Are you familiar with Robert Kiyosaki? He is best known for the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series of books. Over 26 million books authored by Kiyosaki have been sold and he is recognized as a financial expert by millions of people across the globe. Well, guess what? Even Robert Kiyosaki is warning that an economic collapse is coming. In fact, Kiyosaki and his team of financial experts are encouraging Americans to stock up on food, guns and precious metals. This is yet another sign of just how close we are to the total collapse of the U.S. Economy. Kiyosaki, who once co-authored a book with Donald Trump entitled “Why We Want You To Be Rich” is now a full-fledged prepper. As even more prominent Americans start warning that an “economic collapse” is coming do you think that the American people will finally wake up and start paying attention?
The statements that Robert Kiyosaki makes in the video posted below are absolutely jaw-dropping. Once upon a time he was all about teaching people how they could get rich, but now he is talking about storing food, buying guns, investing in precious metals and preparing for the coming crash.
The following are 11 of the best Kiyosaki “sound bites” from the video below….
#1 “when the economy crashes as we predict”
#2 “the crowds come rushing in to buy gold and silver”
#3 “we could either go into a depression or we go to hyperinflation”
#4 “or we could also go to war”
#5 “buy a gun”
#6 “I’m preparing”
#7 “I’m prepared for the worst”
#8 “so come to my house and I’m armed and dangerous and I’ll welcome you”
#9 “we have food, we have water, we have guns, gold and silver, and cash”
#10 “the credit card system shuts down, the world shuts down”
#11 “the supermarkets have less than 3 days supply”
If you have not seen this video yet, it is definitely worth the 8 minutes that it takes to watch it. Robert Kiyosaki seems to be extremely alarmed about the future of the U.S. economy….
It certainly seems as though the entire financial culture in America is changing.
Once upon a time everyone wanted to know how to get rich.
Now everyone wants to know how to survive the collapse that is coming.
As I have written about previously, even people like Tony Robbins and Donald Trump are warning that an economic collapse is coming.
Economic pessimism is seemingly everywhere and almost every recent survey indicates that the American people are losing faith in the U.S. economy.
For example, in a recent article I noted that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months.
According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that lack confidence in U.S. banks is now at an all-time high of 36%. Back in 2007, just 14% of Americans lacked confidence in U.S. banks.
In order for society to function correctly, people need to be able to trust each other and they need to be able to trust the major institutions that hold society together.
Once confidence in our major societal institutions is gone, it is going to be incredibly difficult to get it back.
Sadly, the reality is that many of our major financial institutions have been untrustworthy for a very long time. It is just that the American people are only just now starting to wake up to that fact.
For example, the Federal Reserve has been at the heart of our economic problems for decades but most Americans have not realized it.
But now that is starting to change. According to one recent poll, only 30% of Americans currently view Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke favorably.
The American people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with an economic system where the vast majority of the rewards flow to Wall Street, the big banks, the biggest corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
According to the Washington Post, the top 0.1% of all income earners in the United States took home 2.6% of the nation’s earnings in 1975. By 2008, the top 0.1% were taking home 10.4% of the nation’s earnings.
The Washington Post also says that after adjusting for inflation, the average income of the top 0.1% of all Americans jumped by 385 percent between 1970 and 2008 while the average income for the bottom 90 percent of all Americans actually fell by one percent.
The sad truth is that income inequality in the United States has become a major problem. A very small sliver of the population is reaping almost all of the rewards and the middle class is being ripped to shreds. Conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans and libertarians should all be alarmed by this.
Meanwhile, the national debt continues to explode. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.
Every single minute we steal another 2 million dollars away from our children and our grandchildren.
But if we stop this theft it would throw the U.S. economy into a horrible economic crisis that would be far worse than what we are experiencing right now.
That is why the vast majority of our politicians do not have the guts to do it.
We truly are caught between a rock and a hard place.
But people like Robert Kiyosaki can see what is coming, and they are getting prepared.
Are you prepared?
Many of our young people have come up with their own versions of an “economic stimulus plan”. In past articles I have documented many of the signs that society is collapsing, including the disturbing rise of the “mob robbery” phenomenon.
Well, just the other day there was another very shocking mob robbery in the city of Philadelphia.
It really is hard to find the words to describe the true horror of the national debt. The U.S. government has been on the greatest debt binge in all of human history, and a day of reckoning is coming that is going to be so painful that it is going to shock America to the core. We have lived so far above our means for so long that none of us really has any concept of what “normal” is like anymore. The United States has enjoyed the greatest party in the history of the world, but now this decades-old party is ending and the bills are coming due. It was Dick Cheney who famously said that “deficits don’t matter”. Well, try telling that to the nation of Greece right about now. The horror that Greece is just beginning to experience is a preview of what is going to happen to us as well. Only when it happens to us it is going to be so much worse, because when we go down we are going to bring the entire global financial system down with us.
What we have done to future generations is beyond sickening. Previous generations entrusted to us the greatest economic machine in the history of the world and we destroyed it. Now we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren an economic future that has been totally wiped out and a national debt of more than 14 trillion dollars that we expect them to repay.
In Washington D.C. these days, there is a lot of talk about the debt ceiling. But whatever the politicians do, it is not going to solve our debt problems. If the debt ceiling does not get raised, we move the financial pain into the present. World financial markets would crash and that would be followed by a devastating economic nightmare.
If we do raise the debt ceiling, that will “kick the can down the road” a little bit farther. However, world financial markets will still crash eventually and our eventual economic nightmare will be even worse.
Well, can’t we just “inflate our way” out of debt?
No, unfortunately things are just not that easy. If we try to inflate our way out of debt, interest rates will likely rise just as quickly as inflation does, and that would be absolutely catastrophic.
Before interest rates even reached 20% we would hit a point where it would take every single dollar taken in by the federal government just to pay the interest on the national debt.
Meanwhile, rapidly rising inflation would devastate the value of all of your bank accounts and every other single financial asset that you own.
So no, inflating our way out of debt is not going to work.
At the moment, the U.S. federal government is able to borrow gigantic quantities of money at super low interest rates.
When that changes, all hell is going to be unleashed.
The following are 41 statistics about the national debt that are almost too crazy to believe….
2 – 30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was approximately 14 times smaller.
3 – It took from the presidency of George Washington to the presidency of Ronald Reagan for the U.S. government to accumulate one trillion dollars of debt.
4 – Since then, we have added more than 13 trillion dollars of additional debt.
5 – The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
6 – If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. households, each one owes over $125,000.
7 – Mandatory federal spending is going to surpass total federal revenue for the first time ever in this fiscal year. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
8 – 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.
11 – The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.
12 – The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.
13 – The U.S. government borrows an average of about 168 million dollars every single hour.
14 – The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011. Thanks to George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress, U.S. taxpayers are guaranteeing that debt. This is debt that is not even included in the $14.3 trillion national debt figure.
15 – Some experts estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government for programs such as Social Security and Medicare are in the neighborhood of 60 trillion dollars. Other experts claim that the total for federal government unfunded liabilities could be well over $100 trillion. But what almost everyone agrees on is that it is going to be virtually impossible to even come close to meeting all of those obligations.
16 – The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
17 – The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.
18 – The level of government waste in this country is absolutely mind blowing. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services has just announced a brand new $500 million program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.
20 – The cost for the first week of airstrikes on Libya was 600 million dollars. Keep in mind that the leader of the opposition in Libya has admitted that his forces contain large numbers of the same “al-Qaeda fighters” that were shooting at American troops in Iraq. So we are going broke and we are helping al-Qaeda take power in Libya at the same time.
21 – Just one day of the war in Afghanistan costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon.
22 – In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
23 – 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
24 – Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
25 – Back in 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by approximately 16 workers. Today, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.
27 – Back in the 1950s, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2009, corporate taxes accounted for just 6.6 percent.
29 – If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
30 – According to a shocking U.S. government report, interest on the national debt and mandatory spending on entitlement programs will absorb approximately 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019.
34 – It is now being projected that by the year 2021, interest payments on the national debt will amount to $1.1 trillion dollars a year.
35 – If interest rates move up even slightly, the interest on the national debt is going to be a whole lot worse. A recent article in the Huffington Post laid this out really well….
According to a recent note from the sage of Dallas based Hayman Capital, highly respected Kyle Bass, a move back to 5% (2006 levels) in short term interest rates will increase annual U.S. interest expense by almost $700 billion annually. This is against current U.S. government tax revenues of $2.228 trillion (CBO FY 2011 forecast).
37 – A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.
38 – If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
39 – If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.
40 – If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
41 – If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
You might be depressed after reading all of those statistics about the national debt, but there is some good news.
If you would like to help address this problem, the federal government is actually taking online donations that will go towards paying off the national debt.
Try not to laugh.
The national debt is a problem that should have been handled 20 or 30 years ago.
But it wasn’t.
So now what we have to look forward to is a very bleak future. Even if we totally scrapped our current monetary system and repudiated the debt, the transition would be “rocky” at best and we would not enjoy anything close to the standard of living that we are enjoying today.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians in Washington D.C. would never even dream of abandoning the current system. Most of them still totally believe in it.
But this current system is headed for an inevitable collapse. There is no way of getting around it.
Even most of our top politicians are now admitting that our current state of affairs is “unsustainable”. They just don’t have the guts to do anything about it.
The rest of the world needs to sit up and take notice of what is going on in Greece right now. This is what can happen when you allow government debt to spiral out of control. Once it becomes clear that you can’t pay your debts, a financial collapse can happen very suddenly and you start losing your sovereignty to those that you must turn to for financial help. So is the financial collapse of Greece the “canary in the coal mine” for the global economy? EU finance ministers have given the Greek government two weeks from Monday to approve another round of brutal austerity measures. If the austerity measures are not approved, Greece will not receive the next bailout installment of 12 billion euros. If that happens, the whole globe better buckle up because it is going to get crazy.
July 3rd is the deadline. Basically the EU has put a gun to the head of the Greek government. Without this bailout money, Greece will default and economic hell will break loose all across the country.
It is important to keep in mind that this is just the first Greek bailout that we are talking about. Last year, the EU and the IMF agreed to provide the Greek government with a 110 billion euro bailout. The current 12 billion euro installment is part of that package.
Sadly, it has become apparent that the first bailout is not going to be nearly enough for Greece. A second bailout, which will be the same size or even larger, is already being discussed. This is going to put the Greek people even more under the heel of the money powers in Europe.
Keep in mind that all of these “bailouts” are just more loans. There is no way that the Greeks are ever going to be able to repay all of this money.
But this is what happens when a nation lets debt get out of control. For years and years it can seem like all of that debt does not have any consequences, but then the day of reckoning comes and it is a complete and total nightmare.
In order to get the next installment of 12 billion euros, European finance ministers are insisting that the Greek Parliament approves a package of austerity measures that will be worth approximately 28 billion euros.
At this point, it is uncertain whether those austerity measures will pass.
However, the pressure on the Greek government to get them pushed through is immense.
These austerity measures include tax increases, budget cuts and a “large-scale privatization program”.
This is often what happens to third world nations that cannot pay their debts. Organizations such as the IMF or the World Bank will come in and insist that they tax their people more, cut back on their spending and sell some of their public assets to big corporations.
As we can see from the wild protests that have been taking place in Greece, a significant percentage of the Greek population is not happy with all of these austerity measures.
Unfortunately, the EU and the IMF are able to put a lot more pressure on the Greek government than the Greek people are.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou recently gave the following warning to the Greek people about what could happen if this debt crisis ends badly….
The consequences of a violent bankruptcy or exit from the euro would be immediately catastrophic for households, the banks, and the country’s credibility.
Not only would a Greek default be a total disaster for Greece, it would potentially be a total disaster for the entire global financial system.
Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, recently made the following statement about the seriousness of the debt crisis in Europe….
“The European debt crisis has the potential to have as big an impact as the subprime mortgage crisis did in the United States”
So will these bailouts solve the problem?
No, giving Greece more loans is only going to kick the can down the road for a little while longer.
The truth is that Greece is bankrupt. Unless huge amounts of Greek debt are forgiven, Greece is going to default sooner or later.
When confidence in the finances of a nation is lost, borrowing costs can go up very quickly. Today, the yield on two year Greek bonds is up to 28.6%.
Anyone that has ever been late on paying their credit cards knows how painful an interest rate like that can be.
So why doesn’t Greece just slash government spending to the bone and get their financial house in order?
Well, it is not that easy. Harsh austerity measures have already been implemented. As a result, unemployment is rampant and there is rioting in the streets.
A year of wage and pension cuts, benefit losses and tax increases has taken its toll: almost a quarter of the population now live below the poverty line, unemployment is at a record 16% and, as the economy contracts for a third year, economists estimate that about 100,000 businesses have closed.
As the economy crumbles, Greece has descended into an almost permanent state of civil unrest.
The fact that the EU and the IMF want even more austerity measures has sparked some wild rioting In Greece in recent days. You can see video of the stunning violence going on in Greece right here.
Not all protesters are being violent. Some of them are showing their displeasure in non-violent ways. For example, workers for Greece’s state-owned electric utility are staging 48 hours of rolling strikes that are designed to create blackouts over large areas.
The frightening thing is that Greece is not alone. Ireland has already received a bailout and they are probably going to need another one at some point.
The employment situation in Spain is absolutely nightmarish. Spain will probably be able to squeak by without a bailout if the global economy stays stable, but if the dominoes start to fall Spain could be in a massive amount of trouble very quickly.
Not that many people are talking about Italy, but the truth is that Italy has a huge debt problem. On Friday, Moody’s warned that it may downgrade Italy’s Aa2 debt rating at some point within the next 90 days.
Belgium and France also have very substantial debt problems. They probably would not be the first dominoes to fall, but if the “contagion” starts to spread they could certainly have massive problems.
The truth is that Europe’s entire financial system is extremely vulnerable right now. Big banks all over Europe (and especially in Germany) are leveraged to the hilt. All it would take to topple many of them is a stiff breeze.
When Lehman Brothers collapsed, it was leveraged 31 to 1.
German banks are also holding a massive amount of Greek debt.
That is why there is so much fear that the crisis in Greece could spread across the rest of Europe and start toppling dominoes.
The sovereign debt crisis in Europe did not happen overnight and it is going to be with us for a long, long time even if the global economy remains relatively stable.
At the moment, the best that officials in Europe can seem to come up with is to put off the pain for another day. Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC the following on Monday….
“This problem is not going to go away. It’s going to weigh on markets here and we’re going to see the same set of headlines over and over again. We simply cannot continue to kick the can down the road, because we’re coming to the end of the road in Greece.”
So if Europe starts having major problems will the U.S. step in and help?
Yes, if the crisis in Europe gets worse, the Federal Reserve will probably step in just like they did back in 2008.
But the U.S. is rapidly approaching a day of reckoning like the one that Greece is going through. The U.S. government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and faith in the U.S. dollar is dying.
The economic crisis in the United States gets worse with each passing year. Yes, the Federal Reserve can print up stacks of money and send it over to Europe, but that isn’t going to solve anything in the long run. The truth is that the U.S. is not even going to be able to keep itself from drowning.
The world financial system is far more vulnerable today than it was back in 2008. The next wave of the financial collapse is going to hit at some point, and when it does it is going to probably be even more painful than the last wave.
Our world is becoming an incredibly unstable place.
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.
Are we about to see a repeat of 2008 (or something even worse)? Suddenly all kinds of people are coming out of the woodwork and warning that we could be on the verge of the next major financial collapse. Of course many economists and financial pundits just enjoy hearing themselves talk, and sometimes they will make outrageous claims just to get attention, but when so many ominous warnings come out all at once it does tend to make one sit up and take notice. The truth is that global financial markets are even more vulnerable today than they were in 2008, and all over the globe we are seeing trouble signs. Japan is trying to recover from the worst natural disaster that they have ever seen and they are dealing with a nuclear crisis that never seems to end. The Europeans are trying to put another bailout package for Greece together and about a half dozen more European nations that are drowning in debt will need bailouts after that. In the U.S., there are all kinds of signs pointing to the collapse of the economy and the politicians in Washington D.C. continue to “kick the can down the road” and hope that our economic problems will somehow fix themselves. Oil prices are incredibly high and turmoil is sweeping the globe. Conditions are certainly developing that could bring about a “perfect storm” and cause another global financial collapse.
The following is just a sampling of the financial warnings that we have seen in recent days from some prominent voices….
*Economist Nouriel Roubini: “I think right now we’re on the tipping point of a market correction. Data from the U.S., from Europe, from Japan, from China are suggesting an economic slowdown.”
*Jim Rogers: “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.”
*Mark Mobius, the executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group: “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.”
*David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices: “Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight.”
*Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital: “I think we’re looking at some type of echo in the credit crisis coming up here. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
*Carl Icahn: “I do think that there could be another major problem. Now, will it happen next week, next year, i don’t know and certainly nobody knows, but i don’t think that the system is working properly. I really find it amazing that we’re almost back to where it was, where there’s so much leverage going on in the investment banks today. There’s just way too much leverage and way too much risk-taking, with other people’s money.”
Sadly, the world really did not seem to learn much of anything from 2008. Global financial markets are still pretty much operating the same way that they did before the last crisis.
But back before the crisis in 2008 things were much more stable around the globe.
When the horrible earthquake and tsunami struck Japan earlier this year, most economists brushed it off and believed that Japan would be “resilient” and would bounce back very quickly.
Well, 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.
As bad as that number is, just remember that the tsunami did not even hit until March 11th.
So what is the 2nd quarter number going to look like?
There is often a lag between a disaster and the economic effects of the disaster. The economic impact of this nightmare is going to be felt in Japan for many years to come. In fact, it is going to be very interesting to see what kind of earnings reports we seeing coming out of Japan in the months ahead.
The economic problems in Japan are also really starting to be felt around the rest of the globe. The other day, USA Today published an article with the following headline: “U.S. economy damaged more than thought by Japan quake“.
Amazingly, everyone seems to be really surprised that the worst tsunami in modern history is having a significant economic impact.
Meanwhile, the crisis at Fukushima just continues to get worse.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Japanese are not even close to finding a solution to this crisis.
The mainstream media has been doing their best to downplay the crisis at Fukushima, but the truth is that it is now a worse disaster than Chernobyl and life in that region will never be the same again.
Conditions are also ripe in Europe for another financial collapse.
Have you been watching what has been going on in Greece?
It’s crazy. Without another bailout the Greek government will soon start defaulting on their debts.
The EU and the IMF don’t want to give Greece more bailout money unless there are some significant “strings” attached. But they also know that if Greece is not bailed out it will cause complete chaos in the financial markets.
The Greek population does not want more bailouts and more austerity. There have been protests all over the country. Greek citizens have been pulling billions out of Greek banks as the country descends into chaos.
In the end, another bailout deal will get pushed through and the can will be kicked down the road a little while longer.
But what about all of the other European nations that need bailouts?
Portugal, Spain and Italy (along with several other European nations) are also teetering on the brink of financial disaster.
Most Americans do not realize it, but the European sovereign debt crisis really could set off another global financial crash. Everyone really should be watching Europe. It is going to be a very interesting summer.
Of course the United States continues to be an economic basket case.
More depressing housing data came out today. U.S. home prices are now 5.1% lower than they were a year ago and they have fallen back to mid-2002 levels. CNN is declaring that a housing “double-dip” has been confirmed.
Also, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 this month.
Americans are becoming more pessimistic about the economy.
According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was “getting better” at this time last year. Today, that number is at just 27 percent.
We are seeing a tremendous about of inflation in 2011, but incomes are not rising. Unemployment is still rampant and very few jobs are being created. What is even sadder is that a very high percentage of the jobs that are being created are part-time or temporary jobs.
But this was supposed to be the “recovery”. Barack Obama and the Congress pushed through “stimulus package” after “stimulus package”. We added trillions to our national debt. The Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazy. An all-out effort was made to pump up the U.S. economy in the short-term.
So after all of that, is this what the “recovery” is going to look like?
Meanwhile, all of those efforts have also made our long-term economic problems even worse.
Because of our exploding national debt and the reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve, faith in the U.S. dollar is dying. Even the United Nations is warning of a potential dollar collapse.
We are in big, big trouble.
This is about as good as things are going to get for the U.S. economy. Despite unprecedented efforts, the U.S. economy is still struggling mightily and our long-term economic problems are scarier than ever.
Sadly, most Americans still believe that wonderful economic times are on the way. Most believe that this downturn is just temporary and that things will soon be better than ever.
How do you think they are going to feel when they find out the truth?
A day is coming when the rest of the world will decide that it no longer has faith in U.S. dollars or in U.S. debt. When that day arrives, the game will be over. Traditionally, two of the biggest things that the U.S. economy has had going for it were the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries. The U.S. dollar has been the default reserve currency of the world for decades. All over the globe it was seen as a strong, stable currency that was desirable for international trade. U.S. government debt has long been considered the “safest debt” in the entire world. Whenever there was a major crisis, investors would flock to U.S. Treasuries because they were considered a rock. Sadly, all of this is now changing. Today the rest of the world is losing faith in the U.S. financial system. In fact, even the United Nations is now warning of the collapse of the dollar. But if the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries collapse, that will be an absolute nightmare for the U.S. economy. If the rest of the world does not want our dollars someday, then what are we going to give them in exchange for all of the oil and all of the cheap imported goods they send us? If the rest of the world does not want our debt someday, then how in the world are we going to be able to continue to consume far, far more wealth than we produce?
The rest of the world is watching the U.S. government run up record-setting budget deficits and they are watching the Federal Reserve print money like there is no tomorrow and they realize that the U.S. financial system is slowly imploding.
As mentioned above, now even the United Nations is warning that the U.S. dollar could collapse. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent news report put out by Reuters….
The United Nations warned on Wednesday of a possible crisis of confidence in, and even a “collapse” of, the U.S. dollar if its value against other currencies continued to decline.
In a mid-year review of the world economy, the UN economic division said such a development, stemming from the falling value of foreign dollar holdings, would imperil the global financial system.
But it is not just the United Nations that is concerned about the U.S. dollar.
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.
At one time, it would have been unthinkable for Standard & Poor’s to do such a thing.
But today it is amazing that it has taken them so long to make such a move. U.S. government finances are falling apart.
When the credit rating of U.S. government debt starts declining, interest rates will go up. Just ask the government of Greece how painful that can be. Today, Greece is paying over 16 percent on 10 year bonds.
S&P is noting the U.S. government’s long-range fiscal problems. Generally, you’ll find that the accounting for unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other programs on a net-present-value (NPV) basis indicates total federal debt and obligations of about $75 trillion. That’s 15 times the gross domestic product (GDP). The debt and obligations are increasing at a pace of about $5 trillion a year, which is neither sustainable nor containable. If the U.S. was a corporation on a parallel basis, it would be headed into bankruptcy rather quickly.
Look, the rest of the world is not stupid. They know that the U.S. government is hurtling towards financial disaster. The appetite among foreigners for U.S. government debt is decreasing rapidly.
In fact, according to Zero Hedge, foreigners are dumping U.S. debt at a very rapid pace right now.
In addition, the cost to insure U.S. debt has risen sharply in recent days.
Right now, the Federal Reserve has been buying up most new U.S. government debt with dollars that it has created out of thin air. This is a giant Ponzi scheme, and it is a major contributing factor to the decline of faith in the U.S. dollar.
The dollar has fallen by 17 percent compared to other major national currencies since 2009. What makes that fact even sadder is that all major currencies have been rapidly losing value compared to hard assets over that time period. The dollar is just sliding faster than almost all of the other global currencies that are constantly losing value as well.
Anyone with half a brain could have seen that this would be the end result of reckless government borrowing, but unfortunately our politicians have been ignoring this problem for decades.
Now a day or reckoning is fast approaching and it is going to be very painful.
The U.S. government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. Just consider a few shocking facts about this unprecedented debt….
#4 In the new budget that the Obama administration has proposed, the U.S. government would spend 3.7 trillion dollars in 2012 and by 2021 the U.S. government would be spending a whopping 5.6 trillion dollars per year.
#5 The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
#6 The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.
#7 The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.
#8 The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.
#10 Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the U.S. government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.
#11 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to go about 1.6 trillion dollars more into debt.
#12 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
So have our politicians learned anything from the mistakes of the past?
No.
The U.S. government continues to spend money on some of the most ridiculous things imaginable. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services has just announced a brand new $500 million program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.
Isn’t it good to see the government investing our hard-earned tax dollars so wisely?
Of course if our kids weren’t being constantly fed foods packed with sugar, high fructose corn syrup and aspartame we wouldn’t have to spend 500 million dollars to deal with this problem.
When it comes to government waste, nobody seems to do it any better than the U.S. government.
Our politicians continue to assume that the rest of the world will always want our dollars and our debt, but that is simply not the case.
Over the past couple of years, global leader after global leader has publicly talked about the need for a new world reserve currency.
In fact, globalist institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have been very busy discussing what the world is going to use as a global reserve currency after the death of the dollar.
The rest of the world is not sitting around waiting to see if the U.S. financial system is going to recover. They are already making plans for the demise of the dollar. They are increasingly using other currencies to trade with. They are becoming more hesitant to buy more of our debt. They are realizing that the days of U.S. dominance are coming to an end.
So what is that going to mean for us?
It is going to be a complete and total disaster.
Right now, we live far, far beyond our means. We borrow gigantic piles of money to make up the difference between what we produce and what we consume. We are absolutely dependent on the fact that the rest of the world will take our dollars in exchange for the things that we need.
The current situation is not sustainable.
It will come to an end.
When it does, our standard of living is going to feel like it has changed overnight.
He sure has come a long way since “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. During a recent television segment for CBS, Ben Stein declared that “the tea leaves are ominous” and he warned that an economic collapse may be coming. In particular, Ben Stein is deeply concerned about inflation. During his recent appearance on CBS, Stein proclaimed that the Federal Reserve is “just shoving money out the door as fast as it can” and that this could have horrific consequences for the U.S. financial system. Sadly, Ben Stein is exactly right on this point. The Federal Reserve has already injected enough money into the financial system to create an inflationary disaster. Fortunately most of this liquidity is still being held by the banks (this will be further explored below), but once all of that money starts getting released into the financial system it is going to unleash economic chaos.
In the video that you are about to watch, Ben Stein states that “when serious inflation hits, it hits everyone”.
And that is absolutely true. Inflation is a hidden tax on ever single dollar that each one of us holds. Nobody can cheat that hidden tax and nobody can escape from it.
You may have noticed that the price of gas is going up.
In fact, just the other day UPI reported that the price of gas at one station in the Washington D.C. area was up to 5 dollars a gallon.
Can it get much worse?
Well, actually yes it can.
Richard Hastings, a strategist at Global Hunter Securities, recently told CNBC that he believes that we could potentially see $6 gas at some point this summer.
Do you think that a lot of American families will rethink their summer vacations if that happens?
You betcha.
Perhaps Americans will just fly instead.
Well, that is rapidly becoming more expensive as well. Just check out what one recent CNN article had to say about rising airfares….
Late Tuesday, Southwest Airlines raised all of its round-trip fares by $10. Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) initiated this latest round of price increases on Monday, and as of midday Wednesday American Airlines (AMR, Fortune 500), JetBlue (JBLU) and United Airlines (UAL) had matched it.
As Ben Stein also notes in the video below, food prices are soaring as well. Rampant money printing by the Federal Reserve and serious crop problems all over the globe have created a “perfect storm” for agricultural commodities. In the video, Stein sounds downright apocalyptic as he describes crop failures around the world….
But now, we are getting serious crop shortfalls in China – an enormously important agricultural producer and consumer. U.S. crop forecasts are also disappointing. There are huge problems in Australia, South America, and Russia. Corn, wheat, rice and other foodstuff prices are just going wild.
And you know what?
Ben Stein is right.
In a recent article about the global food crisis, I detailed some of the agricultural commodity price increases that we have seen….
*According to the World Bank, the global price of food has risen 36% over the past 12 months.
*The commodity price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.
*The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.
But it isn’t just food and gas that are going up. We are seeing inflation everywhere. The value of virtually all “hard assets” is going up.
Investors are running to precious metals such as gold and silver in a desperate attempt to preserve their wealth. Gold and silver have been absolutely skyrocketing. The price of gold set another brand new all-time record high this week. The price of silver hit a 31-year high today.
So why is this happening?
One of the biggest reasons for all of this is that the Federal Reserve has been flooding the system with new money. In the video below, Ben Stein points to quantitative easing as the primary reason why we are seeing so much inflation….
But most important of all, the Fed is just shoving money out the door as fast as it can, creating piles of cash in banks.
The Federal Reserve had hoped that economic growth would be sparked by all of this new cash, but that is only happening to a minimal degree.
Instead, what Ben Stein believes all of this new money is going to bring about is a situation known as “stagflation”.
Do you remember the 1970s and the “misery index”?
Well, we seem to be headed for a repeat of those days.
Stagflation exists when inflation and unemployment are both at high levels at the same time.
Up to this point, we have had high unemployment but relatively low levels of inflation.
But now we are going to get to enjoy high unemployment and high inflation at the same time.
Oh goody!
Video of Ben Stein’s recent appearance on CBS is posted below. You can read a transcript of his remarks here. It is amazing that a mainstream news outlet would allow this much truth to get out….
Look, the reality is that you cannot pump this much money into the financial system without there eventually being very serious consequences.
For decades the Federal Reserve has been systematically debasing the U.S. dollar, but what the Fed has been doing to the money supply over the past couple of years is absolutely unprecedented. Just check out the chart below….
So why hasn’t all of this new cash caused chaos in the economy already?
Well, because most of it is still trapped in the financial system. Banks have been reluctant to loan it out. Instead, they seem content to keep most of it on reserve at the Fed.
But if all of this new money starts leaking out into the economy it is going to drive prices up. When you have lots more money chasing roughly the same number of goods and services it is inevitable that inflation will result.
Robert Wenzel of EconomicPolicyJournal.com believes that more quantitative easing is not even necessary to turn the U.S. economy into a hyperinflationary nightmare. In fact, Wenzel says that there are enough excess reserves at the Fed right now to turn us into another Zimbabwe….
With over $1.4 TRILLION in excess reserves, Bernanke never has to resort to QE style monetary operations ever again, to print money. If those excess reserves leak into the system, Bernanke has enough sitting there to make Zimbabwe look like a model of prudent money management. As per usual, Bernanke has most of the media and Fed watchers looking at the wrong card.
Forget about QE3, keep your eye on excess reserves. Excess reserves are funds that are not in the system bidding up prices, but when they enter the system by banks using them to make loans, have the potential to result in a multiple of their size, when they impact the money supply. Because of this potential for multiple size impact, excess reserve entering the economy are considered high-powered money.
We would have never even been in this position if we had never allowed the Federal Reserve to be created and had never gotten 14 trillion dollars in debt. But now America has a debt problem that can never be solved under the current system. We are locked into a debt spiral from which there is no escape.
Last year, the U.S. government spent more on interest on the national debt than on the following departments combined….
*The Department of Health and Human Services
*The Department of Energy
*The Department of Veterans Affairs
*The Department of Justice
*The Department of Homeland Security
*The Department of Agriculture
*The Treasury Department
*The Department of Labor
Ouch!
But right now the U.S. is still able to borrow tons of money at super low interest rates.
So what happens if interest rates go up?
It could potentially be catastrophic.
That is why the decision by S&P to downgrade its outlook on U.S. government debt was such a big thing the other day. The U.S. still has a “AAA” rating, but S&P is warning that the AAA rating is in danger.
So what would it mean if the U.S. lost the AAA rating that it currently holds?
A credit rating downgrade for the United States would spell even more financial trouble for the U.S. government, hampering its ability to borrow money as investors demand higher yields to make up for the increased risk. That would cause its national debt to balloon further and increase the need to hike taxes or make even more painful cuts in spending.
But the U.S. government continues to borrow money like there is no tomorrow and Ben Bernanke and his friends at the Fed continue to recklessly print money.
As bad as things may seem for many of you right now, the truth is that what we are experiencing at the moment is a “false bubble of prosperity”. Things are eventually going to get much, much worse.
Enjoy this time of economic peace and stability while you still can. Our leaders have absolutely destroyed our economic future and we are going to want to have some good memories to hold on to while we are living through economic hell in the years ahead.
The U.S. financial system is like a junkie that needs continually increasing amounts of “junk” to get the same “buzz”. So what is the U.S. financial system addicted to? It is addicted to money and debt. For many years, whenever the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates or the U.S government would borrow and spend more money, the U.S. economy would respond positively. But just like with any other kind of artificial stimulation, over time it has taken greater and greater amounts of debt and cheap money to get a response from our economic system. So yes, the fact that the official unemployment rate went down 0.1% last month is good news, but considering the massive amount of spending that the U.S. government is doing and considering the gigantic quantity of money that the Federal Reserve is injecting into the financial system, the truth is that the unemployment rate should be falling much faster than that. So don’t be fooled by the good economic numbers and don’t be fooled by the financial “sugar rush”. The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have been pulling out all the stops to stimulate the economy, and the fact that all of their efforts are barely moving the unemployment rate at all is an indication of just how far our economic situation has degenerated.
Many in the mainstream media were extremely excited when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. unemployment rate declined to 8.8% in March. U.S. stocks soared as investors enthusiastically welcomed the news. But should we all really be jumping up and down over this?
The truth is that some other measures show that the unemployment situation in the United States is becoming worse.
According to Gallup, the number of Americans that are either unemployed or working part-time but desiring full-time work actually rose from 19.8 percent in February to 20.3 percent in March.
So let us not get too excited about the employment situation. Yes, unemployment is not spinning wildly out of control at the moment and that is good news.
However, when you look at the larger picture things look rather grim.
What the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have been doing is that they have been mortgaging our future big time for short-term economic gain.
This year alone, the U.S. government is going to run an all-time record budget deficit of approximately 1.6 trillion dollars. By borrowing 1.6 trillion dollars that we do not have and spending it into the system, it does stimulate the economy.
There are some members of Congress that would like to implement substantial budget cuts, but most members of Congress fear doing too much budget cutting right now because it would “harm the economy”.
And you know what? They are right – budget cuts would harm our economy in the short-term.
But continuing to pile up all of this debt is setting the stage for an absolute economic nightmare in the mid to long term.
We have lived far, far beyond our means for decades, and most of our politicians are acting like this can go forever.
But tell me, does anyone out there actually believe that we can keep expanding the national debt like this indefinitely?….
Yes, government spending does stimulate the economy. The Keynesians are right about that.
However, by accumulating a national debt that is spinning wildly out of control, we have completely destroyed the economic future of this nation.
The Federal Reserve has been very busy trying to stimulate the U.S. economy as well.
Over the past couple of years, the Fed has been injecting massive amounts of money into the financial system. The theory is that the financial system will loan this money out to the American people and that will stimulate the economy and create more jobs.
Well, that may very well be true to a certain extent in the short-term, but as I wrote about yesterday, in the long-term this is going to create a substantial amount of inflation.
The chart posted below cannot be emphasized enough. It shows how the Fed has dramatically increased the size of the adjusted monetary base since mid-2008….
Yes, all of this new money will stimulate economic activity, but it is completely and totally ludicrous for Ben Bernanke to attempt to deny that this is also going to cause significant inflation.
So when taking a look at the economic numbers, it is absolutely critical to keep in mind that our “authorities” have pushed all the chips to the middle of the table in an all-out attempt to stimulate the economy in the short-term.
The small economic “sugar rush” that we are experiencing right now is all we have gotten out of it so far.
Sadly, this is about the best that the U.S. economy is going to do from now on. Things really are not going to get much better than this.
Yes, unemployment numbers might come down a little more, but pretty soon inflation is going to really kick in and that is going to have a really negative impact on tens of millions of Americans.
First of all, when inflation really starts taking off it is going to be absolutely devastating for those on fixed incomes. Many of them will be completely wiped out.
Secondly, those that do have jobs are going to find that their incomes are not nearly keeping up with inflation.
In fact, we are seeing this starting to happen already.
So did what we are paying for food and gas only go up 2.1% in 2010?
Of course not.
So are things getting better so far in 2011?
No.
One of the depressing things about the new numbers released by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was that wages for U.S. workers did not increase in March.
According to the BLS, the average U.S. worker earned $22.87 an hour during the month of March, which is exactly the same number we saw in February.
So inflation is going up and wages are staying flat.
That means that American family budgets are going to be squeezed even more.
In addition, the numbers from the BLS show that it is still incredibly difficult to get a job. In fact, the average length of unemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
According to USA Today, median CEO pay soared 27 percent during 2010. For the year, median CEO pay was a stunning $9.0 million.
Wouldn’t you like to be making 9 million dollars a year?
According a recent report by CNN, the 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers in the United States combined to bring in an astounding $22.07 billion in income during 2010.
Wouldn’t you like to get just a small piece of that?
All of the measures that the government and the Federal Reserve are using to stimulate the economy are causing tremendous distortions in our financial system.
Wall Street is absolutely swimming in cash right now. There are some people that are making obscene amounts of money.
But ultimately the party is going to end for all of us.
It has been incredibly foolish for the government and the Fed to go “all in” in a desperate attempt to boost short-term economic numbers.
Our long-term economic future is completely gone. Our financial system is heading for a horrible collapse. It is not a matter of “if” it will happen, but rather “when” it will happen.
Are you familiar with Robert Kiyosaki? He is best known for the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series of books. Over 26 million books authored by Kiyosaki have been sold and he is recognized as a financial expert by millions of people across the globe. Well, guess what? Even Robert Kiyosaki is warning that an economic collapse is coming. In fact, Kiyosaki and his team of financial experts are encouraging Americans to stock up on food, guns and precious metals. This is yet another sign of just how close we are to the total collapse of the U.S. Economy. Kiyosaki, who once co-authored a book with Donald Trump entitled “Why We Want You To Be Rich” is now a full-fledged prepper. As even more prominent Americans start warning that an “economic collapse” is coming do you think that the American people will finally wake up and start paying attention?
The Sky Is Falling, It Is Time To Panic And The U.S. Economy Has Fallen And It Can’t Get Up
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….
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.
But what is perhaps even more frightening is that 2011 is starting to look a lot like 2008 all over again.
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.
When Moody’s warned that it may downgrade the debt ratings of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, that really set off alarm bells for me.
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….
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.
On a recent article entitled “Global Financial Markets Tremble As Bad Economic News Continues To Pour In” a reader named Esta left the following comment….
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….
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.