So, is the doom implied in the title of this article, namely that we will bear witness to an economic collapse this year, totally misguided? More broadly speaking, when it comes to the economy who are we to trust? Politicians? Conspiracy theorists? Nobel prize winners? JREF forum posters? Drkitty?
Given those choices I'd say Drkitt(en)y. If "doom" does start happening he'll acknowledge it pretty quickly I think. He's not trying to sell you anything or get you to do something, nor does he work for someone that is (unless you're a high school senior near his college I suppose).
Really though trying to call timing on any geo-economic event is a fools' game.. The mere fact that
anyone with a dollar can bet it on the same possible outcomes means that by the time you're right about something for any valid/supportable reason it will already be a crowded trade. In theory there's only one "truth", so betting money based on that would be a bit too easy wouldn't it?
Like drkitten said we're just guessing if we try and say what a modern "depression" would be like. This isn't the 30s, and technology or other factors could make a prolonged economic contraction a different animal altogether than previous such situations.
Is this all misguided? Well.. There are many valid reasons to be worried about the U.S. economy, even people who consider us to be in a recovery make a point of attaching the word "modest" to it any chance they get.. But even if we "double-dip" or whatever, how bad is that? How much worse than 2008? What if it's exactly 30% worse, what are the implications? Mad Max? Silent Running? 1980s inflation?
This is what happens when you talk about perpetually uncharted territory like economics or geopolitics, half the sentences in your paragraphs end in question marks and in the end none of it is going to make you any money.
(Edit: If you're really just worried about "losing everything" you can hold a bunch of cash/treasuries with some unhedged gold mining companies or buy a ton of junk silver or something as a counterbalance in case of eventual inflation. Then forget you even did any of that because you will be
bored to death for the
foreseeable future if you pay attention to those investments in any way.)
(Edit 2: This is because the
unforeseeable future is your big concern. But really not losing quite so bad sometimes = winning, take miners in 2008/2009 for example. I made some small-time profit by simply holding miners all the way down the drain, then when they bottomed first I had the intervening time as nothing but easy buying opportunities for things that had been hit even harder even later and hadn't even begun their recovery yet unlike the recently-pwned prices of the gold/miners.)
