The Ultimate Money Guide for Bubbles, Busts, Recession, and Depression

Chapter 1. WHY THE TOUGH TIMES ARE JUST BEGINNING!

Despite the greatest government rescue operations of all time, America continues to suffer through the toughest of times.

The place is every home, business, and community. The time is now.

And the pattern is now clear: First a great speculative bubble ... then a great bust ... followed by massive government stimulus, bailouts, and money printing ... and then ... still another, even greater bubble and bust.

When all is said and done, some people make fortunes. But millions of average hard-working people lose their jobs, get evicted from their homes, sink deeper into debt, and even risk abject poverty.

Wall Street and Washington talk about recovery. But for nearly everyone on Main Street, the bubble-and-bust cycle is a roller coaster that begins to feel more like an on-again-off-again depression with each passing day.

No one under the age of 80 has ever had personal experience with a similar episode.

Nor have I. I was born in 1946, just as we were leaving the final vestiges of America's Great Depression behind. I've studied that historic period with books, charts, and numbers, but that's not the same thing. I spent years in Japan before and after their 20-year depression, but that, too, was different.

What truly brings me close to a visceral understanding of bubbles, busts, recessions, and depressions is the half century I shared with my father, J. Irving Weiss, one of the few economists who not only advised investors during the Great Depression, ...