MY 2015 WORRY LIST

Instead of making predictions for the New Year I will simply create a list of things I am concerned with for the coming year.  In this world controlled by large conglomerates that have huge caches of money , that are pursing goals we often know little about and in some cases never find out about till it's too late to stop them.  It is impossible to make predictions that will come to pass

THE ECONOMY:
 The stock market at all time highs being the most published of economic indicators that we are led to believe is do to actual market activities is actually being driven by trick vehicles used to outright manipulate the markets in a direction to bring in corporate cash . Stock buybacks, derivatives, fast track trading , insider trading make it an impossibility to predict how the markets will act in 2015.
The market is quite simply a house of cards , and it will fall , but when , who knows.

For 30+ years a coordinated attack on the American working man has been underway and it is well on the way to accomplish their end game.  6000 factories and their blue collar jobs have disappeared from the work place to be replaced by minimum wage service jobs , which provide just the minimums of life.  30% of 18 to 34 year olds are living with their parents out of necessity. If your 50 and over your chances of getting a new job are slim. If you are successful in finding one you will be making less than 20K per year.  Unemployment rate actually is around the 23% mark and has been there for 3 years with not a lot of hope for the future .

Pensions that were once a major part of our working life have been disappearing .  Killed off by mergers, bankruptcies, legislation and other means to simply take away the benefits that have been earned through our service to our employers.  Nobody is safe from this movement.  Even the largest pension funds are under attack, California government workers, teachers .  Of course if your pension gets fried you have little choice on how to accumulate enough money to retire on.

To sum it up , we have an economy  being run by and for the 1% instead of serving all  the  people.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS:
The SHIFT TO ASIA being touted by the Obama administration has turned into a not very well concealed attempt to take Russia out of the world picture and China with it.  The badly concealed attempt to get Russia to cross the line on Ukraine not only has failed but as sent Russia out into the world making big deal after , big deal to counter sanctions placed on them by US.  Confused, I don't blame you. Damn near the same day of removing sanctions on Cuba because they haven't worked in 50 years we turn around and put sanctions on Russia. The Obama brain trust did not look very closely at Russian options to counter the sanctions, relying on the threat of nuclear war as the big hammer to pull Russia into line.  With most of the EU is desperate economic straights , taken their by out crooked banks are in little mood for a land war in Europe.  So we sit here and wait for the outcome , waiting to see who will win this game.

I look at our foreign affairs and I see a child going thru a zoo poking sticks into every animal in the zoo to anger them into attacking.  That about sums up our foreign policies.  Afghanistan , Iraq, Ukraine, Iran and lots of smaller actions that make us hated over most of the world.

It looks today that Russia has out maneuvered us in this latest Game of Thrones game.  In trying to control world energy resources we have in fact pushed some big players into the Russian tent. Time will tell who wins this game.

AMERICAN LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The last 30+ years have driven the average working man from a position of financial security into a stance for some that you can only call desperate.  Job gone, pension gone, health care gone, a decent wage gone , generally gone. house gone. self respect gone.  This group is very large, one has to think that this group watching the world of the 1% getting richer and richer , while they get poorer and poorer cannot not be a recipe for a peaceful society.  When 59% of the workforce earning minimum wage , with all hands in the family working sometimes two and three jobs , leaving no family time, no hope for a future, they toil away with only hope left to drive them.

So here we sit with huge unemployment , low incomes, little chance of improvement , we are told you need to get more education and the masses set out to run up huge debts for college education.  But wait a BA is not enough, you need a MA and so you run up your bill into a huge monkey on your back when it come payback time.  Then the real ballbuster hits, you have done all the abobe and graduated with a MA only to find out that what once looked like a viable career path now provides damn few opportunities , so back to living with your parents.

When looking at career paths of the future there are damn few good paying ones left to choose from.  While you are out busting your ass to get a career, the 1% are out inventing machines to replace the job you are now doing.  Somewhere I read that in a decade half of current jobs will no longer exist.

Which leaves the question, what the hell are we going to do with all these unemployed or under employed people.  If the current atmosphere of not wanting to offer support to these people presents us with the threat of a revolt highly probable.

On top of all this we sit and watch our government armor up our police forces with combat weapons which seems to have changed the temperament of the cops to one that goes straight to deadly violence.   An example : A kid on a playground waving around a gun, cops respond and shoot the child dead in 2 seconds.  There seems to be more and more of these actions which appear to be aimed at the black community.  It is just a matter of time before this turns ugly.  Remember 1968?

I am worried about the apparent need for instant gratification in our daily lives.  Watch folk young and old alike walk down the street , face in their iphone, oblivious of all around them   They sit side by side on park benches tweeting one another , The  spoken word is disappearing.  Iphones, compuers and tablets gain our attention while our  MSM delivers the one or two top stories of the day over and over again supported by tweets and other citizen inputs, essentially makes so called news immaterial.
We watch our world where student loans have to be paid, no bankruptcies for them , Meantime company after company goes bankrupt , while stealing retirement funds, busting pay checks, shedding jobs while the masses are harassed by loan collectors.

There is more to be said but this is a start, over the year I will attempt to address areas of concern to me in the hopes I can cause you to react.