Stump Rancher, Scandinavia could see some serious trouble. Prior to WW2, Scandinavia was squalid. At the turn of the 19th-20th century, Norway was the poorest country on earth--just after Arabia. My how things change...and for the same reasons!
Actually, Scandinavia's biggest coup was staying neutral during both world wars, and barely escaping becoming soviet satellite states, no thanks to Roosevelt and his buddy Algier Hiss, the crypto-communist.
The Soviet Union was planned to be the centrally-planned mega-industrial slave state, but it turned out that central planning doesn't work. The Scandinavian countries uniquely had their industrial infrastructure intact after both wars, and although they have a reputation for socialism, that is not quite true; they are "welfarist" not so much "socialist"; unlike the UK and France they did not cripple their industries regulating them to death. Finland in particular, and to a lesser degree Sweden, made fortunes selling industrial goods into the Soviet Union in exchange for oil and other natural resources.
Numerous Scandinavian politicians and diplomats have been assassinated or executed (Raoul Wallenberg, 1947, by firing squad, Lubyank Prison, Moscow--there was never any "mystery" as to his fate), to teach the locals what their place is in the New World Order.
As a result, they are no longer politically neutral, but have been enveloped in the tentacles of Euroland and NATO.
Norway's oil is now running out, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. All the countries of Scandinavia are mired in welfare states that subsidize openly hostile foreign immigrants. If the locals protest--and they have--they send in goon squads to break up any demonstrations.
I suppose that one possible way out, is if there is a dramatic change in the balance of power, due to collapse of the current financial order.
Then you still have legacy issues (it's hard to "de-sovietize"), and there is still the problem of the petroleum running out.
I am very interested to know, Atash, how you come to have this knowledge as to the future.
Same way I knew to buy gold at $255 an ounce and Platinum at $800 and change an ounce.
Same way I knew we were in trouble (but did make some mistakes..."always in motion the future is"--Yoda) 20 years ago. I have a brain that is lousy at building rapport with others but great at modeling complex systems. That forum about Asperger's is not a joke.
Just look at how screwed up our systems are, friend. We are stuck with jaw-droppingly corrupt politicians who believe that they can fix any problem by spending more money on it (and siphoning a great deal of it off to their harlots and catamites...).
We've now got high-schools where roughly 1/3 of the students are essentially illiterate and innumerate. This is our "brain trust". Demographics alone doom us. And yet we are spending a fortune on the idiotic "no child left behind".
We spend a fortune trying to save people from old age. My wife's hospital had a patient recently in for heart surgery at 94. The surgeon opened her up, and she died within minutes as her poor old heart simply fell apart spontaneously! The tissues were far too fragile. We also pay for dialysis for alcoholics, medical care for drug dealers and "madames" who have "no visible income" but drive into the hospital with their late-model luxury cars. My wife had a patient who was connecting her "girls" to her customers from her hospital bed on her cell phone, while the bill is being paid by the taxpayer.
This system will not last.
Other countries have corruption too, but in our system it is so "moralized" and legitimatized that most people can't see it. It is everywhere, but just considering what's at the top: What is the probability that Hillary Clinton's cattle-futures trades were legit? Some statisticians at the Journal of Economics and Statistics calculated it at "less than 1 in 250,000,000". Anybody who knows anything about commodity futures realizes it is suspicious.
Interestingly but not surprisingly, Ms. Clinton had Vince Foster's file in her office within half an hour of his sudden and untimely demise in a DC park.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/FOSTER_COVERUP/foster.htmlHe had been working on her and the president's "blind trust" account. Hillary is the tip of the iceberg. Mysteriously, George "W" kept getting "sweetheart deals" where he would be put in charge of a shell operation that he would run into the ground, then be put in charge of another, collecting salary (from the House of Saud) all the way.
One of our local politicians, who moved on to DC, is reputedly worth around $50 million from "stock market trading". I would estimate his IQ at around 90-100; the man is a dolt and he has always lived quite well; he was never a great saver or investor.
The port of Seattle PAYS an Israeli company to dock its cruise ships in our ports. On the rare occasions anyone has the guts to complain, our media explains it as doing us a huge favor.
Here is a gedanken experiment for you:
A government bureaucrat want to "stimulate the economy", so he organizes construction of new roads, freeways, a "technology park", and a senior center". Workers come to do the work, and collect and spend their paychecks. New companies move into the "technology park", and register their stocks and bonds on Wall Street.
In this kind of situation, 99.9% of the population perceive that "the economy is healthy". They don't realize the trouble until the symptoms finally show up much later.
Mike and I (and probably a number of others on this board--birds of a feather and all that) perceive that they have just tilted the production-consumption equation in favor of CONSUMPTION. People see the roads and office parks and see "productivity", but it is in fact net consumption. They are "producing" "goods and services" (not really) that you never knew you needed until someone told you so.
