Global financial markets are in turmoil as the situation in Japan continues to deteriorate. Stock markets are plunging all over the world as investors flock to investments that are considered to be safer. The 9.0 earthquake and the unprecedented tsunami in Japan would have been more than enough to spook investors and unleash chaos on world financial markets, but now the unfolding nightmare at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility is really starting to cause panic. Right now there is a mass exodus out of the city of Tokyo. But not everyone can leave the city. There are over 30 million people living in and around Tokyo. So where in the world could you possibly put 30 million refugees? Sadly, the truth is that millions of Japanese are going to stay in Tokyo no matter how high the radiation gets. Let us hope that Japanese authorities can get the situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility under control, but the fact that they have resorted to dropping water from helicopters and shooting water cannons at these nuclear reactors is not comforting.
World financial markets are certainly not expressing a lot of confidence right now. This week alone, $300 billion in U.S. stock values have been wiped out. The Dow Jones industrial average lost about 2 percent of its total value on Wednesday. The Nikkei 225 stock index has lost about 10 percent of its total value since the beginning of this crisis. At one point it was down more than 16 percent, but a gigantic monetary injection from the Bank of Japan has helped to stabilize things at least for now. There are also some that believe that the Japanese government is now directly buying up stocks to keep them from falling even further.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed down 97.05 points, or 1.7% at 5,598.23 while France’s CAC-40 fell 84.29 points, or 2.2%, to 3,696.56. Germany’s DAX ended 133.82 points, or 2%, lower at 6,513.84.
The financial ripples from this crisis are going to be felt for a long, long time.
In order to rebuild Japan, the Japanese government is somehow going to have to borrow massive amounts of money. But the Japanese national debt was already projected to reach 228 percent of GDP this year.
The Japanese government has become an incredibly bad credit risk, but lowering their credit rating right now would seem to be in very bad taste. So far, all three major credit rating agencies are taking a “wait and see” approach when it comes to Japan.
Unfortunately, the crisis in Japan is far from over.
The situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility just seems to grow more dire with each passing day. Right now, the primary concern is the 40 years of spent fuel rods that are stored throughout the complex.
Ed Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, recently explained why the pools that store the spent fuel rods are the biggest problem at this point….
“For the time being, the greatest concern is the spent fuel pools because there is a clear pathway for release of radioactivity from the pools into the environment.”
The phrase “spent fuel rods” may make it sound like they should no longer be a threat, but the truth is that these fuel rods remain extremely hot and extremely radioactive for years after they are done being used. For some reason, someone thought that it would be a good idea to store these spent fuel rods in huge pools of water near the top of each of the nuclear reactor buildings at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.
These spent fuel rod pools are not housed in the same kind of containment vessels that the nuclear reactors are. Therefore there is a much greater danger that radiation from these spent fuel rods could be released into the surrounding environment.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools dedicated to spent fuel rods. These are located at the top of six reactor buildings – or were until explosions and fires ravaged the plant. On the ground level there is a common pool in a separate building that was critically damaged by the tsunami. Each reactor building pool holds 3,450 fuel rod assemblies and the common pool holds 6,291 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. In short, the Fukushima Daiichi plant contains over 600,000 spent fuel rods – a massive amount of radiation that will soon be released into the atmosphere.
Each of these 600,000 spent fuel rods is a potential “dirty bomb”.
Are you starting to grasp just how serious this all is?
It is absolutely critical that all of these spent fuel rods remain submerged in water.
If the water drops in the spent fuel pools there will be nothing to keep the spent fuel rods cool and they will start to degrade very, very quickly.
Unfortunately, things don’t look good right now. U.S. authorities today expressed their belief that the spent fuel rods in unit 4 are now exposed and that a great deal of radiation is being released. In fact, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stated during Congressional testimony today that he believes that an extremely high level of radiation is being released by exposed spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility at this point….
We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.
It would be hard to understate the courage of those that are working inside the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility right now. They all likely realize that they are all going to die very quickly. They are laying down their lives in an effort to save their countrymen. According to a recent report from CBS News these workers say that they are not afraid to die….
Although communication with the workers inside the nuclear plant is nearly impossible, a CBS News consultant spoke to a Japanese official who made contact with one of the workers inside the control center.
The official said that his friend told him that he was not afraid to die, that that was his job.
Would all of us respond the same way?
Even the media that are reporting on this disaster in Japan are starting to be affected by this radiation. Lester Holt revealed this morning that his entire crew had tested positive for radiation after returning from an assignment.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama is acting as if all of this stuff going on in Japan is no big deal. In fact, as Keith Koffler recently observed, Obama seems to be really enjoying himself in the midst of this crisis….
This morning, as Japan’s nuclear crisis enters a potentially catastrophic phase, we are told that Obama is videotaping his NCAA tournament picks and that we’ll be able to tune into ESPN Wednesday to find out who he likes.
Saturday, he made his 61st outing to the golf course as president, and got back to the White House with just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to party with Washington’s elite journalists at the annual Gridiron Dinner.
This weekend, the Obamas are headed down to Brazil. According to an article in Forbes, the Obama plan to do a good bit of sightseeing while they are there….
The Obama family will also take in the sights in Rio. A trip to Corcovado mountain, where the Christ the Redeemer statue stands (France gave us Lady Liberty, gave Brazil Jesus) is supposedly on the itinerary. What trip to Rio would be complete without it?
Isn’t it great to see Obama acting like a true leader in the midst of one of the greatest moments of crisis that the world has seen since World War 2?
What in the world is Obama possibly thinking?
One thing about a major crisis is that it reveals the true character of those affected by it. Many are responding to this crisis in Japan with great acts of courage and heroism.
Others are not rising to the occasion.
Let us just hope and pray that the Japanese figure out a way to get the situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex under control. If a “worst case scenario” happens we could soon be facing an unprecedented nuclear nightmare.
How much of a threat is the nuclear crisis in Japan? That question is on the minds of millions of people around the globe tonight. Unfortunately, the Japanese government and the mainstream media have both been doing their best to downplay this crisis. Even though there have been massive explosions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility, authorities in Japan have still been very stingy with information and they keep insisting that the situation is under control. But the situation is not under control. In fact, it just seems to get worse with each passing day. Radiation levels are now incredibly high at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex and the radiation cloud is starting to spread. Radiation levels in Tokyo are already 10 times above normal levels, and there are reports in the international media that some people have begun to flee the city. It is imperative that the Japanese government tell the truth about what is going on because this could potentially affect the health of millions of people. There are over 12 million people in the city of Tokyo alone. If this nuclear crisis continues to get worse it could potentially end up killing more Japanese than the tsunami just did.
Yes, things really are that serious.
We are not just talking about a repeat of Chernobyl.
We are possibly talking about “many Chernobyls”.
It is somewhat understandable that the Japanese government and the mainstream media do not want to panic the public, but the reality is that people need the truth about what is going on.
Unfortunately, it is not likely that the Japanese government or the mainstream media are going to “change their stripes” overnight, so in order to try to get an idea of what is really going on we need to look at the clues.
Sometimes it is much more important to watch what people are doing rather than what they are saying.
For example, a significant number of foreign governments are now evacuating personnel from Tokyo.
Why would they be evacuating if there was no threat?
Posted below are 27 signs that the nuclear crisis in Japan is much worse than either the mainstream media or the Japanese government have been telling us. When you take all of these clues and you put them together it really does paint a frightening picture….
#1 Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is urging all people living within 30 kilometers of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility to stay indoors.
#2 Andre-Claude Lacoste, the head of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority, says that the containment vessel surrounding the No. 2 reactor at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex is “no longer sealed“.
#3 Radiation levels in Tokyo are already 10 times above normal levels.
#4Reuters is reporting that some residents of Tokyo are already starting to flee the city.
#5 Radiation levels in one city north of Tokyo, Utsunomiya, were recently reported to be 33 times above normal levels.
#6 Radiation levels in the city of Saitama have been reported to be 40 times above normal levels.
#8 The Japanese government is admitting that radiation levels near the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex are very harmful to human health.
#9 According to the World Nuclear Association, exposure to over 100 millisieverts of radiation a year can lead to cancer. At this point the level of radiation being measured right outside the number 4 reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex is 400 millisieverts per hour.
#10 A U.S. Navy crew that was assisting in relief efforts was exposed to a month’s worth of nuclear radiation in just a single hour.
#11 According to the U.S. Navy, low levels of radiation have been detected at their bases in Yokosuka and Atsugi.
#21 The Chinese Embassy has announced that it will be evacuating all Chinese citizens from the Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Iwate prefectures.
#22 Russia is making preparations to evacuate civilians and military units from the Kuril Islands.
#23 Physicist Frank von Hippel recently told the New York Times the following about this disaster: “It’s way past Three Mile Island already”.
#24 The president of France’s nuclear safety authority says that this crisis is now almost as bad as Chernobyl was….
“It’s clear we are at Level 6, that’s to say we’re at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.”
#25 There have been reports of extremely high radiation at another nuclear facility in Japan. It has been reported that at the Onagawa nuclear plant radiation that is 700 times the normal level was detected at one point.
#26 One anonymous senior nuclear industry executive told The Times Of India that Japanese power industry managers are “basically in a full-scale panic” and that “they don’t know what to do”.
#27 It is also being reported that there were over 600,000 spent fuel rods stored at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. Most of these rods were apparently stored near the top of the 6 reactor buildings. There have already been major explosions at three of those buildings. It is now feared that there is now nothing to prevent many of these spent fuel rods from releasing radiation into the atmosphere. That is really, really bad news.
So is there a threat that nuclear radiation from Japan could reach the United States?
Well, actually everyone agrees that radiation could reach the United States. The controversy is whether or not it will be enough to be harmful to human health.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is admitting that it is “quite possible” that nuclear fallout from this disaster could reach the United States. In fact, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre says that there could already be radiation from Japan over America….
Right now it’s quite possible that there could be some radiation floating over the United States.
But most government officials in the U.S. are insisting that there is “no threat” to the health of American citizens from this crisis at this point.
So how would nuclear radiation from Japan get transported to the United States?
Well, if radiation released by a damaged nuclear reactor got up into the jet stream, the first major land mass that it would encounter would be North America. In fact, the jet stream commonly takes air from over Japan directly over the west coast of the United States. The following video demonstrates this fact beautifully….
So is there any reason for those of us living in the United States to be concerned?
According to the Japanese government, the U.S. government and the mainstream media there is not.
But do you believe them?
The truth is that they seem much more concerned with keeping the public calm rather than telling the public the truth.
Radiation levels are increasing all over northern and central Japan. People are starting to leave Tokyo and other major cities in the region. Foreign governments are evacuating personnel. Fires continue to erupt at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. The authorities in Japan seem to have no idea how to solve this crisis.
If even one of those damaged nuclear reactors fully melts down it is going to be a complete and total nightmare. If you live in an area that could potentially be affected by nuclear radiation from Japan you might want to start figuring out how you and your family are going to handle this crisis.
The economic collapse of Japan has begun. The extent of the devastation is now becoming clear and many are now projecting that this will be the most expensive natural disaster in modern human history. The tsunami that struck Japan on March 11th swept up to 6 miles inland, destroying virtually everything in the way. Countless thousands were killed and entire communities were totally wiped out. So how does a nation that is already drowning in debt replace dozens of cities and towns that have suddenly been destroyed? Many in the mainstream media are claiming that the economy of Japan will bounce right back from this, but they are wrong. The tsunami decimated thousands of square miles. The loss of homes, cars, businesses and personal wealth is almost unimaginable. It is going to take many years to rebuild the roads, bridges, rail systems, ports, power lines and water systems that were lost. There are going to be a significant number of Japanese insurance companies and financial institutions that are going to be totally wiped out as a result of this great tragedy. Of course in the days ahead the Japanese people will band together and work hard to rebuild the nation, but the truth is that it is impossible to “bounce right back” from such a massive loss of wealth, assets and infrastructure.
Just think about what happened after Hurricane Katrina. Did the economy of New Orleans bounce right back? No, there are some areas of New Orleans today that still look like war zones.
Well, this disaster is much worse.
The truth is that this is going to be one of the defining moments in the history of Japan. Hundreds of miles along the coast of Japan have been absolutely devastated. Authorities are finding it difficult to even get food and water into some areas at this point.
Even before this great tragedy Japan was one of the nations that was on the verge of a national economic collapse. Their economy had been in the doldrums for over a decade and their national debt was well over 200 percent of GDP. Now the Japanese economy has experienced a shock from which it may never truly recover.
The Bank of Japan is already flooding the Japanese economy with new yen, and so we may indeed see some impressive “economic growth” statistics at the end of the year. But just because lots more yen are being passed around does not mean that the Japanese economy is in better shape.
The truth is that a tsunami of yen is not going to undo the damage that the tsunami of water did. A massive amount of Japanese wealth was wiped out by this disaster. An economy that was already teetering on the brink is now very likely going to plunge into oblivion.
It is fine to be optimistic, but the cold, hard reality of the situation is that this is a knockout blow for the Japanese economy. The extent of the devastation is just too great. This truly is a complete and total nightmare.
The following are 14 reasons why the economic collapse of Japan has now begun….
#1 The Bank of Japan has announced that they have decided to flood the Japanese economy with 15 trillion yen. That is the equivalent of roughly $183 billion dollars. This is going to provide needed liquidity in the short-term, but it is also going to set Japan on a highly inflationary course.
#2 Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average declined by more than 6 percent on Monday. As the full extent of the damage becomes apparent more declines are likely.
#3 Oil refineries all over Japan have been severely damaged or destroyed. For example, six refineries that combine to process 31 percent of the oil for Japan have been totally shut down at least for now.
#4 The damage to roads, bridges, ports and rail systems is estimated to be in the billions of dollars. The damage done to power lines and water systems is almost unimaginable. It is going to take many years to rebuild the infrastructure of Japan.
#5 Right now the flow of goods and services in many areas of northern Japan has been reduced to a crawl, and this is likely to remain the case for quite some time.
#6 Many cities and towns along the east coast of Japan have essentially been completely destroyed.
#7 Japan’s nuclear industry is essentially dead in the water at this point. Even if there is not a full-blown nuclear meltdown, the events that have transpired already have frightened people enough to cause a massive public outcry against nuclear power in Japan.
#8 Japan is going to need even more oil and natural gas in the long run to replace lost nuclear energy production. Prior to this crisis, Japan derived 29 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.
#9 Japan is the second largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, but that is about to change. Japan currently has about $882 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds and they are going to have to liquidate much of that in order to fund the rebuilding of their nation.
#10 Many factories in Japan are closing down at least temporarily. For example, Nissan has shut down four factories and Sony has shut down six factories.
#12 A substantial number of Japanese financial institutions and insurance companies are absolutely going to be devastated by this nightmare.
#13 Japan’s budget deficit was already 9 percent of GDP even before this tragedy. Now they are going to have to borrow lots more money to fund the rebuilding effort.
#14 Japan’s national debt was already well over 200 percent of GDP even before this tragedy. How much farther into the danger zone can they possibly go?
Sadly, as the economy of Japan goes down it is going to have a huge affect on the rest of the world as well. For example, Japan is no longer going to be able to buy up huge amounts of U.S. Treasuries. So who is going to pick up the slack? Will our government officials beg China to lend us even more money? Will the Federal Reserve just “buy” even more of our government debt?
Right now there are more questions than there are answers, but what is clear is that the Japanese economy has just been dealt an incapacitating blow. Hopefully this tragedy will bring out the best in the Japanese people, but no matter how resilient they are, the truth is that this is something that no nation would be able to bounce back from quickly.
Let us hope that the economic damage from this tragedy will be contained and will not spread to the rest of the world. The global economy is already in enough trouble, and hopefully this tragedy will not cause a cascade of economic failures to sweep the globe.
The entire world is in a state of mourning today as details regarding the horrific damage caused by the massive tsunami in Japan continue to trickle in. The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest earthquake that Japan has ever experienced in modern times. Waves as high as 30 feet swept over northern Japan. The tsunami waters reached as far as 6 miles inland, and authorities have already recovered hundreds of dead bodies. Those of us that have seen footage of this disaster on television will never forget it. But this nightmare is not over yet. There have been dozens of aftershocks, and many of them have been quite large. In fact, there have been 19 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6.0 in the area over the last 24 hours. So what is this disaster going to do to the 3rd largest economy in the world? Japan already had a national debt that was well over 200 percent of GDP. Could this be the “tipping point” that pushes the Japanese economy over the edge and into oblivion?
It is hard to assess the full scope of the damage to Japan at this point, but virtually everyone agrees that much of northern Japan is a complete and total disaster area at this point. Many towns have essentially been destroyed. Some are estimating that the economic damage from this disaster will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Others believe that the final total will be in the trillions of dollars.
Fortunately, major cities such as Tokyo came through this event relatively unscathed and most of the major manufacturing facilities are not in the areas that were most directly affected by the earthquake and the tsunami.
But let there be no doubt, this was a nation-changing event. Japan will never quite be the same again.
Also, it isn’t just Japan that will be affected by this. The truth is that economic ripples from this event will be felt all over the world.
An economist from High Frequency Economics, Carl Weinberg, told AFP the following about the economic consequences of this disaster….
“There is no way to assess even the direct damage to Japan’s economy or to the global economy. This is a sad day for Japan, and economic aftershocks could affect the whole world’s economy.”
It is literally going to take months to figure out exactly how much damage has been done. Let us just hope that we don’t see any more major earthquakes in the area.
The Japanese are a very resilient people and the Bank of Japan is already vowing that it will be doing whatever is necessary to ensure the stability of the financial markets. The Bank of Japan has announced that it is going to provide as much liquidity as necessary to keep the Japanese economy functioning normally.
But the truth is that the Bank of Japan has already been printing money like crazy….
Is a tsunami of new yen really going to solve the economic damage that has been done by the earthquake and the tsunami?
Of course not.
The truth is that the economy of Japan was already deeply struggling before this disaster.
The national debt of Japan is now well over 200% of GDP and there seems to be no doubt that they will need to borrow massive amounts of money to deal with the aftermath of this crisis.
But in light of what has just happened, will the citizens of Japan still have enough resources to continue to fund the rampant spending of the Japanese government?
At this point, it is estimated that this gigantic mountain of debt breaks down to 7.5 million yen for every single citizen of Japan.
Politicians in Japan have been pledging for years to do something about all of this debt, but nobody has been able to make much progress.
Even before this disaster, the major credit rating agencies were warning that they may have to downgrade Japanese government debt. The earthquake and the tsunami are certainly not going to make the Japanese even more credit-worthy.
Hideo Kumano, the chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, has said that a “tipping point” will come when world financial markets finally recognize that the government of Japan simply cannot afford to service its debt any longer….
“It’s hard to predict when the bond market might collapse, but it would happen when the market judges that Japan’s ability to finance its debt is not sustainable anymore.”
Is the massive tsunami that just hit Japan such a tipping point?
Other countries such as Greece and Ireland would have already collapsed if it had not been for the massive international bailouts that they received.
So who is going to bail Japan out?
This could potentially be one of the greatest economic disasters that the world has seen since World War 2.
With the world already on the verge of a major financial collapse, this is the last thing that world financial markets needed.
In fact, much of the rest of the world had been hoping that an influx of capital from Japan would help to stabilize things.
For example, Japanese insurance companies had recently announced that they were planning on buying up lots of European sovereign debt, but now obviously those plans are on hold. As a result of this disaster, Japanese insurance companies will be forced to sell off assets like crazy in order to pay settlements. But as Zero Hedge is correctly pointing out, without Japanese financial institutions stepping in to soak up Eurozone bonds this is going to make the European sovereign debt crisis even worse.
But right now the focus in on the devastation in Japan. At the moment it is unclear how much of the economic infrastructure of Japan has survived.
For example, as USA Today is reporting, some factories cannot even be reached by phone at this point….
Toyota’s phone calls to its plants in affected areas were not being answered, said Shiori Hashimoto, a spokeswoman in Tokyo. The Toyota City-based carmaker began production at a new plant in Miyagi this year that makes Yaris compact cars and has capacity to make 120,000 vehicles a year.
What is clear is that the cost of recovering and rebuilding after this disaster is going to put extraordinary financial stress on the Japanese government.
In the United States today, thousands upon thousands of ridiculous federal regulations tightly control almost every area of our lives. One example of this is that starting on January 1st, we are no longer going to be able to buy certain kinds of light bulbs in the United States. Back in 2007, President George W. Bush signed a law that mandates the following: “Manufacturers will no longer be able to make the 100-watt Thomas Edison bulb after Jan. 1, 2012, followed by the 75-watt version in Jan. 2013, and the the 60- and 40-watt bulbs in Jan. 2014.” Yes, you read that correctly. Federal bureaucrats are running wild and the nanny state has decided that you are simply not going to have the choice to buy traditional light bulbs anymore. So why the change? Incandescent light bulbs have not been proven to be unsafe and consumers still want to buy them. The new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) light bulbs are more expensive and are actually worse for the environment. So why was this law passed? The feds passed it because they decided that existing light bulbs use too much energy and have too large of a “carbon footprint”. Instead of giving us choices and attempting to persuade us to change, the federal government is ramming their will down our throats. Well, it is about time that we told the federal bureaucrats that are trying to take our freedoms away that we want them to get their dirty hands off of our light bulbs.
Thankfully there are some members of the House and Senate that are seeking to repeal this law, but right now it looks extremely doubtful that a repeal would ever be signed into law by Barack Obama.
Some people may not think that light bulbs are a big deal, but the truth is that the fact that the government tells us what kind of light bulbs to buy is just another sign of how rapidly liberty and freedom are dying in this country.
The founding fathers intended for this nation to have a very limited central government and lots of room for liberty and freedom.
But today we are “fenced in” by thousands and thousands and thousands of government regulations. We only get to enjoy very small amounts of “liberty” and “freedom” within the very-tightly defined boundaries that the federal government has set up for us.
Unfortunately, this “control grid” has been developing for decades. The elite that make up America’s ruling class are raised and educated to believe that they know better than the rest of us how things should be done. They are taught all through school that it is their “responsibility” to impose their vision of “a better life” on all the rest of us. To the ruling elite, we are all just a bunch of sheep that do not even understand what is best for us.
If it seems like the people running this country are a bunch of “control freaks”, that is because that is exactly what they are. They are smug, arrogant and convinced that they are better than you are. They believe that democracy needs to be “directed” and that all of us need to be told what to do and what to believe.
Do you ever get the impression that television news is “talking down” to you?
Well, that is because that is exactly what is happening.
The people that own and deliver the news come from wealth and privilege. They have been “educated” at schools like Yale, Harvard and Stanford. They live in cities like New York and Los Angeles and they mingle with the ultra-wealthy and the very famous. They feel like they are making the world a better place by not only delivering the news but also by telling you what you should think about it.
So when the “establishment” passes a law that bans you from buying certain kinds of light bulbs, most of those in the “establishment” media are going to back them up on it.
The establishment has decided that the rest of us are not smart enough to want “the green agenda” on our own, so they are just going to start imposing it on all of us.
So what is so great about the new light bulbs?
Well, the new light bulbs that they are trying to push on us use less energy and therefore leave less of a “carbon footprint”.
But instead of giving us a choice and trying to make their case, they are just banning the old light bulbs that we have been using for decades.
What kind of “freedom of choice” is that?
In addition, these new light bulbs are actually worse for the environment and they have been known to cause health problems.
The following are just a few of the known issues with CFL bulbs….
*When a CFL light bulb is broken it releases high levels of mercury into the air.
*The quality of light produced by CFL bulbs is poorer.
*CFL bulbs are dimmer.
*CFL bulbs tend to flicker and this causes some people to become dizzy or ill.
*CFL bulbs have been associated with migraine headaches and sleep abnormalities.
*CFL bulbs are so toxic that they require special disposal.
*The mercury in CFL bulbs is particularly harmful to fetuses and children.
*The amount of mercury in a CFL bulb is enough to make 1,000 gallons of water unsafe for human consumption.
So what do you do if you break one of these toxic little bulbs in your home?
What if I accidentally break a fluorescent lamp in my house?
The lamp contains a small amount of mercury, but you can clean this up yourself if you do the following:
* Do not use a vacuum cleaner to clean up the breakage. This will spread the mercury vapor and dust throughout the area and could potentially contaminate the vacuum.
* Keep people and pets away from the breakage area until the cleanup is complete.
* Ventilate the area by opening windows, and leave the area for 15 minutes before returning to begin the cleanup. Mercury vapor levels will be lower by then.
* For maximum protection and if you have them, wear rubber gloves to protect your hands from the sharp glass.
* Carefully remove the larger pieces and place them in a secure closed container, preferably a glass container with a metal screw top lid and seal like a canning jar. A glass jar with a good seal works best to contain any mercury vapors inside.
* Next, begin collecting the smaller pieces and dust. You can use two stiff pieces of paper such as index cards or playing cards to scoop up pieces.
* Pat the area with the sticky side of duct tape, packing tape or masking tape to pick up fine particles. Wipe the area with a wet wipe or damp paper towel to pick up even finer particles.
* Put all waste and materials into the glass container, including all material used in the cleanup that may have been contaminated with mercury. Label the container as “Universal Waste – broken lamp.”
* Remove the container with the breakage and cleanup materials from your home. This is particularly important if you do not have a glass container.
* Continue ventilating the room for several hours.
* Wash your hands and face.
* Take the glass container with the waste material to a facility that accepts “universal waste” for recycling.
Have you got all that?
You might want to be very careful not to drop any light bulbs in the future. As you can see, cleaning one up in a huge pain.
But all in the name of conforming to the “green agenda” of the ruling elite, eh?
You know what one of the saddest things about all of this is?
This freedom-killing regulation was signed into law by George W. Bush. Millions of Republicans went along with it because they were just blindly following whatever Bush did.
Well, you know what?
Bush was an absolutely horrible president and if Republicans want to have any credibility they need to start admitting that.
The elitist Bush passed lots of freedom killing laws like this one, and now the elitist Obama is cramming them down all of our throats.
The sad truth is that Bush and Obama are much more alike than they are different.
Fortunately, there are still a few members of the U.S. government that have some common sense.
For example, have you seen the recent video of U.S. Senator Rand Paul questioning Kathleen Hogan, the deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency at the Energy Department?
During a recent hearing in the Senate, Rand Paul told Paul told Hogan “my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house.”
Video of this exchange is posted below….
U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann has also come out against these ridiculous regulations. She recently had the following to say about her new bill to repeal the light bulb ban….
“The government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy.”
She is right about that.
Federal bureaucrats should quit trying to be little “gods”. They are supposed to be “public servants”. Americans are fully capable of getting along just fine without the federal government micromanaging every single little detail of our lives.
How can we claim that we are still living in a country that cherishes liberty and freedom if things have progressed this far?
Sadly, every new crop of federal bureaucrats just seems to be worse than the one before it and the U.S. government just continues to grow in size. There are thousands upon thousands of control freaks that sit in their offices all day thinking of new ways to tighten the “Big Brother” control grid that is being constructed all around us.
Do you feel like you are being suffocated by all of this government control sometimes?
Well, you are not alone.
The truth is that there are millions of Americans that are absolutely sick of it.
It is time for the federal government to get off our backs.
We don’t need some sick, twisted control freaks in Washington D.C. telling us what light bulbs we can or cannot buy.
We are Americans, and our forefathers bled and died so that we could enjoy liberty and freedom in this land. They did not sacrifice so much so that a bunch of elitists could impose a nanny state on all of us and micromanage all of our lives.
We just want the basic liberties and freedoms that we were taught about as we grew up.
Bill Gross, the manager of the biggest bond fund in the world, has forgotten more about bonds than most of us will ever learn. That is why the big move that PIMCO has just made is so unsettling. At one time PIMCO held more U.S. government debt than any other bond fund on the globe, but now news has come out that they have gotten rid of all their U.S. government-related securities. So should we be alarmed? For months Gross has been warning that the bull market in bonds is coming to an end, and now it looks like he is putting his words into action.s Gross has often publicly decried the rampant government spending that has been going on over the last several years, and apparently he has seen enough. He is taking his ball and he is going home. This really is a stunning move by PIMCO. Gross must really believe that something fundamental has shifted. Gross didn’t get to where he is today by being stupid. But so far world financial markets are taking this news in stride. Nobody seems all that alarmed that the largest bond fund in the world has dumped all of their U.S. Treasuries. But with world financial markets in such a state of chaos right now, shouldn’t we all take note when one of the biggest players in the game makes such a bold move?
Gross believes that interest rates on U.S. Treasuries are way too low right now and that they will start going up when the Federal Reserve ends the current round of quantitative easing in June. Gross has indicated that if interest rates on U.S. Treasuries go up high enough, PIMCO might get back in.
But if interest rates do start going up that is going to make servicing the monolithic U.S. national debt much more expensive, and that would not be good news for U.S. government finances.
But would the Federal Reserve really allow interest rates on U.S. Treasuries to go up substantially? Wouldn’t they just step in at some point and start buying U.S. government debt again?
Probably.
But the truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as Gross noted in his March newsletter….
“Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t.”
Gross also noted in his newsletter that the Federal Reserve is currently buying up about 70 percent of all new U.S. government debt.
So what is going to happen when that stops?
Nobody knows for certain, but it sure is going to be interesting to watch.
The market for U.S. Treasuries has not been working “normally” for quite some time now, and there is some legitimate doubt as to whether it will ever fully get back to “normal” again.
Meanwhile, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to get even worse.
The yield on 10-year Portuguese bonds is now above 7 percent, the yield on 10-year Irish bonds is now above 9 percent and the yield on 10-year Greek bonds is now above 12 percent.
Most people expect European leaders to soon come to an agreement to add billions more to existing bailout funds, but there is no guarantee that is actually going to happen.
In fact, the Germans are making waves by insisting that the financially troubled nations in the EU must be willing to agree to limits on their future budget deficits. A recent article on CNBC described the situation this way….
Before the Germans will agree to pump in extra cash from their taxpayers, backed by the French, they want each leader to agree to legislation at home that will limit the size of their future national deficits. The Greeks are already refusing point blank. Things may boil to the surface at an extraordinary summit on Friday.
So what if an agreement can’t be reached?
Could the dominoes in Europe start to fall?
Very few people actually want to see a wave of sovereign defaults in Europe, but the current situation cannot go on forever. At some point the Germans are going to get sick and tired of bailing out other members of the EU.
The global addiction to debt is about to start having some very serious consequences.
For decades, most of the governments of the industrialized world have been running up debt as if it would never come back to haunt them. Now the world is absolutely covered in red ink and everyone is looking for a way to solve the problem.
But there is not going to be a debt jubilee to come along and save everyone. This debt bubble is either going to keep expanding or it is going to burst.
At one point, at least some of the debt-ridden nations will try to inflate their way out of debt by recklessly printing money. To a certain extent that has already been going on. But it will not work. It will only cause a whole lot of inflation.
This is just more evidence that any economic system based on debt is destined to fall. When we allowed a private central bank to start issuing debt-based currency in this country back in 1913 we set ourselves up to fail. As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve should never have been allowed to come into existence, and it should have been shut down by Congress long before now.
But now the United States is caught in the same debt trap that most of the other nations around the world are caught in. The global addiction to debt is going to have some very, very serious consequences. Instead of moving into a great time of peace and prosperity, everything is about to come falling apart.
Things could have been different. Things did not have to turn out this way. But here we are on the edge of one of the biggest financial disasters in human history and most Americans still don’t understand what is happening.
So what do you all think about all of this? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
The ratio of government handouts to wages and salaries in the United States is now at an all-time high. According to TrimTabs Investment Research, government handouts have reached a level that is equivalent to 35 percent of all wages and salaries in the United States. Considering the fact that this figure was only 21 percent back in the year 2000 and only 10 percent back in 1960 that is very frightening. The sad truth is that today the American people are more dependent on direct government payments than they ever have been before. What this does is that it takes formerly independent Americans and transforms them into “sheeple” and pets of the government. Today we have tens of millions of Americans that eagerly await the crumbs that the federal government tosses them each month. This is one reason why our national debt is exploding, but our politicians like this system because it enables them to buy votes. Meanwhile, the federal government and the international corporations that dominate our economy have rigged the game so that power and money are becoming increasingly centralized in their hands. As a result of the system that the “big boys” have developed, millions of small businesses across the country are being absolutely crushed, the standard of living of the middle class is gradually being destroyed and more American families slip into poverty ever single day. What we need to do is to dramatically reduce the power of both the federal government and the big corporations so that small businesses and individuals can thrive once again, but instead “activists” such as Michael Moore are out there demanding even more taxes and even more government handouts.
Not that a “safety net” is a bad thing. We simply are not going to allow tens of millions of Americans to starve out in our streets. However, it has gotten to the point where the majority of American families are now dependent on the U.S. government in one form or another and that is very, very wrong.
More government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything. Handouts do not give people dignity. Handouts do not teach people to be independent. Handouts do not enable people to live the “American Dream”. Handouts are not the path to prosperity.
What the American people need are jobs and an environment where small businesses can thrive. But instead, the federal government has allowed the big global corporations to ship millions of our jobs out of the country and the federal government continues to burden our small businesses with an endless array of new taxes and regulations.
Who is successful in America today?
It is the big boys. Everyone else is being crushed.
This is what the founding fathers tried to warn us about. They did not want the federal government to have much power at all, and they were deeply suspicious of large corporations.
But we have turned our backs on the principles of the founding fathers.
We should be figuring out how to get back to the America that our founding fathers originally tried to create, but instead all of the attention is being given to “activists” such as Michael Moore who are calling for even more taxes and even more government handouts. The following video is of Michael Moore giving a speech to protesters in Madison, Wisconsin on March 5th, 2011. His speech was entitled “America Is Not Broke”….
Yes, the “little guy” is being absolutely crushed in America today. But for people like Michael Moore the solution is always to tax the middle class more and to pass out even more government handouts.
That isn’t going to solve anything. Most of the ultra-wealthy have turned avoiding taxes into an art form. A third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore banks“. Many of our largest corporations don’t pay a dime in federal taxes even as they pass out multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives.
Raising taxes in most definitely not the answer. Those that have mastered the art of avoiding taxes will continue to do so no matter how high you raise them.
The truth is that we need to shut down the IRS and scrap the current tax system entirely. It simply does not work.
What we need to do is to get the federal government and the big corporations under control and transfer the power back to the American people.
That is what our founding fathers intended. They intended for the common man to be empowered to start businesses, create wealth and pursue happiness.
But instead tens of millions of Americans have become addicted to government handouts. When large numbers of people give up and willingly become wards of the government that is not good for society.
Unfortunately, more Americans today are dependent on the U.S. government than ever before. Just consider the following statistics….
-According to TrimTabs Investment Research, social welfare benefits in the United States have risen by $514 billion over the past two years alone.
-As 2007 began, only about 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but today over 44 million Americans are now on food stamps.
-Over 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid.
-Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.
–53 million Americans received $703 billion in Social Security benefits in 2010.
-Right now the U.S. government is either writing or guaranteeing well over 90 percent of all mortgages in the United States.
-It is being projected that extended unemployment benefits will cost the federal government $34 billion over the next two years.
-30 U.S. states have borrowed a total of $41.5 billion from the federal government just so that they could continue paying out unemployment benefits during the recession.
-Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare now account for 58% of all U.S. government spending.
But what else should we expect? The federal government has been using a sledgehammer to endlessly pound away on the capacity of small businesses and individuals to create wealth and jobs and opportunities. The business atmosphere in the United States is now so toxic that it is amazing that any small businesses have survived.
Most Americans find themselves with no other way to make a living other than to work for someone else. But the big global corporations have discovered that they can make much larger profits by getting rid of American workers and by shipping our jobs overseas and our politicians are allowing them to get away with it.
The truth is that both political parties don’t have the answers. Neither party seems to have any clue about how to stop millions of jobs from leaving the United States and neither party seems to have any clue about how to create a business environment inside the United States where individuals and small businesses can actually thrive.
How much longer will it be before we all finally admit that we are experiencing total system failure in this country? Should we all just quit trying and sit on our couches waiting for the next government handout? The truth is that there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all Americans anyway.
The middle class is dying and the establishment has us all fighting with each other. The left and the right are busy fighting about taxes and budget cuts while the ultra-wealthy continue to enjoy massive profits and incredibly low taxes in the globalized economic system that we have allowed our politicians to create.
Yes, there are tens of millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now and they need to be helped.
But government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything. What we need to do is to massively reduce the power of the federal government, massively reduce the power of the big corporations and stop businesses and jobs from being shipped out of the country. We also need to create an environment in the United States that is very favorable to small businesses. That would give our country a chance to start creating good jobs again.
But instead, we continue to allow our politicians to destroy our economy. We actually have 10 percent fewer middle class jobs in this country than we did just ten years ago. The middle class is being systematically destroyed. All of the wealth and all of the power are slowly being transferred into the hands of big government and the big corporations.
The vast majority of the rest of us are being transformed from strong, independent, prosperous Americans into dehumanized sheeple that can’t wait for the next government check to come in.
Does anyone out there actually believe that this is what our founding fathers originally intended?
The price of oil is shaping up to be the number one economic story of 2011, and right now the eyes of the investing world are closely watching the developing situation in Saudi Arabia. All of the other recent Middle East revolutions have been organized on the Internet, and now all over Facebook and Twitter there are calls for a “Day of Rage” in Saudi Arabia on March 11. The Saudi monarchy is attempting to head off any protests by promising to give $37 billion in “benefits” to the people and by publicly proclaiming that all political demonstrations are specifically banned. In addition, the Saudi government is stationing thousands of security forces at various potential “hot spots” around the country. So far similar measures have not done much to quell unrest in other nations in the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia will be a true test of the revolutionary fervor that is sweeping the region. The Saudis have a long history of brutally repressing their own people. They simply do not mess around. So a revolution in Saudi Arabia will not be nearly as “easy” as it was in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya. However, if a revolution does sweep across Saudi Arabia, it is going to send the price of oil into unprecedented territory. Saudi Arabia is the number one exporter of oil in the world, and if their oil fields get shut down even for a little while it is going to have a dramatic effect on the global economy. With the world already on the verge of a major sovereign debt crisis, the last thing it needs is for the price of oil to start soaring into the stratosphere.
Right now the investing world is not sure what to think about all of this, and financial markets do not like uncertainty. One piece of really bad news could send markets all over the globe crashing down.
Speculation in oil futures is absolutely rampant. A recent report on CNN noted the following….
The speculative fervor is so remarkable that the big trading firms now have nearly twice as many long contracts open as they did in 2008, when oil spiked to $147 in the summer, a development that either foreshadowed or caused the global economic meltdown, depending on how you look at it.
In particular, the number of investors that are betting that a revolution in Saudi Arabia is going to send the price of oil up to $200 a barrel has exploded in recent days.
$200 a barrel?
Are people actually betting that is going to happen?
The all-time record is only $147 a barrel. Just a few months ago it was absolutely unthinkable to most economists that we could potentially see $200 oil in 2011.
But it would be a mistake to assume that a full-blown revolution is guaranteed to break out in Saudi Arabia. Remember, this is a nation that has a very, very long history of denying even the most basic freedoms to the people.
For example, in Saudi Arabia the practice of any religion other than Islam is strictly forbidden. By law, citizens of Saudi Arabia are not permitted to change religion. Even foreign visitors are forbidden to openly practice any other religion. It is a whole different world. You cannot go to the store and buy a Bible in Saudi Arabia. In fact, if you try to pass out Bibles in Saudi Arabia you will be thrown into prison.
So if you plan of being a revolutionary in Saudi Arabia you had better put your big boy pants on, because the Saudis play hardball.
Much of the rest of the globe is desperately hoping that a revolution does not happen in Saudi Arabia because the global economic situation is precarious at best.
In Europe, if the price of oil causes a significant economic slowdown right now it could have global implications. Moody’s Investors Service just slashed Greece’s debt rating three levels all the way down to B1. But Greece is far from alone. Several European governments are finding it much more expensive to finance their debts these days. We are right on the edge of a major European sovereign debt crisis and the chaos in the Middle East could potentially be just the thing to spark a panic.
The United States could feel a rise in the price of oil even more than Europe because the U.S. economy is so spread out and it is so dependent on products from overseas.
Did you know that in 1960 only 8 percent of the things Americans bought were made overseas but that today 60 percent of the things Americans buy are made overseas?
It’s true.
So what would happen if the cost of transporting all of those products suddenly doubled? All of the products we buy must be transported somehow, and a rise in transportation costs will be passed on to U.S. consumers.
But the truth is that the pain is already here. Already, millions of American families are starting to feel some very real financial pain from the chaos in the Middle East.
From February 18th to March 4th, the average price of gasoline in the United States rose 33 cents. That was the biggest two week increase ever recorded.
Ouch.
The rise in the price of oil has some broader economic implications as well.
The more the price of oil goes up the bigger our trade deficit is going become. As the trade deficit gets bigger, that means that more money is going out of the country and less money is going to support American businesses and American workers. When American workers lose jobs, that means that they aren’t producing wealth anymore and they aren’t paying taxes anymore. Instead, they become a drain on the system as they start receiving government handouts.
When millions of Americans go from being productive, taxpaying workers to unemployed welfare cases it causes our federal budget deficit to become even larger.
Most Americans do not understand how connected our trade deficit and our federal budget deficit really are. One feeds right into the other.
Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve seems to think that the solution to any economic problem these days is to print more money.
One of the reasons why the price of oil and other commodities has been going up over the last six months is because of all of this reckless money printing.
Now Lockhart is saying that because of the oil price increases they may have to do more money printing?
How bizarre is that?
Unfortunately, several other top Fed officials have dropped hints about a possible “QE3” lately. It just seems like the insanity never stops.
Let us hope that the Fed does not go there because the U.S. dollar is falling apart fast enough already.
In any event, the rest of 2011 is certainly going to be very interesting to watch.
Even if a revolution does not happen in Saudi Arabia, the price of oil will most likely continue to slowly move higher just as it has been doing for months.
But if a full-blown revolution does happen in Saudi Arabia, it could literally change the global economy almost overnight. The entire world financial system would be thrown into a state of chaos.
Oil is the lifeblood of the world economy. Without a continuous supply of very inexpensive oil, life as we know it would dramatically change. Most of us just assumed that we would always live in a world where we would always have an endless supply of very cheap oil.
Well, the times they are a changing.
You had better buckle up because it is going to be a bumpy ride.
It is not just the United States that is headed for an economic collapse. The truth is that the entire world is heading for a massive economic meltdown and the people of earth need to be warned about the coming economic disaster that is going to sweep the globe. The current world financial system is based on debt, and there are alarming signs that the gigantic global debt bubble is getting ready to burst. In addition, global prices for the key resources that the major economies of the planet depend on are rising very rapidly. Despite all of our advanced technology, the truth is that human civilization simply cannot function without oil and food. But now the price of oil and the price of food are both increasing dramatically. So how is the current global economy supposed to keep functioning properly if it soon costs much more to ship products between continents? How are the billions of people that are just barely surviving today supposed to feed themselves if the price of food goes up another 30 or 40 percent? For decades, most of the major economies around the globe have been able to take for granted that massive amounts of cheap oil and massive amounts of cheap food will always be there. So what happens when that paradigm changes?
At last check, the price of U.S. crude was over 104 dollars a barrel and the price of Brent crude was over 115 dollars a barrel. Many analysts fear that if the crisis in Libya escalates or if the chaos in the Middle East spreads that we could see the all-time record of 147 dollars a barrel broken by the end of the year. That would be absolutely disastrous for the global economy.
But it isn’t just the chaos in the Middle East that is driving oil prices. The truth is that oil prices have been moving upwards for months. The recent revolutions in the Middle East have only accelerated the trend.
Let’s just hope that the “day of rage” being called for in Saudi Arabia later this month does not turn into a full-blown revolution like we have seen in other Middle Eastern countries. The Saudis keep a pretty tight grip on their people, but at this point anything is possible. A true revolution in Saudi Arabia would send oil prices into unprecedented territory very quickly.
But even without all of the trouble in the Middle East the world was already heading for an oil crunch. The global demand for oil is rising at a very vigorous pace. For example, last year Chinese demand for oil increased by almost 1 million barrels per day. That is absolutely staggering. The Chinese are now buying more new cars every year than Americans are, and so Chinese demand for oil is only going to continue to increase.
Much could be done to increase the global supply of oil, but so far our politicians and the major oil company executives are sitting on their hands. They seem to like the increasing oil prices.
So for now it looks like oil prices will continue to rise and this is going to result in much higher prices at the gas pump.
Already, ABC News is reporting that regular unleaded gasoline is going for $5.29 a gallon at one gas station in Orlando, Florida.
The U.S. economy in particular is vulnerable to rising oil prices because our entire economic system is designed around cheap gasoline. If the price of gas goes up to 5 or 6 dollars a gallon and it stays there it is going to have a catastrophic effect on the U.S. economy.
Just remember what happened back in 2008. The price of oil hit an all-time high of $147 a barrel and then a few months later the entire financial system had a major meltdown.
Well, as the price of oil rises it is going to create a whole lot of imbalances in the global financial system once again.
This is definitely a situation that we should all be watching.
But it is not just the price of oil that could cause a global economic disaster.
The global price of food could potentially be even more concerning. As you read this, there are about 3 billion people around the globe that live on the equivalent of 2 dollars a day or less. Those people cannot afford for food prices to go up much.
But global food prices are rising. According to the United Nations, the global price of food has risen for 8 consecutive months. Last month, the global price of food set a brand new all-time record high. Many are starting to fear that we could actually be in the early stages of a major global food crisis.
The price of just about every major agricultural commodity has been absolutely soaring during the past year….
*The price of corn has doubled over the last six months.
*The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.
*The price of sugar is the highest it has been in 30 years.
Unfortunately, the production of food in most countries around the world is very highly dependent on oil, so as oil goes up in price this is going to make the food crisis even worse.
Hold on to your hats folks.
Also, as I have written about previously, the world is facing some very serious problems when it comes to water. Due to the greed of the global elite, there is not nearly enough fresh water to go around. The following are some very disturbing facts about the global water situation….
*According to USAID, one-third of all humans will face severe or chronic water shortages by the year 2025.
*Of the 60 million people added to the world’s cities every year, the vast majority of them live in impoverished slums and shanty-towns with no sanitation facilities whatsoever.
*In northern China, the water table is dropping one meter per year due to overpumping.
These days, one of the trendy things to do is to call water “the oil of the 21st century”, but unfortunately that is not a completely inaccurate statement. Fresh, clean water is something that we all need, but right now world supplies are getting tight.
Our politicians and the global elite could be doing something about this if they really wanted to, but right now they seem perfectly fine with what is happening.
On top of everything else, the sovereign debt crisis is worse than it has ever been before.
All of the major global central banks have been feverishly printing money in an attempt to “paper over” this crisis, but it is not going to work.
Most Americans don’t realize it, but right now the continent of Europe is a financial basket case. Greece and Ireland would have imploded already if they had not been bailed out, and now Portugal is on the verge of collapse. The interest rate on Portugal’s 10-year notes has now been above 7% for about 3 weeks, and most analysts believe that it is only a matter of time before they are forced to accept a bailout.
Sadly, if the entire global economy experiences a slowdown because of rising oil prices, we could see half a dozen European nations default on their debts if they are not bailed out.
For now the Germans seem fine with bailing out the weak sisters that are all around them, but that isn’t going to last forever.
A day or reckoning is coming for Europe, and when it arrives the reverberations are going to be felt all across the face of the earth. The euro is on very shaky ground already, and whether or not it can survive the coming crisis is an open question.
Of course there are some very serious concerns about Asia as well. The national debt of Japan is now well over 200% of GDP and nobody seems to have a solution for their problems. Up to this point, Japan has been able to borrow massive amounts of money at extremely low interest rates from their own people, but that isn’t going to last forever either.
As I have written about so many times before, the biggest debt problem of all is the United States. Barack Obama is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year will be a new all-time record 1.65 trillion dollars. It is expected that the total U.S. national debt will surpass the 15 trillion dollar mark by the end of the fiscal year.
Shouldn’t we have some sort of celebration when that happens?
15 trillion dollars is quite an achievement.
Most Americans cannot even conceive of a debt that large. If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
But the United States is not alone. The truth is that wherever you look, there is a sea of red ink covering the planet.
The current global financial system is entirely based on debt. If the total amount of debt does not continually expand, the system will crash. If somehow a way was found to keep this system going perpetually (which is impossible), the size of global debt would keep on increasing infinitely.
Now the World Economic Forum says that we need to grow the total amount of debt by another 100 trillion dollars over the next ten years to “support” the anticipated amount of “economic growth” around the world that they expect to see.
The entire global financial system is a gigantic Ponzi scheme. It is designed to keep everyone enslaved to perpetual debt. If at some point the debt spiral gets interrupted in some significant way, we are going to witness an economic disaster that is going to make what happened in 2008 look like a Sunday picnic.
The more research that one does on the current global economic situation, the more clear it becomes that we are absolutely doomed.
How much of a threat is the nuclear crisis in Japan? That question is on the minds of millions of people around the globe tonight. Unfortunately, the Japanese government and the mainstream media have both been doing their best to downplay this crisis. Even though there have been massive explosions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility, authorities in Japan have still been very stingy with information and they keep insisting that the situation is under control. But the situation is not under control. In fact, it just seems to get worse with each passing day. Radiation levels are now incredibly high at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex and the radiation cloud is starting to spread. Radiation levels in Tokyo are already 10 times above normal levels, and there are reports in the international media that some people have begun to flee the city. It is imperative that the Japanese government tell the truth about what is going on because this could potentially affect the health of millions of people. There are over 12 million people in the city of Tokyo alone. If this nuclear crisis continues to get worse it could potentially end up killing more Japanese than the tsunami just did.
Global Financial Markets Plunge As The World Watches Japan Descend Into A Nuclear Nightmare
World financial markets are certainly not expressing a lot of confidence right now. This week alone, $300 billion in U.S. stock values have been wiped out. The Dow Jones industrial average lost about 2 percent of its total value on Wednesday. The Nikkei 225 stock index has lost about 10 percent of its total value since the beginning of this crisis. At one point it was down more than 16 percent, but a gigantic monetary injection from the Bank of Japan has helped to stabilize things at least for now. There are also some that believe that the Japanese government is now directly buying up stocks to keep them from falling even further.
Stock markets across Europe have been plunging as well. An article posted on the USA Today website described some of the carnage on Wednesday….
The financial ripples from this crisis are going to be felt for a long, long time.
In order to rebuild Japan, the Japanese government is somehow going to have to borrow massive amounts of money. But the Japanese national debt was already projected to reach 228 percent of GDP this year.
The Japanese government has become an incredibly bad credit risk, but lowering their credit rating right now would seem to be in very bad taste. So far, all three major credit rating agencies are taking a “wait and see” approach when it comes to Japan.
Unfortunately, the crisis in Japan is far from over.
The situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility just seems to grow more dire with each passing day. Right now, the primary concern is the 40 years of spent fuel rods that are stored throughout the complex.
Ed Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, recently explained why the pools that store the spent fuel rods are the biggest problem at this point….
The phrase “spent fuel rods” may make it sound like they should no longer be a threat, but the truth is that these fuel rods remain extremely hot and extremely radioactive for years after they are done being used. For some reason, someone thought that it would be a good idea to store these spent fuel rods in huge pools of water near the top of each of the nuclear reactor buildings at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.
These spent fuel rod pools are not housed in the same kind of containment vessels that the nuclear reactors are. Therefore there is a much greater danger that radiation from these spent fuel rods could be released into the surrounding environment.
A recent article by Paul Joseph Watson did a great job of explaining just how big of a problem these spent fuel rods represent….
Each of these 600,000 spent fuel rods is a potential “dirty bomb”.
Are you starting to grasp just how serious this all is?
It is absolutely critical that all of these spent fuel rods remain submerged in water.
If the water drops in the spent fuel pools there will be nothing to keep the spent fuel rods cool and they will start to degrade very, very quickly.
Unfortunately, things don’t look good right now. U.S. authorities today expressed their belief that the spent fuel rods in unit 4 are now exposed and that a great deal of radiation is being released. In fact, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stated during Congressional testimony today that he believes that an extremely high level of radiation is being released by exposed spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility at this point….
It would be hard to understate the courage of those that are working inside the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility right now. They all likely realize that they are all going to die very quickly. They are laying down their lives in an effort to save their countrymen. According to a recent report from CBS News these workers say that they are not afraid to die….
Would all of us respond the same way?
Even the media that are reporting on this disaster in Japan are starting to be affected by this radiation. Lester Holt revealed this morning that his entire crew had tested positive for radiation after returning from an assignment.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama is acting as if all of this stuff going on in Japan is no big deal. In fact, as Keith Koffler recently observed, Obama seems to be really enjoying himself in the midst of this crisis….
If you are curious about Obama’s picks for the NCAA tourney, they are posted on the official White House website.
This weekend, the Obamas are headed down to Brazil. According to an article in Forbes, the Obama plan to do a good bit of sightseeing while they are there….
Isn’t it great to see Obama acting like a true leader in the midst of one of the greatest moments of crisis that the world has seen since World War 2?
What in the world is Obama possibly thinking?
One thing about a major crisis is that it reveals the true character of those affected by it. Many are responding to this crisis in Japan with great acts of courage and heroism.
Others are not rising to the occasion.
Let us just hope and pray that the Japanese figure out a way to get the situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex under control. If a “worst case scenario” happens we could soon be facing an unprecedented nuclear nightmare.