“Total collapse can’t happen in America because I don’t want it to. Plus, it has never happened before so it can’t happen. I feel warm and fuzzy about our future.” That is called, the “normalcy bias” and will end up killing many Americans when financial depression and inflation take control.
When hyperinflation smacked Germany in the 1920s, Germans carried a bag full of German marks to purchase a loaf of bread. One family took a wheel barrow full of money to the grocery store for their weekly supplies but could not get the wheel barrow through the door. Leaving the wheel barrow full of money at the door, they went into the store to get bags and discovered upon their return, that their wheel barrow had been stolen and the money dumped on the sidewalk! Prices doubled every two days!
By 1923, the highest German banknote denomination was one hundred trillion marks! The German mark was so worthless, they were literally used for wallpaper, and housewives fed banknotes into their stoves because the banknotes burned longer and were less expensive than firewood
When inflation was at its peak, it took 4 trillion German marks to purchase one U.S. dollar! One of the printing companies submitted a bill of 33 quintillion marks to the German Reich bank for their printing of the German marks!
In 1946, the Hungarian National Bank issued a bank note for 100 quintillion, and in July, prices doubled every 15 hours! In 2008, Zimbabwe prices doubled every five days.
Are Americans and Canadians ready for recession, rationing, rebellion, rage, riots, and rampage? We will experience a time of reckoning and reaping what we have sown. Deflation, stagnation, and inflation will probably ravage the world.
This never-before-seen disaster will bring America to her knees, which might be exactly what God has planned for us. When the television is turned off, God will get our attention.
No one wants to believe America and the world are on a toboggan slide to destruction where lives will be irrevocably changed forever but I believe it is coming. I do not believe “America’s best days are ahead of us.” The chaos taking place in Greece (bank runs, anarchy, and joblessness), Cyprus, Italy, and Spain will be replayed in America. It’s a fact that “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” and it is equally true that “The gain in Spain goes mainly down the drain.” That is obviously happening in the US today
Few Americans will agree with me since a total financial collapse in America has never happened before. After all, this is America! We always come out on top. We are a special nation in God’s eyes. No worry. Be happy. Turn the television on and hand me a drink.
That attitude is called; “the normalcy bias” and it can kill.
The normalcy bias refers to a mental attitude people have when facing a disaster. It causes people to refuse to admit the evident facts they are facing. Because it has never happened here, it is not going to happen. It makes people close their eyes to approaching disaster and the tragic results. They always take hope in any small possible idea of making it less dangerous and less likely for a disaster to happen. They deceive themselves into an almost euphoric state. Their eyes and minds are closed to any possible danger. Like the ostrich with its head in the sand (not in real life), it becomes more exposed to danger. The progressive steps are deceit, defiance, disaster, and destruction.
This kind of thinking (or non-thinking) has been seen in many disasters when people were ordered to evacuate their homes but refused to do so knowing they were in the path of a storm or fire. In fact, studies reveal that 70% of people call others before deciding to leave the place of danger!
The normalcy bias was obvious in Nazi Germany where the Jews knew that their Jewish friends and neighbors were taken away during the night and never heard from again. They had heard about the concentration camps, but the most civilized, even “Christian” nation in Europe, could not stoop to commit such atrocities on innocent people. About 100,000 Jews left Germany by 1935 but about half a million remained. The atrocities continued to accelerate until it was too late. It was impossible, but it happened.
I am convinced chaos is ahead: riots, race wars, no gas deliveries, no food in the grocery stores (as someone said, “Americans are 15 meals from killing for food.”), utilities available a few hours each day, martial law and suspension of civil rights, mass arrests, gang control of many cities, neighbor fighting neighbor, closed highways, etc.
When governments fail along with the economy, authority disappears and the void is filled with anger, apathy, and anarchy. Get prepared for disaster ahead as much as possible: pay off your bills, put aside some food and water, medicines, tools, and plant a garden. After all, when God finished creating the universe, the world, all animals, and man–He planted a garden (Gen.:8)! If God planted a garden, don’t you think we should follow His example?
I can almost hear the run-away “train” coming down the track. Get out of the way!
Copyright 2012, Don Boys, Ph.D.
No comments:
Post a Comment