The worst natural disaster in the United States since Hurricane Katrina just happened, and many in the mainstream media are already treating it like back page news. It can be really tempting to want to talk about whatever the next “news cycle” brings us, but right now we really need to pray for those affected by “the tornadoes of 2011″. There are parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia that will never, ever be the same again. Entire towns have been wiped off the map. Hundreds are dead and thousands have been seriously injured. Over a million people lost power. One of the tornadoes that ripped through the region was reported to be a mile wide. How in the world are you supposed to get away from something like that once it is on top of you? Many in the mainstream media have already acknowledged that this was the worst natural disaster in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina took 1,800 lives back in 2005. Over and over and over, those living in the region are describing the devastation by saying that they have “never seen anything like it”. This truly was one for the history books.
The F5 tornado that ripped through the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area was reportedly so monstrous that it is still kind of difficult to believe that it was actually real. The thing was a mile wide and scientists are estimating that it had winds that exceeded 260 miles an hour.
“I don’t know how anyone survived,” said Mr Maddox. “It’s an amazing scene.
A state of emergency has been declared in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
But this disaster will not be “cleaned up” in a few days or a few weeks.
This was literally a history changing event for millions of people.
The last time the death toll from a tornado outbreak was this high was back in March 1932.
If you have the time, try to watch some videos of the devastation caused by these tornadoes. It is incredibly difficult to try to do the damage caused by these tornadoes justice using only words.
Powerful tornadoes swept through this northeastern Mississippi hamlet and across much of the South on Wednesday, splintering homes, shearing roofs and destroying lives. Smithville’s Town Hall was destroyed, as were the local high school, four churches and each of the town’s 14 businesses. Mattresses hung from tree branches, cars were flattened as if stepped on by giant feet, and rows of three-story pine trees snapped in half.
Do you think that Smithville will ever be the same?
Yes, the tornadoes of 2011 will be remembered for a very, very long time.
The people living in these areas deserve our prayers.
Thousands of lives have been permanently altered forever. The following is just one example that CNN reported on….
Janet Puckett stands outside what’s left of her home on 30th Avenue in Alberta. Its walls crumbled under the force of the storm. Her living room and a front bedroom disappeared. The roof of the house got sucked up, too.
“A war zone,” she says of the mountains of broken 2-by-4s and other debris all around.
How would you feel if your roof and half your house were suddenly missing?
Would you rebuild?
Would you feel safe living in the same area?
Would your life ever be the same again?
Sadly, massive tornado outbreaks seem to be happening with increasing frequency in the South.
Back on April 16th, a similar wave of very violent thunderstorms spawned approximately 140 tornadoes. During that event, 22 people were killed in the state of North Carolina.
Overall, there have been approximately 600 tornadoes in the United States during April. That is the most tornadoes that have ever been recorded in a single month.
Usually, the U.S. only experiences about 1,200 tornadoes for the entire year. So what we are seeing right now is highly unusual.
The tornadoes that just ripped through the South also had a massive impact on the economy down there.
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.
Alabama produces more chicken than anywhere else in the United States except for Georgia and Arkansas.
So get ready to pay more for chicken.
Meanwhile, many key agricultural areas of Texas are experiencing their worst drought in decades. According to CNBC, climate experts are becoming extremely concerned about the lack of rainfall….
Data issued Thursday by a consortium of national climate experts said 95 percent of Texas was suffering “severe drought,” or worse, up from 92 percent a week earlier. More than 70 percent of the state was in the worse conditions of “extreme drought” or “exceptional drought.” That is up from 68 percent a week ago in extreme and exceptional drought.
Not only that, some areas along the Mississippi River are having to deal with “historic flooding” right now. The following is from a recent article on Accuweather.com….
As if tornadoes and damaging thunderstorms were not enough, historic flooding is also threatening the Mississippi River, below St. Louis, as well as the lower part of the Ohio River.
The rising waters are expected to top levels set during February 1937. This mark is the middle Mississippi Valley’s equivalent to the 1993 event farther north along Old Man River.
Things are really crazy out there right now.
Please pray for those that lost family and friends during these recent tornadoes. There are thousands upon thousands of good people down in the South that are really hurting right now. They could really use our prayers.
As I have written about previously, our world is seemingly going crazy right now and nothing is stable anymore. The earth is shaking, natural disasters are becoming worse, the economy is falling apart and America appears to be coming apart at the seams.
Unfortunately, I believe that things are going to become even more unstable in the months and years ahead.
So what do all of you believe? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
Is going to college a worthwhile investment? Is the education that our young people are receiving at our colleges and universities really worth all of the time, money and effort that is required? Decades ago, a college education was quite inexpensive and it was almost an automatic ticket to the middle class. But today all of that has changed. At this point, college education is a big business. There are currently more than 18 million students enrolled at the nearly 5,000 colleges and universities currently in operation throughout the United States. There are quite a few “institutions of higher learning” that now charge $40,000 or even $50,000 a year for tuition. That does not even count room and board and other living expenses. Meanwhile, as you will see from the statistics posted below, the quality of education at our colleges and universities has deteriorated badly. When graduation finally arrives, many of our college students have actually learned very little, they find themselves unable to get good jobs and yet they end up trapped in student loan debt hell for essentially the rest of their lives.
Across America today, “guidance counselors” are pushing millions of high school students to go to the very best colleges that they can get into, but they rarely warn them about how much it is going to cost or about the sad reality that they could end up being burdened by massive debt loads for decades to come.
Yes, college is a ton of fun and it is a really unique experience. If you can get someone else to pay for it then you should definitely consider going.
There are also many careers which absolutely require a college degree. Depending on your career goals, you may not have much of a choice of whether to go to college or not.
But that doesn’t mean that you have to go to student loan debt hell.
You don’t have to go to the most expensive school that you can get into.
You don’t have to take out huge student loans.
There is no shame in picking a school based on affordability.
The truth is that pretty much wherever you go to school the quality of the education is going to be rather pathetic. A highly trained cat could pass most college courses in the United States today.
Personally, I have had the chance to spend quite a number of years on college campuses. I enjoyed my time and I have some pretty pieces of parchment to put up on the wall. I have seen with my own eyes what goes on at our institutions of higher learning. In a previous article, I described what life is like for most “average students” enrolled in our colleges and universities today….
The vast majority of college students in America spend two to four hours a day in the classroom and maybe an hour or two outside the classroom studying. The remainder of the time these “students” are out drinking beer, partying, chasing after sex partners, going to sporting events, playing video games, hanging out with friends, chatting on Facebook or getting into trouble. When they say that college is the most fun that most people will ever have in their lives they mean it. It is basically one huge party.
If you are a parent and you are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars every year to pay for college you need to know the truth.
You are being ripped off.
Sadly, a college education just is not that good of an investment anymore. Tuition costs have absolutely skyrocketed even as the quality of education has plummeted.
A college education is not worth getting locked into crippling student loan payments for the next 30 years.
Even many university professors are now acknowledging that student loan debt has become a horrific societal problem. Just check out what one professor was quoted as saying in a recent article in The Huffington Post….
“Thirty years ago, college was a wise, modest investment,” says Fabio Rojas, a professor of sociology at Indiana University. He studies the politics of higher education. “Now, it’s a lifetime lock-in, an albatross you can’t escape.”
Anyone that is thinking of going to college needs to do a cost/benefit analysis.
Is it really going to be worth it?
For some people the answer will be “yes” and for some people the answer will be “no”.
But sadly, hardly anyone that goes to college these days gets a “good” education.
#4 Americans have accumulated well over $900 billion in student loan debt. That figure is higher than the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.
#6 According to very extensive research detailed in a new book entitled “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”, 45 percent of U.S. college students exhibit “no significant gains in learning” after two years in college.
#7 Today, college students spend approximately 50% less time studying than U.S. college students did just a few decades ago.
#835% of U.S. college students spend 5 hours or less studying per week.
#950% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.
#1032% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to read more than 40 pages in a week.
#11 U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.
#12 Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor’s degree within four years.
#13Nearly half of all the graduate science students enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States are foreigners.
#14 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for college graduates younger than 25 years old was 9.3 percent in 2010.
#18 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.
#19 In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespersons have a college degree.
#20 Once they get out into the “real world”, 70% of college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the “real world” while they were still in school.
#21Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.
There are millions of young college graduates running around out there that are wondering where all of the “good jobs” are. All of their lives they were promised that if they worked really hard and got good grades that the system would reward them.
Sometimes when you do everything right you still can’t get a job. A while back The Huffington Post featured the story of Kyle Daley – a highly qualified UCLA graduate who had been unemployed for 19 months at the time….
I spent my time at UCLA preparing for the outside world. I had internships in congressional offices, political action committees, non-profits and even as a personal intern to a successful venture capitalist. These weren’t the run-of-the-mill office internships; I worked in marketing, press relations, research and analysis. Additionally, the mayor and city council of my hometown appointed me to serve on two citywide governing bodies, the planning commission and the open government commission. I used to think that given my experience, finding work after graduation would be easy.
At this point, however, looking for a job is my job. I recently counted the number of job applications I have sent out over the past year — it amounts to several hundred. I have tried to find part-time work at local stores or restaurants, only to be turned away. Apparently, having a college degree implies that I might bail out quickly when a better opportunity comes along.
The sad truth is that a college degree is not an automatic ticket to the middle class any longer.
But for millions of young Americans a college degree is an automatic ticket to student loan debt hell.
Student loan debt is one of the most insidious forms of debt. You can’t get away from student loan debt no matter what you do. Federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts, and many recent grads end up with loan payments that absolutely devastate them financially at a time when they are struggling to get on their feet and make something of themselves.
So are you still sure that you want to go to college?
Another open secret is that most of our colleges and universities are little more than indoctrination centers. Most people would be absolutely shocked at how much unfiltered propaganda is being pounded into the heads of our young people.
At most colleges and universities, when it comes to the “big questions” there is a “right answer” and there is virtually no discussion of any other alternatives.
In most fields there is an “orthodoxy” that you had better adhere to if you want to get good grades.
Let’s just say that “independent thought” and “critical thinking” are not really encouraged at most of our institutions of higher learning.
Am I bitter because I didn’t do well? No, I actually did extremely well in school. I have seen the system from the inside. I know how it works.
It is a giant fraud.
If you want to go to college because you want to have a good time or because it will help you get your career started then by all means go for it.
At times it really is breathtaking how corrupted the U.S. government has become. Government corruption has become so endemic in our society that most people have just kind of accepted it as “normal”. But shouldn’t we all get hopping mad when we learn that the Federal Reserve sent billions of dollars in bailout money to addresses in the Cayman Islands? Shouldn’t we all be furious when one of the leading candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, declares that he is “not going to spend my time focusing on the Federal Reserve”? Shouldn’t we all be alarmed when Nancy Pelosi gives a speech in which she says that “elections shouldn’t matter”? Shouldn’t we all demand that someone be held accountable when we find out that a CBO analysis shows that the “$38.5 billion” in spending cuts will only reduce the budget deficit for this year by $352 million dollars? On top of everything else, shouldn’t we all be absolutely horrified when the TSA gropes little 6 year old girls and virtually none of our politicians demand change?
$38.5 Billion In Budget Cuts Is Really Just $352 Million In Deficit Reduction?
Yesterday I wrote about how a close examination of the “budget cut deal” reveals that the 38.5 billion dollars in budget cuts are largely illusory.
However, even I was not ready for what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about this deal. What I read in the Washington Post today absolutely floored me. According to the Washington Post, the Congressional Budget Office is saying that the budget deal will only cut the budget deficit for this year by less than one percent of what was being claimed by Republican and Democrat leaders….
The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday would pare just $352 million from the deficit through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.
What a joke.
The reality is that U.S. government is increasing by over 2 million dollars every single minute. So the entire “savings” from this “budget deal” will account for approximately 3 hours of government spending.
Look, the U.S. government ran a budget deficit of $188 billion dollars for the month of March alone. We are in debt up to our eyeballs and it is getting worse at a mind blowing pace.
When are people going to wake up and realize that neither political party is the least bit serious about dealing with our debt problem any time soon?
The Federal Reserve Sent Billions In Bailout Aid To Millionaires and Billionaires In The Cayman Islands
Most Americans don’t even understand what the Federal Reserve is, and yet they get to throw trillions of dollars around while being more or less completely unaccountable the entire time.
In a new article for Rolling Stone (which is a must read), Matt Taibbi exposes some of the folks that the Federal Reserve has been sending money to….
The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”
How in the world does it benefit the American people to send billions of dollars to some ultra-wealthy people down in the Cayman Islands?
In light of what we have already found out, it is absolutely amazing that Congress is still refusing to authorize a complete audit of the Federal Reserve.
The corruption of the Fed is crying out to be investigated.
Unfortunately, many of our top politicians are openly declaring that they have no intention of going after the Federal Reserve.
Mitt Romney Declares That He Will Not Be Going After Ben Bernanke Or The Federal Reserve
In case anyone needs one more sign that Mitt Romney is just another shill for the establishment, just check out the two statements by Romney below.
According to Politico, Romney recently told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that he is not concerned about the Federal Reserve at all….
“I think Ben Bernanke is a student of monetary policy; he’s doing as good a job as he thinks he can do,” Romney said when Kudlow asked what kind of job Bernanke is doing. “I’m not going to spend my time going after Ben Bernanke. I’m not going to spend my time focusing on the Federal Reserve.”
That’s just great. The Republican candidate with perhaps the greatest amount of “establishment support” says that he thinks that Bernanke is doing a good job and he does not plan to spend any time focusing on the Federal Reserve.
So if Romney gets in the Federal Reserve will continue to be able to dish out trillions to their friends without any interference.
Nancy Pelosi Declares That “Elections Shouldn’t Matter”
How are we supposed to respond when the top Democrat in the House of Representatives declares that “elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do”?
During a recent speech, Pelosi implored establishment Republicans to “take back your party” so that elections won’t “matter” as much….
To my Republican friends: take back your party. So that it doesn’t matter so much who wins the election, because we have shared values about the education of our children, the growth of our economy, how we defend our country, our security and civil liberties, how we respect our seniors. Because there are so many things at risk right now — perhaps in another question I’ll go into them, if you want. But the fact is that elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do… But when it comes to a place where there doesn’t seem to be shared values then that can be problematic for the country, as I think you can see right now.
Apparently what Pelosi wants is for America to go back to a time when all of us just went along with the false left/right paradigm and when we were all content to sleep while the establishment agenda rolled right along.
Well guess what Nancy? Some of us are starting to wake up.
6 Year Old Girl Molested By The TSA
How far have we fallen as a nation when a 6 year old girl has to have her private areas touched in public by the TSA before she is allowed to get on an airplane?
America is becoming a very strange place.
The following is video that was posted on YouTube of the recent incident involving a 6 year old girl….
So is this what we have become as a nation?
Will we subject ourselves to anything as long as the authorities insist that it will keep us a little bit safer?
Pretty soon America is going to be unrecognizable.
I have previously written about how in one town in Missouri, girls scouts have actually been banned from selling girl scout cookies in their own front yards.
How crazy is that?
In Cleveland, authorities haves announced plans to have “trash supervisors” go snooping through trash cans to ensure that people are actually recycling according to city guidelines.
The control freaks we keep voting into office seem to have an obsession with running ever detail of our lives.
In many areas of the nation we aren’t even allowed to do acts of kindness anymore.
For example, in Houston, Texas a couple named Bobby and Amanda Herring that had been feeding homeless people for over a year has been banned by the city from doing so.
So what is next?
Are they going to ban kids from taking lunches to school?
It is already happening….
At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the cafeteria serves.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve gets to create trillions of dollars out of thin air and they get to send it to whoever they want.
What a country we have, eh?
Our system has become corrupted beyond all recognition. Government corruption is out of control and it is getting worse with each passing day.
So when are the American people going to get sick of all this nonsense?
When are….
Wait.
American Idol is on tonight.
Perhaps all of this can just wait for another time.
After all, who wants to miss what J-Lo and Steven Tyler are going to say tonight?
Those two are really a couple of characters!
Our leaders know what they are doing, right?
We can trust our politicians to act in our best interest, right?
So instead of writing about all of this “doom and gloom”, perhaps I should just lighten up and focus on fun things like American Idol a little bit more.
Everything that you own is slowly being taken away from you. It is being done purposely and it is being done by design. Many Americans like to think of themselves as “well off”, but as will be demonstrated below, we don’t “own” nearly as much as we think that we do. The truth is that most of us have to frantically run around accumulating wealth as rapidly as we can so that we can somehow stay ahead of the rate that wealth is being taken away from us. The entire system is designed to take what you have away from you. There are many ways that this is accomplished – taxation, inflation, debt, interest, fines, fees, tickets, government seizures and good old-fashioned corporate greed. If you tried to just sit back and do nothing but hold on to the wealth that you already have you would find out that it would disappear rather quickly. When you take the time to really analyze our system the conclusion is undeniable – everything that you think that you own is being systematically taken away from you.
There is a reason why the wealthiest one percent of all Americans control 40 percent of all the wealth in the United States. The system is designed to funnel all of the wealth to them and to the government. Average Americans are experiencing a declining standard of living and it is not by accident.
Just check out some of the ways that our wealth is being taken from us….
#1 Do you think that you own your house? You might want to think again. Most Americans that “own a home” are paying a mortgage. If you stop paying that mortgage you will lose that home. Over a million American families were kicked out of their homes last year. This year a million more American families will get the boot.
But when those families get booted out onto the street they don’t get their down payments back. They don’t get all the mortgage payments that they have made back. The banks get to keep all of the money and all of the houses.
Perhaps you don’t have a mortgage. Does that mean that you “own your home”?
No, not really. Just refuse to pay your property taxes and watch what happens. At best you can say that you have the right to rent your home from the government.
In any event, the reality is that the banks now own more of “our homes” than we do. During the most recent recession, the total amount of U.S. home equity owned by the banks surpassed the total amount of U.S. home equity owned by the rest of us for the first time ever.
Things used to be far different in this country. Once upon a time American families owned most of the houses and most of the land in this nation.
But now the banks own most of it. Sadly, most American families that believe that they “own homes” are actually enslaved to 20 or 30 year debt contracts.
#2 Do you think that you own your car? You don’t own it if you are still making payments on it. If you stop making payments you will rapidly lose that car.
But even if your car is paid off, you can only operate that car if you do the following….
*You must pay the license fee
*You must pay the car registration fee
*You must pay the emissions inspection fee
*You must pay the property taxes on that car (if that applies in your area)
*You must pay the tire taxes
*You must pay the gas taxes
If you have paid all of those taxes, then you are permitted to drive only where the government allows you to drive and only under the rules that the government sets for you.
But at least you “own” your car, right?
#3 What about your possessions? Do you own them?
Well, yes, you probably own some possessions.
But that doesn’t mean that they are not enslaving you.
After all, did you use a credit card to pay for any of them?
If so, you could end up paying much more for your possessions than you originally thought that they cost.
For example, if you only make the minimum payment on your credit card each month, a $6,000 credit card bill could end up costing you over $30,000 (depending on the interest rate).
#4 Do you own your education? Well, it is undeniable that nobody can ever take it away from you. But if you took out student loans that debt may end up enslaving you for decades.
The borrower is the servant of the lender and student loan debt is more of a financial drain on Americans than ever before. Americans now owe more on student loans than they do on credit cards. As hard as that is to believe, that is actually true. Americans now owe more than $903 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.
#5 Will you protect your wealth if you put your money in the bank?
No, in fact your wealth will be systematically destroyed in the bank.
Inflation is a hidden tax on every single dollar that you own. It destroys the value of all dollars in existence. There are some Americans that have been saving money for decades, but those savings are being taxed into oblivion by inflation. Many experts are now projecting that the average price of a gallon of gasoline will hit $5 by the end of the year. So the next time you go to the gas pump just take a moment to think about how your wealth is being drained away by inflation.
#6 Insurance costs continue to soar. After insuring everything in our lives many of us barely have any money left over to actually live our lives with. In particular, health insurance premiums have become completely and totally ridiculous. According to the Los Angeles Times, Blue Shield of California plans to raise rates an average of 30% to 35%, and some individual policy holders could see their health insurance premiums rise by a whopping 59 percent this year alone. So how are American families supposed to survive if they keep on handing over bigger and bigger chunks of their income to the health care industry?
#7 State and local governments all over the nation have turned to ticket writing as a primary revenue source. In fact, in some areas of the country traffic citations are soaring at a crazy rate. For example, 110,000 more traffic citations were written in Los Angeles County last fiscal year than were written in the fiscal year immediately prior to the last recession.
The truth is that the police even realize what is going on. Just consider the following quote from from Police Chief Michael Reaves of Utica, Michigan….
“When I first started in this job 30 years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement, but if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues.”
#8 Some states have decided to simply confiscate wealth even if nothing has been done wrong. For example, the state of California is aggressively seizing “unclaimed” safe deposit boxes. If you have a safe deposit box that you have not checked on in a while you might want to make sure that it is still there.
#9 You might end up losing your valuables when you cross the border. It is being reported that U.S. border agents are now regularly seizing laptops and other electronic devices as people cross the border. In many cases those items are never returned.
#10 If you don’t pay your property taxes, you will lose your house and it will likely be a big Wall Street bank that will be taking it from you. As I have written about previously, the big Wall Street banks are buying up thousands upon thousands of tax liens and are making a killing by socking distressed homeowners with predatory interest, outrageous penalties and almost unbelievable legal fees.
#11 Of course the biggest way that our wealth is being drained is through federal income taxes. The reason that the Federal Reserve and the IRS were established back in 1913 was to redistribute wealth. Wealth is transferred from the American people to the U.S. government and then ultimately to the elite and to the causes that the elite favor.
But federal taxes are only one of the taxes that we pay. The truth is that the average American pays dozens of different taxes each year. Just check out a few examples of the different taxes that drain our wealth….
#12 Accounts Receivable Taxes
#13 Building Permit Taxes
#14 Capital Gains Taxes
#15 CDL License Taxes
#16 Cigarette Taxes
#17 Corporate Income Taxes
#18 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#19 Dog License Taxes
#20 Federal Unemployment Taxes (FUTA)
#21 Fishing License Taxes
#22 Food License Taxes
#23 Gasoline Taxes
#24 Gift Taxes
#25 Hunting License Taxes
#26 Inheritance Taxes
#27 Inventory Taxes
#28 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#29 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#30 Liquor Taxes
#31 Local Income Taxes
#32 Luxury Taxes
#33 Marriage License Taxes
#34 Medicare Taxes
#35 Payroll Taxes
#36 Property Taxes
#37 Real Estate Taxes
#38 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#39 Road Toll Booth Taxes
#40 Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)
#41 Sales Taxes
#42 Self-Employment Taxes
#43 School Taxes
#44 Septic Permit Taxes
#45 Service Charge Taxes
#46 Social Security Taxes
#47 State Income Taxes
#48 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#49 Telephone federal excise taxes
#50 Telephone federal universal service fee taxes
#51 Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
#52 Telephone minimum usage surcharge taxes
#53 Telephone recurring and non-recurring taxes
#54 Telephone state and local taxes
#55 Telephone usage charge taxes
#56 Toll Bridge Taxes
#57 Toll Tunnel Taxes
#58 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#59 Trailer Registration Taxes
#60 Utility Taxes
#61 Vehicle License Registration Taxes
#62 Vehicle Sales Taxes
#63 Watercraft Registration Taxes
#64 Well Permit Taxes
#65 Workers Compensation Taxes
Even the future is being taken away from us. The future is literally being stolen from our children and our grandchildren. They will be inheriting the 14 trillion dollar (and still rising) national debt that we have accumulated. What we have done to future generations is unthinkable, and yet we continue to endlessly borrow more money. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the U.S. government will need to borrow $738 billion between April 1st and September 30th. Faith in U.S. Treasuries is falling so rapidly that now the biggest bond fund in the world, PIMCO, is actually shorting U.S. Treasuries.
When you base an entire economy on debt, eventually you end up with money problems that never seem to end. As a nation we are now enslaved to a vicious spiral of debt that is going to destroy everything that our forefathers worked so hard to build.
As the debt loads of our federal, state and local governments become even more burdensome, they are going to want even more money from us. For decades we gave in to new tax after new tax thinking that it would finally satisfy them. But it never seems to be enough. They always want more.
It is the same thing with the banksters. They are never satisfied either. They always want more assets and they always want more Americans to be enslaved to debt.
Unfortunately, most Americans are so caught up in the “rat race” that they never take much time to think about who designed the race or why they are running it.
Hopefully more Americans will wake up and will realize that our entire economy and our entire financial system need to be reformed. Our current system is inherently flawed and it will eventually impoverish the vast majority of us if we allow it to.
It seems like wherever you turn there is bad news for the U.S. economy. Unemployment is rampant, the cost of gasoline is going up, the cost of food is going up and American families are getting poorer. Millions of jobs continue to leave the country and everyone is wondering why it seems like the “American Dream” is dying. American consumers are absolutely swamped with staggering levels of credit card debt, student loan debt and mortgage debt and each year the consumer debt crisis only seems to get worse. For millions of American families the money problems never seem to end. Meanwhile, our politicians are doing next to nothing to fix our horrific national debt problem. So yes, there are a whole lot of reasons to be absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy. We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and anyone with half a brain can see that we are heading for complete and total disaster.
A lot of Americans do not like to read about economics, but what has been going on over the last few years has been nothing short of extraordinary. The Federal Reserve has basically tripled the adjusted monetary base. We have now been conditioned to accept that trillion dollar deficits are “normal”. The U.S. dollar is being systematically destroyed right in front of our eyes and most Americans don’t even seem alarmed about it.
Our entire financial system is coming apart.
The signs are everywhere.
The following are 25 reasons to be absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy….
#1 There are now 6.4 million fewer jobs in America than there were when the recession began.
#2 In Southern California, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is $1.00 higher than it was at this time last year.
#3 The average price of gasoline in the United States has jumped about 20 cents in just the last two weeks.
#4 Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.
#5 In the 8 days leading up to the “historic” $38.5 billion budget deal, the U.S. national debt increased by $54.1 billion dollars.
#6 The $38.5 billion in budget cuts that the Republicans and the Democrats have agreed to represent approximately one percent of the federal budget.
#7 During the 2010 campaign, the Republicans promised voters they would cut $100 billion from the budget for 2011. Instead, they gave in when the Democrats offered just $38.5 billion.
#8 The Obama administration had been estimating that the federal budget deficit for fiscal 2011 would be approximately 1.6 trillion dollars. Now it will likely be somewhere around 1.55 trillion dollars which will still be an all-time record.
#9 According to numbers released by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping 875,000 Americans were “medical tourists” in 2010.
#10 The median pay for CEOs increased by 27 percent during 2010.
#11 Thanks to globalism, U.S. workers now must directly compete for jobs with workers in places such as Indonesia. In Indonesia, full-time workers make as little as two dollars a day. So how are Americans supposed to compete with that?
#12 Last week, the price of gold set a new all-time record on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday and on Friday.
#14 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
#15According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 25 percent of U.S. households now have zero net worth or negative net worth. Back in 2007, that number was just 18.6 percent.
#17 According to the New York Times, as of 2009 the wealthiest 5 percent of all Americans had 63.5 percent of all the wealth in America. Meanwhile, the bottom 80 percent had just 12.8 percent of all the wealth.
#18 According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
#21 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of unemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
#22 Back in the 1950s, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. Today they account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.
That last statistic really gets me. During the month of April the American people are going to be spending massive amounts of time and money to prepare their taxes.
But what do Americans get in return for their taxes?
What they get is a government that is completely and totally incompetent. Our “leaders” are running the greatest economy in the history of the world into the ground, but unfortunately most Americans have no idea what is happening.
Why are Americans so clueless?
Well, the truth is that over time we have been turned into a nation of idiots and morons.
Thanks to the slothfulness of society, the deficiencies in our education system and the toxins in our food, air and water it has become hard for most of us to think clearly.
Most of us are fat, dumb and totally clueless. The entire economic system is being shredded and most of us just drool and turn up the television a little louder.
If we have money problems, most of us just run out and apply for another credit card. If our state and local governments run into financial problems they just borrow even more money.
Of course the biggest offender of all is the federal government. What our politicians are doing to future generations is not just criminal. It is beyond criminal. It is absolutely unconscionable.
So please excuse me if I am absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy.
We took the greatest economy in the history of the world and we wrecked it.
How in the world are we going to explain this to our children and our grandchildren?
Do you want to know how to find a job in America today? It’s easy. Just be willing to flip burgers, wait tables or welcome people to Wal-Mart. You must also be willing to work for close to minimum wage with no health benefits. It’s not that complicated. On April 19th, McDonald’s is going to be holding its first “national hiring day” and it will be attempting to fill 50,000 positions. Hundreds of thousands of applicants are expected, so if you are going to apply be ready for some stiff competition. McDonald’s held a similar event last year in its western region and 60,000 people applied for just 13,000 jobs. But if you are one of the lucky ones, you too may soon be flipping burgers for minimum wage. Who said that finding a job was hard and that the U.S. economy doesn’t work anymore? All of us just need to be “flexible” and we all need to be willing to adapt to the “new economic reality”.
Oh, you say that you can’t pay the mortgage and feed your family on what they would pay you at McDonald’s?
You say that you are looking for a “good job”?
Well, that is just too bad.
Good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce. In fact, there are 10% fewer “middle class jobs” in the United States today than there were a decade ago.
The competition for the few “middle class jobs” that are still available has become so intense that you might not want to steer clear. You just can’t afford to be too picky in today’s world.
After all, you don’t want to become one of those poor saps that is unemployed month after month after month. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of unemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
Can you really afford to be out of work for almost a year?
Why not go after the “low hanging fruit”? For a position at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart you will probably only be competing against four or five other people for each job opening. Those odds aren’t that bad.
Things were not always like this in America, you say?
Once upon a time there were actually lots and lots of great jobs?
Well, this is part of the sacrifice that we must make for the emerging global economy. We must allow thousands of our factories to close and millions of our good paying jobs to be shipped overseas. Our politicians have all promised us that globalism will be incredibly good for us in the long run.
So don’t be alarmed when naysayers warn that the United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobsper month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Yes, American workers now must directly compete for jobs with millions of people willing to work for slave labor wages on the other side of the globe. But eventually their wages will come up slightly and our wages will go way down to their level and at that point we will all have equality.
You aren’t against “equality” are you?
Who could be against equality?
This is what globalism is all about – tearing down all the borders and gathering us all into one big, happy “global family”. Right now too many of the good jobs are in America so millions of them have to be shipped out of the country. Also, millions of legal and illegal immigrants must be allowed into the U.S. so that they can compete for American jobs as well.
But won’t that drive wages down?
Of course, but in the end the “global community” will benefit.
What did you think? Did you actually believe that the United States would be able to have a thriving middle class forever?
In the new “global economy“, the wealthy get to exploit slave labor on the other side of the world thus wiping out the American middle class.
Already we are seeing signs of an “economic recovery” with the ultra-rich leading the way. According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.
That is some “change” that Wall Street can believe in!
But what about the rest of us?
All kidding aside, it is absolutely brutal out there right now.
American families just want jobs that will enable them to pay their mortgages, put food on the table and provide a decent standard of living for their families.
Unfortunately, those jobs are disappearing and they are being replaced by low paying service jobs.
According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
So yes, it has become extremely difficult to find a job that pays a decent wage.
In fact, half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
Could your family survive on $505 a week?
One reader recently left a comment that detailed how this economy has left her without a job, without a home and feeling depressed….
Yup, Im depressed. If I would have known what the WTO protests were about here in Seattle in the 90s, I would have joined in. I knew a lot of folks were very angry, but I wasn’t sure why. I was a busy working mother of a toddler. Now fast forward 10+ years and I haven’t worked in 2 and a half years and only 4 job interviews in that time and 0 job offers. we are going to get paid by Chase to give them our home (gee thanks!) so we can move out… OK now what? things aren’t looking too good. I started a very small business that no where near comes even close to supporting us. So were going to stay in my brother’s house in Texas. and then? who knows. at least I don’t feel alone. there are millions of stories just like mine.
Sadly, there are millions more stories just like this. The U.S. economy has fundamentally changed and it simply does not work like it used to.
Millions of American families are experiencing severe economic pain right now, and millions more will be experiencing it very soon.
In a previous article entitled, “Where Are The Jobs?“, I explained why things are changing for American workers….
Most Americans don’t really care about the economic minutiae that many of us who study the U.S. economy love to pour over. When it comes to the economy, the typical American citizen just wants to be able to get a good job, make a decent living and put bread on the table for the family. For generations, this arrangement has worked out quite well. The U.S. economy has provided large numbers of middle class jobs and the American people have worked hard and have helped this nation prosper like no other. But now people are starting to notice that something has shifted. Millions of people are looking around and are realizing that the jobs that are supposed to be there are not there anymore. The American people are still working hard (and in many cases harder than ever) but all of that hard work is producing fewer and fewer rewards. Often politicians will placate voters by telling them that they are working harder and harder for less and less. That tends to ring true with voters because that is a very accurate description of what so many of them are actually experiencing, but what the politicians don’t tell us is that they are the ones to blame for the situation that we are in. As millions of jobs become obsolete because of technology and millions of other jobs are shipped overseas, our politicians tell us over and over that we can “compete” with anyone and that if we will just go out and get some more education we can make it happen. But those of us who are extremely over-educated know what a fraud that line is. The truth is that there are not nearly enough jobs for all of us no matter how “educated” we are. This is creating a lot of anger and frustration, and now even the IMF is warning that we could see “an explosion of social unrest” if high unemployment persists.
Unfortunately, most of our politicians do not have any answers. Bill Clinton greatly accelerated the shipping of our jobs overseas. George W. Bush was a complete and total disaster when it came to the economy. Barack Obama has been continuing most of the economic policies of those that came before him.
Unless we make some fundamental changes, millions of jobs will continue to be lost, the U.S. industrial base will continue to be dismantled, we will continue to go into astounding amounts of debt as a nation and more American families will slip into poverty every single day.
But waiting for Washington D.C. to change is kind of like waiting for hell to freeze over. The Federal Reserve is not going to help us either. In fact, the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems.
No, the truth is that the U.S. economy is going to continue to go downhill. All of us need to try to become less dependent on the system, because when it collapses it is going to devastate the lives of tens of millions of American families.
If you know someone that believes that the U.S. economy is in great shape, just show that person the following statistics. But please don’t show these statistics to anyone that is feeling depressed or that has just lost a job – it might push such a person over the edge. The sad truth is that the U.S. economy is in the midst of a long-term decline and it is coming apart at the seams. Right now the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are attempting to “paper over” our economic problems with massive amounts of government debt and paper currency, but in the end it is not going to work. When you analyze the numbers objectively, it leads to the inescapable conclusion that we are headed for another Great Depression. That is a very depressing thought, but there is no denying that decades of debt and incredibly bad decisions are starting to catch up with us. The economic pain that is coming is going to be absolutely mind blowing.
It would be nice if our politicians and our business leaders suddenly started making incredibly wise decisions so that we could bring the U.S. economy in for a “soft landing”, but the chance of that happening is so small that it is not even worth mentioning.
It is time for all of us to face up to the truth. In this day and age it is really easy to get caught up in the trap of feeling depressed, but once we understand exactly how bad our problems are it can be empowering because then we can start focusing on solutions.
The following are 27 depressing statistics about the U.S. economy that are almost too crazy to believe….
#1 The Obama administration projects that the federal budget deficit will be approximately $1,600,000,000,000 this year. Right now the Republicans and the Democrats are fighting tooth and nail over budget cuts. The Republicans are proposing to cut the budget deficit by 3.8%. The Democrats only want to cut it by 2.1%.
#2 The U.S. economy actually grew more between 1930 and 1940 than it did during the decade that recently ended.
#3 Over the last decade, the number of Americans without health insurance has risen from about 38 million to about 52 million.
#4 Agricultural commodities are absolutely soaring. The price of corn has more than doubled over the last 12 months. Considering the fact that corn is in literally thousands of our food products, that is a very frightening statistic.
#5 Between 1999 and 2009, real median household income in the United States declined by 5.0%.
#6 It is being estimated that total U.S. government debt will grow by 42 percent by the year 2015.
#7 According to the Pentagon, the cost of the first week of attacks on Libya was 600 million dollars.
#8 The average American now spends approximately 23 percent of his or her income on food and gas.
#9 According to the U.S. Energy Department, the average U.S. household will spend approximately $700 more on gasoline in 2011 than it did during 2010.
#10 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.
#11 According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 25 percent of U.S. households now have zero net worth or negative net worth. Back in 2007, that number was just 18.6 percent.
#12 China produced 19.8 percent of all the goods consumed in the world last year. The United States only produced 19.4 percent.
#13 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobsper month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#14 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#19 Now home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
#20 The financial condition of American families continues to deteriorate rapidly. In 2010, one out of every eight American families had at least one family member that was unemployed. That number was the highest it has been since the U.S. Labor Department began keeping track of that statistic back in 1994.
#25 According to the Federal Reserve, between 2007 and 2009 median household net worth in the United States fell by 23 percent.
#26 The Federal Reserve also says that median household debt in the United States has risen to $75,600.
#27 According to a recent article posted on the website of the American Institute of Economic Research, the purchasing power of a U.S. dollar declined from $1.00 in 1913 to 4.6 cents in 2009. Sadly, the Federal Reserve is working very hard to get rid of the little bit of purchasing power that the U.S. dollar has left.
The U.S. financial system is like a junkie that needs continually increasing amounts of “junk” to get the same “buzz”. So what is the U.S. financial system addicted to? It is addicted to money and debt. For many years, whenever the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates or the U.S government would borrow and spend more money, the U.S. economy would respond positively. But just like with any other kind of artificial stimulation, over time it has taken greater and greater amounts of debt and cheap money to get a response from our economic system. So yes, the fact that the official unemployment rate went down 0.1% last month is good news, but considering the massive amount of spending that the U.S. government is doing and considering the gigantic quantity of money that the Federal Reserve is injecting into the financial system, the truth is that the unemployment rate should be falling much faster than that. So don’t be fooled by the good economic numbers and don’t be fooled by the financial “sugar rush”. The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have been pulling out all the stops to stimulate the economy, and the fact that all of their efforts are barely moving the unemployment rate at all is an indication of just how far our economic situation has degenerated.
Many in the mainstream media were extremely excited when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. unemployment rate declined to 8.8% in March. U.S. stocks soared as investors enthusiastically welcomed the news. But should we all really be jumping up and down over this?
The truth is that some other measures show that the unemployment situation in the United States is becoming worse.
According to Gallup, the number of Americans that are either unemployed or working part-time but desiring full-time work actually rose from 19.8 percent in February to 20.3 percent in March.
So let us not get too excited about the employment situation. Yes, unemployment is not spinning wildly out of control at the moment and that is good news.
However, when you look at the larger picture things look rather grim.
What the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have been doing is that they have been mortgaging our future big time for short-term economic gain.
This year alone, the U.S. government is going to run an all-time record budget deficit of approximately 1.6 trillion dollars. By borrowing 1.6 trillion dollars that we do not have and spending it into the system, it does stimulate the economy.
There are some members of Congress that would like to implement substantial budget cuts, but most members of Congress fear doing too much budget cutting right now because it would “harm the economy”.
And you know what? They are right – budget cuts would harm our economy in the short-term.
But continuing to pile up all of this debt is setting the stage for an absolute economic nightmare in the mid to long term.
We have lived far, far beyond our means for decades, and most of our politicians are acting like this can go forever.
But tell me, does anyone out there actually believe that we can keep expanding the national debt like this indefinitely?….
Yes, government spending does stimulate the economy. The Keynesians are right about that.
However, by accumulating a national debt that is spinning wildly out of control, we have completely destroyed the economic future of this nation.
The Federal Reserve has been very busy trying to stimulate the U.S. economy as well.
Over the past couple of years, the Fed has been injecting massive amounts of money into the financial system. The theory is that the financial system will loan this money out to the American people and that will stimulate the economy and create more jobs.
Well, that may very well be true to a certain extent in the short-term, but as I wrote about yesterday, in the long-term this is going to create a substantial amount of inflation.
The chart posted below cannot be emphasized enough. It shows how the Fed has dramatically increased the size of the adjusted monetary base since mid-2008….
Yes, all of this new money will stimulate economic activity, but it is completely and totally ludicrous for Ben Bernanke to attempt to deny that this is also going to cause significant inflation.
So when taking a look at the economic numbers, it is absolutely critical to keep in mind that our “authorities” have pushed all the chips to the middle of the table in an all-out attempt to stimulate the economy in the short-term.
The small economic “sugar rush” that we are experiencing right now is all we have gotten out of it so far.
Sadly, this is about the best that the U.S. economy is going to do from now on. Things really are not going to get much better than this.
Yes, unemployment numbers might come down a little more, but pretty soon inflation is going to really kick in and that is going to have a really negative impact on tens of millions of Americans.
First of all, when inflation really starts taking off it is going to be absolutely devastating for those on fixed incomes. Many of them will be completely wiped out.
Secondly, those that do have jobs are going to find that their incomes are not nearly keeping up with inflation.
In fact, we are seeing this starting to happen already.
So did what we are paying for food and gas only go up 2.1% in 2010?
Of course not.
So are things getting better so far in 2011?
No.
One of the depressing things about the new numbers released by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was that wages for U.S. workers did not increase in March.
According to the BLS, the average U.S. worker earned $22.87 an hour during the month of March, which is exactly the same number we saw in February.
So inflation is going up and wages are staying flat.
That means that American family budgets are going to be squeezed even more.
In addition, the numbers from the BLS show that it is still incredibly difficult to get a job. In fact, the average length of unemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
According to USA Today, median CEO pay soared 27 percent during 2010. For the year, median CEO pay was a stunning $9.0 million.
Wouldn’t you like to be making 9 million dollars a year?
According a recent report by CNN, the 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers in the United States combined to bring in an astounding $22.07 billion in income during 2010.
Wouldn’t you like to get just a small piece of that?
All of the measures that the government and the Federal Reserve are using to stimulate the economy are causing tremendous distortions in our financial system.
Wall Street is absolutely swimming in cash right now. There are some people that are making obscene amounts of money.
But ultimately the party is going to end for all of us.
It has been incredibly foolish for the government and the Fed to go “all in” in a desperate attempt to boost short-term economic numbers.
Our long-term economic future is completely gone. Our financial system is heading for a horrible collapse. It is not a matter of “if” it will happen, but rather “when” it will happen.
Thank you Ben Bernanke for all the money printing. Thanks to a massive injection of cash into the financial system by the Federal Reserve and other central banks, the price of almost every major commodity has skyrocketed over the past six months. Now those price increases are starting to filter down to the retail level. During a recent meeting with USA TODAY’s editorial board, Wal-Mart CEO Bill Simon said that rising inflation in the United States is “going to be serious” and that Wal-Mart is “seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate.” For many years Wal-Mart has been famous for their “low prices”, so for the head of Wal-Mart to publicly warn that much higher prices are coming is more than a little alarming. There are millions of American families that are already drowning in debt, that can barely pay their mortgages and that are struggling to put food on the table for their families. So what is going to happen to the U.S. economy when prices start rising substantially at places such as Wal-Mart?
But Wal-Mart is not the only major corporation that says that inflation is coming. Hershey has just announced price increases of about 10 percent on their entire line of products.
So if you like chocolate you better start stocking up now.
Cocoa production is being seriously threatened by the political unrest in Africa right now. The recent chaos in the Ivory Coast is certainly not good news for Hershey, but the truth is that all of the long-term trends indicate that prices for commodities such as cocoa, coffee and sugar are going to move up anyway.
In fact, Aaron Smith, the managing director of Superfund Financial, believes that coffee, sugar and cocoa will all be five to ten times more expensive by 2014 than they are today.
So if you are addicted to coffee or to sugar you might want to start making your plans accordingly.
But the truth is that inflation is not limited to just a few commodities. Virtually every major agricultural commodity has soared in price over the past 6 months to a year.
So what is causing all of this?
Well, there are several factors which are major contributors.
First of all, overall global demand continues to increase. The population of the world continues to grow, and as the economies of nations such as China and India develop, millions more people want to enjoy luxury items such as chocolate and coffee just like Americans do.
Secondly, all over the world central banks have been recklessly printing money in an attempt to stimulate their economies, but this is also going to end up causing tremendous inflation.
So how does that work?
Well, it is actually very simple.
For example, in the United States when there are more dollars chasing the same number of goods and services, what is going to happen?
Prices are going to rise of course.
And we are seeing this happen all over the world right now.
Thirdly, as the price of oil continues to rise, it is going to increase the cost of everything else. The era of massive amounts of cheap food being transported around the world using massive quantities of cheap oil is rapidly coming to an end.
The following chart if from the Federal Reserve. It shows that the price of oil is rapidly moving back to the level it was at prior to the financial crisis of 2008. In fact, this chart is slightly out of date. At last check, the price of oil was over $107 a barrel. So what is it going to mean for our economy if we soon surpass the record that was set back in 2008?….
Fourthly, global instability is also going to cause prices to continue to rise. Over the past year we have had really bizarre weather all over the globe, we have seen revolutions erupt all over Africa and the Middle East and the third largest economy in the world (Japan) just experienced the worst disaster that they have been through since World War 2 ended.
When things are unstable, economies don’t work as efficiently. That means that less goods and services are produced.
But when there are less goods and services being chased by an increasing amount of money that tends to push prices up.
The truth is that inflation is here, and if the CEO of Wal-Mart is right, it is not going to go away any time soon.
In fact, many believe that the world is on the verge of another major economic crisis.
If you stop and think about it, every major region of the world is dealing with very serious problems right now.
Right now, the European debt crisis is worse than it ever has been before. Did you notice that Standard & Poor’s just downgraded Portugal’s debt for the second time in a week? Now Portuguese debt is rated BBB-, which is only one level above junk status.
That is a very alarming sign.
Asia is dealing with the Japanese crisis, nearly all of the countries in the Middle East are dealing with protests or full-blown revolutions, Africa is dealing with the war in Libya and quite a few revolutions of their own, and the U.S. is still deeply struggling with a whole host of economic problems.
Most Americans don’t realize just how precarious things are at the moment for the global economy. The financial crash of 2008 did a lot of lasting damage, and the next wave of the financial crisis could potentially be even worse. Unfortunately, the global financial system is more vulnerable than ever right now.
So what are the Federal Reserve and other central banks going to do the next time a major financial crisis happens?
They are going to print even larger quantities of money and they are going to give even larger bailouts to their friends of course.
The dollars that you have today are never going to be more valuable than they are right now. Don’t wait too long to use them. If you have a huge pile of dollars sitting in the bank your wealth is slowly but surely rotting away.
Very hard economic times are coming. The inflation that the CEO of Wal-Mart is warning about is only the beginning. Eventually we are going to see inflation in this country that is going to be absolutely mind blowing.
But don’t wait until the storm hits to start preparing. We all have time now to prepare, so let us be wise and make the most of it.
Is going to college a worthwhile investment? Is the education that our young people are receiving at our colleges and universities really worth all of the time, money and effort that is required? Decades ago, a college education was quite inexpensive and it was almost an automatic ticket to the middle class. But today all of that has changed. At this point, college education is a big business. There are currently more than 18 million students enrolled at the nearly 5,000 colleges and universities currently in operation throughout the United States. There are quite a few “institutions of higher learning” that now charge $40,000 or even $50,000 a year for tuition. That does not even count room and board and other living expenses. Meanwhile, as you will see from the statistics posted below, the quality of education at our colleges and universities has deteriorated badly. When graduation finally arrives, many of our college students have actually learned very little, they find themselves unable to get good jobs and yet they end up trapped in student loan debt hell for essentially the rest of their lives.
The Tornadoes Of 2011: The Worst Natural Disaster In The United States Since Hurricane Katrina
The F5 tornado that ripped through the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area was reportedly so monstrous that it is still kind of difficult to believe that it was actually real. The thing was a mile wide and scientists are estimating that it had winds that exceeded 260 miles an hour.
According to National Geographic, this monster tornado may have traveled a whopping 300 miles across Alabama and Georgia.
Can you even imagine the kind of devastation that we are talking about?
It is hard to even conceive of how much damage a mile-wide F5 tornado with winds of up to 260 MPH would do as it traveled across 300 miles.
Dozens are dead and close to a thousand people are injured in the city of Tuscaloosa alone.
At this point, the city looks like a war zone. In fact, Tuscaloosa mayor Walter Maddox says that his city has been “obliterated”.
A stunned Maddox was quoted by The Telegraph as saying the following about the devastation….
A state of emergency has been declared in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
But this disaster will not be “cleaned up” in a few days or a few weeks.
This was literally a history changing event for millions of people.
The last time the death toll from a tornado outbreak was this high was back in March 1932.
If you have the time, try to watch some videos of the devastation caused by these tornadoes. It is incredibly difficult to try to do the damage caused by these tornadoes justice using only words.
The following is how an article posted on USA Today describes the devastation in the town of Smithville, Mississippi….
Do you think that Smithville will ever be the same?
Yes, the tornadoes of 2011 will be remembered for a very, very long time.
The people living in these areas deserve our prayers.
Thousands of lives have been permanently altered forever. The following is just one example that CNN reported on….
How would you feel if your roof and half your house were suddenly missing?
Would you rebuild?
Would you feel safe living in the same area?
Would your life ever be the same again?
Sadly, massive tornado outbreaks seem to be happening with increasing frequency in the South.
Back on April 16th, a similar wave of very violent thunderstorms spawned approximately 140 tornadoes. During that event, 22 people were killed in the state of North Carolina.
Overall, there have been approximately 600 tornadoes in the United States during April. That is the most tornadoes that have ever been recorded in a single month.
Usually, the U.S. only experiences about 1,200 tornadoes for the entire year. So what we are seeing right now is highly unusual.
The tornadoes that just ripped through the South also had a massive impact on the economy down there.
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.
Alabama produces more chicken than anywhere else in the United States except for Georgia and Arkansas.
So get ready to pay more for chicken.
Meanwhile, many key agricultural areas of Texas are experiencing their worst drought in decades. According to CNBC, climate experts are becoming extremely concerned about the lack of rainfall….
Not only that, some areas along the Mississippi River are having to deal with “historic flooding” right now. The following is from a recent article on Accuweather.com….
Things are really crazy out there right now.
Please pray for those that lost family and friends during these recent tornadoes. There are thousands upon thousands of good people down in the South that are really hurting right now. They could really use our prayers.
As I have written about previously, our world is seemingly going crazy right now and nothing is stable anymore. The earth is shaking, natural disasters are becoming worse, the economy is falling apart and America appears to be coming apart at the seams.
Unfortunately, I believe that things are going to become even more unstable in the months and years ahead.
So what do all of you believe? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….