Catastrophe in America

by Pete Thorsen

  After high school he worked in construction for a couple years then the recession hit and he lost his job. It was pretty obvious that jobs would be hard to come by for some time so he joined the Army. It took him little time in the Army to realize that the military was not the place for him and he left as soon as his four years were up. But he did see some time in Afghanistan before getting out though luckily no actual fighting.

  While he was in the service his parents had died in a car accident. Being an only child he inherited his folk’s property near the town of Cottonwood Arizona. After all the legal stuff was over he ended up with the property free and clear and a small amount of cash money also. Art had also saved a fair amount of money when he was employed by Uncle Sam.

  Out of the Army with his own place to live that only cost him the yearly taxes he could live well enough on a shoestring budget. He still had his old pickup that while old did still run well. Jobs were still very scarce and Art got a job at the Casino in the next town about twenty five miles from his modest home to work and then twenty five miles back home again.

  Being a vet helped him get the job he thought and that was fine as long as he had a job. He did maintenance and housekeeping or just say janitor which was what he really was. Janitor is not a dirty word but is seldom used as job description anymore.

  Art was a loner and his solitary life fit him well. He had no real friends at work and his friends from school were scattered and he had not kept in contact with any of them for the many years since graduation. He occasionally dated one of the ladies from work but it never seemed to work out for more then a couple or three dates before it ended amiably. He often worked on the weekends and had days off during the week which was fine with him because it made no difference as far as he was concerned the weekends were just two more week days was his outlook on it.

  Art received some broadcast TV at his home and sometimes watched the news shows. He idly kept track of the political scene and the nation’s economic woes. As near as he could tell the politicians and the news shows were both blatantly lying about the economic recovery of the country.

  There was obviously no recovery at all. Things were about the same when he got out of the military as when he went in with the lone exception of the huge rise of the nation’s stock market. Maybe a few more people were working but prices had got up substantially, especially on groceries. The more he thought about it the more he thought things were actually worse now than they were before.

  He was working full time but he knew from listening to the talk of others that many now only had part-time jobs. Pretty tough to live on the money from a part-time job he thought, maybe if you had two of them you could make it. As he worked he always listened to the chatter from those people around him.

  A janitor was invisible it seemed to many people. He learned a lot of what people really thought about things that way. During breaks he listened to co-workers chatter about this and that also. He seldom joined any conversations.

  A surprising number of people talked about the coming economic collapse or world war three or other catastrophes that they thought were sure to befall mankind at any minute. They talked about all the people getting welfare and food stamps or disability or other free money from our state, county, or federal governments.

  The huge national debt was often mentioned. People talked about the fact that the nation was being overrun by illegal aliens and that for the first time white babies were now the minority in the United States.

  Art listened to everything and was amused by some, shocked by some, and worried by some. On his days off he often went to the library and researched some of the stuff he heard about. One thing he found out was that TV news was plumb full of BS and was about the poorest place to get the news of what was really happening. The internet had the real news but required very careful sorting to separate the fact from the fiction. And sometimes it was impossible to sort out.

  Gradually Art thought that maybe some of the doomsayers were onto something. The world situation was awful. There were small wars and skirmishes here and there around the world but that was very normal and something that was always happening. Large powerful countries were blustering and threatening but again that was pretty normal.

  Severe weather, earthquakes, and volcanoes were hammering many countries causing devastation but again that was pretty normal in the world scene. But what was a little different was the devastating economic situation in just about every country. Countries were in very deep debt. Even the wonderful United States was in debt to the tune of just shy of eighteen trillion dollars.

  But this huge debt was hardly even mentioned, something Art thought was astounding. There was obviously no way the United States would ever pay off that debt; it was impossible. Those in Congress and the President almost never said anything about it and both continued to add to the debt without let up.

  The Federal Reserve was ‘printing’ new money at an astronomical rate of at least a trillion dollars per year (no one really knew for sure as the Federal Reserve had no oversight at all). The huge debt and the money printing would have almost immediately led to the downfall of the United States except for one little fact; other countries were in the same boat and doing the same thing as the United States.

  At some point something had to give. When that point came things could get ugly or so the doomsayers had said and Art had to at least somewhat agree with that assessment.

  Chapter Two

  Art’s job was easy (like almost all jobs now days) so he had to exercise at home to keep in shape. He basically did the same type exercises that he had done when in the military. Sit ups, push ups, running, and he also hiked a lot in the hilly country around his home.

  And no he was never any special commando or anything in the Army, he was just a regular grunt that never advanced. Art had put in the time he had signed up for and had waited anxiously for that time to expire so he could come back to be a regular civilian again.

  He had always been a hunter and applied for deer and elk tags every year. He also hunted quail and doves during season and shot (and ate) a few rabbits. He had no military style firearms and wanted none. He had inherited a few guns from his parent’s estate and he had a few he had owned from before he joined the Army. Art was not ‘into’ guns but used them for hunting and did rather enjoy an occasional day of target shooting.

  He knew what a prepper was but did not get into storing two years of food and ten thousand rounds of ammunition or anything like that. Art owned no gold or silver bars or things like that either but he had gotten some old coins from his folks and likely there were a few silver coins mixed in.

  There would be no gold coins mixed in because his parents had very little money and certainly not enough to buy something like gold coins. The incredibly fast rising food prices did cause him to buy extra when something he ate happened to be on sale. Plus he only went grocery shopping about once a month so when he went he did buy a fair amount at a time.

  Art did expect some kind of economic collapse just because it seemed inevitable but things like that had happened before; similar to what happened a few years back when he had lost his construction job. There was no rioting or end-of-the-world stuff; just common people who suffered the loss of jobs and caused some to lose their houses or new cars due to their inability to pay their payments. That, he was rather sure, would happen again and quite possibly it would be some worse this second time around.

  Yes if it happened it would certainly hurt some people just like the recession a few years ago had done. Very few working people were said to have any money saved up for emergencies. This fact sure did not surprise Art any as those around him constantly complained about their money situation. Not that Art felt sorry for many of these complainers because they all seemed to have ‘smart’ phones and many TV channels on their satellite TV systems.

  If things got bad more people would go on food stamps and more would show up at the food pantries looking for a hand out. Even
during the Great Depression there was no rioting or end-of-the-world goings on; it was just people with very little money and jobs that were very hard to find. If or when a depression happened he could easily envision losing his job but he had some savings and was not very worried about getting through it.

  Here in sunny Arizona there was very little chance of having a disastrous weather event. Tornados were slightly possible but Art had never heard of one causing any damage in Arizona.

  It did snow a little where he lived on rare occasions but that sure was not a worry. There were no hurricanes here. No volcanoes. Never had a big earthquake but he thought those could maybe happen anywhere though not something that should cause a big worry here.

  There was always the threat of world war three but it was very unlikely that would just happen out of the blue. There would be a long run up to something like that before it actually took place.

  What concerned Art the most about war was being called back into military service. Terrorists were a very real threat but again while possible (and maybe even probable) it was not likely they would pick the small town of Cottonwood to commit an act of terror. So while something big could happen like all the doomsayers thought, most would give a long warning or be unlikely to happen in sunny Arizona.

  Then Art heard about Ebola and soon it was all over the TV news along with all the sites on the internet. Ebola came to the United States and less than a half dozen people got it and then it disappeared from the news. It disappeared from the news a while before the mid term elections (but that could have been a coincidence, right?). The Ebola thing had killed no US citizens but it had cost millions of dollars to care for and treat the very few that had contracted it here in the States.

  If it ever really spread here besides the loss of lives it would likely cause, it would surely cost an incredibly huge amount of money to fight the disease. And that would be money that the United States did not have so the debt would go even higher.

  Our crazy President sent three or four thousand US troops over to western Africa to help fight the Ebola disease over there. He sent troops just like Art had been when in the Army. What could troopers do to fight Ebola? Art did not think guns would be much help for fighting the disease.

  Sending those poor souls over to those disease ridden countries where about all they could do to help was to bury the dead was a very stupid move Art thought and certainly put those troops at serious risk of getting Ebola and then dying on foreign soil for no logical reason what so ever.

  Best case was for them to supply little more than moral support to the Africans and worst case was many of those troopers contracting the disease and possibly bringing it back with them to the United States (if they lived long enough).

  So while there was a lot of stuff a person could worry about and some of those things were fairly serious, Art would not get on the doomsayer bandwagon just yet. He still had his job and his health and the sun was still shining so things were just not that bad he thought.

  Chapter Three

  Art continued to go to work and continued to watch and listen to both local people and network/internet news. Like always local people complained and Art thought that was pretty normal but he did notice people also talked more and more about how they would prepare for the bad times that were surely coming in the near future. Art also believed most of those only just talked about getting prepared and actually did nothing. Just the talk of getting prepared though did get him thinking.

  He was often surprised by just how many people actually seemed to expect something bad to happen. Art also noticed that even on the TV news they occasionally ran a news story about some analyst or economist that predicted bad economic times in the near future. Internet searches would find hundreds of such predictions. Art took all of this with a grain of salt. Predictions could be made by anyone about anything and almost all had one glaring thing in common, and that is that they were later proved to be wrong.

  While he could plainly see things were certainly not rosy, they were also not that bad either. One conversation he over heard did get him thinking a little. Two older guys were talking about possible bad times coming and one said that he was not too concerned because he some money in the bank that would tide him over any rough spots in the economy.

  He said no matter what the stock market or the bond market did he still had that cash money safe in his savings account in the local bank. While the other man agreed that savings were certainly an excellent idea and that money could ease them through the rough times, he wondered about access to that money.

  Unless it was in your hand or in your own safe at home did you really have it? If things got bad the first thing that would close would be the banks. Just look at what happened in the Great Depression. There were runs on all the banks and that had forced them to close. Some people got their money and many did not. He thought this time the banks would close before the big runs and very, very few would get their money.

  But what about the FDIC said the other man. The government has my money insured so even if the bank can’t pay out the money I can get it from the government. The other said “And you totally trust our government to take care of you?”

  Art started really thinking about this and did some investigating using the internet at the library. Yes the FDIC did insure everyone’s deposits and it worked fine if only a few of the smaller banks had trouble. But they did not have the resources for even one of the really big banks if they failed.

  With the interest being paid on the savings account at only one quarter of one percent Art decided he would lose nothing if he kept the cash money at home rather in the bank. He did not really think all the banks would fail or close but why take even a small chance? After all he did not think his house would burn down either but he still had fire insurance on it.

  Thinking about the safety of the cash he did split it up and buried it at home. Now it was still safe from theft and from fire and he had instant access to the cash whether the bank was open or closed. This caused him no hardships and seemed like a prudent move to protect what money he did have anyway.

  Of course he still had some money in his checking account but that was used so he needed to keep some in there. Art did notice that he had not been watching his checking account very close and there was way more in there than he needed so he took a bunch of that out as cash and buried it also.

  The movement of his money from the bank to his back yard gave Art a surprising amount of relief or satisfaction or something. He just felt much better having it close and it gave him a feeling of accomplishment knowing he had done something to be prepared for a bad situation. It was a good feeling and it had cost him basically nothing.

  The stock market continued to mark new record high numbers. Thinking about this it just made no sense. Even if you used the media’s or the politicians’ view that the nation’s economy was slowly getting better (which Art disagreed with) then it would be reasonable that the stock market would lag behind.

  After all first people would have to get in a better financial situation so they had the disposable income to spend money and increase demand for goods and hence increase the profits for all those American companies. But instead household incomes were shrinking while stocks were flying high on a huge wave of record high numbers. That made no sense at all if you just took a full minute to think about it.

  Was the answer to this conundrum the Federal Reserve Bank? After all the stock market rose to those record highs at the exact same time that the Federal Reserve was injecting huge amounts of cash into the nation’s economy.

  The three or four trillion dollars of new cash that was supposed to result in a rapid rise in the economy never seemed to have any effect at all. Except of course for the stock market this is. Art thought each one of those new ‘dollars’ should really be added to the national debt number because in his mind each was something like an interest-free loan to America.

  There was talk at least once a week about when the Fe
deral Reserve would raise the interest rates that right now they had lowered down to about zero (hard to go lower than that). The Fed said they did this to loosen up loans but again it had no effect at all as far as loosing up credit, at least that Art could find in his limited research. But Art knew that normally interest rates were around six percent historically.

  Doing the math he did not think the United States could pay the interest on the eighteen trillion dollars of national debt if interest rates rose to that average six percent number again. If they could not pay the interest on the debt then the United States would default on their debt just like what would happen to a regular person who could not pay their debt. What would be the result of that default, Art was not sure. But it had to be a bad thing.

  But life goes on and Art had his janitor job at the Casino and life was good. He was healthy, his old pickup was still running just fine, he had a job that paid enough, and he was relatively happy. Even the price of gas had fallen way down saving him money every time he filled the gas tank on his pickup. Maybe, just maybe all the doomsayers were wrong.

  Chapter Four

  Art got a notice at work that he would be reduced in hours. He had always been full time and now would be part time. Art was not the only one to receive this notice though some instead were just laid off.

  He was not surprised at all because anyone could see the casino business was down as was every other business. Things were not going well for the nation’s economy. Even the TV news and the politicians no longer tried to say we were ‘recovering’.