Predicting the Next Economic Downturn

December 24, 2009 by Clair Button.

I read in the news that Americans bought 12 BILLION rounds of ammunition this year, about 38 bullets per man, woman and child in this country. You might be surprised by that figure, but not if you live in my neck of the woods. The surge in bullet and gun purchases actually started during the 2008 elections. My neighbors got swept up in the right wing hysteria of internet rumors intended to get them out to vote.  The Republicans lost the election, but the media campaign generated record profits for gun and bullet manufacturing companies. TARP funds didn’t keep the economy from going to hell, it was us.

I doubt liberal easterners paid much attention.  A lot of them are asleep at the switch, anyway. But here in the west, most of us got weekly reminders – recycled email forwarded umpteen times.  While not exactly asleep at the switch, my friends forget who they mailed the message to the previous week.  Bob was not bright enough to check the list of names that Dave and Bubba used when they both sent the email to him. I was on their lists, too. Also, Mrs. Bob, Mrs. Dave, and Mrs. Bubba included me on their mail lists.  Everybody figured “what the heck, he’ll want to know this anyway, and if he got it before, he can just delete it.” Most of us didn’t even read it. We knew what it was about, anyway, and went right out and bought more bullets – each time.

Those damn Democrats were going to take our guns and make us get a criminal background check just to buy bullets. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the bullets after the Democrats had taken my guns, but I figured, what the heck, it can’t hurt to have a few more rounds.  Plus, I sure did not want to have anybody check into my background the next time I ran out of bullets, so I pulled out my wallet and beat them to the punch.

With all the reminders, I went out and bought 3 new pistols, 2 shotguns, an M-60 machine gun (slightly used) and a couple extra grenade launchers, too.  I already had enough automatic rifles and night-vision scopes. Don’t ask how many bullets I bought.  Somebody had to bring the national average up to 38. Those dumb-ass liberals back east didn’t do it.

Well, it looks like the rumors fizzled.  Nobody came to take my guns or ammo. So now, like most of my neighbors, I am sitting on an ammunition dump that will take out two square blocks of homes if we have a fire. The chain reaction that would set off in this town would probably make the Iraq war look like a picnic.

In other words, what we have out here in the west is a glut of stockpiled munitions. When my friends die, the estate sales alone will flood the market with guns, bullets, armored personnel carriers, and grenades.  I might pick up another machine gun or two if my neighbors die first, but eventually, even my guns will get back into the supply chain.

This is the beginning of the third dip in the economy, bigger than the commercial real estate bubble.  We are going to put a lot of national defense contractors out of business when we go. Be smart. Get out of the stock market now.

Disclaimer: Clair Button is not an investment adviser.  If you are dumb enough to take this as investment advice, you ought to check in to buying a burial plot instead of stocks. The odds are you probably don’t have long to live.

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