No matter how often the pretty people on television tell us that the U.S. economy is getting better, it isn’t going to change the soul crushing agony that millions of American families are going through right now. The stock market may have gotten back to where it was in 2008, but the job market sure hasn’t. As I wrote about a few days ago, the percentage of working age Americans that are actually employed has stayed very flat since late 2009, and the average duration of unemployment is hovering near an all-time high. Sadly, this is not just a temporary downturn. The U.S. economy has been slowly declining for several decades and is nearing total system failure. Right now, many poverty statistics are higher than they have ever been since the Great Depression. Many measurements of government dependence are the highest that we have ever seen in all of U.S. history. The emerging one world economic system (otherwise known as “free trade”) has cost the U.S. economy tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth. The federal government is going into unprecedented amounts of debt in order to try to maintain our current standard of living, but there is no way that they will be able to sustain this kind of borrowing for too much longer. So enjoy this bubble of false prosperity while you can, because things will soon get significantly worse.
As the U.S. economy experiences total system failure, it will be imperative for all of us not to wait around waiting for someone to rescue us.
And I am not just talking about the government.
Today, millions upon millions of Americans are waiting around hoping that someone out there will hire them.
Well, the truth is that our politicians have made it so complicated and so expensive to hire someone that many small businesses try to avoid hiring as much as possible.
Businesses generally only want to hire people if they can make a profit by doing so. When our politicians keep piling on the taxes and the regulations and the paperwork, that creates a tremendous incentive not to hire workers.
Michael Fleischer, the President of Bogen Communications, once wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why I’m Not Hiring”. The following is how Paul Hollrah of Family Security Matters summarized the nightmarish taxes that are imposed on his company when Fleischer hires a new worker….
According to Fleischer, Sally grosses $59,000 a year, which shrinks to less than $44,000 after taxes and other payroll deductions. The $15,311 deducted from Sally’s gross pay is comprised of New Jersey state income tax: $1,893; Social Security taxes: $3,661; state unemployment insurance: $126; disability insurance: $149; Medicare insurance: $856; federal withholding tax: $6,250; and her share of medical and dental insurance: $2,376. Roughly 25.9 percent of Sally’s income is siphoned off by Washington and Trenton before she receives her paychecks.
But then there are the additional costs of employing Sally. In addition to her gross salary, her employer must pay the lion’s share of her healthcare insurance premiums: $9,561; life and other insurance premiums: $153; federal unemployment insurance: $56; disability insurance: $149; worker’s comp insurance: $300; New Jersey state unemployment insurance: $505; Medicare insurance: $856; and the employer’s share of Social Security taxes: $3,661.
Over and above her gross salary, Bogen Communications must pay an additional $15,241 in benefits and state and federal taxes, bringing the total cost of employing Sally to approximately $74,241 per year. Sally gets to keep $43,689, or just 58.8% of that total.
Are you starting to understand why so many businesses are hesitant to hire new workers?
The big corporations can handle all of the paperwork and regulations that come with hiring a new worker fairly well, but for small businesses hiring a new worker can be a massive undertaking. That new worker is going to have to almost be a miracle worker in order to justify all of the hassle and expense.
But the federal government just keeps piling more burdens on to the backs of employers. That is one reason why there is such an uproar over Obamacare. It is going to make hiring workers even less attractive.
These days, most small businesses are trying to get by with as few workers as possible, and many big businesses are trying to ship as many jobs as they can overseas.
Sadly, even if you do find a good job it can disappear at any moment.
The following is from a comment that a reader named Jeff recently left on one of my articles….
It’s sad what’s happening here in this country. So many lucky ones defend it. In America it’s not exactly about hard work anymore, it’s about who you know always. The ability to keep people stupid as well as in debt was established here well by corporations also. You cannot start a solid hiring business like you could years ago.
I know many of folks who don’t break a sweat and earn more money than I ever will in a week. The system is getting crazy only creating two extremes. I fought for this country right after 9/11 as a young naive person. Using my grandfather’s old stories to see the dream that this country was always suppose to have.
The company I still unfortunately work for (cause other places are worse), 4 years ago they froze our salaries. No raises yet, this is when the company was bought by an investment group for 500 million.
Now we are getting sold to Japan for 1 billion. A 500 million dollar profit. Sorry if I may be ignorant in this way of business. But it seems the only one who benefited from this is that group of investors. 400+ well skilled jobs lost, no raises or rewards, a whole lot more work and contract obligations to meet, and less contact with management when problems surface.
I just think the United States of America is becoming the world’s poker table.
I want out of this country so bad. I don’t even know what happen to people here. The younger generation scares me how dumb they are and everyone seems so easily bought with eyecandy.
Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine your boss walking in one day and declaring that the business has just been sold to foreigners and that you are about to lose your job?
In America today, it can be absolutely soul crushing to lose a job. It isn’t as if you are going to run out and get another fantastic job in a week or two.
When you are unemployed, people look at your differently. It gets to the point where you don’t even want to interact with other people because you know that your unemployment is probably going to be the number one topic of conversation.
When you are out of work for six months or more, it is easy to feel like a failure – especially when so many other people are looking at you as if you are a failure too.
But in most cases, individual Americans are not to blame for not being able to find work.
Rather it is the entire system that is failing all of us.
The U.S. economy is bleeding good jobs and the middle class in America has become a bizarre game of musical chairs. When the music stops each round you might lose your spot. You just never know.
Looking for work in the United States in this economic environment can be a demoralizing endeavor. For example, a recent Esquire article described what one unemployed man named Scott Annechino found when he attended a job fair in San Francisco….
A glass elevator carries him to the third floor, where the front-desk girl, who knows it’s her job to be cheerful, told him the job fair is supposed to be.
A pasty kid, maybe thirty, in a too-big shirt and a cheap tie, greets him and tells him the companies are set up in rooms along the hall and that he should definitely visit all of them. Annechino, forty-four years old, wearing his best suit and shined black shoes, walks to the first exhibitor: Devcon, a home-security company. The door is closed, no one inside. Annechino looks around for an explanation. “Oh, I just got an e-mail from my contact there saying they wouldn’t be able to make it today,” the pasty kid says, fingering his BlackBerry.
A couple of other potential employers who were supposed to be here didn’t make it, either — Konica Minolta, Santa Clara University. “Yeah …” the kid says. Annechino moves to the next room. State Farm. They’re looking for people who can put up fifty grand to start their own insurance agency. The Art Institute is next, mostly looking for people who might want to go to art school. New York Life. The U. S. Army, where men wearing fatigues and combat boots offer brochures.
That’s it.
If you want to check out the rest of the sad unemployment stories in that article, you can find them right here.
But even if you do have a job, that doesn’t mean that everything is just fine. Average American families are finding that the prices of the basic things that they need are rising much faster than their paychecks are.
According to one recent study, more than half of all Americans feel as though they are really struggling to afford just the basics at this point….
“Every retailer wants to think ‘Everything I sell is worth it! Shoppers will love it’, but the hard reality is 52% Americans feel they barely have enough to afford the basics,” said Candace Corlett, president of WSL/Strategic Retail.
Just buying food and gas is a major financial ordeal for many families these days. On average, a gallon of gasoline in the United States now costs $3.83. Many Americans burn up a huge chunk of their paychecks just going back and forth to work in their cars.
So what is the solution?
Well, according to the Obama administration the answer is even more government dependence. The federal government is now actually running ads encouraging even more people to go on food stamps….
Can you believe that?
Apparently having 46.5 million Americans on food stamps is not enough. The federal government is spending our tax money on advertisements that try to convince even more Americans that they need to be on food stamps.
What the American people really need are good jobs, but those keep getting shipped out of the country.
For example one Colorado man was recently caught stealing parts from toilets in public restrooms….
Donald Allen Citron, 48, faces 18 charges, including burglary and theft. He’s accused of stealing toilet parts from several locations, including Southwest Plaza Mall, University of Denver, and Craig Hospital.
Most of the crimes happened in just a few minutes, but police Citron is a plumber and all he needed was a wrench and a screw driver to steal pipes and the plumbing in toilets. The items he’s accused of stealing are valued at around $6,400.
They are calling him “the crapper scrapper”.
Other Americans are not willing to stoop to crime and instead suffer quietly and anonymously.
A reader named Katie recently left the following heartbreaking comment on one of my articles….
I’m almost homeless. Through no fault of my own I’d like to point out. I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. I don’t even eat fast food unless I have too.
Four years ago I had a house, car, family, stuff, an IRA, and really everything that people in this country aspire to. I had a great job that I enjoyed so did my boyfriend. Even our relationship was great.
We didn’t get hit by the economy right away. We were in Katrina damaged parts of the country and there was still a lot of construction going on and the economic boom that comes with it.
Then I got laid off. Doesn’t seem to matter that I go to interview after interview. I use indeed, monster, craigslist, and newspapers to search for jobs even outside my area.
Now my boyfriend has passed away suddenly, and his family got everything. I personally have only a living father left, who hasn’t the room but I’m camping in his yard. All my friends say they don’t have the room either. Which makes me wonder just how much of friends they are. Considering if the situation was reversed I have in the past and would open my home to anyone that needed help.
If something happens to him I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I need to get on my feet and I know that jobs are hard to come by. I’m sick of the people who have jobs saying ‘get a job you lazy bum’. I’m hardly lazy and I’m trying desperately to be employed; not being homeless would be rather awesome in my opinion. I’m not picky, regardless of my degree I’ll pick up trash or clean toilets. McDonald’s, Taco Bell and the other fast food places don’t even bother with a call back. And when I call to inquire about my application it’s always the same, ‘we will call you when we make a decision’. Such a cop-out.
So no. In my (granted meaningless opinion) the economy is not getting better. To even suggest that when unemployment is so high or the rate of food stamps. Is utter ludicrous at best. I notice that those talking heads on the cable news and radio never seem to mention that the homeless shelters have a higher occupancy level than ever before. Nor would they mention the fact that we have those shelters in abundance now across the country in comparison to the Great Depression.
I’m getting real tired of hearing how great the economy is doing. When obviously it’s not. All you have to do is open your eyes and see. Business are not coming back yet and foreclosed homes sit empty everywhere. The unemployment rate only counts the people who are getting unemployment benefits. So the people who fall off the unemployment benefits don’t get counted. Because the must have gotten a job, right? Hardly. In fact the homeless in this country are almost never counted correctly. It’s too hard to count them all, or at least that’s the excuse.
I know it’s meaningless, especially to those who see homeless and immediately have a bias, but that’s my opinion on the current state of our economy. You can count me in the 80%. Only a fool would see this as a recovery.
Please say a prayer for Katie and the millions of other Americans just like her. It can be absolutely soul crushing to lose everything that you ever worked for and not see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Unfortunately, the U.S. economy is not going to be improving in the long run. What we are experiencing right now is about as good as it is going to get. The truth is that it is pretty much downhill from here.
It is fairly simple to figure out what is happening to us as a nation.
You can’t keep buying far more than you sell.
You can’t keep spending far more than you bring in.
You can’t keep running up debt in larger and larger amounts indefinitely.
The U.S. economy is running on borrowed money and on borrowed time.
Rampant silver manipulation? Rampant gold manipulation? Rampant LIBOR manipulation? Hiding MF Global client assets? These are all happening at JP Morgan according to an open letter reportedly written by an anonymous employee of the firm. The whistleblower also warns of a “cascading credit event being triggered” by derivatives related to Greek government debt. Unlike Greg Smith at Goldman Sachs, this whistleblower has chosen to remain anonymous for now. According to the letter, the whistleblower is still an employee of JP Morgan and has not resigned. But that does make it much more difficult to confirm what he is saying. With Greg Smith, we know exactly who he is and what he was doing at Goldman. As far as this anonymous whistleblower is concerned, all we have is this letter. So we must take it with a grain of salt. However, the information in this letter does agree with what whistleblowers such as Andrew Maguire have said in the past about silver manipulation by JP Morgan. And this letter does mention Greg Smith’s resignation from Goldman, so we know that it must have been written in the past few days. Hopefully this letter will cause authorities to take a much closer look at the crazy things that are going on over at JP Morgan and the other big Wall Street banks.
This anonymous letter was addressed to the CFTC, but unfortunately it looks like the CFTC has already chosen to ignore it.
The original letter from this anonymous whistleblower has already been taken down from the CFTC website. When you go there now, all you get is this message….
“The Comment Cannot Be Found. Please Return to the Previous Page and Try Again.”
Fortunately, there are many in the alternative media that copied this entire letter from the CFTC website.
The following is a copy of the original letter that the anonymous whistleblower from JP Morgan submitted to the CFTC….
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Dear CFTC Staff,
Hello, I am a current JPMorgan Chase employee. This is an open letter to all commissioners and regulators. I am emailing you today b/c I know of insider information that will be damning at best for JPMorgan Chase. I have decided to play the role of whistleblower b/c I no longer have faith and belief that what we are doing for society is bringing value to people. I am now under the opinion that we are actually putting hard working Americans unaware of what lays ahead at extreme market risk. This risk is unnecessary and will lead to wide-scale market collapse if not handled properly. With the release of Mr. Smith’s open letter to Goldman, I too would like to set the record straight for JPM as well. I have seen the disruptive behavior of superiors and no longer can say that I look up to employees at the ED/MD level here at JPM. Their smug exuberance and arrogance permeates the air just as pungently as rotting vegetables. They all know too well of the backdoor crony connections they share intimately with elected officials and with other institutions. It is apparent in everything they do, from the meager attempts to manipulate LIBOR, therefore controlling how almost all derivatives are priced to the inherit and fraudulent commodities manipulation. They too may have one day stood for something in the past in the client-employee relationship. Does anyone in today’s market really care about the protection of their client? From the ruthless and scandalous treatment of MF Global client asset funds to the excessive bonuses paid by companies with burgeoning liabilities. Yes, we at JPMorgan that are in the know are fearful of a cascading credit event being triggered in Greece as they have hidden derivatives in excess of $1 Trillion USD. We at JPMorgan own enough of these through counterparty risk and outright prop trading that our entire IB EDG space could be annihilated within a few short days. The last ten years has been market by inflexion point after inflexion point with the most notable coming in 2008 after the acquisition of Bear.
I wish to remain anonymous as of now as fear of termination mounts from what I am about to reveal. Robert Gottlieb is not my real name; however he is a trader that is involved in a lawsuit for manipulative trading while working with JPMorgan Chase. He was acquired during our Bear Stearns acquisition and is known to be the notorious person shorting in the silver future market from his trading space, along with Blythe Masters, his IB Global boss. However, with that said, we are manipulating the silver futures market and playing a smaller (but still massively manipulative) role in manipulating the gold futures market. We have a little over a 25% (give or take a percentage) position in the short market for silver futures and by your definition this denotes a larger position than for speculative purposes or for hedging and is beyond the line of manipulation.
On a side note, I do not work directly with accounts that would have been directly impacted by the MF Global fiasco but I have heard through other colleagues that we have involvement in the hiding of client assets from MF Global. This is another fraudulent effort on our part and constitutes theft. I urge you to forward that part of the investigation on to the respective authorities.
There is something else that you may find strange. During month-end December, we were all told by our managers that this was going to be a dismal year in terms of earnings and that we should not expect any bonuses or pay raises. Then come mid-late January it is made known that everyone received a pay raise and/or bonus, which is interesting b/c just a few weeks ago we were told that this was not likely and expected to be paid nothing in addition to base salary. January is right around the time we started increasing our short positions quite significantly again and this most recent crash in gold and silver during Bernanke’s speech on February 29th is of notable importance, as we along with 4 other major institutions, orchestrated the violent $100 drop in Gold and subsequent drops in silver.
As regulators of the free people of this country, I ask you to uphold the most important job in the world right now. That job is judge and overseer of all that is justice in the most sensitive of commodity markets. There are many middle-income people that invest in the physical assets of silver, gold, as well as mining stocks that are being financially impacted in a negative way b/c of our unscrupulous shorts in the precious metals commodity sector. If you read the COT with intent you will find that commercials (even though we have no business being in the commercial sector, which should be reserved for companies that truly produce the metal) are net short by a long shot in not only silver, but gold.
It is rather surprising that what should be well known liabilities on our balance sheet have not erupted into wider scale scrutinization. I call all honest and courageous JPMorgan employees to step up and fight the cronyism and wide-scale manipulation by reporting the truth. We are only helping reality come to light therefore allowing a real valuation of our banking industry which will give investors a chance to properly adjust without being totally wiped out. I will be contacting a lawyer shortly about this matter, as I believe no other whistleblower at JPMorgan has come forward yet. Our deepest secrets lie within the hands of honest employees and can be revealed through honest regulators that are willing to take a look inside one of America’s best kept secrets. Please do not allow this to turn into another Enron.
Kind Regards,
-The 1st Whistleblower of Many
———-
Another Enron?
If what this letter says is true, then the problems facing our financial system are more serious than most of us thought.
And the allegations of corruption at JP Morgan are absolutely shocking.
But this is not the first whistleblower to come forward to the CFTC with charges of rampant market manipulation by JP Morgan.
Back in 2010 I wrote about the stunning allegations that a former silver trader named Andrew Maguire presented to the CFTC. The following is an extended excerpt from that article….
———-
Back in November 2009, Andrew Maguire, a former Goldman Sachs silver trader in Goldman’s London office, contacted the CFTC’s Enforcement Division and reported the illegal manipulation of the silver market by traders at JPMorgan Chase.
Maguire told the CFTC how silver traders at JPMorgan Chase openly bragged about their exploits – including how they sent a signal to the market in advance so that other traders could make a profit during price suppression episodes.
Traders would recognize these signals and would make money shorting precious metals alongside JPMorgan Chase. Maguire explained to the CFTC how there would routinely be market manipulations at the time of option expiries, during non-farm payroll data releases, during commodities exchange contract rollovers, as well as at other times if it was deemed necessary.
On February 3rd, Maguire gave the CFTC a two day warning of a market manipulation event by email to Eliud Ramirez, who is a senior investigator for the CFTC’s Enforcement Division.
Maguire warned Ramirez that the price of precious metals would be suppressed upon the release of non-farm payroll data on February 5th. As the manipulation of the precious metals markets was unfolding on February 5th, Maguire sent additional emails to Ramirez explaining exactly what was going on.
And it wasn’t just that Maguire predicted that the price would be forced down. It was the level of precision that he was able to communicate to the CFTC that was the most stunning. He warned the CFTC that the price of silver was to be taken down regardless of what happened to the employment numbers and that the price of silver would end up below $15 per ounce. Over the next couple of days, the price of silver was indeed taken down from $16.17 per ounce down to a low of $14.62 per ounce.
Because of Maguire’s warning, the CFTC was able to watch a crime unfold, right in front of their eyes, in real time.
Basically, the CFTC is a government agency that appears to do next to nothing.
Another scandal involving JP Morgan has come out in recent days as well.
This one involves their credit card division. If you have a moments, you should really read the recent American Banker expose of credit card debt collection practices at JPMorgan Chase. It exposes some things that will absolutely blow your mind.
Linda Almonte, a former executive at JPMorgan Chase’s Credit Card Litigation Support Group, has revealed some incredible stuff regarding the debt collection practices at the company. Almonte says that she was shocked at what she saw when she began examining the details of a $200 million package of debt collection judgments to an outside debt collection agency….
Nearly half of the files her team sampled were missing proofs of judgment or other essential information, she wrote to colleagues. Even more worrisome, she alleged in her wrongful-termination suit, nearly a quarter of the files misstated how much the borrower owed.
In the “vast majority” of those instances, the actual debt was “lower that what Chase was representing,” her suit stated.
JPMorgan Chase issues food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and they actually want more Americans to go on food stamps so that they can make bigger profits from the division that issues them.
So now are you starting to understand why so many Americans are upset about the corruption on Wall Street?
This isn’t a “conservative issue” or a “liberal issue” – it is an American issue and the outrageous behavior of these firms has brought our financial system once again to the edge of disaster.
Over the past six months, more than 350 prominent executives have resigned from major banks and financial institutions all over the globe.
Is this a sign that the rats are fleeing a sinking ship?
Do they know something that we don’t?
What we do know is that the financial crisis in Greece is far from over and the European financial system is getting closer to a complete meltdown with each passing day.
Very few of the things that caused the financial crisis of 2008 were ever corrected and our financial system is even more vulnerable today than it was back then.
In the end, this entire pyramid of debt, leverage and corruption is going to come crashing down really hard, and the consequences are going to be absolutely catastrophic.
For a long time, most analysts have believed that if someone was going to leave the euro, it would be a weak nation such as Greece or Portugal. But the truth is that financially troubled nations such as Greece and Portugal don’t want to leave the euro. The leaders of those nations understand that if they leave the euro their economies will totally collapse and nobody will be there to bail them out. And at this point there really is not a formal mechanism which would enable other members of the eurozone to kick financially troubled nations such as Greece or Portugal out of the euro. But there is one possibility that is becoming increasingly likely that could actually cause the break up of the euro. Germany could leave the euro. Yes, it might actually happen. Germany is faced with a very difficult problem right now. It is looking at a future where it will be essentially forced to bail out most of the rest of the nations in the eurozone for many years to come, and those bailouts will be extremely expensive. Meanwhile, the mood in much of the rest of Europe is becoming decidedly anti-German. In Greece, Angela Merkel and the German government are being openly portrayed as Nazis. Financially troubled nations such as Greece want German bailout money, but they are getting sick and tired of the requirements that Germany is imposing upon them in order to get that money. Increasingly, other nations in Europe are simply ignoring what Germany is asking them to do or are openly defying Germany. In the end, Germany will need to decide whether it is worth it to continue to pour billions upon billions of euros into countries that don’t appreciate it and that are not doing what Germany has asked them to do.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party recently approved a resolution that would allow a country to leave the euro without leaving the European Union.
Many thought that the resolution was aimed at countries like Greece or Portugal, but the truth is that this resolution may be setting the stage for a German exit from the euro.
The following is an excerpt from that resolution….
“Should a member [of the euro zone] be unable or unwilling to permanently obey the rules connected to the common currency he will be able to voluntarily–according to the rules of the Lisbon Treaty for leaving the European Union–leave the euro zone without leaving the European Union. He would receive the same status as those member states that do not have the euro.”
So was that paragraph written for Greece?
Or was it written for Germany?
That is a very interesting question.
What is clear is that the status quo cannot last much longer.
Voters in Germany are definitely not in the mood to give any more bailout money to other nations in Europe, but if Germany is going to continue to stay in the eurozone many more bailouts will be required in the coming years.
Meanwhile, Germany is rapidly losing control over the rest of the eurozone….
*Greece has implemented some of the austerity measures that have been required of it, but many others have not been implemented. In a few weeks there will be a national election, and parties that are opposed to the austerity measures are surging in the polls. It is likely that the new government will be much less friendly toward Germany.
*The Spanish government is already defying the budgetary requirements that the EU is trying to impose upon it. Spain is definitely going to miss the debt targets mandated by the EU, and the Spanish government has absolutely no plans of making more reductions to government spending.
*The upcoming election in France could be absolutely crucial. Nicolas Sarkozy is not doing well in the polls and the new French government could totally wreck the recent fiscal agreement that the members of the eurozone recently agreed to.
The following is how Graham Summers recently summarized the current situation in France….
We should also take Schäuble’s statements in the context of Angela Merkel’s recent backing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s re-election campaign in France against hardened socialist François Hollande, who wants to engage in a rampant socialist mission to lower France’s retirement age, cut tax breaks to the wealthy, and break the recent new EU fiscal requirements Germany convinced 17 members of the EU to agree to.
Obviously Germany has been trying very hard to keep the eurozone together. But the German government also believes that if it is going to be bailing everyone out that it should also be able to set the rules.
So what happens if the rest of Europe tells Germany to stick their rules where the sun doesn’t shine?
Well, Germany would be forced to make a very difficult decision, and Germany appears to making plans for that eventuality.
For example, Germany recently reinstated its Special Financial Market Stabilization Funds. This money would be used to bail out German banks in the event of a break up of the euro. The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers….
In short, Germany has given the SoFFIN:
€400 billion to be used as guarantees for German banks.
€80 billion to be used for the recapitalization of German banks
Legislation that would permit German banks to dump their euro-zone government bonds if needed.
That is correct. Any German bank, if it so chooses, will have the option to dump its EU sovereign bonds into the SoFFIN during a Crisis.
In simple terms, Germany has put a €480 billion firewall around its banks. It can literally pull out of the Euro any time it wants to.
If the rest of Europe continues to defy Germany, then at some point Germany may decide to simply pick up the ball and go home.
Germany is the strongest economy in the eurozone by far, and if Germany were to pull out the euro would absolutely collapse. Whatever currency Germany decided to issue would be extremely valuable. Such an event would actually have some tremendous side benefits for Germany.
Right now, the German national debt is denominated in euros.
If Germany left the euro, the value of euros would plummet and would likely keep declining as the rest of the eurozone fell apart financially and Germany would be able to pay back its debt in rapidly appreciating “marks” or whatever other currency it decided to issue.
All other debts in Germany would also be denominated in euros and would also be repaid with a much stronger currency.
Are you starting to get the picture?
Yes, Germany would likely have to bail out German banks if it left the euro, but leaving the euro could also prove to be a tremendous windfall for Germany.
If Germany chooses to say in the euro, it is going to be faced with extremely expensive bailouts of other countries for as far as the eye can see.
Bernard Connolly, a persistent critic of Europe, estimates it would cost Germany, as the main surplus-generating country in the euro area, about 7 percent of its annual gross domestic product over several years to transfer sufficient funds to bail out Europe’s debt-burdened countries, including France.
That amount, he has argued, would far surpass the huge reparations bill foisted upon Germany by the victorious powers after World War I, the final payment of which Germany made in 2010.
If Germany leaves the euro, that does not mean that the dream of a single currency is dead. Germany could just let the rest of the eurozone collapse and then invite them to join the new German currency eventually after all the carnage is over.
At that point, Germany would have all the leverage and Germany would be able to dictate all the rules.
What is clear is that the status quo in Europe is becoming extremely unacceptable in Germany. The Germans do not intend to give endless bailouts to other nations that do not appreciate them and that do not intend to follow the rules.
At some point Germany may actually decide to walk, and there are lots of whispers that Germany has been steadily preparing for that day.
For example, there are persistent rumors that Germany has ordered printing plates for the printing of new German marks. Philippa Malmgren, a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush, says that she believes that this is already happening….
“I think they have already got the printing machines going and are bringing out the old deutschmarks they have left over from when the euro was introduced.”
Increasingly, it really is looking as if Germany is actually preparing to leave the euro.
If Germany did leave the euro, the consequences for the rest of Europe would be catastrophic.
The euro would rapidly drop to all-time lows.
The global financial system would be thrown in chaos.
Countries such as Greece would lose their major source of bailout money and would be forced to default.
The recession in Europe would likely deepen into a devastating economic depression.
So there would be a lot of downside.
But Germany would fare much better than most of the rest of Europe, and in the end Germany would be left holding most of the cards.
Keep a close eye on the upcoming European elections and the evolving political situation in Europe.
If things don’t go well for Germany, at some point Germany may just get fed up and walk away from the euro.
Well, it is official. The restructuring deal between Greece and private investors has been pushed through and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association has ruled that this is a credit event which will trigger credit-default swap contracts. The ISDA is saying that there are approximately $3.2 billion in credit-default swap contracts on Greek debt outstanding, and most analysts expect that the global financial system will be able to absorb these losses. But still, 3.2 billion dollars is nothing to scoff at, and some of these financial institutions that wrote a lot of these contracts on Greek debt are going to be hurting. This deal with private investors may have “rescued” Greece for the moment, but the consequences of this deal are going to be felt for years to come. For example, now that Greece has gotten a sweet “haircut” from private investors, politicians in Portugal, Italy, Spain and other European nations are going to wonder why they shouldn’t get some “debt forgiveness” too. Also, private investors are almost certainly going to be less likely to want to loan money to European nations from now on. If they will be required to take a massive haircuts at some point, then why in the world would they want to lend huge amounts of money to European governments at super low interest rates? It simply does not make sense. Now that Greece has defaulted, the whole game is going to change. This is just the beginning.
The “restructuring deal” was approved by approximately 84 percent of all Greek bondholders, but the key to triggering the payouts on the credit-default swaps was the fact that Greece decided to activate the “collective action clauses” which had been retroactively inserted into these bonds. These collective action clauses force most of the rest of the bondholders to go along with this restructuring deal.
A recent article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard explained why so many people were upset about these “collective action clauses”….
The Greek parliament’s retroactive law last month to insert collective action clauses (CACs) into its bonds to coerce creditor hold-outs has added a fresh twist. These CAC’s are likely to be activated over coming days. Use of retroactive laws to change contracts is anathema in credit markets.
If a government can go in and retroactively change the terms of a bond just before it is ready to default, then why should private investors invest in them?
That is a very good question.
But for now the buck has been passed on to those that issued the credit-default swaps. As mentioned above, the ISDA says that there are approximately $3.2 billion in Greek credit-default swaps that will need to be paid out.
However, that number assumes that a lot of hedges and offsetting swaps cancel each other out. When you just look at the raw total of swaps outstanding, the number is much, much higher. The following is from a recent article in The Huffington Post….
If you remove all hedges and offsetting swaps, there’s about $70 billion in default-insurance exposure to Greece out there, which is a little bit bigger pill for the banking system to swallow. Is it possible that some banks won’t be able to pay on their default policies? We’ll find out.
Yes, indeed. We will find out very soon.
If some counterparties are unable to pay we could soon see some big problems cascade through the financial system.
But even with this new restructuring deal with private investors, Greece is still in really bad shape.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters recently that it “would be a big mistake to think we are out of the woods”.
Even with this new deal, Greek debt is still projected to be only reduced to 120 percent of GDP by the year 2020. And that number relies on projections that are almost unbelievably optimistic.
In addition, there are still a whole host of very strict conditions that the Greek government must meet in order to continue getting bailout money.
Also, the upcoming Greek elections in just a few weeks could bring this entire process to an end in just a single day.
The Greek economy has been in recession for five years in a row and it continues to shrink at a frightening pace. Greek GDP was 7.5 percent smaller during the 4th quarter of 2011 than it was during the 4th quarter of 2010.
Unemployment in Greece also continues to get worse.
The average unemployment rate in Greece in 2010 was 12.5 percent. During 2011, the average unemployment rate was 17.3 percent, and in December the unemployment rate in Greece was 21.0 percent.
Young people are getting hit the hardest. The youth unemployment rate in Greece is up to an all-time record of 51.1 percent.
Unfortunately, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for Greece at this point. The latest round of austerity measures that are now being implemented will slow the economy down even more.
Sadly, several other countries in Europe are going down the exact same road that Greece has gone.
Investors all over the globe are wondering which one will be the “next Greece”.
Some believe that it will be Portugal. The following is from a recent article in The Telegraph….
“The rule of law has been treated with contempt,” said Marc Ostwald from Monument Securities. “This will lead to litigation for the next ten years. It has become a massive impediment for long-term investors, and people will now be very wary about Portugal.”
Right now, the combination of all public and private debt in Portugal comes to a grand total of 360 percent of GDP.
In Greece, the combined total of all public and private debt is about 100 percentage points less than that.
So yes, Portugal is heading for a world of hurt. The following is more about Portugal from the recent Telegraph article mentioned above….
Citigroup expects the economy to contract by 5.7pc this year, warning that bondholders may face a 50pc haircut by the end of the year. Portugal’s €78bn loan package from the EU-IMF Troika is already large enough to crowd out private creditors, reducing them to ever more junior status.
So why should anyone invest in Portuguese debt at this point?
Or Italian debt?
Or Spanish debt?
Or any European debt at all?
The truth is that the European financial system is a house of cards that could come crashing down at any time.
German economist Hans-Werner Sinn is even convinced that the European Central Bank itself could collapse.
There is a Der Spiegel article that everyone out there should read. It is entitled “Euro-Zone Central Bank System Massively Imbalanced“. It is quite technical, but if this German economist is correct, the implications are staggering.
The following is from the first paragraph of the article….
More than a year ago, German economist Hans-Werner Sinn discovered a gigantic risk on the balance sheets of Germany’s central bank. Were the euro zone to collapse, Bundesbank losses could be half a trillion euros — more than one-and-a-half times the size of the country’s annual budget.
Not so fast. Those that are publicly declaring that an economic recovery has arrived are ignoring a whole host of numbers that indicate that the U.S. economy is in absolutely horrendous shape. The truth is that the health of an economy should not be measured by how well the stock market is doing. Rather, the truth health of an economy should be evaluated by looking at numbers for things like jobs, housing, poverty and debt. Some of the latest economic statistics indicate that unemployment is getting a little bit worse, that the housing market continues to deteriorate, that poverty in America continues to soar and that our debt problem is worse than ever. If we were truly experiencing the kind of economic recovery that the United States has experienced after every other post-World War II recession we would see a sharp improvement across the board in most of our economic statistics. But that simply is not happening. Sadly, this is about as much of an “economic recovery” as we are going to get because soon the economy will be getting much worse. So enjoy this period of relative stability while you can.
The Obama administration would have us believe that unemployment in the United States has declined, but the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed has stayed very, very flat for more than two years and now there are some measures of unemployment that are actually getting worse.
For example, according to Gallup the unemployment rate in the United States has risen from 8.5% in December to 8.6% in January to 9.1% in February. The Obama administration would have us believe that it is actually going the other direction.
Initial unemployment claims are rising again. For the week ending March 3rd, they increased by 8,000 over the previous week to 362,000. This is not the kind of good news that people were hoping for.
What the U.S. economy could really use are millions of good jobs. But those are being shipped out of the country at a staggering pace.
Right now there are millions of Americans in their prime working years that are sitting at home wondering what to do with their lives. The average duration of unemployment in the United States continues to hover near a record high, and if we were truly experiencing an economic recovery it should have been falling by now.
But a lot of Americans have bought into the propaganda about an economic recovery and they are out running up huge amounts of debt once again. In January, consumer credit increased by much more than expected. The following is from a recent Reuters report….
Nonrevolving credit, which includes auto loans as well as student loans made by the government, rose $20.723 billion during the month. That was the biggest increase in dollar terms since November 2001, when credit was surging in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
Don’t fall into the trap of debt slavery. During the last recession millions of Americans lost their homes and most of what they owned because they got overextended.
Don’t do it.
The U.S. housing market continues to deeply struggle as well. If we were really in an economic recovery housing would be bouncing back. But that is not happening. Just consider the following facts….
*The number of new homes sold in the United States continues to hover near a record low.
*U.S. home prices in the 4th quarter of 2011 were four percent lower than they were during the 4th quarter of 2010.
*According to CoreLogic, 22.8 percent of all homes with a mortgage in the United States were in negative equity as of the end of the 4th quarter of 2011. That was an increase from 22.1 percent in the third quarter.
Why are things still getting worse for the U.S housing market?
For example, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased to 46.5 million – a brand new all-time record.
If we really were in an economic recovery, wouldn’t that number be going down?
We should be thankful that the U.S. economy is not declining as rapidly as it was during 2008 and 2009. But what we are experiencing right now is not an economic recovery. It is simply just a bubble of false hope.
The big problem is that our nation is covered in an ocean of constantly expanding debt.
U.S. consumers are drowning in debt, U.S. businesses have pushed debt levels to the red line, and the U.S. financial system is massively overleveraged.
Of course government debt is our biggest debt problem of all.
All over the nation, state and local governments are on the verge of financial ruin.
If we were in the middle of an economic recovery, so many states would not be in crisis mode. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times declared that “California could run out of cash in March“. As the economy continues to crumble we are going to hear a lot more of this kind of thing.
A lot of local governments around the nation are on the verge of total financial collapse. Stockton, California has announced that they will be defaulting on some debt payments, and Suffolk County in New York recently declared a fiscal emergency after discovering that it would rack up more than 500 million dollars of debt between 2011 and 2013.
Keep your eyes open for more news items like this in the months ahead.
Of course the biggest problem of all is the U.S. national debt and it continues to rapidly get worse.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. government had a budget deficit of 229 billion dollars in the month of February. That is the worst one month budget deficit in the history of the United States.
The Congressional Budget Office also says that the U.S. government is now borrowing 42 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
Ouch.
The U.S. national debt has gotten more than 59 times larger since 1950.
The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
Are there any words in the English language that are strong enough to describe how foolish we have been?
Of course we won’t be able to accumulate so much debt indefinitely. At some point the trillion dollar deficits will stop and our false prosperity will disappear.
But Barack Obama and most members of the U.S. Congress don’t really care about what they are doing to our future.
What they care about is winning the next election so that they can continue living their fabulous lives.
Barack Obama is supposed to be taking care of the American people, but instead he has been very busy taking care of the people who helped him get elected. Politics in America is all about money. Just check out the following very short excerpt from a recent article in the Washington Post….
More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.
At least 24 Obama bundlers were given posts as foreign ambassadors, including in Finland, Australia, Portugal and Luxembourg. Among them is Don Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor who serves as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Washington D.C. is deeply corrupt and if you are waiting for our politicians to fix our problems you are going to be deeply disappointed.
The federal government is not going to save you.
Our politicians are not going to save you.
You better figure out how you are going to take care of yourself and your family in the years ahead because this is about as good as things are going to get.
This “economic recovery” is about to end and more pain is about to begin.
Who ever imagined that Ben Bernanke would become a poster child for the student loan debt problem in America? Recently Bernanke told Congress that his son will graduate from medical school with about $400,000 of student loan debt. For most Americans, such a staggering amount of debt would almost certainly guarantee a lifetime of debt slavery. Unfortunately, Bernanke’s son is not alone. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, approximately 167,000 Americans have more than $200,000 of student loan debt. The cost of a college education has increased much more rapidly than the rate of inflation over the past several decades, and most students enter the “real world” today with a debt burden that will stay with them for most of their working lives. In an economy where there are so few good jobs for college graduates, it can be incredibly difficult to get married, buy a house or afford to have children when you are drowning in student loan debt. It would be hard to overstate the financial pain that student loans are causing many young adults in America today. The student loan debt problem is a national crisis and it is not going away any time soon.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York says that the total amount of student loan debt in America now exceeds the total of all credit card debt in the country. It also exceeds the total of all auto loans.
The New York Fed says that there is a total of $870 billion owed on student loans in the United States right now. Other sources claim that the total amount of student loan debt in the United States will soon exceed one trillion dollars.
Either way, we are talking about an extraordinary amount of money.
Sadly, approximately two-thirds of all U.S. college students graduate with student loan debt these days. The average amount of student loan debt at graduation is approximately $25,000.
That might not be so bad if the economy was full of good paying jobs for college graduates, but that simply is not the case.
As college tuition continues to soar, the student loan debt problem continues to get even worse. U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation.
That is not a good trend.
The truth is that it has simply gotten way too expensive to go to college.
Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600.
“I pay almost $1,000 a month just in student loan repayment. I will have to do so for the next 30 years. How will I ever afford to buy a house, have children or save for the future?”
After working so hard all the way through school, is that any kind of a “future” to look forward to?
The system is failing our young people.
Many young college graduates have found themselves unable to make their payments or have simply decided to quit making payments.
Officially, the student loan default rate has nearly doubled since 2005. But a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says that things may be even worse than that. According to the New York Fed, approximately one out of every four student loan balances are past-due at this point.
But it isn’t just young people getting into trouble with student loan debt.
These days, financial institutions are increasingly targeting parents. Federal student loans often do not cover all of the expenses of college in this day and age, and so increasingly loans are being made to parents to make up the difference. Student loans made to directly to parents have increased by 75 percent since the 2005-2006 academic year.
Unfortunately, what students and parents are getting in return for all of this money is not that great.
I spent eight years of my life studying at U.S. colleges and universities. The institutions that I attended were supposed to be better than most. But most of the classes that I took were a total joke. A 6-year-old child could have passed most of them.
Almost everyone agrees that the quality of college education in America is in a serious state of decline. The goal is to get these kids through the system and to keep collecting the big tuition checks.
When I was in school, I could hardly believe how little was being required of me. But being as lazy as I was, I certainly did not complain.
If only more parents realized what was really going on.
The following are some facts about the quality of college education in the United States from a USA Today article….
-“After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.”
-“Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago”
-“35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone.”
-“50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages”
-“32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”
Are you starting to get the picture?
If you are in college right now, enjoy the good times while they last, because when you graduate you will find that there are very few good jobs available for the hordes of new college graduates that are pouring into the labor market.
For a new college graduate, things can be rather depressing. Just consider the following statistics….
*About a third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.
*In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.
There are millions of college graduates that are unemployed in America today. There are millions of others that have been forced to take very low paying jobs because that is all they can get.
It is no coincidence that incomes for households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation since the year 2000.
Young people in America are under intense financial pressure right now.
Many are unable to make it at all and have moved back in with Mom and Dad. As I wrote about recently, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents at this point.
The system of higher education in this country is badly broken and it desperately needs to be fixed.
So do you have a solution to these problems or do you have a student loan debt horror story to share?
Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
The unemployment rate in the eurozone is now 10.7 percent. That is the highest the unemployment rate has been since the introduction of the euro. The unemployment rate in the eurozone never got any higher than 10.2 percent during the last recession. This is very troubling news. It was just recently announced that the eurozone has entered another recession, and already the unemployment rate is hitting new record highs. So how bad are things going to get in the months to come? The truth is that the problems for Europe are just starting. The European sovereign debt crisis continues to get worse, and another major global financial crisis is going to be here way too soon. The EU as a whole has a larger population, a larger banking system and more Fortune 500 companies than the United States does. When the financial system of Europe crashes, the entire world is going to feel it.
Some of the unemployment numbers coming out of Europe are absolutely staggering.
Unemployment in Spain is 19.9 percent.
Unemployment in Greece is 23.3 percent.
And when you look at youth unemployment the numbers are far worse.
The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 is 48.1 percent in Greece and 49.9 percent in Spain.
If you look carefully at the photos of the austerity riots happening in Spain and in Greece you will notice that the vast majority of the protesters are young people.
Instead of getting better, the unemployment numbers in Europe just keep getting worse. Many analysts were shocked by these new numbers. The following is from a CNN article….
“This is appalling,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, highlighting that the unemployment rate following the collapse of Lehman Brothers peaked at 10.2%.
Appalling indeed.
The frightening thing is that we haven’t even had a major financial crisis in Europe yet. So far, the powers that be have been able to keep Greece from defaulting and have been able to keep major banks all over Europe from collapsing.
But there are quite a few signs that the “moment of reckoning” for Europe is rapidly approaching….
-The European Central Bank announced on Tuesday that it would no longer take Greek bonds as collateral from European banks. That is a really bad sign.
-Major European banks are revealing unexpectedly huge losses on Greek debt. The following is from a Reuters article….
The scars of Greece’s debt crisis were laid bare in heavy losses from a string of European banks on Thursday, and bosses warned the region’s precarious finances would continue to threaten economic growth and earnings.
From France to Germany, Britain to Belgium, four of the region’s biggest banks lined up to reveal they lost more than 8 billion euros (6.8 million pounds) last year from their Greek bonds holdings.
“We are in the worst economic crisis since 1929,” Credit Agricole chief executive Jean-Paul Chifflet said.
-The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has ruled that the Greek debt deal will not trigger payouts on credit default swaps. This is going to make it less likely that private bondholders will voluntarily agree to the debt deal.
This ruling is also seriously shaking confidence in credit default swaps. After all, they are supposed to be “insurance” in case something happens. But if they aren’t going to pay out when you need them, what good are they?
-Voters in Germany are sick and tired of pouring money into a black hole. One recent opinion poll in Germany showed that Germans are overwhelmingly against more bailouts for Greece.
Some German politicians are becoming very open about their feelings for Greece. For example, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said the following in a recent interview with Der Spiegel….
“Greece’s chances to regenerate itself and become competitive are surely greater outside the monetary union than if it remains in the euro area.” He added that he did not support a forced exit. “I’m not talking about throwing Greece out, but rather about creating incentives for an exit that they can’t pass up.”
-In Greece, news publications are openly portraying German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Hitler. Far left political parties that oppose the bailouts are surging in the polls and anger and frustration are reaching unprecedented levels.
There is a growing animosity towards Germany on the streets of Athens. Angela Merkel bears most of the hostility with one of Greece’s newspapers last week mocking the chancellor up as a Nazi on its front page.
Niki Fidaki, 40, says Greeks are angry at Germany and the troika’s demands for higher taxes and public services cuts. “People can’t afford to pay the tax. My pay has gone down, but my taxes have gone up. But, I’m a lucky one – half of my friends don’t have jobs. Greeks hate that they are asking us to pay all the time when we don’t have the money. Families have no work, they have kids to look after but no money to pay for anything.”
As I have written about before, Greece is already going through a devastating economic depression. The people of Greece are not in the mood to be pushed much further.
The eurozone is a powder keg that could explode at any time.
So why is the U.S. economy doing so much better than the European economy right now?
Well, a big reason is because we haven’t seen any austerity in the United States yet.
Barack Obama is funding our false prosperity by borrowing 150 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren.
Of course all of this reckless borrowing is going to make the eventual collapse of our financial system far worse, but right now Americans don’t seem to care. The only thing the mainstream media seems to care about is that some of our economic numbers are getting slightly better.
The sad thing is that our government is spending a lot of this money on some of the most stupid things that you could possibly imagine.
Did you know that the Obama administration just spent $750,000 on a brand new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay?
I wish I had a $750,000 soccer field to play on.
I would love that.
Look, when the federal government quits stealing more than a trillion dollars a year from future generations things are going to look a whole lot different in this country.
The Dow has closed above 13,000 for the first time since 2008, and the mainstream media is declaring that a strong economic recovery is underway. Barack Obama is telling anyone who will listen that his economic policies are a huge success, and U.S. consumers are piling up astounding amounts of new debt. Unfortunately, this euphoria about the economy will be short-lived. None of the long-term problems that are destroying the U.S. economy have been solved. In fact, there are dozens of statistics that can be quoted that prove that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than it was when the recession supposedly ended. If dramatic changes are not made very rapidly, our nation is going to smash directly into an economic brick wall. Sadly, most Americans are so addicted to entertainment that they have no idea what is about to happen. Most of them are “sheeple” that are content to trust that the “experts” know exactly how to fix our problems as they continue to enjoy their entertainment-induced comas. After all, it is much easier to turn on “American Idol” or “Dancing With The Stars” than it is to think about debt ratios and monetary policy. But that doesn’t mean that we should not try to wake the sheeple up. It just means that it will not be easy.
If you went to the doctor tomorrow and he told you to take some little blue pills without telling you anything else, would you take them?
Of course not.
You would want to know what the little blue pills are for.
But if your doctor told you that you have a deadly incurable disease that is about to kill you, and that the little blue pills are the only cure, then you would definitely be interested in taking them.
Well, it is the same way with the American people. Until they understand just how sick the economy is, they will not be interested in fighting for a solution.
We need to show all the sheeple out there that the U.S. economy has terminal cancer and is headed for death.
We need to show them that the future of our children and our grandchildren is literally being destroyed.
Way too many Americans are sitting around waiting for the government to save them.
It isn’t going to happen.
It is up to those of us that are awake to wake up those that are asleep.
And there are many out there that think that they are awake that are only partially awake.
One very famous author once wrote that “people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”, and that is exactly what is happening in America today. Most Americans simply don’t understand what is happening economically, politically, socially, morally or financially in this nation.
Please help me wake the sheeple up.
The following are 20 economic statistics to use to wake sheeple up from their entertainment-induced comas….
#1 The United States has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.
#2 The European Commission has formally declared that Europe has now entered another recession. German banks are leveraged 32 to 1 and the European financial system is rapidly approaching a nightmare. Lehman Brothers was only leveraged 30 to 1 when it finally collapsed.
#3 There are clear signs that economic activity is also significantly slowing down in the United States. For example, new orders for goods manufactured in the United States experienced the biggest drop in three years in January.
#4 U.S. consumers are busy racking up staggering amounts of debt once again. Total consumer debt rose at an annual rate of 9.3 percent in December. It is now sitting at a grand total of 2.498 trillion dollars.
#5 The U.S. Postal Service has announced plans to eliminate 35,000 more jobs.
#8 Right now, there are 88 million working age Americans that do not have jobs and that the government says are not looking for jobs.
#9 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#10 In January 2009, there were 2.6 million “long-term unemployed workers” according to the federal government. Today, there are 5.6 million.
#11 The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has risen by 14 cents in just the past week, and the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the state of California is now an astounding $4.29. Sadly, the price of gas is expected to continue rising over the next few months.
#12 The U.S. housing market continues to struggle deeply. Home prices in the 4th quarter of 2011 were four percent lower than they were during the 4th quarter of 2010. Overall, U.S. home prices are 34 percent lower than they were back at the peak of the housing bubble.
#13 Large numbers of Americans are putting off basic health procedures due to the declining economy. Just consider the following example from a recent Huffington Post article….
Americans between the ages of 50 to 64 got 500,000 fewer colonoscopies, or screenings aimed at detecting colon cancer, during the recession, compared to the two years before, according to a recent study from researchers at the University of North Carolina’s medical school.
#14 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased by almost 50 percent since Barack Obama first took office.
#15 Right now, 48 percent of all Americans are considered to be either “low income” or “living in poverty”.
#16 The U.S. government is stealing about 150 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.
#17 If Bill Gates gave all of his money to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.
#18 Since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. dollar has declined in value by more than 95 percent and the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.
#19 Approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents. Most of them are doing it for economic reasons.
#20 According to a new Politico poll, only 30 percent of all Americans believe that the next generation will be “better off economically” than the previous generation.
Thankfully, there are others out there such as trends researcher Gerald Celente that are tirelessly working to sound the alarm. Celente is convinced that the U.S. financial system is rapidly heading for a disaster. Just consider the following quotes from Celente in a recent USA Today article….
“2012 is when many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and political trends that we have been forecasting and tracking will climax,” Celente noted in his Top 12 Trends 2012 newsletter. In an interview he added: “When money stops flowing to the man on the street, blood starts flowing in the street.”
Even some politicians on the state level are deeply concerned about the possibility of a massive financial meltdown.
For example, a bill has been introduced in Wyoming that would set up “a state-run government continuity task force” which would develop plans for how Wyoming would deal with potential disasters such as a “complete meltdown of the federal government”, an economic collapse or a major disruption in food and energy supplies….
State Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, has seen the national debt rise above $15 trillion and protest movements grow around the country. Wealthy Americans are fleeing the country, he says, and confidence in the dollar has taken a hit around the world.
If America’s economic and social problems continue to escalate and spiral out of control, Miller said, Wyoming needs to be ready. So, he’s introduced legislation to create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.
It would even look at the feasibility of quickly providing an alternative currency in Wyoming should the U.S. dollar collapse entirely.
But for many Americans, the “meltdown” has already happened on a personal level.
Many are going to extreme lengths in an attempt to survive in this economy.
For example, one ex-police officer in Ohio got so desperate that he decided that it would be better to get arrested for bank robbery and be thrown in prison than to be homeless and living in the streets….
Former Columbus police officer Edward Pascucci had been jobless for more than a year and was facing homelessness last summer when he decided to rob a local bank. Making off with stacks of cash, however, never was his intention.
Pascucci told a federal judge on Thursday he’d run out of options, was facing “severe health problems” and opted to avail himself of the services offered by the federal penal system rather than live on the street.
Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine getting arrested just so that you could get free health care and wouldn’t have to sleep in the streets?
Meanwhile, the Obamas are living the high life and seem to have developed a “let them eat cake” mentality. The following is from a recent article in The Daily Mail….
The Obama family just finished a luxury ski vacation in Aspen, Colorado. This comes on the heels of a Hawaiian Christmas vacation for the family that lasted a few weeks. The 2011 Hawaiian vacation cost the American taxpayers $4 million and a big increase from the 2010 bill sent to the American people for $2.5 million, according to the Huffington Post.
Over the past three summers, the Obama’s have vacationed in the exclusive Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. President Obama has a reputation for hitting every golf course on this island vacation spot for the rich and famous.
There is nothing wrong with a President taking a modest vacation, but there is a problem when the political leader of America is taking frequent swanky vacations when average Americans are experiencing economic pain.
Shouldn’t the Obamas be setting an example for the rest of us during these hard economic times?
Unfortunately, Barack Obama seems to believe that the worst of our economic troubles is now behind us.
If only that were true.
During this short-lived bubble of false hope, we should all be working hard to prepare for what is ahead.
A menacing storm is on the horizon and it will be here way too soon.
Let us wake up as many of the sheeple as we can while there is still time.
Would you rather live in the America of 1950 or the America of 2012? Has the United States changed for the better over the last 62 years? Many fondly remember the 1950s and the 1960s as the “golden age” of America. We emerged from World War II as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. During that time period, just about anyone that wanted to get a job could find a job and the U.S. middle class expanded rapidly. Back in 1950, America was still considered to be a “land of opportunity” and the economy was growing like crazy. There was less crime, there was less divorce, the American people had much less debt and the world seemed a whole lot less crazy. Most of the rest of the world deeply admired us and wanted to be more like us. Of course there were a lot of things that were not great about America back in 1950, and there are many things that many of us dearly love that we would have to give up in order to go back and live during that time. For example, there was no Internet back in 1950. Instead of being able to go online and read the articles that you want to read, your news would have been almost entirely controlled by the big media companies of the day. So there are definitely some advantages that we have today that they did not have back in 1950. But not all of the changes have been for the better. America is in a constant state of change, and many are deeply concerned about where all of these changes are taking us.
There has never been any society in the history of the world that has been perfect. America was flawed in 1950 just as America is flawed today.
But that doesn’t mean that we should not reflect on how much things have changed over the past 62 years.
So which version of America would you rather live in?
America 1950 vs. America 2012 – you make the call….
In 1950, a gallon of gasoline cost about 27 cents.
In 1950, the average duration of unemployment was about 12 weeks.
In 2012, the average duration of unemployment is about 40 weeks.
In 1950, the average family spent about 22% of its income on housing.
In 2012, the average family spends about 43% of its income on housing.
In 1950, gum chewing and talking in class were some of the major disciplinary problems in our schools.
In 2012, many of our public schools have been equipped with metal detectors because violence has become so bad.
In 1950, mothers decided what their children would eat for lunch.
In 2012, lunches are inspected by government control freaks to make sure that they contain the “correct foods” in many areas of the country. For example, one 4-year-old girl recently had her lunch confiscated by a “lunch monitor” because it did not meet USDA guidelines….
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs – including in-home day care centers – to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
In 1950, the United States was #1 in GDP per capita.
In 2012, the United States is #13 in GDP per capita.
In 1950, redistribution of wealth was considered to be something that “the communists” did.
In 2012, the U.S. government redistributes more wealth than anyone else in the world.
In 2012, less than 12 million Americans have manufacturing jobs even though our population has more than doubled since 1950.
In 1950, the entire U.S. military was mobilized to protect the borders of South Korea.
In 2012, the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada are wide open and now there are 1.4 million gang members living inside the United States.
In 1950, there were about 2 million people living in Detroit and it was one of the greatest cities on earth.
In 2012, there are about 700,000 people living in Detroit and it has become a symbol of what is wrong with the U.S. economy.
In 1950, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was slightly over the 200 mark.
In 2012, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is threatening to soar over the 13,000 mark.
In 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue.
In 2012, corporate taxes will account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.
In 1950, the median age at first marriage was about 22 for men and about 20 for women.
In 2012, the median age at first marriage is about 28 for men and about 26 for women.
In 1950, many Americans dressed up in suits and dresses before getting on an airplane.
In 2012, security goons look at the exposed forms of our women and our children before they are allowed to get on to an airplane.
In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers.
In 2012, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.
In 1950, many Americans regularly left their cars and the front doors of their homes unlocked.
In 2012, many Americans live with steel bars on their windows and gun sales are at record highs.
In 1950, the American people had a great love for the U.S. Constitution.
In 2012, if you are “reverent of individual liberty“, you may get labeled as a potential terrorist by the U.S. government.
In 1950, the United States loaned more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.
In 2012, the United States owes more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.
In 1950, the U.S. national debt was about 257 billion dollars.
In 2012, the U.S. national debt is 59 times larger. It is currently sitting at a grand total of $15,435,694,556,033.29. Surely our children and our grandchildren will thank us for that.
One of the only things that is constant in life is change.
Whether we like it or not, America is going to continue to change.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, about 70 percent of all American adults were married.
Today, only about 50 percent of all American adults are married.
No matter how often the pretty people on television tell us that the U.S. economy is getting better, it isn’t going to change the soul crushing agony that millions of American families are going through right now. The stock market may have gotten back to where it was in 2008, but the job market sure hasn’t. As I wrote about a few days ago, the percentage of working age Americans that are actually employed has stayed very flat since late 2009, and the average duration of unemployment is hovering near an all-time high. Sadly, this is not just a temporary downturn. The U.S. economy has been slowly declining for several decades and is nearing total system failure. Right now, many poverty statistics are higher than they have ever been since the Great Depression. Many measurements of government dependence are the highest that we have ever seen in all of U.S. history. The emerging one world economic system (otherwise known as “free trade”) has cost the U.S. economy tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth. The federal government is going into unprecedented amounts of debt in order to try to maintain our current standard of living, but there is no way that they will be able to sustain this kind of borrowing for too much longer. So enjoy this bubble of false prosperity while you can, because things will soon get significantly worse.
Not So Fast On That Whole Economic Recovery Thing
The Obama administration would have us believe that unemployment in the United States has declined, but the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed has stayed very, very flat for more than two years and now there are some measures of unemployment that are actually getting worse.
For example, according to Gallup the unemployment rate in the United States has risen from 8.5% in December to 8.6% in January to 9.1% in February. The Obama administration would have us believe that it is actually going the other direction.
Initial unemployment claims are rising again. For the week ending March 3rd, they increased by 8,000 over the previous week to 362,000. This is not the kind of good news that people were hoping for.
What the U.S. economy could really use are millions of good jobs. But those are being shipped out of the country at a staggering pace.
Right now there are millions of Americans in their prime working years that are sitting at home wondering what to do with their lives. The average duration of unemployment in the United States continues to hover near a record high, and if we were truly experiencing an economic recovery it should have been falling by now.
But a lot of Americans have bought into the propaganda about an economic recovery and they are out running up huge amounts of debt once again. In January, consumer credit increased by much more than expected. The following is from a recent Reuters report….
Don’t fall into the trap of debt slavery. During the last recession millions of Americans lost their homes and most of what they owned because they got overextended.
Don’t do it.
The U.S. housing market continues to deeply struggle as well. If we were really in an economic recovery housing would be bouncing back. But that is not happening. Just consider the following facts….
*The number of new homes sold in the United States continues to hover near a record low.
*U.S. home prices in the 4th quarter of 2011 were four percent lower than they were during the 4th quarter of 2010.
*According to CoreLogic, 22.8 percent of all homes with a mortgage in the United States were in negative equity as of the end of the 4th quarter of 2011. That was an increase from 22.1 percent in the third quarter.
Why are things still getting worse for the U.S housing market?
That is a really good question.
We should have seen some improvement by now.
But it isn’t happening.
Also, poverty in America continues to explode.
For example, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased to 46.5 million – a brand new all-time record.
If we really were in an economic recovery, wouldn’t that number be going down?
We should be thankful that the U.S. economy is not declining as rapidly as it was during 2008 and 2009. But what we are experiencing right now is not an economic recovery. It is simply just a bubble of false hope.
The big problem is that our nation is covered in an ocean of constantly expanding debt.
U.S. consumers are drowning in debt, U.S. businesses have pushed debt levels to the red line, and the U.S. financial system is massively overleveraged.
Of course government debt is our biggest debt problem of all.
All over the nation, state and local governments are on the verge of financial ruin.
If we were in the middle of an economic recovery, so many states would not be in crisis mode. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times declared that “California could run out of cash in March“. As the economy continues to crumble we are going to hear a lot more of this kind of thing.
A lot of local governments around the nation are on the verge of total financial collapse. Stockton, California has announced that they will be defaulting on some debt payments, and Suffolk County in New York recently declared a fiscal emergency after discovering that it would rack up more than 500 million dollars of debt between 2011 and 2013.
Keep your eyes open for more news items like this in the months ahead.
Of course the biggest problem of all is the U.S. national debt and it continues to rapidly get worse.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. government had a budget deficit of 229 billion dollars in the month of February. That is the worst one month budget deficit in the history of the United States.
The Congressional Budget Office also says that the U.S. government is now borrowing 42 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
Ouch.
The U.S. national debt has gotten more than 59 times larger since 1950.
The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
Are there any words in the English language that are strong enough to describe how foolish we have been?
Of course we won’t be able to accumulate so much debt indefinitely. At some point the trillion dollar deficits will stop and our false prosperity will disappear.
If you want to get an idea of what happens then, just take a look at Greece.
But Barack Obama and most members of the U.S. Congress don’t really care about what they are doing to our future.
What they care about is winning the next election so that they can continue living their fabulous lives.
Barack Obama is supposed to be taking care of the American people, but instead he has been very busy taking care of the people who helped him get elected. Politics in America is all about money. Just check out the following very short excerpt from a recent article in the Washington Post….
Washington D.C. is deeply corrupt and if you are waiting for our politicians to fix our problems you are going to be deeply disappointed.
The federal government is not going to save you.
Our politicians are not going to save you.
You better figure out how you are going to take care of yourself and your family in the years ahead because this is about as good as things are going to get.
This “economic recovery” is about to end and more pain is about to begin.