Does your well being depend upon the health of the financial markets? How well off will you be within the next year or the next five years? The truth of the matter is that an uncertain future, a natural disaster and/or a war between one or more countries will cause a bear market environment that adversely affects the health of one or more financial markets. When an economy of a particular country becomes sick and/or depressed investors take profits or sell short those businesses or commodities that are expected to decrease in value within the near future.
So too, a decrease in the economic activity of one or more countries can result in a short term or a long term recession or even an economic depression within those countries. There is no better recent example of the formation of a bear market than to study the causes for what is now being called “The Great Recession of 2008.”
The huge increase of the price of crude oil is the primary cause of “The Great Recession of 2008.” Such a large increase in such a short period of time caused people and businesses to spend more money to manufacture and ship products to the consumers of those products. The same thing happened when the Arabs stopped exporting crude oil to the United States of America in 1973. The shortage of motor fuels and heating oil caused the prices for all of the other consumer goods to increase while people did not earn enough money in which to pay for those goods and services that kept them healthy and alive.
To make matters worse, “Job Outsourcing” by the owners and the controllers of multinational corporations is a major contributor to the balance of payments deficit which has now increased to about 14,000,000,000,000 dollars and still growing. That’s fourteen trillion dollars of debt owed mainly to China because most of those outsourced jobs when to people in China, as did the bulk of the manufacturing jobs. Doing so caused hundreds of factory closures within the United States of America.
The end result of the above is that about 14,000,000 people are currently unemployed within the United States of America. Thousands of businesses went bankrupt. Tens of thousands of people have lost their home and are homeless or soon might be homeless, on the street with nothing to eat. The huge decrease in the value of the stocks of businesses that are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as other exchanges caused trillions of dollars of paper losses that were realized when subsequently sold to other investors.
Therein is one formula for a bear market and such market conditions will continue if the elected politicians within the United States of America do nothing to stop the business activities of the owners and the controllers of multinational corporations, together with putting an end to the greed of those who own the crude oil resources of the World. “We people of the United States of America” can do our part by buying only products that are made in the United States of America. Clearly, our elected politicians must put an end to “Job Outsourcing” and take steps to reduce the price of crude oil and/or our dependence upon that fossil fuel resource.