Most of us look at the end of the year, reflect on the past, and look into the future. Many of us have resolutions to do things better in the coming year.

At The Prickly Pear, we look at the economic horizon and we see storm clouds. That does not bode well for a society that is already badly divided and where one side seems to delight in unleashing criminals on the rest of us.

Economic trauma tends to make social stability more difficult in any case, but especially so when lawbreaking has been made into a form of acceptable social protest.

Therefore, we plan to use more space in the coming year on two topics: personal finance and personal safety.

We will explain later in greater detail why personal finance needs to be front and center. But the short version is this: given the recent election results and the betrayal of the House Republicans by Mitch McConnell, we just don’t see any principled and effective resistance to further spending on top of the excesses we have already seen. The result will likely be a recession and a severe debt crisis.  Likely we are too far along in this debt crisis now to resolve it without great pain. We had each better take care of ourselves or we won’t have much left with which to help the country.

In terms of crime, the Democrats have an agenda to change both the prosecutorial system, and the prison system, and attempt to redefine crime for the sake of “equality.” Couple this with probable privation, and you have a toxic mixture quite likely to lead to rising crime and a risk to private and public safety.

Therefore, we will be producing more articles on both subjects and increasing the number of videos on the subject as well.

We don’t wish to start off the new year on a pessimistic note, but we prefer to think of it as enlightened realism.

The good news is the debt crisis will likely be the only thing that brings our political elite to their senses. The bad news is, the rest of us are going to have to get through it.

If you prepare well and the worst does not happen, no harm, no foul. However, if you get caught blindsided, you may not be able to recover. Thus, a good dose of realism is the best posture to take at this time.