Very few Americans have ever thought about the prospect of an economic depression or collapse so severe that it could result in riots like those we’ve seen in the middle east and Europe over the last year.

But while most of our countrymen have had their heads in the sand, alternative news media has been warning about the possibility of civil unrest, riots, violence and even martial law if the economy continues on its unabating downward trajectory.

It seems that the realities of what we face are starting to reach the mainstream, as Mayor Bloomberg of New York recently noted on WOR Newstalk 710:

The public is not happy. The public knows there’s something wrong in this country. And there is. The public does not know what, necessarily, or disagrees on what, doesn’t know how to fix it, or disagrees on what the fix should be.

The bottom line is they are upset.

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Economic disasters tend not to be an overnight thing.

The damage to this country from our immigration policy will last for decades. The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs will go on for many, many years. It all sort of us — there’s no one event…

We are really making ourselves have less of a future than we could have.

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You have a lot of kids graduating college that can’t find jobs. That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.

…There’s no overnight solution. You create these problems over long periods of time…

While we disagree with Mayor Bloomberg’s approach to a host of issues, we agree with his view that riots will hit the streets of America if we can’t resolve our economic, fiscal, political, social and monetary problems.

Unemployment is a big part of it, but it won’t be the only driver of civil unrest. For now, if you’re unemployed you have assistance in the form of modern day soup lines – food stamps, welfare, government health care, social security and rental assistance. It’s when there’s either no more money to send checks to those without jobs, or, when the prices of goods rise so high that it effectively cuts subsistence checks by 50% or more, that we will see Americans rise up in the streets.

In our view, it’s a foregone conclusion. It’s is no longer a question of if civil unrest will happen. It’s only a question of when.

There is no easy fix and we’re going to experience some serious pain one way or another. We suspect Mr. Bloomberg and many of our elected officials already know this. This is why our government is conducting military exercises designed specifically for large-scale economic breakdown and civil unrest, and this is why they are arming our local police forces with assault weapons, tanks, and drones.