For readers who have tired of Rick’s Picks’ sugar-coated predictions for the economy, here’s a despairing jeremiad from that irrepressible bear’s bear, Erich Simon. Is there any escaping the grim future that he foresees?  Only on the planet Mars, perhaps (but even there, the dust can kill you).  Here’s Erich, with a take on the endgame that some readers may find all too plausible:

When you look at the political leadership in the U.S., it is in complete dis-harmony. In-fighting, finger pointing, fragmentation, bickering, squabbling, separation, individualism, heterogeneity, split, divided, dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself — all the hallmarks of a people in breakdown caught inside the walls of a collapsing and imploding economic environment, fueled by resource depletion and gross mismanagement. That’s » Read the full article