Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesus H Christ
Great post, seriously.
Look, I'm going to be straight up with you because I am an American born who's been to Russia many times totaling 9 months in a 6 year period and will be back there in late September. The reason I mention this is after reading your post and knowing the culture well, your English tells me in you've been here a long time and makes me wonder why you left? Meaning, you've only "lived" through part of the recovery unless you were an English professor? Obviously, this still makes your post incredibly valid and some wisdom we all should read/learn, because the greatest fear for anyone is always the unknown.
There will be an enormous difference from post Soviet Russia and a post default America. We are currently the world reserve currency and our collapse will cause a symbiotic collapses across the world. Meaning, post Soviet Russia had people to trade with as the outside world was at full steam ahead.
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I am not saying they are the same. A constant in "doom and gloom" business is that the hype is always exponentially greater than the reality.
My point was simply that the unthinkable happened and it was no big deal. Before it, people were worried about anarchy, a stray nuclear arsenal, a military revolt, a nation striking, communism coming back, a complete halt on foreign investment, a complete halt on foreign loans and so on and so forth. I could go on forever with the list of concerns. It was going to be the end of the Russian world, just at a time when they were starting to trust banks, inflation was coming under control and the currency was stabilizing, people were getting used to the idea of owning property, when people were trying to bring their money out of the shadows and so on.
My view is that when you get into the "this time its different" discussion, that's no different than voicing any other concern, no matter how reasonable or unreasonable. The hype and concern is always far worse than the reality. Anyone can find reasons why "this time its different" but at the end of the day, a free market adjusts very quickly, investors still invest, markets rebound, currencies recover etc.
Anyway, i seriously doubt the world would skip a beat. I've watched this all happen first hand. The housing market has already collapsed in the US. Did anyone's lives end? Was the world forever changed? Nope. People who couldn't afford the homes they were in lost them. People who couldn't afford their investment properties let them go. Others just walked away from properties under water. It was about as much of a complete meltdown of the housing market as this country has ever seen and at the end of the day, it meant very little in the grand scheme of things.