The American People Are Utterly Clueless About What Is Going To Happen As We Enter 2015!

• The American People Are Utterly Clueless About What Is Going To Happen As We Enter 2015! 
  by Michael Snyder, http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/ 
  The American people are feeling really good right about now.  For example, Gallup’s economic confidence index has hit the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.  In addition, nearly half of all Americans believe that 2015 will be a better year than 2014 was, and only about 10 percent believe that it will be a worse year.  And a lot of people are generally feeling quite good about the people that have been leading our nation.  …
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  Sadly, what we are experiencing right now is so similar to what we witnessed in 2007 and early 2008.  The stock market had been on a great run, people were flipping houses like crazy and most people were convinced that the party would never end.
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  But then it did end – very painfully. The signs of trouble were there, but most people chose to ignore them. Sadly, the exact same thing is happening again.
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  On Monday, the price of oil hit a brand new five year low.  As I write this, U.S. oil is sitting at a price of $53.76 a barrel, which is nearly a 50 percent decline from the peak earlier this year.
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  Since 2009, oil industry employment has risen by 50 percent.  And jobs in the oil industry pay quite well.  One figure that I saw put the average weekly wage at about 1700 dollars. But now we aren’t going to be gaining those types of jobs.  Instead, we are going to rapidly start losing them.
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  Already, the oil rig count has dropped for three weeks in a row and is now at an 8 month low.  And as the oil industry suffers, all of the industries that it supports are also going to start feeling the pain.  In fact, Business Insider is reporting that Texas business executives are “freaked out” about what is happening…
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  Meanwhile, the 9 trillion dollar U.S. dollar carry trade is starting to unwind. The following is an excerpt from a recent Zero Hedge article…
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  Oil’s collapse is predicated by one major event: the explosion of the US Dollar carry trade. Worldwide, there is over $9 TRILLION in borrowed US Dollars that has been ploughed into risk assets.
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  Energy projects, particularly Oil Shale in the US, are one of the prime spots for this. But it is not the only one. Economies that are closely aligned with commodities (all of which are priced in US Dollars) are getting demolished too.
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  Just about everything will be hit as well. Most of the “recovery” of the last five years has been fueled by cheap borrowed Dollars. Now that the US Dollar has broken out of a multi-year range, you’re going to see more and more “risk assets” (read: projects or investments fueled by borrowed Dollars) blow up. Oil is just the beginning, not a  standalone story.
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  If things really pick up steam, there’s over $9 TRILLION worth of potential explosions waiting in the wings. Imagine if the entire economies of both Germany and Japan exploded and you’ve got a decent idea of the size of the potential impact on the financial system.
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  And that’s assuming NO increased leverage from derivative usage.
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  read more!

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