When Barack Obama, the Federal Reserve and the mainstream media tell us that we are in the middle of an economic recovery, is that supposed to be some kind of sick joke? According to newly released numbers, over 44 million Americans are now on food stamps. That is a new all-time record and that number is 13.1% higher than it was just one year ago. So how many Americans have to go on food stamps before we can all finally agree that the U.S. economy is dying? 50 million? 60 million? All of us? The food stamp program is the modern equivalent of the old bread lines. More than one out of every seven Americans now depends on the federal government for food. Oh, but haven’t you heard? The economy is showing dramatic improvement. Corporate profits are up. The stock market is soaring. Happy days are here again.
It just seems inconceivable that anyone can claim that the economy is improving when the number of Americans on food stamps continues to set a brand new record every single month. But the food stamp program is not the only indicator that the economy is still having massive problems. The following are 10 more reasons why the U.S. economy is simply not getting any better….
#1 Some recent statistics actually indicate that the number of unemployed Americans is still going up. According to Gallup, unemployment in the United States rose to 10.3% at the end of February. That is the highest number Gallup has reported since early last year.
#2 The housing industry is still a complete and total disaster. In fact, new home sales in the U.S. in January were 11.2% lower than they were in December. Not only that, the number of new home sales in January was 18.6% lower than the number of new home sales in January 2010. That is not a sign of improvement.
#3 There wouldn’t even be much of a housing industry at all at this point if it was not for the U.S. government. Right now the U.S. government is either writing or guaranteeing well over 90 percent of all mortgages in the United States. So what would the housing market look like in 2011 if the government was not in the picture?
#4 In 2010, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure for the first time ever, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.
#5 Due to rampant economic decay and record numbers of foreclosures there are areas in most of our major cities that now look like “war zones”. For example, the Huffington Post is reporting that there are now approximately 15,000 vacant buildings in the city of Chicago and there are approximately 60,000 vacant houses and apartments in the city of Las Vegas.
#6 According to the Oil Price Information Service, U.S. drivers spent an average of $347 on gasoline during the month of February, which was 30 percent more than a year earlier. This represented 8.5% of median monthly income. So what is going to happen when gas prices go even higher? Sadly, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. has risen another 4 cents since yesterday and it is likely to go much higher from here.
#7 The U.S. trade deficit continues to grow. The trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009, and the 2011 trade deficit is expected to be even bigger.
#8 The CredAbility Consumer Distress Index, which measures the average financial condition of U.S. households, declined in every single quarter in 2010.
#9 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
#10 The U.S. national debt is growing faster than ever. The Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year will be a new all-time record 1.65 trillion dollars. It is hard to even imagine how much money that is. If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars. Long ago the U.S. government should have been getting these deficits under control, but instead they are just getting even larger.
So in light of the statistics above, can anyone really claim that we are in the middle of an economic recovery?
The truth is that there is no sign that any of the long-term trends that are destroying the U.S. economy are even slowing down.
Millions of jobs continue to be shipped overseas.
The U.S. dollar continues to be devalued.
The federal government continues to go into more debt.
State and local governments continue to go into more debt.
Our trade deficit continues to grow.
Our cities continue to be transformed into wastelands as they are being systematically deindustrialized.
The number of Americans that are dependent on the government continues to soar.
The U.S. middle class continues to shrink.
I know that I harp on these themes over and over, but it is vitally important that everyone understands that the mainstream media is lying to us.
The U.S. economy is dying a very painful death and there is no hope on the horizon.
Things are not going to be getting better. Well, they may get a bit better for the boys down on Wall Street, but for the rest of us our standards of living are going to continue to decline.
The best days for the U.S. economy are already behind us. What lies ahead is a whole lot of pain.
We are going to pay the price for decades of corruption and incompetence.
An economic collapse is coming and you had better get ready.
Did anyone out there anticipate that 2011 would be such a wild year? The year is barely over two months old and we have already seen multiple civil wars erupt, rumors of more wars all over the mainstream media (potentially even including the United States), riots and revolutions breaking out all over the globe, oil prices soaring into the stratosphere and chaos on global financial markets. So why is all of this happening? Is all of this one big coincidence or is there a reason why we are witnessing such global chaos right now? Is it just coincidence that revolutions have broken out in over a dozen countries in the Middle East all at the same time? Is it just a coincidence that global prices for oil, food and precious metals are all skyrocketing? Is it just a coincidence that world financial markets suddenly seem more vulnerable than at any time since 2008? Looking at what is going on in the world right now, it is very tempting to use the phrase “a perfect storm” to describe it. Unfortunately, this “perfect storm” is very likely to plunge the global economy into yet another financial collapse if it continues to get even worse.
After decades of relative stability, the Middle East has erupted in chaos in 2011. In the post-World War 2 era, we have never seen a time when there have been so many major internal revolutions all at once. All of these simultaneous revolutions are driving the price of oil rapidly upwards.
The price of West Texas crude is now over $102 a barrel and the price of Brent crude is now over $116 a barrel and if the chaos in the Middle East continues those numbers are likely to go a lot higher.
Meanwhile, gold has set a new all-time record this week and the price of silver is absolutely exploding.
In fact, just about every kind of “hard asset” that you can possibly name is going up in price. Investors don’t like all of this instability and they are looking for safe places to put their money.
Unfortunately, the global situation looks like it may become even more heated.
The calls for military action against Libya are rapidly reaching a crescendo.
The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution calling for the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, and many members of Congress are openly declaring that the U.S. and NATO should take unilateral action no matter what the UN ultimately decides.
But implementing a no-fly zone is not a simple thing. It is not just a matter of telling Libya not to fly their planes. Rather, imposing a no-fly zone over Libya would constitute a major military operation.
“Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses … and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down.”
You would have to remove the air defense capability in order to establish the no-fly zone so it – no illusions here, it would be a military operation.
Essentially, imposing a no-fly zone over Libya would be an act of war.
Most of our representatives in Washington D.C. seem to be quite ready to go to war in Libya, but it is another story entirely when it comes to the American people. A recent Rasmussen poll found that a whopping 67 percent of Americans do not want the U.S. to get more involved in the unrest going on in Arab countries and only 17 percent of Americans do want the U.S. to get more directly involved.
But the American people don’t get to decide whether we go to war or not. Our leaders in Washington D.C. do. The USS Enterprise and other major warships are on their way to Libya, and U.S. forces throughout the Mediterranean are on high alert.
So could the U.S. really get involved in another war in the Middle East?
Well, if the U.S. and NATO choose to get involved they will do it without the approval of the rest of the world.
On Wednesday, the Arab League issued a statement which specifically rejected “any foreign interference within Libya on behalf of the opposition”.
Not only that, but any military action by the UN will most likely be blocked by both China and Russia.
“If someone in Washington is seeking a blitzkrieg in Libya, it is a serious mistake because any use of military force outside the NATO responsibility zone will be considered a violation of international law.”
But Libya is far from the only crisis point in the Middle East.
In fact, a much larger problem may be brewing in Saudi Arabia.
On Facebook, a “Day of Rage” is being hyped for March 11th. Other dates being promoted for “revolution” in Saudi Arabia include March 20th and March 21st.
But if Saudi Arabia sees the same kind of chaos that we have seen in other countries in the Middle East there is no telling how high the price of oil could go.
Could we see $125 oil?
Could we see $150 oil?
Could we see $200 oil?
Saudi Arabia exports more oil than anyone else in the world, so if their oil production gets interrupted it is going to have a dramatic impact on the global economy.
For decades, the entire globe has been blessed with very cheap oil and this has resulted in a massive economic boom.
But times are changing.
The economic situation over in Europe is already deteriorating and any additional bad news could plunge that entire continent into a major crisis. A recently released report from Ernst & Young is warning that if oil goes up to 150 dollars a barrel and it stays there, “at least” one eurozone country will default and the entire eurozone will be plunged back into recession.
A much higher price for oil would obviously not be good for the U.S. economy either. Do you remember what happened back in 2008? The price of oil hit a record high in June and then the entire financial system came unglued just a few months later.
But if we see a repeat of 2008 it may be a lot worse this time because the global financial system is now more unstable than ever.
The truth is that the entire world is still trying to recover from the last financial crisis. The Federal Reserve is pumping massive quantities of dollars into the U.S. economy in an attempt to stimulate it back to life, but so far it is not working too well.
The rest of the world does not appreciate all of this “money printing” and the inflation that this is causing is beginning to create massive imbalances on global financial markets.
The world is starting to lose faith in the U.S. dollar. Right now, approximately 85% of all foreign-exchange transactions in the world involve the U.S. dollar. Not only that, 60% of all the currency reserves in the world are in U.S. dollars. With the U.S. dollar rapidly becoming less stable, many are now wondering if it should continue to be used as the reserve currency of the world.
The truth is that if the U.S. dollar falls, it is going to create a tremendous amount of financial chaos in almost every nation on the globe.
Unfortunately, as I have written about so many times previously, the U.S. economy is dying. The U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt, and leaders all over the planet are calling for the establishment of a new global reserve currency.
The days of the United States being the “economic engine of the planet” are rapidly coming to an end.
The U.S. economy is not ever going to fully “recover”. In fact, the U.S. economy is basically “running on empty” at this point as Gerald Celente recently noted during an interview on RT television….
The entire U.S. economy was designed to operate on massive amounts of very cheap oil. Americans do more driving than anyone else in the world. Many of us are so lazy that we won’t even walk to a store if it is on the other side of the parking lot.
If oil hits record levels in 2011, it is going to be a massive shock to the U.S. economic system. Any hopes for an “economic recovery” will be completely dashed.
In fact, if one wanted to “take down” the U.S. economy, driving up the price of oil would be a perfect way to do it.
And if one wanted to drive up the price of oil, a perfect way to do that would be to create all kinds of chaos in the Middle East.
So is all of this craziness that we are seeing in 2011 just a big coincidence or is there a reason why all of this is happening?
Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the matter below….
Have you ever heard of mob robberies? What happens is that dozens of young people storm a store at the same time, take whatever they want, and then storm out as powerless store clerks watch helplessly. Most of the time these “mob robbers” end up getting caught, but unfortunately “group crime” is a trend that is rising. Is it a sign of the times that large groups of people are starting to recklessly invade retail establishments? Is this the future of America? As I have written about so frequently, the U.S. middle class is being destroyed by this economy and large numbers of our young people are losing hope. Frustration and anger are rising from coast to coast and millions of Americans are losing faith in the system. The thin veneer of civilization which we all take for granted is already starting to disappear. So what is going to happen when the economy collapses? As our economic system fails, mob robberies and rampant looting are only going to become more common. Let us hope that the economy can hold together for at least a couple more years, because once society falls apart things are going to get really, really ugly in our major cities.
Are you prepared for what America is going to look like during the next Great Depression? It isn’t going to be pretty. Over the past couple of decades we have gotten hints of what America is going to look like when society breaks down, and those hints have been very frightening.
This first video is a news report about the mob robberies that have taken place in Minnesota recently. What would you do if you were a store clerk in this situation….
Unfortunately, these mob robberies are not just an anomaly. The American people really do seem to be losing it. Over the past couple of years, some almost unbelievable brawls have been breaking out in restaurants and in retail establishments all over the nation.
In addition, who could forget the wild mob scenes that erupted at stores all over America during the most recent Black Friday holiday sales?
Of course we all remember what happened during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. All along the Gulf Coast looting was rampant. Sadly, people were even openly looting stores in front of television news cameras….
This third video contains a compilation of footage from all over the United States over the past few decades. Is this what America is going to look like when the economy breaks down and people are going wild in the streets?….
But don’t think that Americans only act this way in the big cities. The truth is that human decency is breaking down everywhere. This was perfectly illustrated by a recently reported case of horrific child abuse in Oklahoma.
According to CNN, a 9-year-old girl, an 11-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy were actually forced to eat pet food and had suffered burns all over their bodies due to the nightmarish abuse that they had received from the couple that adopted them.
The 15-year-old boy in this case told authorities that at one point he was forced to live in a plastic dog carrier for two months and that all three of the children have had their tongues burned with a hot spoon by their “parents”.
The following is how CNN described some of the abuse that these children were subjected to….
Authorities said the Kluths are accused of burning the children with hot spoons, choking them and locking them “in the storm shelter behind the residence for long periods of time with only chairs to sit in and plastic buckets for bathroom use. It was also alleged that the Kluths deprived the children of meals for punishment and fed them cat food and dog food,” according to a statement from authorities.
Can you imagine?
As Americans, we like to think of ourselves as “good people”, but is that really true?
In the United States today, the percentage of the population that is in prison is more than ten times higher than it is in Japan.
Part of that is because the U.S. is rapidly becoming a “Big Brother” police state, but we also have to admit that the American people don’t seem to be made of the same “stuff” that they used to.
Something has gone dramatically wrong.
We have lost our way.
Is this country going to be able to handle another Great Depression?
Right now more than 43 million Americans are on food stamps. This is helping keep the population under control. But what is going to happen when the price of food goes up 50 percent and all of these millions of people can’t even feed themselves anymore?
That is a frightening thing to think about.
Most Americans have never known hard times. Most Americans cannot even imagine what deep economic suffering is like.
When the U.S. economy does completely unravel, it is going to blindside most of the population. Many Americans will go completely crazy when they finally realize that the “good times” are gone and are never coming back.
What we are seeing in Wisconsin right now is only a very small foretaste of the kinds of economic protests that we will see in the future. There are tens of millions of Americans that are just not going to quietly accept that their affluence is gone permanently.
Unfortunately, the time to start saying something was years ago. Our economy is being gutted right in front of our eyes and yet most Americans just keep on voting for the globalist politicians that continue to ship our factories, our jobs and our prosperity overseas.
Believe it or not, cities like Detroit, Michigan were once the envy of the world.
In 2011, the rest of the world laughs at Detroit. It has become a global joke.
And you know what?
Hundreds of other communities across the United States are being slowly but surely transformed into new Detroits.
Today, there are many towns across the United States where you can almost reach out and feel the despair. It is almost as if someone has sucked all of the hope right out of the atmosphere.
People are getting desperate. As the economy crumbles crime is only going to increase. In fact, many of our biggest cities have large areas where residents simply do not ever want to venture outside after the sun goes down. Life is getting crazier in America with each passing year.
The America that so many of us so fondly remember is being rapidly destroyed.
So what do you all think? Are mob robbers and rampant looting the future of America? Are people going to go crazy when the economy collapses or are Americans going to be able to handle it fairly well? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
Today budget cutters are on the rampage from coast to coast and often one of their first targets is public school teachers. What we have witnessed recently in Wisconsin is just one example of this. The truth is that you do not want to become a teacher if you want to have financial security in America today. Teacher salaries are being slashed from sea to shining sea. But to a certain extent the teachers that are having their wages cut are the fortunate ones. There are thousands upon thousands of teachers that have already been laid off, and there are tens of thousands more that are about to be laid off. It is absolutely brutal out there right now. So if you are thinking about becoming a teacher you might want to think twice. Not that there are a whole lot of other jobs that are more secure right now. The truth is that there is no such thing as a “safe job” in America today.
It is very unfortunate that what is going on right now is going to scare so many young people away from becoming a teacher because the next generation could definitely use some quality teachers.
But the truth is that it is getting really hard to honestly recommend that anyone become a teacher at this point. Just consider some of the following news stories that we have seen around the nation recently….
#2 Michigan has just approved a plan to shut down nearly half of the public schools in Detroit. Under the plan, 70 schools will be closed and 72 will continue operating.
#3 In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has laid off thousands of teachers and he cut a billion dollars from the state education budget.
#5 The eyes of the whole country are on Wisconsin right now. Teachers there are very alarmed about the $900 million in cuts to school funding over the next two years that are being proposed.
#6 Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, recently said that his organization is projecting that 100,000 school employees in the state of Texas could lose their jobs.
#7 The current plan is for more than 4,500 New York City school teachers to be laid off after this current school years ends. This will be the most significant teacher layoffs in New York since the 1970s.
#8 In Los Angeles, more than 5,000 teachers will be receiving preliminary layoff notices due to budget cuts.
#9 Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval is being deeply criticized for the teacher pay cuts that he is proposing.
#10StudentsFirst.org is projecting that 161,000 teachers across the United States are in danger of losing their jobs this year alone.
So in light of the facts above, should we advise any of our young people to try to become a teacher?
The worst thing about all this for young teachers is that in many areas of the country there is a rule that says the last teachers hired are the first ones that get laid off.
That is another huge incentive for young people not to choose teaching as a profession.
So why are so many teacher layoffs happening?
Well, the truth is that most of our state and local governments are very deep in debt and have run out of money.
State and local government debt has reached at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP, and hordes of state and local governments are teetering on the brink of insolvency at this point.
When there is no more money, the cuts have to come from somewhere. It is just really unfortunate that so many teachers are going to be put out onto the street.
People that have gone into the teaching profession have all spent a lot of time and money to get the education that they need to teach. If they are told that they can’t do that anymore, what are they supposed to do?
Most of the time when teachers are forced out of the profession they end up having to take jobs that pay much less. In this economy, many ex-teachers will not be able to find jobs at all. Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps, and sadly many teachers may soon be joining them.
So why don’t we just raise taxes so that all of these teachers can keep their jobs? Well, the truth is that middle class Americans are already being taxed into oblivion. When you add up the dozens and dozens of different taxes that Americans pay each year the overall tax burden is absolutely frightening. There is only so much that you can squeeze out of the American people.
No, the truth is that the American people are taxed way too much already, and the big corporations and the ultra-wealthy have become experts at avoiding taxation. Our current tax system needs to be completely scrapped and replaced with something entirely new.
If our state and local governments had not been so addicted to debt, and if our economy had been managed correctly and if about a hundred other things had been done differently we would not be having these problems.
But here we are.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any easy answers.
Or are there some solutions that most of us have been overlooking? What do you all think? What should be done about all of the teacher layoffs that are taking place all over the country? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….
One of the quickest ways to bring down the U.S. economy would be to dramatically increase the price of oil. Oil is the lifeblood of our economic system. Without it, our entire economy would come to a grinding halt. Almost every type of economic activity in this country depends on oil, and even a small rise in the price of oil can have a dramatic impact on economic growth. That is why so many economists are incredibly alarmed about what is happening in the Middle East right now. The revolution in Libya caused the price of WTI crude to soar more than 7 dollars on Tuesday alone. It closed at $93.57 on Tuesday and Brent crude actually hit $108.57 a barrel before settling back to $105.78 at the end of the day. Some analysts are warning that we could even see 5 dollar gas in the United States by the end of the year if rioting spreads to other oil producing nations such as Saudi Arabia. With the Middle East in such a state of chaos right now it is hard to know exactly what is going to happen, but almost everyone agrees that if oil prices continue to rise at a rapid pace over the next several months it is going to have a devastating impact on economic growth all over the globe.
Right now the eyes of the world are on Libya. Libya is the 17th largest oil producer on the globe and it has the biggest proven oil reserves on the continent of Africa.
Libya only produces 2 percent of the oil in the world, but with global supplies so tight at the moment even a minor production disruption can have a dramatic impact on the price of oil.
Before this crisis, Libya was producing approximately 1.6 million barrels of oil per day. Now the rest of the world is wondering what may happen if revolution spreads to other major oil producing nations such as Kuwait (2.5 million barrels of oil per day) or Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia produces 8.4 million barrels of oil a day. It produces more oil than anyone else in OPEC.
If revolution strikes in Saudi Arabia and a major production disruption happens it could be catastrophic for the global economy.
David Rosenberg, the chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates, is warning that if there is major civil unrest in Saudi Arabia we could end up seeing oil go up to $200 a barrel….
“If Libya can spark a $10-a-barrel response, imagine what a similar uprising in Saudi Arabia could unleash. Do the math: we’d be talking about $200 oil.”
200 dollar oil?
Don’t laugh – it could happen.
In fact, if it does happen the global economy would probably go into cardiac arrest.
The truth is that if the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia gets disrupted there is not enough spare capacity from the rest of the globe to make up for it.
Paul Horsnell, the head of oil research at Barclays Capital, recently said that the world does not currently have enough spare capacity to be able to guarantee that an oil “price shock” will not happen….
“The world has only 4.5m barrels-per-day (bpd) of spare capacity, which is not comfortable.”
Horsnell also said that even in the midst of potential supply problems, the global demand for oil continues to grow at a very robust pace….
“In just two years, the world has grown so fast as to consume additional volume equal to the output of Iraq and Kuwait combined.”
For now, Saudi officials are saying all the right things. They say that there will be no revolution in Saudi Arabia and that there are not going to be any supply problems.
For example, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi recently announced that the rest of the world should not worry because his country is definitely going to be able to make up for any shortage in the global supply of oil….
“What I would like you to convey to the market: right now there is absolutely no shortage of supply.”
But what happens if revolution comes to Saudi Arabia?
Suddenly the whole game would change.
But even with a peaceful Saudi Arabia the price of gasoline in the United States is already rising to alarming levels.
The average price of gasoline in the United States reached $3.14 a gallon last week. This closely mirrors what happened back in 2008. Three years ago at this time the average price of gasoline was right around $3.13 a gallon.
Let’s certainly hope that we don’t see a repeat of what happened to oil prices back in mid-2008. The price of oil reached an all-time record of $147 a barrel and gas prices in the United States absolutely skyrocketed.
So how high will the price of gas in the U.S. go in 2011?
We haven’t even come close to 4 dollar gas yet, but a large number of analysts believe that it is coming this summer.
Is there even a possibility that we could see 5 dollar gas in America at some point in the next couple of years?
Well, there are some in the oil industry that are convinced that it could actually happen. Just consider the following quotes….
Darin Newsom, senior analyst at energy tracker DTN….
“If this thing escalates and there’s a good chance that there’d be a shift in supplies, $5 gas isn’t out of the question.”
Peter Beutel, president of energy adviser Cameron Hanover….
“If you are looking at the disruption of movement and production in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, you’re easily talking $5 gas.”
John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil, on his belief that we could see 5 dollar gas by 2012….
“I’m predicting actually the worst outcome over the next two years which takes us to 2012 with higher gasoline prices.”
So why is everyone so concerned about gas prices?
Well, because it affects the price of almost everything else in the economy.
David Wyss, the chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, says that every extra dollar that is spent on gasoline is a dollar that will not be spent somewhere else….
“The money that you spend filling up your car is money you don’t have to spend at the shopping mall.”
Not only that, but when gasoline costs more it has a negative effect on economic growth. Almost all economic activities involve the use of oil in one form or another. When the price of oil starts getting really high it motivates people to start cutting back on many of those activities.
The truth is that our whole economic system is based on the ability to use massive amounts of very cheap oil. Now that the price of oil is rapidly rising again, many economists are becoming very alarmed.
Nobuo Tanaka, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, recently told CNBC that his organization is extremely concerned about what high oil prices could do to the global economy….
“That is our concern, regardless of the margins of disruption, if the $100 per barrel of oil is continued in 2011, the burden of oil to the global economy is as bad as 2008.”
So what was so bad about 2008? Well, the price of oil soared to $147 a barrel in mid-2008 and this was a huge factor in the financial collapse that happened a few months later. Now oil prices are returning to levels that we have not seen since 2008….
So if the price of oil breaks the all-time record this year will we see another global financial crisis?
It is hard to say. But what almost everyone agrees on is that it will not be good for the global economy at all.
In addition, a higher price for oil will also have a huge impact on the trade deficit. Because oil prices were at such a high level back in 2008, oil imports actually made up almost 50 percent of the U.S. trade deficit that year.
In 2010, the U.S. trade deficit was just a whisker under $500 billion. If the price of oil gets up to 140 or 150 dollars a barrel we could easily see the U.S. trade deficit explode to 700 or 800 billion dollars in 2011.
That would be really, really bad for the U.S. economy.
So where are oil prices going next?
Well, if you could predict that with 100 percent certainty you could make a whole lot of money. Nobody knows for sure.
But almost everyone believes that the price of oil is going to go up. In fact, a lot number of investors have been making some very large bets that the price of oil is going to go up very significantly this year.
Recently, large numbers of investors have been betting that the price of oil will rise to $125 a barrel by May. Shockingly, some investors have even been betting that the price of oil will rise to $250 a barrel by next December.
Let us hope that the price of oil does not rise that rapidly, but as the past couple of months have demonstrated, the world is becoming a very unstable place. Just about anything is possible at this point.
If the price of oil rises significantly above $100 a barrel and it stays there for an extended period of time, it is going to be absolutely devastating for the U.S. economy.
So what do you all think is going to happen to the price of oil in 2011? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….
Have you heard the news? The stock market is absolutely soaring and according to the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve we are in the beginning stages of a robust economic recovery. Yippee! The S&P 500 is up 6.8 percent so far in 2011, and the stock market recently hit a two and a half year high. So shouldn’t we all be celebrating? Well, if stock market performance was an accurate measure of economic health, then Zimbabwe would have had one of the healthiest economies on the entire globe during the last decade. But just like Zimbabwe’s stock market was artificially pumped up with “funny money” that was rapidly being devalued, so is ours. All of the “quantitative easing” that the Federal Reserve has been doing is pumping plenty of money into the financial markets and is helping to inflate a false stock market bubble, but it is doing very little to alleviate the suffering of the U.S. middle class. In fact, when you take a closer look at the numbers you quickly find out that the suffering of the middle class is getting even worse.
According to Gallup, the unemployment rate is now over 10%. The number of Americans that have given up looking for work recently set a new all-time record. The number of mortgages in foreclosure tied a record high during the fourth quarter of 2010. Gas and food prices are rising rapidly. The number of Americans on food stamps continues to increase every single month.
Yes, right now the economic situation is not in free fall like it was a couple years ago. We should be thankful for that. Periods of relative stability such as we are enjoying now will be few and far between in the years ahead. This “bubble” of economic calm is a great opportunity that we should all be taking advantage of.
However, those that are hoping that this is an economic “turning point” and that things will soon be back to “normal” are going to be greatly disappointed. This is about as “normal” as things are going to be ever again.
Even during this time of relative economic stability, the U.S. middle class is still being ripped to shreds. If there are those among your family and friends that are somehow convinced that the U.S. economy is recovering nicely, you might want want to show them the following 18 very sobering facts….
#1 According to Gallup, the U.S. unemployment rate is currently 10.3 percent. When you add in part-time American workers that want full-time employment, that number rises to 20.2 percent.
#2 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of job openings in the United States declined for a second straight month during December.
#4 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
#5 Gasoline prices in the United States recently hit a 28-month high.
#6 During the 4th quarter of 2010, 4.63 percent of all U.S. home loans were in foreclosure. That matched the all-time high, and it was up significantly from 4.39 percent in the 3rd quarter.
#7 It is estimated that there are about 5 million homeowners in the United States that are at least two months behind on their mortgages, and it is being projected that over a million American families will be booted out of their homes this year alone.
#8Almost 14 percent of all credit card accounts in the United States are currently 90 days or more delinquent.
#9 The average credit card rate in the United States had increased to a whopping 13.44 percent at the end of 2010.
#10 Americans now owe more than $890 billion on student loans, which is even more than they owe on credit cards.
#11 Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income. In China, average household debt is only 17% of average household income.
#18One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
You know things are bad when articles start popping up in the mainstream news instructing us how to interact socially with the hordes of unemployed Americans that are out there today. A recent USA Today article entitled “What not to say to someone who is unemployed” listed some of the things that you should not say to someone that does not have a job. The following are some of their suggestions on what NOT to say….
“Hey, have you found anything yet?”
“How’s the search going?”
“You just have to pound the pavement.”
“Something will turn up.”
“It’s tough out there.”
“Other people are going through the same thing.”
“Maybe you’re asking for too much money.”
“Maybe you should go back to school.”
“There are plenty of jobs out there.”
I am sure most of us have heard things like this at one time or another. It can be a soul-crushing thing to have others like at you in pity because you don’t have a job and you can’t pay the mortgage and feed your family.
Most unemployed Americans are not lazy. The vast majority of them desperately want jobs. But the U.S. economy is not producing nearly enough jobs today. As noted above, the U.S. economy currently has about 3 million job openings, but approximately 20 percent of the workforce wants to find a full-time job. The demand for jobs is far, far, far greater than the supply.
Unfortunately, this is the legacy of decades of bad economic decision-making. The U.S. economy should be able to provide work for every single person that wants it, but because of the choices that have been made that will never be the case again.
The middle class in America is being ripped to shreds right in front of our eyes and very little is being done to stop it. Desperation is rising across the nation. More Americans slip into poverty every single day. It is almost as if a cloud of gloom and despair has descended upon the U.S. economy and every single month the situation only seems to get darker.
So what about you? How has this economy affected you and your family? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….
Have you seen video of the teacher protests that are going on in Wisconsin? We haven’t seen anything like this in America in quite some time. If you haven’t seen video of the protests yet, some very good raw footage is posted below. On the one hand it is good to see Americans coming together and standing up for what they believe in, but on the other hand what these teachers are freaking out about shows just how much America has changed. These teachers are not protesting for liberty, freedom or to change the government. Rather, they are protesting because they want things to remain the same. They simply don’t want anyone to mess with their pay. Well, the truth is that none of us ever wants to experience a pay cut. It is not a lot of fun. But sadly, states like Wisconsin are so broke that they have to find cuts somewhere. Someone is going to have to make a sacrifice. The teachers in Wisconsin just want to make sure that it is not them.
In the United States today, state and local governments are facing unprecedented budget crunches. Tax revenues are way down and expenses are way up. State and local government debt has reached at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP, and many state and local governments are teetering on the brink of insolvency.
States like Wisconsin have to do something or else they will collapse financially. Wisconsin is facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit (which for that state is huge), and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans in the legislature are attempting to make some tough cuts.
In particular, they want public employees to pay a little more towards their health care premiums and pension programs. In fact, what the Republicans are proposing would still leave Wisconsin public employees contributing far less to health care and pensions than their private sector counterparts.
U.S. Representative Paul Ryan recently appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program and described what Governor Scott Walker is asking the teachers to do….
Scott and I are very close friends. We e-mail each other quite a bit… He’s basically saying that state workers which have extremely generous benefits packages relative to their private sector counterparts, they contribute next to nothing to their pensions, very, very little in their health care packages.
He’s asking that they contribute about 12 percent for their health care premiums, which is about half of the private sector average, and about 5.6 percent to their pensions. It’s not asking a lot. It’s still about half of what private sector pensions do and health care packages do.
So he’s basically saying “I want you public workers half of what your private sector counterparts do” and he’s getting riots. It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison these days.
These proposed changes have caused a massive uproar in Wisconsin. Just check out the following raw video footage from the last few days….
But this is what we have come to as a nation. Almost everyone agrees that reducing government debt is a good thing “in theory”, but whenever anyone starts to put forward some specific proposals to cut government spending it makes those that will be affected by the cuts extremely upset.
Just look at what is happening with the federal government. Republicans and Democrats are both frothing at the mouth over extremely small budget cuts that have been proposed. Virtually none of our national politicians are even willing to discuss budget cuts that would actually make a serious dent in our budget deficits.
But we have got to do something. Spending by the U.S. government is spinning wildly out of control. Back in 1970, the U.S. government only spent about 200 billion dollars for the whole year. Well, this year the federal government is going to spend somewhere around 3.6 trillion dollars, and Barack Obama’s newest budget proposal calls for U.S. government spending to increase to 5.6 trillion dollars by the year 2021. If the government continues to spend money at such a rapid pace it is going to completely wipe out our entire economic system….
But it is not just the U.S. government that is spending like a drunken sailor. Most of our state governments are complete financial disaster zones at this point as well.
As I have written about previously, the state of Illinois is such a financial disaster zone that it is hard to even describe. According to 60 Minutes, the state of Illinois is six months behind on their bill payments. 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft asked Illinois state Comptroller Dan Hynes how many people and organizations are waiting to be paid by the state, and this is how Hynes responded….
“It’s fair to say that there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people waiting to be paid by the state.”
Something has got to be done about our national addiction to debt.
Government spending has to be dramatically cut. All of us are going to have to make sacrifices. We simply cannot continue to spend far, far, far more than we bring in.
But we are Americans – we do not like to make sacrifices.
Our founding fathers warned us about this. They warned that when the American people figured out that they could vote themselves money out of the U.S. Treasury it would greatly endanger our republic.
Unfortunately that is exactly what is happening today. The vast majority of government spending on both the national and state levels consists of direct payments to individuals of one sort or another.
The American people have become addicted to the bread crumbs that they receive from the hand of their master.
This is not what our republic was supposed to look like.
As the U.S. economy continues to decline, we are going to see a lot more riots like we have seen in Wisconsin. Once the American people realize that the “good times” are over, all hell is going to break loose.
Already the anger and the frustration of the American people is starting to boil over. Unfortunately, that anger and frustration is focused in 1000 different directions. The ruling elite and the establishment media are constantly encouraging us to hate one another. I recently wrote about this phenomenon in an article on another website….
The truth is that the “establishment” is constantly trying to divide us and get us fighting with one another. They pit the Republicans against the Democrats (even as though control both sides). They pit one race against another. They pit one gender against another. We are told that the rich are against the poor, the north is against the south, urban is against rural and that there are even “generational battles” going on. Frustration and hate are rapidly growing in the United States today, and a lot of that frustration and hate is unfortunately aimed at the targets that the mainstream media has programmed all of us to hate. Meanwhile, those at the top of the pyramid who are controlling the whole game love it when we are divided because we can never become united and challenge their control.
Unfortunately, America is more divided today than ever. Our extreme affluence has kept the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted from disappearing so far, but once our affluence is gone all of the hate and frustration in society is going to come bubbling to the surface and it is going to be horrifying to behold.
Once the economic collapse happens, most Americans are not going to take it sitting down. Most Americans are going to want someone to blame. Most Americans are going to want to lash out somehow.
America today is like a big, fat spoiled baby that is about to have its favorite pacifier permanently taken away. America is going to whine and cry and complain like there is no tomorrow.
For decades the financial “gloom and doomers” have been warning about what would happen to this country if we didn’t get our house in order, but nobody wanted to listen. Everyone just kept piling up more debt as if it would never be a problem.
Well, now our entire country is covered in red ink. Large numbers of state and local governments across the country are on the verge of defaulting on their debts, and they are hoping that the federal government will bail them out. The federal government has already accumulated the biggest pile of debt the world has ever seen and continues to behave as if we can just keep borrowing and spending massive amounts of money forever.
There is no way out of this nightmare under the current system. Taxing people more is not going to solve our problems. Taxing people less is not going to solve our problems.
We have gotten to the point where it is inevitable that the debt bubble that we have created is going to burst. Our politicians can try to delay it for a while, but in the end the whole house of cards is going to come crashing down.
When the U.S. economy does totally collapse, it is going to make the riots that we have seen in Egypt and throughout the Middle East this year seem tame by comparison.
What we are witnessing right now in Wisconsin are just the “birth pains”. The American people don’t want to “tighten their belts”. In fact, most Americans have absolutely no idea what “hard times” would even look like. When things go from bad to worse we are going to see temper tantrums in this country like we have never seen before.
So get ready. Unless there is some kind of dramatic transformation in this country, in the years ahead we are going to see some horrific economic riots.
It would be nice if we had a brighter future to look forward to, but we don’t do ourselves any favors by living in denial.
So what do you all think about what has been going on in Wisconsin? Do you all believe that we could see huge economic riots inside America in the years ahead? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
Everywhere you look today the mainstream news is talking about shortages. Authorities all over the globe are boldly proclaiming that the world is rapidly running out of food, water and oil. So are these doomsayers right? Well, it must be noted that some of the most famous “prophets of doom” of the past several decades have seen their predictions fail spectacularly. For example, in his infamous 1968 book entitled “The Population Bomb“, Paul Ehrlich made the following statement: “I don’t see how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” Well, India is now feeding well over twice the number of people than they had when Ehrlich originally wrote his book. But that doesn’t mean that major shortages won’t happen in the future. It just means that we should be careful not to look incredibly ridiculous like Ehrlich did. The truth is that there are good reasons why we should be watching global supplies of food, water and oil very closely. Life as we know it would cease to exist if we had severe shortages of any of them.
So will we actually be facing serious shortages of food, water or oil in the coming years?
Well, let’s take a look at oil first.
Oil Shortage?
Right now oil is absolutely essential to almost everything that we do. We require oil to drive our cars, we require oil to produce our food, a large percentage of our homes use energy that is derived from oil and most of what we buy at the stores comes in packaging that is made up at least partly of oil.
So if we run out of oil that is going to be a really huge deal.
So are we going to run out of oil?
Well, right now advocates of the “peak oil” hypothesis are getting a lot of attention in the mainstream media.
Basically the idea behind “peak oil” is that the world has reached (or almost reached) the maximum amount of oil that it can produce and that from here on out the amount of oil that will be produced will begin to decline. Meanwhile, the demand for oil is only going to continue to increase.
So is there evidence that this is actually happening?
Well, it depends on who you ask. But what is undeniable is that there are some very powerful interests that are doing their best to hype a coming oil shortage.
In recently released report entitled “Signals & Signposts“, Shell Oil warns that global demand for energy is going to be three times as large in 2050 as it was in 2000.
So where will all of that extra energy come from?
Can the world possibly produce two or three times as much oil as it does today?
The Shell Oil report forecasts that the global supply of oil will continue to rise but that the rise in supply will not be fast enough to keep up with the rise in demand. According to Shell, this is going to cause rapidly rising oil prices which will cause the gross domestic products of all nations to fall.
So just how high could oil prices go?
Well, the truth is that the price of oil is very highly manipulated. The market for oil is not exactly what you would call a “free market”.
However, it is alarming that almost everyone is forecasting much higher oil prices at this point.
For example, Weeden & Co. oil analyst Charles Maxwell recently stated that he believes that the price of oil will eventually hit $300 a barrel by the end of this decade.
If that were to happen, it would be absolutely disastrous for the global economy. Yeah, those in the oil industry would make a killing, but for the rest of the world it would be a complete and utter nightmare.
Unfortunately, what most Americans don’t understand is that there are lots of alternative energy technologies out there that have been repressed by the big oil companies and by the big oil producing nations because they threaten hundreds of billions of dollars in profits.
For example, did you know that it is possible to run a car entirely on water? One Japanese company hopes to start mass marketing them….
But I wouldn’t count on seeing water-powered cars sold on every street corner any time soon.
Why?
Because of greed.
Our entire system of energy is based on making as much money as possible for those who have all the oil.
So if the world has a shortage of energy in the coming years, it is not because that is how it inevitably had to be.
Rather, it will be all about pure, unadulterated greed.
There are plenty of alternative energy technologies out there that are incredibly promising, but those that are getting incredibly wealthy off of our oil-based society are not going to quietly step aside for the good of mankind.
Food Shortage?
So what about food?
Is the world running out of food?
Well, as we have seen so many times in the past, the earth can support far more people than most of the “experts” ever imagined.
In fact, if weather patterns were perfectly stable and we removed human greed out of the picture, the earth could most likely support a whole lot more people.
Unfortunately, weather patterns are becoming increasingly bizarre and human greed is always a problem.
In particular, this year extreme weather all over the globe is causing many to be concerned that we may soon see some very serious food shortages. In Australia and Brazil, flooding of Biblical proportions has absolutely devastated crops. Some of China’s most important agricultural areas are experiencing the worst droughts that they have seen in 200 years. Authorities are warning that two-thirds of China’s wheat crop could be in danger. A recent cold snap that hit northern Mexico wiped out entire harvests and has sent prices for many fresh produce items in the United States soaring.
But these bizarre weather patterns will hopefully settle down eventually.
What is of even greater concern is that we have been seeing a long-term trend of rapidly rising food prices over the last couple of years that is putting an extreme amount of strain on the 3 billion people in the world that are trying to survive on the equivalent of 2 dollars or less per day.
Most Americans can still handle rising food prices, but for millions upon millions of poor people all over the world a significant increase in the cost of food can mean the difference between life and death.
That is why the sudden rise in price of so many agricultural commodities is so disturbing. Just consider some of the shocking price increases that we have seen over the past year or two….
*The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.
*The price of sugar is the highest it has been in 30 years.
If prices continue to go up like this we are going to see a lot more food riots all over the globe.
But perhaps that is what those in positions of power actually want. The truth is that the global elite don’t always have the best interests of the rest of us at heart.
Water Shortage?
So what about water?
Is the world running out of water?
Well, yes, many areas of the world are rapidly running out of fresh water and this is perhaps one of the biggest problems we are facing.
Without oil, most of us could survive for quite some time.
Without food, most of us could survive for a number of weeks.
Without water, most of us would die within a matter of days.
Fortunately North America still has a decent supply of fresh water, but as I have written about previously, in many areas of the globe the situation is quickly becoming absolutely dire….
*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.
*But there are few places where the water shortage is as severe as it is in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia had been producing enough wheat to be self-sufficient for most of the past 30 years, but in 2008 authorities there realized that the non-replenishable aquifer they had been pumping for irrigation purposes was nearly depleted. So in response Saudi Arabia made the decision to reduce their wheat harvest by one-eighth every year thereafter. Wheat production in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to cease entirely in 2016.
In some of the most populated areas of the planet the water situation can only be described as catastrophic.
For example, did you know that a new desert the size of Rhode Island is created in China because of drought every single year?
Did you know that in China 80% of the major rivers are so polluted that they don’t support aquatic life at all?
Did you know that the women of South Africa collectively walk the equivalent distance to the moon and back 16 times a day for water?
Thankfully the water situation in the United States has not gotten that bad yet, but the truth is that even we could be facing serious water shortages in the years ahead.
According to a recent report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than one-third of all counties in the lower 48 states will likely be facing very serious water shortages by the year 2050.
So, yes, there are some really good reasons to be concerned about earth’s dwindling resources.
If the global elite were not so incredibly greedy and if we managed our planet better we would not have problems to this degree.
But here we are.
So what is the solution?
Well, it would be really great if the global elite would just share some of their wealth. A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research discovered that the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 percent of all global wealth.
But the global elite aren’t about to change the rules of the global economy. After all, they spent a whole lot of time and effort rigging the game so that virtually all wealth eventually gets funneled into their hands.
After all, they argue, if there are half as many people around then we will only be using half as many resources, right?
Well, as alluring as that may sound, the truth is that the world has always had a huge problem with poverty. Even when the global population was down around 100 million people there was rampant poverty.
The number of people is not the problem.
The problem is the insatiable greed of the elite.
The global elite have systematically exploited the poor all over the planet, they have gobbled up the resources of the world wherever they have found them and now they are hoarding their wealth as millions upon millions suffer desperately.
Well, in the end the global elite will have to answer to a higher power. In the book of James it talks about those who hoard wealth on this earth….
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.
According to the most recent “Global Wealth Report” by Credit Suisse, the wealthiest 0.5% control over 35% of the wealth of the world.
That qualifies as hoarding wealth.
Other estimates put the concentration of wealth at the very top of the food chain much higher than that.
But sadly, the problem of greed is not going to be solved any time soon.
Global supplies of food and fresh water are going to continue to diminish.
The world economy is going to continue to become increasingly unstable.
If it was always your desire to live in “interesting times”, then you are about to get your wish. Things are about to get extremely “interesting” on this planet.
So what do you think? Do you believe that the world will be facing shortages of food, water and oil in the years ahead? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
Once upon a time, the United States was the greatest industrial powerhouse that the world has ever seen. Our immense economic machinery was the envy of the rest of the globe and it provided the foundation for the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. But now the once great U.S. economic machine is being dismantled piece by piece. The U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized and very few of our leaders even seem to care. It was the United States that once showed the rest of the world how to mass produce televisions and automobiles and airplanes and computers, but now our industrial base is being ripped to shreds. Tens of thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas. Many of our proudest manufacturing cities have been transformed into “post-industrial” hellholes that nobody wants to live in anymore.
Meanwhile, wave after wave of shiny new factories is going up in nations such as China, India and Brazil. This is great for those countries, but for the millions of American workers that desperately needed the jobs that have been sent overseas it is not so great.
This is the legacy of globalism. Multinational corporations now have the choice whether to hire U.S. workers or to hire workers in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. The “great sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about so long ago is actually happening, and it has left tens of millions of Americans without good jobs.
So what is to become of a nation that consumes more than it ever has and yet continues to produce less and less?
Well, the greatest debt binge in the history of the world has enabled us to maintain (and even increase) our standard of living for several decades, but all of that debt is starting to really catch up with us.
The American people seem to be very confused about what is happening to us because most of them thought that the party was going to last forever. In fact, most of them still seem convinced that our brightest economic days are still ahead.
After all, every time we have had a “recession” in the past things have always turned around and we have gone on to even greater things, right?
Well, what most Americans simply fail to understand is that we are like a car that is having its insides ripped right out. Our industrial base is being gutted right in front of our eyes.
Most Americans don’t think much about our “trade deficit”, but it is absolutely central to what is happening to our economy. Every year, we buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.
In 2010, the U.S. trade deficit was just a whisker under $500 billion. This is money that we could have all spent inside the United States that would have supported thousands of American factories and millions of American jobs.
Instead, we sent all of those hundreds of billions of dollars overseas in exchange for a big pile of stuff that we greedily consumed. Most of that stuff we probably didn’t need anyway.
Since we spent almost $500 billion more with the rest of the world than they spent with us, at the end of the year the rest of the world was $500 billion wealthier and the American people were collectively $500 billion poorer.
That means that the collective “economic pie” that we are all dividing up is now $500 billion smaller.
Are you starting to understand why times suddenly seem so “hard” in the United States?
Meanwhile, jobs and businesses continue to fly out of the United States at a blinding pace.
This is a national crisis.
We simply cannot expect to continue to have a “great economy” if we allow our economy to be deindustrialized.
A nation that consumes far more than it produces is not going to be wealthy for long.
The following are 21 signs that the once great U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized….
#1 The U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world rose to 497.8 billion dollars in 2010. That represented a 32.8% increase from 2009.
#2 The U.S. trade deficit with China rose to an all-time record of 273.1 billion dollars in 2010. This is the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
#3 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#4 In the years since 1975, the United States had run a total trade deficit of 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.
#5 The United States spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#6 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall.
#7 The number of net jobs gained by the U.S. economy during this past decade was smaller than during any other decade since World War 2.
#8 The Bureau of Labor Statistics originally predicted that the U.S. economy would create approximately 22 million jobs during the decade of the 2000s, but it turns out that the U.S. economy only produced about 7 million jobs during that time period.
#11 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#12 The United States now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.
#13According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#14 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#15 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.
#16 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
#17 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#18 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#20 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#21 Ten years ago, the “employment rate” in the United States was about 64%. Since then it has been constantly declining and now the “employment rate” in the United States is only about 58%. So where did all of those jobs go?
The world is changing.
We are bleeding national wealth at a pace that is almost unimaginable.
We are literally being drained dry.
Did you know that China now has the world’s fastest train and the world’s largest high-speed rail network?
They were able to afford those things with all of the money that we have been sending them.
How do you think all of those oil barons in the Middle East became so wealthy and could build such opulent palaces?
They got rich off of all the money that we have been sending them.
Meanwhile, once great U.S. cities such as Detroit, Michigan now look like war zones.
Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was about 6 million dollars for the entire year.
As mentioned above, the U.S. trade deficit with China for 2010 was over 273 billion dollars.
What a difference 25 years can make, eh?
What do you find when you go into a Wal-Mart, a Target or a dollar store today?
You find row after row after row of stuff made in China and in other far away countries.
It can be more than a bit difficult to find things that are actually made inside the United States anymore. In fact, there are quite a few industries that have completely and totally left the United States. For certain product categories it is now literally impossible to buy something made in America.
So what are we going to do with our tens of millions of blue collar workers?
Should we just tell them that their jobs are not ever coming back so they better learn phrases such as “Welcome to Wal-Mart” and “Would you like fries with that”?
For quite a few years, the gigantic debt bubble that we were living in kind of insulated us from feeling the effects of the deindustrialization of America.
Did anyone out there anticipate that 2011 would be such a wild year? The year is barely over two months old and we have already seen multiple civil wars erupt, rumors of more wars all over the mainstream media (potentially even including the United States), riots and revolutions breaking out all over the globe, oil prices soaring into the stratosphere and chaos on global financial markets. So why is all of this happening? Is all of this one big coincidence or is there a reason why we are witnessing such global chaos right now? Is it just coincidence that revolutions have broken out in over a dozen countries in the Middle East all at the same time? Is it just a coincidence that global prices for oil, food and precious metals are all skyrocketing? Is it just a coincidence that world financial markets suddenly seem more vulnerable than at any time since 2008? Looking at what is going on in the world right now, it is very tempting to use the phrase “a perfect storm” to describe it. Unfortunately, this “perfect storm” is very likely to plunge the global economy into yet another financial collapse if it continues to get even worse.
You Call This An Economic Recovery? 44 Million Americans On Food Stamps and 10 Other Reasons Why The Economy Is Simply Not Getting Better
It just seems inconceivable that anyone can claim that the economy is improving when the number of Americans on food stamps continues to set a brand new record every single month. But the food stamp program is not the only indicator that the economy is still having massive problems. The following are 10 more reasons why the U.S. economy is simply not getting any better….
#1 Some recent statistics actually indicate that the number of unemployed Americans is still going up. According to Gallup, unemployment in the United States rose to 10.3% at the end of February. That is the highest number Gallup has reported since early last year.
#2 The housing industry is still a complete and total disaster. In fact, new home sales in the U.S. in January were 11.2% lower than they were in December. Not only that, the number of new home sales in January was 18.6% lower than the number of new home sales in January 2010. That is not a sign of improvement.
#3 There wouldn’t even be much of a housing industry at all at this point if it was not for the U.S. government. Right now the U.S. government is either writing or guaranteeing well over 90 percent of all mortgages in the United States. So what would the housing market look like in 2011 if the government was not in the picture?
#4 In 2010, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure for the first time ever, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.
#5 Due to rampant economic decay and record numbers of foreclosures there are areas in most of our major cities that now look like “war zones”. For example, the Huffington Post is reporting that there are now approximately 15,000 vacant buildings in the city of Chicago and there are approximately 60,000 vacant houses and apartments in the city of Las Vegas.
#6 According to the Oil Price Information Service, U.S. drivers spent an average of $347 on gasoline during the month of February, which was 30 percent more than a year earlier. This represented 8.5% of median monthly income. So what is going to happen when gas prices go even higher? Sadly, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. has risen another 4 cents since yesterday and it is likely to go much higher from here.
#7 The U.S. trade deficit continues to grow. The trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009, and the 2011 trade deficit is expected to be even bigger.
#8 The CredAbility Consumer Distress Index, which measures the average financial condition of U.S. households, declined in every single quarter in 2010.
#9 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
#10 The U.S. national debt is growing faster than ever. The Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year will be a new all-time record 1.65 trillion dollars. It is hard to even imagine how much money that is. If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars. Long ago the U.S. government should have been getting these deficits under control, but instead they are just getting even larger.
So in light of the statistics above, can anyone really claim that we are in the middle of an economic recovery?
The truth is that there is no sign that any of the long-term trends that are destroying the U.S. economy are even slowing down.
Millions of jobs continue to be shipped overseas.
The U.S. dollar continues to be devalued.
The federal government continues to go into more debt.
State and local governments continue to go into more debt.
Our trade deficit continues to grow.
Our cities continue to be transformed into wastelands as they are being systematically deindustrialized.
The number of Americans that are dependent on the government continues to soar.
The U.S. middle class continues to shrink.
I know that I harp on these themes over and over, but it is vitally important that everyone understands that the mainstream media is lying to us.
The U.S. economy is dying a very painful death and there is no hope on the horizon.
Things are not going to be getting better. Well, they may get a bit better for the boys down on Wall Street, but for the rest of us our standards of living are going to continue to decline.
The best days for the U.S. economy are already behind us. What lies ahead is a whole lot of pain.
We are going to pay the price for decades of corruption and incompetence.
An economic collapse is coming and you had better get ready.