A State of Fear and Loathing

This a Chart of Fear. It describes in stark graphics what happens to an economy when it's government is first gripped by fear, changes direction and concurrently has a desire to create social revolution reordering the laws of physics: Thermodyamics and Gravity. The government puts its citizens into a state of fear and its business leaders into a state of loathing.

The Chart speaks volumes. How did this happen and where are we going? It happened because the government has capriciously changed Contract Law, seized major businesses: private, publicly held, and quasi-public; and seized control of nearly every area of finance.

The result is that it is impossible to operate within this changing system with any certainty. It's like being at sea in a storm with both wind and waves rough and confused. The best tactic? Reef-down, lower sail, go slow and keep damage to a minimum. To survive that means: take no risk, make no unnecessary expense, hire no unnecessary employees, make no plans other than to await a sea state one can sail upon. Unemployment will continue to rise, businesses will continue to fail, homes will continue to fall into foreclosure. Nothing has been "fixed" by government leaders. Much of what got us into this mess is being rekindled by those very soles charged with fixing "it": government giveaways, easy credit to those least deserving and least likely to repay, The Fourth Estate in bed with the regulators, business people caught like deer in the headlights, the rest watching it all ravel and unravel like a comic horror show in which we are all playing a real-life role.