There is much more to the collapse of America than just our economic problems. The truth is that the United States is like a beautiful house that may still look great on the outside but that has rotted and decayed very badly on the inside. In fact, the foundations of our country have rotted away so badly that our entire society is starting to collapse. Just look at James Holmes. It would be great if we could honestly say that James Holmes is an aberration, but we all know better than that. James Holmes is not alone. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that our degenerate society regularly produces sickos and monsters like James Holmes. As I wrote about the other day, we lead the world in a whole host of bad categories. We lead the world in child abuse, we lead the world in divorce, we lead the world in teen pregnancy and we lead the world in drug addiction. The basic building blocks of society that tie us together and help keep us grounded (such as the family) are breaking down, but we still seem surprised that we have hordes of “lone wolf individuals” running around doing crazy things. We are a sick, twisted society that is producing sick, twisted individuals. If we do not admit how deep our problems really are, then we are never going to find any real solutions and we are going to keep being shocked when another James Holmes pops on to the scene.
Why are our young people so violent and so mentally unstable?
What has changed?
Those are some very important questions. But most Americans will forget this incident very quickly and they will move on with their self-absorbed lives.
But there is so much about this shooting that calls for further examination.
What would make a highly educated 24 year old man do something so incredibly evil?
Why are so many young people suddenly “snapping” these days?
As our society continues to decay, how much worse are things going to get?
It is almost to the point where people are going to start becoming afraid of gathering in public places.
Most Americans never would have imagined that it would be dangerous to go to the movie theater.
But now people are going to look at going to the movies much differently.
And could it have been possible that James Holmes had some help?
There are some important questions that the media is not really focusing on in this case….
-How did an impoverished college student put together an arsenal of weapons, ammunition and body armor worth tens of thousands of dollars?
-Why did he surrender to police without offering any resistance whatsoever?
It would be great if we could get some answers to those questions.
In any event, this is yet another sign of how far our society has fallen. We are becoming more sick and more twisted with each passing day, and it is time to admit this fact.
The following are 20 more examples of the sickos that are overrunning America….
#1 A Sicko In Oregon That Breaks Into Homes In Order To Watch Computer Porn
According to CBS, one young man in Oregon has been breaking into homes with the intent of watching pornography on the Internet….
Police say a 21-year-old Oregon man broke into homes to look at pornography on the Internet, sometimes while the homeowners were inside.
Eugene police said Thursday they arrested Antone Forrest Deedward Owens on charges of burglary, menacing and coercion. Authorities say he broke into at least three homes since last September, sometimes entering the same home on multiple occasions.
#2 Delaware Pediatrician That Sexually Abused 103 Children
Who is the bigger monster – James Holmes or the Delaware doctor that sexually abused 103 children? The following is from a recent Natural News article….
According to reports in 2010, Dr. Earl Bradley, who has since been dubbed “America’s Worst Pedophile,” stood accused of molesting 103 young patients in his office in the tiny town of Lewes, Del., since 1994.
Detailed in 160 pages of what ABC News described as “disturbing court documents,” Bradley apparently videotaped his sex acts. The documents said Bradley repeatedly molested his child patients as their parents sat nearby and unsuspecting outside the waiting room of his BayBee’s Pediatrics clinic.
#3 Jerry Sandusky
Jerry Sandusky was supposed to be a role model. He was an assistant football coach at Penn State and he was heavily involved in charity work.
But it turns out that it was all a lie. In fact, a whole bunch of people involved in the Penn State football program knew what was going on and did not report it.
In the end, Jerry Sandusky was found guilty of 45 counts of sexually abusing young boys. He has become a national symbol of the depravity which is rotting away the very heart of this nation.
#4 Man That Kept His Wife Chained Up For 10 Years
What would you do to a man that kept his wife chained up for ten years?
Earlier this month, Lizon was arrested after police say he kept his wife, Stephanie, chained up for nearly a decade in their home along Miller Hollow Road in Leroy, W.Va.
Lizon is accused of smashing Stephanie’s feet with farm equipment and hitting her with a hot frying pan.
Police say she also had a miscarriage because of the abuse and was forced to have another baby while still chained.
#5 Serial Foot-Licker In New York
Did serial foot-lickers even exist back in the 1950s?
Why are there so many of them running around today?
Police have a possible serial foot-licker in custody after a 49-year-old man was arrested for inappropriately touching two young girls at an upstate New York library.
Anthony Parri allegedly took off a child’s shoe and rubbed the girl’s foot against his nose and mouth in one of two incidents Tuesday at Penfield Library, according to reports.
One of the alleged attacks happened in an open area in the children’s section, library director Bernadette Brickman told WHAM, ABC’s affiliate in Rochester. The child’s mom and a library employee witnessed the abuse and called the cops, according to the station.
#6 Houston Police Officer Accused Of Raping A Woman While On Duty
Who is supposed to keep all of these sickos under control?
DNA evidence has linked a Houston police officer to a rape he allegedly committed while on duty last month, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Officer Adan Jimenez Carranza, 32, was being held Friday at the Harris County Jail under a $30,000 bond, charged with aggravated sexual assault of a woman June 18 after a minor traffic accident, court records show.
#7 Philadelphia Police Officer Makes 14 Year Old Girl Watch Him Have Sex With A Prostitute After Sexually Assaulting Her
If we can’t trust the police, then who can we trust?
Recently there have been a bunch of reports of sexual misconduct by police in the national news.
The following is how Fox News described one particularly disturbing incident from the Philadelphia area….
A Philadelphia cop was arrested over allegations that he abducted a 14-year-old girl, sexually assaulted her and made her watch him have sex with a prostitute.
Police found Anthony Dattilo, 36, at a motel in the Bensalem area of the city Wednesday while responding to a possible abduction, according to the Bucks County Courier Times.
Dattilo, a 12-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, is reportedly in custody at the Bucks County prison on $500,000 bail.
#8 TSA Agent Spills Grandpa’s Ashes And Laughs About It
Almost every single day there is another TSA horror story in the news.
But what you are about to read is one of the worst of them all.
“They opened up my bag, and I told them, ‘Please, be careful. These are my grandpa’s ashes,’” Gross told the station. “She picked up the jar. She opened it up.”
Gross said the TSA agent used her finger to sift through the ashes and accidentally spilled it. He said one-third to one-half of the ashes spilled and that the agent laughed as he tried to gather what he could from the floor.
“She didn’t apologize. She started laughing. I was on my hands and knees picking up bone fragments. I couldn’t pick up all, everything that was lost. I mean, there was a long line behind me.”
#9 Connecticut Man Threatens To Cut The Tongue Out Of The Mouth Of A 3 Year Old Child
What kind of a man would hold up a knife and threaten to cut the tongue out of the mouth of a 3 year old kid?
Sadly, that is exactly what happened up in Connecticut recently.
The following is from a WFSB report about this incident….
Police in Vernon are investigating reports that a man held a knife to a child’s face and threatened to cut out his tongue.
On Friday, a woman named Heather Bonneville called police to inform them that a family acquaintance, who has been identified as Roman Fein, held the knife within inches of her 3-year-old son’s face before making the threat to cut his tongue out of his mouth.
#10 Naked “Cannibal” Threatens To Eat Police Officers Down In Georgia
A public school administrator claims in court that his male boss sexually assaulted him in a hotel room after giving him pornography and trying to get him to join a foursome, then fired him for rebuffing the advances.
#12 Naked Florida Man Bites Chunk From Another Man’s Stomach
A naked man allegedly flew into a violent rampage, biting a chunk out of another man’s stomach after leaping from his roof onto a truck and urinating inside his home.
Officers responding to the scene needed backup to restrain Jeremiah Aaron Haughee with leg shackles, a spit hood and handcuffs after he continued fighting despite being Tasered five times.
Authorities did not carry out tests on Haughee to see if he was under the influence of any drugs.
Police first arrived at the home in Flagler Beach, Florida at 4.30 a.m. to find two men restraining the naked 22-year-old in a puddle of urine and glass.
#13 Father Who Killed His 3 Daughters Inside The Home Of His Ex-Wife
You know that society is really starting to break down when parents start killing their own children.
What one man up in Wisconsin is being charged with is absolutely horrific.
A 34-year-old father was being held by authorities Wednesday in connection with the deaths of his three daughters, who were found inside his ex-wife’s Wisconsin home with the gas fireplace turned on, officials said.
#14 Pregnant Woman Set On Fire In Detroit
These days not even pregnant women are immune to violence.
What one pregnant woman up in Detroit went through recently is hard to stomach….
A 22-year-old pregnant woman survived after being bound, driven to Detroit, set on fire and shot early Saturday morning.
The woman, who was nine-months pregnant, had returned from a movie with her boyfriend and dropped him off at his house in Warren when she was approached from behind, Warren police Sgt. Dave Geffert said.
The woman’s hands, feet and eyes were bound with duct tape. She was then forced into her car and driven to an unknown place in Detroit where she was doused with lighter fluid, set on fire and shot once in the upper back, he said.
#15 New Jersey Man Throws His Own Intestines At Police
If the police were breaking into your home, would you cut out your own entrails and throw them at the police?
According to the Huffington Post, that is exactly what one man up in New Jersey did….
A New Jersey man allegedly cut out his entrails in front of police and then threw bits of his flesh and intestines at them.
The gruesome scene played out at a home in Hackensack, N.J., where 43-year-old Wayne Carter allegedly barricaded himself in on Sunday, NBC New York reported.
Officers got a call that morning when a witness said Carter was threatening to harm himself with a knife. Two cops responded, kicked in the door and found Carter in the corner, the station reported.
Carter allegedly ignored officers’ orders to put down the knife, and instead began stabbing himself in the abdomen, neck and legs.
#16 Naked Man Brutally Murders A Hotel Maid
Why would anyone want to kill a 62 year old cleaning woman?
Many of the crimes that are being committed today are absolutely senseless.
A naked man who may have been on drugs was arrested Saturday for killing a Tracy motel employee.
Andrew Carreiro, 25, is behind bars accused of killing the 62-year-old woman who cleans rooms at the Hacienda Inn on the 600 block of West 11th Street.
Witnesses say they found Carreiro covered in blood and standing near the partially naked body of the woman, say witnesses.
“[It’s] most definitely the craziest thing I’ve seen in my life, most definitely,” said Jermaine Haynes, a motel resident who made the gruesome discovery.
#17 Crack-Fueled Sickos Abduct A Female Jogger
These days you are not safe anywhere in the country.
Just check out what happened to one math teacher from Montana. The following is how a Daily Mail article described what two very sick drug addicts did to her….
After smoking crack cocaine over the entire trip, Waters allegedly told Spell the drug ‘brought the devil out in him’ and began talking about kidnapping and killing a female, AP reports.
After they spotted Arnold, Spell claims that Waters told him to ‘grab the lady’ and pull her into their Ford Explorer as she jogged by.
‘Spell said Waters got into the back seat with the female and “choked her out”,’ the affidavit states.
After dropping Arnold’s body in a rural area of North Dakota later that night, Waters bought a shovel at a nearby Walmart. They buried the body in a two- to three-feet-deep hole on an old farmstead.
#18 Female Teacher Has Sex With Four Male Students
Why are so many public school teachers having sex with their students?
Don’t they realize that they will inevitably get caught?
Aren’t the dozens of other school sex scandals in the news sufficient warnings?
A new police report reveals racy, disturbing details of the alleged relationships between an Ironwood Ridge High School teacher and four of her students.
Oro Valley Police picked up Melissa Dalton April 30th booking her on four counts of sexual conduct with a minor.
She posted bail and got out the next day.
Subsequently more Ironwood Ridge students came forward with more allegations. That prompted the Oro Valley Police Department to add eight more counts including six of sex with a minor.
Melissa Dalton was in her first year teaching at Ironwood Ridge High School. The 33 year old is a wife and mother.
#19 Texas House Of Horrors
The nightmares that were happening in one quiet house in Texas are so horrifying that it is hard to find the words to describe them.
Texas authorities said Tuesday they removed 11 children from a crowded home where a registered sex offender lives after they found eight confined in a small, dark bedroom with restraints tying some to their beds.
Along with the children, 10 adults were living in the one-story, 1,700-square-foot home in Dayton, about 30 miles northeast of Houston, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Gwen Carter said. One month after a raid on the house, authorities are still trying to determine how the children are related and why they were there, she said.
#20 Florida Man Bites The Lips Off Of A Kitten
What kind of a monster would bite the lips off of a kitten?
It is hard to imagine anyone actually doing such a thing, but according to WKMG this apparently happened….
A Palm Coast man was arrested on suspicion of biting the lips off a kitten and strangling another cat.
Angel Vega Roman, 28, was arrested Saturday and charged with cruelty to animals.
According to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Roman told an acquaintance that he accidentally choked his roommates’ kitten a couple of weeks ago and bit the lips off another black and white kitten named Oreo. Roman also tortured Oreo by burning its ear and whiskers with a lighter, a sheriff’s report stated.
I know that I used a lot of disturbing examples in this article, but I wanted to make my point very strongly.
James Holmes is not an isolated case. America is literally being overrun by sickos and monsters.
In the old days, our societal institutions were strong and they helped to tie us together.
But today there is very, very little that ties us together and keeps us grounded. Faith in almost every major institution in society is very low and our families are falling apart.
The percentage of adult Americans that are married right now is at an all-time low. The percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation at all is at an all-time high.
Well, we just had another bad jobs report. The U.S. economy created just 80,000 new jobs during the month of June. Normally, about 125,000 new jobs need to be created every month just to keep up with population growth. So it is a bit odd that the official unemployment rate did not rise above 8.2%. What is even more alarming is that the Social Security Administration is telling us that 85,000 U.S. workers “left the workforce” and enrolled in the Social Security Disability Insurance program during the month of June. That means that the number of Americans enrolling in Social Security Disability actually exceeded the number of new jobs that was created. That is definitely not a sign of recovery. Unfortunately, this is about as good as things are going to get. Right now corporate profits are at an all-time high and usually after a recession has ended the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs bounces back very strongly. But that has not happened this time, and when the next economic crisis hits things are going to get a lot worse.
The headline to this article states that there will never be enough jobs in America again.
How could that possibly be true?
Well, the sad truth is that it is very hard to make a profit on an employee in the United States today.
Every year, the control freaks that run things just keep dumping more taxes, more laws, more regulations and more demands on employers. Hiring even a low level employee today is very complicated and very expensive.
These days a lot of small business owners have decided that it is simply not worth the hassle to hire more employees. If you can’t make a profit on them, what is the point?
If there was going to be a major rebound in hiring, we would have seen it by now. Corporate profits are at an all-time high as I mentioned earlier. How much more money do they need to make before they start hiring?
But I don’t blame them. Our politicians have loaded the system with plenty of incentives NOT to hire workers.
Yesterday, I wrote about how Barack Obama has been a one man wrecking crew when it comes to killing jobs. But he is not the only one to blame. The truth is that politicians from both political parties have been making things more difficult for employers for decades.
Today, many employers are trying to replace as many employees as possible with computers, automation, robotics and other forms of technology. Those are jobs that are not ever going to come back.
However, sometimes human labor is still actually needed.
But instead of hiring American workers, many big corporations are taking advantage of the emerging “one world economy” and are setting up shop in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.
So how are American workers supposed to compete with that?
The truth is that they can’t.
Today, you aren’t just competing for jobs with your neighbors. Your competition also includes millions upon millions of hard working people on the other side of the globe that will gladly work 12 hour shifts in nightmarish conditions for a dollar an hour.
The United States has been losing millions of jobs to lower wage countries, and the fierce competition for the jobs that remain is driving down wages in this country.
We are going to continue to bleed jobs because both major political parties are fully convinced that merging our labor pool with the labor pool of the rest of the world is a grand idea.
Republicans have been brainwashed into believing that a one world economic system is actually “conservative”. They have been told that it is “conservative” to merge our economy with countries ruled by third world dictators and brutal communist regimes that have no respect for human rights at all.
Democrats have been brainwashed into believing that merging our economy into a one world economic system is “good for American workers” and will bring more prosperity to this country.
Barack Obama is even negotiating a treaty right now that would reportedly ban all “Buy American” laws.
How stupid can we be?
If we merge our labor pool with the labor pool of the rest of the world with no protection, guess where our wages and our standard of living is going to go?
The answer is obvious.
The “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about so many years ago has become a reality.
It is just basic economics.
If I go to the store and I see two similar products and one is priced at $10 and the other is priced at $100 I am going to go for the one priced $10.
Well, it is the same thing with employees.
U.S. workers can’t compare with low wage workers on the other side of the world. It is simply no contest.
Meanwhile, our control freak politicians continue to shove more jobs out the door by piling on even more taxes, rules and regulations.
Unfortunately, these trends are not going to change. It doesn’t matter who gets elected. The bleeding of jobs is going to continue.
In fact, we should probably be celebrating that things are still as good as they are.
In the future they will be a whole lot worse.
The period we are in right now was supposed to be the recovery. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with jobs fell dramatically. Since the end of the recession, that number has stayed remarkably flat….
When our debt-fueled false prosperity ends, the true horror of the decay of our economic system will be revealed.
If you think it is hard to find a job now, you just wait. What is coming is going to be a total nightmare. As I have written about before, many years of pain are ahead.
But that doesn’t mean that you have to lose hope.
On my website, people often share how their lives have been absolutely devastated by this economy. Some of them are even so down that they are considering giving up completely.
But that is the exact wrong response to all of this!
The reason why I try so hard to explain what is coming is so that it will not be a surprise to people. If you make plans and preparations now, the times that are coming will not overwhelm you. I believe that there will be people that will be greatly blessed even in the midst of what is coming.
However, millions of Americans that are not listening to the warnings now will have their lives totally destroyed by what is coming.
The world is changing. Nothing is going to stop that. The unprecedented prosperity that we have been rolling in is going to shrivel up and go away.
But that does not mean that your life is over.
In fact, if you get yourself physically and mentally prepared for what is ahead the times that are coming can be the greatest times of your life.
One of my goals is to give people hope. There is hope in understanding what is coming. There is hope in being prepared. There is hope in being a light in the middle of the darkness. There is hope in being willing to love people in the midst of a world that is going crazy. The following is from a comment that one reader left on a recent article….
I wanted to thank you, the author of this article, whoever you are. I haven’t completely ruled out killing myself but you’ve certainly given me something to think about. And thank you for trying to give people like me a little hope. A little kindness, even if only through words, is at a premium these days especially in my life. I will think carefully about what you’ve said. Best wishes to you and your efforts. God bless.
Everyone out there that is in a similar position – please do not ever, ever, ever give up.
No matter how bad things look right now, there are people out there that care.
One thing I have learned in life is this – there is always a way that things can be turned around.
Sadly, in the future a lot of Americans are going to give in to despair and will completely give up on life. We saw it happen during the Great Depression of the 1930s and we are seeing this in Greece and other European countries right now.
But the truth is that your life is not over no matter how bad things get out there.
You can let the times that are coming destroy you, or you can make them the greatest adventure of your life.
The choice is up to you.
I urge you to get ready, to get more independent of the system and to start focusing on the things that really matter in life.
What is the second half of 2012 going to bring? Are things going to get even worse than they are right now? Unfortunately, that appears more likely with each passing day. I will admit that I am extremely concerned about the second half of 2012. Historically, a financial crisis is much more likely to begin in the fall than during any other season of the year. Just think about it. The stock market crash of 1929 happened in the fall. “Black Monday” happened on October 19th, 1987. The financial crisis of 2008 started in the fall. There just seems to be something about the fall that brings out the worst in the financial markets. But of course there is not a stock market crash every year. So are there specific reasons why we should be extremely concerned about what is coming this year? Yes, there are. The ingredients for a “perfect storm” are slowly coming together, and in the months ahead we could very well see the next wave of the economic collapse strike. Sadly, we have never even come close to recovering from the last recession, and this next crisis might end up being even more painful than the last one.
The following are 17 reasons to be extremely concerned about the second half of 2012….
#1 Historical Trends
A recent IMF research paper by Luc Laeven and Fabián Valencia showed that a banking crisis is far more likely to start in September than in any other month. The following chart is from their report….
So what will this September bring?
#2 JP Morgan
Do you remember back in May when JP Morgan announced that it would be taking a 2 billion dollar trading loss on some derivatives trades gone bad? Well, the New York Times is now reporting that the real figure could reach 9 billion dollars, but nobody really knows for sure. At some point is JP Morgan going to need a bailout? If so, what is that going to do to the U.S. financial system?
#3 Derivatives
Last week, Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of 15 major global banks. As a result, a number of them have been required to post billions of dollars in additional collateral against derivatives exposures….
Citigroup’s two-notch long-term rating downgrade from A3 to Baa2 could have led to US$500m in additional liquidity and funding demands due to derivative triggers and exchange margin requirements, according to the bank’s 10Q regulatory filing at the end of the first quarter.
Morgan Stanley – which Moody’s downgraded from A2 to Baa1 – said a two-notch downgrade from both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s could spur an additional US$6.8bn of collateral requirements in its latest 10Q. The bank did not break down its potential collateral calls under a scenario where only Moody’s downgraded the bank below the Single A threshold.
Royal Bank of Scotland estimated it may have to post £9bn of collateral as a result of the one-notch Moody’s downgrade to Baa1 in a statement on June 21, but did not detail how much of this additional requirement was driven by margin for swaps exposures.
The worldwide derivatives market is starting to show some cracks, and at some point this is going to become a major disaster.
Remember, the 9 largest U.S. banks have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When this bubble completely bursts it is going to be impossible to fix.
#4 LEAP/E2020 Warning
LEAP/E2020 has issued a red alert for the global financial system for this fall. They are warning that the “second half of 2012″ will represent a “major inflection point” for the global economic system….
The shock of the autumn 2008 will seem like a small summer storm compared to what will affect planet in several months.
In fact LEAP/E2020 has never seen the chronological convergence of such a series of explosive and so fundamental factors (economy, finances, geopolitical…) since 2006, the start of its work on the global systemic crisis. Logically, in our modest attempt to regularly publish a “crisis weather forecast”, we must therefore give our readers a “Red Alert” because the upcoming events which are readying themselves to shake the world system next September/ October belong to this category.
#5 Increasing Pessimism
One recent survey of corporate executives found that only 20 percent of them expect the global economy to improve over the next 12 months and 48 percent of them expect the global economy to get worse over the next 12 months.
#6 Spain
The Spanish financial system is basically a total nightmare at this point. Moody’s recently downgraded Spanish debt to one level above junk status, and earlier this week Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of 28 major Spanish banks.
According to CNBC, Spain’s short-term borrowing costs are now about three times higher than they were just one month ago….
Spain’s short-term borrowing costs nearly tripled at auction on Tuesday, underlining the country’s precarious finances as it struggles against recession and juggles with a debt crisis among its newly downgraded banks.
The yield paid on a 3-month bill was 2.362 percent, up from just 0.846 percent a month ago. For six-month paper, it leapt to 3.237 percent from 1.737 percent in May.
Needless to say, this is very, very bad news.
#7 Italy
The situation in Italy continues to deteriorate and many analysts believe that it could be one of the next dominoes to fall. The following is from a recent Businessweek article….
The euro zone’s third-biggest economy is seen as the next domino at risk of toppling after the European Union’s June 9 deal to lend Spain $125 billion in bank bailout funds. Yields on Italy’s 10-year government bonds reached 6.2 percent on June 13, up from just 4.8 percent in March. By pushing up Italy’s borrowing costs out of fear of default, investors are making a default more likely.
A recent Fortune article detailed some of the economic fundamentals that have so many economists deeply concerned about the Italian economy right now….
The main glaring risk threats that could propel Italy down the path to become Europe’s next domino is the size of country’s outstanding debt (at €1.9 trillion or 120% of GDP); the mountain of debt it has to roll over in the next 12 months (nearly €400 billion); and the market’s cracking credibility around Prime Minister Mario Monti’s ability to reduce the country’s fiscal footprint and spur growth.
Further, fear around Italy’s creditworthiness, which has recently been expressed by near cycle highs in sovereign CDS spreads and government yields on the 10-year bond, follow some rather glaring negative fundamentals over recent quarters and years: declining GDP over the last three consecutive quarters; a rising unemployment rate (especially among its youth); deterioration in labor market competitiveness; and increased competition for export goods to its key trading partners.
#8 Greece
I have written extensively about the financial nightmare that is unfolding in Greece. Unemployment has soared past the 20 percent mark, youth unemployment is above 50 percent, the Greek economy has contracted by close to 25 percent over the past four years and now Greek politicians are saying that a third bailout package may be necessary.
#9 Cyprus
The tiny island nation of Cyprus has become the fifth member of the eurozone to formally request a bailout. This is yet another sign that the eurozone is rapidly falling apart.
#10 Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to promote an austerity path for Europe and she continues to maintain her very firm position against any kind of eurozone debt sharing….
Merkel, speaking to a conference in Berlin today as Spain announced it would formally seek aid for its banks, dismissed “euro bonds, euro bills and European deposit insurance with joint liability and much more” as “economically wrong and counterproductive,” saying that they ran against the German constitution.
“It’s not a bold prediction to say that in Brussels most eyes — all eyes — will be on Germany yet again,” Merkel said. “I say quite openly: when I think of the summit on Thursday I’m concerned that once again the discussion will be far too much about all kinds of ideas for joint liability and far too little about improved oversight and structural measures.”
In fact, Merkel says that there will be no eurobonds “as long as I live“. This means that there will be no “quick fix” for the problems that are unfolding in Europe.
#11 Bank Runs
Every single day, hundreds of millions of dollars is being pulled out of banks in southern Europe. Much of that money is being transferred to banks in northern Europe.
In a previous article I included an extremely alarming quote from a CNBC article about the unfolding banking crisis in Europe….
Financial advisers and private bankers whose clients have accounts too large to be covered by a Europe-wide guarantee on deposits up to 100,000 euros ($125,000), are reporting a “bank run by wire transfer” that has picked up during May.
Much of this money has headed north to banks in London, Frankfurt and Geneva, financial advisers say.
“It’s been an ongoing process but it certainly picked up pace a couple of weeks ago We believe there is a continuous 2-3 year bank run by wire transfer,” said Lorne Baring, managing director at B Capital, a Geneva-based pan European wealth management firm.
How long can these bank runs continue before banking systems start to collapse?
#12 Preparations For The Collapse Of The Eurozone
As I have written about previously, the smart money has already written off southern Europe. All over the continent major financial institutions are preparing for the worst. For example, just check out what Visa Europe is doing….
Visa Europe is holding weekly meetings to discuss scenarios in the event the euro zone collapses, joining other companies that are preparing for a potential breakup of the currency bloc.
Chief Commercial Officer Steve Perry said Tuesday that management at the U.K.-based credit-card company meets weekly to explore various possible outcomes, including a total collapse of the euro zone.
#13 Global Lending Is Slowing Down
All over the globe the flow of credit is beginning to freeze up. In fact, the Bank for International Settlements says that worldwide lending is contracting at the fastest pace since the financial crisis of 2008.
#14 Sophisticated Cyber Attacks On Banks
It is being reported that “very sophisticated” hackers have successfully raided dozens of banks in Europe. So far, it is being estimated that they have stolen 60 million euros….
Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world.
According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an “insider level of understanding”.
What happens someday if we wake up and all the money in the banks is gone?
#15 U.S. Municipal Bankruptcies
All over the United States there are cities and towns on the verge of financial disaster. This week Stockton, California became the largest U.S. city to ever declare bankruptcy, but the reality is that this is only just the beginning of the municipal debt crisis….
Stockton, California, said it will file for bankruptcy after talks with bondholders and labor unions failed, making the agricultural center the biggest U.S. city to seek court protection from creditors.
“The city is fiscally insolvent and must seek Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection,” Stockton said in a statement released yesterday after its council voted 6-1 to adopt a spending plan for operating under bankruptcy protection.
#16 The Obamacare Decision
The U.S. economy is already a complete and total mess, and now the Obamacare decision is going to throw a huge wet blanket on it. All over America, small business owners are saying that they are going to have to let some workers go because they cannot afford to keep them all under Obamacare. It would be hard to imagine a more job killing law than Obamacare, and now that the Supreme Court decision has finally been announced we are going to see many businesses making some really hard decisions.
#17 The U.S. Election
It is being reported that Barack Obama is putting together an army of “thousands of lawyers” to deal with any disputes that arise over voting procedures or results. It certainly looks like this upcoming election is going to be extremely close, and there is the potential that we could end up facing another Bush v. Gore scenario where the fate of the presidency is determined in court. This campaign season is likely to be exceptionally nasty, and I fear what may happen if there is not a decisive winner on election day. The possibility of significant civil unrest is certainly there.
We definitely live in “interesting” times.
Personally, I am deeply concerned about the September, October, November time frame.
“It’s A Depression For Millions And Millions Of Americans”
And what Biden said was right for once. Millions of Americans are out of work right now and millions of Americans have fallen out of the middle class in recent years. If you have lost everything, it does feel like you are living through a depression.
When people lose everything, they tend to get desperate. And desperate people do desperate things – especially when they are angry.
A whole host of recent opinion polls have shown that anger and frustration in the United States are rising to unprecedented levels. The ingredients are certainly there for an explosion. Someone just needs to come along and light the fuse. We truly do live in frightening times.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
What is the biggest economic problem that the United States is facing? Very simply, our biggest problem is that we have way too much debt. Over the past 30 years, household debt, corporate debt and government debt have all grown much faster than our GDP has. But no nation on earth has ever been able to expand debt much faster than national output indefinitely. All debt bubbles eventually burst. Right now, we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world. All of this debt has fueled a “false prosperity” which has enabled many Americans to live like kings and queens. But no nation (or household) can pile on more debt forever. At some point the weight of the debt becomes just too great. It is amazing that the United States has been able to pile up as much debt as it has. Over the years, many authors have predicted that U.S. government finances would collapse long before the U.S. national debt ever got to this level. So the mountain of debt that we have accumulated is quite an “achievement” if you want to look at it that way. But the clock is ticking on this debt bubble and when it collapses we will say “bye bye” to our vastly inflated standard of living and we will discover that we have destroyed the economy for all future generations of Americans.
Household Debt
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. When most Americans think of the “debt problem” in this country, they think of the debt of the federal government.
But that is not the only debt bubble that we are facing.
Thirty years ago, household debt in the United States was approaching the 2 trillion dollar mark. Today, it is sitting at about 13 trillion dollars….
We have been trained to pay for everything with debt.
We pay for our homes with debt, and mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP has more than tripled since 1955.
We pay for our cars with debt, and at this point about 70 percent of all auto purchases in the United States involve an auto loan.
We pay for higher education with debt, and the total amount of student loan debt in America recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
Wherever we go we pay with plastic.
If you want a heated cat bed and a cute little cat sweater for your little kitty just put it on your Visa or Mastercard.
Amazingly, consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971, and if you can believe it, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.
We are absolutely addicted to debt and we do not know how to stop.
State And Local Government Debt
Our state and local governments are also addicted to debt.
30 years ago, state and local government debt was approaching the 400 million dollar mark. Today, state and local government debt is hovering around the 3 trillion dollar mark….
In the United States today, we don’t just have one “government debt problem” – the truth is that we have hundreds of them. All over the country, state and local governments are facing bankruptcy because of too much debt.
For example, according to Fox News the city of Stockton, California is right on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. In fact, an announcement could come as early as this week….
Stockton, Calif., is set to declare bankruptcy as early as this week, according to local officials, a move that would make it one of the largest U.S. cities ever to file for reorganization.
On Monday, a state-required mediation with creditors to find a fiscal solution is scheduled to expire. Stockton’s City Council is then slated to meet Tuesday to decide whether to adopt a budget for operating in bankruptcy, a move widely considered the last step before the city formally submits a Chapter 9 petition to federal bankruptcy court.
Federal Government Debt
Of course the biggest offender of all is the federal government. 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan was running around proclaiming what a nightmare it was that the U.S. national debt was reaching the one trillion dollar mark.
Well, now we are about to blast through the 16 trillion dollar mark with no end in sight….
Running up debt at a much faster rate than our GDP is rising is a recipe for national financial suicide. Our politicians continue to steal about 150 million dollars an hour from future generations and everybody just acts like this is perfectly normal.
We are going down the same path that Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain have gone.
In fact, we already have more government debt per capita than all of those nations do.
Incredibly, the national debt has grown more under Obama in less than 4 years than it did under George W. Bush during his entire 8 year term.
Since Barack Obama entered the White House, we have accumulated more than five trillion dollars of additional debt.
We are on the road to national financial oblivion, and most Americans don’t seem to care.
Debt From Sea To Shining Sea
Now let’s add up all the debt in the country. When you total up all household debt, business debt and government debt, it comes to more than 300% of our GDP….
In fact, if current trends continue we will hit 400% of GDP before too long.
As you can see from the chart, there was a little “hiccup” during the last recession, but now the debt bubble is growing again.
So how high can it go before the entire system collapses?
Total credit market debt owed is roughly 10 times larger than it was about 30 years ago.
How in the world did we accumulate 10 times more debt in just 30 years?
If we do that again in the next 30 years, our total debt will be more than 500 trillion dollars in the 2040s.
Unfortunately, that is the way that debt spirals work. They either have to keep expanding or they collapse.
So will the U.S. debt spiral continue to expand?
Or will we soon see a collapse?
Sadly, this exact same thing is happening all over the world. The government debt to GDP ratio in Japan (the third largest economy in the world) blew past the 200% mark quite a while ago, and almost every country in the EU is absolutely drowning in debt.
The world has never faced anything quite like this. There is way, way too much debt in the world, but the only way we can continue to enjoy this level of prosperity under the current system is to pile up a lot more debt.
The western world is like a debt addict in a deep state of denial. Some debt addicts end up with dozens of credit card accounts. They will keep opening more accounts as long as someone will let them. Most debt addicts actually believe that they will be able to get out of the hole at some point, but most never do.
Most Americans still believe that we are experiencing “temporary” economic problems that will eventually go away. Most Americans still believe that even greater prosperity is still ahead.
Sadly, what the mainstream media and the two major political parties are telling them is a bunch of lies.
We have enjoyed the greatest prosperity that we will ever see in the United States, and when the debt bubble bursts there is going to be an immense amount of pain.
That is a very painful truth, but it is better to come to grips with it now than be blindsided by it later.
Many people hype “the coming economic collapse” as if it is some kind of big summer Hollywood blockbuster. Many people out there write about it as if it is something that will happen in a single day or over a few weeks and that it will suddenly change how the entire world functions. But that is not how the financial world works. The financial world is like a game of chess – very slow and methodical. Yes, there are times when things happen very quickly (like back in 2008), but even that crisis played out over a number of months. Sadly, most Americans are not used to thinking in terms of months or years. These days, most Americans have the attention span of a goldfish and most Americans have been trained to expect instant gratification. They are simply not accustomed to being patient and to wait for things. Well, despite what you may have read, the economic collapse is not going to be a single event. It is going to play out over quite a few years. In some ways we are experiencing an economic collapse right now. When the next major financial crisis occurs, many will be calling that “an economic collapse”. But if you really want to grasp what is happening to us, you need to think long-term. We are heading for a complete and total nightmare, but it is going to take some time to get to the end of the story.
Yes, there will certainly be times of great chaos. The financial crisis of 2008 was one of those moments.
But the financial crisis of 2008 did not completely destroy us.
Neither will the next crisis.
I think it is helpful to think of what is happening to us as a series of waves.
When you build a beautiful sand castle on the beach, the first wave that comes in does not totally destroy it.
Rather, the first wave weakens the castle and it is destroyed by subsequent waves.
Well, that is what is happening to us.
The financial crisis of 2008 was a wave.
The epicenter of the next great financial crisis will be in Europe and that will be another wave.
For many, the next financial crisis will feel like “the end of the world” but it won’t be.
There will be waves after that one that will be even worse.
Yes, the waves are going to start coming more rapidly and will start becoming more intense.
In that way, they will kind of be like birth pains.
But these problems did not build up overnight and they are not going to disappear overnight either.
A lot of people that write about the coming economic collapse seem to suggest that we should just let it happen so that the “recovery” can begin.
It took decades for American consumers to build up the greatest consumer debt bubble in the history of the world.
It took decades to gut the economic infrastructure of the United States and ship millions of our jobs overseas.
These problems are going to plague us for a very long time.
Sadly, a lot of people out there seem to wish for an economic apocalypse. They seem to think that if the global financial system crashes that the government is going to disappear and we are going to start fighting with each other using sharp pointed sticks.
Well, it simply is not going to happen.
The U.S. government is not going to help you survive when things hit the fan, but it is not going to disappear either.
In fact, the federal government will probably try to grab more power than ever in an attempt to “restore order”.
The governments of Europe are not going to disappear either. In fact, in the long run Europe is probably going to end up more “federalized” than ever even if the euro breaks up in the short run.
A lot of people out there seem to think that when the old system collapses that it will give them an opportunity to help put in a new system.
Sorry, but that is not going to happen either.
The powers that be are going to have their own ideas about what needs to happen.
They never like to let a good crisis go to waste, and they will certainly try to use every crisis to shape the world even more in their own image.
The coming economic collapse is going to play out over a number of years and it is going to be absolutely horrible.
Billions of people will deeply suffer because of it.
It will be unlike anything any of us have ever seen.
Personally, I believe that it will eventually be much worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The United States is going to get hit particularly hard. The United States is going to lose its position as the leading economic power on the globe and the U.S. dollar is going to lose its position as the default reserve currency of the world.
If you thought that the unemployment crisis during the last recession was bad, just wait until you see what is coming.
We are heading for a complete and total unemployment nightmare in the United States. Unemployment is eventually going to soar well up into the double digits.
The U.S. government will try a wide variety of measures to try to “fix” things, and some will likely have some limited success.
But the debt-fueled prosperity that we are all enjoying now is going to come to an end.
There are going to be riots in our major cities, crime and looting will be absolutely rampant and it will seem like society is coming apart at the seams.
The U.S. government will likely respond by becoming more authoritarian than ever, and that will truly be frightening.
But all of this is going to play out over time.
Right now, things are not as good as they were five years ago.
A couple of years from now, things will be even worse. Many of us will look back and wish that we could return to the “good old days” of 2011 and 2012.
We are on a decline that is not going to stop. There will be little false bubbles of hope like we are in now, but they won’t last long.
But just because the economy is falling apart does not mean that your life is over. Many that are busy preparing right now will be greatly blessed even in the middle of all the chaos.
And it is when things are the darkest that the greatest lights are needed.
Make the decision right now to be a light during the times ahead.
You can choose to let the times that are coming destroy you, or you can choose to make them the greatest adventure of your life.
Why is the economy going to collapse? Have you ever been asked that question? If so, what did you say? Sometimes it is difficult to communicate dozens of complicated economic and financial concepts in a package that the average person on the street can easily digest. It can be very frustrating to know that something is true but not be able to explain it clearly to someone else. Hopefully many of you out there will find the list below useful. It is a list of 70 numbers that show why we are headed for a national economic nightmare. So why does the title of the article single out Barack Obama? Well, it is because right now he is the biggest cheerleader for the economy. He is attempting to convince all of us that everything is just fine and that the economy is heading in a positive direction. Well, the truth is that everything is not fine and things are about to get a whole lot worse. Certainly others should share in the blame as well. Congress has been steering the economy in the wrong direction for decades, the “too big to fail” banks have turned Wall Street into a pyramid of risk, leverage and debt, and the Federal Reserve has more power over the financial system than anyone else does. Our economy has been in decline for quite a while now, and soon we are going to smash directly into an economic brick wall. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are in denial about this. A lot of people out there doubt that an economic collapse is coming. Well, if you know someone that believes that the U.S. economy is going to be “just fine”, just show them the list below.
The following are 70 facts that Barack Obama does not want you to see….
$3.59 – When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.59.
22 – It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping 22 percent.
23 – According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day during 2010.
30 – Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.
32 – The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
35 – U.S. housing prices are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.
40 – The official U.S. unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.
42 – According to one survey, 42 percent of all American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
48 – Shockingly, at this point 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
49 – Today, an astounding 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.
60 – According to a recent Gallup poll, only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.
61 – At this point the Federal Reserve is essentially monetizing much of the U.S. national debt. For example, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.
63 – One recent survey found that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.
$6000 – If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
$10,000 – According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
49,000 – In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
50,000 – The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
56,000 – The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
$85,000 – According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
$175,587 – The Obama administration spent $175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.
$328,404 – Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
$361,330 – This is what the average banker in New York City made in 2010.
440,00 – If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to totally pay it off.
500,000 – According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
2,000,000 – Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today.
2,600,000 – In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
5,400,000 – When Barack Obama first took office there were 2.7 million long-term unemployed Americans. Today there are twice as many.
16,000,000 – It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
$20,000,000 – The amount of money the U.S. government was spending to create a version of Sesame Street for children in Pakistan.
25,000,000 – Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
40,000,000 – According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
46,405,204 – The number of Americans currently on food stamps. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.
88,000,000 – Today there are more than 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.
100,000,000 – Overall, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.
$150,000,000 – This is approximately the amount of money that the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress are stealing from future generations of Americans every single hour.
$2,000,000,000 – The amount of money that JP Morgan has admitted that it will lose from derivatives trades gone bad. Many analysts are convinced that the real number will actually end up being much higher.
$147,000,000,000 – In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately 147 billion dollars a year.
295,500,000,000 – Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
$359,100,000,000 – During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.
$454,000,000,000 – During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
$1,000,000,000,000 – The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
$1,170,000,000,000 – China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.
$1,600,000,000,000 – The amount that has been added to the U.S. national debt since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is more than the first 97 Congresses added to the national debt combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – What the real U.S. budget deficit in 2011 would have been if the federal government had used generally accepted accounting principles.
$11,440,000,000,000 – The total amount of consumer debt in the United States.
$200,000,000,000,000 – Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the derivatives market completely collapses there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
Why isn’t the U.S. economy in a depression right now? The number one reason is because the federal government has stolen more than five trillion dollars from future generations since Barack Obama was elected and has used that money to pump up our grossly inflated standard of living. Whether the federal government spends money wisely or foolishly, the truth is that the vast majority of it still ends up in the pockets of the American people who then use it to buy the things they need for their daily lives. If the U.S. government had not borrowed and spent an extra five trillion dollars that we did not have over the past several years, we would be in the middle of a rip-roaring economic depression right now. So any talk that Barack Obama is “improving the economy” is a total farce. It is a five trillion dollar lie. The reality is that Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress have been stealing trillions of dollars from future generations in order to make things tolerable in the present. If the federal government adopted a balanced budget next year, the debt-fueled prosperity that we are currently enjoying would start disappearing very rapidly and all hell would break loose in America.
At this point, the U.S. national debt is over 15.7 trillion dollars.
When Ronald Reagan took office it was less than a trillion dollars.
If you were to divide the national debt up equally, it would come to more than $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
So the share of the national debt for an average family of four would be about $200,000.
When the government borrows and spends money that it does not have, that increases the amount of dollars in circulation and it causes GDP to go up.
That is one of the reasons why our politicians like to borrow and spend money that we do not have. It makes the economic statistics look good. They can point to those economic statistics as a reason to send them back for another term.
This is a major flaw in our system. Most of our politicians do not care about how they are raping future generations financially. Most of them just care about getting elected again.
If you will notice carefully, neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama are promising to balance the budget any time soon. Like so many politicians in the past, they promise to do it “eventually”, but “eventually” never arrives.
According to a recent article in the Washington Times, Mitt Romney declared during a recent campaign appearance that he has no plans to balance the federal budget in his first year….
“My job is to get America back on track to have a balanced budget. Now I’m not going to cut $1 trillion in the first year”
Why would he say that?
Why wouldn’t he want to balance the budget?
He went on to explain that….
“The reason,” he explained, “is taking a trillion dollars out of a $15 trillion economy would cause our economy to shrink [and] would put a lot of people out of work.”
Romney is right about this. Taking a trillion dollars out of a 15 trillion dollar economy would plunge us into an economic nightmare.
And that would make him look bad.
Of course if Obama wins the election we can just expect more of the same from him as well.
“The time for austerity is not today,” Lew told NBC News “Meet the Press.” “If we were to put in austerity measures right now, it would take the economy in the wrong way.”
Why is the time for austerity not today?
It is because the 2012 election is coming up and Obama wants the economic statistics to look good.
Just look at what is happening in Greece. After several years of austerity they are in the midst of a full-blown economic depression and they still have not balanced their budget.
Do we want to end up like Greece?
Most Americans do not realize this, but the U.S. already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.
So why haven’t we collapsed yet?
Well, because we continue to borrow larger and larger amounts of money.
It took from the founding of America until 1995 for the federal government to accumulate 5 trillion dollars of debt.
Under Obama, we have accumulated more than 5 trillion dollars of new debt in just over 3 years.
And let there be no mistake – George W. Bush was a wild spender. A fiscal conservative he most certainly was not.
But Barack Obama does not seem troubled by any of this.
Barack Obama is prancing about the countryside touting his great “economic plan”, but the truth is that the only reason the economy has not totally collapsed is because he is stealing 150 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren.
Sadly, most Americans don’t understand that the current level of prosperity that we are enjoying is a grand illusion. Most Americans still expect things to return to the way that they used to be, and they are increasingly becoming angry that it is taking so long to get back there.
In fact, a whole host of recent surveys have shown that Americans are very dissatisfied with the direction the economy is heading in….
Four recent surveys have found that on average only 28% of Americans are satisfied with the condition of the country, while 70% are dissatisfied. Three recent surveys have found that between 69% and 83% of Americans believe that the country is still in recession (it isn’t), and only half believe that a recovery is under way.
What they don’t realize is that if we were not massively ripping off our kids and our grandkids things would be much, much worse.
Thomas Jefferson understood that government borrowing is essentially the same as theft from future generations.
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is so immoral that it is hard to put into words.
We are running up trillions upon trillions of dollars of debt in their name just so that our lives can be more comfortable right now.
How could we be so selfish?
The sad thing is that even with all of this reckless spending our economy is still not in great shape.
In fact, the middle class continues to shrink at an alarming rate. The following are just a few statistics from a recent article I did about this phenomenon….
-Today, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are currently either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
-Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages. In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages. Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.
-The United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
-Every year now, we see millions of Americans fall out of the middle class. In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
-At this point, approximately 22 percent of all American children are living in poverty.
-When Barack Obama took office, there were 32 million Americans on food stamps. Now, there are more than 46 million Americans on food stamps.
So how much worse would things be if a trillion dollars of federal spending was suddenly removed from the economy?
Are you starting to get the picture?
As bad as things are right now, they are about to get a whole lot worse.
So why can’t we just keep on borrowing and spending forever?
Well, just like Greece found out, debt always catches up with you eventually.
During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
But just like we are seeing in Europe, if confidence in U.S. government debt starts to disappear the U.S. government could end up facing much higher interest rates to borrow money.
If the average rate on U.S. government debt only rose to 7 percent (in the past it has actually been much higher than that), then the U.S. government would be spending about 1.1 trillion dollars a year just on interest on the national debt.
So if we were spending 1.1 trillion dollars just on interest, that would be close to half of all the revenue the federal government brings in.
Right now, the Federal Reserve is manipulating the system in a desperate attempt to keep interest rates down. During 2011, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department.
But most Americans have no idea how fragile our financial system is.
Most Americans just assume that we will always be the greatest economy on the planet and that there is nothing to be worried about.
Sadly, one way or another this debt bubble is going to burst and then our debt-fueled false prosperity is going to disappear.
Most Americans are not going to understand what is happening and they are going to go absolutely nuts.
During an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Jim Cramer of CNBC boldly predicted that “financial anarchy” is coming to Europe and that there will be “bank runs” in Spain and Italy in the next few weeks. This is very strong language for the most famous personality on the most watched financial news channel in the United States to be using. In fact, if Cramer is not careful, people will start accusing him of sounding just like The Economic Collapse Blog. It may not happen in “the next few weeks”, but the truth is that the European banking system is in a massive amount of trouble and if Greece does leave the euro it is going to cause a tremendous loss of confidence in banks in countries such as Spain, Italy and Portugal. There are already rumors that the “smart money” is pulling out of Spanish and Italian banks. So could we see some of these banks collapse? Would they get bailed out if they do collapse? It is so hard to predict exactly how “financial anarchy” will play out, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the European financial system is heading for a massive amount of pain.
Posted below is a clip of Jim Cramer making his bold predictions during his appearance on Meet The Press. He is obviously very, very disturbed about the direction that Europe is heading in….
But what is Europe supposed to do? Even though “austerity measures” have been implemented in many eurozone nations, the truth is that they are all still running up more debt. Are European nations just supposed to run up massive amounts of debt indefinitely and pretend that there will never been any consequences?
That is apparently what Barack Obama wants. During the G-8 summit that just concluded, Obama urged European leaders to pursue a “pro-growth” path.
Of course to Obama a “pro-growth” economic plan includes spending trillions of dollars that you do not have without any regard for what you are doing to future generations.
Germany has been trying to get the rest of the eurozone to move much closer to living within their means, but as the recent elections in France and Greece demonstrated, much of the rest of the eurozone is not too thrilled with the end of debt-fueled prosperity.
In Greece, the recent elections failed to produce a new government, so new elections will be held on June 17th.
Many EU politicians are trying to turn these upcoming elections into a referendum on whether Greece stays in the eurozone or not. If the next Greek government is willing to honor the austerity agreements that have been previously agreed to, then Greece will probably stay in the eurozone for a while longer. If the next Greek government is not willing to honor the austerity agreements that have been previously agreed to, then Greece will probably be forced out of the eurozone.
The following is what John Praveen, the chief investment strategist at Prudential International Investments Advisers, had to say about the political situation in Greece recently….
“If the pro-euro major parties fail to muster enough support to form a coalition and the radical left Syriza party and other anti-euro, anti-austerity parties secure a majority, the risk of a disorderly Greek exit from the Euro increases and could roil markets”
Right now, polls show the leading anti-austerity party, Syriza, doing very well. The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, has declared that he plans “to stop the experiment” with austerity and that what the rest of the eurozone has tried to do in Greece is a “crime against the Greek people“.
But the Germans do not see it that way. The Germans just want the Greeks to stop spending far more money than they bring in.
The Germans do not want to endlessly bail out the Greeks if the Greeks are not willing to show some financial discipline.
As we approach the June 17th elections, the financial markets are likely to be quite nervous. According to Art Hogan of Lazard Capital Partners, many investors are deeply concerned about how “sloppy” a great exit from the euro could be….
“Next week is only one of the four weeks we have to wait until the Greek election. Every utterance out of Greece makes us think about their [possible] exit and how sloppy that could be”
Most Greek citizens want to remain in the eurozone and most European politicians want Greece to remain in the eurozone, but it is looking increasingly likely as if that may not happen.
In fact, there are reports that preparations are rapidly being made for a Greek exit. According to Reuters, “contingency plans” for the printing of Greek drachmas have already been drawn up….
De La Rue (DLAR.L) has drawn up contingency plans to print drachma banknotes should Greece exit the euro and approach the British money printer, an industry source told Reuters on Friday.
And even EU officials are now acknowledging that plans for a Greek exit from the euro are being developed. The following is what EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said during one recent interview….
“A year and a half ago, there may have been the danger of a domino effect,” he said, “but today there are, both within the European Central Bank and the European Commission, services that are working on emergency scenarios in case Greece doesn’t make it.”
When these kinds of things start to become public, that is a sign that officials really do not expect Greece to remain a part of the euro.
And Greece is rapidly beginning to run out of money. According to a recent Ekathimerini article, the Greek government is likely to run out of money at the end of June….
The public coffers are seen running dry at the end of June, but this will depend on two key factors. First, revenue collection: In the first 10 days of May, inflows were about 15 percent lower than projected but there are fears that the slide may reach 50 percent. The GAO will have a picture for the first 20 days on May 23, while the last three days of the month are considered crucial, when 1.5 billion euros of the month’s budgeted total of 3.6 billion are expected to flow in.
Second, whether the IMF and EFSF installments are disbursed: This is not certain, as the decision will be purely political for both providers and evidently partly linked to political developments. Earlier this month the eurozone approved a disbursement 1 billion short of the 5 billion euros that were expected.
If Greece runs out of money and if the rest of Europe cuts off the flow of euros, Greece would essentially be forced to leave the euro.
So the last half of June looks like it could potentially be a key moment for Greece.
Meanwhile, the Greek banking system is struggling to survive as hundreds of millions of euros get pulled out of it. The following is from a recent CNN article….
The Greek financial system is straining hard for cash.
Consumers and businesses are making massive withdrawals from Greece’s banks — leading to concern the beleaguered nation could be forced out of the eurozone by a banking crisis even before its government runs out of cash.
Deposits are the lifeblood of any bank, and Greeks pulled 800 million euros out of the banking system on Tuesday alone, the most recent day for which figures are available.
If Greece does leave the euro and the Greek banking system does collapse, that is going to be a clear signal that a similar scenario will be allowed to play out in other eurozone nations.
That is why Jim Cramer, myself and many others are warning that there could soon be bank runs all over the eurozone.
For example, the Telegraph has reported that wealthy individuals are starting to pull money out of Spanish banking giant Santander….
Customers with large deposits have started withdrawing cash from Santander, the bank has admitted, as it tried to reassure concerned members of the public that their money is safe.
Round and round we go. Where all this will stop nobody knows.
If Greece does end up leaving the euro, that could set off a chain of cascading events that could potentially be absolutely catastrophic.
And if the “house of cards” does come down in Europe, that is going to greatly destabilize the global derivatives market.
You see, the truth is that the global derivatives market is very delicately balanced. The assumption most firms make is that things are not going to deviate too much from what is considered “normal”.
If we do end up seeing “financial anarchy” in Europe, that is going to greatly destabilize the system and we could rapidly have a huge derivatives crisis on our hands.
And as we saw with JP Morgan recently, losses from derivatives can add up really fast.
Originally, we were told that the derivatives losses that JP Morgan experienced recently came to a total of only about 2 billion dollars.
Now, we are told that it could be a whole lot more than that. According to the Wall Street Journal, JP Morgan could end up losing about 5 billion dollars (or more) before it is all said and done….
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is struggling to extricate itself from disastrous wagers by traders such as the “London whale,” in a sign that the size of its bets could bog down the bank’s unwinding of the trades and deepen its losses by billions of dollars.
The nation’s largest bank has said publicly that its losses on the trades have surpassed $2 billion, and people familiar with the matter have said they could over time reach $5 billion.
And if Europe experiences a financial collapse, the losses experienced by U.S. firms could make that 5 billion dollars look like pocket change. The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers….
According to Reuters once you include Spain and Italy as well as Credit Default Swaps and indirect exposure to Europe, US banks have roughly $4 TRILLION in potential exposure to the EU.
To put that number in perspective, the entire US banking system is $12 trillion in size.
Interesting days are ahead my friends.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
The Federal Reserve says that everything is going to be okay. The Fed says that unemployment is going to go down, inflation is going to remain low and economic growth is going to steadily increase. Do you believe them this time? As you will see later in this article, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been dead wrong about the economy over and over again. But the mainstream media and many Americans still seem to have a lot of faith in the Federal Reserve. It doesn’t seem to matter that Bernanke and other Fed officials have been telling the American people lies for years. As I always say, most people believe what they want to believe, and many people seem to want to have blind faith in the Federal Reserve even when logic and reason would dictate otherwise. The truth is that things are not going to be getting much better than they are right now. When the next wave of the financial crisis hits, the U.S. economy is going to fall back into recession, financial markets are going to crash and unemployment is going to absolutely skyrocket. But you will never hear any of that from the Federal Reserve.
The following are 5 new lies that the Federal Reserve is telling the American people. After each lie I have posted what The Economic Collapse Blog thinks is actually going to happen….
#1 The Federal Reserve says that the labor market has improved and that unemployment is going to decline significantly over the next few years.
The following is a quote from the FOMC press release that was released on Wednesday….
Labor market conditions have improved in recent months; the unemployment rate has declined but remains elevated.
The Federal Reserve is projecting that the unemployment rate will fall within the range of 7.8 percent and 8.0 percent by the end of 2012.
The Federal Reserve is also projecting that the unemployment rate will fall within the range of 6.7 percent and 7.4 percent by the end of 2014.
The Economic Collapse Blog says that the labor market has not improved. In March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Exactly two years later in March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job. If the labor market was improving, the percentage of working age Americans with a job should have gone up.
The Economic Collapse Blog also says that while there is a chance the official unemployment rate may go down slightly in the short-term, the truth is that it is going to go up into double digits once the next wave of the financial crisis hits us.
#2 The Federal Reserve says that that U.S. economy is going to experience solid GDP growth over the next couple of years.
In fact, the Federal Reserve is projecting that U.S. GDP will be rising at an annual rate that falls between 3.1 percent and 3.6 percent by the end of 2014.
The Economic Collapse Blog says that a great economic cataclysm is coming….
“When the European banking system crashes (and it will) it is going to reverberate around the globe. The epicenter of the next great financial crisis is going to be in Europe, and it is getting closer with each passing day.”
#3 The Federal Reserve says that we can expect low inflation for an extended period of time.
The Federal Reserve is officially projecting that the annual rate of inflation will not be higher than 2.0 percent by the end of 2012. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reinforced this projection during his press conference on Wednesday….
“But we expect that to pass through the system, and assuming no new shocks in the oil sector, inflation ought to moderate to about 2 percent later this year.”
The Economic Collapse Blog says that the Fed is being tremendously dishonest and that if inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the annual rate of inflation would be more than 10 percent right now.
The truth is that most middle class families know that we do not have low inflation right now. This is hammered home millions of times a day when average Americans visit the gas station or the grocery store.
At the beginning of the next recession inflation will likely subside, but that will only be because economic activity will be slowing down dramatically.
#4 The Federal Reserve says that it has built up a 30 year reputation for keeping inflation low.
Ben Bernanke actually had the gall to make the following claim during his press conference on Wednesday….
“We, the Federal Reserve, have spent 30 years building up credibility for low and stable inflation, which has proved extremely valuable in that we’ve been able to take strong accommodative actions in the last four, five years to support the economy.”
Oh really?
The Economic Collapse Blog says that the Federal Reserve has nearly a 100 year reputation for destroying the value of the U.S. dollar. Even using the Fed’s doctored numbers, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 95 percent since 1913.
To get a really good idea of just how much the dollar has been destroyed by the Fed over the years, just check out this chart.
#5 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that we should trust him because the Federal Reserve stands ready to do whatever is necessary to support the U.S. economy.
“If appropriate… we remain entirely prepared to take additional action”
The Economic Collapse Blog says that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is doing a great disservice by not warning the American people about the tremendous crisis that is coming. In a recent article I stated that this next crisis will blindside most Americans just like the last one did….
“Sadly, just like back in 2008, most people will never even see this next crisis coming.”
So who should you trust – the Federal Reserve or all of the half-crazed bloggers out there that are warning about the “serious doom” that is coming.
Well, come back to this article in a year or two and compare how accurate the predictions were.
In the end, time will tell who is telling lies and who is not.
If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
For example, let’s take a quick look at Ben Bernanke’s track record over the past several years.
#1 (July, 2005) “We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.”
#2 (October 20, 2005) “House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.”
#3 (November 15, 2005) “With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.”
#4 (February 15, 2006) “Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”
#5 (February 15, 2007) “Despite the ongoing adjustments in the housing sector, overall economic prospects for households remain good. Household finances appear generally solid, and delinquency rates on most types of consumer loans and residential mortgages remain low.”
#6 (March 28, 2007) “At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency.”
#7 (May 17, 2007) “All that said, given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system. The vast majority of mortgages, including even subprime mortgages, continue to perform well. Past gains in house prices have left most homeowners with significant amounts of home equity, and growth in jobs and incomes should help keep the financial obligations of most households manageable.”
#8 (January 10, 2008) “The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.”
#9 (June 10, 2008) “The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.”
But don’t worry, Ben Bernanke insists that he knows exactly what is going on this time.
So do you believe him?
A lot of Americans don’t. In fact, an “economic collapse” is the number one catastrophic event that Americans worry about according to one recent survey.
The central planners over at the Federal Reserve are not going to solve our economic problems.
The truth is that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems.
We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that debt bubble has been facilitated by the Fed.
Over the past three decades, the total amount of debt in America has increased by about 50 trillion dollars. By stealing from future generations, we have been able to live like kings and queens, but there is going to be a great price to pay for our foolishness.
Ben Bernanke and the other folks running the Federal Reserve are just going to keep insisting that everything is going to be okay for as long as they possibly can. They are going to tell you that they know exactly how to fix things and that the economy will be back on track very soon.
Well, we just had another bad jobs report. The U.S. economy created just 80,000 new jobs during the month of June. Normally, about 125,000 new jobs need to be created every month just to keep up with population growth. So it is a bit odd that the official unemployment rate did not rise above 8.2%. What is even more alarming is that the Social Security Administration is telling us that 85,000 U.S. workers “left the workforce” and enrolled in the Social Security Disability Insurance program during the month of June. That means that the number of Americans enrolling in Social Security Disability actually exceeded the number of new jobs that was created. That is definitely not a sign of recovery. Unfortunately, this is about as good as things are going to get. Right now corporate profits are at an all-time high and usually after a recession has ended the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs bounces back very strongly. But that has not happened this time, and when the next economic crisis hits things are going to get a lot worse.
James Holmes Is Not Alone – 20 More Examples Of The Sickos That Are Overrunning America
Why didn’t this type of thing happen back in the 1950s?
Why are our young people so violent and so mentally unstable?
What has changed?
Those are some very important questions. But most Americans will forget this incident very quickly and they will move on with their self-absorbed lives.
But there is so much about this shooting that calls for further examination.
What would make a highly educated 24 year old man do something so incredibly evil?
Why are so many young people suddenly “snapping” these days?
As our society continues to decay, how much worse are things going to get?
It is almost to the point where people are going to start becoming afraid of gathering in public places.
Most Americans never would have imagined that it would be dangerous to go to the movie theater.
But now people are going to look at going to the movies much differently.
And could it have been possible that James Holmes had some help?
There are some important questions that the media is not really focusing on in this case….
-How did an impoverished college student put together an arsenal of weapons, ammunition and body armor worth tens of thousands of dollars?
-Why do some eyewitnesses claim that he had at least one other person assisting him?
-Why did he surrender to police without offering any resistance whatsoever?
It would be great if we could get some answers to those questions.
In any event, this is yet another sign of how far our society has fallen. We are becoming more sick and more twisted with each passing day, and it is time to admit this fact.
The following are 20 more examples of the sickos that are overrunning America….
#1 A Sicko In Oregon That Breaks Into Homes In Order To Watch Computer Porn
According to CBS, one young man in Oregon has been breaking into homes with the intent of watching pornography on the Internet….
#2 Delaware Pediatrician That Sexually Abused 103 Children
Who is the bigger monster – James Holmes or the Delaware doctor that sexually abused 103 children? The following is from a recent Natural News article….
#3 Jerry Sandusky
Jerry Sandusky was supposed to be a role model. He was an assistant football coach at Penn State and he was heavily involved in charity work.
But it turns out that it was all a lie. In fact, a whole bunch of people involved in the Penn State football program knew what was going on and did not report it.
In the end, Jerry Sandusky was found guilty of 45 counts of sexually abusing young boys. He has become a national symbol of the depravity which is rotting away the very heart of this nation.
#4 Man That Kept His Wife Chained Up For 10 Years
What would you do to a man that kept his wife chained up for ten years?
According to one West Virginia news source, that is exactly what one man down in West Virginia did….
#5 Serial Foot-Licker In New York
Did serial foot-lickers even exist back in the 1950s?
Why are there so many of them running around today?
The following is from the New York Daily News….
#6 Houston Police Officer Accused Of Raping A Woman While On Duty
Who is supposed to keep all of these sickos under control?
The police?
Sadly, the police often are the sickos.
The following is from the Houston Chronicle….
#7 Philadelphia Police Officer Makes 14 Year Old Girl Watch Him Have Sex With A Prostitute After Sexually Assaulting Her
If we can’t trust the police, then who can we trust?
Recently there have been a bunch of reports of sexual misconduct by police in the national news.
The following is how Fox News described one particularly disturbing incident from the Philadelphia area….
#8 TSA Agent Spills Grandpa’s Ashes And Laughs About It
Almost every single day there is another TSA horror story in the news.
But what you are about to read is one of the worst of them all.
The following is from an ABC News article….
#9 Connecticut Man Threatens To Cut The Tongue Out Of The Mouth Of A 3 Year Old Child
What kind of a man would hold up a knife and threaten to cut the tongue out of the mouth of a 3 year old kid?
Sadly, that is exactly what happened up in Connecticut recently.
The following is from a WFSB report about this incident….
#10 Naked “Cannibal” Threatens To Eat Police Officers Down In Georgia
Why are so many criminals getting naked lately?
Why are so many criminals trying to eat people?
The following is from a recent Daily Mail article….
#11 Public School Administrator In New York Fired For Not Participating In A Gay Orgy
Almost every day there is another story in the news about a new school sex scandal somewhere in America.
The following is from Courthouse News Service….
#12 Naked Florida Man Bites Chunk From Another Man’s Stomach
This year criminals in America seem to have become obsessed with chewing on human flesh.
The following example is from a recent Daily Mail article….
#13 Father Who Killed His 3 Daughters Inside The Home Of His Ex-Wife
You know that society is really starting to break down when parents start killing their own children.
What one man up in Wisconsin is being charged with is absolutely horrific.
The following is from a recent CNN article….
#14 Pregnant Woman Set On Fire In Detroit
These days not even pregnant women are immune to violence.
What one pregnant woman up in Detroit went through recently is hard to stomach….
#15 New Jersey Man Throws His Own Intestines At Police
If the police were breaking into your home, would you cut out your own entrails and throw them at the police?
According to the Huffington Post, that is exactly what one man up in New Jersey did….
#16 Naked Man Brutally Murders A Hotel Maid
Why would anyone want to kill a 62 year old cleaning woman?
Many of the crimes that are being committed today are absolutely senseless.
The following is how the CBS affiliate in Sacramento reported this story….
#17 Crack-Fueled Sickos Abduct A Female Jogger
These days you are not safe anywhere in the country.
Just check out what happened to one math teacher from Montana. The following is how a Daily Mail article described what two very sick drug addicts did to her….
#18 Female Teacher Has Sex With Four Male Students
Why are so many public school teachers having sex with their students?
Don’t they realize that they will inevitably get caught?
Aren’t the dozens of other school sex scandals in the news sufficient warnings?
The following is from the NBC affiliate in Tucson, Arizona….
#19 Texas House Of Horrors
The nightmares that were happening in one quiet house in Texas are so horrifying that it is hard to find the words to describe them.
The following is from a New York Daily News article….
#20 Florida Man Bites The Lips Off Of A Kitten
What kind of a monster would bite the lips off of a kitten?
It is hard to imagine anyone actually doing such a thing, but according to WKMG this apparently happened….
I know that I used a lot of disturbing examples in this article, but I wanted to make my point very strongly.
James Holmes is not an isolated case. America is literally being overrun by sickos and monsters.
In the old days, our societal institutions were strong and they helped to tie us together.
But today there is very, very little that ties us together and keeps us grounded. Faith in almost every major institution in society is very low and our families are falling apart.
The percentage of adult Americans that are married right now is at an all-time low. The percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation at all is at an all-time high.
Our society is rotting from the inside out and many of our formerly great cities are degenerating into absolute hellholes.
Fixing America is not just a matter of fixing our economic system or our political system.
Fixing America is going to take a whole lot more than that.
So what do all of you think about this?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….