Great post Trent.

Sounds like there is a lot more to the future of humanity than work and money. A society who doesn’t raise their children with solid values does not have a promising future.

That may well be true. None of us has a crystal ball. It may also be that things will change in a way we can’t anticipate now and life will chug right along (as it always has up to this point.) But we aren’t promised a rose garden and the collective sweet life might not be as sweet as it’s gotten to be. The advice isn’t just “Don’t Panic” – it’s, “While you’re not panicking, get your house in order: get out of debt, learn to live beneath your means and find inexpensive pastimes, save, stock up, diversify investments, and all the things we talk about here.”

Then *if* there is a sudden shift (things always change, it’s the speed of change that makes for hardship), we will be in the best position possible to be hunker down and roll with it and be okay. We will also gain more flexibility to change our own lives rapidly in response.

I wouldn’t pull anything out of the stock market anyway, because if the market “completely crashes!!”, then losing my retirement will be the least of my concerns anyway. For that to happen, the U.S. economy will have come to a screeching halt and all that cash money won’t mean beans anyway (and gold? ridiculous!). We’d be in apocalypse territory. Anything’s possible, I guess, but I’m not living my life worrying about THAT. (I come from a family that spent years getting rid of bags of grain and toothpaste from Y2K preparations. Ahem.)

My personal opinion, FWIW, is that this too shall pass. Energy sources will change eventually (probably after a nice alternative energy bubble) and we may have to live with some ugly stuff like nuclear power. Maybe a lot of nice things that got abandoned after the 70’s, like good bike paths, will get attention and use, and there will certainly be fewer SUVs on the road. Oh, how I will appreciate being able to see around other cars again! :)

Peak Oil is only a concern if you believe there aren’t replacements. The only reason alternative fuels (and I’m thinking of the easy ones, such as ethanol and biodiesel) aren’t readily available in the USA is that their cost is higher than oil. When the cost for oil rises high enough, then you’ll see the country switch to other fuels.

The world has already proven how desireable and useful the automobile is (people the world over are willing to lower their other budget items in order to have the freedom and mobility a vehicle provides), so they’re not about to stop using them. They’ll find ways to fuel that desire, even if it means the price of food is higher.

This is a decent general article about panic, but what I absolutely love here is all the comments. There are so many talking points, pet theories etc… I just find it fascinating how we all (myself included of course) pick one reason or another to help make sense of a fundamentally chaotic world!

Never forget that people still immigrate to the USA. That’s where the population growth has come from to take us from population 200 million to 300 million.

Also, half of the potential retirees don’t have proper funds to retire, so they’ll keep working for a few more years (or return to the work force when they realize that sad truth).

IN FOR THE LONG HAUL – GO BROKE

http://www.mutualfundmagic.com/articles/012808.html

“Throughout all of this tumult, I’ve lost a fair amount of money in my retirement account.”

In any investment, the most important decision you need to make is not “when to buy” but rather “when to sell”. You need to know in advance what your sell “signal” will be.

“The problem is that one never knows exactly where the top is.”

True, but there is a tool that will tell when the top (or bottom) has just passed. It is called the “200 day moving average”.

Go to:

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/advchart/frames/frames.asp?symb=sp500&time=8&freq=1

Under “Time frame” change the “Time” to “1 decade”

Select “Indicators”

Under “Moving Average” select “SMA”.

In the text box to the right of “SMA” enter 200.

Hit the “Draw Chart” button.

In the case of SP500 stocks (and in most cases, stocks in general), simply buy when the 200-day moving average is going up and sell when it turns down.

My personal strategy is a variation of the following:

http://www.mutualfundmagic.com/twoforthemoney.html

Most mutual fund families have an “aggressive” stock fund and some type of money market fund. If the SP500 200-day moving average line is trending up, all my money is in the “aggressive” fund. If the SP500 200-day moving average line is trending down (as it is now) I move all my money into the money market account. On average these movements will occur about once every 5 years. I am, of course, putting money into my account on a monthly basis the whole time.

Is it a perfect system? Of course not. However on the whole I capture about 80% of the upside and avoid about 80% of the down side.

Is this system for everyone? Probably not. If your net worth measures in the millions you probably need something more sophisticated. Also if you have the time to spend doing the research, you could probably come up with something more effective. However for me it strikes the right balance of safety, effectiveness and ease.

Uh, talk about a generalization. Most people in those countries are not American-wannabes.

Have to side with Robert on this one, the weakening of the American dollar makes every other country’s growth look like inflation to us. With transportation costs skyrocketing, we’ll be fine individually in the outsourcing dillemma.

An interesting twist that I haven’t made my mind up about is the impending retirement wave(Prediction of 20 million fewer American employees in the next 12 years). How will that effect America on the global stage? Sure we’ll all have jobs if we want them, but will we be able to sate global/domestic demand? Not without new tech. Will we go back to employees locking into one skillset for life?

So don’t panic, but definitely keep your eyes open. I think in the shortterm, anything that’s moving overseas will come back home, but then we may find ourselves with more work than we have employees and it will fade back out.