Right now, we are witnessing a truly historic collapse of the economy, and yet most Americans do not understand what is going on. One of the biggest reasons why the American people do not understand what is happening to the economy is because our politicians and the mainstream media are not telling the truth. Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke keep repeating the phrase "economic recovery" over and over, and this is really confusing for most Americans because things sure don't seem to be getting much better where they live. There are millions upon millions of Americans that are sitting at home on their couches right now wondering why they lost their jobs and why nobody will hire them. Millions of others are wondering why the only jobs they can get are jobs that a high school student could do. Families all across America are wondering why it seems like their wages never go up but the price of food and the price of gas continue to skyrocket. We are facing some very serious long-term economic problems in this country, and we need to educate the American people about why the collapse of the economy is happening. If the American people don't understand why they are losing their jobs, why they are losing their homes and why they are drowning in debt then they are going to keep on doing all of the same things that they have been doing. They will also keep sending the same idiot politicians back to Washington to represent us. There are some fundamental things about the economy that every American should know. The American people need to be shocked out of their entertainment-induced stupor long enough to understand what is really going on and what needs to be done to solve our nightmarish economic problems. If we do not wake up enough Americans in time, the economic collapse that is coming could tear this nation to shreds.
The U.S. economy was once the greatest economic machine in modern world history. It was truly a wonder to behold. It worked so well that entire generations of Americans came to believe that America would enjoy boundless prosperity indefinitely.
But sadly, prosperity is not guaranteed for any nation. Over the past several decades, some very alarming long-term economic trends have developed that are absolutely destroying the economy. If dramatic changes are not made soon, a complete and total economic collapse will be unavoidable.
Unfortunately, the American people will never agree to fundamental changes to our economic and financial systems unless they are fully educated about what is causing our problems. We have turned our backs on the principles of our forefathers and the principles of those that founded this nation. We have rejected the ancient wisdom that was handed down to us.
It has been said that those that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.
We are about to experience the consequences of decades of really bad decisions.
Hopefully we can get the American people to wake up.
The following are 50 things that every American should know about the collapse of the economy....
#1 Do you remember how much was made of the "Misery Index" during the presidency of Jimmy Carter? At that time, the "Misery Index" was constantly making headlines in newspapers all across the country. Well, according to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, if we calculated unemployment and inflation the same way that we did back during the Carter administration, then the Misery Index today would actually be higher than at any point during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
#2 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006. Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month.
#3 According to the Wall Street Journal, there are 5.5 million Americans that are currently unemployed and yet are not receiving unemployment benefits.
#4 All over America, state and local governments are selling off buildings just to pay the bills. Investors can now buy up government-owned power plants, prisons and municipal buildings from coast to coast. For example, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey recently sold off 16 government buildings (including the police and fire headquarters) just to pay some bills.
#5 When Americans think of "government debt", most of them only think of the federal government, but it is not just the federal government that has a massive debt problem. State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.
#6 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
#7 Credit card usage in the United States is on the increase once again. During the month of March, revolving consumer credit jumped 2.9%. Sadly, it looks like Americans have not learned their lessons about the dangers of credit card debt.
#8 Last year, Social Security ran a deficit for the first time since 1983, and the "Social Security deficits" in future years are projected to be absolutely horrific.
#9 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#10 Right now we are watching what could potentially be the worst Mississippi River flood ever recorded play out right in front of our eyes. One agricultural economist at Mississippi State University believes that this disaster could do 2 billion dollars of damage just to farms alone.
#11 The "tornadoes of 2011" that we just saw in the southeast United States are being called the worst natural disaster that the U.S. has seen since Hurricane Katrina. It has been estimated that up to 25 percent of all of the poultry houses in Alabama were either significantly damaged or destroyed. It is also believed that millions of birds were killed.
#12 The economic effects of the BP oil spill just seem to go on and on and on. The number of very sick fish in the Gulf of Mexico is really starting to alarm scientists. The following is how one local newspaper recently described the situation....
Scientists are alarmed by the discovery of unusual numbers of fish in the Gulf of Mexico and inland waterways with skin lesions, fin rot, spots, liver blood clots and other health problems.
#13 The number of "low income jobs" in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
#14 All over America, hospitals that care for the poor and needy are so overwhelmed and are so broke that they are being forced to shut down. Recently, a local newspaper in Florida ran an article about two prominent charity hospitals in Illinois that have served the poor for more than 100 years but are now asking for permission to shut down....
Two charity hospitals in Illinois are facing a life-or-death decision. There's not much left of either of them - one in Chicago's south suburbs, the other in impoverished East St. Louis - aside from emergency rooms crowded with patients seeking free care. Now they would like the state's permission to shut down.
#15 The U.S. dollar is in such bad shape that now even Steve Forbes is predicting that the U.S. is "likely" to go back to a gold standard within the next five years.
#16 Most Americans don't realize how much the U.S. dollar has been devalued over the years. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $115.93 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $454.36 today.
#17 Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.
#18 U.S. oil companies will bring in about $200 billion in pre-tax profits this year. They will also receive about $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks from the U.S. government.
#19 It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year. Their biggest customer is the United States.
#20 According to the Pentagon, there are minerals worth over a trillion dollars under the ground in Afghanistan. Now, J.P. Morgan is starting to tap those riches with the help of the U.S. military.
#21 Speaking of J.P. Morgan, most Americans don't realize that they are actually the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. In fact, the more Americans that go on food stamps the more money that J.P. Morgan makes.
#22 When 2007 began, there were about 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are over 44 million on food stamps, and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#23 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#24 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
#25 The financial system is more vulnerable today than it was back in 2008 before the financial panic. Today, the world financial system has been turned into a giant financial casino where bets are made on just about anything you can possibly imagine, and the major Wall Street banks make a ton of money from this betting system. The system is largely unregulated (the new "Wall Street reform" law has only changed this slightly) and it is totally dominated by the big international banks. The danger from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them "financial weapons of mass destruction". It is estimated that the "derivatives bubble" is somewhere in the neighborhood of a quadrillion dollars, and once it pops there isn't going to be enough money in the entire world to bail everyone out.
#26 Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.
#27 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#28 In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China was "scrap and trash".
#29 All over the United States, many of our once great manufacturing cities are being transformed into hellholes. In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.
#30 During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.
#31 New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
#32 America's real estate crisis just seems to get worse and worse. U.S. home prices have now fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble.
#33 According to a new report from the AFL-CIO, the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.
#34 The European debt crisis could cause a global financial collapse like the one that we saw in 2008 at any time. The world economy is incredibly interconnected today, and the United States would not be immune. A recent IMF report stated the following about the growing sovereign debt crisis in Europe....
Strong policy responses have successfully contained the sovereign debt and financial-sector troubles in the euro area periphery so far. But contagion to the core euro area and then onward to emerging Europe remains a tangible risk.
#35 According to one study, the 50 U.S. state governments are collectively 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations.
#36 A different study has shown that individual Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
#37 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
#38 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#39 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#40 The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011. Thanks to our politicians, U.S. taxpayers are standing behind that debt.
#41 The U.S. government is over 14 trillion dollars in debt and the budget deficit for this year is projected to be about 1.5 trillion dollars. However, if the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
#42 Most Americans don't understand that the Federal Reserve and the debt-based monetary system that it runs are at the very heart of our economic problems. All of this debt is absolutely crushing us. The U.S. government spent over 413 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2010, and it is being projected that the U.S. government will be shelling out 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019.
#43 Standard & Poor’s has altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from "stable" to "negative" and is warning that the U.S. could soon lose its AAA rating.
#44 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
#45 U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#46 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
#47 According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was "getting better" at this time last year. Today, that number is at just 27 percent.
#48 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.
#49 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#50 The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.
“DO WHAT YOU KNOW WORKS. Organized Labor, a progressive tax rate, and strong regulation led to the boom of the fifties and the sixties.”
Not true. After WWII ended, the government CUT SPENDING by over a trillion dollars. John Maynard Keynes nearly had a heart attack and foretold disaster. However, the result was massive gains in prosperity and peace. The kind that John Kenneth Galbraith and the sixties generation all condemned. Keep in mind that in the fifties there was no EPA, Medicare, etc. It’s simply a matter of the fact that much of this countrie’s problems stem from the gimme gimmes and desire for instant gratification. Lack of self-control is what has led to this country’s collaps. Nothing else.
“Not true. After WWII ended, the government CUT SPENDING by over a trillion dollars. John Maynard Keynes nearly had a heart attack and foretold disaster.”
I think it fascinating that so many Keynes bashers seem to think they can spout obvious, blatant lies. It’s not that hard to fact check claims like this and find out that….
- Keynes expected spending cuts once WWII ended because governments always cut spending following a war. He wasn’t surprised by the United States’ postwar budget at all and he certainly didn’t nearly have a heart attack
- Keynes expected the spending cuts to have a negative effect on the economy, but he never predicted they would bring about “disaster”.
- He also said that the high saving rates of the war years would help mitigate the slump following the cuts. There was a lot of pent up demand waiting to be released when people started spending again.
Oh, and there’s one more thing. I’ve noticed that Keynes’ detractors never seem to bring it up. It’s almost as if they don’t want people to know about it….
- THERE WAS A RECESSION IN 1945.
Washington D.C. is not America. Yes, D.C. will collapse and the States will reorganize. Restore currency, work to a triple AAA rating. Possibly using precious metals or cheaper metals to back the new treasury notes. We need to De-fund the U.N. cut all foreign aid, and worry about ourselves. The Fair Tax is a good start. Contact your reps to support it.
This has nothing to do with republicans or democrats. The downfall of this country can be directly attributed to CORPORATIONS!!! They move all of our jobs to India, China, and Mexico…and do you actually think these CORPORATIONS would lower the price of their products because they are being produced so cheaply? Hell no!
As a nation, we don’t make anything but weapons and debt anymore. There will be a time when we can’t pay our debt anymore and others will follow…hello WWIII. Get ready and start buying gold.
Our present capitalist economic, social and political system is a victim of its own success. With the robotic and electronic revolution well under way we are replacing manual and mental labor as we know it. And that is not a bad thing. If we can get machines to do the back breaking work in the factories, mines etc. then that should be a plus for humanity. But unfortunately they haven’t figured out how to get the robots to buy back what they produce. And with a system still based on the premise that you have to have a job to earn a wage to buy the necessaries of life and there are no jobs….you have an irreconcilable contradiction. The profits and market system can no longer function to meet the needs of the majority of society. With Globalization there is an evening up process with the spread of the technology. And rather then bringing the rest of the worlds workers up to the living standard we have enjoyed…our standard of living is being driven down to theirs. I used to think it was a big conspiracy by the elite but now I believe that every economic system has its own objective motion and laws. They think that if they just throw more of our taxpayer money at the problem it will go away. Democracy in this country has been reduced to merely casting a vote. Every 4 years they let us decide which of their leaders is going to mislead us for another 4 years. To enjoy the fruits of democracy the average person would have to have access to the tools of democracy. Television, print, radio. The only folks who have that access are the millionaires and billionaires. Michael Moore is right in demanding economic democracy. The democratic right to a job, house, food, healthcare and that elusive right to human happiness. You can call it a cooperative society, socialism, communism, or a duck. Bring it on!
Why are none of these claims footnoted and a validated source referenced? I really would like the source for #15. I have actually seen interviewed about this saying EXACTLY the opposite. If the US went back to a gold standard, and had to back every dollar to an equiv. amount of gold, you would see a collapse beyond anything suggested in this article, above. There has never been enuf gold mined in the entire world (I can verify this info, and have on other posts) to back the currency in the US economy. The economy still is GIGANTICALLY large now compared to what it was when the gold standard ended, and the only reason it could grow was b/c it was no longer tethered to a limited supply of gold; it was set free of that and allowed to expand based on our wealth of skills and knowledge and productivity. Everything else said in the post, above, should be brought into question 1. w/o footnotes for the claims, and 2. based on the #15 statement. My bullshit meter lit up when I saw that one.
If we do go back to the G/S(and we will) The lifestyles of most Americans we be pushed back 60 to even 100 years. Most Americans have taken for granted the air and heat always ready to use at home, or leaving the t.v. on when it’s not being watched, lights, everything! We live far above our means with no way to keep paying for it all. So when the G/S comes back, most people will have a hard time re-verting back to paying for everything upfront, no credit cards, and literally most people will have to rely on trades as well as small farms for each home to keep food on the table.
When this does happen, a large number of people will simply die of starvation as well as exposure, a lot of people will even kill others to take or protect what they have.
Far to many Americans have for years taken advantage of the special benefits that our government offers, simply because they can.
Here is what I see. There are many people in this great country that are taking advantage of th benefits offered to them because they are poor! I know plenty of people who are living together but not married, claiming that they have no way to support themselves. They live better than I do with an above average income and yet, every month, they get funds deposited on a card so they can buy food and other things (not to mention the amount they receive would buy steak every day of the week) And their rent is paid for them, they get all kind of government subsidies and live in nicer homes and drive nicer cars than I do. All the while, we are paying taxes and supporting them! It makes me sick. I have reported this fraud numerous times(with specific people not just in general), but nothing seems to change. We need to make people more accountable!
You’re either an idiot or a liar. I live on food stamps, and it pays for old bread and canned vegetables for maybe twenty days, when supplemented by dumpster-diving. The rest of the time, I eat whatever I find growing along the road.
A lot of true facts, but like so many other people, no answers. I blame people like you just as much as I do anyone else for the state that this great country is in. There may be a lot of folks out there that would like to be a part of pulling America up by its bootstraps and showing the world the great country we are. People like you discourage them in that you through a lot of facts out there about the way things are, you offer little, if anything in the way of solutions. The solutions are tough and will call for much sacrifice, but we can do it, this is America!!!!!
Wake up and stop playing the blame game. We are all
complacent cause we were sold on a dream that was nothing more then a dellusion. Inequality is a large part of the monetary system even though our
constitution says all men are created equal we have
to know by now this is nothing but foolishness. If
we want a world where all men are created equally we have to fight for it, sacrifice for it and maybe
even die for it. We are living in a dream world of
materialism pasified by corporate controlled media,
government and the american dream which are all BS.
These evil heirarchies are responsible for the mess
we now find ourselves in and unless we grow some balls to unite against our common enemy we will only decay into an inevitable apocalypse. We will never be able to change a system that they created
and it seems our only hope is to destroy them, create an economy based on resources dedicated to
the necessities of life, equal standards of living, sustainability for our children and happiness based
on universal cooperative understanding!
join the American Third Position the only party that is willing to represent the people of america.
I hope you don’t mind my musical insight regarding the economy . Song title – They Did The Wild Life Boogie .
http://www.orangetvfl.net/mickey-carroll/they-did-the-wild-video_3b4f15e27.html
Mickey Carroll
Grammy Nominee
Gold Record Recipient
300 people attend a major city’s council meeting and this is BIG News. 300,000 turn out for a parade to honor a basketball team. You get the Government you deserve.
America weeps!!!
Of the thirty or so correct statements in here, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM WAS CAUSED BY BUSH ONE AND BUSH TWO. President Obama was STARTING to bring us back to an even keel, when the crooked billionaires, panicked at the thought of having to pay even one percent more in taxes, bribed to Supreme Sores to allow unlimited money from all over the world to be funneled to elections of repugnant-baggers to protect their bushiosi tax handout giveaways. So we ended up with crybaby Boeh-ner and Cornyn-hole, throwing two-year-old tantrums over the very idea that Murdoch (whose pimps hacked into the phones of dead soldiers and deleted personal messages to their families, looking for tabloid dirt) should have to pay taxes on his propaganda media network instead of donating that hundred million directly to the politicians he owns. Why, his personal pimp might have to get an actual job instead of spending all his time falsifying videos about ACORN!
The repukeli-teabagging-libertards are now officially joined at the hip with the neo-klan-nazi A3P. Here’s hoping they all have a convention together and the minimum-wage waiters they sneer at put strychnine in their steak.
Among the many reasons for the economic collapse of the U.S., one seldom commented upon is that of the basic psychology of the common thief or bank robber to “go where the money is.” Expert safecracker Willie Keeler was once asked why he robbed banks, and he quite reasonably answered, “That’s where the money is!” During the long economic boom following WWII, the USA concentrated more wealth in shorter period of time than any nation in history – but we forgot to bar the door and lock the windows. The looters rushed in, suitably disguised as bankers, businessmen, politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and so on – and the rest is history. The carcass is almost picked clean now. There is a silver lining, however, which is that once we are broke and destitute, the looters will move on to fresh game, perhaps in China or elsewhere. We’ll have become an American version of Somalia by then, but at least the thieves may devote less attention to us. The moral of the story for us, should we have the chance to rebuild our nation, is to design our national institutions to be more robust in terms of moral and economic security. We will have to sacrifice some wealth and efficiency to do so, but these will be worth the cost in fewer sleepless nights.
Whatever. Until all wealth is distributed evenly and people can live like humans, don’t expect much. Greed is universal. So is sin.
I have been following this whole financial problem in the United States in relation to Bible prophecy. I read several articles that point to the US not being involved in the End Time events. One article refers to the upcoming events that will happen in the next year: http://howlongolord.com/?p=36
Out of all the prophecies in the Bible, all have been precise and happened exactly as foretold.
From Forbes Magazine:
Muslim Prophecy
forbes magazine link
“Is Barack Obama the ‘promised warrior’ coming to help the Hidden Imam of Shiite Muslims conquer the world?” asked columnist Amir Taheri in Forbes. “The question has made the rounds in Iran since last month, when a pro-government website published a Hadith (or tradition) from a Shiite text of the 17th century. The tradition comes from Bahar al-Anvar (meaning Oceans of Light) by Mullah Majlisi, a magnum opus in 132 volumes and the basis of modern Shiite Islam.
“According to the tradition, Imam Ali Ibn Abi-Talib (the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law) prophesied that at the End of Times and just before the return of the Mahdi, the Ultimate Saviour, a ‘tall black man will assume the reins of government in the West.’ Commanding ‘the strongest army on earth,’ the new ruler in the West will carry ‘a clear sign’ from the third imam, whose name was Hussein Ibn Ali. The tradition concludes: ‘Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us.’”
The Khomeinist establishment in Iran sees Obama’s rise as another sign of the West’s decline and the triumph of Islam and the return of the Mahdi.
I’m one of those Americans who has at least 10 credit cards. (Two of them are tied to my Hong Kong bank accounts– Bank of East Asia and Hang Seng Bank. The rest are from American banks). But this is not a big deal. Having a credit card is not a problem; it’s a good thing. In my personal experience, credit cards never EVER under any circumstances charge fees or interest, and they ALWAYS offer cash back bonuses or other perks. (I’m willing to admit that other people have different experiences, but I can’t live my life according to them. So I’m stuck with my own personal experience, however inadequate).
#16… well, a phone call that would have cost you $20 in the 1970s costs you $0.20 today, and a computer that would have cost you $1,000,000 in the 1970s costs under $1000 today (and is about 98% smaller, too).
You have to be able to take care of yourself and many can’t. The government can not take care of you. Grow a garden for food, have a safe place to go and get a generator for power. Learn to sew to make clothes, get ready to go it alone again. Lean to hunt, fish and be self sufficient.
Let me get this straight. We are a democracy and we owe trillions of dollars in loans that we cannot repay…to a dictatorship government? Am I stupid if I were of the opinion that dictatorships are founded on atheism and that our greed and collective crimes as a nation and selfishness demonstrated a course reflective of an atheistic attitude, and that we can no longer alter the consequences that have begun to unravel and we will soon collapse and be one day conquered and become a slave nation? And that as prophesied in the bible not even the rich will be saved by their riches from the wrath that is to come?
It is a shocking fact that “The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third (33%) 0f all the wealth in the United States.”
Nothing surprises me! I hate living in a world so bent on destroying itself! Nobody knows anything noone wants to know and knowbody cares!
Someday we will realize that we should have done things to stop the flames of destruction before the world was enveloped in greed, worry, wars and poverty more then at any time since the dark ages! Ignorance is really the parent
of destruction and not bliss at all! Many also believe that there is time to fix things or let our leaders fix this cause that’s what they get paid for but nothing could be farther from the truth! Noone likes being taken for a sucker but
the American public is taken again and again and again and more nieve then that, there is none!
Americas financial sustainability begins with Made in America
Americans must wake up and take action to protect our liberty and way of life.
America must rejuvenate itself and become the huge industrial power it once was.
It starts by re-inventing the wheel and building manufacturing facilities in the United States that employ Americans who produce quality goods at a competitive price with space age technology and modernization.
Organized workforce and benefits has to be revamped to meet today’s economic conditions.
Government and its bureaucracy must be reduced and streamlined. Rules and regulations must be revamped to be conducive to business growth and development.
This is a must in order to increase employment and bring back America’s economic vitality.
We could try to give tax incentives for products made in America. It brings revenues and employment, reduces financial drain on the government.
“It is cheaper to save energy than make energy”
YJ Draiman for Mayor of Los Angeles 2013