As countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, whom we purchase a fair amount of oil from as well as other trading, begin to back away from their commitments on the United States dollar, our economy will continue to sputter and eventually give out. The United Arab Emirates are only the first, of what is surely, many more countries to come in abandoning the dollar. The problem is the former business tycoon that was the United States is visibly on the way out – the United Arab Emirates were merely just the first foreign power to recognize this.

            Another plague on American business, our housing bubble. The housing bubble started around 2001 and is generally, in the most simplistic of explanations, consider the mass purchasing of housing in more population dense areas, it should be noted that the bubble does not only including these specific areas but it is believed to have originated from these larger areas like the suburbs of Chicago for instance. Around 2005 the market peaked, plateaued and then began a steep decline in the course of two years. The real problem is individuals attempting to live beyond their means, most likely from pressure from the media, regardless of how small, to have lavish and expensive things. As of 2002 the national credit card debt was over 60 billion dollars, with 1.2 billion credit cards in use. In 2003 1.3 million credit card holders filled for bankruptcy, which is no wonder the foreclosure rate started to rise and then spike in mid to late 2006 and has only picked up steam causing a crisis in the sub-prime, Alt-A, CDO, CDX, mortgage, credit, hedge fund, and even foreign bank markets. Some of the biggest investors, and even the major banks, like Bank of America, posted record losses for the past fiscal year.

            As business continues to decline our stock market will slowly come crashing down, much as it did causing the Great Depression. Perhaps at that point we will have as much to worry about from other countries and “terrorist” as we are lead to believe. After all, what would this nation be without the money to fund it’s military – our greatest asset? People need to take a stand, either by demanding the government change the laws it enforces for credit card companies or abolish the credit system as we know it all together. The government itself has a nasty credit card debt itself as well, almost 4 trillion of which comes from the Afghanistan/Iraq war. When 75% of the credit card companies penalize customers for paying off their debt early, you know something is wrong. To save the American economy and continue to have a business world as we know, we seriously need to reevaluate and then try to continue moving along with our lives.