Unfortunately I'd have to say no. No one (no politician) wants to spoil the party and ask the waiter for the tab. The news today mentions the fed lowering the reserve requirement to 20% of minimum (down from 30%) for fannie mae and freddie mac. How is guaranteeing a couple trillion more in shaky home loans a sound decision? I smell a taxpayer fleecing as the fed is who pretty much backs those two giants. I guess my point is that things are pretty desperate, and no one (in a position of influence) is doing much to change it.

Maybe it's just me then, but life seems to be about as easy as it's ever been lately, despite all the desperation. I am able to put away a bigger portion of my paycheck these days than ever before, despite having more expenses than I've ever had. I have more work to do than I have in a long time, I am eating well, I've been getting a lot more sex lately, and my girls not only are no longer whining at me about how tough their life is, but are actually sounding grateful for all the things I do for them, and how fortunate they are for having such great parents (though I won't discount that this is a ploy to soften me up before fleecing me yet again, they are definitely getting wiser, if not smarter).

Maybe it's just that I've learned enough at this point in life about how to play the game that I am actually starting to win for a change, but it seems most of the people around me aren't in too bad a shape either, at least the smarter ones. I won't take too much credit, but I gotta think that I've had my fingers burned enough times to at least know what sort of pitfalls to avoid. Even a monkey can learn to avoid things that don't make him feel too good.

I have been having that same revelation about myself, of late.

It has me waiting for "the other shoe to drop"

"... actually allowing our civilization to fall over the edge would likely prove counterproductive, otherwise they'd have pushed it over long ago."

I suspect you're assuming great intelligence among the greedy manipulators. People who are always thinking about how to fleece someone else, and only think of themselves are basically criminal-minded. Many criminals succeed, but most of them don't. Even the more intelligent ones seem to always overlook some crucial facet of the situation. And if America goes belly-up, I think it will be due to something happening that they didn't expect, with someone or some group attempting to grab the equivalent of an unbalanced tray falling off a table edge and missing it. Then I think there will be a severe domino effect.

Stock market levels are neither a cause nor a control, they are only indicators of faith.

"When and if a collapse comes, it may truly be global."

There's no 'maybe' about it. The Great Depression was worldwide then. And there is far more interaction between countries now than there was then.

A major depression here would probably be catastropic. But imagine the Third World countries that are America's trained dogs, the ones that we feed.

I no longer have TV, and don't take a newspaper. I think they both warp one's thinking, because the information being fed to us is what they want us to hear/know, and you know damned well that it isn't likely to be the truth. I go more by the EFFECTS.

Sue

Yes, the risk is there. Certainly the power-mongers failure is that no matter how smart and wise they are, and some are, their greed is always just a little bit bigger, which is why we are doomed to eventually fail. Whether it is acute or chronic, the end is inevitable thanks mostly to the actions of a few at the top. The only difference being that if it falls through it will be a lot more obvious than if it just slowly erodes away.

I guess my point is that so long as we remain the most powerful nation in the world in terms of military might, we have a hedge against going straight to the bottom of the pile, in that we can use what power we've got to drain the resources of those below us on our way down. It won't likely stop our descent, but it will spread our misery out a little thinner so the contrast between us and those around us ain't quite so extreme.