The Last Thanksgiving Before GD2?

by David Chu

Photo: The Last Thanksgiving Before GD2?

Happy Thanksgiving, America!

Enjoy this wonderful family and friends celebration while you still can.

Because around the corner lurks GD2. More about this vile monster later.

Thanksgiving, U.S.A.

I remember fondly the Thanksgivings I used to spend with the Catholic family of my ex-wife in Southern California. I only mentioned that they are Catholic to emphasis that these festive celebrations were large gatherings. They usually took place either in Anaheim where her parents lived or in Orange where her uncle and aunt lived.

Thanksgiving in southern California is a special time. Weather is not cold as it is in most parts of the U.S. There is no snow on the ground. It feels more like a late summer than an early winter.

Usually, there would be almost 40 family members including a lot of grown-up kids and grandkids. The beloved matriarch who held this family together is an incredible lady whose first name is Gloria, having been born on Easter day in 1924. Gloria was one of these rare ladies whose refined manners and compassion could straighten out any delinquent and stray youth, and she did do that during her teaching days at a community college in Anaheim.

Even though I didn’t make it to her funeral (she passed away in 2005 after many years of courageously fighting a rare and painful lung disease), I respect this woman and consider her to be a true saint who touched the lives of many including mine. Because if there was ever an unassuming, flesh-and-blood saint that I have met in this lifetime, Gloria would be that one!

So I dedicate this “prescient” article on this Thanksgiving 2008 to “Lady Gloria.” (I think she would want you to know what is about to happen from her vantage point. She can certainly see it much better from up there!)

What the Heck is GD2?

Simply, “Great Depression 2.”

But as the famous physicist, Neil Bohr, once remarked, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

However, just because something is difficult does not mean that we shouldn’t try to get a handle on it, especially on something dire that concerns our future, or attempt to read the “handwriting on the wall” to use an old Biblical expression.

Using my long ago analogy by calling the ship of state (financial and economic affairs) of the U.S. as the U.S.S. Titanic, America has already scrapped that massive iceberg: there is a huge gaping hole on the starboard side of the U.S.S. Titanic!

The U.S.S. Titanic encountered this iceburg during the week of October 6, 2008. Everything that happens afterwards and in the immediate days, weeks, months, and even years following is just governments and their corrupt, criminal fiends on Wall Street and elsewhere going through the motions. Like the band that kept playing aboard the real R.M.S. Titanic, the politicians and the “captains of industry” will paint a bright and rosy picture for the third-class passengers aboard the U.S.S. Titanic, while they all don on their financial life jackets and run like hell for the very few financial lifeboats!

What do you think the $850 billion TARP (“Troubled Asset Recovery Program”) was for?

Then visualize life jackets embossed with the letters “TARP” on the back!

Buried in a report from Biz.yahoo.com on November 12 titled “ Stocks plunge for third straight session ” was the following incredible statement: “According to the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index [which reflects the value of almost all U.S. stocks], Wednesday's [November 12] paper losses amounted to about $600 billion. By that measure, the [U.S.] stock market has shed $9.1 trillion since the index's Oct. 9, 2007, peak.” The bolded emphasis in mine. The Dow Industrial Average or Dow, which is comprised of 30 “blue chip” stocks, closed out at 8,262 on November 12, and was at 8,046 at the close on November 21, so the estimate of $9.1 trillion of financial losses since October 9 is a pretty close guess, if not a conservative one.

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