Source: Bloomberg.com

Abandon hope, all ye who open this book. Michael J. Panzner, author of “Financial Armageddon,” is back with a new jeremiad on our cracked and out-of-joint times.

His outlook is grim. We stand on the cusp of what hedge- fund manager Barton Biggs would call “an episode of great wealth destruction,” Panzner writes in “When Giants Fall: An Economic Roadmap for the End of the American Era.” Things are already bad for Americans and they are going to get worse.

Working hours will rise and pay will fall, forcing many people to take two or even three jobs, he asserts. We’ll be traveling on foot — or by bicycle or boat. More and more of us will live in extended-family households, three generations under one roof. We’ll recycle rainwater, draw heat from the sun and eat food grown in our own gardens.

Tax revenue will slump, unraveling safety nets like Social Security and Medicare. Hospitals will shut. Police budgets will be slashed, crime will surge, more people will pack guns. The dollar and modern payment mechanisms may give way to “barter arrangements, alternative financial instruments and collective support networks,” he says.

“Like the other great spasms in our history, the one that now seems to be unfolding is unlikely to be narrow in scope, shallow in depth, or short-lived in duration,” he writes.

And so this book goes, with page after dystopian page outlining the decline of the U.S. and the splintering of the planet into brutish nation states fighting over dwindling stores of commodities, energy and water.

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