Decades ago people led simple lives, many workers could get a job; be loyal and their employers would make sure the company was kept stable. Over time people began to realize that there was other options and began changing employers; employers started wanting 50 % or 300 % returns not 10 % results.
The age of monopolies went away and companies had a lot more competitors than before and market share plummeted. People saw insane investment strategies and risky ventures that were marketed to silly people with more money than brains. Many lost everything, but others got insanely rich.
Union bosses, lawyers and stockbrokers found that hoping on flights to Costa Rica tended to pay very well as long as you were seeking a permanent new life. Insider trading made trillions until the Government realized such practices were lowering peoples expectations and investments into the Stock Market.
Today it is a brave new world; in the new Millennium the Dot.Com bubble made ordinary people into millionaires. Life was perfect anything was possible as long as your had at least twelve credit cards, best of all never did those debts ever get called in.
One day in 2007 the banks realized people no longer had actual money. What had happened was peoples pay rises and bonuses were tied to performance. And this incentive system actually caused the problem; originally to make figures look better financial type people simply added a single zero to the end of numbers. No one seemed to notice that TEN dollars actually read as ONE HUNDRED dollars. No one noticed because no one was using money they were all just borrowing or running up accounts.
So the creative accounting people started adding TWO zeros; and life was good. People truly believed the Cold War was over, Cancer could be cured, no more children in poverty; Peace on Earth. Researchers even began investigating how Dogs and Cats could live together in Harmony. Simply Bliss and Utopia on Earth, the Golden Age. Those religious fanatics about Armageddon were wrong . . .
Then the impossible; someone actually counted the dollars in the vault for businesses and found instead of 100 million dollars, there was only one million dollars. People got curious and then people realized it was all " smoke and mirrors " deception. The finance people said, no nothing wrong it is just how we have done practice for years; just add more zeros. The government said, well we cannot prosecute everyone; therefore no one did anything wrong. So everyone saw their retirement investments and pensions evaporate over night.
This Recession went from 2007 till 2009 when officially all was good again, except people now realized the lies were nothing more than fear, propaganda and marketing the main three commodities America now sells, of course America sells pizzas and tires but they are insignificant compared to selling fear, propaganda and marketing.
The new age of the Great Depression has set in people stopped giving, stopped investing simply because they no longer had anything left to invest. People realized once those extra zeros from their accounts were removed they could no longer ever hope of owning their homes, simply no longer pay for them. Banks repossessed thousands of houses before they realized no one had money to buy them.
Governments introduced underwater loans, simply to keep people in their own homes because no one else could afford them; better to let that person live there forever instead of having more homeless and empty houses. Cites told hard working city employees they no longer could pay out their pension funds, large cities went bankrupt and people thought it cute how cities sold derelict bridges for cash simply to try and balance the budget.
Today you can get 3% on your money, of course if you actually have larger amounts and can choose to tie it up for years you can get 6 or 8 percent. So nothing previously known is still the same, you need inside knowledge to make money investing and no real existing companies truly have a new worth. Put another way, any truly proven profitable company is so expensive to by into you cannot afford the shares.
In our new world order the government just prints more money and Congress just introduces more stealth hidden taxes to keep the money flowing. This does nothing for the economy but it does keep the government running and that is the whole point. It is irrelevant people can no longer afford to put money into the economy, simply 75% of Americans have no real money nor assets and the other 25% are what runs the economy; the rich just get richer . . .
So some rich people invented cryptocurrencies and today there are over one thousand different internet monies like Bitcoin. Simply because criminals, or the government control the real fiat money, people wanted invisible money. For example "The Silk Road" was a Bitcoin funnel simply to move unseen irregular money around, after all drug dealers need to get paid too.
Reality says we will not need over one thousand cryptocurrencies, after all with 300 countries in the world there is only really 250 long term real fiat currencies. So traders buy and sell these cryptocurrencies to make money over time we will see which cyber coins live or fade away. But there are no real precedents, so since you can predict nothing why not a cryptocurrency that is actually linked to something real life a Social Media platform.
After all that is what the internet is about, exchanging information and influencing opinion. Steemit is the brave new world and whether you believe enough to buy Steem at this low price; there is one thing you can be sure off. Somewhere someone rich is watching Steemit as a prototype experimenter as they develop their own competitive future platform to try and make more money.
This is one fundamental idea; if someone is doing something, then it is probably because they believe their is some reward for doing it : )
/ hugz ; )
So if you have a spare few dollars; buy some Steem, however no one should borrow from loan sharks nor use more than 10% of their discretionary funds, in my humble opinion. And; if you think loan sharks are bad, credit cards are a worse option . . .