up and have never seen a hard time -- this has never happened before in US history. I've thought for years, that the US is going to head once more into what I call really hard times. I see people in restaurants leaving plates full of food, my kids leave the lights on, people get out of their cars and leave the motor running, people pay nine dollars to see a movie when they could get the same movie via Netflix for a dollar or two if they waited, the "good times" and the wasteful times have been around for years. The US has 5% of the world's population, and we use 25% of the world's oil and fuel. What has allowed us to live so high on the hog when two-thirds of the world is living amid hard times? It's the reserve currency status of the dollar. And I wonder how long the US will continue to enjoy that fantastic advantage. I've said many times that the dollar is the Achilles Heel of the US. Now the dollar is turning weak,and gold is heading higher. Are hard times around the corner?

There's a hard rain a'comin', I feel it in my bones. The US standard of living is heading down, courtesy of our many creditors and 50 years of living high on the reserve status of the almighty Yankee Dollar.
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