Mike Shedlock is suggesting that US treasuries are a good buy at this point. Let's see if he's right...

Currently yields are at 4%. If yields drop to 2%, that means the price of 30-year treasuries would be double the current price. Could it happen? Short-term, based on this chart, it sure looks like a possibility.

Short-term (i.e. within the next 12-18 months), the outlook for US treasuries is quite bullish.

But let's look at the longer term. Since 1980, yields on US treasuries have been going down. We have a 29-year unbroken uptrend (bull market) in treasuries (downtrend in yields). The current bull market in treasuries seems just a tad ancient. When this trend finally reverses, look out below.

Fundamentally, you'd be mad to own US treasuries right now. The average rate of inflation in the US since 1971 has been 7% per year. A long-term yield of 4% makes absolutely no sense. Ignoring inflation when buying bonds is like ignoring P/E ratios when buying stocks.

Buying US treasuries now would be like buying dot-com stocks in 1999. Sure it might go up 100% in three months, but if you don't time the trade perfectly you'll be wiped out. You better get the timing exactly right, or else you could lose your money.

By 1999, the US stock market had been in an unbroken uptrend for 16 years. In 2000 the trend finally reversed, and all the suckers that got in after 1997 have yet to make any return on their investments.

Don't be a sucker.

Right after I posted my "worst case scenario" calling for exchange controls by fall of 2009, Jim Rogers (in this Bloomberg article) is basically saying the same thing!

"
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- A rally in the U.S. dollar has run its course and a currency crisis may take place in the fall, investor Jim Rogers said.

“We’re going to have a currency crisis, probably this fall or the fall of 2010,” Rogers, 66, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore. “It’s been building up for a long time. We’ve had a huge rally in the dollar, an artificial rally in the dollar, so it’s time for a currency crisis.”

Rogers may consider buying the yen and prefers the euro to the dollar or the pound, he added.
"

Jim Rogers correctly predicted the dollar rally last fall.

I've taken the time to compile a timeline of global economic stats for 2009. It will be an interesting year. I'm not ready to drink the kool-aid that the worst is over. The worst is yet to come. After a quiet summer, the next leg of the collapse will start at some point in August. I really hope what I say does not come true, because if it does, it will be a living nightmare.

• Unemployment figures (officially) in the US will hit 10% by July. However - the government may massage the figures, keeping them under 10% until late September.
• I'm expecting very little volatility in the markets over the summer, until early August when unemployment figures in the double-digits will be first released. I'm expecting the Dow to continue somewhere between 9000 and 10,000, and gold between $900 and $1000, until at least early August.
  
• Watch out on August 8, 2009. This is exactly a year after the Georgia incident. Russia may again try to attack Europe, in retaliation to growing NATO influence over former Warsaw-pact territory. The men behind the curtain may give Russia the green light, in light of the horrendous economic stats coming out. In other words, to make a quick buck and prevent social unrest, the corrupt banksters may choose to start a third world war.
  
• By fall it will become clear that the world is in total economic collapse. In September, 2009, the Dow will begin to crash violently, along with the US dollar. News will be coming out that US unemployment has just hit 12% and the US economy is expected to contract 15% in 2009.
• From a high of 9000, the Dow will end up at 4000 by November. US treasuries will go into hyperinflation in October, 2009. The entire world will enter a World War II-like state economically starting in October.
  
• In October, 2009 a dangerous new influenza virus begins to spread. It begins by claiming 200-300 lives every day. It is clear that it is a bioweapon, because it is spread by way of covert agents, appearing simultaneously on different continents. By December, this mystery flu is killing 1000-2000 people every single day. It has a kill rate of 40%. This means 40% of people who become infected die. The government encourages vaccination, not knowing that the vaccine also has a kill rate of 40%. It will turn out to be the worst pandemic the world has ever seen.
  
• Somewhere in early October, gold will definitively cross the $1000 barrier while the Dow crosses 4000 on its way down. Shortly after that, the COMEX will be shut down and all markets in the US will be closed. All commodities will be declared illegal. The US will be under full martial law. No person will be allowed to own property, and all land will be seized by the US Federal Government. Movement will be strictly controlled with military checkpoints. UN peacekeeping forces will be deployed worldwide to contain civil unrest.
  
• Although no longer reported, unemployment will continue to climb, reaching 16% by the end of 2009 (by official measures) or 30% according to shadowstats.
• It will not be visible, but the US dollar will reach hyperinflationary collapse by November, 2009. The US dollar will only be exchangeable on the black market. Exchange controls will be in place worldwide. Gold will sell for over $4000 USD on the black market.
• At some point in October, 2009, there will be a concerted effort to take down the Internet. ISPs will be forcefully shut down for allowing "subversive" material to be downloaded. If the attempt is successful, there will be mass riots. 70% of every city's population will be violently protesting. All economic activity will go underground. The Internet may be forced to go underground.
• Be prepared for widespread long-lasting power outages starting in August, 2009. Remember what happened in 2003. It will be similar to that, but it will last longer. Blackouts may end up lasting for weeks. It's quite possible that by the end of 2009, reliable electricity service will be a thing of the past.
• One also needs to prepare for food shortages and shortages of other essential goods. The government and corporations will hoard all food for themselves and possibly give some out in small rations (e.g. you are allowed 3 eggs per month). The blackouts will make it hard for supermarkets to continue operating. The fixed exchange rate and worthless fiat currency will mean that imports & exports will be impossible.
  
• By November, 2009 nearly every country on the planet will have instated a total military draft. Every single citizen will be openly apprehended and forced into either military service or civilian service (forced labour).
• The speed with which all this happens will make "shock & awe" seem like slow motion.

I suggest to everyone (including myself) to prepare for all of these possibilities. What do you do if your city's power goes out for 2 weeks? Or if the Internet is shut down? What if all the local grocery stores close down for 3 weeks? What if all your paper currency becomes worthless, or you're no longer allowed to withdraw money from your bank account? And lastly, what are you gonna do... when they come for you?

Peace. Love. Understanding.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

It's tax refund time, and my suggestion to you all (especially US citizens) would be to spend 50% of your tax refund on precious metals. Here's a little known fact: The average rate of inflation in the US over the past 40 years has been 7% per year. This means in 10 years you lose half your money.

The case for precious metals as an inflation hedge really doesn't need to be re-stated. But before you get into precious metals, here are some important things to know:

1. The COMEX price means nothing. Be prepared to set your own price.
The COMEX is just one of many markets for precious metals. Other markets are eBay and Craigslist. The COMEX is in fact a very small market. Use the COMEX price (like all other prices) to your advantage. When the COMEX price is the lowest, buy from the COMEX (or from dealers who base their price on the COMEX price). The primary objective here is to always buy low and sell high.

2. For buying, coin shops and bullion dealers are the most reliable & usually the cheapest.
eBay is very expensive these days, mainly because of cash-back. If you're in the US, take advantage of the cash-back offer. Otherwise, forget about eBay. Craigslist rarely has bullion up for sale and if it is, it's usually local pickup and quite expensive (because the seller knows how valuable bullion really is).

3. Always tally up all your costs (shipping, exchange rates, and other fees) before determining price.
It's often easy to forget about shipping costs, customs fees, eBay fees (for selling), or exchange rate arbitrage. Typically, exchange rate arbitrage is 3% of the price (if you're paying in a currency other than your bank's).

4. Always prefer domestic dealers over foreign. But not necessarily local.
There's certainly more risk involved in sending precious metals across international borders. You could be hit with customs fees or run into some kind of draconian restriction on imports. Now, in Canada, if you choose a dealer within your own province, you'll have to pay provincial sales taxes. So it's usually better to buy from dealers outside of your province (or other regional jurisdiction) to avoid taxes.

5. Do not sell anything unless you must.
Given the uncertainty of a fiat monetary system, you never know if something is a bubble or if it's hyperinflation. There's really no way to judge if precious metals have become overvalued. The best exit strategy is to never sell. However, there are those cases where you desperately need some money. In such a case, you are forced to sell. There are also situations where you may find a better investment (e.g. a stock or a piece of property) but don't have enough money to invest in it. In that case, again, you are effectively forced to sell to raise cash.

6. There is such a thing as having too much.
Keep enough cash lying around so that you won't be forced to sell in the event of some minor setback (e.g. losing your job). The problem with selling precious metals is that in many cases you are hit with taxes & fees, on top of the premiums you paid originally to purchase the metals. Therefore, too much buying & selling will cause you to lose all your money.

7. Keep yourself busy.
Sometimes it's tempting to obsess about the daily spot prices or constantly second-guess your investment decisions. To avoid such foolishness, you should keep your mind occupied. Basically, forget about the fact that you have precious metals and go on with your life.

There is another question precious metals investors struggle with, and that is, "Which metals should I buy?" My belief in this regard is that the oldest metals, those that have been money for thousands of years, need to be given priority. You should have a much larger proportion of gold & silver relative to platinum & palladium.

Deciding between platinum & palladium is quite easy. Palladium can be substituted for just about every use of platinum and it's much cheaper. Plus, Russia controls much of the palladium supply, meaning it could create artificial scarcity quite easily, raising prices dramatically. Palladium can be used to produce the cold fusion effect observed in 1989 by Fleischmann & Pons. There's also a growing palladium jewellery market in Asia. I would recommend palladium over platinum any day of the week.

Now, deciding between gold & silver is more tricky. On the one hand, gold is owned by central banks and is therefore more capitalized. It's more liquid & less volatile. The problem with silver is it's a wild ride. If you don't like wild rides, you should keep more gold than silver. However, silver has the potential to go much much much much higher than gold. Silver can be substituted for all other precious metals, and there's less silver bullion out there than gold bullion! So if you want maximum upside, you should go with silver. And because silver is correlated with gold, you won't miss out on gold's upside by owning silver. However, I would recommend holding some gold because of its low volatility. In cases where you need to sell something, you would sell the gold & keep the silver.

Historically, the best performing portfolio is 50% gold, 20% silver, 5% platinum, and 25% palladium. However, it's also very volatile & illiquid because of palladium and not very well exposed to silver. So instead, I would recommend a portfolio of 40% gold, 40% silver, 5% platinum, and 15% palladium.

In the end it's up to you. Remember: DYODD (Do Your Own Due Diligence).

My word is not gospel. Amen.

I love how ignorant people often accuse bearers of bad news of spreading "FUD" (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt). Let me just address this by saying, FUD is the only way to find truth. It's the only way to learn new things. Were it not for FUD, we'd still believe the Earth is flat. All of science is based on FUD. Ignorance is caused by the absence (or opposite) of FUD.

What's the opposite of FUD anyway? It's gotta be TCB (Trust, Certainty, and Belief). Trust, certainty, and belief are the three fundamental pillars of religion. You must TRUST that the preacher is honest, you must be CERTAIN that there's a God. You must always BELIEVE that there is a God. No questioning. There's no room for FUD in religion.

So let me just finish this by saying, I will ALWAYS promote & encourage FUD. We have too much TCB in this world. Obama and his Wall Street crooks keep spreading TCB about everything. Hope. Faith. Trust. Confidence. I have a better word for it: CONTROL!

Haven't had much time to update the blog lately, but here's my take on the latest events...

• Swine flu: Dry run for martial law. Mexico was on the verge of financial & social collapse. Obama just finished 100 days in office. US treasuries were in trouble. In a prior secret meeting in 2008, the US congress discussed the imminent collapse of US finances by May of 2009. How convenient then to have a "pandemic" at this point. It's a total diversion from more important issues at best, and at worst a pretext for governments to launch full-blown martial law. No more talk about torture or prosecuting Bush admin officials. WHO is at level 5 now. Level 6 means the US government has the authority to apprehend any individual and detain him/her indefinitely and seize his/her property without warrant. This authority was given by a piece of legislation passed in the summer of 2008 which specificially mentions "threat of influenza pandemic" as a potential event that would trigger martial law. All of this is documented on infowars.com.
  
  
• Do not panic, yet: Although governments around the world have full authority now to do whatever they want, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will. Just because I can jump off a bridge doesn't mean I will. At this point, it's a matter of wait & see. In the meantime, we must all do our best to inform our fellow citizens in any way possible that the government is not on our side. The government is owned by individuals who want to see the world's population reduced to 500 million. Does this mean they will? Maybe, maybe not. But their stated intent is clear. It's like living next door to a person who has threatened to kill you. It's only a matter of time.
  
  
• Anthropogenic global warming is a convenient lie: I have to throw this in here because of all the nonsense I keep hearing about anthropogenic global warming. It's false. It's a politically-motivated lie. The world is warming, but your car is not causing it. If anything, we should be putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. Plants need CO2 to grow. Studies have shown that trees grow bigger if their supply of CO2 is greater. The greatest limiting factor on plant growth is lack of CO2. Plants produce oxygen and clean out toxins from the air. If you want to support a greener planet, put more CO2 into the air. Lastly, CO2 is not a pollutant. It's what humans breathe out. Do you want a tax on breathing? Oh right, I forgot, you're a sheep! BAAAAH!

Well I'm done. Not much time to blog these days but I'll be back in about a week with another summary of this kind. I find it fun to rant as long as it's a meaningful rant.

The people who believe the worst is over in terms of real estate are completely delusional.

The people who believe real-estate in Canada will continue to appreciate are lunatics.

The truth is simply this: Real estate prices will go to zero. Capitalism is finished.

Suppose you're looking to buy a shitty-ass single-bedroom apartment for $140,000. First of all, good luck finding such a low-priced apartment. However, if you do, what will your monthly mortgage payment be (supposing you take out a $140,000 mortgage)?

A simple calculation using ING's mortgage calculator yields $740 / month (with 4% interest rate). Let's suppose for simplicity that mortgage payments are 0.5% of an asset's price with today's low interest rates. For instance, if you took out a $140,000 mortgage, you'd be paying $700 / month.

Now let's add utilities, property taxes, and condo fees, totaling $400 / month.

Total now is $1100 / month in the "expenses" category of your balance sheet.

In order to be in the black marginally you need to rent out your apartment at a minimum of $1100 per month. Now, considering that you actually want to make a decent profit, let's say you want to make $400 in profit per month, so let's go for $1500 per month rental cost.

Who in their right mind pays $1500 rent for a shitty-ass single-bedroom apartment? The rent would be more like $600 at best. But if I rented out my apartment at $600 I would be losing $500 every month! Clearly not a good investment.

So how much do real estate prices have to fall before real estate is a profitable investment again? Let's see... Supposing you'd be happy with even $1 in profit per month, we're looking at mortgage payments of $200 per month (maximum). This means the apartment would have to cost $40,000.

Bottom line is real estate prices need to fall into 5 digits again. It's also not impossible for real estate prices to go to zero or negative. Suppose you have a property that costs $500 per month to maintain (not counting mortgage payments) but only returns $400 per month in rent revenue. How much would you sell this for? Wouldn't it make sense for the price to be negative? You would be willing to pay someone to take the property off your hands. This is already happening in Detroit.

The broader reality is that capitalism is finished. Property taxes have eaten away all incentives to own real estate. Unemployment just puts the final nail in the coffin. Banks can lower rates to 0% and it won't do any good. It's over. We are all slaves. The people who own the government now own everything.

APRIL 2009 --
The economic downturn leaves no company unaffected. MSFT is finished.
July, 2008 Bill Gates stepped down. The company will not release one single product
worthy of investigation this year. IE 8 has been surpassed by Mozilla and there is
absolutely nothing MS can do to resurrect IE. The major theme this year will be the
death of Microsoft.

In the open source arena, Linux continues to make advances. At some point this year,
Linux market share will rise dramatically. There may be an event which triggers
a mass migration to Linux on the desktop. My belief is that an amazing software
product comes out which only runs on Linux. People are so drawn to this product that
they are willing to ditch their Windows OS (or at least dual-boot Linux with it). The
product will be intentionally designed NOT to run on Windows.

In the hardware realm, Intel will be going the slow & steady route. AMD is finished.
The video card industry is finished. They've pushed it too far. PSUs can't handle
3 cards in SLI. It's pure madness. NVIDIA will suffer this year, and so will AMD,
because of its ownership of ATI. All graphics card manufacturers will suffer. I don't
think we will see any further advancements this year in graphics hardware.

In addition, the recession means less spending on high-end hardware. Therefore, any
high-end hardware product will drop in price dramatically. Look for deals on top-notch
video cards and super-fast memory. DDR3 will get very cheap, very fast.

I almost missed it - the biggest story this year will be Apple. Specifically, the
iPhone is taking over the world. Those who were slow in adopting blackberries or other
smart mobile devices will now swarm to the iPhone. The iPhone will replace the iPod,
cell phones, digital cameras, video cameras, and many other portable devices. The
iPhone is part of the new iLife trend which is all about unifying mobile devices into
one incredible everyday-life-enhancing device that you can take with you everywhere.

Continuing the trend with the iPhone, it will soon start to replace devices used in
industry. For example, on construction sites, the inclination of the ground will be
measured using an iPhone. In your car, instead of having a real map, an iPhone plus
Google maps will do.

The trend towards minification of laptops (i.e. netbooks & tablets) will merge with
the iPhone trend. The trend is towards a fully portable computer (i.e. a computer you
can carry in your pocket). This computer will be capable of having all sorts of devices
attached to it (as peripheral extensions). It will be a virtual sensor - an extension
of the human senses.

Touch is the biggest trend in terms of UI. Without touch, a screen is nothing. Every
screen is going multi-touch. There will be a shift toward touch-friendly UIs.

In the UI realm, there is a growing trend towards 3D-ization of everything, even the
web. I believe 3D accelerated web browsers are coming soon. Whoever makes the first
move into 3D-accelerated web browsing will become famous. All UIs will be
3D-accelerated. The exact form that this will take remains to be seen. The idea is
that a whole new concept of "3D layout" will need to be developed. Web 2.0 is a first
step in this direction, with its pervasive use of realistic 3D gradients. These will
soon be replaced with real 3D surfaces (perhaps designed with Bezier curves and
ray-traced). Yes - real-time ray tracing. It will be very exciting.

On the topic of ray tracing, I believe ray tracing is slowly going to overtake the
old polygon + projection model that we're all so familiar with. The reason? Ray
tracing lends itself to parallel processing. In particular, photon mapping will soon
be done in real-time and scenes in 3D games will be rendered with photon mapping, for
unbelievably realistic lighting. The photon map will be precomputed for static scenes
to save processing speed. Models (meshes) will be made using Bezier splines, so that
meshes will be totally smooth (no more polygons!). The result will be unbelievably
smooth surfaces. It turns out that with ray tracing, splines (curves) are much easier
to process than polygons! Bottom line - the buzzword (or phrase) these days in
graphics is "real-time ray tracing".

Because ray tracing produces such realistic graphics, I believe we're trending toward
a world where a lot of the images you see as design elements on websites and other UIs
will be ray-traced, either in real time or rendered once and saved as an image. You
can quite easily imagine a building contractor having on their website a ray-traced
image of the inside of a virtual apartment, with such perfect graphics that you would
instantly be amazed. Ray tracing will become the holy grail in graphic design.

The biggest trend rising in 2009 is the use of portable computers for entertainment.
This will grow, over many years. Rather than performance improvements, improvements in
hardware will most likely be focused more on functionality rather than performance.
You're going to start seeing a lot more innovative input & output devices in the
coming years, directed mainly towards entertainment & improving day-to-day life.

Projecting trends into 2010, Apple will dominate the mobile arena. MSFT is history.
In the server & business world, MSFT is being replaced by Linux at a rapid pace. The
ever-present need for standardization means UNIX is becoming the de-facto standard
OS, similar to how HTML became the de-facto standard web presentation language. All
new software is built for Linux or some UNIX variant (like Apple's OSes).

Graphics cards manufacturers will continue to suffer. Integrated graphics comes on
in a big way this year. Intel now manages to capture 90% of graphics performance with
its latest integrated graphics chip + integrated memory controller & DDR3 RAM. The
idea of a separate graphics chip falls by the wayside and soon graphics cards will be
a distant memory of an ancient past. Why have 1 GB of dedicated video RAM when the same
RAM, at the same speed, can be allocated from system RAM? Soon, the GPU + CPU will
merge into one unit, much like the way math co-processors disappeared back in the 1990s.

The biggest trend this year is the realworldization of the virtual world. The idea
of taking the desktop computer outdoors. Custom sensors will become an enormous market.
E.g.: Imagine checking your iPhone's UV sensor when walking out on the beach on a sunny
afternoon. Or imagine connecting your iPhone up to a telescope to align it perfectly
with the moon on a clear night. A whole new computer (the "real world computer") will
appear, for this purpose alone.

2010 is when I believe a "Microsoft" will emerge in the real-world computer realm.
Apple will have competition later this year. I'm not sure who will be that next Bill
Gates but I'm certainly a contender.

In 2010, computers will start to replace books for casual reading. Already the Amazon
Kindle is making huge headlines, but this trend will fully take off only in 2010, when
90% of newspapers go bankrupt and everyone starts reading the news on their new
real-world computer.

In 2010, the support-based software model becomes the only viable business model for
software. The idea is you pay separately for licensing and support/customization. The
idea is that by paying for support you're guaranteed that the company will provide
that support. In other words, many companies lose potential clients because those
clients are afraid that the company might go out of business or that they might release
a new version of the software tomorrow that is fully incompatible with the old version.
This is the nightmare of every IT department. Naturally, business models that make life
easier for IT departments will grow. The idea of "we guarantee that we won't go out of
business" is a very seductive one for any IT department.

The home computer will remain, but it will remain as a sort of appliance where
data can be centralized. Its sole purpose will be the centralization of data. In other
words, it will become more of a server.

What is the future in terms of hardware? By 2011, we should expect 22nm processors
with 4 to 8 cores. Clearly, the trend will be towards parallel computing and more
integration as I believe Intel will finally merge the GPU & CPU into one with its
new "Sandy Bridge" technology which comes out in 2011. This technology will be as
revolutionary for Intel as the "Pentium M" was (which then led to the Core 2).

Intel will rapidly become dominant in the area of graphics, forcing AMD to adopt a
similar strategy of integrating its ATI chips onto its CPUs. This may actually give
AMD a competitive advantage over Intel, because let's face it - Intel's graphics chips
suck compared to ATI. I believe at this point NVIDIA will be begging to be acquired,
and guess who will acquire NVIDIA? Intel!

So the biggest story in 2011 will be the rise of Intel to total domination of the
desktop computing world. On top of that, the trend towards innovative display devices
that started with touch screens will intensify by 2011. I believe we'll see the first
holographic or projective displays in 2011. The idea is the image is projected onto
any surface. Imagine a pen that projects the daily news onto an 8.5x11 piece of paper.

Another example of an innovative input device would be an exercise machine that is
designed to interact with your desktop computer (or game console). For example, a
treadmill that corresponds to a virtual car driving around a city. When you run
faster, the car goes faster. The idea is to turn physical effort into positive UI
feedback, thus producing positive reinforcement and turning people into fitness
junkies.

PC gaming will make a comeback. Game consoles have been slowly replacing PCs when it
comes to gaming. However, I think this trend may actually reverse. People will soon
discover that they can connect their PC to their TV and save the money that they
would otherwise have spent on a game console. Thus, PC-to-TV output devices will
become extremely popular. Also, on your PC you can obtain games for free (via
downloading) and you can obtain an unlimited number of games, and you can even make
your own games. Therefore, I don't believe that PC gaming is dead. In fact, I think
it will come back in a big way, mainly because of the current economic downturn
which I expect to last well into the next decade.

In this article I will attempt to explain why this is not 1929, and why it will get worse.
Economically, America is on a path toward certain death, if it's not already dead.
The only thing that can revive America is a revolution and a new declaration of independence.

Anyway, let's explore the reasons why it's worse than 1929:

1. The US is a military superpower
   How is this bad? The US is totally dependent on continuing its military dominance over the rest of the world. It forces countries to accept T-bills at gunpoint. Any slight weakness or decline in this military dominance spells disaster. It would lead to hyperinflation and shortages of just about everything. The US imports more oil than any other country. The US economy is heavily reliant on imports, mainly of oil and drugs. These imports usually come from hostile regimes like Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
   
2. The US produces nothing
   There was a time when the US was a leading producer in the world. It produced automobiles, commodities, and other tangible products. However, partly because of rising taxes, these days hardly anything is produced in the US. Why do that when it's so much cheaper to produce it in China and import it? Of course, when the US was a producer, people had jobs. With jobs, people were able to save, invest, spend, and thus contribute to the growth of the US economy. Nowadays, the only jobs left are government jobs, and the US produces only fiat currency, which is worth nothing.
3. The US Federal Government is gigantic and wants more
   Income taxes are rising. They are already higher than in many of the developed nations (including Canada!). Property taxes are high and rising. The reasons why house prices are falling are two-fold: first, there are no more jobs and therefore rent income has diminished. But also, property taxes are still as high as they were in 2006 if not higher, and certainly rising. So what you have now is houses with negative earnings, selling for $1 on eBay!
4. The US dollar is worthless
   In 1971, Nixon removed any ties between the US dollar and gold. In 1929, the US dollar was still backed by gold. Today, it's backed by nothing. In the absence of a stable currency, all economic activity in the US is distorted, unpredictable, and volatile. Speculation runs wild, and everyone makes miscalculations and misallocations of capital while the Federal Reserve quietly manipulates the markets. The result: through repeated cycles of inflation & deflation, the private Federal Reserve takes ownership of all property and the people are left homeless.
5. Auto workers no longer make $5 a day
   Just to give you an idea of what it was like in 1920s America, Henry Ford established the $5 per day "efficiency" wage. In today's money, this would be equivalent to about $500 per day (or $120,000 per year). This was way above the average, but Ford believed that it would motivate employees and lead to increased productivity. This is the polar opposite of what most employers are doing these days (i.e. slashing wages in every possible way).
6. Farming has disappeared from America
   Back in the 1930s, many people moved back to the countryside where they could live off the land. Nowadays, most people are crammed into cities where everything is 100% dependent on reliable supplies of goods from overseas. If those supplies are interrupted for any period of time, chaos will break out. Just imagine what it would be like in a major city without electricity for 2 weeks.

We need to stop comparing the present situation to the 1930s. Things today are very different, and much more perilous. We are treading through unprecedented historical territory. As I see it, Americans need to reverse the 6 things I listed above. Otherwise, the US is headed for disaster. I believe that, at this point, the US government has become so totalitarian and so unconcerned with the will of the people that only a revolution (i.e. a total overthrow of the government & return to the constitution) would affect any change.

To put things more clearly, the states need to remove their support for the federal government by seceding from the union, citing the 10th amendment.