New DVDs By Michael Snyder
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 The entire financial system of the western world is designed to be a debt spiral. The total amount of money and and the total amount of debt are supposed to continually expand. Today, we are in debt up to our eyeballs and it seems like nearly everyone is talking about “deleveraging” and reducing government debt. But in a world where the entire financial system is based on debt, is there any way for massive deleveraging to take place without plunging us all into a horrific worldwide depression? The governments of the western world have had a lot of fun spending money as if there was no tomorrow, but now tomorrow has arrived and all of that debt is rapidly catching up with us. Politicians in Europe and in the United States are running around trying to come up with a “plan”, but there is no “plan” that is going to fix the current debt-based system. Over the next few years we are going to reap what we have sown.
For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped a trillion dollars.
Sadly, most Americans simply have no idea how much money a trillion dollars is.
Perhaps an illustration or two would help.
If on the day when Jesus was born you began spending one million dollars every single day, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.
That is how large a trillion dollars is.
If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
Some people have suggested that we could solve our problems by taxing the rich.
Well, if Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.
No, the truth is that what we have is a spending problem.
The U.S. federal government is spending way, way too much money. Total U.S. government debt will soon cross the 15 trillion dollar mark.
Should we do something to celebrate such a monumental national achievement?
It really takes a special effort to borrow 15 trillion dollars.
We have accumulated the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and yet our government continues to add to our debt at a blistering pace.
If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
Unfortunately, we are not paying it off right now. Instead, we are adding even more to it.
Back in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan declared the national debt to be a national crisis.
Well, today our national debt is more than 14 times larger than it was when Reagan took office.
Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
Spending is going in the wrong direction.
And most government spending goes into the pockets of individual Americans.
59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
We have got tens of millions of Americans that are completely and totally addicted to getting money from the federal government.
But wasn’t the Tea Party supposed to do something about all of this crazy government spending?
Unfortunately, the Tea Party has failed in this area. In the mainstream media there is talk of “austerity” by the federal government, but the truth is that spending by the federal government has increased by about 5 percent so far this year.
We are hurtling toward a “debt wall” and the brakes don’t seem to work.
Europe is in a massive amount of debt trouble as well. In fact, a financial meltdown is probably going to happen in Europe before it happens in the United States.
Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy all have debt to GDP ratios that are well above 100%. Spain is in a massive amount of trouble as well.
Right now, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain owe the rest of the world about 3 trillion euros combined.
Greece is on the verge of a default of one form or another, and Italy and Portugal look like they will not be far behind.
As the financial world braces for a Greek default, the yields on Greek bonds are going absolutely crazy. The yield on 2 year Greek bonds is now over 70 percent. The yield on 1 year Greek bonds is now over 170 percent.
Sadly, it looks like Portuguese bonds are starting to go down the same path. The yield on 2 year Portuguese bonds is now over 17 percent. A year ago the yield on those bonds was about 4 percent.
European banks are also drowning in an ocean of debt.
According to renowned financial journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, banks in Europe need to reduce the amount of lending on their books by about 7 trillion dollars in order to get down to safe levels….
Europe’s banks face a $7 trillion lending contraction to bring their balance sheets in line with the US and Japan, threatening to trap the region in a credit crunch and chronic depression for a decade.
But can that be done safely?
Can that be done without plunging Europe into a financial nightmare?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is skeptical….
The risk is “Japanisation” without the benefits of Japan: without a single government, or a trade super-surplus, or 1pc debt costs, or unique social cohesion.
Already the financial crisis in Europe has pushed unemployment to frightening levels. So what will happen if you add massive deleveraging to the equation? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is very concerned about what might happen in some of the most troubled nations….
Even today, the jobless rate for youth is near 10pc in Japan. It is already 46pc in Spain, 43pc in Greece, 32pc in Ireland, and 27pc in Italy. We will discover over time what yet more debt deleveraging will do to these societies.
Major European banks not only have too many loans on their books – they have also borrowed way, way too much money themselves.
The truth is that most major European banks are leveraged to the hilt and are massively exposed to sovereign debt. Before it fell in 2008, Lehman Brothers was leveraged 31 to 1. Today, major German banks are leveraged 32 to 1, and those banks are currently holding a massive amount of European sovereign debt.
What all of this means is that we are on the verge of some really bad stuff.
The governments of the world are up to their eyeballs in debt. According to the Economist, the governments of the world combined are more than 40 trillion dollars in debt. But that total only counts government debt held by the public and it does not include any future obligations (such as Social Security, etc.) owed by national governments.
It would be hard to overstate how much of a crisis this is.
But just like with the subprime mortgage meltdown of a few years ago, a number of very savvy investors and economists can see what is coming.
For example, Texas investor Kyle Bass made millions and millions of dollars betting against subprime mortgages, and now he is warning that we are facing a crisis much greater than that.
Bass believes that the European debt crisis is soon going to explode. In particular, he has been putting his money into investments that will pay off big if Greek debt collapses.
But that is not all Bass has been up to. He has been stockpiling gold, guns and nickels (20 million nickels to be exact).
Bass appears to be well prepared for the coming economic collapse. The following is how one writer described his visit to the 40,000 square foot “fort” owned by Bass….
“We hopped into his Hummer, decorated with bumper stickers (God Bless Our Troops, Especially Our Snipers) and customized to maximize the amount of fun its owner could have in it: for instance, he could press a button and, James Bond–like, coat the road behind him in giant tacks. We roared out into the Texas hill country, where, with the fortune he’d made off the subprime crisis, Kyle Bass had purchased what amounted to a fort: a forty-thousand-square-foot ranch house on thousands of acres in the middle of nowhere, with its own water supply, and an arsenal of automatic weapons and sniper rifles and small explosives to equip a battalion.”
If only the rest of us were so well prepared, eh?
So if this is the kind of thing that the “financial experts” are doing, then what is the message for us?
A great storm is coming, and most Americans are going to be totally unprepared for it.
Not that things are not really, really bad already.
According to Shadow Government Statistics, the “real” rate of unemployment in the United States is creeping up toward 25 percent.
So what is going to happen if a worldwide depression hits?
Things could get very, very interesting over the next few years.
A significant percentage of Americans have already lost faith in the system. According to a new Gallup poll, 44 percent of all Americans say that our economic system is “unfair” to them on a personal level.
But sadly, most Americans don’t really understand the mechanics of our financial system.
They don’t understand what actually makes it unfair.
That is why we need to work so hard to educate the American people about the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve system is at the very heart of our financial system, and it was designed to get the U.S. government perpetually enslaved to debt.
At this point, the U.S. national debt is 4700 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.
It looks like the creators of the Federal Reserve achieved their goal.
Posted below is a cartoon that was published one year before the creation of the Federal Reserve. The intent of this cartoon was to criticize the “Aldrich plan” which was a precursor to the plan to create the Federal Reserve.
As you can see below, the creator of this cartoon had a good idea of what would happen if the plan put forward by Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich was adopted.
Today, the Federal Reserve totally dominates our financial system just like this cartoon once warned would happen if we allowed a central bank to control our money….
 As he continues to heavily tout his “9-9-9 plan”, Herman Cain has seen his popularity soar. But is the Herman Cain tax plan a good idea for America? Without a doubt, the “9-9-9 plan” is simple and it is easy to remember. To most Americans, it sounds like a low tax plan. But is that the truth? As you will see below, Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan will actually raise federal taxes on some middle income Americans to as high as 37 percent. If the other Republican candidates understood this, they would be jumping all over Cain. But instead the best that most of them seem to be able to do is to make jokes about it. For example, Jon Huntsman said that he thought that the 9-9-9 plan “was the price of a pizza when I first heard about it.” That is a funny line, but the reality is that the future of our tax system is very serious business. Our economy is dying and our nation is drowning in debt. We need some very real solutions to our very real problems. So let’s take a closer look at the 9-9-9 plan that Herman Cain is proposing….
The one great thing about the 9-9-9 plan is that it would completely eliminate the current tax code. That should be the starting point for any proposal for reforming our current system of taxation.
Under Herman Cain’s plan, all current federal taxes would be eliminated. Social Security taxes would be eliminated, estate taxes would be eliminated and capital gains taxes would be eliminated.
All current tax deductions and loopholes would be eliminated as well.
So far so good.
Under the 9-9-9 plan, the current tax system would be replaced with a 9 percent personal income tax, a 9 percent business income tax and a 9 percent national sales tax.
Uh oh.
9 sounds like a low number, but when you add tax on top of tax on top of tax they can add up very quickly. The truth is that some Americans would end up paying significantly more taxes under the Herman Cain tax plan.
Even Herman Cain is admitting this. The following is what Cain said about his plan the other day on NBC’s Meet The Press….
“Some people will pay more”
So who will be paying more?
Will it be the those at the top of the food chain?
No, the reality is that the Herman Cain tax plan would represent a substantial tax hike for millions of middle income families.
According to ABC News, an average family of four with a yearly income of just under $50,000 (i.e. the median household income), would pay approximately $2,725 more to the federal government in taxes under the 9-9-9 plan.
Well, that doesn’t sound good.
That doesn’t sound like a recipe for economic recovery.
But if you are a middle income small business owner, the news is much worse than that.
Under Herman Cain’s tax plan, some small business owners could end up paying up to 37 percent of their incomes in taxes to the federal government.
Here is how that breaks down….
#1) First they would pay the 9 percent personal income tax.
#2) Secondly, they would pay 9 percent on all business income. There would not even be a deduction for wages paid out. This would hit some small businesses incredibly hard. In fact, small businesses that have a very tight profit margin could be totally wiped out by this.
A lot of people have assumed that the 9 percent tax on businesses is only on corporations. But that simply is not the case.
In a recent article, Paul Krugman of the New York Times explained what the 9-9-9 plan really says….
From comments I see that some readers believe that Cain’s second “9″ is a profits tax, which I’ve argued in the past probably falls on capital owners. But it isn’t: it’s a tax on all business income, defined as sales minus purchased inputs and dividends — but with no deduction for wages.
Ouch.
Okay, so now we are up to 18 percent for small business owners.
#3) The 9-9-9 plan also calls for a 9 percent national sales tax. Of course the truth is that very few people will spend all of their money on things that the national sales tax is imposed upon, but theoretically this could add another 9 percent to an individual’s tax burden.
So now we are up to a potential total of 27 percent for small business owners.
The 9-9-9 plan would also make sales taxes absolutely crushing in some areas of the United States. For example, it has been projected that once you throw in state and local sales taxes, some areas of the country could be facing a combined sales tax as high as 17 percent once the 9-9-9 plan is implemented.
Cain’s plan would also set the stage for a VAT tax to be implemented. Many countries in Europe have already implemented a VAT tax, and quite a few liberal politicians in the U.S. have been eager to institute one here.
The potential dangers of a VAT tax were described in a recent article by Dean Clancy….
A VAT is a form of national sales tax that is collected at every stage of the process from the initial sale of raw materials to a manufacturer to the final sale of a finished product to an end-consumer. It’s the most insidious of all taxes, because it is built into the price of everything and consumers can’t see how much of the price is due to the tax. When taxes rise, prices rise, but consumers mistakenly assume that’s just market forces at work. Politicians love a VAT: it lets them take a lot more money out of our wallets. And VATs usually exist side by side with income taxes, not in lieu of them. Taxpayers should hate VATs for the same reasons politicians love them.
Politicians love “new revenue streams”, and once they get opened up they rarely ever get closed.
#4) Anyway, getting back to the main issue, so how do we get up to 37 percent for small business owners under the 9-9-9 plan?
Well, Herman Cain has also been heavily touting “the Chilean model” as a replacement for Social Security.
Under the Chilean model, all citizens are absolutely required to contribute 10 percent of all income to private pension plans. Workers in Chile do not have the option to opt out of the system.
So if “the Chilean model” is adopted to replace the current Social Security system, that would mean that an extra 10 percent mandatory “tax” would be added on top of the 9-9-9 plan.
That would mean that many middle income small business owners could end up paying up to 37 percent of all of their income in taxes.
Is that something that you could afford to do?
When you add in state taxes, local taxes, property taxes and the dozens of other taxes that Americans pay each year, many middle income Americans would end up paying out over 50 percent of their incomes in taxes.
So much for a low tax plan.
So where in the world did Herman Cain get the idea for the 9-9-9 plan?
Well, there are some that are now claiming that he got the 9-9-9 plan from a video game.
Yes, seriously.
The following is an excerpt from a recent article in The Daily Mail about the 9-9-9 plan….
Though he claims to have received the idea from a bank employee named Richard Lowrie Jr. in Ohio, observers are now questioning if the true inspiration is the tax code used on the SimCity video game.
The game, originally invented in 1989 allows players to plan and run virtual cities. The fourth version of the game, which came out in 2003, taxes players nine per cent for industrial taxes, nine per cent for residential taxes and nine per cent for commercial taxes.
Does that sound familiar?
Let us hope that this is not true. Let us hope that Herman Cain did not get his tax plan from a video game.
But in any event, perhaps it is time to take a closer look at Herman Cain.
For example, did you know that he was once the chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Board?
That is not a good sign.
As I have written about so many times, the Federal Reserve is at the very heart of our economic problems.
But Herman Cain does not intend to abolish the Federal Reserve. In fact, he is very fond of the Federal Reserve. He is on record as saying that a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve is not even needed.
The following is what Herman Cain once had to say about the need for an audit of the Federal Reserve….
Some people say that we ought to audit the Fed. Here’s what I do know. The Federal Reserve already has so many internal audits it’s ridiculous. I don’t know why people think we’re gonna learn this great amount of information by auditing the Federal Reserve.
I think a lot of people are calling for this audit of the Federal Reserve because they don’t know enough about it. There’s no hidden secrets going on in the Federal Reserve to my knowledge.
That is so sad. There is a lot to like about Herman Cain. But obviously his 9-9-9 plan is not well thought out, and he is a big time apologist for the Federal Reserve.
During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve made $16 trillion in secret loans to the big Wall Street banks and to their friends.
That dollar figure is larger than the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States for an entire year.
If Congress had not passed a one time limited audit of the Federal Reserve we would have never learned about those loans.
So how in the world can Herman Cain claim that there is no need to audit the Fed?
Once again, there are definitely some things to like about Herman Cain, but when it comes to economics, taxation and the Federal Reserve, he is way out of his league.
So what is the alternative to the 9-9-9 plan?
The alternative should not be to go back to our current system of taxation. It is broken beyond repair and needs to be abolished.
If we are going to tax income, we need a system that will be fair and not full of loopholes, that will not overly burden the poor, that will encourage businesses to stay in the United States, that will limit the size of the federal government and that will be easy to understand and implement.
But the truth is that until the federal government completely shuts down the Federal Reserve and the IRS we are going to be enslaved to debt and we are going to be paying much higher taxes than we should be. We are operating in a debt-based monetary system which is designed to transfer wealth away from the American people. We desperately need to change this.
It is entirely possible that we could have a system that did not tax income at all. For much of U.S. history, that was the case in this nation. It would certainly be possible to do it again.
So right now is definitely a time for some bold new ideas.
Unfortunately, the 9-9-9 plan is not going to be the solution to much of anything.
 All across America there are cities and towns that were once prosperous and beautiful that are being transformed into absolute hellholes. The scars left by the long-term economic decline of the United States are getting deeper and more gruesome. The tax base in many areas of the nation has been absolutely devastated as millions of jobs have left this country. Hundreds of cities are drowning in debt and are desperately trying to survive. Last year, city government revenues in the United States fell by another 2.3 percent. That was the fifth year in a row that we have seen a decline. Meanwhile, costs associated with health care, pensions and virtually everything else continue to explode. So what are cities doing to make ends meet? Well, one big trend that we are now witnessing is that many U.S. cities have been getting rid of huge numbers of employees. If you can believe it, 72 percent of all U.S. cities are laying workers off this year. Social services and essential infrastructure programs are also being savagely cut back in many areas of the country. The cold, hard truth is that most of our cities are flat broke and things are going to get even worse in the years ahead.
So how do you know if your own city has become a hellhole?
Well, a few potential “red flags” are posted below….
You know that your city has become a hellhole when most of the street lights get repossessed because of unpaid electric bills.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it announces that it will no longer prosecute domestic violence cases in order to save money.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it simply stops sending out pension checks to retired workers.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it rips up asphalt roads and replaces them with gravel because gravel is cheaper to maintain.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it eliminates the entire public bus system.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when nearly half of all the people living there can’t read.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when one out of every ten homes sells for under $10,000.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when you can literally buy a house for one dollar.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when you have hundreds of people living in the tunnels underneath your streets.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when three of your past five mayors have been sent to prison for corruption.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when nearly half of the public schools in the city get shut down because of a lack of money.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when you have dozens of young people rampaging in the streets that are thirsty for revenge and that are armed with bats, pipes and guns.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it is considered to be one of the 10 most dangerous cities in the world.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when thieves defecate in the back seat after they have broken into your car and taken your things.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when prostitution and drug dealing are two of the only viable businesses that remain in the city.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when the police chief announces that the police department will no longer respond to calls about burglary and identity theft due to very deep budget cuts.
Many of the examples above may seem humorous at first glance, but the truth is that they reveal just how deeply tragic our economic decline really is.
This is one of the reasons why I write about our trade deficit over and over and over. Every single month, tens of billions of dollars more wealth goes out of the United States than enters it. Every single month, we are getting poorer as a nation. Every single month, we lose more jobs and businesses.
Any politician that tells you that he or she can solve our economic problems without fundamentally addressing our horrific trade imbalance is lying to you. That means that there are a whole lot of liars in both political parties.
If the number of good jobs continues to decline, the plight of the average American family is going to continue to get worse. Home sales will continue to hover around record lows. The American people will continue to become increasingly frustrated with the economy.
The signs of decline are all around us.
Quit listening to the politicians and just open up your eyes and look.
So do any of you have any additional signs that a city has become a hellhole to add to the list above? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….
 Hey, have you heard? The stock market is absolutely soaring right now. The Dow was up 330 points on Monday, and overall the Dow has risen by more than 10 percent since October 3rd. So should we all be throwing our money into the stock market in order to take advantage of this tremendous rally? Well, if you actually believe that the sovereign debt crisis has passed and that we are no longer on the verge of a massive worldwide financial crisis then I have a bridge that I would like to sell you. The stock market may be soaring, but absolutely nothing has been solved. The truth is that this stock market rally is for suckers. The primary reason why stocks rose today was because German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised that they would reveal a “comprehensive response” to the European debt crisis by the end of this month. When pressed for specifics, Sarkozy stated that “now is not the moment to go into the details.” So do global financial markets really have a legitimate reason to be giddy about the super secret plan cooked up by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, or are Merkel and Sarkozy just blowing a bunch of smoke?
Merkel and Sarkozy have made bold promises in the past, but nothing ever got fixed.
So why should we believe them this time?
If they have real solutions, why don’t they just reveal them now?
Why keep us in suspense?
By making these vague promises, Merkel and Sarkozy certainly did give a boost to global financial markets, but they also seriously raised expectations.
Now many in the financial world are expecting something truly significant from Merkel and Sarkozy. For example, CNN has quoted economist Scott Brown as saying the following about the announcement by Merkel and Sarkozy….
“The Europe debt crisis cloud has been hanging over the market for a year-and-a-half now,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James. “The risks and worries have been intensifying over the last couple of weeks, but after this weekend, the market is expecting something big and concrete that will put the crisis behind us.”
So can Merkel and Sarkozy deliver something big?
Of course not.
Merkel has already gotten all of the bailout money that she is going to get out of the Germans. The political will for more bailouts is totally gone in Germany, and many of Germany’s top leaders have expressed this in no uncertain terms.
For example, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is publicly admitting that Germany will not be able to contribute any more money to the European bailout fund.
Also, the leader of Bavaria’s Social Christians, Horst Seehofer, said after the recent vote on the Greek bailout package that his party would go “this far, and no further“.
Recent opinion polls in Germany make it abundantly clear that the German people are overwhelmingly opposed to more bailouts. Squeezing more money out of Germany simply is not going to happen, and that means that squeezing more money out of the rest of Europe is simply not going to happen.
In a recent editorial, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard described the current political situation in Europe in this manner….
Repeat after me:
THERE WILL BE NO FISCAL UNION.
THERE WILL BE NO EUROBONDS.
THERE WILL BE NO DEBT POOL.
THERE WILL BE NO EU TREASURY.
THERE WILL BE NO FISCAL TRANSFERS IN PERPETUITY.
THERE WILL BE A STABILITY UNION – OR NO MONETARY UNION.
Get used to it. This is the political reality of Europe, since nothing of importance can be done without Germany. All else is wishful thinking, clutching at straws, and evasion. If this means the euro will shed some members or blow apart – as it almost certainly does – then the rest of the world must prepare for the day.
So exactly what “big” solution do Merkel and Sarkozy have up their sleeves that does not involve more money?
Can they really produce the goods or are they just blowing smoke?
Perhaps global financial markets should be focusing on what we can see rather than on what we cannot see.
For example, the first major bank bailout in Europe has now happened. Dexia is being bailed out, and it is going to cost more than 100 billion dollars.
The funny thing is that Dexia actually passed the banking stress test that was conducted a few months ago.
What does that say about all of the major European banks that did not pass the stress test?
Also, perhaps global financial markets should focus on all of the credit ratings that are being downgraded all over Europe.
Lately, we have seen a cascade of credit rating downgrades.
For example, Moody’s slashed Italy’s credit rating by three levels last Tuesday, and the other day S&P slashed the credit ratings of seven different major Italian banks.
The problems in Europe continue to grow worse, and yet the stock market is soaring.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?
If Greece defaults, it is going to be a major disaster.
If Italy or Spain defaults, it is going to be financial armageddon.
The world truly is on the verge of a massive financial crisis. If you don’t want to believe me, perhaps you might believe some of the top financial officials in the world….
*Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King: “This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen at least since the 1930s, if not ever”
*U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner recently stated that if something is not done quickly, Europe faces “cascading default, bank runs and catastrophic risk.”
*IMF advisor Robert Shapiro: “If they can not address [the financial crisis] in a credible way I believe within perhaps 2 to 3 weeks we will have a meltdown in sovereign debt which will produce a meltdown across the European banking system. We are not just talking about a relatively small Belgian bank, we are talking about the largest banks in the world, the largest banks in Germany, the largest banks in France, that will spread to the United Kingdom, it will spread everywhere because the global financial system is so interconnected.”
For many more shocking quotes about how bad things have gotten in Europe, just check out this article.
Merkel and Sarkozy are holding really weak cards but they have chosen to raise the stakes anyway.
Their bluff may calm financial markets for a month or two, but in the end they will not be able to stop what is coming.
A great financial collapse is coming to Europe.
Try to get out of the way of the coming avalanche while you still can.
 The U.S. economy is dying and most American voters have no idea why it is happening. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and most of our politicians are not telling the truth about the collapse of the economy. This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen, and we have completely wrecked it. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have left us drowning in an ocean of corruption, greed and bad debt. Thousands of businesses and millions of jobs have left the country and poverty is exploding from coast to coast. We are literally becoming a joke to the rest of the world. It is absolutely imperative that we educate America about what is happening. Until the American people truly understand the problems that we are facing, they will not be willing to implement the solutions that are necessary.
The following are the top 100 statistics about the collapse of the economy that every American voter should know….
#100 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#99 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
#98 Since Barack Obama was sworn in, the share of the national debt per household has increased by $35,835.
#97 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.
#96 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.
#95 The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.
#94 In 2010, the U.S. government paid $413 billion in interest on the national debt. That is projected to at least double over the next decade.
#93 According to one new survey, one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.
#92 State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.
#91 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
#90 U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#89 According to a new study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.
#88 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
#87 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#86 The cost of a health insurance policy for the average American family rose by a whopping 9 percent last year, and according to a report put out by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, the average family health insurance policy now costs over $15,000 a year.
#85 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#84 An all-time record 49.9 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all at this point, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.
#83 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#82 Average yearly tuition at U.S. private universities is now up to $27,293.
#81 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
#80 In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.
#79 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.
#78 The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.
#77 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.
#76 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.
#75 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.
#74 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.
#73 It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year. Their biggest customer is the United States.
#72 U.S. oil companies will bring in about $200 billion in pre-tax profits this year. They will also receive about $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks from the U.S. government.
#71 The United States has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976, and since that time the United States has run a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.
#70 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#69 The U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#68 Today, the United States spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#67 China has surpassed the United States and is now the largest PC market in the entire world.
#66 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.
#65 In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China was “scrap and trash”.
#64 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.
#63 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#62 If you can believe it, more than 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed down since 2001.
#61 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.
#60 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#59 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.
#58 If you gathered together all of the workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States today, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the world.
#57 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States right now than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.
#56 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.
#55 Only 55.3% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were employed last year. That was the lowest level that we have seen since World War II.
#54 Today, there are 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 that are living with their parents.
#53 The economic downturn has been particularly tough on men. According to Census data, men are twice as likely to live with their parents as women are.
#52 According to one recent survey, only 14 percent of all Americans that are 28 or 29 years old are optimistic about their financial futures.
#51 Incredibly, less than 30 percent of all U.S. teens had a job this summer.
#50 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#49 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#48 In 1980, 52 percent of all jobs in the United States were middle income jobs. Today, only 42 percent of all jobs are middle income jobs.
#47 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#46 According to Paul Osterman, a professor of economics at MIT, approximately 20 percent of all employed Americans are making $10.65 an hour or less.
#45 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#44 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
#43 New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
#42 The all-time record for fewest number of new homes sold in the United States was broken in 2009. Then it was broken again in 2010. It is on pace to be broken once again in 2011.
#41 At one point this year, U.S. home prices had fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble.
#40 U.S. home values have fallen approximately 6 trillion dollars since the housing crisis first began.
#39 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.
#38 Historically, the percentage of residential mortgages in foreclosure in the United States has tended to hover between 1 and 1.5 percent. Today, it is up around 4.5 percent.
#37 According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, at least 8 million Americans are currently at least one month behind on their mortgage payments.
#36 According to a Harris Interactive survey taken near the end of last year, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. In 2007, the same survey found that only 43 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.
#35 Starting on January 1st, 2011 the Baby Boomers began to hit retirement age. From now on, every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.
#34 According to a new poll by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about “maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement”. Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.
#33 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#32 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.
#31 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.
#30 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#29 According to one study, the 50 U.S. state governments are collectively 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations.
#28 A different study has shown that individual Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
#27 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.
#26 According to a shocking AARP survey of Baby Boomers that are still in the workforce, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”.
#25 Last year, 2.6 million more Americans dropped into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
#24 Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
#23 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#22 More than 45 million Americans are now on food stamps.
#21 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.
#20 Approximately one-third of the entire population of the state of Alabama is now on food stamps.
#19 Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#18 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
#17 The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.
#16 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.
#15 In Washington D.C., the “child food insecurity rate” is 32.3%.
#14 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.
#13 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.
#12 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#11 According to a recent report from the AFL-CIO, the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.
#10 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.
#9 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#8 The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.
#7 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
#6 According to one recent poll, 90 percent of the American people believe that economic conditions in the United States are “poor”. To put this in perspective, only 11 percent of Americans rated economic conditions in the U.S. as “poor” back in January of 1999.
#5 According to another recent poll, 80 percent of the American people believe that we are actually in a recession right now.
#4 Our dollar is being systematically destroyed by the Federal Reserve. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 will cost you $116.78 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 will cost you $457.67 today.
#3 The Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their friends during the last financial crisis.
#2 The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine. Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 4700 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.
#1 According to a new CNN/ORC International Poll, 27 percent of all Americans have never even heard of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
We need to educate America.
Please share this with as many people as you can. Time is running out for America, and 2012 is going to be an absolutely pivotal year in the history of this nation.
We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline that is rapidly accelerating. If dramatic changes are not made very quickly, we will soon witness a full-blown collapse of the economy.
Wake up as many people as you can.
We are running out of time.
 And so it begins. The first major European bank bailout of 2011 has now happened. French/Belgian banking giant Dexia has failed and both governments have pledged to participate in a rescue plan. But Dexia will not be the last major European bank to fail. Even now, governments all over Europe are feverishly developing plans to bail out major national banks in the event that the current financial crisis goes from bad to worse. Instead of learning the lessons of 2008, most major European banks have continued to pile up huge mountains of debt, leverage and risk. Now the bill for that stupidity is about to be passed on to the taxpayers of those nations. But with most nations in Europe already drowning in debt, are bank bailouts really the right course of action? What is it going to happen to Europe if dozens of major banks start failing and trillions of euros are needed to bail them all out?
Dexia is the first victim of the new credit crunch. It got to the point where Dexia simply could not get access to the funding that it needed in the credit markets.
We are starting to see this all over Europe. Nobody wants to loan much money to European banks right now because it is unclear what is going to happen next in Europe and it is uncertain which banks are stable and which are on the verge of collapse.
This is so similar to what happened back in 2008.
But Dexia is not going to be “the next Lehman Brothers” because the governments of France and Belgium are stepping in to save Dexia from collapse.
A recent article in the Financial Post described how the rescue of Dexia is likely to proceed….
Dexia will effectively be broken up, with the sale of healthier operations while toxic assets, including Greek and other peripheral euro zone government bonds, will be placed in a state-supported “bad bank.”
The details of the plan will be negotiated over the coming days, but authorities are making it clear that Dexia is not going to be allowed to collapse. Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer is assuring everyone that Dexia is going to have access to plenty of liquidity….
“We will loan Dexia as much as it needs”
It appears that the “too big to fail” doctrine is alive and well in Europe.
Sadly, this is not the first time that Dexia has been bailed out. France and Belgium also bailed out Dexia back in 2008.
But this was not supposed to happen.
Just three months ago, Dexia received “a clean bill of health” from regulators during European Union bank stress testing.
It just shows how credible those “stress tests” really are.
So are more European bank bailouts coming?
It certainly looks that way.
An article in the Financial Post on Tuesday stated the following….
European finance ministers agreed on Tuesday to prepare action to safeguard their banks as doubts grew about whether a planned second bailout package for debt-laden Greece would go ahead.
Of course when they talk about the need “to safeguard their banks” they are talking about those that are deemed “too big to fail”. Just like in the United States, banks that are “too small” don’t get bailed out at all.
But western governments are very protective of the big banks. The big banks are allowed to take gigantic risks, and if they succeed they make tons of money and if they fail then the taxpayers bail them out.
With big trouble on the horizon in Europe, authorities are already getting ready to bail out the major banks. A Bloomberg article from last month acknowledged that the German government has been very busy getting ready to bail out their major banks in the event that a Greek default becomes a reality….
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is preparing plans to shore up German banks in the event that Greece fails to meet the terms of its aid package and defaults, three coalition officials said.
As you read this, there are already signs of trouble at major German banks. For example, Deutsche Bank has just announced that it is eliminating 500 more jobs.
The fundamental problems that Europe is facing are not being solved and the financial crisis is getting progressively worse. With each passing day, more bad financial news comes pouring in.
For example, Moody’s slashed Italy’s bond ratings by three levels on Tuesday.
A reduction of just one level is very serious business. For Moody’s to hit Italy that hard is a really big deal.
Italian banks have also been targeted by the credit rating agencies. The other day, S&P slashed the credit ratings of seven different Italian banks.
If Italy goes down, it is going to be an absolute nightmare. The Italian economy absolutely dwarfs the Greek economy. The EU has been really struggling to bail out Greece, and there is no way in the world that they would be able to bail out Italy.
So if nations such as Italy or Spain start collapsing, will the U.S. Federal Reserve step in to help bail them out?
You never know.
The sad truth is that the Federal Reserve can do pretty much whatever it wants and nobody can stop them.
As I wrote about the other day, the Federal Reserve has agreed to join with other major central banks to lend hundreds of billions of dollars to major European banks in October, November and December.
As the past few years have shown, wherever big, global banks are in trouble, the Federal Reserve is sure to step in and help.
And many big banks in Europe are definitely headed for trouble. Right now, European banks are holding more than $4 trillion in European sovereign debt.
A lot of that debt is bad debt. Today, troubled European nations Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain owe the rest of the world about 3 trillion euros combined.
That is a whole lot of debt out there, and many big banks are so leveraged that just a 5 percent reduction in the value of their holdings could wipe them out.
Hold on to your hats folks.
So what should we be watching next?
Well, Greece continues to be a huge problem.
The IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Union are very frustrated with Greece right now.
On Monday, it was revealed that Greece is not going to hit the deficit reduction targets set for it by the “troika” either this year or next year.
European officials have been particularly displeased that Greece has been getting all of this aid money and yet has not been strictly adhering to the austerity measures that they agreed to.
However, the reality is that the austerity measures that Greece has actually bothered to implement have hit the Greek economy really hard. The more Greece reduces government spending the more the Greek economy seems to slow down.
Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos recently announced that the Greek economy is projected to shrink by 5.3% in 2011, and Greek debt continues to spiral out of control.
Meanwhile, severe economic pain continues to spark huge protests all over Greece. Scenes of riot police firing tear gas and protesters throwing stones at police have become so common in Greece that most of us don’t even pay much attention anymore.
But all of us should pay attention to what is happening in Greece.
Eventually these kinds of economic riots will spread throughout the rest of the western world as well.
And every day Greece just seems to get closer and closer to default.
At this point, global financial markets seem to consider a Greek default to be inevitable. The yield on 2 year Greek bonds is now over 65 percent. The yield on 1 year Greek bonds is now over 135 percent.
Greece is toast without more bailout money.
But now major politicians all over Germany are declaring that Germany is done contributing money to the European bailout fund.
And without Germany, the rest of the eurozone is not going to be able to continue the bailouts.
So the clock is ticking.
Once the current bailout fund has dried up, the bailout game will be over.
What will happen then?
Will that be what sets off a massive financial collapse in Europe?
Could we actually see the end of the euro?
For a long time there was speculation that it would be weak nations such as Greece that would leave the euro.
But now it appears increasingly likely that if someone is going to leave the euro it might be Germany.
Most German citizens would be in favor of such a move. One recent poll conducted for Stern magazine actually found that 54 percent of all Germans would favor leaving the euro.
But if Germany left the euro it would absolutely implode. German economic strength is the primary thing holding the euro up at this point.
In any event, it is going to be very interesting to watch what will happen to Europe over the coming months.
Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain are all steadily marching toward collapse.
Germany says that it is done bailing out other members of the eurozone.
Dozens of major European banks are teetering on the brink of disaster.
People get ready – a storm is coming.
Time is running out for Europe and there is no help in sight.
 We are getting so close to a financial collapse in Europe that you can almost hear the debt bubbles popping. All across the western world, governments and major banks are rapidly becoming insolvent. So far, the powers that be are keeping all of the balls in the air by throwing around lots of bailout money. But now the political will for more bailouts is drying up and the number of troubled entities seems to grow by the day. Right now the western world is facing a debt crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in world history. Europe has had a tremendously difficult time just trying to keep Greece afloat, and several much larger European countries are now on the verge of a major financial crisis. In addition, there is a growing number of very large financial institutions all over the western world that are also rapidly approaching a day of reckoning. The global financial system is a sea or red ink, and when we get to the point where there are hundreds of ships going under how is it going to be possible to bail all of them out? The quotes that you are about to read show that quite a few top financial and political insiders know that things cannot hold together much longer and that a horrific economic crisis is coming. We built the global financial system on a foundation of debt, leverage and risk and now this house of cards that we have created is about to come tumbling down.
A lot of people in politics and in the financial world know what is about to happen. Once in a while they will even be quite candid about it with the media.
As I have written about previously, Europe is on the verge of a financial collapse. If things go really badly, things could totally fall apart in a few weeks. But more likely it will be a few more months until the juggling act ends.
Right now, the banking system in Europe is coming apart at the seams. Because the global financial system is so interconnected today, when major European banks start to fail it is going to have a cascading effect across the United States and Asia as well.
The financial crisis of 2008 plunged us into the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
The next financial crisis could potentially hit the world even harder.
The following are 12 shocking quotes from insiders that are warning about the horrific economic crisis that is almost here….
#1 George Soros: “Financial markets are driving the world towards another Great Depression with incalculable political consequences. The authorities, particularly in Europe, have lost control of the situation.”
#2 PIMCO CEO Mohammed El-Erian: “These are all signs of an institutional run on French banks. If it persists, the banks would have no choice but to delever their balance sheets in a very drastic and disorderly fashion. Retail depositors would get edgy and be tempted to follow trading and institutional clients through the exit doors. Europe would thus be thrown into a full-blown banking crisis that aggravates the sovereign debt trap, renders certain another economic recession, and significantly worsens the outlook for the global economy.”
#3 Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy, global head of securities services at UniCredit SpA (Italy’s largest bank): “The only remaining question is how many days the hopeless rearguard action of European governments and the European Central Bank can keep up Greece’s spirits.”
#4 Stefan Homburg, the head of Germany’s Institute for Public Finance: “The euro is nearing its ugly end. A collapse of monetary union now appears unavoidable.”
#5 EU Parliament Member Nigel Farage: “I think the worst in the financial system is yet to come, a possible cataclysm and if that happens the gold price could go (higher) to a number that we simply cannot, at this moment, even imagine.”
#6 Carl Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics: “At this point, our base case is that Greece will default within weeks.”
#7 Goldman Sachs strategist Alan Brazil: “Solving a debt problem with more debt has not solved the underlying problem. In the US, Treasury debt growth financed the US consumer but has not had enough of an impact on job growth. Can the US continue to depreciate the world’s base currency?”
#8 International Labour Organization director general Juan Somavia recently stated that total unemployment could “increase by some 20m to a total of 40m in G20 countries” by the end of 2012.
#9 Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman: “It is an open secret that numerous European banks would not survive having to revalue sovereign debt held on the banking book at market levels.”
#10 Alastair Newton, a strategist for Nomura Securities in London: “We believe that we are just about to enter a critical period for the eurozone and that the threat of some sort of break-up between now and year-end is greater than it has been at any time since the start of the crisis”
#11 Ann Barnhardt, head of Barnhardt Capital Management, Inc.: “It’s over. There is no coming back from this. The only thing that can happen is a total and complete collapse of EVERYTHING we now know, and humanity starts from scratch. And if you think that this collapse is going to play out without one hell of a big hot war, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”
#12 Lakshman Achuthan of ECRI: “When I call a recession…that means that process is starting to feed on itself, which means that you can yell and scream and you can write a big check, but it’s not going to stop.”
*****
In my opinion, the epicenter of the “next wave” of the financial collapse is going to be in Europe. But that does not mean that the United States is going to be okay. The reality is that the United States never recovered from the last recession and there are already a lot of signs that we are getting ready to enter another major recession. A major financial collapse in Europe would just accelerate our plunge into a new economic crisis.
If you want to read something that will really freak you out, you should check out what Dr. Philippa Malmgren is saying. Dr. Philippa Malmgren is the President and founder of Principalis Asset Management. She is also a former member of the Bush economic team. You can find her bio right here.
Malmgren is claiming that Germany is seriously considering bringing back the Deutschmark. In fact, she claims that Germany is very busy printing new currency up. In a list of things that we could see happen over the next few months, she included the following….
“The Germans announce they are re-introducing the Deutschmark. They have already ordered the new currency and asked that the printers hurry up.”
This is quite a claim for someone to be making. You would think that someone that used to work in the White House would not make such a claim unless it was based on something solid.
If Germany did decide to leave the euro, you would see an implosion of the euro that would be truly historic.
But as I have written about previously, it should not surprise anyone that the end of the euro is being talked about because the euro simply does not work.
The only way that the euro would have had a chance of working is if all of the governments using the euro would have kept debt levels very low.
Unfortunately, the financial systems of the western world are designed to push governments into high levels of debt.
The truth is that the euro was doomed from the very beginning.
Now we are approaching a day of reckoning. We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, but the bubble is ending. There are several ways that the powers that be could handle this, but all of them will lead to greater financial instability.
In the end, we will see that the debt-fueled prosperity that the western world has been enjoying for decades was just an illusion.
Debt is a very cruel master. It will almost always bring more pain and suffering than you anticipated.
It is easy to get into debt, but it can be very difficult to get out of debt.
There is no way that the western world can unwind this debt spiral easily.
The only way that another massive economic crisis can be put off for even a little while would be for the powers that be to “kick the can down the road” a little farther by creating even more debt.
But in the end, you can never solve a debt problem with more debt.
The next several years are going to be an incredibly clear illustration of why debt is bad.
When the dominoes start to fall, we are going to witness a financial avalanche which is going to destroy the finances of millions of people.
You might want to try to get out of the way while you still can.
 Will global financial markets reach a breaking point during the month of October? Right now there are all kinds of signs that the financial world is about to experience a nervous breakdown. Massive amounts of investor money is being pulled out of the stock market and mammoth bets are being made against the S&P 500 in October. The European debt crisis continues to grow even worse and weird financial moves are being made all over the globe. Does all of this unusual activity indicate that something big is about to happen? Let’s hope not. But historically, the biggest stock market crashes have tended to happen in the fall. So are we on the verge of a “Black October”?
The following are 21 signs that something big is about to happen in the financial world and that global financial markets are on the verge of a nervous breakdown….
#1 We are seeing an amazing number of bets against the S&P 500 right now. According to CNN, the number of bets against the S&P 500 rose to the highest level in a year last month. But that was nothing compared to what we are seeing for October. The number of bets against the S&P 500 for the month of October is absolutely astounding. Somebody is going to make a monstrous amount of money if there is a stock market crash next month.
#2 Investors are pulling a huge amount of money out of stocks right now. Do they know something that we don’t? The following is from a report in the Financial Post….
Investors have pulled more money from U.S. equity funds since the end of April than in the five months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., adding to the $2.1 trillion rout in American stocks.
About $75 billion was withdrawn from funds that focus on shares during the past four months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the Investment Company Institute, a Washington-based trade group, and EPFR Global, a research firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Outflows totaled $72.8 billion from October 2008 through February 2009, following Lehman’s bankruptcy, the data show.
#3 Siemens has pulled more than half a billion euros out of two major French banks and has moved that money to the European Central Bank. Do they know something or are they just getting nervous?
#4 On Monday, Standard & Poor’s cut Italy’s credit rating from A+ to A.
#5 The European Central Bank is purchasing even more Italian and Spanish bonds in an attempt to cool down the burgeoning financial crisis in Europe.
#6 The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank have announced that they are going to make available an “unlimited” amount of money to European commercial banks in October, November and December.
#7 So far this year, the largest bank in Italy has lost over half of its value and the second largest bank in Italy is down 44 percent.
#8 Angela Merkel’s coalition is getting embarrassed in local elections in Germany. A recent poll found that an astounding 82 percent of all Germans believe that her government is doing a bad job of handling the crisis in Greece. Right now, public opinion in Germany is very negative toward the bailouts, and that is really bad news for Greece.
#9 Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic collapse at this point. Just consider the following statistics from a recent editorial in the Guardian….
Consider first the scale of the crisis. After contracting in 2009 and 2010, GDP fell by a further 7.3% in the second quarter of 2011. Unemployment is approaching 900,000 and is projected to exceed 1.2 million, in a population of 11 million. These are figures reminiscent of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
#10 In 2009, Greece had a debt to GDP ratio of about 115%. Today, Greece has a debt to GDP ratio of about 160%. All of the austerity that has been imposed upon them has done nothing to solve their long-term problems.
#11 The yield on 1 year Greek bonds is now over 129 percent. A year ago the yield on those bonds was under 10 percent.
#12 Greek Deputy Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis says that Greece only has enough cash to continue operating until next month.
#13 Italy now has a debt to GDP ratio of about 120% and their economy is far, far larger than the economy of Greece.
#14 The yield on 2 year Portuguese bonds is now over 17 percent. A year ago the yield on those bonds was about 4 percent.
#15 China seems to be concerned about the stability of European banks. The following is from a recent Reuters report….
A big market-making state bank in China’s onshore foreign exchange market has stopped foreign exchange forwards and swaps trading with several European banks due to the unfolding debt crisis in Europe, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
#16 European central banks are now buying more gold than they are selling. This is the first time that has happened in more than 20 years.
#17 The chief economist at the IMF says that the global economy has entered a “dangerous new phase“.
#18 Israel has dumped 46 percent of its U.S. Treasuries and Russia has dumped 95 percent of its U.S. Treasuries. Do they know something that we don’t?
#19 World financial markets are expecting that the Federal Reserve will announce a new bond-buying plan this week that will be designed to push long-term interest rates lower.
#20 If some wealthy investors believe that the Obama tax plan has a chance of getting through Congress, they may start dumping stocks before the end of this year in order to avoid getting taxed at a much higher rate in 2012.
#21 According to a study that was recently released by Merrill Lynch, the U.S. economy has an 80% chance of going into another recession.
When financial markets get really jumpy like this, all it takes is one really big spark to set the dominoes in motion.
Hopefully nothing really big will happen in October.
Hopefully global financial markets will not experience a nervous breakdown.
But right now things look a little bit more like 2008 every single day.
None of the problems that caused the financial crisis of 2008 have been fixed, and the world financial system is more vulnerable today than it ever has been since the end of World War II.
As I wrote about yesterday, the U.S. economy has never really recovered from the last financial crisis.
If we see another major financial crash in the coming months, the consequences would be absolutely devastating.
We have been softened up and we are ready for the knockout blow.
Let’s just hope that the financial world can keep it together.
We don’t need more economic pain right about now.
 If you think the U.S. economy is bad now, just wait for a few months. Things are about to become absolutely nightmarish. None of the long-term economic trends that are hollowing out our economy have been addressed and more bad economic news seems to come out virtually every single day. Now there is constant talk of the “next recession” in the mainstream media. But did the last recession ever truly end? The number of good jobs continues to decline, more stores are closing, incomes continue to go down, credit card debt and student loan debt are soaring, the housing market resembles a corpse, the number of Americans living in poverty continues to rise and government debt is at unprecedented levels. We are losing blood fast, and almost all of our leaders are either too corrupt or too incompetent to be able to do anything about it. The U.S. economy really and truly is about to go into the toilet, and if something is not done very quickly we are going to experience a complete and total economic disaster in this nation.
Americans have been promised over and over that this economic downturn is just “temporary” and that things will return to normal soon. During this upcoming election cycle, the Democrats will swear that they have all the answers and that if we just elect them everything will be okay. The Republicans will also swear that they have all the answers and that if we just elect them everything will be okay.
Well, both sides are lying. The economic plans of both major political parties are a joke. Neither of them can restore economic prosperity to this nation.
Our politicians could delay the coming economic collapse by borrowing gigantic piles of money and pumping all of that cash into the economy. But stealing from our children and our grandchildren is not exactly sound economic policy.
Yes, the U.S. economy is in bad shape right now, but things are about to get even worse. The long-term problems that are destroying our economy have not been fixed, and the leaks in our ship are going to continue to grow.
The following are 30 signs that the U.S. economy is about to go into the toilet….
#1 An increasing number of unemployed Americans have become so desperate that they have started to look for work overseas. For example, the number of Americans that are submitting applications for temporary work visas in Canada has approximately doubled since 2008. Other Americans are willing to learn foreign languages and travel to the other side of the world if that is what it takes to land a decent job. Just consider the following quote from a recent USA Today report….
Job placement firms are reporting a surge in American worker interest in booming economies such as Hong Kong, Singapore, China and, increasingly, India. Hunt Partners, an executive search firm, estimates that it’s getting 50% to 100% more unsolicited résumés from Americans looking for Asia-based positions today than before the recession.
#2 When Barack Obama first took office, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent.
#3 The number of Americans that are concerned that they will lose their jobs continues to hover near record highs. According to Gallup, 30 percent of all employed Americans are worried that they will soon be laid off.
#4 After three straight years of very high unemployment, you can feel frustration and desperation in the air almost everywhere that you go. Many unemployed Americans are now at the end of their ropes. The following is from a testimonial that was recently posted on The Atlantic….
The most difficult part of the job search is:
1. that I don’t live near a factory or outsource outlet in China, India, or Malaysia.
2. trying not to appear desperate for a job when I am, in fact, quite desperate for a job.
3. that I am subject to everyone’s advice on how to get a job, but no real job leads.
4. that I am reminded that having a good job is not an entitlement.
5. that when I become depressed from my job search, I’m told told to cheer up or else give a bad vibe to prospective employers … yet when I become happy through non-search related activities, I am reminded that I should be looking for work
7. that when I confide to friends and family that I have “given up” to pursue more fruitful interests, it elicits a crushing look of disbelief, disappointment, and disgust
8. waiting for permission to give up.
#5 The percentage of American men that are employed continues to plummet. In July, only 63.5 percent of all men in the United States had a job. Since 1948, that number has only been lower one time (63.3 percent in December 2009).
#6 Back in the 1950s, manufacturing accounted for about 28 percent of U.S. GDP. Last year, it accounted for just 11.7 percent. Meanwhile, manufacturing now accounts for about 25 percent of GDP in China and they now actually have more factory production each year than we do. Sadly, Barack Obama is pushing for even more trade agreements that will send millions more of our jobs overseas.
#7 The percentage of Americans that are working low paying jobs continues to relentlessly march upwards. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#8 According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, after you add in all short-term discouraged workers, all long-term discouraged workers and all Americans that are working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment, the real unemployment rate should be approximately 23 percent.
#9 We are starting to see another huge wave of store closings and layoffs. For example, the parent company of Payless stores has announced that it will be permanently closing 475 stores. Borders is in the process of closing every single one of its 399 stores. Also, Bank of America has just announced that it will be closing about 600 branches, and that could result in the loss of about 30,000 good jobs.
#10 Median household income has fallen for three years in a row.
#11 Americans are really starting to rack up consumer debt once again. According to Time Magazine, U.S. consumers are on pace to collectively add 54 billion dollars in credit card debt in 2011.
#12 Student loan defaults are rising very sharply. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent New York Times article….
The share of federal student loan defaults rose sharply last year, especially at for-profit colleges and universities, where 15 percent of borrowers defaulted in the first two years of repayment, up from 11.6 percent the previous year.
#13 According to a chart in The Economist, whenever the number of newspaper articles in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal that mention the word “recession” goes over 1,500 in a particular quarter, the U.S. economy almost always goes into a recession.
#14 The U.S. housing crash just continues to get worse. The index of home builder sentiment put out by the National Association of Home Builders fell once again during the month of September. With such a glut of unsold foreclosed homes on the market, it is making things really hard of home builders. Things have gotten so bad that even the U.S. government now owns nearly a quarter of a million foreclosed homes. The impact of this housing nightmare on families has been absolutely devastating. Just check out what a recent Time Magazine article had to say about what has been going on in California….
The impact on children has been brutal: since 2007, 7% of the state’s children have had a foreclosure process started on their homes, the fourth-highest level in the nation, according to a study released this month by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
#15 Many believe that due to much tighter lending standards, it is now harder to be approved for a mortgage than at any other time since World War II. This is absolutely crushing the housing market.
#16 Most Americans don’t seem to expect housing prices to recover for an extended period of time. One recent survey found that 54 percent of Americans believe that there will not be a housing recovery until “2014 or later“.
#17 The combined debt of the largest GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to a whopping 6.4 trillion in 2011. If that debt goes bad, U.S. taxpayers will be left holding the bill.
#18 There are now nearly 50 million Americans that do not have health insurance, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row. Meanwhile, Americans now spend about 3 times as much on health care as they did back in 1990.
#19 The Postal Service has publicly announced that it is “on the verge” of financial collapse.
#20 The number of small businesses continues to fall. I recently noted this fact on The American Dream Blog….
The number of “self-employed” Americans continues to rapidly shrink. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million. Even though we have 14 million unemployed people in this country and jobs are incredibly difficult to come by, the number of people trying to work for themselves continues to decrease because the environment for small businesses in this country has become so incredibly toxic.
#21 American consumers have become tremendously pessimistic. According to one recent survey, 61 percent of all Americans believe that they will not return to their “pre-recession” lifestyles until at least 2014. According to a different recent survey, 39 percent of Americans actually believe that the U.S. economy has now entered a “permanent decline”.
#22 Many U.S. investors certainly seem to believe that trouble is coming. According to CNN, last month the number of bets against the S&P 500 was the highest that we have seen in about a year.
#23 The number of U.S. households that are “doubling up” continues to grow. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of combined households has increased by 10.7 percent since 2007.
#24 When Barack Obama moved into the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.83. Today it is $3.58.
#25 The number of Americans living in poverty grew by 2.6 million last year. That was the largest increase since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.
#26 Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
#27 On Barack Obama’s first day on the job, there were about 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 45 million Americans on food stamps.
#28 If there is a financial collapse in Europe, that will definitely plunge us into another recession. Right now, things do not look promising. At this point, headlines all over the world are proclaiming that Greece is dangerously close to defaulting.
#29 At some point soon, investors all over the globe may decide that it is time to start dumping U.S. government debt. For example, Chinese officials are now openly talking about the need to “liquidate” their holdings of U.S. Treasuries.
#30 The U.S. national debt continues to explode in size and spiral out of control. According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. “fiscal gap” increased by about 6 trillion dollars last year. In fact, Kotlikoff makes a compelling argument that Greece is actually in better shape financially than the United States is.
Do you now understand how much trouble we are in?
The long-term trends that are destroying us continue to get worse.
The United States is steamrolling directly toward an economic collapse.
When this economy hits bottom and splatters all over the place, it is not going to be easy to fix.
The America that we know today is going to be wiped out by a gigantic mountain of debt and by the consequences of decades of really bad decisions.
We were handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in the history of the world and we have wrecked it.
So prepare for really, really hard times ahead.
The era of endless prosperity is ending.
Next comes the pain.
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The 9-9-9 Plan: Is The Herman Cain Tax Plan A Good Idea?
The one great thing about the 9-9-9 plan is that it would completely eliminate the current tax code. That should be the starting point for any proposal for reforming our current system of taxation.
Under Herman Cain’s plan, all current federal taxes would be eliminated. Social Security taxes would be eliminated, estate taxes would be eliminated and capital gains taxes would be eliminated.
All current tax deductions and loopholes would be eliminated as well.
So far so good.
Under the 9-9-9 plan, the current tax system would be replaced with a 9 percent personal income tax, a 9 percent business income tax and a 9 percent national sales tax.
Uh oh.
9 sounds like a low number, but when you add tax on top of tax on top of tax they can add up very quickly. The truth is that some Americans would end up paying significantly more taxes under the Herman Cain tax plan.
Even Herman Cain is admitting this. The following is what Cain said about his plan the other day on NBC’s Meet The Press….
So who will be paying more?
Will it be the those at the top of the food chain?
No, the reality is that the Herman Cain tax plan would represent a substantial tax hike for millions of middle income families.
According to ABC News, an average family of four with a yearly income of just under $50,000 (i.e. the median household income), would pay approximately $2,725 more to the federal government in taxes under the 9-9-9 plan.
Well, that doesn’t sound good.
That doesn’t sound like a recipe for economic recovery.
But if you are a middle income small business owner, the news is much worse than that.
Under Herman Cain’s tax plan, some small business owners could end up paying up to 37 percent of their incomes in taxes to the federal government.
Here is how that breaks down….
#1) First they would pay the 9 percent personal income tax.
#2) Secondly, they would pay 9 percent on all business income. There would not even be a deduction for wages paid out. This would hit some small businesses incredibly hard. In fact, small businesses that have a very tight profit margin could be totally wiped out by this.
A lot of people have assumed that the 9 percent tax on businesses is only on corporations. But that simply is not the case.
In a recent article, Paul Krugman of the New York Times explained what the 9-9-9 plan really says….
Ouch.
Okay, so now we are up to 18 percent for small business owners.
#3) The 9-9-9 plan also calls for a 9 percent national sales tax. Of course the truth is that very few people will spend all of their money on things that the national sales tax is imposed upon, but theoretically this could add another 9 percent to an individual’s tax burden.
So now we are up to a potential total of 27 percent for small business owners.
The 9-9-9 plan would also make sales taxes absolutely crushing in some areas of the United States. For example, it has been projected that once you throw in state and local sales taxes, some areas of the country could be facing a combined sales tax as high as 17 percent once the 9-9-9 plan is implemented.
Cain’s plan would also set the stage for a VAT tax to be implemented. Many countries in Europe have already implemented a VAT tax, and quite a few liberal politicians in the U.S. have been eager to institute one here.
The potential dangers of a VAT tax were described in a recent article by Dean Clancy….
Politicians love “new revenue streams”, and once they get opened up they rarely ever get closed.
#4) Anyway, getting back to the main issue, so how do we get up to 37 percent for small business owners under the 9-9-9 plan?
Well, Herman Cain has also been heavily touting “the Chilean model” as a replacement for Social Security.
Under the Chilean model, all citizens are absolutely required to contribute 10 percent of all income to private pension plans. Workers in Chile do not have the option to opt out of the system.
So if “the Chilean model” is adopted to replace the current Social Security system, that would mean that an extra 10 percent mandatory “tax” would be added on top of the 9-9-9 plan.
That would mean that many middle income small business owners could end up paying up to 37 percent of all of their income in taxes.
Is that something that you could afford to do?
When you add in state taxes, local taxes, property taxes and the dozens of other taxes that Americans pay each year, many middle income Americans would end up paying out over 50 percent of their incomes in taxes.
So much for a low tax plan.
So where in the world did Herman Cain get the idea for the 9-9-9 plan?
Well, there are some that are now claiming that he got the 9-9-9 plan from a video game.
Yes, seriously.
The following is an excerpt from a recent article in The Daily Mail about the 9-9-9 plan….
Does that sound familiar?
Let us hope that this is not true. Let us hope that Herman Cain did not get his tax plan from a video game.
But in any event, perhaps it is time to take a closer look at Herman Cain.
For example, did you know that he was once the chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Board?
That is not a good sign.
As I have written about so many times, the Federal Reserve is at the very heart of our economic problems.
But Herman Cain does not intend to abolish the Federal Reserve. In fact, he is very fond of the Federal Reserve. He is on record as saying that a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve is not even needed.
The following is what Herman Cain once had to say about the need for an audit of the Federal Reserve….
That is so sad. There is a lot to like about Herman Cain. But obviously his 9-9-9 plan is not well thought out, and he is a big time apologist for the Federal Reserve.
During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve made $16 trillion in secret loans to the big Wall Street banks and to their friends.
That dollar figure is larger than the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States for an entire year.
If Congress had not passed a one time limited audit of the Federal Reserve we would have never learned about those loans.
So how in the world can Herman Cain claim that there is no need to audit the Fed?
Once again, there are definitely some things to like about Herman Cain, but when it comes to economics, taxation and the Federal Reserve, he is way out of his league.
So what is the alternative to the 9-9-9 plan?
The alternative should not be to go back to our current system of taxation. It is broken beyond repair and needs to be abolished.
If we are going to tax income, we need a system that will be fair and not full of loopholes, that will not overly burden the poor, that will encourage businesses to stay in the United States, that will limit the size of the federal government and that will be easy to understand and implement.
But the truth is that until the federal government completely shuts down the Federal Reserve and the IRS we are going to be enslaved to debt and we are going to be paying much higher taxes than we should be. We are operating in a debt-based monetary system which is designed to transfer wealth away from the American people. We desperately need to change this.
It is entirely possible that we could have a system that did not tax income at all. For much of U.S. history, that was the case in this nation. It would certainly be possible to do it again.
So right now is definitely a time for some bold new ideas.
Unfortunately, the 9-9-9 plan is not going to be the solution to much of anything.