Calamity in America (3 page)

“Only you!”

“Stick with me kid and you too will be living high-on-the-hog.”

“I think I’ll do just that.”

I looked at her then and she was looking at me and smiling at our joking but she looked serious at the same time.  It made me feel funny inside.

I was not working out as much any more either.  I still had my same job but my boss was having a tough time finding work even for his small crew and we very seldom worked a full week anymore.  Three day work weeks were now fairly common for us, actually for many people.  I knew exactly what he was going through because I hardly ever got any weekend handy man jobs anymore.  When I did get one it was often just a one day job or even part of a day of work.  Everyone was cutting back just trying to make ends meet.

Police forces everywhere were being cut back at the same time crime was going way up.  At first it was just petty thefts with people stealing to try and get by but gradually there was more and more of the much more serious crimes.  Here in a more rural state there were many guns for sale by people needing the money at the same time people needed those guns for their personal protection. 

I even bought a couple more guns at prices that two years ago would have been unheard of.  They were just too cheap for me to let them pass by.  The guy that I bought one of the guns from had a lot of related items for sale real cheap also.  I bought a lot of various ammunition along with other odds and ends he had for sale.  He also seemed very knowledgeable and I asked many questions about some of the stuff I bought.  

Of course it seemed that everyone had stuff for sale now.  Every public bulletin board was packed with items for sale or work wanted ads.  The often joked about signs saying ‘will work for food’ were no longer a joke. 

Unemployment continued to rise.  And with it there was less money coming into all levels of government at the same time those governments needed more and more money.  It was a vicious circle.

Most everyone was cutting back on expenses but there was little that I could do to cut back anymore.  I had always been living as cheaply as I could.  Beth and her mom were having a tough time of it.  Beth continued to look for work but there were no jobs of any kind to be had.  When her mom got sick and had to go to the hospital they both knew they would not be able to pay the hospital bill.  Her mom (Betty) did have Medicare but the deductible had gone way up the first of the year along with the premium.

Over the last year or more all medicines had taken a major jump in prices.  The only income that Beth and her mom had was what Betty received every month from Social Security.  She did have money in the bank but that had been slowly been used up to pay regular bills.  She owned her house outright and Betty tried to get a reverse mortgage on it but was told that they were no longer available. 

I felt bad for them both but there was little I could do.  I had some money saved up but it was not nearly enough to pay the hospital bill.  Betty had stayed in the hospital for seventeen days and even after Medicare paid what they did the remaining bill was enormous.  Of course many people had outstanding hospital bills now.  Actually many people had a long list of outstanding bills that were not being paid.

Of course even the TV news could no longer pretend everything was awesome.  They aired many interviews with this person or that person that would put the blame on someone or other for this economic downturn.  Many blamed this current President and some blamed the previous President and some even blamed other countries for our current plight. 

Then I happened to catch an interview with someone who seemed to make more sense.  When asked who to blame he said Congress but previous ones not really the current Congress though he made it seem that all were the same.

He said the trouble started near the end of Clinton’s second term as President when Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.  In those over sixty years that law had protected banks from hurting themselves and there had been no major bank closings or severe economic troubles.  But just eight or nine years after it was repealed all the big banks needed a bailout because they were in very serious trouble and our whole economy was in chaos.

At that time Congress decided to make things worse by putting on a bandaid to prevent a depression.  So they bailed out the banks and spent an additional trillion dollars to dump into America’s economy.  They should have instead re-instated the Glass-Steagall Act but they didn’t.  They should have let the banks that were stupid fail but they did not.  They should have let things run their normal course but they didn’t. 

When all they did had little effect the great Federal Reserve Bank stepped in and lowered interest rates to zero as a temporary measure to boost the economy.  But it had no effect other than hurt those Americans that had money saved in the banks.  Now they received no or very, very little interest.  The Fed left this emergency temporary zero interest rate that way for many years because the economy was so shaky they said they couldn’t raise those rates.

Next the Federal Reserve started printing money and dumping it into the economy to the tune of at least three trillion dollars to boost the economy.  This had very little if any real effect other than boost the stock market.  At this point the Fed was out of options.  They had done everything they could and had nothing left to try.

The trouble was everyone was trying to prop up America’s economy when they needed to just leave it alone and let things work themselves out naturally.  Yes things would have likely got a little worse for a couple years but then it would have started a real recovery instead of the fake induced one that politicians and the media had been harping about for the last few years.

When Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act it only took seven or eight years to bankrupt the banks.  We then bailed them out but did nothing to stop it from happening again.  Now it has been another eight years and the banks are again bankrupt and we as a country do not have the money to bail them out again or the inclination to do so. 

Because of all the meddling done by our government to our economy now we will have to pay the piper.  And it will get very bad here.  Likely it will get way worse than it was during the Great Depression of the nineteen thirty’s.  All the government’s meddling did was give us a few years of flat line growth and add trillions upon trillions of dollars to our debt.  Our government, by kicking the can down the road for a few years, will now bring America down to a third world country for at least several years.  Times will be so bad that in five years America will be unrecognizable.

Well that synopsis was sure not putting a positive spin on things I thought when I heard the whole interview.  I hoped that the man was wrong but what he said did make sense and I too believed we were very quickly heading for the second great depression.  This one likely more severe and maybe even longer lasting.  I sure hope that both this guy on the news and me are wrong about this prediction.

America is now a way different place than when we had the Great Depression in the nineteen thirties.  We have a much bigger population now and this population is mostly clustered together in our huge cities.  There are now very few small family farms anymore and instead we have huge corporate farms.  Most people have no idea how to grow a garden or even attempt to take care of themselves.  We as a society are way different now than during the first Great Depression.

If it happens to us now it will be much, much worse and I believe this time at least many and maybe a fairly large portion of our current population will perish from starvation and violence.  I can only hope that I am wrong and things will turn around quickly and get back to normal.     

Mortgage payments are being skipped by a large amount of the population but home prices are now so low and financing for a home loan is almost impossible to get anymore.  Technically many homes with former owners still living there are in foreclosure but the banks are no longer kicking anyone out.  It is better just to let them live there with the hope that the economy will turn around and mortgage payments will again start being made.  Wishful thinking by the banks I believe.

Banks are in sad shape.  There are no ‘stress tests’ being done on all the banks anymore because I’m sure none would pass any kind of a test at this point.  Many on the internet think most all the banks are now actually insolvent but if they closed these banks the nation’s situation would then become untenable.  Better just to let the banks stay open and at least pretend that they are still viable entities. 

One thing that the banks did do was to drastically reduce the spending limits on all credit cards.  Overnight huge numbers of American citizens found out that their credit cards with large balances on them no longer worked.  It sent another shock through the nation but there had been so many shocks at this point that they now caused little impact overall.  The banks had sent out warnings before they actually did cut off the credit for many people.  Of course most people likely were no longer working and could do nothing about paying down their debt anyway.  Warning or not.

Chapter 4

The world turned and time passed.  It was good that I had increased the size of my garden.  With very little work now I had plenty of time to tend the garden.  Beth wanted to help with it but gas was expensive and there was no extra money to spend needlessly on gas so she seldom came out to the farm.  She and Betty worked in their own small garden and both theirs and mine were starting to produce some stuff already.

When I did have a day or two of work in town I always swung by Beth’s house to visit.  I also always brought some food with to give them.  Sometimes the food was from my garden and sometimes it was from what was available in the area when I went out foraging.  They both always gratefully took anything that I brought them.

As the summer progressed I was busy canning vegetables from my garden.  Many people had gardens this year and everyone’s gardens were now producing viable amounts of the much needed food.  That is when tragedy struck. 

I was just going out to work in the garden when I had a phone call.  I answered and heard noises on the line that almost sounded like crying.  I said hello a couple times before I heard “My mom…..” then more crying.  I was sure I recognized the voice as being Beth.

“Are you at home?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.  Hang on until I get there.”

I hang up the phone and ran to my truck and that old thing had never been driven so fast all the while I had owned it that’s for sure.  The brakes and tires squealed when I came to a stop in front of Beth’s house.  I ran up the steps and burst through the front door without even a knock.  Only then I thought maybe I should have brought a weapon of some kind.  But none was needed.  I ran through the house and found Beth just outside the back door.

Beth was on her knees and holding her mom who was lying on the ground covered in blood.  I checked her mom for a pulse but never expected to find one.  There was just so much blood.  Beth was softly sobbing.  I ran back into the house and pulled the big afghan off the back of the couch and went back out. 

Gently I got Beth to stand up and holding her with one arm I covered her mom with the afghan.  I led Beth to the bench on the back porch and I sat down with her.  She just buried her face in my shoulder and started crying harder again.  I just held her.

After a few minutes she quieted down and I asked if she had called the police.  She said she had called them just before she had called me.  It had been some time by then and they still had not yet shown up. 

I held Beth for a very long time and when the police still had not shown up I called them just in case they had not gotten the address correctly.  I was informed when I finally got through that yes officers were on their way but it still might be some time yet before they arrived.  I asked if they had been informed that there had been a violent death here and they answered yes they had that information.

I could hardly believe that it must have been at the very least an hour and a half and more likely two or more hours since Beth had called them and they still were not here.

It was maybe another forty five minutes or so when I heard someone announce their presence at the front door.  It was one police officer.  He had not used the siren on his car or I would have certainly heard it.  I took him out the back door and pointed at the covered body on the ground.

“What happened here?”

“I don’t know.  The young lady called me just after she called the police about three hours ago.  The woman on the ground is her mother.  That is all I know other than the young woman seems to be unhurt.”

He walked over and lifted the afghan to look at the body.  Then he walked over and started to question Beth.  First he got full names for both her and her mom and verified that indeed the woman was her natural mother and that they lived at this address together.  When asked what exactly happened Beth said she had left to walk up to the grocery store to pick up a few things and when she got back she found her mom where she was now.  No one else lived here and Beth said she saw no one when she got back.

The policemen looked again at the back yard and seemed to notice that it was all garden.  Then he walked all around the low fence that enclosed the back yard before coming back.

“Likely someone came over the fence to steal some of your garden produce.  That is happening daily here in the city.  Your mom must have surprised them or maybe tried to stop them and was struck at that point.  I’ll put that in my report.  Do you have a funeral home picked out?  If so I will call the one of your choice for the pick up.  If not I will call the closest one.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

“Won’t the coroner come for the body?  What about an investigation?  Will a forensic crew come and look for evidence?  Will there be an autopsy?”