Is the United States “number one”? Many Americans take deep pride in their nation and the truth is that the U.S. has a lot going for it. The United States has the largest economy in the world. The United States also has the most powerful military on the entire planet. The United States has produced most of the greatest movies that the world has ever seen. But the United States is also number one in a lot of categories that are not go great. If we ever want to turn this country around, we need to be very honest with ourselves. We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that it is not a good thing that we are number one in divorce, drug addiction, debt, obesity, car thefts, murders and total crimes. We have become a slothful, greedy, decadent nation that is exhibiting signs of advanced decay. Until we understand just how bad our problems really are, we won’t be able to come up with the solutions that we need.
A lot of people that write articles like this have a deep hatred for America. But that is not the case with me. I love the United States. I love the American people. America is like an aging, bloated rock star that has become addicted to a dozen different drugs. America is a shadow of its former self and it desperately needs to wake up before it plunges into oblivion.
If you do not believe that America is in bad shape, just read the list below. The following are 20 not so good categories that the United States leads the world in….
#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.
#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.
#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
#20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.
So are you convinced that we are in trouble yet?
The truth is that America has changed. Most of us don’t even say hello to our neighbors anymore.
In fact, we have become so self-involved that many of us don’t even notice when someone around us dies.
Just consider the following two examples.
*USA Today recently reported on the body of a dead woman that was not found for approximately a year even though a whole bunch of people walked right past the car where she died….
Bank contractors, inspectors and even the new owner of a foreclosed home walked past the silver Chevy Nova in the garage numerous times before discovering the former homeowner — dead on the front seat.
*In an even more shocking case, the CBS affiliate in Boston recently reported that a dead woman was lying on the bottom of a public pool for two days while large numbers of people swam right over her. How in the world could something like this possibly happen?….
It’s a mystery as murky as the water at Veteran’s Memorial swimming pool in Fall River public pool: how did swimmers, lifeguards, or inspectors not notice a woman’s body at the bottom of the pool for a few days?
Marie Joseph, 36, was last seen at the pool on Sunday. The pool was open to the public Monday and Tuesday with six lifeguards on duty, and no one noticed the body under 12 feet of water.
Most Americans have become so self-involved that they barely even notice anyone other than their family and close friends.
The love of most Americans is growing cold and when the collapse of the U.S. economy happens it is just going to make things worse. Instead of working as a community, most Americans will only be concerned with making sure that their own needs are taken care of.
The United States was once the most blessed nation on the face of the earth, but now we are literally falling to pieces.
Does anyone have any ideas about why this could be happening?
If you do much grocery shopping, you have probably noticed that the cost of food has been rising at a very brisk pace over the past year. So why are food prices rising so fast? According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, inflation is still very low and the economy is improving. So what is going on here? When I go to the grocery store these days, there are very few things that I will buy unless they are on sale. In fact, I have noticed that many of the new “sale prices” are the old regular prices. Other items have had their packages reduced in size in order to hide the price increases. But with millions of American families just barely scraping by as it is, what is going to happen if food prices keep rising this rapidly?
The food prices are especially painful if you are trying to eat healthy. Most of the low price stuff in the grocery stores is garbage. Eating the “typical American diet” is a highway to cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
But if you try to stick to food that is “healthy” or “organic” you can blow through hundreds of dollars in a heartbeat. In fact, the reality is that tens of millions of American families have now essentially been priced out of a healthy diet.
Soon there will be millions more American families that will not even be able to afford an unhealthy diet.
Some recent statistics compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are absolutely staggering. According to a recent CNBC article, over the past year many of the most popular foods in America have absolutely soared in price….
Coffee, for instance, is up 40 percent. Celery is 28 percent higher while butter prices rose 26.4 percent. Rounding out the top five are bacon, at 23.5 percent, and cabbage, at 23.3 percent.
Unfortunately, it looks like the trend of rising food prices is accelerating. Just look at what the CNBC article says happened in the month of April alone….
Just in April—the most recent month for which data is available—grapes went up nearly 30 percent, cabbage jumped about 17 percent and orange juice surged more than 5 percent.
Meat is becoming more expensive as well. Since March 2009, livestock prices have risen by 138%.
So when Ben Bernanke tells us that inflation is very low, that really is a lie. On the stuff that people spend money on every day (like food and gas), prices have gone up dramatically.
Sadly, this is not just a phenomenon that is happening in the United States. The truth is that the entire planet is rapidly approaching a horrific global food crisis.
Over the past year, the global price of food has risen by 37 percent and this has pushed approximately 44 million more people around the world into poverty.
When food prices rise in the U.S. it may be painful for millions of American families, but around the world a rise in food prices can mean the difference between surviving and not surviving.
That is why it has been so alarming that the global price of wheat has approximately doubled over the past year.
But it is not just wheat that has been soaring. Check out what a recent Bloomberg article had to say about what has been happening to many key agricultural commodities over the past year….
Corn futures advanced 77 percent in the past 12 months in Chicago trading, a global benchmark, rice gained 39 percent and sugar jumped 64 percent. There will be shortages in corn, wheat, soybeans, coffee and cocoa this year or next, according to Utrecht, Netherlands-based Rabobank Groep. Prices also rose after droughts and floods from Australia to Canada ruined crops last year. European farmers are now contending with their driest growing season in more than three decades.
Even before this recent spike in food prices the world was struggling to get enough food to everybody. It has been estimated that somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five.
So what is going to happen if food prices keep on rising at the current pace?
That is a very good question.
We really are starting to move into unprecedented territory. Nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.
So why is all of this happening?
Well, a lot of people are blaming the Federal Reserve. All of the “quantitative easing” that the Fed has done has flooded the financial markets with money. All of that money had to go somewhere. Much of it has pumped up the prices of hard assets such as oil, gold and agricultural commodities.
But it is not just the Fed that is to blame. The truth is that central banks all over the world have been recklessly printing money.
When the amount of money in an economy goes up, the purchasing value of all existing money goes down. In the United States, that means that your dollars will not go as far as they did before.
But it is not just monetary policy that is affecting food prices. In 2010 and 2011 we have seen an unprecedented wave of natural disasters and crazy weather. This has caused problems with crops all over the globe.
In addition, U.S. economic policies are also playing a role. At this point, almost a third of all corn grown in the United States is used for fuel. This is putting a lot of stress on the price of corn.
Also, there are some long-term trends that are not in our favor. For example, the systematic depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer could eventually turn “America’s Breadbasket” back into the “Dust Bowl”. If you have not heard of this problem I would encourage you to do some research on it.
Things are going to get a lot worse, but already America is having a really hard time feeding itself. According to Feeding America’s 2010 hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.
So is that number unusual?
Yes, it sure is.
The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
That is not a good trend.
Another stat that I talk a lot about in this column is the number of Americans on food stamps.
Right now, there are 44 million Americans on food stamps. Nearly half of them are children.
How did we ever get to the point as a nation where more than 20 million children end up on food stamps?
It is estimated that one out of every four American children is currently on food stamps, and it is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?
What is going to happen if there really is a major food crisis in this country someday?
Food prices have been going up for decades and they are going to continue to go up. But the frightening thing is how fast they are increasing now.
As the U.S. middle class continues to be destroyed, the number of Americans that can’t afford to buy enough food is going to continue to rise. Food prices are rising much faster than wages are, and that is not likely to change any time soon.
Food is rapidly becoming one of the most important global economic issues of this decade. The farther one looks down the road, the bleaker things look for the global food situation.
Is the U.S. economy improving? That is what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would have us believe. Bernanke declared today that the “recovery appears to be proceeding at a moderate pace” and that everything is going pretty much as planned. Sadly, the mainstream media and most of the American people still seem to have faith in the economic pronouncements of Helicopter Ben. They seem to have forgotten all of the Bernanke quotes from before the financial crisis. Bernanke pledged that there would not be a housing crash and that there would not be a recession. It is amazing that anyone still believes that Bernanke has any credibility left.
Of course “economic recovery” is one of Barack Obama’s favorite new terms. He loves to talk about all of the signs that the economy is improving. To Obama, all of the recent bad economic news is no big deal. He says that what we are experiencing right now are simply “bumps on the road to recovery“.
Well, whether you want to call them “bumps” or “potholes” or “massive gaping wounds that are gushing blood all over the place”, the truth is that the U.S. economy is not improving at all. In fact, it is rapidly getting worse.
Let’s take a look at just a few areas of the economy….
Federal Government Finances
As I wrote about yesterday, the national debt is completely and totally out of control. Since Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt has increased by nearly 4 trillion dollars.
Keep in mind that from George Washington to Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government accumulated only 1 trillion dollars in debt.
Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.
Now the Democrats and the Republicans are busy negotiating over some modest reductions in spending.
But unprecedented federal spending is one of the only things propping the economy up right now.
If the U.S. economy is performing so poorly after being flooded with “stimulus money” from the federal government, what is going to happen once the federal government cuts back?
For the moment, let’s just focus on the state of Illinois.
Did you know that things have gotten so bad in Illinois at this point that the Illinois state government is letting bills go unpaid for long periods of time on a regular basis?
It’s true.
Right now they have billions in unpaid bills and they are facing a financial future that is so bleak that it is almost indescribable.
In one recent article, author Stephen Lendman described the horrific financial crisis that Illinois is facing right now….
With spending exceeding revenues, and obligations not postponed, unpaid bills are growing “at a frightening rate. For instance, IGPA’s Fiscal Futures Model indicates (they) could reach $40 billion by July 1, 2013, with an associated delay in paying those bills of more than five years.”
Besides its $13 billion deficit and $6 billion in unpaid bills, its pension fund is about $130 billion in the red – a red flag that state workers may lose out altogether, wiping out their promised retirement savings.
But it isn’t just the state government that is having problems. According to Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, the average household in Chicago would owe a whopping $63,525 if all local government debt was divided up equally among all of the households.
The truth is that even if the finances of the federal government could somehow be fixed, there would still be dozens and dozens of very significant “government debt problems” all across America.
With so many state and local governments drowning in debt, jobs are being slashed at an alarming rate. UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments in the U.S. will combine to slash a whopping 450,000 jobs by the end of next year.
So would the U.S. government step in and start bailing out state and local governments?
Not likely.
U.S. Representative Paul Ryan has said the following about the prospect of bailing out the states….
“If we bail out one state, then all of the debt of all of the states are almost explicitly on the books of the federal government.”
So for now, state and local governments are on their own.
Commercial Real Estate
Commercial real estate continues to decline all across America.
Moody’s/REAL All Property Type Aggregate Index fell 3.7% in April and is now the lowest it has been in over 10 years.
Overall, commercial real estate is down by over 40 percent since the peak back in 2007.
Residential Real Estate
The United States is dealing with a housing crash that never seems to end.
According to the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales in the United States fell another 3.8% in May.
During this housing crash home values have declined more than they did during the Great Depression and there does not appear to be any hope in sight.
New home sales are in even worse shape. During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.
Unemployment
As 2009 began, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent.
The American people keep waiting for a “jobs recovery”, but it has not shown up.
Sadly, all of this is part of a long-term trend.
Over the past decade, U.S. multinational corporations have been laying off millions of workers in the U.S. and hiring millions of workers overseas to take their place.
The labor of American workers is rapidly losing value in a globalized economy. Big corporations have a tough time justifying paying ten times more to a worker in the United States when they are allowed to hire people for slave labor wages overseas.
The share of the national income taken in by U.S. workers continues to decline. Just consider what Mortimer Zuckerman had to say in a recent article for usnews.com….
Labor’s share of national income has fallen to the lowest level in modern history, down to 57.5 percent in the first quarter as compared to 59.8 percent when the so-called recovery began. This reflects not only the 7 million fewer workers but the fact that wages for part-time workers now average $19,000—less than half the median income.
In the United States today, there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. The number of “middle class jobs” has fallen by about 10 percent over the last decade.
Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
We are seeing the rise of a whole class of people that are chronically unemployed. At the beginning of 2009, the number of “long-term unemployed” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is up to 6.2 million.
So in light of these employment statistics, can anyone really say that the economy is improving?
Economic Anxiety
The economy is the number one issue on the minds of the American people. There is an extraordinary about of economic pain out there today, and Americans are becoming impatient.
According to CNBC, the Money Anxiety Index is at its highest level in 30 years….
The latest indicator to ring up trouble is the Money Anxiety Index, which uses traditional economic metrics as well as other factors to gauge the level of consumers’ worry regarding their personal financial conditions.
According to the May figures, the MAI is not only at its highest level in 30 years at 91.9 but also two months away from indicating another dip into recession. In the past, five straight months of increases in the index often signaled recession.
Most recent polls show that the American people are rapidly becoming more pessimistic about the direction the U.S. economy is headed.
By making inflation appear lower, it would be easier for Congress to deny cost of living increases to those on Social Security and other social programs.
How sad is that?
Economic Suffering
As American families find it increasingly difficult to pay the mortgage and put food on the table, many of them find themselves forced to put off other expenses. According to one recent survey, 26 percent of Americans have put off doctor visits because of the economy.
Other Americans can’t make it at all without government assistance. As 2007 began, there were only 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, which is an all-time record.
It is not good to have so many Americans on food stamps, but it is probably better than the alternative.
If there were tens of millions of Americans that could not feed themselves we would probably already have economic riots in the streets.
Solutions?
So do our politicians have any solutions?
Of course not. Everything that they have tried has failed.
Several top Democrats in Washington D.C. are now calling for a new economic stimulus package. When in doubt, our politicians usually revert to spending more money.
Sadly, this is about the best that our economy is going to get.
What we are experiencing right now is “the recovery”. As we move forward things are going to get progressively worse.
A lot of people don’t like to hear that we are in the middle of a long-term economic decline, but that is the truth.
The era of tremendous economic prosperity for America is coming to an end.
Do you believe that the U.S. economy is steamrolling toward a depression? If so, you are not alone. According to a recent CNN poll, 48 percent of Americans believe that “another Great Depression” is likely within the next 12 months. Americans have been waiting for almost three years for a “recovery” to materialize, but instead there are all kinds of signs that the economy is about to get worse yet again. Inflation is rising but wages are not. There are millions of Americans that would do just about anything to get a decent job. The “misery index” is the highest it has been in almost 30 years. All of the recent polls show that the American people are more pessimistic about the economy than at any other time in recent memory. World financial markets are incredibly unstable right now and many analysts are expecting a repeat of 2008 (or worse). Meanwhile, our state and local governments are drowning in debt, the federal government is drowning in debt and governments all over Europe are drowning in debt. No, it is not crazy for 48 percent of Americans to believe that we are about to go into another Great Depression.
Just think about that statistic for a moment. Nearly half of the country expects the economy to fall to pieces at some point over the next year.
So do I agree with them?
Yes, I certainly believe that an economic collapse is coming. But that doesn’t mean that it will necessarily happen within the next year. The United States is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, and the next big financial crisis could potentially happen in 2011 or 2012.
But it might not.
There are so many variables and it is so hard to predict with certainty the exact timing of how things will play out.
However, it is true that incredibly painful economic times are coming. Our long-term economic future looks unbelievably bleak.
So anyone that believes that we are headed for another depression is certainly not crazy. The following are 19 reasons why it is perfectly rational to be pessimistic about the U.S. economy right now….
#1 Today, 25 million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. 6 million of those have been out of work for at least 6 months. The average duration of unemployment in the U.S. is now close to 40 weeks.
#2 The unofficial misery index, which is calculated by combining unemployment and inflation, is now at a 28 year high.
#3 Sadly, if unemployment and inflation were calculated the same way that they were back in the 1970s, the misery index would actually be much, much higher. According to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, the current “real” rate of inflation is approximately 11.2% instead of the 3.6% figure that the U.S. government wants us to believe.
#4 Greece is on the verge of complete and total financial collapse. The yield on two year Greek bonds is up to 28 percent. The European Central Bank and the German government have been fighting over what to do to solve the Greek crisis. The truth is that without a bailout the Greek government will default. If Greece defaults, it would be a huge nightmare for world financial markets.
#5 Neil MacKinnon, an analyst at VTB Capital, is warning that a Greek implosion could set off a 2008-style financial crisis….
“The risk of a ‘Lehman moment’ for the eurozone is increasing”
#6 Spain is also potentially a major problem. The Spanish economy is more than twice the size of the Greek, Irish and Portuguese economies combined. Over the past 12 months, the yield on 10 year Spanish bonds has been rising steadily, and many believe that Spain could be the tipping point that pushes the sovereign debt crisis in Europe over the edge.
#7 State and local governments all over the United States are cutting their budgets and are implementing brutal austerity measures. For example, one small town in Alabama has actually decided that they are simply going to stop paying pension benefits to their retirees. In other areas, teachers and police officers are being fired in massive numbers. UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments in the U.S. will combine to slash a whopping 450,000 jobs by the end of next year.
#8 The middle class in the United States is being systematically ripped to shreds. The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States at this point.
#9 It is never a good sign when even the big Wall Street banks start laying off workers. CNBC is reporting that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and many other big firms on Wall Street are planning some large staff reductions in the months ahead. That is a very bad sign for the economy.
#10 Things have gotten so bad that some mainstream media outlets are actually encouraging Americans to go out and start racking up credit card debt once again. For example, one recent USA Today article was actually entitled “More credit card debt might be good for the economy“. Of course the big banks are ready to suck the lifeblood out of anyone that does slip up on making their credit card payments. One major bank has announced that a single late payment could result in a penalty rate as high as 29.99%.
#11 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the share of national income being taken home by American workers is at a post-war low and is rapidly declining.
#12Reuters is reporting that many of Wall Street’s biggest banks plan to cut their use of U.S. Treasuries starting in August. China has already been dumping short-term U.S. debt. But if most of the big players abandon the market, who is going to buy up the massive amounts of debt that the U.S. government needs to issue?
“At some point, the pain of high unemployment may lead to some new thinking in Washington – but until that time, welcome to the second Great Depression”
#14 The U.S. banking system could plunge into disaster at any moment. The FDIC is backing up 7 trillion dollars in deposits with an insurance fund that barely has anything in it.
#15 It seems like almost everyone is talking about the next financial collapse. Renowned investor Jim Rogers recently said the following….
“I would expect to see some serious problems in the foreseeable future….By 2011, 2012, 2013, 2013, I don’t know when, we’re going to have an economic slowdown again.”
There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner,” says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, “because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”
#17 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period. It is clearly unsustainable for our debt to be growing so much faster than our economy is.
“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.”
#19 The American people are extremely pessimistic about the economy right now. According to one recent poll, 56 percent of Americans have lost sleep due to the economy and about three-quarters of Americans believe that the nation is on the wrong track.
The nation is in a very sour mood right now, and this is causing even many in the mainstream media to ask some very hard questions.
For example, Jack Cafferty recently asked the following question to viewers on CNN….
“What are the chances the U.S. economy could eventually trigger violence in our country?”
You can view the video of Cafferty asking this question right here or you can just watch it below….
Sadly, we are already starting to see violence erupt all over North America.
In previous articles I have discussed the insanity that has been going on in major U.S. cities such as Chicago.
Now even the mainstream media is being forced to report on the surge in violence.
A recent USA Today article described some of the most recent mob robberies that have been happening in Chicago….
A Chicago Tribune report tells of a 68-year-old man from Washington State who was set upon while he was smoking a cigar on a bench when youths surrounded him, attacked him and reportedly stole a phone and iPad. The report says a 42-year-old Japanese tourist also was beaten and robbed on a bicycle path by the lakefront. The paper says seven were arrested, but that the group participating in the felonies was estimated at 15 to 20 people strong. One 20something suburbanite told Chicago’s WGN TV that he was hit so hard in the head with a baseball that it knocked his motorcycle helmet off. he managed to fight his way out of trouble and hail police, he said.
When people don’t have hope, they get desperate.
There are millions of other Americans that are suffering through this economy quietly.
There are so many people out there that have worked hard and have followed all the rules and yet now find themselves struggling just to survive.
For example, a reader named Carolyn recently left a comment in which she shared her story with my readers….
My husband lost his long-term job in 2009 due to budget cuts. Don’t worry, I said. I’m still working, and we have a year of our salary in savings. You’re smart, you’re educated, you’re a hard worker. You’ll find a job soon.
Two months later, my long-term job was sent to India.
I still wasn’t worried. I’m smart, I’m educated, and I’m a smart worker.
A year and a half later, I haven’t found new career yet. I’m 50. No one is going to hire me. I am working – at a Home Depot. At a 79% pay cut from my prior position. But it doesn’t pay for anything. My husband found a new position in his field – at a 62% pay cut from his prior position.
We lived off unemployment and our savings, until both ran out. We put our house and investment property on the market the day after I lost my job.
We haven’t had one offer.
We just had our Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharged. Our foreclosure is still pending. No word yet when that will be done.
To add insult to injury, we owe Federal income taxes on the penalties we used to make withdrawals from our 401(k)’s to live off. My husband took a job in another state, and we were SHOCKED to learn that we owed NEW YORK STATE taxes on the income he earned in Mississippi – to New York state! Apparently there is some loophole that if you are a property owner in New York, but earn income in another state, you have to pay New York state income taxes on out of state earned income.
We’ve been told once our foreclosure is finalized, we may owe taxes on that as well.
What happened to our country?
It is so sad to see what is happening to America.
Things are so hard out there for so many millions of American families right now.
But the truth is that things are much better at the moment than they will be in a few years.
So what is America going to look like when there is no doubt that the economy has collapsed and people have no hope at all?
What we are now witnessing is the slow motion unraveling of America. Our economy is dying, the American people have lost faith in the government and in almost all of our other major institutions, and our society is collapsing. Most Americans don’t understand why all of this is happening, but most of them do realize that something has fundamentally changed. Earlier this year, McDonald’s held a “National Hiring Day” and a million Americans showed up to apply for jobs. Only 62,000 of them were hired. That means only 6.2% of the applicants got jobs. So what are we supposed to tell the 93.8% that didn’t get hired? Are they supposed to have any hope for the future when they can’t even get a minimum wage job at McDonald’s? When I was a teenager, I went over to McDonald’s one day, filled out an application and was instantly hired. My, how things have changed. Now we have millions upon millions of young people that are staring directly into a very bleak future. The level of frustration in this country is rising to frightening levels and large numbers of people are already showing that they will stoop to anything in order to survive.
In a recent article entitled “18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating” I focused primarily on the chaos that has been erupting in many of our urban areas. But the truth is that, as you will see below, there are signs that society is collapsing coming out of very rural areas as well. This phenomenon cannot just be pinned down to one area of the country or to one group of people. From coast to coast people are already starting to lose it and the economic collapse has only just begun.
The cold, hard reality of the matter is that what we are experiencing right now is rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming down the road.
So if people will behave this wildly now, what is our society going to look like someday when there are millions of Americans that have not had anything to eat for several days?
That is something to think about.
History has shown us that when people are really, really hungry they will do just about anything.
But right now we are not even close to that point and yet people all across America are going crazy.
The following are 12 more signs that society is collapsing….
#1In my previous article, I detailed how the “mob robbery” phenomenon in Chicago is spinning wildly out of control. Well, just this morning, the brother of Billy Corgan (the front man for the Smashing Pumpkins) was mugged and had his iPod stolen by a mob of teens while he was riding a Red Line train in Chicago.
Things have gotten so bad that now even The Wall Street Journal is taking notice of the rash of “mob robberies” that have been happening in Chicago. The following is how a new article in the Journal described one of the recent attacks….
In another incident last Saturday evening, Krzysztof Wilkowski, after shopping on Michigan Avenue, was sitting on his scooter a couple of blocks away checking his phone for a restaurant when he got whacked in the face with a baseball.
At first, he said, he thought it was a prank, but then he looked up and saw 15 to 20 young men approaching. “My first reaction was, ‘I’m about to get robbed, what do I do?’ ” Mr. Wilkowski recalled in an interview.
The 34-year-old insurance company employee from a Chicago suburb grabbed the keys from his ignition and held tight to his phone. A few of the attackers dragged him off his scooter and pulled him onto Chicago Avenue where they punched him, hit him with his helmet and tried to grab his phone.
#2 Sadly, “mob robberies” are not just happening in Chicago. The following is a video of a mob robbery that took place in Stockton, California….
This next video is an Associated Press video report about how police have become extremely concerned about the “flash mobs” that have been plaguing Philadelphia lately…..
This is a very, very disturbing trend. Once these videos go up on YouTube, other groups of young people “copycat” them all over the country.
The next 10 signs are from some of my readers. In response to my previous article that discussed how society is collapsing, a number of people left comments that described what is happening in their particular areas. Sometimes so many dozens of comments get left that some real gems get overlooked. The following is a sampling of what my readers have been sharing about how society is collapsing where they live….
#3 Golden Child (Third Richest County In America):
About a month ago I was robbed in broad daylight walking to the store on a picture perfect 75 degree sunny day at 1 PM by two high school dropout teenagers on the path in my nice suburban town which is located in third richest county in America! A few months before that I was beaten unconscious by random drunk young people on the path near my home that I woke up in the hospital getting stitches in my face. This will be one dangerous summer for places all across America.
#4 Chris (Fargo, North Dakota):
I live in Fargo,ND and we have been having a rash of crime lately. In the past 6 months we have had multiple gas station robberies, bank robberies, and the latest, a shooting at one of our three movie theaters.
#5 Sue (Ogden, Utah):
I am a teacher in Ogden, Utah and this last winter I had a second grade student tell me that if I didn’t tell him how old I was that he was going to “shoot me in the back of my head.” He was suspended from school because that is a threat of violence, but nothing changed. His parents are active gang members.
#6 Heather (Columbus, Ohio):
I live close enough to Columbus, OH to follow the news there. (Thankfully far enough away not to be regularly affected by it.) Every day there is a new report of a violent crime. I believe we are up to 70 or so murders on the year. 10 years ago this wasn’t the case. I could (and did) walk into the worst part of the city and be safe as long as I was vigilant. I wouldn’t try that for the world now. I used to be a bank teller there and there’d be maybe 1 robbery a month throughout the city. It’s at least one a week now, probably more than that. And it’s no longer the downtown banks that are getting robbed–it’s the suburban ones.
#7 The Baroness (Atlanta):
I live in Atlanta Georgia. Everyday there are signs. Today’s headlines are: Babysitter kills toddler, 2 shot outside teen party, Brick thrown from I-75 overpass and several more.
#8 Gas Panic (Unknown):
The first, a 21 year old pizza delivery girl who was held with a knife to her throat while making a delivery. They took all the money she had on her and even took the time to search her car! The second was a 30 year old woman who told me she was walking down the street and was solicited by a pimp telling her she could “make good money”. After she told him to get lost, he stabbed her in the back of the arm. She needed over twenty stitches and showed me the wound.
#9 NS (Fairbanks, Alaska):
Even in Fairbanks, Alaska, there has been similar “mob robbing” going on. Yes, it is spreading everywhere.
#10 Katherine (Unknown):
I’ve also seen a huge increase in theft, vandalism, sexual assault, and violence just in the past couple of years. This is in a city that used to make the list in top places to live in the U.S. year after year.
#11 Doktryn (Richmond, California):
I live in Richmond California aka the city with the 2nd highest murder rate next to New Orleans, aka the city where the probability of you being killed is 5x higher. It is getting very serious out here, and luckily I don’t live in the rough part, however I go to the rough part to try to witness and preach. People are walking zombies. At any point their lives can be taken but the fact is, this is all they know. It is completely hopeless and when you wrote about “American Hellholes” I live in one. Richmond, CA is a post-industrial warzone. I work in the manufacturing industry, and I got here not long ago, but if you just drive through the city, the boarded up homes and abandoned warehouses tell the tale of how a deindustrialized city quickly turns to a battlefield.
#12 IWillSurvive (Rural America):
In my area we have been able to sleep well enough and always known our neighbors – up until a few months ago I did not lock my cars or my home most of the time – there was no need. That has changed, neighbors are now siphoning gas out of cars from desperation, and stealing scrap lumber, metal, livestock, produce and anything else they can get their hands on to sell or eat. Over the last year or so the police departments of some areas have started taking these seriously and actually investigated and caught a few. They are sometimes groups of people working together to amass resources to sell. We now keep a vigilant eye on our little flock of chickens and we have a colony of rabbits as well. We no longer “free range” them on our property at all – the risk of theft is too high if others know we have them. We keep any resources away from the road on the back side of our property – we also keep two German Shepherd Dogs for guarding our property. Living in the country is NOT what it used to be.
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Sadly, this is just the beginning.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
As the economy collapses, the chaos is going to get a lot worse.
I wish that wasn’t true, but this is the world we live in now.
The recent article I did about the “economic hell” that American families are going through right now got a huge response, but honestly what we are experiencing right now is not even worth comparing to how nightmarish things are going to be when our economic system fully collapses.
We have been on the biggest debt binge that the world has ever seen. Our debt-fueled prosperity has enabled us to enjoy an unprecedented standard of living. But the largest debt bubble in the history of the world is going to pop, and when it does the party is going to be over.
As the U.S. economy collapses, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is going to begin to disappear. In fact, there are already an increasing number of signs that the collapse of society is accelerating. In cities such as Chicago, roving packs of young people are “mob robbing” local businesses, randomly assaulting tourists and shoppers and are even pulling people out of vehicles. This isn’t just happening in the “bad areas” anymore. Over the past couple of months this type of crime has been common in some of the wealthiest areas of Chicago. In fact, many Chicago residents are now referring to “the Magnificent Mile” as “the Mug Mile”. But it isn’t just in Chicago that this is happening. During this past Memorial Day weekend, cities all over the United States experienced a stunning wave of mass violence. We are supposed to be an “example” for the rest of the world, but as our economic wealth crumbles we are witnessing the collapse of society all around us. So what is going to happen when the economy gets even worse?
The United States used to be a fairly civilized society. But now very few people seem to care how they treat others. That is even the case with our own government. As you will see below, the government is now sending SWAT teams in and dragging people out of their homes over unpaid student loans.
So if the government is going to be so brutal, what kind of message does that send to our young people?
Today our young people are facing a future that looks incredibly bleak. It is hard to have faith in the “system” when the “system” simply does not work any longer.
What are you supposed to say to a young person when you know very well that there are no jobs and that there is very little hope?
Most Americans don’t understand what is causing the collapse of the economy, but most of them do have a sinking feeling that something has seriously gone wrong.
For the last few years the American people have waited patiently for our politicians to “fix things”, but they have not gotten the job done.
Instead, our economic situation is still declining.
So now frustration is starting to boil over, and it is only going to get worse.
The following are 18 signs that the collapse of society is accelerating….
#1 In a brand new article, Janet Tavakoli has vividly described the wave of shocking violence that is currently sweeping the city of Chicago. What she says is happening to Chicago right now is beyond alarming….
This year, all hell has broken loose in downtown Chicago. Years of under-hiring have resulted in a police force that is unprepared for wildings and gang violence. Moreover, concealed carry in Chicago is illegal, unless one follows the Constitution.
Tourists and residents have been attacked by mobs of youths on buses, on beaches, on bicycle paths, near the shops of the Magnificent Mile, and outside their homes. Mobs of shoplifters plagued “Mug Mile” stores.
Terror has descended on many of the wealthiest areas of Chicago. Some are even calling on Chicago residents to completely avoid areas like the Magnificent Mile during the weekends until more police are brought in.
Mobs of young people are “swarming” retail stores, assaulting shoppers and pedestrians and even pulling people out of their cars.
The following is one eyewitness account of the “wildings” in Chicago that Tavakoli included in her recent article….
At about 11pm last Friday night, June 3rd, I heard shouting, screaming, horns blaring and tires screeching from my apartment…When I looked out my window to the street below I saw a crowd of about 20 young people…directly across the street from the entrance to my building. They were leaning on parked cars and clogging the street. They were screaming at people walking and driving by. I watched them stop vehicles, including taxi cabs, and pull people from the vehicles…It was a frightening scene and I was sure someone was going to be hurt.
#2 If you don’t pay your student loans you may find yourself getting dragged out of your home by a SWAT team.
You doubt this?
The following is how an article in The Daily Mail recently described one recent SWAT team raid in California that was apparently ordered by the Department of Education….
A father was dragged from his home and handcuffed in front of his children by a SWAT team looking for his estranged wife – to collect her unpaid student loans.
A stunned Kenneth Wright had his front door kicked in by the raiding party at 6 am yesterday before being dragged onto his front porch, handcuffed and led to a police car with his three children.
He says he was then detained for six hours while officers looked for his wife – who no longer lives at the house.
#3 One town in Connecticut was forced to shut down a beautiful new fountain because too many people were using it as a toilet.
#4 This most recent Memorial Day weekend, cities all over America literally turned into war zones. There were reports of mass violence in Miami, New York, Chicago, Charlotte, Myrtle Beach, Nashville and Boston among other places.
If you want to see video of some of the violence in Miami as it was happening, you can view it here. The video is quite disturbing so please don’t let any small children view it.
#5 One of the hottest books in America right now is a “children’s book” entitled “Go The F*k To Sleep“.
#7 In New York City, one 32-year-old man was recently charged with sexually assaulting an 85-year-old woman.
#8 Democratic strategist James Carville recently made national headlines when he told talk show host Don Imus the following….
“You know, look — this is a humanitarian — you know, you’re smart enough to see this . . . People, you know, if it continues, we’re going to start to see civil unrest in this country. I hate to say that, but I think it’s imminently possible.”
#9According to one new study, the percentage of U.S. households that contain a married couple with children has fallen from 44.3% in 1960 to 20.2% today.
#10 In Atlanta, two dozen teens recently violently assaulted two Delta flight attendants on a train for no apparent reason. The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the attacks….
Their “Clockwork Orange” style blitz was over soon after it began. The teens boarded the train, headed to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, at the Garnett station a little after midnight seemingly intent on instilling fear. They succeeded.
“There was blood everywhere, people were hollering and screaming,” a witness told Channel 2 Action News. “We were intimidated. People were terrified. People were trying to run. But there was nowhere to run.”
#11 Federal prosecutors in Indianapolis have announced that they have broken up one of the largest child pornography rings ever discovered. It was based in Bloomington, Indiana.
Are any small towns still safe?
#12 Barack Obama’s food safety chief is defending armed raids of raw milk producers (including a raid on an Amish farmer) and he says that the FDA will “keep doing our public health job“.
#13 In Florida, a 45-year-old Polk County sheriff’s deputy has been charged with strapping children to a desk and spanking them with sex toys.
#14 In Sioux City, Iowa a 41 year old man recently walked into the office where his boss worked and beat the living daylights out of him. The boss suffered four chipped teeth and needed surgery to repair his nose. Apparently the boss was planning to fire the man.
#15 A 20-year-old woman in Oklahoma has been charged with killing the family cat and using the blood as part of a costume she planned to wear to a Lady Gaga concert.
#16 McDonald’s recently held a “National Hiring Day” and about a million Americans showed up to apply for jobs at McDonald’s restaurants all around the nation. Well, in Cleveland a horrible fight broke out between some girls and it ended up with three people being run over by a car. You can view video of this incident right here. Please do not watch the video if you are sensitive to graphic violence.
#17 All over the United States, vicious restaurant brawls have been erupting with alarming frequency and many of them are being posted up on YouTube for the world to see. You can see one example of this phenomenon right here.
#18 From coast to coast, “mob robbing” has become a very disturbing trend.
So what is a “mob robbing”?
Well, basically dozens of young people storm into a store together, grab whatever they want, and storm back out again.
So does anyone still doubt that we are starting to see the collapse of society?
Sadly, things are going to get a whole lot worse.
In response to a recent article entitled “The Coming Economic Hell For American Families“, a frequent commenter on my site known as “El Pollo De Oro” left the following comment about the collapse of society that is beginning to unfold….
Yes, it’s going to be VERY violent in The Banana Republic of America. Carjacking, kidnapping, drug trafficking, armed robbery and murder for hire will be major growth industries in the BRA when millions of formerly middle class Americans, now the neo-poor/neo-peasants, become increasingly desperate. The horrifying violence in Mexico will become a fact of life on this side of the border, the brutal kidnappings of the Philippines and Papua New Guinea will plague the BRA as well. Formerly middle class Americans who find themselves living in shantytown slums won’t like their new accommodations, and many of them will turn to violent crime in the hope of improving their miserable circumstances.
The truth is that about the only thing keeping our society together has been the unprecedented affluence that we have been enjoying over the past few decades.
Once that affluence is gone, the true character of the American people will come out, and we may not like what we see.
That is one reason why I pound on the economic crisis this nation is facing day after day. Once our wealth is gone, there is going to be chaos in the streets of America.
So what are you seeing in your area of the country? Do you see signs that the collapse of society is accelerating where you live? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
The global economy has become so incredibly unstable at this point that it is not going to take much to plunge the world into a horrific economic nightmare. The foundations of the world economic system are so decayed and so corrupted that even a stiff breeze could potentially topple the entire structure over. Over the past couple of months a constant parade of bad economic news has come streaming in from Europe, Asia and the United States. Signs of an impending economic slowdown are everywhere. So what “tipping point” will trigger the next global economic downturn? Nobody knows for sure, but potential tipping points are all around us.
Today, the global economic system is even more vulnerable than it was back in 2008. Virtually none of the systemic problems that contributed to the 2008 collapse have been fixed.
“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”
The “financial reform” law that Barack Obama and the Congress passed a while back was a complete and total joke. They might as well have written the law on toilet paper for all the good that it is doing.
We did not learn from our mistakes and our future economic lessons are going to be even more painful.
The world is drowning in a mountain of debt, the global financial system is packed to the gills with toxic derivatives, everyone is leveraged to the hilt and the dominoes could start falling at any time.
I am not the only one that is warning that another financial collapse is coming. In fact, a whole lot of people have been warning about the next financial collapse lately.
So what will the tipping point for the next collapse be?
The following are some potential nominees….
Tipping Point #1: Syria
Syria is a situation to watch very, very closely. The Syrian government is in a lot of trouble right now. Sadly, the instability inside Syria probably makes war with Israel even more likely.
Make no mistake – a war between Israel and Syria has been brewing for a long, long time and at some point it will happen. When it happens, the entire Middle East may erupt in warfare.
Just the other day, a very troubling incident happened in the area around the Golan Heights. The following is an excerpt from a report by The Daily Mail about the incident….
“About 20 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were killed and 325 injured yesterday when Israeli forces opened fire on them as they crossed the border from Syria into occupied territories, according to reports.”
At this point, the Syrian government is probably glad that the attention has been taken off of them at least for a while. The Syrian government has been getting a lot of bad press lately. The following is an excerpt from a recent report by Human Rights Watch about the treatment of protesters inside Syria….
“The methods of torture included prolonged beatings with sticks, twisted wires, and other devices; electric shocks administered with Tasers and electric batons; use of improvised metal and wooden ‘racks'; and, in at least one case documented by Human Rights Watch, the rape of a male detainee with a baton.
“Interrogators and guards also subjected detainees to various forms of humiliating treatment, such as urinating on the detainees, stepping on their faces, and making them kiss the officers’ shoes. Several detainees said they were repeatedly threatened with imminent execution.”
So in light of the “precedent” that we recently set in Libya, does this mean that we will be “forced” to conduct a “humanitarian mission” inside Syria as well?
Syria is one tipping point that we all need to keep a close eye on.
Tipping Point #2: Iran
The Iranian nuclear program is in the news again. A new report by RAND Corporation researcher Gregory S. Jones claims that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within 2 months. His report is based on recent findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to Jones, airstrikes alone would be incapable of stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program at this point. Instead, Jones says that a “military occupation” would be required.
It is a minor miracle that a war with Iran has not erupted yet. It seems almost inevitable that at some point either the United States or Israel will use military force to try to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
When that happens, it is going to cause a major shock to the global economy.
Tipping Point #3: Libya
NATO has made it abundantly clear that Moammar Gadhafi will no longer be tolerated. In fact, NATO apparently plans to reduce Tripoli to a heap of smoking ruins if that is what it takes to bring about the fall of Gadhafi.
What a “humanitarian mission” we have going in Libya, eh? It turns out that NATO believes that the United Nations gave it permission to bomb television stations and to make attack runs with helicopters.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov recently said that by using attack helicopters, NATO has moved dangerously close to turning the Libya operation into a ground invasion….
“Using attack helicopters, in my view, is the last but one step before the land operation.”
So why is Libya a potential tipping point?
It isn’t because Gadhafi is a threat. He is toast.
It is because the rest of the world is watching what is happening in Libya, and that is raising global tensions.
Even if Gadhafi falls, the Libyan operation will still be a failure because it has brought us all significantly closer to World War III.
Tipping Point #4: More Revolutions In The Middle East
The revolutions throughout the Middle East earlier this year sent oil prices absolutely skyrocketing and they have remained at elevated levels.
And in case you haven’t noticed, revolutions continue to sweep the Middle East.
Have you seen what has been happening in Yemen lately?
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has burns over 40% of his body and he has suffered a collapsed lung as a result of a recent attack.
If violence and protests throughout the Middle East become even more intense as the weather warms up this summer that could have a very significant impact on world financial markets.
Tipping Point #5: Fukushima
The mainstream news has gotten a bit tired of covering it, but the situation at Fukushima is still a complete and total disaster.
Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters admitted on Monday that three reactors experienced “full meltdowns” in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in March.
Did it really take them nearly three months to figure this out, or were they lying to the rest of the world all of this time?
The economic impact of the Fukushima disaster is going to continue to unfold over an extended period of time. It turns out that Japan is now officially in a recession. Their economy contracted at a 3.7 percent annualized rate during the first quarter.
Look for more bad economic numbers to come out of Japan for the rest of the year. Considering the fact that the Japanese economy is the third largest economy in the world, the fact that they are struggling so badly right now is not a good sign for the rest of us.
Tipping Point #6: Oil Prices
The price of oil is going to continue to be one of the biggest economic stories for the rest of this year and for 2012 as well.
The last time U.S. energy expenditures were over 9 percent of GDP was in 2008 and we quickly plunged into the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Well, we have reached the significant 9 percent figure once again in 2011, and many fear that once again high oil prices will cause another major economic decline.
Tipping Point #7: Government Austerity
In the United States, it is not just the federal government that is drowning in debt.
All over America, there are state and local governments that are financial basket cases.
I don’t always agree with the time frames that Meredith Whitney puts out there, but she is absolutely correct that we are going to see a massive municipal bond crisis. The following is an excerpt from a recent report about Whitney’s predictions on CNN….
“Meredith Whitney is issuing a fresh warning to mutual funds, banks, and politicians: The state of state finances is far worse than what you think, or at least than what you’ve been willing to tell the investors and taxpayers who will eventually carry the burden.”
Many state and local governments are attempting to get their budgets balanced by making huge budget cuts. But most of the time these austerity programs also include the elimination of a lot of government jobs.
UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments will combine to slash a whopping 450,000 jobs by the end of next year.
So where will the half a million good jobs come from to replace all of those lost jobs?
Tipping Point #8: The European Sovereign Debt Crisis
Greece is just the tip of the iceberg in Europe.
Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again last Wednesday. This time Moody’s downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1. At this point, the yield on 10-year Greek bonds is over 15 percent.
The EU has been going crazy trying to deal with the Greek debt crisis. The truth is that a default by the Greek government would be absolutely catastrophic. If you do not understand the kind of chaos a Greek default would set off on world financial markets, just read this editorial.
But Greece is not the only major European nation with a massive debt problem.
Portugal, Spain and Italy are also on the verge of collapse.
So will the EU bail all of these nations out for years and years to come?
At some point will the whole house of cards come crashing down?
Everyone needs to keep watching what is going on in Europe. The status quo is not sustainable and it cannot go on forever.
Tipping Point #9: The Dying U.S. Dollar
The euro is not the only major currency that is in trouble.
The U.S. dollar is also slowly dying.
On April 18th, Standard & Poor’s altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned that the U.S. could soon lose its prized AAA rating.
The sad truth is that faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries is rapidly declining. The mainstream news is not reporting on it much, but right now the Chinese are rapidly dumping U.S. government debt.
As the dollar declines, so will the purchasing power of average Americans. We are already seeing a tremendous amount of inflation in 2011.
But this is just the beginning.
A lot worse is going to be coming down the road.
Tipping Point #10: Drought
A lot of people that read my articles doubt that we will ever see a major global food crisis.
But one is coming.
It is just a matter of time.
Even now, many areas of the world are experiencing very serious droughts. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….
Parts of China, the biggest grower, had the least rain in a century, some European regions are the driest in 50 years and almost half the winter-wheat crop in the U.S., the largest exporter, is rated poor or worse. Inventory is dropping 8.8 percent, the most in five years, Rabobank International says. Prices will advance 20 percent to as high as $9.25 a bushel by Dec. 31, a Bloomberg survey of 14 analysts and traders shows.
Are you concerned yet?
You should be.
But if you prefer some mindless pablum that will make you feel better, we have some of that for you too.
“We definitely hit a slower patch, but I think the basic fact that the terrible financial strains we had are abating, remains in place, and I expect this recovery to continue for a substantial period of time.”
Does that make you feel better?
Larry Summers says that everything is going to be okay.
It would be great if Summers was actually right, but sadly he is not.
In fact, the worst economic times that America has ever seen are ahead.
The following is a brief excerpt from a recent interview with Dmitry Orlov about the coming economic collapse that was posted on shtfplan.com….
First you have financial collapse, which is basically the volume of debt that has to be taken on in order for the economy to continue functioning, cannot continue. We’re seeing that right now in Greece, we’re probably going to see that in Japan, we’re definitely at a point now in the United States where even if you raised the income tax to 100 percent, there’s absolutely no way of covering the liabilities of the U.S. federal government. So, we’re at that point now but the workout of the financial collapse is not all quite there. We don’t quite have a worthless currency but that’s in the works.
That, of course, is followed by commercial collapse especially in a country like the United States that imports two thirds of its oil. A lot of that is on credit and if a little bit of that oil goes missing then the economy starts to fall apart because nothing moves unless you burn oil in the United States and, of course, a lot of goods that are sold everywhere are imported again, on credit.
When the U.S. dollar dies and our financial system collapses we are not going to be able to get all of the things that we need from the rest of the world so cheaply any longer.
That is going to cause fundamental changes inside the United States.
Right now, the economic news just seems to get worse and worse, but this is just the beginning.
What is eventually going to happen in this country is going to be so nightmarish that most Americans could not even imagine it right now.
So are our leaders doing anything to prepare for the coming economic crisis?
No, they are too busy with other things.
The big political news of the day was U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner finally admitting that he sent out lewd photos of himself over Twitter to women that he was not married to.
We have become the laughingstock of the world and the economic collapse has not even happened yet.
So many economists and financial pundits seem absolutely shocked that the U.S. economy is slowing down again. It is as if this latest wave of bad economic data has caught them completely by surprise. Now, in the mainstream media we are seeing all kinds of headlines declaring that the U.S. economy is headed for disaster. But anyone with half a brain could have seen this coming. This year alone, we have seen the worst tsunami in Japanese history, the worst U.S. tornado season in recent memory and the worst Mississippi River flooding in decades. In addition, chaos in the Middle East has pushed the price of oil up to very high levels. Of course all of those things were going to have an effect on the economy. In addition, all of the long-term trends that have been destroying the U.S. economy for decades have not been taken a breather. In fact, the truth is that all of our long-term economic problems have been accelerating. So yes, the sky is falling, it is time to panic and the U.S. economy really has fallen and it really can’t get up. It is just that everyone in the mainstream media seems to have believed that Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama would just sprinkle a bunch of fairy dust on the economy and everything would just magically get better. Well, in the real world things simply do not work that way.
Despite an unprecedented debt binge by the federal government and nightmarish money printing by the Federal Reserve, the economic downturn continues to drag on. Andrew Barber, a strategist at Waverly Advisors in Corning, New York recently told CNN the following….
“People are starting to see that this sort of malaise is not just going to go away no matter what you do.”
And “malaise” is a really good word for what we have been experiencing. For those that remember the late 1970s, what we are going through today is similar in a lot of ways.
In particular, we are starting to see some real signs of instability in the financial markets.
When Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday all the way down to Caa1, I was only moderately alarmed. The truth is that everyone knows Greece is a basket case so a debt downgrade wasn’t really all that surprising.
When Moody’s announced that it plans to review the U.S. government’s AAA debt rating “if there is no progress on increasing the statutory debt limit in coming weeks” that got the attention of a lot of people around the world, but it was not totally unexpected. Moody’s is telling Congress that they better raise the debt ceiling or else. A lot more pressure will be applied to Congress before this is over.
Do you all remember what set off the financial panic in 2008?
Do the names “Bear Stearns” and “Lehman Brothers” ring a bell?
Well, right now there are some frightening indications that we may see more trouble at some “too big to fail” institutions.
But will there be any willingness to do more bailouts this time?
Right now the financial markets are closely mirroring their performance just prior to the financial collapse of 2008. One great example of this is these charts which were recently posted by the Financial Armageddon blog. It looks like bank stocks may once again be leading the way down.
Hopefully the financial system can hold together and we won’t have a repeat of 2008 right now, because if it happens it is going to be really messy.
But even without a “financial collapse” we already have all of the economic problems that we can handle.
Robert Brusca, the chief economist at FAO Economics, is being quoted by CNN as saying the following….
“We’ve had a poor economic recovery to begin with, and now it appears to be segueing into an end.”
At this point, U.S. consumer confidence is already lower than it was back in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed. U.S. consumers are holding on to their money more tightly these days and that is not a good sign for an economy that is so highly dependent on consumer spending.
The latest manufacturing numbers have also been very distressing. Measures of manufacturing activity all over the world are indicating that we have now entered an economic slowdown. This is also similar to what we saw a few years ago.
We should all feel really bad for anyone that is entering the workforce right now. We are in the midst of graduation season, and the only thing that our new graduates have to look forward to is an economic crisis that never seems to end.
I feel sad for yet another year of graduates entering a horrible job market. I recently read, and I think it was in the mainstream media, that only half the 2010 college grads have found jobs of any kind, only half of those have found jobs requiring a college education, and that 85 percent of all grads moved right back in with their parents. The job growth rate is so low that we keep employing fewer and fewer people as a percentage of our adult population. Why isn’t that still a recession?
What a future our college graduates have to look forward to, eh? Moving back in with your parents, a crappy job (if you can find one) and a pile of student loan debt that will crush you financially for decades.
We are always told that “more education” is the answer, but even many of our most highly educated young people can’t find jobs. In fact, it turns out that a third of last year’s law school graduates aren’t even practicing law….
The law school class of 2010 is making news for all the wrong reasons. The budding legal minds who managed to find employment last year have set a new record–only 68.4 percent of them are in jobs that require them to pass the bar exam, the lowest share since the Association for Legal Professionals began collecting data.
Now it looks like the economy is going to starting heading downhill once again.
What is that going to do to the job market?
Last year, only 45.4% of Americans had jobs. That was the lowest figure since 1983.
In some states it was even worse than that. In states like California, Arizona and Mississippi only about 37 percent of people had a job last year.
The economic news just seems to get worse and worse and worse. The American people have been relatively calm over the past several years as they have waited for the promised “economic recovery”, but what do you think is going to happen if we have another major economic downturn and unemployment spikes back up by several more percentage points?
And what in the world can our “leaders” really do to “help” the economy if we do have a repeat of 2008?
We are already running trillion dollar deficits.
The Federal Reserve is already printing money like it is going out of style.
So what would their next moves be?
Most Americans have no idea how fragile our financial system and our economy really are.
Let us hope and pray that things can hold together for as long as possible, because when the next wave of the economic collapse happens it is going to be really, really messy.
As the U.S. economy starts to slow down once again, global financial markets are beginning to tremble. Over the past couple of weeks, all kinds of bad economic news has been pouring in. The ADP jobs report was a “disaster”, the housing numbers are dismal, manufacturing has slowed way down and consumer confidence is dropping like a rock. The Democrats and the Republicans are bickering over the debt ceiling and this is causing a lot of uncertainty as well. All of this bad news is starting to spook investors. On Wednesday, the Dow was down 279 points and the NASDAQ was down 65 points. It was the worst day of the year for the Dow, and many are wondering what is going to happen next if we see even more bad economic data. QE2 is slated to end at the end of the month, and already the bond markets seem to be anticipating QE3. If the U.S. economy enters another significant downturn during the second half of 2011, it seems quite likely that the Federal Reserve would attempt to do something to stimulate the economy and that would probably mean more money printing.
This article is essentially the second part to an article I wrote yesterday about how we are seeing warnings about the next financial collapse all over the place right now. Panic is building and a lot of investors are trying to figure out where to put their money. Suddenly everyone seems a whole lot less optimistic than they were a couple of months ago.
Michael Sheldon, the chief market strategist at RDM Financial, believes that all of the bad economic news we are seeing right now is clear evidence that we are entering an “economic slump”….
“Initially, we just had bad news from the weekly jobless claims data, but now we’re starting to see a broad-based economic slump.”
So what are some of the numbers that have investors so concerned?
Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently explained to CNBC why he is so alarmed right now….
“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”
The bad economic news just keeps rolling in. It is almost as if someone has slammed on the economic brakes.
The following are a few more examples of the bad economic numbers that have come out over the past couple of days….
*According to the latest ADP Employment Services report, private employers in the United States only added 38,000 jobs last month. That number had been expected to be somewhere around 175,000. This jobs report is being called a “disaster“.
*Manufacturing activity in May was much lower than most economists were projecting. The following is how CNBC described the newest numbers from ISM….
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists’ expectations for 57.7.
*Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday, and stated that they believe that there is a 50/50 chance that Greece will default. This time Moody’s downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1, and that caused the euro to fall like a rock.
To get an idea of just how imbalanced the European financial system has become at this point, just check out this article.
*As I mentioned yesterday, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 in May.
So what is causing all of this?
Well, the truth is that the “sugar high” that the U.S. economy has been enjoying is coming to an end.
QE2 is almost over and the vast majority of the federal “stimulus money” has been spent. Now the federal government is talking about getting spending under control and we are seeing austerity programs being implemented on the state and local level from coast to coast.
But without massive intervention by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. government will the U.S. economy be able to stand?
Douglas Borthwick, a managing director with Faros Trading in Stamford, Connecticut is not optimistic….
“The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it.”
The truth is that the Fed and the U.S. government went all-out in an attempt to keep the economy from falling into a total depression. The U.S. government has been running budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the Fed has been printing money like mad. If these measures are removed, the economic crisis we are experiencing might just get a whole lot worse.
How much worse?
Well, just check out what Peter Yastrow, a market strategist for Yastrow Origer, recently told CNBC….
“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.”
Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama keep talking about the “economic recovery” but most Americans know better.
According to one new poll, 66% of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.
Perhaps this is a sign that the American people are starting to wake up to the new economic realities that we are facing.
The U.S. economy is being ripped apart and shredded. Thanks to our short-sighted trade policies, the Chinese economy has roared to life while the U.S. economy continues to ship jobs and factories overseas.
But instead of facing up to our economic problems and coming up with some solutions, our nation has been on a horrific debt binge over the last couple of decades in a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living.
One of the reasons why I pound on the economic news day after day is so that more people will really understand what is going on and will start to wake up.
Look, even Barack Obama says that the present state of affairs is “unsustainable” and that changes have to be made.
But if the U.S. government decided that it was going to go to a balanced budget tomorrow, that would suck approximately a trillion and a half dollars out of the economy.
What do you think would happen if that came to pass?
Of course by going into even more debt we are destroying the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.
We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect future generations to pay it off.
It is absolutely disgusting what we have done and it is thievery on the highest level.
Everyone knows that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that at some point it is going to pop.
Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is for a little bit more time before economic disaster strikes.
Unfortunately, all of the latest economic news seems to be pointing toward another economic slowdown.
If you do much grocery shopping, you have probably noticed that the cost of food has been rising at a very brisk pace over the past year. So why are food prices rising so fast? According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, inflation is still very low and the economy is improving. So what is going on here? When I go to the grocery store these days, there are very few things that I will buy unless they are on sale. In fact, I have noticed that many of the new “sale prices” are the old regular prices. Other items have had their packages reduced in size in order to hide the price increases. But with millions of American families just barely scraping by as it is, what is going to happen if food prices keep rising this rapidly?
Number One? 20 Not So Good Categories That The United States Leads The World In
A lot of people that write articles like this have a deep hatred for America. But that is not the case with me. I love the United States. I love the American people. America is like an aging, bloated rock star that has become addicted to a dozen different drugs. America is a shadow of its former self and it desperately needs to wake up before it plunges into oblivion.
If you do not believe that America is in bad shape, just read the list below. The following are 20 not so good categories that the United States leads the world in….
#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.
#2 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.
#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
#4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.
#5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.
#6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.
#7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.
#11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.
#12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.
#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.
#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.
#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.
#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
#18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.
#19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.
#20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.
So are you convinced that we are in trouble yet?
The truth is that America has changed. Most of us don’t even say hello to our neighbors anymore.
In fact, we have become so self-involved that many of us don’t even notice when someone around us dies.
Just consider the following two examples.
*USA Today recently reported on the body of a dead woman that was not found for approximately a year even though a whole bunch of people walked right past the car where she died….
*In an even more shocking case, the CBS affiliate in Boston recently reported that a dead woman was lying on the bottom of a public pool for two days while large numbers of people swam right over her. How in the world could something like this possibly happen?….
Most Americans have become so self-involved that they barely even notice anyone other than their family and close friends.
The love of most Americans is growing cold and when the collapse of the U.S. economy happens it is just going to make things worse. Instead of working as a community, most Americans will only be concerned with making sure that their own needs are taken care of.
The United States was once the most blessed nation on the face of the earth, but now we are literally falling to pieces.
Does anyone have any ideas about why this could be happening?