New DVDs By Michael Snyder
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 Are we on the verge of societal collapse? Many of the greatest empires throughout world history were not conquered by outside forces. Rather, they crumbled inwardly as extreme social decay set in. There have been many that have compared the last days of the Roman Empire to what America is going through right now. In the decades following World War II, the United States was the most powerful and the most prosperous nation on the entire planet, but now things are rapidly changing. There are literally thousands of signs that our society is collapsing all around us. All you have to do to see this is turn on a television or pick up a newspaper. I spend a lot of time discussing our nightmarish economic and political headaches in this column, but the truth is that our problems go much deeper than that. Even if a major miracle happened and we got the “right person” into the White House, the Federal Reserve was shut down, our 16 trillion dollar national debt was paid off, our trade deficit went to zero, a solution was found for the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble and the “too big to fail” banks were broken up, we would still be facing a national crisis of unprecedented magnitude. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that America has become an absolute cesspool of filth and corruption, and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is rapidly disappearing. Until we get our hearts right, there is not much hope for the future of this once great nation.
So are these the last days of America? The following are 25 signs of extreme social decay….
#1 We have come to accept that it is “normal” that security goons should be allowed to touch the private parts of our women and our children in the name of “national security”. Just check out the ordeal that conservative radio host and Breitbart editor Dana Loesch suffered through recently at the hands of the TSA…
They performed the regular pat-down and then the agent informed me that she would be using the front of her hands to “sweep” my groin. She pressed and swept across my crotch three times horizontally and three times vertically. In any other circumstance this would be sexual assault.
The agents themselves were friendly and smiled, yet I was still denied a public screening and no witness of my own present for the screening itself (a second agent was in the room at the time). I had no reason to be angry with the agents themselves, yet I was angry, and still am, at the regulations which require them to routinely violate men, women, and children in the name of a false sense of security.
#2 Police up in New Jersey say that a man kept his girlfriend padlocked in a bedroom for most of the last 10 years.
#3 It is hard to imagine some of the sick things that people do behind closed doors. Down in Florida, one former medical examiner was apparently collecting human body parts…
In what could be described as an episode of “Auction Hunters” turned reality horror show, authorities in Pensacola are investigating after finding human brains, hearts and lungs in a storage unit they say belonged to a former medical examiner.
Someone bought the storage unit at an auction last week and noticed a foul smell as they were sifting through furniture and boxes.
Officials at the medical examiner’s office in Pensacola say the remains of more than 100 people were found crudely stored in Tupperware containers, garbage bags and drink cups.
#4 A former fifth grade teacher down in Atlanta has admitted that she helped her students cheat because they were “dumb as hell“.
#5 Many debt collectors are willing to say absolutely despicable things in order to collect debts. One debt collector recently told a disabled military veteran that if he would have “served our country better” he would not be disabled and that he “should have died“…
“If you would have served our country better you would not be a disabled veteran living off Social Security while the rest of us honest Americans work our asses off,” one of the agency’s debt collectors allegedly told the vet. “Too bad, you should have died.”
Michael Collier was declared 100 per cent disabled after suffering permanent spine and head injuries while in the Army. As a result, both Collier and his wife receive disability payments from the federal Social Security Administration, which are exempt from seizure by debt collectors.
#6 In many areas of the country, street drugs have become so powerful that they are pushing users completely over the edge. Of course there is never any excuse for murdering children, but would any rational person do this kind of thing without being high on drugs?…
A Camden, N.J. man was charged with murder for allegedly slashing the throat of a 6-year-old Camden boy. Police say he told investigators he was smoking a combination of marijuana and PCP, known as “Wet” just before the killing.
Osvaldo “Popeye” Rivera, 31, was arrested Sunday afternoon and charged with murder and attempted murder.
Police say Rivera was trying to sexually assault the boy’s 12-year-sister and the little boy tried to come to her defense. Investigators say Rivera slashed the throats of both children.
#7 A school bus driver in Wisconsin recently told a 12-year-old boy that “maybe your mother should have chosen abortion for you” because he didn’t like the Romney campaign sign standing in his front yard.
#8 We are continuing to see a rash of “zombie attacks” all over the nation. The following is one recent example from Pennsylvania….
A Doylestown man, who was naked and bleeding profusely, gnawed on woman’s head all while “screaming like an animal” during a wild neighborhood rampage, state police said.
#9 A beekeeper over in North Carolina says that someone recently stole 20,000 bees from his property.
#10 Evidence of social decay extends to the highest levels of the federal government. Just check out what some highly paid federal workers have been doing when they were supposed to be working…
In 2006, the deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security was arrested for trying to seduce online someone he thought was a teenage girl. Four years later, the Securities and Exchange Commission found that 17 of 31 employees caught accessing porn at work since 2008 — one for up to eight hours a day — were senior staff.
In 2010, the Boston Globe reported that senior Pentagon staff were downloading child porn. Instead of generating a media storm, the story died. Senior staff were watching the sexual torture of small children on Pentagon computers, and Americans were not outraged?
#11 In a shocking murder trial in southern California, prosecutors have played a tape of a former chef admitting to police that he slow cooked the body of his wife for four days.
#12 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, and many of our prisons are absolute hellholes. The following is what a former inmate named Daniel Miller recently told Business Insider about what really goes on inside our prisons…
“When they found out the black homosexual had approached me talking that homosexual stuff, I was told ‘Look you have to stab him or pipe him down,'” Miller recently told Business Insider about his first experiences during two decades spent in and out of prison, most recently for robbery.
“The guys were there just to make sure I actually split this guy’s head open.”
Those “guys” were the Aryan Brotherhood, one of the most famous and feared jailhouse gangs.
Miller, now 38, joined up when he first entered the correctional system in Kansas as a teen. He bounced around a number of different facilities before being released on Sept. 19 this year.
“At 16 years old, I wanted to be accepted in prison,” he said. “I would fight everybody.”
He grew so cold and so good at fighting he became the one ordering attacks on fellow inmates — something that still haunts him.
#13 A 7-year-old boy was part of a gang of youths that recently invaded the home of a 51-year-old woman and beat the living daylights out of her.
#14 What in the world has gotten into our kids? Many of them have literally turned into little monsters. Just check out what two little boys recently did to a church in Virginia…
Two little boys caused thousands of dollars worth of damage to a Loudon County church, according to officials.
The vandals used the children’s toys and art supplies to damage the sanctuary, fellowship hall, and Sunday school rooms. They also smeared food for needy families and their own feces and urine on walls and floors.
According to Loudon County Sheriff Tim Guider, all that damage was done by two boys, aged 6 and 7.
#15 A former high school English teacher has been accused of having sex with five different male students. The most disturbing part is that she is a mother of three children and her husband is serving this country in the U.S. Army.
#16 You might want to think twice before becoming a pizza delivery worker. Just check out what happened over in Dallas recently…
Two Dallas teens called in a pizza order to lure a delivery worker to a Grand Prairie house, then beat the woman in the head with a pistol and sexually assaulted her on the porch, according to Grand Prairie police reports released Wednesday.
Bleeding and wearing just a bra, the 30-year-old woman drove herself back to a Grand Prairie Pizza Hut, the reports stated.
The 17-year-olds accused in the July 24 robbery and sexual assault were in custody Wednesday at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center in Dallas in what Grand Prairie police are calling one of the city’s “most heinous offenses” in recent memory.
#17 According to shocking new research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately two-thirds of all Americans in the 15 to 24 year old age bracket have engaged in oral sex.
#18 Last year it was reported that 86 teen girls at one high school in Memphis, Tennessee were either pregnant or had recently given birth.
#19 Sex trafficking has become a raging epidemic in America. It is estimated that there are now approximately a million prostitutes in the United States. Most of them are being trafficked by male “pimps”.
#20 As our social decay gets even deeper, it is going to become more important than ever to secure our homes. Just check out what happened over in Kansas City, Missouri recently…
An elderly couple is recovering Tuesday after they were brutally beaten inside their south Kansas City home.
The woman was also raped, according to a police report.
Tony L. Putman, 18, of Kansas City was charged with six felonies Tuesday afternoon. The charges include one count of rape and two counts of robbery.
The couple’s ordeal began about 1:30 p.m. Monday when a man broke into their home near 73rd Street and Campbell Avenue. Entry was gained through a basement window, which was broken.
#21 It is becoming easy to understand why so many Americans are arming themselves these days. Even Brad Pitt says that he “doesn’t feel safe” without a gun.
#22 In this day and age you often can’t even trust the police. Just check out this recent example…
Police in Cherryville took bribes, helped transport stolen goods and extorted money in a multi-state operation that raked in at least $750,000, according to federal indictments unsealed Wednesday.
FBI agents flocked to the Cherryville Police Department and several homes in Cherryville Wednesday morning, loading up boxes of evidence and making arrests.
#23 Overall, more than 50 million abortions have been performed in the United States since Roe vs. Wade was decided back in 1973. At this point, the number of babies killed by abortion in America every year is almost as high as the total number of military deaths in all of U.S. history.
#24 Respect for parents has declined to shockingly low levels in America. Just check out what one son down in Florida recently did to his own mother…
A Florida man yesterday rubbed dog feces in his mother’s face during an argument in the home they share, police report.
Cops arrested William Jenkins, 22, on a felony domestic battery charge for pushing his mother, 53, to the floor during the dispute, according to a Palmetto Police Department report.
When questioned by cops, Jenkins denied pushing his mother, but admitted that he “did rub dog defecation on her face because she yelled at him,” investigators noted.
#25 A 21-year-old Utah man is being accused of stabbing his grandmother 111 times and then removing some of her organs. But news like this hardly makes headlines anymore because crimes such as this one have become so common.
Sadly, a list like this one could go on indefinitely. More examples of extreme social decay pop up in the news almost hourly.
But we don’t like to admit that we have problems. Our politicians continue to proclaim how we are “the greatest nation on earth” and that the rest of the world should follow our example.
Rarely do you ever hear politicians talk about how we are the most obese nation on the planet, about how we have the highest divorce rate on the planet or about how we have the highest teen pregnancy rate on the planet.
Until we are willing to admit just how bad things have gotten, we will never be willing to accept the solutions that are necessary to start fixing things.
Many Americans are pinning their hopes on the upcoming election, but instead of making things better I am concerned that this election may trigger a lot of the anger that is boiling just under the surface in this country.
If we continue down the path that we are currently on, the social decay that we are now experiencing is going to accelerate.
The fundamental level of trust that any society needs in order to operate efficiently is breaking down, and more Americans than ever are living in fear. You can see it in their eyes.
Our politicians can pile on millions more laws, rules and regulations and they can put a police officer on every corner, but that isn’t going to make Americans trust one another. Once confidence in our societal institutions and our faith in one another is gone, it is going to be incredibly difficult to ever rebuild it.
Yes, we really are on the verge of societal collapse. What we are experiencing right now is just the leading edge of the coming crisis.
Things are going to get a whole lot worse from here.
 A devastating economic depression is rapidly spreading across the largest economy in the world. Unemployment is skyrocketing, money is being pulled out of the banks at an astounding rate, bad debts are everywhere and economic activity is slowing down month after month. So who am I talking about? Not the United States – the economy that I am talking about has a GDP that is more than two trillion dollars larger. It is not China either – the economy that I am talking about is more than twice the size of China. You have probably guessed it by now – the largest economy in the world is the EU economy. Things in Europe continue to get even worse. Greece and Spain are already experiencing full-blown economic depressions that continue to deepen, and Italy and France are headed down the exact same path that Greece and Spain have gone. Headlines about violent protests and economic despair dominate European newspapers day after day after day. European leaders hold summit meeting after summit meeting, but all of the “solutions” that get announced never seem to fix anything. In fact, the largest economy on the planet continues to implode right in front of our eyes, and the economic shockwave from this implosion is going to be felt to the four corners of the earth.
On Friday, newspapers all over Europe declared that Greece is about to run out of money (again).
The Greek government says that without more aid they will completely run out of cash by the end of November.
Of course the rest of Europe is going to continue to pour money into Greece because they know that if they don’t the financial markets will panic.
But they are also demanding that Greece make even more painful budget cuts. Previous rounds of budget cuts have been extremely damaging to the Greek economy.
The Greek economy contracted by 4.9 percent during 2010 and by 7.1 percent during 2011.
Overall, the Greek economy has contracted by about 20 percent since 2008.
This is what happens when you live way above your means for too long and a day of reckoning comes.
The adjustment can be immensely painful.
Greece continues to implement wave after wave of austerity measures, and these austerity measures have pushed the country into a very deep depression, but Greece still is not even close to a balanced budget.
Greece is still spending more money than it is bringing in, and Greek politicians are warning what even more budget cuts could mean for their society.
For example, what Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had to say the other day was absolutely chilling….
“Greek democracy stands before what is perhaps its greatest challenge,” Samaras told the German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview published hours before the announcement in Berlin that Angela Merkel will fly to Athens next week for the first time since the outbreak of the crisis.
Resorting to highly unusual language for a man who weighs his words carefully, the 61-year-old politician evoked the rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party to highlight the threat that Greece faces, explaining that society “is threatened by growing unemployment, as happened to Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic”.
“Citizens know that this government is Greece’s last chance,” said Samaras, who has repeatedly appealed for international lenders at the EU and IMF to relax the onerous conditions of the bailout accords propping up the Greek economy.
But don’t look down on Greece. They are just ahead of the curve. Eventually the U.S. and the rest of Europe will go down the exact same path.
Just look at Spain. When Greece first started imploding, Spain insisted that the same thing would never happen to them.
But it did.
By itself, Spain is the 12th largest economy in the world, and right now it is a complete and total mess with no hope of recovery in sight.
The national government is broke, the regional governments are broke, the banking system is insolvent and Spain is in the midst of the worst housing crash that it has ever seen.
On top of everything else, the unemployment rate in Spain is now over 25 percent and the unemployment rate for those under the age of 25 is now well above 50 percent.
An astounding 9.86 percent of all loans that Spanish banks are holding are considered to be bad loans which will probably never be collected. Before it is all said and done, probably ever major Spanish bank will need to be bailed out at least once.
Manufacturing activity in Spain has contracted for 17 months in a row, and the number of corporate bankruptcies in Spain is rising at a stunning rate.
Five different Spanish regions have formally requested bailouts from the national government, and the national government is drowning in an ocean of red ink.
Meanwhile, panic has set in and there has been a run on the banks in Spain. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….
Banco Santander SA (SAN), Spain’s largest bank, lost 6.3 percent of its domestic deposits in July, according to data published by the nation’s banking association. Savings at Banco Popular Espanol SA, the sixth-biggest, fell 9.5 percent the same month.
Eurobank Ergasias SA, Greece’s second-largest lender, lost 22 percent of its customer deposits in the 12 months ended March 31, according to the latest data available from the firm. Alpha Bank SA (ALPHA), the country’s third-biggest, lost 26 percent of client savings during that period.
Overall, the equivalent of 7 percent of GDP was withdrawn from the Spanish banking system in the month of July alone.
Thousands of Spaniards have become so desperate that they have resorted to digging around in supermarket trash bins for food. In response, locks are being put on supermarket trash bins in some areas.
But Greece and Spain are not alone in seeing their economies implode.
As I wrote about recently, the number of unemployed workers in Italy has risen by more than 37 percent over the past year.
The French economy is starting to implode as well. Just check out this article.
The unemployment rate in France is now above 10 percent, and it has risen for 16 months in a row.
It is just a matter of time before things in Italy and France get as bad as they already are in Greece and Spain.
The chief economist at the IMF is now saying that it will take until at least 2018 for the global economy to recover, but unfortunately I believe that he is being overly optimistic.
As I have said so many times before, the next wave of the global economic crisis is rapidly approaching. Depression is already sweeping much of southern Europe, and it is only a matter of time before it sweeps across northern Europe and North America as well.
Neither Obama or Romney is going to be able to stop what is coming. The global economy is getting weaker with each passing day. The central banks of the world can print money until the cows come home, but that isn’t going to fix our fundamental problems.
The largest economy in the world is imploding right in front of our eyes and nobody seems to know what to do about it.
If you believe that Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or Ben Bernanke can somehow magically shield us from the economic shockwave that is coming then you are being delusional.
Just because what is going on in Europe is a “slow-motion train wreck” does not mean that it will be any less devastating.
Yes, we can see what is coming and we can understand why it is happening, but that doesn’t mean that we will be able to avoid the consequences.
 The United States is not the only one with massive economic problems right now. The truth is that just about wherever you look around the globe things are getting even worse. China is experiencing a substantial economic slowdown, and Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing in an effort to keep the Japanese economy moving. Unemployment in Europe continues to get even worse, and the riots this week in Spain and in Greece have been absolutely frightening at times. In the United States there are a whole host of signs that another recession is approaching, and the number of American CEOs that say that they plan to eliminate jobs in the coming months is rapidly rising. The world economy is more interconnected today than ever before, and that means that we are all in this together. Just remember what happened back in 2008 and 2009. The economic pain that started on Wall Street was felt in every corner of the planet. So anyone that believes that the United States (or any other major nation for that matter) is going to escape the next wave of the economic crisis is simply not being realistic. Why do you think central banks all over the world are in “panic mode” right now? They are firing all of their ammunition and printing money like there is no tomorrow in an attempt to keep the system together. Unfortunately, it is not going to work.
If the powers that be had an “easy button” that would quickly fix everything, they would have pressed it by now. But despite all of their efforts things continue to unravel. If you want to get an idea of where we are headed, just look at what is already happening in Europe. Unemployment has risen above 24 percent in Greece and above 25 percent in Spain.
Those two nations are on the “bleeding edge” of the next wave of economic problems. Unemployment is rising almost everywhere else in Europe as well, and things are eventually going to get really bad in Asia and in North America too.
So hold on to your seat belts – it is going to be a bumpy ride.
The following are 14 signs from around the globe that the world economy is getting weaker….
#1 Things in China do not look good right now. The Shanghai Composite index fell to its lowest point in over 3 years earlier this week. Will the S&P 500 soon follow suit?
#2 The Bank of Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing in a desperate attempt to try to bolster the faltering Japanese economy….
In Asia, the Bank of Japan has long been manufacturing money out of thin air. It has just announced an eighth round of money printing to prop up the ailing Japanese economy. The Bank of Japan is to purchase 10 trillion yen of bonds to add further liquidity into the financial system. Now it has 80 trillion yen of bonds in its portfolio, equivalent to 20 per cent of Japan’s gross domestic product.
#3 In Spain, violent demonstrations over the state of the Spanish economy just outside the national Parliament building in Madrid on Tuesday evening made headlines all over the globe. You can view video of police brutally beating young Spanish protesters during those demonstrations right here.
#4 As unemployment hovers around the 25 percent mark, foraging through garbage bins for food has become so rampant in Spain that one city has actually started putting locks on supermarket garbage bins “as a public health precaution“.
#5 Despite all of the money printing that the ECB has been doing, the yield on 10 year Spanish bonds has risen back up to about 6 percent again.
#6 The economic protests in Greece are getting completely and totally out of control. Just check out this description of the “Day of Rage” that took place in Greece earlier this week….
Police fired stun grenades and tear gas at protesters yesterday as tens of thousands poured into the streets of Athens as part of a nationwide strike to challenge a new round of austerity measures that are expected to cut wages, pensions and healthcare once again.
Dozens of youths, some masking their faces with helmets and T-shirts, hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police who fired back in an effort to scatter the angry crowds around the parliament building. More than 50,000 people are believed to have participated in the mass walk-out in Athens alone.
#7 The unemployment rate in France has risen for 16 months in a row and is now the highest that it has been in over a decade.
#8 As I wrote about recently, the number of unemployed workers in Italy has increased by more than 37 percent over the past year.
#9 New orders for durable goods in the United States fell by a whopping 13.2 percent in August. That was the largest decline that we have seen since the middle of the last recession (January 2009).
#10 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP only grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2012 as opposed to the 1.7 percent annual rate previously reported.
#11 The U.S. Postal Service is about to experience its second financial default in just the past two months….
The U.S. Postal Service will default this week on a $5.6 billion congressionally mandated obligation to pre-fund retiree health benefits, marking the second time in two months the cash-strapped agency has done this.
#12 It looks like General Motors is on a path that will lead to bankruptcy (again).
#13 According to a recent survey conducted by State Street Global Advisors, 71 percent of “investors in a survey of 300 around the world, including the largest pension funds, asset managers and private banks, fear an imminent Lehman-like event.”
#14 According to a recent survey of American CEOs by Business Roundtable, the number of CEOs that plan to eliminate jobs has risen significantly from earlier this year….
The CEOs’ decline in confidence comes alongside a worsening employment outlook. Thirty-four percent of the 138 CEOs surveyed said in this quarter’s survey that they expected their companies to cut jobs in the next six months, compared to just 20 percent in the second quarter. Likewise, only 29 percent say they expect employment to grow in the next half year, down from 36 percent last quarter.
But the mainstream media in the United States would like us to believe that everything is getting better.
The mainstream media would like us to believe that QE3 is going to stimulate lots of new hiring all over America, and they are greatly celebrating the fact that the S&P 500 hit a five year high on Thursday.
Well, those on Wall Street should celebrate this monetary “sugar high” while they still can. Of course QE3 was going to cause stock prices to rise in the short-term, but the reality of the matter is that QE3 is not going to do a thing to stop the financial markets from crashing when the time comes for them to crash.
Economies tend to flourish in a stable, predictable environment. When you start recklessly printing money, it may help your economic numbers in the short-term, but it disrupts the stability of the system.
And once you have created a tremendous amount of instability, it is really, really hard to convince people that you can create stability once again.
When it comes to economics, confidence is one of the most important ingredients. If people lose confidence in the system, it almost does not matter what else you do.
As I wrote about the other day, quantitative easing worked for the Weimar Republic for a little while, but in the end it resulted in total disaster.
It will also end in total disaster for us.
All over the globe financial authorities are playing all sorts of games in an attempt to keep the system functioning smoothly. But these games are going to steadily undermine confidence in the system, and that is going to prove to be absolutely deadly.
Take advantage of this period of relative stability while you still can, because when it is gone it is not coming back.
 QE3 has barely even started and some folks on Wall Street are already clamoring for QE4. In fact, as you will read below, one equity strategist at Morgan Stanley says that he would not be “surprised” if the Federal Reserve announced another new round of money printing by the end of the year. But this is what tends to happen when a financial system starts becoming addicted to easy money. There is always a deep hunger for another “hit” of “currency meth”. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was probably hoping that QE3 would satisfy the wolves on Wall Street for a while. His promise to recklessly print 40 billion dollars a month and use it to buy mortgage-backed securities is being called “QEInfinity” by detractors. During QE3, nearly half a trillion dollars a year will be added to the financial system until the Fed decides that it is time to stop. This is so crazy that even former Federal Reserve officials are speaking out against it. For example, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker says that QE3 is the “most extreme easing of monetary policy” that he could ever remember. But the big Wall Street banks are never going to be satisfied. If QE4 is announced, they will start calling for QE5. As I noted in a previous article, quantitative easing tends to pump up the prices of financial assets such as stocks and commodities, and that is very good for Wall Street bankers. So of course they want more quantitative easing. They always want bigger profits and bigger bonus checks at the end of the year.
But at this point the Federal Reserve has already “jumped the shark”. If you don’t know what “jumping the shark” means, you can find a definition on Wikipedia right here. Whatever shreds of credibility the Fed had left are being washed away by a flood of newly printed money.
Those running the Fed have essentially used up all of their bullets and the next great financial crisis has not even fully erupted yet.
So what is the Fed going to do if the stock market crashes and the credit market freezes up like we saw back in 2008?
How much more extreme can the Fed go?
One can just picture “Helicopter Ben” strapping on a pair of water skis and making the following promise….
“We are going to print so much money that we’ll make Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic look like wimps!”
Sadly, the truth is that money printing is not a “quick fix” and it never has been. Just look at Japan. The Bank of Japan is on round 8 of their quantitative easing strategy, and yet things in Japan continue to get even worse.
But that is not going to stop the folks on Wall Street from calling for even more quantitative easing.
For example, the top U.S. equity strategist for Morgan Stanley, Adam Parker, made headlines all over the world this week by writing the following….
“QE3 will likely be insufficient to significantly boost equity markets and we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the Fed dramatically augment this program (i.e., QE4) before year-end, particularly if economic and corporate news continue to deteriorate as they have over the past few weeks.”
Did you get what he is saying there?
He says that QE3 is not going to be enough to boost equity markets (the stock market) so more money printing will be necessary.
But wasn’t QE3 supposed to be about creating jobs and helping the middle class?
I can almost hear many of you laughing out loud already.
As I have written about before, QE3 is unlikely to change the employment picture in any significant way, but what it will do is create more inflation which will squeeze the poor, the middle class and the elderly.
The truth is that quantitative easing has always been about bailing out the banks, and the hope is that this will trickle down to the folks on Main Street as well, but that never seems to happen.
Wall Street is not calling for even more quantitative easing because it would be good for you and I. Rather, Wall Street is calling for even more quantitative easing because it would be good for them.
A CNBC article entitled “Fed May Need to Boost QE ‘Dramatically’ This Year: Pros” discussed Wall Street’s desire for even more money printing….
The Federal Reserve’s latest easing move has been nicknamed everything from “QE3″ to “QE Infinity” to “QEternal,” but some on Wall Street question whether the unprecedented move will be QEnough.
And of course everyone pretty much understands that QE3 is definitely not going to fix our economic problems. Even most of those on Wall Street will admit as much. In the CNBC article mentioned above, a couple of economists named Paul Ashworth and Paul Dales at Capital Economics were quoted as saying the following….
“The Fed can commit to deliver whatever economic outcome it likes, but the problem is that the crisis in the euro-zone and/or a stand-off in negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff in the U.S. may well reveal it to be like the proverbial Emperor with no clothes”
An emperor with no clothes?
I think the analogy fits.
The Federal Reserve is going to keep printing and printing and printing and things are not going to get any better.
At this point, economists at Goldman Sachs are already projecting that QE3 will likely stretch into 2015….
The Federal Reserve’s QE3 bond buying program announced earlier this month could last until the middle of 2015 and eventually reach $2 trillion, according to an estimate from economists at Goldman Sachs.
The Goldman economists also wrote in a report that they believe the Fed will not raise the federal funds rate until 2016. This rate, which is used as a benchmark for a wide variety of consumer and business loans, has been near 0% since December 2008. The Fed said in its last statement that it expected rates would remain low until mid-2015.
So why is Wall Street whining and complaining so loudly right now?
Well, even with all of the bailouts and even with all of the help from the first two rounds of quantitative easing, things are still tough for them.
For example, Bank of America recently announced that they will be laying off 16,000 workers.
In addition, there are rumors that 100 highly paid partners at Goldman Sachs are going to be getting the axe. It is said that Goldman will save 2 billion dollars with such a move.
We haven’t even reached the next great financial crisis and the pink slips are already flying on Wall Street. Meredith Whitney says that she has never seen anything quite like this….
“The industry is as bad as I’ve seen it. So it’s certainly not a great time to be on Wall Street.”
But of course Wall Street is not going to get much sympathy from the rest of America. The truth is that things have been far rougher for most of the rest of us than things have been for them.
When the last crisis hit, they got trillions of dollars in bailout money and we got nothing.
So most people are not really in a mood to shed any tears for Wall Street.
But of course the Federal Reserve is definitely hoping to help their friends on Wall Street out by printing lots of money.
You never know, by the time this is all over we may see QE4, QE5, QE Reloaded, QE With A Vengeance and QE The Return Of The Bernanke.
Meanwhile, Europe is gearing up to print money like crazy too.
A couple months ago, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi made the following pledge….
“Within our mandate, the European Central Bank is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro, and believe me, it will be enough.”
And of course the Bank of Japan has joined the money printing party too. The following is from a recent article by David Kotok….
The recently announced additional program by the BOJ includes a fifty-percent allocation to the purchase of ten-year Japanese government bonds. The other fifty percent will buy shorter-term government securities. Thus, the BOJ is applying half of its additional QE stimulus to extracting long duration from the government bond market, denominated in Japanese yen.
All of the central banks seem to be getting on the QE bandwagon.
But will this fix anything?
Unfortunately it will not, at least according to Paul Volcker….
“Another round of QE is understandable – but it will fail to fix the problem. There is so much liquidity in the market that adding more is not going to change the economy.”
Sadly, most Americans have a ton of faith in the people running our system, but the truth is that they really do not know what they are doing. Just check out what Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said the other day….
“The truth, however, is that nobody on the committee, nor on our staffs at the Board of Governors and the 12 Banks, really knows what is holding back the economy. Nobody really knows what will work to get the economy back on course. And nobody – in fact, no central bank anywhere on the planet – has the experience of successfully navigating a return home from the place in which we now find ourselves. No central bank – not, at least, the Federal Reserve – has ever been on this cruise before.”
Can you imagine the head coach of a football team coming in at halftime and telling his players the following….
“Nobody on the coaching stuff really has any idea what will work.”
That sure would not inspire a lot of confidence, would it?
Perhaps the Fed should be open to some input from the rest of us.
Actually, back on September 14th the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco posted a poll on Facebook that asked the following question….
What effect do you think QE3 will have on the U.S. economy?
The following are the 5 answers that got the most votes….
-“Long term, disastrous”
-“Negative”
-“Thanks for $5 gas”
-“I can’t believe you think this will work!”
-“Fire Bernanke”
So what do you think about the quantitative easing that the Federal Reserve is doing?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….
 Something really strange appears to be happening. All over the globe, governments and big banks are acting as if they are anticipating an imminent financial collapse. Unfortunately, we are not privy to the quiet conversations that are taking place in corporate boardrooms and in the halls of power in places such as Washington D.C. and London, so all we can do is try to make sense of all the clues that are all around us. Of course it is completely possible to misinterpret these clues, but sticking our heads in the sand is not going to do any good either. Last week, it was revealed that the U.S. government has been secretly directing five of the biggest banks in America “to develop plans for staving off collapse” for the last two years. By itself, that wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But when you add that piece to the dozens of other clues of imminent financial collapse, a very troubling picture begins to emerge. Over the past 12 months, hundreds of banking executives have been resigning, corporate insiders have been selling off enormous amounts of stock, and I have been personally told that a significant number of Wall Street bankers have been shopping for “prepper properties” in rural communities this summer. Meanwhile, there have been reports that the U.S. government has been stockpiling food and ammunition, and Barack Obama has been signing a whole bunch of executive orders that would potentially be implemented in the event of a major meltdown of society. So what does all of this mean? It could mean something or it could mean nothing. What we do know is that a financial collapse is coming at some point. Over the past 40 years, the total amount of all debt in the United States has grown from about 2 trillion dollars to nearly 55 trillion dollars. That is a recipe for financial armageddon, and it is inevitable that this gigantic bubble of debt is going to burst at some point.
In normal times, the U.S. government does not tell major banks to “develop plans for staving off collapse”.
But according to a recent Reuters article, that is apparently exactly what has been happening….
U.S. regulators directed five of the country’s biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.
The two-year-old program, which has been largely secret until now, is in addition to the “living wills” the banks crafted to help regulators dismantle them if they actually do fail. It shows how hard regulators are working to ensure that banks have plans for worst-case scenarios and can act rationally in times of distress.
Does it seem odd to anyone else that only five really big banks got such a warning?
And why keep it secret from the American public?
Does the federal government actually expect such a collapse to happen?
If federal officials do expect a financial collapse to occur, they would not be the only ones. An increasing number of very respected economists are speaking about the coming financial collapse as if there is a certain inevitability about it.
For example, check out the following quote from a recent Money Morning article….
Richard Duncan, formerly of the World Bank and chief economist at Blackhorse Asset Mgmt., says America’s $16 trillion federal debt has escalated into a “death spiral,” as he told CNBC.
And it could result in a depression so severe that he doesn’t “think our civilization could survive it.”
A former World Bank executive is warning that our civilization might not survive what is coming?
That is pretty chilling.
Economist Nouriel Roubini says that he believes that the coming crisis will be even worse than 2008….
“Worse because like 2008 you will have an economic and financial crisis but unlike 2008, you are running out of policy bullets. In 2008, you could cut rates; do QE1, QE2; you could do fiscal stimulus; you could backstop/ringfence/guarantee banks and everybody else. Today, more QEs are becoming less and less effective because the problems are of solvency not liquidity. Fiscal deficits are already so large and you cannot bail out the banks because 1) there is a political opposition to it; and 2) governments are near-insolvent – they cannot bailout themselves let alone their banks. The problem is that we are running out of policy rabbits to pull out of the hat!”
Across the pond, many European officials are echoing similar sentiments.
What Nigel Farage told King World News the other day is very ominous….
Today MEP (Member European Parliament) Nigel Farage spoke with King World News about what he described as the possibility of, “a really dramatic banking collapse.” Farage also warned that central planners want to enslave and imprison people inside of a ‘New Order,’ and he described the situation as “horrifying.”
The situation in Europe continues to get worse and worse. The authorities in Europe have come out with “solution” after “solution”, and yet unemployment continues to skyrocket and economic conditions in the EU have deteriorated very steadily over the past 12 months.
If all of that was not bad enough, there are an increasing number of indications that Germany is actually considering leaving the euro.
Needless to say, that would be a complete and total disaster for the rest of the eurozone.
Of course there are any number of ways that the financial crisis in Europe could potentially play out.
But all of the realistic scenarios would be very bad for the global economy.
Meanwhile, our resources are dwindling, war in the Middle East could erupt at any moment and our planet is becoming increasingly unstable. The following is from a recent article by Paul B. Farrell on Marketwatch.com….
Fasten your seat belts, soon we’ll all be shocked out of denial. Some unpredictable black swan. A global wake-up call will trigger the Pentagon’s prediction in Fortune a decade ago at the launch of the Iraq War: “By 2020 … an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies is emerging … warfare defining human life.”
It is almost as if a “perfect storm” is brewing.
Of course the historic drought that is ravaging food production in the United States this summer is not helping matters either. Another summer or two like this one and we could be looking at a return of Dust Bowl conditions.
Anyone that is watching what is going on in the world and is not concerned at all about what is happening is simply being delusional.
Recently, a “team of scientists, economists, and geopolitical analysts” examined the current state of the global economic system and the conclusions they reached were absolutely staggering….
One member of this team, Chris Martenson, a pathologist and former VP of a Fortune 300 company, explains their findings:
“We found an identical pattern in our debt, total credit market, and money supply that guarantees they’re going to fail. This pattern is nearly the same as in any pyramid scheme, one that escalates exponentially fast before it collapses. Governments around the globe are chiefly responsible.
“And what’s really disturbing about these findings is that the pattern isn’t limited to our economy. We found the same catastrophic pattern in our energy, food, and water systems as well.”
According to Martenson: “These systems could all implode at the same time. Food, water, energy, money. Everything.”
Hmmmm – it sounds like they have been reading The Economic Collapse Blog.
The truth is that a massive worldwide financial collapse is coming.
It is inevitable, and it is going to be extremely painful.
So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….
 Are we rapidly approaching a moment of reckoning for the global financial system? August is likely to be a relatively slow month as most of Europe is on vacation, but after that we will be moving into a “danger zone” where just about anything could happen. Historically, a financial crisis has been more likely to happen in the fall than during any other time, and this fall is shaping up to be a doozy. Much of the focus of the financial world is on whether or not the euro is going to break up, but even if the authorities in Europe are able to keep the euro together we are still facing massive problems. Countries such as Greece and Spain are already experiencing depression-like conditions, and much of the rest of the globe is sliding into recession. Unemployment has already risen to record levels in some parts of Europe, major banks all over Europe are teetering on the brink of insolvency, and the flow of credit is freezing up all over the planet. If things take a really bad turn, this crisis could become much worse than the financial crisis of 2008 very quickly.
All over the world people are starting to write about the possibility of a major economic crisis starting this fall.
For example, a recent article in the International Business Times discussed how some economists around the globe are fearing the worst for the coming months….
The consensus? The world economy has entered a final countdown with three months left, and investors should pencil in a collapse in either August or September.
Citing a theory he has been espousing since 2010 that predicts “a future lack of policy flexibility from the monetary and fiscal side,” Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote a note Tuesday that gloated “it feels like Europe has proved us right.”
“The U.S. has the ability to disprove the universal nature of our theory,” Reid wrote, but “if this U.S. cycle is of completely average length as seen using the last 158 years of history (33 cycles), then the next recession should start by the end of August.”
The global financial system is so complex and there are so many thousands of moving parts that it is always difficult to put an exact date on anything. In fact, history is littered with economists that have ended up looking rather foolish by putting a particular date on a prediction.
But without a doubt we are starting to see storm clouds gather for this fall.
The following are 11 more signs that time is quickly running out for the global financial system….
#1 A number of very important events regarding the financial future of Europe are going to happen in the month of September. The following is from a recent Reuters article that detailed many of the key things that are currently slated to occur during that month….
In that month a German court makes a ruling that could neuter the new euro zone rescue fund, the anti-bailout Dutch vote in elections just as Greece tries to renegotiate its financial lifeline, and decisions need to be made on whether taxpayers suffer huge losses on state loans to Athens.
On top of that, the euro zone has to figure out how to help its next wobbling dominoes, Spain and Italy – or what do if one or both were to topple.
#2 Reuters is reporting that Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos has suggested that Spain may need a 300 billion euro bailout.
#3 Spain continues to slide deeper into recession. The Spanish economy contracted 0.4 percent during the second quarter of 2012 after contracting 0.3 percent during the first quarter.
#4 The unemployment rate in Spain is now up to 24.6 percent.
#5 According to the Wall Street Journal, a new 30 billion euro hole has been discovered in the financial rescue plan for Greece.
#6 Morgan Stanley is projecting that the unemployment rate in Greece will exceed 25 percent in 2013.
#7 It is now being projected that the Greek economy will shrink by a total of 7 percent during 2012.
#8 German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble says that the rest of Europe will not be making any more concessions for Greece.
#9 The UK economy has now plunged into a deep recession. During the second quarter of 2012 alone, the UK economy contracted by 0.7 percent.
#10 The Dallas Fed index of general business activity fell dramatically to -13.2 in July. This was a huge surprise and it is yet another indication that the U.S. economy is rapidly heading into a recession.
#11 As I have written about previously, a banking crisis is more likely to happen in the fall than at any other time during the year. The global financial system will enter a “danger zone” starting in September, and none of us need to be reminded that the crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008 all happened during the second half of the year.
So is there any hope on the horizon?
European leaders have tried short-term solution after short-term solution and none of them have worked.
Now countries all over Europe are sliding into depression and the authorities in Europe seem to be all out of answers. The following is what one eurozone diplomat said recently….
“For two years we’ve been pumping up the life raft, taking decisions that fill it with just enough air to keep it afloat even though it has a leak,” the diplomat said. “But now the leak has got so big that we can’t pump air into the raft quickly enough to keep it afloat.”
The boat is filling up with water faster than they can bail it out.
So what is the solution?
Well, some of the top names in economics on both sides of the Atlantic are urging authorities to keep the debt bubble pumped up by printing lots and lots more money.
For example, even though the U.S. government is already running trillion dollar deficits New York Times “economist” Paul Krugman is boldly proclaiming that now is the time to print and borrow even more money. He is proud to be a Keynesian, and he says that “you should be a Keynesian, too.”
Across the pond, the International Business Editor of the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, is strongly urging the ECB to print more money….
Needless to say, I will be advocating 1933 monetary stimulus à l’outrance, or trillions of asset purchases through old fashioned open-market operations through the quantity of money effect (NOT INTEREST RATE ‘CREDITISM’) to avert deflation – and continue doing so until nominal GDP is restored to its trend line, at which point the stimulus can be withdrawn again.
But is more money and more debt really the solution to anything?
In the United States, M2 recent surpassed the 10 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever. It has increased in size by more than 5 times over the past 30 years.
Unfortunately, our debt has been growing much faster than GDP has over that time period.
For example, during the second quarter of 2012 U.S. government debt grew by 274.3 billion dollars but U.S. GDP only grew by 117.6 billion dollars.
Our problem is not that there is not enough money floating around.
Our problem is that there is way, way too much debt.
But this is how things always go with fiat currencies.
There is always the temptation to print more.
That is one of the big reasons why every single fiat currency in history has eventually collapsed.
Printing more money will not solve our problems. It will just cause our problems to take a different form.
In the end, nothing that the authorities can do will be able to avert the crisis that is coming.
A lot of people are starting to realize this, and that is one reason why we are seeing so much economic pessimism right now.
For example, according to a new Rasmussen poll only 14 percent of all Americans believe that children in America today will be “better off” than their parents.
That is an absolutely stunning figure, but it just shows us where we are at.
Our economy has been in decline for a long time, and now we are rapidly approaching another major downturn.
You better buckle up, because this downturn is not going to be pleasant at all.
 We always knew that the financial markets were rigged, but this is getting ridiculous. It is now being alleged that 20 major banks have been systematically fixing global interest rates for years. Barclays has already been fined hundreds of millions of dollars for manipulating Libor (the London Inter Bank Offered Rate). But Barclays says that a whole bunch of other banks were doing this too. This is shaping up to be the biggest financial scandal in history, and criminal investigations have been launched on both sides of the Atlantic. What those investigations are likely to uncover could shake the financial markets to their very core. In the end, this scandal could absolutely devastate confidence in the global financial system and it could potentially bring down a number of major global banks. We have never seen anything quite like this before.
What Is Libor?
As mentioned before, Libor is the London Inter Bank Offered Rate. A recent Washington Post article contained a pretty good explanation of what that means….
In the simplest terms, LIBOR is the average interest rate which banks in London are charging each other for borrowing. It’s calculated by Thomson Reuters — the parent company of the Reuters news agency — for the British Banking Association (BBA), a trade association of banks and financial services companies.
Why Does Libor Matter?
If you have a mortgage, a car loan or a credit card, then there is a very good chance that Libor has affected your personal finances. Libor has been a factor in the pricing of hundreds of trillions of dollars of loans, securities and assets. The following is from a recent article by Maureen Farrell….
These traders influenced the pricing of the London Interbank Offered Rate or Libor, a benchmark that dictates the pricing of up to $800 trillion of securities (yes trillion)
$800 trillion?
That is a number that is hard to even imagine.
Most American consumers do not even know what Libor is, but it actually plays a key role in the U.S. economy as the Washington Post recently explained….
In the United States, the two biggest indices for adjustable rate mortgages and other consumer debt are the prime rate (that is, the rate banks charge favored or “prime” consumers) and LIBOR, with the latter particularly popular for subprime loans. A study from Mark Schweitzer and Guhan Venkatu at the Cleveland Fed looked at survey data in Ohio and found that by 2008, almost 60 percent of prime adjustable rate mortgages, and nearly 100 percent of subprime ones, were indexed to LIBOR
Who Was Involved In This Scandal?
According to the Daily Mail, in addition to Barclays it is being alleged that at least 20 banks (including some major U.S. banks) were involved in this interest rate fixing scandal….
Hundreds of bankers across three continents are embroiled in the interest-rate fixing scandal that has left Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond fighting to save his job.
As pressure intensified on Britain’s highest paid banking boss to quit, MPs heard a string of other financial institutions across the world were under investigation.
At least 20 banks are believed to be under suspicion, with growing demands for a criminal investigation.
There are also indications that the Bank of England itself may have been involved in this scandal.
What Did They Do?
Employees at Barclays (and apparently at about 20 other major banks) were brazenly manipulating interest rates. A recent Yahoo Finance article described how this worked…
To help the bank’s trading positions between 2005 and 2009, and most notably during the global financial crisis of 2007-09, the bank made false submissions to the Libor-setting committee, which agrees rates daily in London.
At the request of its own traders of interest-rate derivatives, Barclays made false submissions relating to Libor and Euribor (the eurozone benchmark rate). By doing this, Barclays personnel aimed to help their trading colleagues to profit by manipulating Libor.
Rigging the world’s leading benchmark for interest rates is pretty serious stuff. Indeed, in the words of the FSA, “Barclays’ behaviour threatened the integrity of the rates, with the risk of serious harm to other market participants”.
Many in the financial world have been absolutely horrified by the details of this scandal that have been emerging.
One recent CNN article declared that “the stench” coming from London is now “overwhelming”….
The Libor scandal has confirmed what many of us have known for some time: There is something smelly in the London financial world and the stench is now overwhelming.
But It is only when I read the Financial Services Authority report — all 44 pages of it — that is became clear just how widespread, how blatant was the fixing of the benchmark interest rate Libor and Euribor by Barclays. Brazen is the only word for it.
The emails and phone calls reveal that on dozens of occasions those who stood to gain by the decisions asked for favors (and got them) from those who helped set the interest rates.
You can read many examples of the kinds of emails that were exchanged between traders in New York and traders at Barclays in London right here.
What Does This Scandal Mean For The Future?
This scandal is making the global financial system look really, really bad. Confidence in global financial markets has already been declining, and these new revelations are not going to help at all. The following is how an article in the Huffington Post put it….
The ballooning interest rate manipulation scandal at Barclays, coupled with stock market instability, is likely to fuel fresh doubts about the integrity of the stock market, insiders said.
“Every time people begin to gain a little confidence, something else comes up,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab. “If it’s not Europe, it’s [troubled] IPOs, or JPMorgan or Barclays. Something new blows up and people say, ‘I knew it was rigged.’”
In addition, we are undoubtedly going to see a huge wave of lawsuits come out of this scandal. Those lawsuits alone will gum up the financial system for a decade or more.
So needless to say, this is a very big deal.
Sadly, the revelations that have come out about Barclays in recent days are probably just the very tip of the iceberg. Before this is all over, we are probably going to find out that most of the major global banks were involved.
At a time when the global financial system is already on the verge of a major implosion, this is not welcome news.
This financial scandal is just another reason to be deeply concerned about the second half of 2012. The house of cards is starting to look really shaky, and nobody knows exactly when it will fall, but anyone with half a brain can see that things are progressively getting worse.
A “perfect storm” is rapidly developing, and when it strikes it is going to be very, very painful.
 Why is the economy going to collapse? Have you ever been asked that question? If so, what did you say? Sometimes it is difficult to communicate dozens of complicated economic and financial concepts in a package that the average person on the street can easily digest. It can be very frustrating to know that something is true but not be able to explain it clearly to someone else. Hopefully many of you out there will find the list below useful. It is a list of 70 numbers that show why we are headed for a national economic nightmare. So why does the title of the article single out Barack Obama? Well, it is because right now he is the biggest cheerleader for the economy. He is attempting to convince all of us that everything is just fine and that the economy is heading in a positive direction. Well, the truth is that everything is not fine and things are about to get a whole lot worse. Certainly others should share in the blame as well. Congress has been steering the economy in the wrong direction for decades, the “too big to fail” banks have turned Wall Street into a pyramid of risk, leverage and debt, and the Federal Reserve has more power over the financial system than anyone else does. Our economy has been in decline for quite a while now, and soon we are going to smash directly into an economic brick wall. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are in denial about this. A lot of people out there doubt that an economic collapse is coming. Well, if you know someone that believes that the U.S. economy is going to be “just fine”, just show them the list below.
The following are 70 facts that Barack Obama does not want you to see….
$3.59 – When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.59.
22 – It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping 22 percent.
23 – According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day during 2010.
30 – Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.
32 – The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
35 – U.S. housing prices are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.
40 – The official U.S. unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.
42 – According to one survey, 42 percent of all American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
48 – Shockingly, at this point 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
49 – Today, an astounding 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.
53 – Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.
60 – According to a recent Gallup poll, only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.
61 – At this point the Federal Reserve is essentially monetizing much of the U.S. national debt. For example, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.
63 – One recent survey found that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.
71 – Today, 71 percent of all small business owners believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession.
80 – Americans buy 80 percent of the pain pills sold on the entire globe each year.
81 – Credit card debt among Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket has risen by 81 percent since 1989.
85 – 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are made in China.
86 – According to one survey, 86 percent of Americans workers in their sixties say that they will continue working past their 65th birthday.
90 – In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
93 – The United States now ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.
95 – The middle class continues to shrink – 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.
107 – Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.
350 – The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes.
400 – According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
$500 – In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.
627 – In 2010, China produced 627 million metric tons of steel. The United States only produced 80 million metric tons of steel.
877 – 20,000 workers recently applied for just 877 jobs at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama.
900 – Auto parts exports from China to the United States have increased by more than 900 percent since the year 2000.
$1580 – When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1580 an ounce.
1700 – Consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971.
2016 – It is being projected that the Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2016.
$4155 – The average American household spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
$4300 – The amount by which real median household income has declined since Barack Obama entered the White House.
$6000 – If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
$10,000 – According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
49,000 – In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
50,000 – The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
56,000 – The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
$85,000 – According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
$175,587 – The Obama administration spent $175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.
$328,404 – Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
$361,330 – This is what the average banker in New York City made in 2010.
440,00 – 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 totally pay it off.
500,000 – According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
2,000,000 – Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today.
$2,000,000 – At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.
2,600,000 – In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
5,400,000 – When Barack Obama first took office there were 2.7 million long-term unemployed Americans. Today there are twice as many.
16,000,000 – It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
$20,000,000 – The amount of money the U.S. government was spending to create a version of Sesame Street for children in Pakistan.
25,000,000 – Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
40,000,000 – According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
46,405,204 – The number of Americans currently on food stamps. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.
88,000,000 – Today there are more than 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.
100,000,000 – Overall, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.
$150,000,000 – This is approximately the amount of money that the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress are stealing from future generations of Americans every single hour.
$2,000,000,000 – The amount of money that JP Morgan has admitted that it will lose from derivatives trades gone bad. Many analysts are convinced that the real number will actually end up being much higher.
$147,000,000,000 – In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately 147 billion dollars a year.
295,500,000,000 – Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
$359,100,000,000 – During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.
$454,000,000,000 – During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
$1,000,000,000,000 – The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
$1,170,000,000,000 – China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.
$1,600,000,000,000 – The amount that has been added to the U.S. national debt since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is more than the first 97 Congresses added to the national debt combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – What the real U.S. budget deficit in 2011 would have been if the federal government had used generally accepted accounting principles.
$11,440,000,000,000 – The total amount of consumer debt in the United States.
$15,734,596,578,458.59 – The U.S. national debt as of June 7, 2012.
$200,000,000,000,000 – Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the derivatives market completely collapses there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
 When the economy of a nation collapses, almost everything changes. Unfortunately, most people have never been through anything like that, so it can be difficult to know how to prepare. For those that are busy preparing for the coming global financial collapse, there is a lot to be learned from the economic depression that is happening right now in Greece. Essentially, what Greece is experiencing is a low level economic collapse. Unemployment is absolutely rampant and poverty is rapidly spreading, but the good news for Greece is that the global financial system is still operating somewhat normally and they are getting some financial assistance from the outside. Things in Greece could be a whole lot worse, and they will probably get a whole lot worse before it is all said and done. But already things have gotten bad enough in Greece that it gives us an idea of what a full-blown economic collapse in the 21st century may look like. There are reports of food and medicine shortages in Greece, crime and suicides are on the rise and people have been rapidly pulling their money out of the banks. Hopefully this article will give you some ideas that you can use as you prepare for the economic chaos that will soon be unfolding all over the globe.
The following are 10 things that we can learn about shortages and preparation from the economic collapse in Greece….
#1 Food Shortages Can Actually Happen
Most people assume that they will always be able to run out to their local supermarket or to Wal-Mart and get all of the supplies they need.
Unfortunately, that is a false assumption. The truth is that our food distribution system is extremely vulnerable.
In Greece, many people are starting to totally run out of food. Even some government institutions (such as prisons) are now reporting food shortages. The following was originally from a Greek news source….
The financing for many prisons has decreased to a minimum for some months now, resulting in hundreds of detainees being malnourished and surviving on the charity of local communities.
The latest example is the prison in Corinth where after the supply stoppage from the nearby military camp, the prisoners are at the mercy of God because, as reported by prison staff, not even one grain of rice has been left in their warehouses. When a few days earlier the commander of the camp announced to the prison management the transportation stoppage, citing lack of food supplies even for the soldiers, he shut down the last source of supply for 84 prisoners. The response of some Corinth citizens was immediate as they took it upon themselves to support the prisoners, since all protests to the Justice ministry were fruitless.
#2 Medicine Is One Of The First Things That Becomes Scarce During An Economic Collapse
If you are dependent on medicine in order to survive, you might want to figure out how you are going to get by if your supply of medicine is totally cut off someday.
In Greece, medicine shortages have become a massive problem. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….
Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.
“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”
The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines. Even when drugs are available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.
#3 When An Economy Collapses, So Might The Power Grid
Try this some time – turn off all power to your home for 24 hours and try to live normally.
Sadly, most people simply do not understand just how dependent we are on the power grid. Without power, all of our lives would change dramatically.
In Greece, authorities are warning of an impending “collapse” of the power grid. If it goes down for an extended period of time in Greece, the consequences would be catastrophic….
Greece’s power regulator RAE told Reuters on Friday it was calling an emergency meeting next week to avert a collapse of the debt-stricken country’s electricity and natural gas system.
“RAE is taking crisis initiatives throughout next week to avert the collapse of the natural gas and electricity system,” the regulator’s chief Nikos Vasilakos told Reuters.
RAE took the decision after receiving a letter from Greece’s natural gas company DEPA, which threatened to cut supplies to electricity producers if they failed to settle their arrears with the company.
#4 During An Economic Collapse You Cannot Even Take Water For Granted
If the power grid goes down, you will soon no longer have clean water coming out of your faucets. That is one of the reasons why it is absolutely imperative that the power grid stay operable in Greece.
Sadly, most people don’t understand just how vulnerable our water system is. In a previous article, I quoted from a report that discussed how rapidly our water supply would be in jeopardy in the event of a major transportation disruption….
According to the American Water Works Association, Americans drink more than one billion glasses of tap water per day. For safety and security reasons, most water supply plants maintain a larger inventory of supplies than the typical business. However, the amount of chemical storage varies significantly and is site specific. According to the Chlorine Institute, most water treatment facilities receive chlorine in cylinders (150 pounds and one ton cylinders) that are delivered by motor carriers. On average, trucks deliver purification chemicals to water supply plants every seven to 14 days. Without these chemicals, water cannot be purified and made safe for drinking. Without truck deliveries of purification chemicals, water supply plants will run out of drinkable water in 14 to 28 days. Once the water supply is drained, water will be deemed safe for drinking only when boiled. Lack of clean drinking water will lead to increased gastrointestinal and other illnesses, further taxing an already weakened healthcare system.
What will you do when clean water stops coming out of your faucets?
You might want to start thinking about that.
#5 During An Economic Crisis Your Credit Cards And Debit Cards May Stop Working
Most people have become very accustomed to using either debit cards or credit cards for almost everything.
But what would happen if the financial system locked up for a period of time and you were not able to use them?
This is something that the citizens of Greece are potentially facing in the coming months, and this is something that all of us need to start thinking about.
#6 Crime, Rioting And Looting Become Commonplace During An Economic Collapse
Big corporations are already making extensive plans for how to protect their stores in the event that Greece switches from the euro to the drachma.
The following is from a recent Reuters article….
British electrical retailer Dixons has spent the last few weeks stockpiling security shutters to protect its nearly 100 stores across Greece in case of riot.
The planning, says Dixons chief Sebastian James, may look alarmist but it’s good to be prepared.
Company bosses around Europe agree. As the financial crisis in Greece worsens, companies are getting ready for everything from social unrest to a complete meltdown of the financial system.
#7 During A Financial Meltdown Many Average Citizens Will Start Bartering
During this economic depression, alternative currencies have already been popping up in Greece.
When things fall apart on a global scale, will you have things to barter for the things that you need?
#8 Suicides Spike During An Economic Collapse
When you think of the Great Depression of the 1930s, what do you think of?
Many people think of images of people jumping out of buildings.
Well, something similar has been happening in Greece. Suicide statistics in Greece have been absolutely soaring during the last couple of years.
Once prosperity disappears, many people feel as though life is not worth living anymore.
#9 Your Currency May Rapidly Lose Value During An Economic Crisis
Just remember what happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic and what has happened recently in places like Zimbabwe.
The truth is that it can happen anywhere.
Right now, Greeks are pulling their money out of the banks because they are worried that their euros will be turned into drachmas which would rapidly lose value.
If I was living in Greece I would definitely be concerned about that. The return of the drachma seems to get closer with each passing day. Just check out these screenshots.
#10 When Things Hit The Fan The Government Will Not Save You
Has the government of Greece come to the rescue of all of those that are deeply suffering right now?
Of course not. The truth is that the Greek government can barely take care of itself at the moment.
History has shown us that governments simply cannot be counted on when things hit the fan.
Just remember what happened during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In the end, the only one that can be counted on to take care of you and your family is you.
So you better start preparing.
Unfortunately, as I wrote about the other day, time is rapidly running out for the global financial system.
Even some of the top economic officials in the world are warning that another major crisis could be on the way.
Just check out what World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the other day….
“Events in Greece could trigger financial fright in Spain, Italy and across the eurozone. The summer of 2012 offers an eerie echo of 2008.”
He also compared a potential exit of Greece from the eurozone to the collapse of Lehman Brothers back during the last financial crisis….
“If Greece leaves the eurozone, the contagion is impossible to predict, just as Lehman had unexpected consequences.”
So what are some things that the average person can do to get prepared?
Well, a recent article on SHTFplan.com entitled “The List: A to Z Survival for the Abysmal Times Ahead” contains hundreds of ideas for preparing for the chaotic economic environment that we are heading into.
Preparation is going to look different for every family. No two situations are exactly the same.
But there are some practical steps that nearly all of us can take to better position ourselves for what is coming. Now is the time to get educated and now is the time to take action.
Or you could be like all of those that laughed at Noah while he was building that big boat.
In the end, things did not work out too well for those folks.
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The U.S. Economy By The Numbers: 70 Facts That Barack Obama Does Not Want You To See
The following are 70 facts that Barack Obama does not want you to see….
$3.59 – When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.59.
22 – It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping 22 percent.
23 – According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day during 2010.
30 – Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.
32 – The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
35 – U.S. housing prices are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.
40 – The official U.S. unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.
42 – According to one survey, 42 percent of all American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
48 – Shockingly, at this point 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
49 – Today, an astounding 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.
53 – Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.
60 – According to a recent Gallup poll, only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.
61 – At this point the Federal Reserve is essentially monetizing much of the U.S. national debt. For example, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.
63 – One recent survey found that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.
71 – Today, 71 percent of all small business owners believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession.
80 – Americans buy 80 percent of the pain pills sold on the entire globe each year.
81 – Credit card debt among Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket has risen by 81 percent since 1989.
85 – 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are made in China.
86 – According to one survey, 86 percent of Americans workers in their sixties say that they will continue working past their 65th birthday.
90 – In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
93 – The United States now ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.
95 – The middle class continues to shrink – 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.
107 – Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.
350 – The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes.
400 – According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
$500 – In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.
627 – In 2010, China produced 627 million metric tons of steel. The United States only produced 80 million metric tons of steel.
877 – 20,000 workers recently applied for just 877 jobs at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama.
900 – Auto parts exports from China to the United States have increased by more than 900 percent since the year 2000.
$1580 – When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1580 an ounce.
1700 – Consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971.
2016 – It is being projected that the Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2016.
$4155 – The average American household spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
$4300 – The amount by which real median household income has declined since Barack Obama entered the White House.
$6000 – If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
$10,000 – According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
49,000 – In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
50,000 – The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
56,000 – The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
$85,000 – According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
$175,587 – The Obama administration spent $175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.
$328,404 – Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
$361,330 – This is what the average banker in New York City made in 2010.
440,00 – 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 totally pay it off.
500,000 – According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
2,000,000 – Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today.
$2,000,000 – At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.
2,600,000 – In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
5,400,000 – When Barack Obama first took office there were 2.7 million long-term unemployed Americans. Today there are twice as many.
16,000,000 – It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
$20,000,000 – The amount of money the U.S. government was spending to create a version of Sesame Street for children in Pakistan.
25,000,000 – Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
40,000,000 – According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
46,405,204 – The number of Americans currently on food stamps. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.
88,000,000 – Today there are more than 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.
100,000,000 – Overall, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.
$150,000,000 – This is approximately the amount of money that the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress are stealing from future generations of Americans every single hour.
$2,000,000,000 – The amount of money that JP Morgan has admitted that it will lose from derivatives trades gone bad. Many analysts are convinced that the real number will actually end up being much higher.
$147,000,000,000 – In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately 147 billion dollars a year.
295,500,000,000 – Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
$359,100,000,000 – During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.
$454,000,000,000 – During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
$1,000,000,000,000 – The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
$1,170,000,000,000 – China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.
$1,600,000,000,000 – The amount that has been added to the U.S. national debt since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is more than the first 97 Congresses added to the national debt combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – What the real U.S. budget deficit in 2011 would have been if the federal government had used generally accepted accounting principles.
$11,440,000,000,000 – The total amount of consumer debt in the United States.
$15,734,596,578,458.59 – The U.S. national debt as of June 7, 2012.
$200,000,000,000,000 – Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the derivatives market completely collapses there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.