What would economic collapse look like?

[pgwenthold]

In other words, you've priced yourself out of the market.

Yes and no.

We absolutely want to sell a house at a price that is well above the current market price. So in that respect, yes we have priced ourself out.

However, the reason that happened is because the market for houses around our area collapsed. So in a way, no, we haven't really priced ourselves out of the market, because we aren't actually IN the market. We are remaining on the sidelines until the market comes back to the point where our house can be sold in a sufficiently timely fashion at a price that is more than enough to cover what we owe. Hey, we aren't insisting on a return on the investment, just to eliminate the losses.

And here's the problem - as much as we'd like to move, it isn't worth the loss that we would have to take in order to do it. It's either sit with two mortgages, or take such a big loss that we might as well sit with two mortgages.

OR we could just live with it now and wait.

It will cost us in the end in that we will end up having to pay more for the new house when we move, but that is better than trying to deal with the loss that would incur moving now (especially considering the house needs a significant foundational repair before it can be sold, but that is a separate issue).

 

[oggiesnr]

Even within Zimbabwe there are those who have access to hard currency and internal resources who are going to be the next oligarchs when the current mess finally collapses. Post Mugabe look at who owns the land and the mines and look at how they came by them, will be a carbon copy of Russia.

Steve

 

[mhaze]

I didn't mean let's assume that the resources are not there, I meant let's not assume that they will always be there. I was referring to this quote, made earlier in the thread: "I don't think you can have true economic collapse as long as you have the resources needed to keep society running."

My point is, we can't know for sure that those resources will always be present, right? So if we're speculating on what collapse would look like, why presume that necessary resources will be present? Maybe economic collapse looks like dwindling resources?

Well, presume that gasoline goes to $10 a gallon, and the prices of food, having a component of fuel costs, goes up accordingly. Major changes occur including a lot of people can't heat their homes in the winter. But now presume that the price of gasoline goes to $20 a gallon (in current value dollars, it is irrelevant the numerical dollar count at the time of this scenario). Suppose further that $20 per gallon means the price of food in the stores exceeds peoples' ability to pay.

You got a problem, because food will only be delivered to the extent that people can pay for it. So the large cities simply don't get enough food, and this could be the worst in those large cities with high percentages of populations on welfare.

What happens then, I think qualifies as "economic collapse".