Only a couple of short months after the last government shutdown closed national parks around the country, it looks like our friends in government ready to do it again.

With only a couple of days left before congress leaves for their winter break, neither side of the political aisle can agree on a bill to fund the government. After passing a temporary spending bill which stopped the last shutdown, two months later lawmakers find themselves in the same place, with another government shutdown only a month away.

As part of the short-term agreement that stopped the last shutdown in mid-October, Congress gave itself until Dec. 13 to reach a tentative deal at the committee level, and until Jan. 15 to pass a final budget. With only a few days left before congress goes on vacation, it looks like the country could be facing yet another partial shutdown of our government.

The last shutdown not only closed National Parks around the country, but it cost small business owners millions of dollars and forced a large number of companies to lay off employees during the shutdown. It’s estimated that over $76 million in lost visitor spending happened each day during the last shutdown.

But probably the biggest scandal was the shutdown of the National Parks. For the first time in our history, Americans were actually arrested for trying to enjoy their own National Parks. Barricades were setup, armed federal officers blocked entrance into the parks borders, and people who lived near government land were even thrown out of their homes.

How Much Can the Country Take?

With another possible government shutdown just around the corner, I wonder how much more this country can take. During the last shutdown it became more than clear that this government has no real plans to fix the country’s problems. We sit at over $17 trillion dollars in debt, and these guys are arguing over continuing to fund a government that can’t stop printing the funny money.

Not one person in Congress, or anywhere in government, has even tried to address the issue of how bad off this country really is.

Just last week China announced they were going to stop accumulating foreign-exchange reserves, it’s estimated that 60 percent of those reserves are held in dollar-denominated assets. With our country now more dependent on China than ever before, it seems our politicians have put us in a position that there’s almost no way out of.

Since 2001, our country has lost 5.1 million manufacturing jobs – 2.7 million of those jobs were lost to China. Not only has China become the number one buyer of U.S. debt, but they’ve destroyed what was once the largest manufacturing base in the world.

The erosion in manufacturing is one of the biggest reasons our economy is failing, and is also one of the biggest threats facing this country. Not only are we dead broke, but we now lack the manufacturing base to even build our own military weaponry.

But hey, at least Congress can give us another sideshow next month as they continue to sell us down the river. But for those who want to actually do something about the problem, I suggest really starting to prepare for a possible economic collapse. One way or another, this country is going to face some real economic problems in the very near future.