US is going to default on its debt
US going into double dip, unemployment going up
Japan tsunami
Japan nuclear plant leak
Greece, Ireland and others trying to take down the Euro
I picked some really crappy stocks
Man, is it just me or has 2011 been a crappy year so far?
This makes 2004-2007 look like heaven.
It’s not just you; this year has been pretty shitty. A lot of bad news, and not very much good news or positive developments around the world. Add the end of the space shuttle program to make it extremely depressing.
Good Point.
The list continues:
End of space shuttle program
Blast/shooting in Oslo, Norway
You should have seen 1996 - 2000.
Anyway, compared to a lot of even recent historical rough spots, great depression, WWII, it’s still a lot better now. And it will be again. These things are cyclical, well apart from natural disasters, but they’ve been pretty constant since the planet was formed.
Leaffan, can you come by and repeat that to me at least hourly?
You should have seen 1996 - 2000.
Anyway, compared to a lot of even recent historical rough spots, great depression, WWII, it’s still a lot better now. And it will be again. These things are cyclical, well apart from natural disasters, but they’ve been pretty constant since the planet was formed.
I should be optimistic, I’m working a steady job, getting lots of overtime in fact, have near zero debt, house paid for, vehicle paid for, no kids or wife but still, I have a feeling of dread as to the way things seem to be headed in this country.
I’m grateful for what I have but there are ominous signs on the horizon.
Those were great years. It was in 2001 when my employer started outsourcing jobs.
times 2.
I survived 3 1/2 years of unemployment and even with a new job I’m not getting any warm and fuzzies.
Add the C/F in Libya to the list.
there is no “double dip” recession looming, except for the propaganda the media has been feeding us…did any of you bounce back, only to be back in the slump again? hmmm? …it’s the same song, second verse…
and…I’m (sorry, had to go puke) from Floriduh now, & “we” just aquitted Casey Anthony…after electing a governor, Rick Scott, KNOWN to have defrauded Medicare (& he paid a large fine, but no jail time of course.) so yes…
global warming is here (extreme weather in any season) hence the hurricanes etc., record snowfalls now causing flooding, earthquakes with tsunamis, melting ice caps etc. etc. not to mention that the ozone layer has more holes in it than the tales I used to tell my mother when she’d say, “where you been?”
:eek:
what can we do about it? Weiner’s showing their weiners, Terminators hiding children in plain sight, “religious” leaders declaring the end of the world…
Plant a garden
Love your children
Pick a side
“Before enlightenment—chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment—chop wood, carry water.”
the little people will prevail, with their provencal beliefs & perseverance. we always do…
meanwhile, unemployment is 16.6% and 1 in 5 homeowners are underwater with their mortgage.
The squirrels ate all the stuff I planted and while I’ve chopped wood to earn some money that got old quick.
Believe it or not, we’re trying to make it work but right now the light at the end of the tunnel has all the indications of being a train.
Listen to this song and quit worrying.
To me the most ominous thing on the horizon is what’s going to happen with China. Figures have slowly been trickling out hinting that they’re even more overleveraged than Europe and the US, with a real threat of political upheaval if things don’t keep chugging along at a pace that’s not too fast but not too slow. Yet authorities have fewer and fewer options available to ensure that happens, e.g., they can’t keep their property sector from ballooning because bank deposits pay several percentage points less than the rate of inflation, currency movements are restricted and where else are people going to put their money? Farmers get their land confiscated to build more empty shells in the middle of nowhere, leaving them no option but to become undocumented migrant workers; the urban class can’t afford a house anymore; and at some point everybody might lose their life savings when the market crashes. Once that bubble bursts, hang on to your hats.
Plant a garden? I did and we have only had about an inch of rain since early June.
I used to be bright eyed and bushy tailed. And then I graduated college in 2008, as everything started to crash. It’s been a struggle since. I’ve yet to find any full time position. I live at home. I’m $40k in debt and working a minimum wage job. The freedom I loved having at college, living on my own, and the hopes I had seem gone.
I enrolled in graduate school, for a field that I heard is in good demand. With hearing about the double-dip, it reminds me of how I had that hope as an innocent kid in 2008 and I really wonder if I’ll get out of this rut and find something that’ll help me get on my own. It’s depressing. 
You know, I usually watch about a hours worth of news every day. Lately tho’ I find myself turning the channel to repeats of “King of Queens” instead of the news. I’ve all but given up on our political system.
So the US, Europe and China just need to transfer some numbers between their balance sheets, the debts all offset and we’re good to go, right? That’d be cool. I should get Obama on that right away. 
OP: You forgot Charlie Sheen getting replaced by hurk Ashton Kutcher on 2.5 men. But it really is starting look like it’s almost our turn in the barrel.
In a “normal” functioning economic, political and social system, yes. What we have now isn’t normal. Restricting the view to just the USA, we’ve had two times in our history where the outcome was not guaranteed we would survive. The first was the American Revolution. The second was the Civil War.
We’re in the third one right now, and the outcome is not guaranteed, either.
No doubt about it, there’s been a lot of crud events on a national and international level. But what kind of a time period are we looking at? You can capture a lot of bad stuff if you bracket the time right. If you take 1932-1942, for instance, you have the worst year of the depression (1933), the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the start of WWII in Europe, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the beginning of the Holocaust, and plenty of other stuff that could have led humankind to toss in the towel. Even if you look at 2011, is it really worse than 2010, or 2004, or 2001? Or do we just forget some of the bad stuff we survived in the past?
And how much of our perception of how bad things are is colored by our personal lives? I can see that if, like some posters, I had been unemployed this past year, the economic news would be especially grim, but to that rare person who went from an OK job to a great new job, wouldn’t the perception be different, or at least less upsetting?
In the last two years, my beloved mother died, I’ve been through a painful divorce, was in a car accident, my daughter was in a car accident, I had to put my dog to sleep, and health insurance skyrocketed while my pay remained constant. Plenty of bummers there. But if you look at the last six months, only the last item is still on the list. And the list doesn’t include that in those two years, I’ve become healthier and happier now that I’m out of a very bad marriage; that I overcame my acrophobia enough to summit a mountain (not Everest, but a stepladder would have been a challenge); that I found a cheaper, more cheerful house to rent; that I finally had some great (blush) sex. True, the national news hasn’t had a lot of good news in it, but fewer good events that qualify newsworthy, so that’s always the case.
I’m not minimizing the unemployment situation or the budget fiasco, and I’m certainly not making light of tsunamis and mass murders. Those are terrible things. I’m just pointing out that you can find almost any pattern if you look hard enough. Shouldn’t that be considered, too?