Has anyone else noticed that the level of stress in this country appears to be extremely high right now? Today, it seems like our federal government, our state governments and most American families live in a constant state of crisis. Everywhere you look there are major problems. Right now everyone is stressed out because of the “debt ceiling deadline”. Earlier this year everyone was freaked out about the possibility of a “government shutdown”. If by some miracle Barack Obama and the Republicans are able to reach a deal in the next few days that will not help the national stress level for long. Another gut-wrenching “national crisis” will almost certainly come along very quickly. Meanwhile, average American families are feeling more stress than ever. There are millions of ordinary Americans that either cannot find jobs or are working as hard as they can and yet cannot seem to pay their mortgages and provide the basics for their families. We are a nation that is really stressed out right now, and as things continue to unravel the level of stress is only going to increase.
Compared to much of the rest of the world, we have an insanely high standard of living, and yet we appear to be some of the most unhappy people on the face of the earth.
Wherever you turn today, someone is popping a pill. The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world. Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
What in the world is wrong with us?
America is a country that desperately needs to chill out.
Washington D.C. sure is a stressful place right now. Most of our politicians seem to be focused on the 2012 elections rather than on trying to solve our problems.
Most of our leaders are prancing around trying to make themselves look good. Meanwhile, our national financial situation continues to go down the toilet.
One way or another this “debt ceiling crisis” will probably get solved. Our politicians will come up with some sort of a “deal” and it will almost certainly be a bad one.
The sad truth is that the U.S. national debt problem should have been addressed decades ago.
But it wasn’t.
So now we are sitting on a 14 trillion dollar timebomb.
Yes, the ultra-wealthy have become absolute masters at avoiding taxation, but even if some way to tap into their offshore wealth could be found, it still would only put a small dent in the problem.
The truth is that the U.S. government spends way too much money.
U.S. government spending is now above 25 percent of U.S. GDP. That is way above what has been normal during the post-World War II era.
But cutting government spending is not going to fix our system either.
The reality is that our debt-based financial system is designed to trap our federal government in a constantly expanding spiral of debt indefinitely.
The same poll found that 80 percent of Americans believe that it is “difficult” to find a job these days.
In the United States today, there are 14 million unemployed people. Tonight there are huge numbers of Americans that are sitting at home desperately hoping that someone will give them a job. A significant percentage of our population that should be productive is just sitting on the sidelines. Just check out the following quote from a recent CNN article….
Has anyone in Washington noticed that 20% of American men are not working? That’s right. One out of five men in this country are collecting unemployment, in prison, on disability, operating in the underground economy, or getting by on the paychecks of wives or girlfriends or parents. The equivalent number in 1970, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, was 7%.
With numbers like that, how in the world can anyone claim that our economy is healthy?
Sadly, it looks like things may get even worse. As I have written about previously, we are now starting to see another huge wave of layoffs all over the nation.
The employment crisis has a ripple effect throughout the rest of the economy as well.
Without good jobs, Americans cannot buy homes. The housing crash is not going to be fixed until there the employment situation gets fixed.
With lending standards tighter than ever, it takes someone with a good income and a solid employment history to be able to qualify for a home loan.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of people like that in the marketplace right now.
So, the housing industry continues to suffer.
Last year was the worst year for new home sales in modern U.S. history. So far, this year is even worse.
Ouch.
It would be really nice if we actually would have an economic recovery, but it just isn’t happening.
Prices are rising and incomes are not. American families are feeling more squeezed than ever.
A lot of Americans live in a constant state of stress because of debt.
According to one new poll, about 20 percent of American adults worry about debt “most or all of the time”.
If you have ever been there, then you know how financial stress can rob sleep from you night after night after night.
Today, total credit card debt in the U.S. is more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
Some Americans can handle credit cards, but a lot of them can’t. A staggering 46 percent of Americans do not pay their credit card bills in full each month.
But credit card debt is only one form of debt that is causing stress for American families. The truth is that the total amount of student loan debt is even greater than the total amount of credit card debt. Medical debt is another huge problem. The vast majority of American families are dealing with a debt problem of one form or another. The decades of “easy credit” that we enjoyed are really starting to catch up with us.
Today, the average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.
That is not a good thing. American consumers are tapped out and the economy is suffering.
As the economy crumbles, many hard working Americans are finding that their lives have radically changed. Just check out the following excerpt from an article posted on a local Connecticut news source….
For 28 years, Cathy Hartley of Glastonbury brought home a good paycheck from her job at Aetna.
But last Tuesday, she was in line with her two young granddaughters for free produce from Mobile Foodshare at the First Church of Christ Congregational on Main Street.
For Hartley, who said she was laid off from her job as a project manager about six years ago and then laid off from a subsequent job two years ago, every little bit helps. Her eligibility for unemployment ran out two months ago.
Could you imagine standing in line at a food bank?
Don’t laugh.
It just might happen to you.
Millions of Americans that have lost their jobs and their homes never thought that it would happen to them.
Wealth and possessions are here today and gone tomorrow. People that base their lives on the things that they own are always going to have a high level of stress. We didn’t bring any of these things into the world with us, and we can’t take any of them with us when we leave.
So try not to stress out too much. We should all learn to be content whether we have a lot or whether we have a little.
So what do all of you think about the stress level in America right now? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
All over America, restlessness and frustration are growing. It has now been almost three years since the great financial crash of 2008, and yet the U.S. economy is still a complete and total mess. In fact, there are all sorts of signs that things are about to get even worse, and the American people are just about fed up. Virtually every major poll, survey and measure of consumer confidence shows that the American people are becoming more pessimistic about the economy. Millions of hard working Americans that worked their fingers to the bone for their employers and that did everything “right” are sitting at home on their couches tonight staring blankly at the television. Many of them still have a hard time believing that they were laid off and that there is nobody out there that wants to give them a good job. There are millions of other Americans that won’t get much sleep tonight because they will spend much of the night rolling around in bed wondering how they are possibly going to be able to pay the mortgage. We have never faced such an extended economic downturn in modern U.S. history, and a lot of people are starting to freak out about the condition of the economy. As Gerald Celente likes to say: “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose – they lose it.”
Every single month, the number of good jobs continues to go down. Wall Street actually rewards companies that have a good “outsourcing strategy”. As I have written about previously, a growing percentage of the jobs that are being “created” these days are very low paying jobs. But you can’t support a family, pay a mortgage or even afford decent health insurance on what you would make stocking shelves at Target or passing out buckets of chicken for KFC.
The American people keep waiting for “hope” and “change” to show up, but all they get instead are more helpings of “despair” and “frustration”.
Sadly, most Americans still cling to the hope that if the “next election” will just turn out the right way that things will be okay. But the truth is that things seem to stay on pretty much the same course no matter who we put into office.
For many years the status quo seemed to be okay for most people, but now we are starting to reap the results of the economic seeds that we have sown.
Now our economic decline is starting to accelerate and people are starting to panic. Most Americans may not know why all of this is happening, but what many of them do know is that something in their gut is telling them that things have gone terribly, terribly wrong somehow.
The following are 10 signs that the American people are starting to freak out about the condition of the economy….
#1 Things have already gotten so bad that Americans will literally trample one another just to get on a waiting list for rental assistance vouchers. Just check out the following excerpt from a local news report about a recent incident in Texas….
At least eight people were hurt Thursday morning while scrambling to line up for a limited number of Dallas County rental vouchers — after waiting for hours in their cars.
People lined up Thursday morning to apply for Dallas County Section 8 housing vouchers. Dallas County sheriff’s spokesman Kim Leach estimated the crowd at about 5,000.
Video of this incident is posted below. One of the people that was trampled was a pregnant woman….
#2 Almost every measurement of consumer confidence is going down. For example, the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell from 61.7 in May to 58.5 in June.
#3 The Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index has fallen to 63.8 after being at 71.5 in June. It is now the lowest that it has been since the last recession “ended”.
#4 The Rasmussen Consumer Index is down 9 points from a month ago.
#5 A recent poll taken by Rasmussen found that 68 percent of Americans believe that we are actually in a recession right now.
#6 According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that lack confidence in U.S. banks is now at an all-time high of 36%.
#7 In many areas of the United States this summer, just about anything that is not bolted down is being stolen by people that are desperate for money.
#8 According to one recent poll, 39 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy has now entered a “permanent decline”.
#9 Another recent survey found that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months.
#10 According to a brand new Reuters/Ipsos poll, 63 percent of Americans believe that the nation is on the wrong track. That figure is three percent higher than it was last month.
One of the only things preventing chaos from breaking out in the streets of our cities from coast to coast is government handouts.
Today, almost 20 percent of all personal income in the United States comes from benefits provided by the federal government.
You don’t believe this? Just check out what the New York Times recently had to say….
Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics.
There are tens of millions of Americans that are living “on the edge”, but at least the massive government handout programs are enabling most of them to survive.
So what happens when the checks from the government stop coming?
Look, I am not advocating that the “welfare society” that we have become is a good thing. Today, Americans receive more in direct government benefits than they pay in taxes. That is not even close to sustainable.
What I am pointing out is that tens of millions of Americans that are deeply suffering are currently being pacified by these government handouts. Once the handouts are cut significantly or taken away completely it is going to unleash a lot of anger and frustration.
Of course what the American people really need are good jobs that will give them dignity and allow them to provide for their families, but millions of those keep getting shipped out of the country.
So the only thing that millions of Americans still have to hang on to are their government benefits. Once that changes a whole lot of people are going to throw a fit.
In fact, we are already seeing some really bizarre behavior across the United States. In many areas of the country we are literally watching society crumble right in front of our very eyes.
If you doubt this, just check out these two articles….
But not all Americans will resort to lawless behavior. In fact, there are a lot of really good, hard working people out there that this economy has left behind.
There are some people that have put in decades of hard work only to see their dreams shrivel up over the past few years.
Some of the stories people send me are absolutely heartbreaking. I have looked at each and every comment that has been left on The Economic Collapse over the past couple of years. Needless to say, it has taken a huge investment of my time to go through more than 20,000 comments. But in the process I have gotten a very good idea of what people are going through across the nation.
So how badly are people hurting? Well, a reader identified as “Anna44″ recently shared with us what some of her family members have been going through in this economy….
My B-I-L was a dealership owner/manager who worked long hours over 38 years and had to close his doors when Saturn was dissolved. When his dealership went under, 72 others lost their job. That’s 72 families who took a hit. He lost his home, everything. A few of his former employees lost their homes as well eventually. They were not lazy or WORTHLESS. It took him a year and a half to finally find something, but now he lives in a hotel unable to qualify for a house or apartment. This is an educated man who competed nationwide for top dog and got it more then once. His biggest fault? He’s almost 60, young enough to need the work, but too old to be hired.
As for my husband- 26 years AF officer, handling millions & billions on International & National levels has just entered his 7th month of unemployment. Two tours abroad- lazy he is NOT. He doesn’t qualify for unemployment, nor is he counted because he gets a retirement check. He wants and needs to work- yet there is little out there. If he doesn’t find something soon, we too will lose the home we sunk every cent into after 20 years of saving for it!
All across America tonight there are similar stories. People have done everything “right” all of their lives and they are frustrated that now they have been pushed to the edge of poverty by this economy.
Unless you have been asleep or hiding under a rock for the past five years, you already know that we are experiencing the worst real estate crisis that the U.S. has ever seen. Home prices in the United States have fallen 33 percent from the peak of the housing bubble, which is more than they fell during the Great Depression. Those that decided to buy a house in 2005 or 2006 are really hurting right now. Just think about it. Could you imagine paying off a $400,000 mortgage on a home that is now only worth $250,000? Millions of Americans are now living through that kind of financial hell. Sadly, most analysts expect U.S. home prices to go down even further. Despite the “best efforts” of those running our economy, unemployment is still rampant. The number of middle class jobs continues to decline year after year, but it takes at least a middle class income to buy a decent home. In addition, financial institutions have really tightened up lending standards and have made it much more difficult to get home loans. Back during the wild days of the housing bubble, the family cat could get a zero-down mortgage, but today the pendulum has swung very far in the other direction and now it is really, really tough to get a home loan. Meanwhile, the number of foreclosures and distressed properties continues to soar. So with a ton of homes on the market and not a lot of buyers the power is firmly in the hands of those looking to buy a house.
So will home prices continue to go down? Possibly. But they won’t go down forever. At some point the inflation that is already affecting many other segments of the economy will affect home prices as well. That doesn’t mean that it will be middle class American families that will be buying up all the homes. An increasing percentage of homes are being purchased by investors or by foreigners. There are a lot of really beautiful homes in the United States, and wealthy people from all over the globe love to buy a house in America.
But because of the factors mentioned above, it is quite possible that U.S. home prices could go down another 10 or 20 percent, especially if the economy gets worse.
So what is the right time to buy a house?
Nobody really knows for sure.
Mortgage rates are near record lows right now and there are some great deals to be had in many areas of the country. But that does not mean that you won’t be able to get the same home for even less 6 months or a year from now.
In any event, this truly has been a really trying time for the U.S. housing market. Hordes of builders, construction workers, contractors, real estate agents and mortgage professionals have been put out of work by this downturn. The housing industry is one of the core pillars of the economy, and so a recovery in home sales is desperately needed.
The following are 20 really wacky statistics about the U.S. real estate crisis….
#1According to Zillow, 28.4 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in the United States are now underwater.
#2 Zillow has also announced that 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.
#3 U.S. home prices have now fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble.
#4 During the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest rate since late 2008.
#5According to Zillow, more than 55 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in Atlanta have negative equity and more than 68 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in Phoenix have negative equity.
#7 In February, U.S. housing starts experienced their largest decline in 27 years.
#8 New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
#9 Historically, the percentage of residential mortgages in foreclosure in the United States has tended to hover between 1 and 1.5 percent. Today, it is up around 4.5 percent.
#10 According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings in the United States are projected to increase by another 20 percent in 2011.
#12 Two years ago, the average U.S. homeowner that was being foreclosed upon had not made a mortgage payment in 11 months. Today, the average U.S. homeowner that is being foreclosed upon has not made a mortgage payment in 17 months.
#13 Sales of foreclosed homes now represent an all-time record 23.7% of the market.
#144.5 million home loans are now either in some stage of foreclosure or are at least 90 days delinquent.
#15 According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, at least 8 million Americans are currently at least one month behind on their mortgage payments.
#16 In September 2008, 33 percent of Americans knew someone who had been foreclosed upon or who was facing the threat of foreclosure. Today that number has risen to 48 percent.
#17 During the first quarter of 2011, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.
#19 In 1996, 89 percent of Americans believed that it was better to own a home than to rent one. Today that number has fallen to 63 percent.
#20 According to Zillow, the United States has been in a “housing recession” for 57 straight months without an end in sight.
So should we be confident that the folks in charge are doing everything that they can to turn all of this around?
Sadly, the truth is that our “authorities” really do not know what they are doing. The following is what Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had to say about the housing market back in 2006….
“Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”
Since that time U.S. housing prices have experienced their biggest decline ever.
At some point widespread inflation is going to reverse the trend we are experiencing right now, but that doesn’t mean that most American families will be able to afford to buy homes when that happens.
As I have written about previously, the middle class in America is shrinking. The number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 18 million over the past four years and today 47 million Americans (a new all-time record) are living in poverty.
Millions of our jobs are being shipped overseas, the cost of living keeps going up and an increasing percentage of American families are losing faith in the economy.
More Americans than ever are talking about “the coming economic collapse” as if it is a foregone conclusion. Our federal government is swamped with debt, our state and local governments are swamped with debt and our economic infrastructure is being ripped to shreds by globalization.
So sadly, no, there are not a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic at this point about a major economic turnaround.
The U.S. economy is going down the toilet and the coming collapse is going to be incredibly painful for all of us.
Hopefully when that collapse comes you will have somewhere warm and safe to call home. If not, hopefully someone will have compassion on you. In any event, we all need to buckle up because it is going to be a wild ride.
It seems like wherever you turn there is bad news for the U.S. economy. Unemployment is rampant, the cost of gasoline is going up, the cost of food is going up and American families are getting poorer. Millions of jobs continue to leave the country and everyone is wondering why it seems like the “American Dream” is dying. American consumers are absolutely swamped with staggering levels of credit card debt, student loan debt and mortgage debt and each year the consumer debt crisis only seems to get worse. For millions of American families the money problems never seem to end. Meanwhile, our politicians are doing next to nothing to fix our horrific national debt problem. So yes, there are a whole lot of reasons to be absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy. We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and anyone with half a brain can see that we are heading for complete and total disaster.
A lot of Americans do not like to read about economics, but what has been going on over the last few years has been nothing short of extraordinary. The Federal Reserve has basically tripled the adjusted monetary base. We have now been conditioned to accept that trillion dollar deficits are “normal”. The U.S. dollar is being systematically destroyed right in front of our eyes and most Americans don’t even seem alarmed about it.
Our entire financial system is coming apart.
The signs are everywhere.
The following are 25 reasons to be absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy….
#1 There are now 6.4 million fewer jobs in America than there were when the recession began.
#2 In Southern California, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is $1.00 higher than it was at this time last year.
#3 The average price of gasoline in the United States has jumped about 20 cents in just the last two weeks.
#4 Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.
#5 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.
#6 The $38.5 billion in budget cuts that the Republicans and the Democrats have agreed to represent approximately one percent of the federal budget.
#7 During the 2010 campaign, the Republicans promised voters they would cut $100 billion from the budget for 2011. Instead, they gave in when the Democrats offered just $38.5 billion.
#8 The Obama administration had been estimating that the federal budget deficit for fiscal 2011 would be approximately 1.6 trillion dollars. Now it will likely be somewhere around 1.55 trillion dollars which will still be an all-time record.
#9 According to numbers released by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping 875,000 Americans were “medical tourists” in 2010.
#10 The median pay for CEOs increased by 27 percent during 2010.
#11 Thanks to globalism, U.S. workers now must directly compete for jobs with workers in places such as Indonesia. In Indonesia, full-time workers make as little as two dollars a day. So how are Americans supposed to compete with that?
#12 Last week, the price of gold set a new all-time record on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday and on Friday.
#14 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
#15According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 25 percent of U.S. households now have zero net worth or negative net worth. Back in 2007, that number was just 18.6 percent.
#17 According to the New York Times, as of 2009 the wealthiest 5 percent of all Americans had 63.5 percent of all the wealth in America. Meanwhile, the bottom 80 percent had just 12.8 percent of all the wealth.
#18 According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
#21 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of unemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
#22 Back in the 1950s, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. Today they account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.
That last statistic really gets me. During the month of April the American people are going to be spending massive amounts of time and money to prepare their taxes.
But what do Americans get in return for their taxes?
What they get is a government that is completely and totally incompetent. Our “leaders” are running the greatest economy in the history of the world into the ground, but unfortunately most Americans have no idea what is happening.
Why are Americans so clueless?
Well, the truth is that over time we have been turned into a nation of idiots and morons.
Thanks to the slothfulness of society, the deficiencies in our education system and the toxins in our food, air and water it has become hard for most of us to think clearly.
Most of us are fat, dumb and totally clueless. The entire economic system is being shredded and most of us just drool and turn up the television a little louder.
If we have money problems, most of us just run out and apply for another credit card. If our state and local governments run into financial problems they just borrow even more money.
Of course the biggest offender of all is the federal government. What our politicians are doing to future generations is not just criminal. It is beyond criminal. It is absolutely unconscionable.
So please excuse me if I am absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy.
We took the greatest economy in the history of the world and we wrecked it.
How in the world are we going to explain this to our children and our grandchildren?
Do you need a good job? If so, there are millions of other Americans that are just like you. Unfortunately, most of the jobs that are available in America today are either part-time jobs, temp jobs or are “independent contractor” jobs. The “full-time job with benefits” is a dying breed. There are so many desperate unemployed workers in America today that companies don’t have to roll out the red carpet anymore. Instead, they can just hire a horde of inexpensive part-timers and temps that they don’t have to give any benefits to. But isn’t the employment situation supposed to be getting better? No, it really is not. Yes, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs in March. However, the truth is that approximately 290,000 part-time jobs were created and about 80,000 full-time jobs were actually lost. This is all part of a long-term trend in America. Good jobs are rapidly disappearing and they are being replaced by low paying service jobs that do not pay a living wage. In many American households today, both parents have multiple jobs. Yet a large percentage of those same households can’t even pay the mortgage and are drowning in debt.
Whenever a new government jobs report comes out from now on, try to find out how many of the jobs that were created were actually part-time jobs. Most Americans that only have part-time jobs are living around or below the poverty line. The truth is that it is really hard to get by if you are only making a couple hundred bucks a week.
As mentioned above, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs last month. The Obama administration and the mainstream media heralded that figure as evidence that the U.S. economy is recovering nicely.
But is that really accurate?
Rebel Cole, a professor at DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, says that when you take the time to do a closer examination of the employment numbers they don’t look so good….
“If you look deeper in the report, there were 290,000 new part-time workers, which means that there were 80,000 fewer full-time workers, that’s not a good sign. Things are getting worse, not getting better.”
Unless you are a teen or a college student or a retired person, most likely you would prefer to be working a full-time job. Most people do not actually have the goal of working part-time. Most part-time jobs pay very poorly and offer very few benefits.
Unfortunately, that is why so many big companies like part-time workers and temp workers. There are so many more rules, regulations and laws that pertain to full-time workers.
Hiring a bunch of part-time workers is so much easier and so much cheaper. Without a doubt it is definitely more profitable in most situations.
Today, there are millions of Americans that have part-time jobs that would love to have full-time jobs. In fact, the government says that there are about 8 million Americans that are currently working part-time jobs for “economic reasons”.
If only I could make HALF that much! The dirty secret is McDonalds needs to add 50,000 workers to increase the headcount in every store. The goal is to have no full-time employees who qualify for health benefits. So these 50,000 jobs will pay $174 a week BEFORE taxes, and have no benefits, no vacation days, no holidays off, call in sick and get fired, but they will have 52 mandatory weekends each year.
And how do I know this? I work for a national restaurant chain that already has gone to a part-time only policy. I am scheduled for 23 hours next week. The threshold for benefits is 26 hrs.
Of course I would assume that there are perhaps a couple of full-time workers at the restaurant that John works at (such as the manager). But the reality is that we are seeing this kind of thing more and more around the nation. Companies are being careful to keep hours low enough so that the majority of their employees do not qualify for expensive “full-time benefits”.
Another commenter on that same article said that it is possible to get by on a low wage but that doesn’t mean that it is easy….
I make about $400 a week; my wife nothing. Rent is $500 a month. Credit card bills (run up back when I made about $1200/week) run about $200 a month. Other expenses run us another few hundred dollars. We quit tv. We’re a litte cold. We eat ok. Try to fill the gas tank just once a month. We’re getting by, but able to save nothing, nor do we go out and have fun. Well, fun has become walks on Saturday morning. Those are free. And, as we’ve learned, rather nice.
$10 an hour stinks, but it is livable if you don’t mind admitting that you are poor. I know I’m poor now. It’s just the way it is. If I tried to keep living as i did when I was a middle class manager, I’d be extremely unhappy. I cant say I’m happy about being poor, but my wife and i are finding that happiness isn’t about having “stuff.”
This is the new “American Dream” for millions of American families. They are learning to scratch and claw to get by on what they have.
As I have written about previously, the standard of living of the middle class is being pushed down to third world levels. We have been merged into a “global labor pool”, and what that means is that the standard of living of all workers all over the world is going to be slowly equalized over time.
Translation: your standard of living and the standard of living of virtually everyone that you know is slated to go way down.
Right now America is rapidly losing high paying jobs and they are being replaced by low paying jobs. According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
So yes, jobs are being created, but most of them are jobs that none of us would really want under normal circumstances.
Unfortunately, times are not normal and millions of desperate people are having to take whatever they can get.
What makes things even worse is that really bad inflation is coming. There are less good jobs for American families and at the same time the cost of basic necessities is going up.
Have you been to the gas pump lately?
As I wrote about yesterday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now $3.70.
A year ago it was just $2.83.
For average American families on a tight budget that is a huge difference.
Food inflation is already here as well.
During the month of February, the price of food in the U.S. increased at the fastest rate in 36 years.
Are you starting to understand why so many American families are feeling squeezed right now?
Times are tough and they are going to get tougher. If you still have a good full-time job you should be very thankful, because there are millions and millions of people that would love to trade places with you.
So do the rest of you believe that America is turning into “the land of the part-time job”? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
If you make your living by building or selling new homes in the United States, you might want to consider taking up a different career for a while. New homes sales in the United States hit yet another new all-time record low in the month of February, and there are a whole lot of reasons why new home sales are going to stay extremely low for an extended period of time. The massive wave of foreclosures that we have seen has produced a giant glut of unsold homes in the marketplace, mortgage lenders are making it really hard to get approved for home loans, unemployment is still rampant and the global economy looks like it may soon plunge into another major recession. None of those things is good news for the new home construction industry. The truth is that we were supposed to have seen new home sales already bounce back by now. If you look at the historical numbers, new home sales in the U.S. always increased significantly after the end of every recession since World War 2. But that did not happen this time. Instead, new home sales have just continued to decline. This is absolutely unprecedented, and economists are puzzled. So what is going to happen if the U.S. economy suffers another major downturn?
New home construction has always been one of the foundational pillars of the U.S. economy. When times were good new home construction would boom, and when times were bad new home construction would falter.
Well, unfortunately the industry is stuck in the midst of a multi-year decline right now. The reality is that you can stick a fork in the new home construction industry in the United States. It is toast. There is going to be no recovery for the foreseeable future.
Not that previously owned homes are doing that much better. According to the National Association of Realtors, sales of previously existing homes in the United States dropped 9.6 percent in February. But at least sales of previously owned homes are not at all-time record lows like new home sales are.
As you can see from the facts posted below, new home sales are absolutely abysmal right now, and there are a lot of indications that things may get even worse. The following are 18 reasons why you can stick a fork in the new home construction industry….
#2 Only 19,000 new homes were sold in the United States during the month of February. The previous record low for new home sales during the month of February was 27,000, which was set last year.
#3 The “months of supply” of new homes in the U.S. rose from 7.4 months in January to 8.9 months in February.
#4 The median price of a new home in the United States declined almost 14 percent to $202,100 in the month of February.
#5 The median price of a new home in the U.S. is now the lowest it has been since December 2003.
#6 As of the end of 2010, new home sales in the United States had declined for five straight years, and they are expected to be lower once again in 2011.
#7 Now home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
#8 New home construction starts in the United States fell 22.5 percent during the month of February. This was the largest decline in 27 years.
#9 In February, the number of new building permits (a measure of future home building activity) declined to the lowest level in more than 50 years. In fact, new building permits were 20 percent lower during February 2011 than they were in February 2010.
#10 There is a major glut of foreclosed homes that still need to be sold off. David Crowe, the chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, recently told CNN that the constant flow of new foreclosures being put on the market is a huge hindrance to a recovery for new home sales….
“One of the biggest detriments to building new homes is the flow of existing foreclosed homes.”
#11 The number of foreclosures just continues to increase. This means that those trying to sell new homes are going to continue to be competing against a giant mountain of foreclosed homes for the foreseeable future. An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010, and that number is expected to be even higher in 2011.
#12 In fact, there are a whole lot of signs that there will be very high levels of foreclosures for years to come. For example, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, at least 8 million Americans are at least one month behind on their mortgage payments at this point.
#13 A stunningly high number of Americans are “underwater” on their mortgages right now. This could lead to an increase in the number of “strategic defaults”. 31 percent of the homeowners that responded to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey indicated that they are “underwater” on their mortgages, and Deutsche Bank is projecting that 48 percent of all U.S. mortgages could have negative equity by the end of 2011.
#14 The truth is that the U.S. doesn’t need a whole lot of new housing at the moment. Right now, 11 percent of all homes in the United States are currently standing empty.
#15 Mortgage lending standards have become extremely tight. Back during the housing bubble, almost anyone that was breathing could get a zero-down mortgage. Today, mortgage lenders have made it extremely difficult to acquire a home loan, and it is quite typical these days for lenders to demand down payments of 20 percent or more. This is dramatically reducing the number of home buyers in the marketplace.
#16 American families cannot buy homes if they do not have good jobs. Unfortunately, it has become extremely difficult to find a job in the United States today. This is especially true if you are looking for a good job. It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 33 weeks to find a job.
#17 There is not going to be a jobs recovery until the overall economy improves. Unfortunately, the price of oil continues to rise dramatically and economic disasters all over the planet threaten to plunge the global economy into another major recession.
#18 On top of everything else, perceptions regarding home ownership are shifting in the United States. In 1996, 89 percent of Americans believed that it was better to own a home than to rent one. Today that number has fallen to 63 percent.
Barack Obama recently made the following statement to American families that are struggling to survive in this economy: “If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, or you might put off a vacation.” A few days after making that statement Obama sent his wife and children off on yet another vacation, this time to a luxury ski hotel in Vail, Colorado. But the Obamas are not the only ones enjoying the high life. Wealthy corporate executives and greedy Wall Street fatcats insist that profit margins are too tight to hire more American workers, and yet sales of luxury cars, private jets and vacation homes are soaring. Meanwhile, most American families are going through economic hell right now. In 2010, more Americans than ever before were living below the poverty line. Over 4 million Americans have been unemployed for more than a year, and over 5 million Americans are at least two months behind on their mortgage payments. As the Obamas and wealthy corporate executives jet off to fancy ski resorts, half of all American workers are earning $505 or less per week and 55 percent of American families are living paycheck to paycheck. Something is very wrong with this picture.
So is there anything wrong with working hard and enjoying the fruits of success? Of course not, as long as it was done honestly and not on the backs of the American taxpayers. But the truth is that many of the corporate executives that are enjoying luxury vacations right now would not even have companies to run if the American taxpayers had not stepped in and bailed them out during the financial crisis. Thanks to the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve, Wall Street bankers and top corporate executives are once again enjoying bonuses that most of us would consider obscene.
Meanwhile, most of the rest of the country is suffering very deeply.
Over the past several decades, the biggest financial institutions and the biggest corporations have worked really hard to “fix” the rules of the game in their favor. The truth is that our economy is no longer a “free market” capitalist system. Rather, what we have now is more accurately described as “corporatism” or “neo-feudalism”. The big corporations dominate almost everything, and whatever they don’t dominate the government does.
One of the key features of a “corporatist” system is that it tends to funnel all the wealth to the very top.
Back in 1976, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States took in 8.9 percent of all income. By 2007, that number had risen to 23.5 percent.
Ouch.
There are two different Americas today. There is the America of the gated communities, the private planes and the good life, and there is the America of declining wages, thrift stores and rising desperation.
What is saddest of all is that the most vulnerable people in society often suffer the most from all of this.
According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.
Do you think that the Obamas are thinking about any of this while they are enjoying their stay at a luxury ski hotel in Vail, Colorado?
The truth is that leadership is not just about words. Leadership is about setting an example.
Back in August, Michelle Obama took her daughter Sasha and 40 of her friends for a vacation in Spain.
So what was the bill to the taxpayers for that little jaunt across the pond?
It is estimated that vacation alone cost U.S. taxpayers $375,000.
Hey, Barack Obama won the most votes in 2008 and so if he wants his family to get as much enjoyment out of these four years as they can that is his prerogative.
However, if he wants to tell American families that they “might put off a vacation” after all the vacations that the Obamas have taken over the past two years then he is just being a massive hypocrite.
According to the New York Post, Barack Obama enjoyed a total of 10 separate vacations that stretched over a total of 90 vacation days during the years of 2009 and 2010.
During his first two years in office, he also managed to play 29 rounds of golf.
Oh, but it is the rest of us that have to cut back on our vacations.
But it is not just the Obamas that are enjoying the high life right now.
The wealthy have recovered nicely from the “recession” and now they are spending money by the gobs once again.
According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of households in the United States account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.
Life is very good in America if you have got enough money.
A recent article in USA Today detailed some of the things that wealthy corporate executives are spending money on in 2011….
Luxury and high-end marketers have picked up on what they hope is a growing trend, offering products that bank on a looming spending spree. Germany’s PG-Bikes is rolling out the $80,000 Black Trail, a battery-powered bicycle. Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille is selling $525,000 timepieces. Steinway has launched a John Lennon-themed grand piano — at $90,000 and up. After selling out a $245,000 model, automaker Porsche is planning the 918 Spyder, a hybrid car that could sell for more than $630,000.
Nearly all luxury brands experienced a resurgence in 2010. Just check out some of the sales increases for luxury car brands….
Porsche: 29%
Cadillac 36%
Rolls-Royce 171%
At the exact same time, however, life is getting really, really hard for the rest of America.
As I wrote about yesterday, the U.S. middle class continues to be decimated even in the midst of this “economic recovery”.
There are tens of millions of Americans that would like to have a full-time job that are not able to get a full-time job. The number of Americans on food stamps has gone from about 26 million at the start of 2007 to 43 million today and it continues to set a brand new record every single month. One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
Our economy has become a complete and total nightmare.
Over the past couple of days some of the readers of this column have been sharing some of their economic horror stories. But they are far from alone. There are literally millions of Americans with economic horror stories out there. It is just that we don’t get to hear too many stories from the “other America” on our televisions.
The following stories of economic pain are from people just like you and me. Times are incredibly hard for most of America right now, and they are only getting harder with each passing month….
Colin:
My mother is unemployed. She is 61 years old, has 25 years of experience working for a major telecommunications corporation, and has a four-year degree. I watch her send application after application to employers with no response. I watch her get contacted by recruiters who say she is a ‘perfect fit’ for a job and never deliver. I watch her slide into depression and staying in bed many hours of the day.
I am 38 years old, I have mental illness, and I recently lost my job as a delivery driver because the owner sold his business to a competitor.
I don’t believe that either my mother or I will ever be employed again. I am beginning to feel that I am permanently in the world of the unemployed.
Jeff:
I graduated college in May 2000 with a Bachelors degree in Broadcasting/Minored in History. I have worked for major corporations as an Enterprise Sales Consultant selling Servers. I was a Network Engineer for Qwest Communications. I even worked for the Federal Government and held a Security Clearance for 4 years. I also won Dell Small Business Sales Consultant of the quarter as well. But since I don’t have an active clearance anymore no one wants to hire me in D.C. I lost my job in 07/2010 and from 07/2010-Present I have been unemployed. My food stamps were also recently cut off last month since the State of Virginia decided that for a household of 1 you can’t make more than $1178 a month. I make $1250 a month in Unemployment compensation before taxes so according to the Government I am too rich to receive Food stamps now. My Rent, Gas and Car insurance is $1000 a month and I am holding on for dear life. I am currently in the process of declaring Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and using my tax return to pay the attorney $1500 to file. That leaves me with only #250 a month for food, water and cell phone.
I have a list compiled in my Google email with approximately 784 applications I have filled out for every government agency, defense contractor and job available in the Washington, DC area. I even applied to Carmax and my old job in college waiting tables at red Lobster and the moving company I used to work at during the summers in college. If its bad for someone like me with over 10 years of Sales, Server/computer experience, Investigations and Network Engineering than I can’t imagine how bad it is for people that just have a high school diploma. I have been on one interview out of the almost 1000 jobs I have applied to (It takes about 2 hours to apply to one job). The one interview I went on offered me less than my unemployment gives me at $8 an hour. I can sit at home and make more money on unemployment than 80% of the jobs that I have applied too and even those jobs don’t call me. Is this what America has become? Is this what I sacrificed 5 years of my life in college from 17 years old to 21 years old and spent $40,000 to get a worthless degree that won’t even get you hired?
Todd:
Well, My family has been ripped to shreds alright.
Overall combined (My father, and myself) make about 60k a year. We can barely survive we keep looking to cut things, and make things cheaper but it’s just not working fast enough.
My wife can’t find a job, and now student loans are starting to become issues. (won’t go in to further details).
Tax returns taken, and various other things, Can’t even afford dental care. We don’t even get to go out anymore, and lucky to get any type of snacks. Just so you know there are 5 people living in this house.
Sharonsj:
The only reason I am not out on the street is that when I had money I paid off my mortgage.
However, because I did that, my food stamp allotment is only $25 a month. The heating assistance I get only paid for less than one months’ heat out of the six months I need here in Pennsylvania. All other expenses use up what’s left, so you learn to eat at home; I try not to leave the house because it’s going to cost me money.
I blame Congress for destroying America. They have given tax breaks to themselves and their rich friends at our expense. Did you know that anybody who serves 5 years in Congress gets a FULL pension at age 62? Us peasants work for 45 years and then if we retire at age 62 we are forced to give up 25% of what we earned.
Niles:
I lost my house, my family was split, and all my savings is gone.
I have lost hope. I served in the military, went to college and have high tech skills. My country doesn’t give a ***** about me. The bankers are as evil as the communists and I hate them.
Michael:
I’m also 38, and have worked in IT since the mid 90s. I lost my full time job in April ’03, and have only been able to find short term temporary work since. The contracts started to get shorter and fewer as the years went on, so in spring ’10 I retrained to be an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) but have not been able to find work in the last 9 months. An ambulance company I applied with said that they have hundreds of applications in several Northern CA counties but no job openings. And health care jobs are supposed to be on the the only areas of growth. I deliver pizzas for cash on and off and am getting unemployment.
Mondobeyondo:
I lost track of how many resumes I’ve sent out during the past several months. My neighbors think I’m trying to win the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes or something (yeah, that would help too! Ha!)
Maybe I should go back to school and become an RLP (Rejection Letter Professional).
Dorothy:
The rent at the place I lived was so high that I couldn’t afford it on a school bus driver’s salary, which I was doing for the past few years, because in spite of 30 years clerical experience, where I performed every function from clerk typist to executive legal secretary, I could not find employment. So I applied for subsidized housing and was forced to move back to Chicago, where the crime rate is very high in certain areas.
Before I moved I was getting $200 in food stamps, but now that I am in subsidized housing, I have to go and reapply and if I get anything at all, I have heard that it will be about $52 a month! Although the rent is subsidized, I have to pay for my own heat, and the building in which I live is completely electric! Energy assistance doesn’t cover it. They give with one hand and take away with the other.
All of the people above are still “surviving”, but what do you think is going to happen to many of them as the cost of living goes up dramatically? Brent crude just hit $108 a barrel and the UN says that the global price of food recently hit a new all-time high.
Americans on fixed incomes or that are on government assistance are going to be absolutely devastated if prices for basics such as food and gas rise substantially.
Not only that, but budget cuts on the federal, state and local levels are also going to hurt many of these people deeply.
But this is where we are at as a nation. A small privileged class is enjoying the high life while a rapidly growing poverty class pleads for the government to toss them some more crumbs.
The American people deserve better than this. They deserve an economy that will provide them with good jobs which will enable them to pay their mortgages and feed their families.
Unfortunately, the U.S. economy is dying. The number of good jobs is actually declining. The middle class is being systematically wiped out.
The answer is not to “tax the rich” so that we can toss the rapidly growing poverty class a few more crumbs. The answer is to radically transform our economy back into the kind of economy our founding fathers originally intended.
But wealthy corporate executives and politicians such as Barack Obama are not going to have any of that. Those sitting on top don’t want any real change to happen. Sadly, the general population has become so dumbed-down that they don’t even know the questions that they should be asking.
So unfortunately it appears we are going to keep heading down the exact same economic path that we have been heading for decades. The middle class will keep being ripped apart and politicians like George W. Bush and Barack Obama will just keep on smiling.
What you are about to read is perhaps the most heartbreaking story that I have ever come across. It is so tragic that I am not even quite sure how to introduce it. Some time ago, a reader named Ashley sent me an email that described the nightmare that she has been living through over the past year. Ashley’s email was very different from the vast majority of emails I usually receive, and I wrote her back right away and asked her some questions. One of the most important questions I asked was whether or not she really wanted me to share her story with the public. Privacy is such a precious thing, and I wanted her to understand that if I shared her story that thousands upon thousands of people would end up seeing it. After considering what I had to say, Ashley said that she was 100% sure that I should share her story because she felt that it could really help some people.
Sometimes it can be really easy to get lost in the economic numbers and to forget that this economy is really and truly destroying lives. The truth is that there are millions of Americans out there today that are hurting just like Ashley is. Her story is more dramatic than most, but that doesn’t mean that we all don’t know someone that could use our help. We have lost our sense of community in America, and thousands upon thousands of people like Ashley are falling through the cracks.
I cannot even imagine going through the things that Ashley has had to go through over the past year. If you think about it, please say a prayer for her. Also, let this story be an inspiration to all of us to stop being so cold-hearted and to help out those in need that are all around us.
The following is Ashley’s story as told in her own words….
*****
Dear Michael,
My name is Ashley. I live in Upstate New York I have been reading your Economic Collapse blog for the past year. Everything that you have said is true. Our economy is dying, and the economic collapse has destroyed the lives of many, many people. I should know. I am one of them. I lost my house, my car, my feet and my father, all in just seven months.
My father and I had a great life together. He raised me as a single parent. My mother died while giving birth to me. So it was just him and me as I was growing up, and things were wonderful for us, but then everything changed.
In September of 2009, my father was laid off from his job after 26 years. He tried so hard to find another job, but he just couldn’t get one. The economy was too horrible. As a result of the loss of income, he was unable to continue making the mortgage and car payments. Our car was repossessed, and not long after that, the bank foreclosed on us and we lost our house.
We moved into a low rent, hole in the wall apartment and lived off of his savings and his unemployment benefits for the next few months. Finally, in December of 2009, I was lucky enough to get a part time job at a pizza place. It was a really long walk from our apartment, but we needed the money badly. So I took the job.
By mid winter, my old snow boots, which had successfully lasted me through several terrible winters, were beginning to rapidly deteriorate. They had holes all over them and they were splitting at the seams. My feet were soaked and freezing all day long. At that point, we were lucky to have food on the table. We had to watch every penny. We couldn’t afford to get me new boots. So I had to make do with the ones I had. My father worked feverishly to try and repair them. He spent hours supergluing them duct taping them. In addition to that, I doubled up on socks and wore plastic bags inside my boots, but nothing did any good. My feet still got drenched.
One morning, in mid February of 2010, I took the last walk I would ever take on my own two feet. There was a huge blizzard raging outside, but we couldn’t afford to lose a day’s worth of pay. So I ventured out into the blizzard and made the long trudge to work anyway. As usual, my feet were drenched and freezing within minutes of leaving my apartment, but there was no choice but to just stick it out. So I kept going. I finally arrived at work to find the place closed. Nobody had called to tell me. There was nothing to do but turn around and make the long trudge back home. By the time I got home, I knew that something was seriously wrong with my feet. They felt horrible. My father helped me out of my drenched boots and socks and we discovered that my feet were all purple and swollen. They were severely frostbitten.
My father was terrified to take me to the emergency room because that would have bankrupted us. So he did everything he could to try and rewarm my feet at home. He spent the next several days giving me hot chocolate, bundling my feet up in blankets, putting my feet on his stomach, etc. But nothing did any good. My feet didn’t get any better. They just kept getting worse. They eventually turned black and began to ooze. At that point, my father broke down and called a car service to take us to the hospital. The doctors told us that, given the extent of the damage, they would not able to save my feet. The frostbite had progressed too far. I ended up having both of my feet amputated.
For the next whole month, my father didn’t do anything but sob. He sobbed himself to sleep every night. He blamed himself for me losing my feet. I rolled myself into his room on my wheelchair every night and wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could. I told him that it wasn’t his fault and that I didn’t blame him for anything. I told him he was the best father any girl could ever have and that I wouldn’t trade him for anything. I think it helped a little in the moment, but as time went on, he just fell further and further into depression.
On the morning of March 15th, 2010, I was awakened by a knock on the door from a police officer. He told me that my father was dead. I told the officer that was ridiculous and that there had been a mistake, but he insisted that my father was dead and that I should come with him. I went racing into my father’s room as fast as my wheelchair could carry me, but he was gone. There was a note on his bed that he had left for me. In the note, he told me that he loved me dearly. He loved me more than anything, but that he had failed me. He told me that I would be better off without him. At that moment, my heart stopped as I began to realize what must have happened. Horrified, I made my way back to the police officer, and he told me that my father had jumped out the window of our apartment in the middle of the night. I went into shock and begged the police officer to let me see him, but he insisted that I wouldn’t want to see him that way. I started sobbing so hard that the police ended up having to take me to the hospital.
I’ve cried myself to sleep every night since. I’ll never understand how my father could have thought that I’d be better off without him. If only he had known how much I needed him. If it wasn’t for my extremely kind hearted and caring neighbor, I don’t know where I would be right now. She’s such a sweet lady. After I lost my father, she took me in and took care of me as though I were her own family. She has gradually helped nurse me back to health, both physically and mentally.
This is probably going to sound really crazy, but throughout this past year, you have been one of my heroes, Michael. As devastating as the truth of your words may be, it is refreshing that somebody has the good sense and the good judgement to come forward and say them. All the government and the media do is lie to us, every single day. I only wish more people would listen to you and heed your warnings. Feel free to post my story on your blog if you would like. You have my permission to do so. I just ask that you not reveal my full name and my email address. Just use my first name. Perhaps my story will serve some purpose in the way of helping to wake some of these idiots up and getting them to realize that this nightmare is real.
In a shocking new interview, Donald Trump has gone farther than he ever has before in discussing a potential economic collapse in America. Using phrases such as “you’re going to pay $25 for a loaf of bread pretty soon” and “we could end up being another Egypt”, Trump explained to Newsmax that he is incredibly concerned about the direction our economy is headed. Whatever you may think of Donald Trump on a personal level, it is undeniable that he has been extremely successful in business. As one of the most prominent businessmen in America, he is absolutely horrified about what is happening to this nation. In fact, he is so disturbed about the direction that this country is heading that he is seriously considering running for president in 2012. But whether he decides to run in 2012 or not, what Trump is now saying about the U.S. economy should be a huge wake up call for all of us.
Trump says that the U.S. government is broke, that all of our jobs are being shipped overseas, that other nations are heavily taking advantage of us and that the value of the U.S. dollar is being destroyed. The following interview with Trump was originally posted on Newsmax and it is really worth watching….
Now, you may or may not think much of Donald Trump as a politician, but when a businessman of his caliber starts using apocalyptic language to describe where the U.S. economy is headed perhaps we should all pay attention.
The following are 12 key quotes that were pulled out of Trump’s new interview along with some facts and statistics that show that what Trump is saying is really happening.
#1“If oil prices are allowed to inflate and keep inflating, if the dollar keeps going down in value, I think there’s a very distinct possibility that things could get worse.”
Donald Trump is exactly right – we are headed for big trouble if we continue to allow the Federal Reserve to pump hundreds of billions of new dollars into the system. As I have written about previously, all of this new money will give us the illusion of short-term economic growth and it will pump up the stock market, but in the end all of the inflation the new money is gong to cause is going to be very painful. Just look at how rapidly M1 has been skyrocketing over the last couple of years. Is there any way that we are going to be able to avoid paying a very serious price for all of this reckless money printing?….
Already all of this money printing has had a very serious affect on world financial markets. The price of agricultural commodities is skyrocketing and the price of oil has almost reached $100 a barrel once again. The last time that the price of oil soared above $100 a barrel was in the early part of 2008, and we all remember the horrific financial collapse that followed in the fall of 2008.
#2“….you’re going to pay $25 for a loaf of bread pretty soon. Look at what’s happening with our food prices. They’re going through the roof. We could end up being another Egypt. You could have riots in our streets also.”
The price of corn has risen 88 percent over the past year and the price of wheat has soared a whopping 114 percent over the past year. Let’s hope that we don’t have to pay $25 for a loaf of bread in the United States any time soon, but in some areas of the world that is what it now feels like.
Approximately 3 billion people in the world today live on the equivalent of $2 a day or less, and most of that money ends up getting spent on food. When food prices go up 10 or 20 percent in deeply impoverished areas of the globe, suddenly the lives of millions are threatened. The riots that we have seen in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and other nations recently were not entirely caused by rising food prices, but they were certainly a big factor.
#3“I think gold will go up as long as people don’t have confidence in our president and our country. And they don’t have confidence in our president.”
Investors run to gold and other precious metals when they don’t feel secure. We saw that happen a lot in 2010. As confidence in the paper currencies and the financial systems of the world has rapidly diminished, precious metals have become increasingly attractive.
In fact, the price of gold has doubled since the beginning of the economic downturn in 2007. As the global financial situation continues to become more unstable, the demand for precious metals is likely only going to become more intense.
#4“The banks have really let us down. Number one, they did some bad things and caused some bad problems. Number two, if you have something that you want to buy, like a house, they’re generally not there for you.”
Banks were given massive bailouts with the understanding that they would open up the vaults and start lending money to average Americans again.
Well, that has not happened.
In particular, it has become much, much harder to get a mortgage in the United States today. Not that the big banks didn’t need to make changes to their lending practices, but things have gotten so tight now that it is choking the real estate market to death.
#5“I see $3.50 for a gallon of gas for cars, and cars are lined up trying to get it and it’s $3.50. It’s a shame, a ridiculous shame.”
Our lack of a cohesive energy policy is a national disgrace. There is no way in the world that a gallon of gas should be $3.50 a gallon.
The U.S. has massive reserves of oil and natural gas that it should be using. In addition, the lack of progress on developing alternative energy sources in light of our sickening dependence on foreign oil is very puzzling. We should be very far along towards solving our energy problems by this point.
Meanwhile, we keep pouring billions into the pockets of foreign oil barons every single month. Unfortunately, Trump was exactly correct in the interview – if something is not done the price of gas is going to keep going higher.
#6“I think the biggest threat is that our jobs are being stolen by other countries. We’re not going to have any jobs here pretty soon.”
Donal Trump is one of the few prominent leaders that is openly speaking the truth about the predatory economic practices of some of our “trading partners”. Most of our politicians have just kept endlessly promising us that free trade is “good for us” even as tens of thousands of factories and millions upon millions of jobs have been shipped overseas.
Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
Yes, computers and robots have replaced a lot of manual labor today, but technology does not account for most of the decline we have seen in manufacturing.
n 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent. Meanwhile, manufacturing in the “developing world” has absolutely exploded.
#7“We’re like a whipping post for other countries. We are standing there and just being beaten by South Korea, by Mexico, by China, by India.”
Most Americans have absolutely no idea how lopsided many of our “trade agreements” actually are. Other nations openly manipulate their currencies in order to keep their exports dirt cheap and we allow it. Other nations openly subsidize their domestic industries that are directly competing with businesses in the United States and we don’t complain. Other nations make it incredibly difficult for American companies to do business in their countries while we allow foreign corporations to come on in and do pretty much whatever they want here.
Then there are certain nations (such as China) that brazenly rip off trade secrets from foreign corporations time after time after time and never get penalized for it.
Meanwhile, our economy continues to bleed jobs at a staggering pace. The number of net jobs gained by the U.S. economy during this past decade was smaller than during any other decade since World War 2.
Fortunately, more Americans than ever seem to be waking up and are realizing that globalism is causing many of these problems. A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted last year discovered that 69 percent of Americans now believe that free trade agreements have cost America jobs.
#8“All of our jobs are going to China. We’re rebuilding China and other places.”
Most Americans don’t realize that China is literally kicking the crap out of us.
Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.
Every single month we buy about 4 times as much stuff from them as they buy from us. Our trade deficit with China has ballooned to enormous proportions. In fact, the U.S. trade deficit with China during this past August was more than 4,600 times larger than the U.S. trade deficit with China was for the entire year of 1985.
So when Donald Trump says that we are rebuilding China he is not joking around.
Nobel economist Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040 if current trends continue.
Yes, that is how serious things have become.
#9“We are a laughingstock throughout the world.”
Donald Trump has said on several occasions that his friends and business partners in China just laugh and laugh at us. They can’t even believe what they are getting away with.
We have become an incompetent giant that is the butt of all the jokes.
According to Stanford University economics professor Ed Lazear, if the U.S. economy and the Chinese economy continue to grow at current rates, the average Chinese citizen will be wealthier than the average American citizen in just 30 years.
Our formerly great industrial cities are slowly becoming ghost towns. The number of long-term unemployed Americans is at an all-time high. Tens of millions of Americans can’t even survive without government assistance anymore. The number of Americans on food stamps set a new all-time record every single month during 2010, and now well over 43 million Americans are enrolled in the program.
We really have become a joke.
#10“The federal government has no money.”
Unfortunately, our federal government has continued to borrow and spend like there is no tomorrow.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. government will have the biggest budget deficit ever recorded (approximately 1.5 trillion dollars) this year.
Do you have an extra $150,000 to contribute for your share?
By 2015 our national debt will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 trillion dollars.
It is the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world by far, and it is the gift that we are going to pass down to future generations of Americans.
If there are any future generations of Americans.
#11“I hate what is happening to this country.”
We should all hate what is happening to this country. Our economic guts are being ripped out, we are being abused by the rest of the world, America’s infrastructure is being sold off piece by piece, our federal government is drowning in debt, our state governments are drowning in debt and our local governments are drowning in debt.
The only way we can even keep going is to run around to the rest of the world and beg them to keep lending us more money.
The mainstream media keeps proclaiming that we are the greatest economy on earth, but the truth is that we are being transformed into a pathetic loser and our politicians are just standing there with their hands in their pockets letting it happen.
All red-blooded Americans should be horrified by what is happening to this nation. We have been betrayed by corrupt and incompetent leaders. As a nation, we have become fat, lazy and stupid.
Hopefully what Donald Trump and others are saying about a coming economic collapse will serve as a huge wake up call and the sleeping giant will arise once again.
If the sleeping giant does not arise, we are in a massive amount of trouble, because right now the road we are on is leading to the biggest economic collapse the world has ever seen.
All over America, restlessness and frustration are growing. It has now been almost three years since the great financial crash of 2008, and yet the U.S. economy is still a complete and total mess. In fact, there are all sorts of signs that things are about to get even worse, and the American people are just about fed up. Virtually every major poll, survey and measure of consumer confidence shows that the American people are becoming more pessimistic about the economy. Millions of hard working Americans that worked their fingers to the bone for their employers and that did everything “right” are sitting at home on their couches tonight staring blankly at the television. Many of them still have a hard time believing that they were laid off and that there is nobody out there that wants to give them a good job. There are millions of other Americans that won’t get much sleep tonight because they will spend much of the night rolling around in bed wondering how they are possibly going to be able to pay the mortgage. We have never faced such an extended economic downturn in modern U.S. history, and a lot of people are starting to freak out about the condition of the economy. As Gerald Celente likes to say: “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose – they lose it.”
Stress!
Compared to much of the rest of the world, we have an insanely high standard of living, and yet we appear to be some of the most unhappy people on the face of the earth.
Wherever you turn today, someone is popping a pill. The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world. Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
What in the world is wrong with us?
America is a country that desperately needs to chill out.
Washington D.C. sure is a stressful place right now. Most of our politicians seem to be focused on the 2012 elections rather than on trying to solve our problems.
Most of our leaders are prancing around trying to make themselves look good. Meanwhile, our national financial situation continues to go down the toilet.
One way or another this “debt ceiling crisis” will probably get solved. Our politicians will come up with some sort of a “deal” and it will almost certainly be a bad one.
The sad truth is that the U.S. national debt problem should have been addressed decades ago.
But it wasn’t.
So now we are sitting on a 14 trillion dollar timebomb.
Yes, the ultra-wealthy have become absolute masters at avoiding taxation, but even if some way to tap into their offshore wealth could be found, it still would only put a small dent in the problem.
The truth is that the U.S. government spends way too much money.
U.S. government spending is now above 25 percent of U.S. GDP. That is way above what has been normal during the post-World War II era.
But cutting government spending is not going to fix our system either.
The reality is that our debt-based financial system is designed to trap our federal government in a constantly expanding spiral of debt indefinitely.
As I have written about previously, the U.S. government debt problem will never be fixed as long as the Federal Reserve is running our financial system.
Under our current system, the debt is going to continue to grow no matter who we elect.
As our debt grows, our economy will suffer and the national stress level will continue to rise.
But for most American households, government debt is not the thing causing the most stress these days.
Most Americans are much more concerned about their own personal financial situations.
Most people just want to work hard, pay the bills and raise their families. But that is becoming extremely difficult to to.
According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 90 percent of Americans believe that the economy is performing poorly.
The same poll found that 80 percent of Americans believe that it is “difficult” to find a job these days.
In the United States today, there are 14 million unemployed people. Tonight there are huge numbers of Americans that are sitting at home desperately hoping that someone will give them a job. A significant percentage of our population that should be productive is just sitting on the sidelines. Just check out the following quote from a recent CNN article….
With numbers like that, how in the world can anyone claim that our economy is healthy?
Sadly, it looks like things may get even worse. As I have written about previously, we are now starting to see another huge wave of layoffs all over the nation.
The employment crisis has a ripple effect throughout the rest of the economy as well.
Without good jobs, Americans cannot buy homes. The housing crash is not going to be fixed until there the employment situation gets fixed.
With lending standards tighter than ever, it takes someone with a good income and a solid employment history to be able to qualify for a home loan.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of people like that in the marketplace right now.
So, the housing industry continues to suffer.
Last year was the worst year for new home sales in modern U.S. history. So far, this year is even worse.
Ouch.
It would be really nice if we actually would have an economic recovery, but it just isn’t happening.
Prices are rising and incomes are not. American families are feeling more squeezed than ever.
A lot of Americans live in a constant state of stress because of debt.
According to one new poll, about 20 percent of American adults worry about debt “most or all of the time”.
If you have ever been there, then you know how financial stress can rob sleep from you night after night after night.
Today, total credit card debt in the U.S. is more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
Some Americans can handle credit cards, but a lot of them can’t. A staggering 46 percent of Americans do not pay their credit card bills in full each month.
But credit card debt is only one form of debt that is causing stress for American families. The truth is that the total amount of student loan debt is even greater than the total amount of credit card debt. Medical debt is another huge problem. The vast majority of American families are dealing with a debt problem of one form or another. The decades of “easy credit” that we enjoyed are really starting to catch up with us.
Today, the average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.
That is not a good thing. American consumers are tapped out and the economy is suffering.
As the economy crumbles, many hard working Americans are finding that their lives have radically changed. Just check out the following excerpt from an article posted on a local Connecticut news source….
Could you imagine standing in line at a food bank?
Don’t laugh.
It just might happen to you.
Millions of Americans that have lost their jobs and their homes never thought that it would happen to them.
Wealth and possessions are here today and gone tomorrow. People that base their lives on the things that they own are always going to have a high level of stress. We didn’t bring any of these things into the world with us, and we can’t take any of them with us when we leave.
So try not to stress out too much. We should all learn to be content whether we have a lot or whether we have a little.
So what do all of you think about the stress level in America right now? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….