Why Read: Because what is said is worth thinking about in order to determine what part of what is said you agree with and deal in a logical and unemotional way with going forward.

Featured Article and MP3: Celente - It's Absolutely Terrifying Where Society Is Headed On April 16 King World News interviewed Gerald Celente, founder of Trends Research. Interpreting what is said at a high level, the article and MP3 speak to the slow, creeping way obvious and not so obvious changes can occur in societies, and how one can wake up one morning and find the their world to be a different place than they perceived it to be the night before.

My Comments: As I read and listened to Mr. Celente, for me the phenomenon he discusses is nothing more or less than continual societal change where there can be more net positives, or alternately more net negatives in any given period of time - where some of those changes are more subtle than obvious, and some are more obvious than subtle.

One again, for many developed country 'Main Streets' there currently seem to be more 'net macro-economic negatives'. Hence everyone ought to be as informed as they possibly can be with respect to important macro-economic drivers including (to name but three):

• China's current and prospective real and nominal (inflation included) growth rate, and China's concurrent appetite for commodities;

• U.S. National Debt, Government Deficits (at the Federal, State and Municipal levels), Net Monthly Trade Deficits, Manufacturing Jobs, Housing Starts and Prices, and sustainable Consumer Spending levels; and,

• Ongoing Eurozone Sovereign Debt and Contagion Issues.

Many people either don't focus on these things because they adopt one or more of the following attitudes:

• consider them too complicated;

• are so involved with their day/day lives that they don't take the time to pay attention to them or develop an opinion about them;

• adopt an "it can't happen to me" attitude; or,

• Adopt an "I can't influence it so why bother worrying about it" attitude.

At a high level, things aren't all that complicated. What happens in concept and practice at a personal level likewise happens in concept and practice at a country, government (all levels), and individual level:

• the primary economic tenant is 'simple' - a budget has to be balanced with disposable income over time, or an individual (or family), a country, or a business runs into financial difficulty or worse; and,

• those who learn, think, worry about, form moving opinions on, and act on those opinions are less likely to 'economically die from a thousand cuts' than those who, like the proverbial lemming, follow the tail of the lemming ahead of them without thinking much if at all about where that 'lemming in front' is leading them.

Think hard about the title of this Commentary. It comes from the mouth of a smart Industrial Psychologist friend who, in the aftermath of a 'very bad day at the office' told me: "you can't imagine how many emotionally mixed-up, very high IQ people are out there flipping hamburgers".