The U.S. health care system has become one gigantic money making scam, and you are about to see the statistics that prove it. Today, the United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world by far. The health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical corporations are raking in gigantic mountains of cash and yet the quality of the health care that we receive in return is rather quite poor. People living in Puerto Rico have a greater life expectancy than we do. Residents of Cuba have a lower infant mortality rate than we do. We are the most medicated population on the planet and yet we are also one of the sickest. If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would have the 6th largest economy on the globe and yet rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes continue to increase. The U.S. health care statistics that you are about to read below are absolutely stunning. For as much money as we shell out for health care, we should have the greatest system in the entire world. But we don’t. Something has gone horribly wrong.
As you read this, there are hordes of health bureaucrats and greedy corporate fatcats that are becoming incredibly wealthy while the rest of us go broke trying to pay for our health care. In the United States today, health care bills cause more bankruptcies than anything else does. Millions of Americans are afraid to go to the hospital because they know that even a short visit would be a huge financial burden.
Sadly, our politicians in Washington D.C. continue to make the problem worse. Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation that anyone has ever come up with in the history of the United States. You could put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters for a thousand years and they wouldn’t come up with anything as bad as Obamacare. Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical corporations, Obamacare actually gives them more power. In fact, huge portions of Obamacare are virtually identical to a bill that was written by the health insurance trade association in 2009. Under Obamacare our health care costs will go up even faster and the quality of our health care will continue to go down. So please don’t try to tell me that Obamacare is the solution to anything.
The health care system in the United States is so broken that it probably cannot be repaired. The entire thing needs to be dismantled and completely reinvented.
If you doubt this, just check out the stats that I have compiled below.
As I put together this list of statistics, Business Insider proved to be a very valuable resource. In addition, I relied heavily on the following articles which I previously authored….
#2 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#3 The United States spent 2.47 trillion dollars on health care in 2009. It is being projected that the U.S. will spend 4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019.
#4 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#5 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#6 Over the past decade, health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than wages have in the United States.
#7 The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, brought in a staggering $68.7 million during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million in wages and other forms of compensation. The funny thing is that he left the company and didn’t even work the whole year.
#8 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States combined to receive nearly $200 million in total compensation for 2009.
#9 Even as the rest of the country struggled with a deep recession, U.S. health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent during 2009 alone.
#10 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.
#11 In the United States, health insurance administration expenses account for 8 percent of all health care costs. In Finland, that figure is just 2 percent.
#12 Health insurance rate increases are getting out of control. According to the Los Angeles Times, Blue Shield of California announced plans earlier this year to raise rates an average of 30% to 35%, and some individual policy holders were slated to see their health insurance premiums rise by up to 59 percent.
#13 According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers in the U.S. increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.
#14 Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.
#17 Prescription drugs cost about 50% more in the United States than they do in other countries.
#18Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was recently released. According to the report, approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs, and more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more drugs on a regular basis.
#20 The Food and Drug Administration reported 1,742 prescription drug recalls in 2009, which was a gigantic increase from 426 drug recalls in 2008.
#21 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
#22 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#23 Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs. According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.
#24 According to one doctor interviewed by Fox News, “a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen” will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the wound is.
#25 Why are c-sections on the rise? It is because a vaginal delivery costs approximately $5,992, while a c-section costs approximately $8,558.
#26 According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States had a higher infant mortality rate than 45 other nations in 2009.
#29 In fact, one trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of all the medical bills that she has audited contain “gross overcharges“.
#30 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don’t know how the system works then you are out of luck.
#31 Over the last decade, the number of Americans without health insurance has risen from about 38 million to about 52 million.
#32 People living in the United States are three times more likely to have diabetes than people living in the United Kingdom.
#41 According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, “inefficient claims processing” costs the U.S. health care system 210 billion dollars every single year.
#42 Today, approximately 40% of all U.S. doctors are age 55 or older.
#43 According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, we were already going to be facing a shortage of more than 150,000 doctors over the next 15 years even before Obamacare was passed.
#44 An IBD/TIPP poll taken back in August 2009 found that 4 out of every 9 American doctors said that they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passed Obamacare.
#45According to a survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine, approximately one-third of all practicing physicians in the United States indicated that they may leave the medical profession because of the new health care law.
#46 According to a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors that was conducted in August 2010, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to “retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care” at some point over the next three years.
Today, average Americans have less power relative to the monolithic corporate and governmental institutions that dominate our society than at any other point in U.S. history. Sadly, this is not what our founding fathers ever envisioned. Our founding fathers established a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, but what we have today is very far from that ideal. In America today, wealth and power are very highly concentrated, and if you have neither wealth nor power than most of our politicians really do not have any interest in you. Over the past several decades, those with huge amounts of money and power have been busy rigging the game so that the rest of the money and power slowly but surely funnels into their hands. If current trends continue, the banksters and the corpocracy will eventually own it all. Below you will find 29 statistics about extreme income inequality in America. Sadly, most of these statistics will be out of date in a year or two because wealth and power will be much more concentrated by that time.
If you are a “Kool-Aid drinking Democrat” you are going to be really upset by this article. If you are a “Kool-Aid drinking Republican” you are going to be really upset by this article.
Most Republicans have been brainwashed into believing that “capitalism” means cheerleading while the big corporations hoover up money and power.
Most Democrats have no trouble with big corporations either because most establishment Democrats have been brainwashed into believing that large concentrations of power (whether governmental or corporate) are generally good. Most Democrats just wish that big corporations were a little less greedy and were a little more “socially responsible”.
Today, the big banks, the big corporations and the federal government are all in bed with one another and it is average Americans that always lose out.
Our founding fathers tried to warn us about large concentrations of power. They attempted to establish a very limited central government, they wanted to keep us free from the tyranny of the big banks and they were very suspicious of large corporations.
In a 2010 article, Rick Ungar noted that corporations were very seriously restricted in the early days of America….
After the nation’s founding, corporations were, as they are today, the result of charters granted by the state. However, unlike today, they were limited in how long they were permitted to exist (typically 20 or 30 years), only permitted to deal in one commodity, they could not own shares in other corporations, and their property holdings were expressly limited to what they needed to accomplish their corporate business goals.
My how things have changed.
“Capitalism” is supposed to be about the empowerment of individuals and families and small businesses.
Instead, today “capitalism” has come to mean something completely different. Today, the biggest, meanest concentrations of wealth devour everyone else with a big assist from the government.
At this point, average Americans mean next to nothing in the political process. This point was eloquently made in a recent column by Robert Reich….
The unemployed are politically invisible. They don’t make major campaign donations. They don’t lobby Congress. There’s no National Association of Unemployed People.
Their ranks are filled with women who had been public employees, single mothers, minorities, young people trying to enter the labor force, and middle-aged men who have been out of work for longer than six months. You couldn’t find a collection of people with less political clout.
I would not normally quote Robert Reich, but he made a good point. If you don’t have an army of lobbyists or any money to give to them then most of our politicians don’t really care what you think or how much you are hurting.
Just think about the amount of power and money that Exxon Mobil or Wal-Mart has compared to the amount of power and money that an average American has.
Our society has veered very far from the egalitarian ideal that our founding fathers once hoped for.
The corporate giants are so powerful that it is next to impossible for small businesses to directly compete with them.
Just try it some time.
Many banks and corporations have become so big that the world literally cannot afford for them to fail.
So what happens if those three corporations collapse?
That is something to think about.
But of course average Americans are never “too big to fail”. The big banks begged and begged for bailouts, but if you are late on your debt payments they will chuck you into prison.
Also, when wealth and power are so highly concentrated, economic rewards flow only to a few. Corporatism (as opposed to true capitalism) produces a handful of winners and a whole lot of losers.
As I have written about previously, the middle class is being destroyed. If current trends are allowed to continue long enough we eventually won’t have much of a middle class left at all.
The following are 29 statistics about extreme income inequality in America that will blow your mind….
#2 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.
#3 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds.
#4 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#5 According to a joint House and Senate report entitled “Income Inequality and the Great Recession“, the top one percent of income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had skyrocketed to 21.0 percent.
#6 Between 1979 and and 2007, the average household income of the top 1% of all Americans soared from $346,600 to $1.3 million. During that same time period the average household income for middle class Americans increased only slightly.
#7According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
#9 According to a new report from the AFL-CIO, the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.
#10 The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
#11 Since 1979, real median weekly earnings for high school dropouts has declined by 22 percent.
#12 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.
#13 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#14 Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population has gotten significantly larger.
#15 Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States fell to seventh.
#16 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.
#18 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
#19 According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.
#20 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#21 The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
#24 It is estimated that over 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where the income gap between the rich and the poor is widening.
#25 One year after the recent financial collapse the top 25 hedge fund managers earned a total of approximately $25 billion. That breaks down to an average of $1 billion each.
#26 Bill Gates has a net worth of somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 billion dollars. That means that there are approximately 140 different nations that have a yearly GDP which is smaller than the amount of money Bill Gates has.
#27 It is estimated that the entire continent of Africa owns approximately 1 percent of the total wealth of the world.
#28 The top 0.01% of Americans make an average of $27,342,212. The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244.
#2958 percent of the members of Congress are millionaires while only about 1 percent of the general population is made up of millionaires.
So what is the solution?
Well, our liberal friends insist that the solution to all of this inequality is to tax the rich and to distribute the wealth to the poor.
Well, there are three major problems with that.
Number one, when you raise taxes too high you eliminate the incentive to work hard.
Number two, when you make it too easy to depend on government handouts you create an underclass of economic parasites.
Number three, the big corporations and the ultra-wealthy have become masters at avoiding taxation no matter what the rates are.
Before you tax the rich too much, you might want to consider the consequences of doing so.
Why should someone bust his or her rear end to run a business and make a lot of money if the government is just going to come along and take over half of all the money that is made?
Personally, if I ever get into a tax bracket where over half the money I make goes to the government then I simply will not work nearly as hard at that point.
But if that starts happening on a large scale, then you have a significant loss of economic activity which hurts the economy overall.
Already, the top 20 percent of all income earners in the United States pay approximately 86 percent of all federal income taxes.
When the government “steals from the rich” and “gives to the poor”, that also tends to create a large group of people that decides that it is easier to take from the government than it is to work for a living.
In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
That is not even close to sustainable, but nobody wants to give up their “government benefits”.
Today, 59 percent of all Americans receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
Yes, there will always be those that cannot help themselves and we should always have a “safety net”.
But when you look around it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that things have gotten completely and totally out of control.
Right now, an all-time record 44 million Americans are on food stamps.
Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
The U.S. government is even handing out billions of dollars to homeowners that are delinquent on their mortgages.
This is not a formula for long-term economic success.
When people get addicted to government checks they never want to stop.
But this is not what the poor need.
What the poor need are good jobs that pay good wages. Unfortunately, we keep shipping millions of those jobs overseas. So now the Chinese economy is thriving and our formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into hellholes.
Handouts do not give people hope, dignity and a future, but jobs can.
Also, as I have written about before, the big corporations and the ultra-wealthy have become masters at avoiding taxes. There is a reason why approximately a third of all the wealth in the world is held in “offshore” tax havens.
What U.S. corporations are able to get away with is absolutely amazing.
During those three years, all of the corporations below made a lot of money. Yet all of them paid net taxes that were below zero for those three years combined.
How is that possible? Well, it turns out that instead of paying in taxes to the federal government, they were actually getting money back.
So for these corporations, their rate of taxation was actually below zero.
If you have not seen these before, you are going to have a hard time believing some of these statistics…..
*Honeywell*
Profits: $4.9 billion
Taxes: -$34 million
*Fed Ex*
Profits: $3 billion
Taxes: -$23 million
*Wells Fargo*
Profits: $49.37 billion
Taxes: -$681 million
*Boeing*
Profits: $9.7 billion
Taxes: -$178 million
*Verizon*
Profits: $32.5 billion
Taxes: -$951 million
*Dupont*
Profits: $2.1 billion
Taxes -$72 million
*American Electric Power*
Profits: $5.89 billion
Taxes -$545 million
*General Electric*
Profits: $7.7 billion
Taxes: -$4.7 billion
Are you starting to get the picture?
I wish I could make $7.7 billion, pay no taxes and have the government give me $4.7 billion on top of it.
Our system has become corrupted beyond all recognition.
We need to throw out the current system of taxation and come up with something entirely new.
In fact, the truth is that for most of U.S. history there was not a federal income tax at all. But that is a story for another day.
If you believe in the U.S. Constitution and in the republic that our founding fathers established, then the very high concentrations of wealth and power in our society today should greatly concern you. Income inequality is not a “Democrat” or a “Republican” issue. A vibrant, thriving middle class should be a goal all of us can embrace.
But I have a feeling a whole lot of “Democrats” and a whole lot of “Republicans” were deeply offended by this article. Feel free to express your opinion by leaving a comment below….
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.
Do you ever have the feeling that there are holes in your pockets? These days our money seems to slip through our hands faster than ever. The Federal Reserve keeps telling us that the rate of inflation in 2011 is “close to zero”, and this is causing confusion for many Americans because they are making just as much money as they did in previous years but it doesn’t seem to go nearly as far. So what in the world is going on out there? Well, sadly, the truth is that we really don’t even know what the government considers “inflation” to be anymore. The way that the U.S. government calculates inflation has changed an astounding 24 times since 1978. You see, it is always politically beneficial to have a low inflation rate, so recent administrations have been changing the formula constantly in an attempt to look good. But these days most Americans know something is up. All they have to do is stop at a gas station, go shopping for food or open up their bills. The reality is that inflation in 2011 is about as bad as we saw back in the 1970s, it is just that the government is much less honest about it now.
Many years ago Kenny Rogers released a song that contained the following lyrics….
You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em
Know when to walk away and know when to run
You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table
There’ll be time for counting when the dealer’s done
Well, the U.S. middle class has been dealt a losing hand, but in the game of life you just can’t fold.
Over the past 3 decades, the average household income for the bottom 80 percent of Americans has been remarkably flat. In fact, over the past several years we have actually seen median household income decline several times. If you do not know about how the U.S. middle class is being ripped to shreds, just read this article. Without a doubt, America is getting poorer.
Well, not the top 1 percent, but the vast majority of the rest of us sure are.
Meanwhile, prices have started to rise with a vengeance.
According to an article in the Daily Mail, a Memorial Day cookout will cost you 29 percent more this year than it did last year.
That doesn’t sound good.
Will it be 29 percent more expensive again next year?
Perhaps some of us will just have to stop having Memorial Day cookouts because we can’t afford them anymore.
The price of gas is also digging into our paychecks big time.
A gallon of gas costs about a dollar more than it did a year ago, but we can’t avoid buying gas. All of us have got to get to work and drive to the store.
Sadly, each time the price of gasoline goes up 50 cents it takes about $70 billion out of the U.S. economy (on a yearly basis).
A recent article in USA Today described the kind of impact these high gas prices are having on average American families….
For every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar now goes toward gas, a 40 percent bigger bite than normal.
Households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. In April 2009, they spent just $201.
But don’t worry, according to Ben Bernanke we barely have any inflation at all in 2011.
Some companies are trying to avoid raising their prices by reducing their package sizes. A recent article posted on Marketwatch entitled “Inflation diet: same price, less product” explored this phenomenon in detail. Millions of Americans are going to the supermarket and are finding that many of their favorite products are now 10 or 20 percent smaller and yet they are paying the same price as before.
Another thing that is happening is that product quality is going down. Have you noticed how things just don’t seem to be made the way that they used to? This is not a coincidence.
According to Global Hunter Securities Macro and Consumer Strategist Richard Hastings, retailers have been collaborating with their production contractors for about two years. They are trying to push back on the total volume, cost and weight of every unit.
“Along the way, the consumer barely noticed. By now, everybody knows something is wrong,” said Hastings. “If we had to put a number on it, it’s probably a 7.5% decline in total quality and durability of products compared to a bigger increase in the cost of production per unit made outside of the U.S.”
But no matter how hard companies try to hide it, at some point the American people are going to wake up and they are going to realize that they aren’t getting as much for their money as they were before.
This is why so many people get upset when the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government devalue our money. Inflation is a “hidden tax” on every single one of us. When our dollars don’t buy as much stuff, that means that we are all poorer than we were before.
All of this inflation is coming at a time when the economy is really struggling. Personally, I am seeing all kinds of signals that the economy is really starting to slow down once again.
What is going to make things even worse is all of the government austerity that is going to be implemented over the next couple of years.
Once upon a time, a government job was the safest kind of a job you could have. Sadly, as a recent Reuters article noted, those days are long gone….
Around 450,000 people who work for U.S. states, counties, cities, towns and villages could get pink slips in fiscal 2012, sharply up from the 300,000 positions shed this year, a report said on Monday.
So should we, as many of our liberal friends insist, tax the rich so that we can pay for all of those government workers?
Well, the truth is that the wealthy are already being taxed into oblivion. If you doubt this, just read this editorial in The Wall Street Journal: “A 62% Top Tax Rate?”
Most of the “ultra-wealthy” have learned how to avoid most of this taxation by moving their wealth offshore. In fact, as I have written about previously, it is estimated that a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore” tax havens.
The Federal Reserve and our politicians in Washington D.C. have been very naughty. They have been systematically destroying the value of our dollars.
Someday when you are using your money as toilet paper because toilet paper is actually much more valuable than dollars are you will wish that the American people had stood up and insisted on a different path.
Don’t laugh – during the hyperinflation that the Weimar Republic experienced in the 1920s, German citizens were actually burning stacks of money in their furnaces in order to keep their homes warm.
100 years ago, a U.S. dollar had more than 20 times the purchasing power than it has today.
Sadly, we are now in a terminal phase of dollar devaluation. It is only going to get worse from here. Someday we will look back and long for the days of “low inflation” that we had back in 2011.
If you listen to Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama and the mainstream media long enough, and if you didn’t know any better, you might be tempted to think that the economic crisis is long gone and that we are in the midst of a burgeoning economic recovery. Unfortunately, the truth is that the economic crisis is far from over. In 2010, more homes were repossessed than ever before, more Americans were on food stamps than ever before and a smaller percentage of American men had jobs than ever before. The reality is that the United States is an economic basket case and all of these natural disasters certainly are not helping things. The Federal Reserve has been printing gigantic piles of money and the U.S. government has been borrowing and spending cash at a dizzying pace in an all-out effort to stabilize things. They have succeeded for the moment, but our long-term economic problems are worse then ever. We are still in the middle of a full-blown economic crisis and things are about to get even worse.
If you know someone that is foolish enough to believe that the economic crisis is over and that our economic problems are behind us, just ask that person the following questions….
#1 During the 23 months of the “Obama recovery”, an average of about 23,000 jobs a month have been created. It takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So shouldn’t we hold off a bit before we declare the economic crisis to be over?
#2 During the “recession”, somewhere between 6.3 million and 7.5 million jobs were lost. During the “Obama recovery”, approximately 535,000 jobs have been added. When will the rest of the jobs finally come back?
#3 Of the 535,000 jobs that have been created during the “Obama recovery”, only about 35,000 of them are permanent full-time jobs. Today, “low income jobs” account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States. If our economy is recovering, then why can’t it produce large numbers of good jobs that will enable people to provide for their families?
#4 Agricultural commodities have been absolutely soaring this decade. The combined price of cotton, wheat, gasoline and hogs is now more than 3 times higher than it was back in 2002. So how in the world can the Federal Reserve claim that inflation has been at minimal levels all this time?
#5 Back in 2008, banks had a total of 27 billion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed. Today, banks have a total of approximately 1.5 trillion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed. So what is going to happen when all of this money eventually hits the economy?….
#6 If the U.S. economy is recovering, then why are shipments by U.S. factories still substantially below 2008 levels?
#7 Why are imports of goods from overseas growing much more rapidly than shipments of goods from U.S. factories?
#8 According to Zillow, the average price of a home in the U.S. is about 8 percent lower than it was a year ago and that it continues to fall about 1 percent a month. During the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest rate since late 2008. So can we really talk about a “recovery” when the real estate crisis continues to get worse?
#9 According to a shocking new survey, 54 percent of Americans believe that a housing recovery is “unlikely” until at least 2014. So how is the housing industry supposed to improve if so many people are convinced that it will not?
#10 The latest GDP numbers out of Japan are a complete and total disaster. During the first quarter GDP declined by a stunning 3.7 percent. Of course I have been saying for months that the Japanese economy is collapsing, but most mainstream economists were absolutely stunned by the latest figures. So will the rest of the world be able to avoid slipping into a recession as well?
#11 Next week, Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to allow a vote on raising the debt ceiling. Everyone knows that this is an opportunity for Republican lawmakers to “look tough” to their constituents (the vast majority of which do not want the debt ceiling raised). Everyone also knows that eventually the Republicans are almost certainly going to cave on the debt ceiling after minimal concessions by the Democrats. The truth is that neither “establishment Republicans” nor “establishment Democrats” are actually serious about significantly cutting government debt. So why do we need all of this political theater?
#12 Why are so many of our once great manufacturing cities being transformed into hellholes? In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.
#13 According to one new survey, about half of all Baby Boomers fear that when they retire they are going to end up living in poverty. So who is going to take care of them all when the money runs out?
#14 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006. Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month. So why are our politicians talking about “economic recovery” instead of “the collapse of the economy” when hiring remains about 50 percent below normal?
#15 Since August, 2 million more Americans have left the labor force. But the entire period from August to today was supposed to have been a time of economic growth and recovery. So why are so many Americans giving up on looking for a job?
#16According 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. Are Americans losing faith in the U.S. economy?
#17 According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years, and one out of every four American children is currently on food stamps. During this same time period, Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke have told us over and over that the U.S. economy has been getting better. So what is the truth?
#18 America has become absolutely addicted to government money. 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another. U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes. Americans hate having their taxes raised and they hate having their government benefits cut. So is there any hope that this will ever be turned around before disaster strikes?
#19 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. How in the world is the U.S. government going to be able to afford to guarantee all of that debt on top of everything else?
#20 If the U.S. national debt (more than 14 trillion dollars) was reduced to a stack of 5 dollar bills, it would reach three quarters of the way to the moon. The U.S. government borrows about 168 million dollars every single hour. 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. So how in the world can our politicians tell us that everything is going to be okay?
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.
At times it really is breathtaking how corrupted the U.S. government has become. Government corruption has become so endemic in our society that most people have just kind of accepted it as “normal”. But shouldn’t we all get hopping mad when we learn that the Federal Reserve sent billions of dollars in bailout money to addresses in the Cayman Islands? Shouldn’t we all be furious when one of the leading candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, declares that he is “not going to spend my time focusing on the Federal Reserve”? Shouldn’t we all be alarmed when Nancy Pelosi gives a speech in which she says that “elections shouldn’t matter”? Shouldn’t we all demand that someone be held accountable when we find out that a CBO analysis shows that the “$38.5 billion” in spending cuts will only reduce the budget deficit for this year by $352 million dollars? On top of everything else, shouldn’t we all be absolutely horrified when the TSA gropes little 6 year old girls and virtually none of our politicians demand change?
$38.5 Billion In Budget Cuts Is Really Just $352 Million In Deficit Reduction?
Yesterday I wrote about how a close examination of the “budget cut deal” reveals that the 38.5 billion dollars in budget cuts are largely illusory.
However, even I was not ready for what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about this deal. What I read in the Washington Post today absolutely floored me. According to the Washington Post, the Congressional Budget Office is saying that the budget deal will only cut the budget deficit for this year by less than one percent of what was being claimed by Republican and Democrat leaders….
The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday would pare just $352 million from the deficit through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.
What a joke.
The reality is that U.S. government is increasing by over 2 million dollars every single minute. So the entire “savings” from this “budget deal” will account for approximately 3 hours of government spending.
Look, the U.S. government ran a budget deficit of $188 billion dollars for the month of March alone. We are in debt up to our eyeballs and it is getting worse at a mind blowing pace.
When are people going to wake up and realize that neither political party is the least bit serious about dealing with our debt problem any time soon?
The Federal Reserve Sent Billions In Bailout Aid To Millionaires and Billionaires In The Cayman Islands
Most Americans don’t even understand what the Federal Reserve is, and yet they get to throw trillions of dollars around while being more or less completely unaccountable the entire time.
In a new article for Rolling Stone (which is a must read), Matt Taibbi exposes some of the folks that the Federal Reserve has been sending money to….
The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”
How in the world does it benefit the American people to send billions of dollars to some ultra-wealthy people down in the Cayman Islands?
In light of what we have already found out, it is absolutely amazing that Congress is still refusing to authorize a complete audit of the Federal Reserve.
The corruption of the Fed is crying out to be investigated.
Unfortunately, many of our top politicians are openly declaring that they have no intention of going after the Federal Reserve.
Mitt Romney Declares That He Will Not Be Going After Ben Bernanke Or The Federal Reserve
In case anyone needs one more sign that Mitt Romney is just another shill for the establishment, just check out the two statements by Romney below.
According to Politico, Romney recently told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that he is not concerned about the Federal Reserve at all….
“I think Ben Bernanke is a student of monetary policy; he’s doing as good a job as he thinks he can do,” Romney said when Kudlow asked what kind of job Bernanke is doing. “I’m not going to spend my time going after Ben Bernanke. I’m not going to spend my time focusing on the Federal Reserve.”
That’s just great. The Republican candidate with perhaps the greatest amount of “establishment support” says that he thinks that Bernanke is doing a good job and he does not plan to spend any time focusing on the Federal Reserve.
So if Romney gets in the Federal Reserve will continue to be able to dish out trillions to their friends without any interference.
Nancy Pelosi Declares That “Elections Shouldn’t Matter”
How are we supposed to respond when the top Democrat in the House of Representatives declares that “elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do”?
During a recent speech, Pelosi implored establishment Republicans to “take back your party” so that elections won’t “matter” as much….
To my Republican friends: take back your party. So that it doesn’t matter so much who wins the election, because we have shared values about the education of our children, the growth of our economy, how we defend our country, our security and civil liberties, how we respect our seniors. Because there are so many things at risk right now — perhaps in another question I’ll go into them, if you want. But the fact is that elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do… But when it comes to a place where there doesn’t seem to be shared values then that can be problematic for the country, as I think you can see right now.
Apparently what Pelosi wants is for America to go back to a time when all of us just went along with the false left/right paradigm and when we were all content to sleep while the establishment agenda rolled right along.
Well guess what Nancy? Some of us are starting to wake up.
6 Year Old Girl Molested By The TSA
How far have we fallen as a nation when a 6 year old girl has to have her private areas touched in public by the TSA before she is allowed to get on an airplane?
America is becoming a very strange place.
The following is video that was posted on YouTube of the recent incident involving a 6 year old girl….
So is this what we have become as a nation?
Will we subject ourselves to anything as long as the authorities insist that it will keep us a little bit safer?
Pretty soon America is going to be unrecognizable.
I have previously written about how in one town in Missouri, girls scouts have actually been banned from selling girl scout cookies in their own front yards.
How crazy is that?
In Cleveland, authorities haves announced plans to have “trash supervisors” go snooping through trash cans to ensure that people are actually recycling according to city guidelines.
The control freaks we keep voting into office seem to have an obsession with running ever detail of our lives.
In many areas of the nation we aren’t even allowed to do acts of kindness anymore.
For example, in Houston, Texas a couple named Bobby and Amanda Herring that had been feeding homeless people for over a year has been banned by the city from doing so.
So what is next?
Are they going to ban kids from taking lunches to school?
It is already happening….
At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the cafeteria serves.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve gets to create trillions of dollars out of thin air and they get to send it to whoever they want.
What a country we have, eh?
Our system has become corrupted beyond all recognition. Government corruption is out of control and it is getting worse with each passing day.
So when are the American people going to get sick of all this nonsense?
When are….
Wait.
American Idol is on tonight.
Perhaps all of this can just wait for another time.
After all, who wants to miss what J-Lo and Steven Tyler are going to say tonight?
Those two are really a couple of characters!
Our leaders know what they are doing, right?
We can trust our politicians to act in our best interest, right?
So instead of writing about all of this “doom and gloom”, perhaps I should just lighten up and focus on fun things like American Idol a little bit more.
Guess what? The Democrats and the Republicans are both lying to us again. So what else is new? The truth is that the great “budget crisis” which supposedly took us to the verge of a government shutdown was just a whole bunch of political theater. Even the Associated Press is declaring that our politicians used “accounting sleight of hand” to reach the $38.5 billion budget cut figure. Not that $38.5 billion was an impressive number to begin with. $38.5 billion would just be one percent of the federal budget. But once you strip away the accounting charades, the real budget cut number is somewhere around 14 billion dollars. It turns out that the “budget cuts” include money left unspent from previous years, earmarks that were going nowhere, unused census money and programs that Obama was already planning to cut. The more you examine the “budget deal”, the more it becomes obvious that the Republicans and the Democrats had no intention of doing anything serious about our debt problems. The U.S. government is still going to run a record-setting budget deficit in 2011 and both the Democrats and the Republicans are to blame.
So should we be surprised that our politicians have been lying to us again?
Of course not.
But if something is not done about our soaring debt it is absolutely going to crash our financial system.
According to the IMF, the U.S. government will have to borrow an amount of money equivalent to 29 percent of GDP this year alone in order to finance its budget deficit and its maturing debt.
That is what you call a crisis.
But neither political party seems the least bit serious about the national debt.
The Republicans are proposing even more tax cuts without saying how they are going to pay for them, and they even tucked an increase in military spending into the “budget cut” deal.
The Democrats don’t seem to want to cut much of anything. In fact, most Democrats seem to believe that government debt is not much of a crisis at all.
Our politicians love to talk about “cutting the budget”, but nothing ever gets done. Both parties have been promising us “fiscal responsibility” for decades but both parties have never delivered.
Sadly, the American people have not held our politicians responsible for this.
This latest episode just reveals how much of a joke Washington D.C. has become. In the 8 days leading up to the “historic” $38.5 billion budget deal, the U.S. national debt increased by $54.1 billion dollars.
Our politicians are standing by and doing nothing while the financial future of this nation is being destroyed right in front of our eyes. 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.
Fortunately, some bloggers out there are starting to wake up to just how pathetic this latest “budget deal” really was.
For instance, Tim Fernholz of the National Journal recently posted the following….
For example, the final cuts in the deal are advertised as $38.5 billion less than was appropriated in 2010, but after removing rescissions, cuts to reserve funds, and reductions in mandatory spending programs, discretionary spending will be reduced only by $14.7 billion.
In fact, some conservative bloggers are becoming absolutely furious with the duplicity of the Republican party. In a recent article on Business Insider, John Ellis really let John Boehner have it….
It turns out that the budget agreement that all parties were hailing this past weekend as a “great achievement” is in fact a joke. Any Republican who was elected with even a sliver of Tea Party support is now duty-bound to vote against it on Friday. Every 2012 Republican presidential hopeful is now duty-bound to demand that it be voted down.
But Boehner is already saying that it is time to “move on” and that he is really going to “get tough” during the next battle. Boehner is claiming that the “war” over the debt ceiling is going to be about “trillions” instead of “billions”.
The American people are certainly in the mood for something to be done about our debt crisis. According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, the vast majority of Republicans and the vast majority of independents do not want the debt ceiling raised. Even Democrats are roughly split on the issue.
So what pathetically low number will cause John Boehner to cave in this time?
Obama is already taking a strong stand on the debt ceiling. He is demanding that the Republicans send him a “clean bill” and is warning that they must not “play politics” with U.S. government finances.
On Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney stated that “the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling would be Armageddon-like in terms of the economy.”
You know what? To a certain degree Carney is right. If the U.S. government hits the debt ceiling the financial markets will likely go haywire. That would cause the big boys up on Wall Street to start putting tremendous pressure on Boehner. There is no way that Boehner would watch chaos unfold on Wall Street and not end up flinching.
Not that Boehner was ever serious about cutting the federal deficit. He was not serious about it during the Bush years and he is not serious about it now.
This is all just a whole lot of political theater.
Meanwhile, most Americans are not even paying attention to all of the financial fraud being committed by the “fourth branch of government”.
Of course the Federal Reserve is not actually part of the federal government at all. But they do get to spend trillions and lend trillions without ever having to get the approval of Congress, the president or the American people.
For example, most Americans don’t realize this, but the Federal Reserve has been handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in nearly risk-free loans to their friends and even to the wives of their friends.
Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve is above the law and is not accountable to anyone. In fact, we can’t even get our politicians to authorize a comprehensive audit of their books.
The truth is that our system is soaked in so much fraud that there is no way that it will ever recover.
We have turned our backs on the principles of our founding fathers and so now we pay the price.
The U.S. national debt is now over 14 times larger than it was 30 years ago and it is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day. This debt will destroy our financial system. We are stealing the future from our children and our grandchildren.
It is so sad to see what is happening to America.
So what do all of you think about what is going on in Washington D.C.? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
Thank you Ben Bernanke for all the money printing. Thanks to a massive injection of cash into the financial system by the Federal Reserve and other central banks, the price of almost every major commodity has skyrocketed over the past six months. Now those price increases are starting to filter down to the retail level. During a recent meeting with USA TODAY’s editorial board, Wal-Mart CEO Bill Simon said that rising inflation in the United States is “going to be serious” and that Wal-Mart is “seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate.” For many years Wal-Mart has been famous for their “low prices”, so for the head of Wal-Mart to publicly warn that much higher prices are coming is more than a little alarming. There are millions of American families that are already drowning in debt, that can barely pay their mortgages and that are struggling to put food on the table for their families. So what is going to happen to the U.S. economy when prices start rising substantially at places such as Wal-Mart?
But Wal-Mart is not the only major corporation that says that inflation is coming. Hershey has just announced price increases of about 10 percent on their entire line of products.
So if you like chocolate you better start stocking up now.
Cocoa production is being seriously threatened by the political unrest in Africa right now. The recent chaos in the Ivory Coast is certainly not good news for Hershey, but the truth is that all of the long-term trends indicate that prices for commodities such as cocoa, coffee and sugar are going to move up anyway.
In fact, Aaron Smith, the managing director of Superfund Financial, believes that coffee, sugar and cocoa will all be five to ten times more expensive by 2014 than they are today.
So if you are addicted to coffee or to sugar you might want to start making your plans accordingly.
But the truth is that inflation is not limited to just a few commodities. Virtually every major agricultural commodity has soared in price over the past 6 months to a year.
So what is causing all of this?
Well, there are several factors which are major contributors.
First of all, overall global demand continues to increase. The population of the world continues to grow, and as the economies of nations such as China and India develop, millions more people want to enjoy luxury items such as chocolate and coffee just like Americans do.
Secondly, all over the world central banks have been recklessly printing money in an attempt to stimulate their economies, but this is also going to end up causing tremendous inflation.
So how does that work?
Well, it is actually very simple.
For example, in the United States when there are more dollars chasing the same number of goods and services, what is going to happen?
Prices are going to rise of course.
And we are seeing this happen all over the world right now.
Thirdly, as the price of oil continues to rise, it is going to increase the cost of everything else. The era of massive amounts of cheap food being transported around the world using massive quantities of cheap oil is rapidly coming to an end.
The following chart if from the Federal Reserve. It shows that the price of oil is rapidly moving back to the level it was at prior to the financial crisis of 2008. In fact, this chart is slightly out of date. At last check, the price of oil was over $107 a barrel. So what is it going to mean for our economy if we soon surpass the record that was set back in 2008?….
Fourthly, global instability is also going to cause prices to continue to rise. Over the past year we have had really bizarre weather all over the globe, we have seen revolutions erupt all over Africa and the Middle East and the third largest economy in the world (Japan) just experienced the worst disaster that they have been through since World War 2 ended.
When things are unstable, economies don’t work as efficiently. That means that less goods and services are produced.
But when there are less goods and services being chased by an increasing amount of money that tends to push prices up.
The truth is that inflation is here, and if the CEO of Wal-Mart is right, it is not going to go away any time soon.
In fact, many believe that the world is on the verge of another major economic crisis.
If you stop and think about it, every major region of the world is dealing with very serious problems right now.
Right now, the European debt crisis is worse than it ever has been before. Did you notice that Standard & Poor’s just downgraded Portugal’s debt for the second time in a week? Now Portuguese debt is rated BBB-, which is only one level above junk status.
That is a very alarming sign.
Asia is dealing with the Japanese crisis, nearly all of the countries in the Middle East are dealing with protests or full-blown revolutions, Africa is dealing with the war in Libya and quite a few revolutions of their own, and the U.S. is still deeply struggling with a whole host of economic problems.
Most Americans don’t realize just how precarious things are at the moment for the global economy. The financial crash of 2008 did a lot of lasting damage, and the next wave of the financial crisis could potentially be even worse. Unfortunately, the global financial system is more vulnerable than ever right now.
So what are the Federal Reserve and other central banks going to do the next time a major financial crisis happens?
They are going to print even larger quantities of money and they are going to give even larger bailouts to their friends of course.
The dollars that you have today are never going to be more valuable than they are right now. Don’t wait too long to use them. If you have a huge pile of dollars sitting in the bank your wealth is slowly but surely rotting away.
Very hard economic times are coming. The inflation that the CEO of Wal-Mart is warning about is only the beginning. Eventually we are going to see inflation in this country that is going to be absolutely mind blowing.
But don’t wait until the storm hits to start preparing. We all have time now to prepare, so let us be wise and make the most of it.
Today, average Americans have less power relative to the monolithic corporate and governmental institutions that dominate our society than at any other point in U.S. history. Sadly, this is not what our founding fathers ever envisioned. Our founding fathers established a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, but what we have today is very far from that ideal. In America today, wealth and power are very highly concentrated, and if you have neither wealth nor power than most of our politicians really do not have any interest in you. Over the past several decades, those with huge amounts of money and power have been busy rigging the game so that the rest of the money and power slowly but surely funnels into their hands. If current trends continue, the banksters and the corpocracy will eventually own it all. Below you will find 29 statistics about extreme income inequality in America. Sadly, most of these statistics will be out of date in a year or two because wealth and power will be much more concentrated by that time.
50 U.S. Health Care Statistics That Will Absolutely Astonish You
As you read this, there are hordes of health bureaucrats and greedy corporate fatcats that are becoming incredibly wealthy while the rest of us go broke trying to pay for our health care. In the United States today, health care bills cause more bankruptcies than anything else does. Millions of Americans are afraid to go to the hospital because they know that even a short visit would be a huge financial burden.
Sadly, our politicians in Washington D.C. continue to make the problem worse. Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation that anyone has ever come up with in the history of the United States. You could put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters for a thousand years and they wouldn’t come up with anything as bad as Obamacare. Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical corporations, Obamacare actually gives them more power. In fact, huge portions of Obamacare are virtually identical to a bill that was written by the health insurance trade association in 2009. Under Obamacare our health care costs will go up even faster and the quality of our health care will continue to go down. So please don’t try to tell me that Obamacare is the solution to anything.
The health care system in the United States is so broken that it probably cannot be repaired. The entire thing needs to be dismantled and completely reinvented.
If you doubt this, just check out the stats that I have compiled below.
As I put together this list of statistics, Business Insider proved to be a very valuable resource. In addition, I relied heavily on the following articles which I previously authored….
*25 Shocking Facts That Prove That The Entire U.S. Health Care Industry Has Become One Giant Money Making Scam
*18 Ridiculous Statistics About Medical Bills, Medical Debt And The Health Care Industry That Will Make You So Mad You Will Want To Tear Your Hair Out
*The Coming Doctor Shortage
The following are 50 U.S. health care statistics that will absolutely astonish you….
#1 What the United States spent on health care in 2009 was greater than the entire GDP of Great Britain.
#2 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#3 The United States spent 2.47 trillion dollars on health care in 2009. It is being projected that the U.S. will spend 4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019.
#4 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#5 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#6 Over the past decade, health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than wages have in the United States.
#7 The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, brought in a staggering $68.7 million during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million in wages and other forms of compensation. The funny thing is that he left the company and didn’t even work the whole year.
#8 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States combined to receive nearly $200 million in total compensation for 2009.
#9 Even as the rest of the country struggled with a deep recession, U.S. health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent during 2009 alone.
#10 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.
#11 In the United States, health insurance administration expenses account for 8 percent of all health care costs. In Finland, that figure is just 2 percent.
#12 Health insurance rate increases are getting out of control. According to the Los Angeles Times, Blue Shield of California announced plans earlier this year to raise rates an average of 30% to 35%, and some individual policy holders were slated to see their health insurance premiums rise by up to 59 percent.
#13 According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers in the U.S. increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.
#14 Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.
#15 There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits each during 2008.
#16 Each year, tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.
#17 Prescription drugs cost about 50% more in the United States than they do in other countries.
#18 Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was recently released. According to the report, approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs, and more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more drugs on a regular basis.
#19 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#20 The Food and Drug Administration reported 1,742 prescription drug recalls in 2009, which was a gigantic increase from 426 drug recalls in 2008.
#21 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
#22 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#23 Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs. According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.
#24 According to one doctor interviewed by Fox News, “a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen” will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the wound is.
#25 Why are c-sections on the rise? It is because a vaginal delivery costs approximately $5,992, while a c-section costs approximately $8,558.
#26 According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States had a higher infant mortality rate than 45 other nations in 2009.
#27 The infant mortality rate in the United States is nearly three times as high as it is in Singapore.
#28 It is estimated that hospitals overcharge Americans by about 10 billion dollars every single year.
#29 In fact, one trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of all the medical bills that she has audited contain “gross overcharges“.
#30 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don’t know how the system works then you are out of luck.
#31 Over the last decade, the number of Americans without health insurance has risen from about 38 million to about 52 million.
#32 People living in the United States are three times more likely to have diabetes than people living in the United Kingdom.
#33 Today, people living in Puerto Rico have a greater life expectancy than people living in the United States do.
#34 According to OECD statistics, Americans are twice as obese as Canadians are.
#35 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#36 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#37 It is being projected that the federal government will account for more than 50 percent of all health care spending in 2012.
#38 Greece has twice as many hospital beds per person as the United States does.
#39 The state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.
#40 According to one survey, approximately 1 out of every 4 Californians under the age of 65 has absolutely no health insurance.
#41 According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, “inefficient claims processing” costs the U.S. health care system 210 billion dollars every single year.
#42 Today, approximately 40% of all U.S. doctors are age 55 or older.
#43 According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, we were already going to be facing a shortage of more than 150,000 doctors over the next 15 years even before Obamacare was passed.
#44 An IBD/TIPP poll taken back in August 2009 found that 4 out of every 9 American doctors said that they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passed Obamacare.
#45 According to a survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine, approximately one-third of all practicing physicians in the United States indicated that they may leave the medical profession because of the new health care law.
#46 According to a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors that was conducted in August 2010, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to “retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care” at some point over the next three years.
#47 According to the executive director of Physician Hospitals of America, Obamacare has already forced the cancellation of at least 60 doctor-owned hospitals that were scheduled to open soon.
#48 According to a report released in 2010, Americans spend approximately twice as much as residents of other developed countries do on health care.
#49 If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy in the entire world.
#50 According to numbers released by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping 875,000 Americans were “medical tourists” in 2010.