The Economic Perils of 2020

All my adult life, I have tried to save and invest money wisely to ensure a secure financial future and a comfortable retirement. However, in the last few years, my retirement savings have dwindled. Some of my friends were smart enough to shift their retirement savings accounts to gold and silver. They are the only ones who have a smile on their face today, while the rest of us have watched our own hard-earned savings evaporate in recent years.

Excessively high rates of inflation and poor income levels have made it difficult to save money for almost everyone. I have not been able to save anything in the last few years, even when I realized that saving and investment in precious metals could give me the best financial protection during an era of widespread economic uncertainty. However, I am not the only one who has failed to make savings and investments in recent years.

As per the figures released by the Commerce Department, the personal savings rate in 2019 was a negative 15 percent, which is the worst in the last hundred years! The situation of savings is perhaps worse than the days of the Great Depression. This alarming negative savings rate is an indicator of things to come for the millions of people nearing their retirement.

The busting of the housing bubble has added further to the woes of millions of American people. With the home mortgages debt exceeding $16 trillion, there was no way the bubble could sustain itself any longer. Many homebuyers purchased overpriced homes by taking on more debt, while reducing their disposable income and savings. Many more refinanced their homes to pay for their living expenses and many put their faith, at least years ago, in the first decade of this century, in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and watched them blow up because of poor management by Barnie Frank. To watch huge entities like that implode was frightening. With the bubble busting, many Americans were destined to lose a major part of their life’s savings and wealth.

One of the poor government policies in recent years has been the easing of bankruptcy laws. U.S. lending institutions and private lenders have aggressively lobbied the government to ease the laws, and effectively encouraged people to take on more debt. Now as the situation gets out of hand and the country faces the prospects of national bankruptcy, a large number of small and medium businesses as well as consumers are bound to go bankrupt.

These imminent bankruptcies are going to put further pressure on the banks and other financial institutions. Most of the banks are already suffering from massive losses, and any further liquidity and credit problems will mean a crippling of the entire banking and financial sector. Economic activities and investments will be severely curtailed, making the country further uncompetitive in comparison to the leaner and meaner emerging economies of Asia.

I wonder how would have the American economy performed if the government had the foresight to see the impending doom of the dollar, and the meteoric rise of gold and silver as the global financial reserve. This is what countries like China and India did, and today they are sitting on vast precious metal reserves. This has added to their economic stability and allowed these countries to take risks and enhance their competitiveness in various areas.