As I have said for years an economic collapse is NOT an event, it's a process. When people think of a historic crisis they usually imagine something like the stock market crash of 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression. However, there were numerous indicators and warning signs leading up to that crash that should have tipped people off. There were even a handful of economists that voiced concerns about impending instability, yet they were ignored.

Then, after the crash occurred numerous establishment economists denied that the system was in any real danger. They continually claimed that recovery was "right around the corner", but the recovery never materialized. Instead, the crash spiraled onward for over a decade until world war erupted, largely because the Federal Reserve raised interest rates into economic weakness (a disaster they have openly admitted to causing and a policy they are instituting right now).

The point is, the mainstream "experts" are almost always wrong. The skeptics of collapse either ignore the evidence or they don't comprehend the implications of events. They don't want to believe that the economy is broken and that consequences are possible. They operate from the limited view of their own personal experience. For most of their lives the system has functioned without catastrophe so that must mean catastrophe is impossible. In truth, catastrophe has merely been deferred to a later date, not prevented.

Our present day predicament has not reached Great Depression levels yet. We are currently in a stagflationary phase similar to what happened in the 1970s. For those that think we have it bad now, the 70s were actually far worse.

House prices nearly TRIPLED from 1970 to 1980 (the median house price was $17,000 in 1970 compared to almost $50,000 in 1980). Annual inflation on most goods and services was in the double digits and the minimum wage was only $1.45 an hour. Unemployment was high and interest rates were eventually hiked to around 20% by 1981.