one eight

What are your predictions regarding:

1. N. Korea
2. Foley fallout/upcoming US elections
3. Gas Prices
4. US Housing market/economy

We can look back at this thread in the future, to see who had the best insight.

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-more than a number

Spunky

Smile when you bend over and spread your cheeks

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kane

1. N.Korea - not much more than talks. What else can we do short of a full blown invasion? When someone has the big stick you have to give them a little room. This is the country we should have worried about, not Iraq.

2. Foley fallout - it will cost the repubs a few seats at the least. Obviously his seat for starters. if it comes out that others knew about this and did nothing about it, it could be the direct cause of them losing others. As a whole it hurts them pretty bad because it seems like they have a new problem every week. Right now the republican party has more drama in it the GFY.

3. Gas prices - I think they will go up a little bit. OPEC has said it will cut production by a million barrels a day and that could cause a rise in prices. The repubs with fight like hell though to keep them from going up until after the election.

4. Us housing market/economy - I could write a thesis on this one, but I won't. Basically I will say this. The economy is cyclical. We have high points and low points. The key is controlling them so that we don't get too high and crash or too low and bottom out. The middle class is in trouble in this country. The middle class in this country was built on manufacturing jobs. These are jobs that people with a high school eduction could get and make enough money to own a home and raise a family. These jobs are disappearing. Companies are outsourcing and going to third world nations where they can hire 100 people for same wage that they paid 1 person in the US. The economy is growing, but many of the jobs that are being created are lower paying retail/service industry jobs. There is no real incentives for companies to keep their manufacturing jobs here.

With the housing boom and the drop in interest rates we saw a lot of people buying houses. Many of them went with variable rate mortgages. So as interest rates rise they will find themselves unable to pay for the houses. Also a lot of people basically used the low interest rates to get a fixed mortgage, but they bought the biggest house they could possibly afford. When the day comes around and that $20-$25 an hour manufacturing job goes away it will be almost impossible for them to get another job making that kind of money and they will lose thier house.

We will have a downturn in the economy, it always happens. How bad it will be depends on on a lot of factors. If we see a lot of people losing their jobs and having to take lesser paying jobs and losing their houses, it could get pretty ugly.