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 Are we running out of time? For the last several years, we have been living in a false bubble of hope that has been fueled by massive amounts of debt and bailout money. This illusion of economic stability has convinced most people that the great economic crisis of 2008 was just an "aberration" and that now things are back to normal. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The truth is that the financial crash of 2008 was just the first wave of our economic troubles. We have not even come close to recovering from that wave, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching. Our economy is like a giant sand castle that has been built on a foundation of debt and toilet paper currency. As each wave of the crisis hits us, the solutions that our leaders will present to us will involve even more debt and even more money printing. And each time, those "solutions" will only make our problems even worse. Right now, events are unfolding in Europe and in the United States that are pushing us toward the next major crisis moment. I sincerely hope that we have some more time before the next crisis overwhelms us, but as you will see, time is rapidly running out. (Read More....)
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 If you still have a good job, you might want to hold on to it very tightly because there are a whole bunch of signs that unemployment in the United States is about to start getting worse again. Over the past several weeks, a substantial number of large corporations have announced disappointing earnings for the third quarter. Many of those large corporations are also loaded up with huge amounts of debt. So what is the solution? Well, the favorite solution on Wall Street these days seems to be to lay off workers. In fact, it is almost turning into a feeding frenzy. Since September 1st, we have seen more job cuts announced than during any other two month period since the start of 2010. These announcements represent future layoffs and job losses which are not even showing up in the unemployment numbers yet. So needless to say, things don't look very promising for the end of 2012 or for the beginning of 2013. If this race to eliminate jobs becomes a stampede, will we see the bottom fall out of the employment market? (Read More....)
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 The future of the United States of America is being systematically destroyed by our politicians, but unfortunately most Americans don't really grasp exactly what is happening. 30 years ago, our national debt had just crossed the one trillion dollar mark. Just recently, it crossed the 16 trillion dollar mark. Prior to every election, politicians from both parties swear up and down that they will do something about our exploding debt, but it never happens. Once again this year, our politicians are making all kinds of grand promises about getting U.S. government finances under control. But they are also promising all kinds of new plans and programs which are going to cost a lot more money on top of what we are already spending. For the average American, all of this can be incredibly confusing. That is why I have put together a list of facts about the debt and U.S. government finances below. These are things that every voter should know. The federal government is stealing more than a trillion dollars a year from our children and our grandchildren, and they are spending that money in some of the most foolish ways that you could ever imagine. We have accumulated the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world, but our politicians just can't help themselves - they appear to be absolutely addicted to spending money. If we continue on the path that we are currently on, our entire financial system and our entire economy will be destroyed by all of this debt. Time is running out and urgent action is needed to address this crisis. (Read More....)
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 You can tell a lot about a nation by the condition of the infrastructure. So what does our infrastructure say about us? It says that we are in a very advanced state of decay. At this point, much of America is being held together with spit, duct tape and prayers. Our roads are crumbling and thousands of our bridges look like they could collapse at any moment. Our power grid is ancient and over a trillion gallons of untreated sewage is leaking from our aging sewer systems each year. Our airports and our seaports are clogged with far more traffic than they were ever designed to carry. Approximately a third of all of the dam failures that have taken place in the United States since 1874 have happened during the past decade. Our national parks and recreation areas have been terribly neglected and our railroads are a bad joke. Hurricane Katrina showed how vulnerable our levees are, and drinking water systems all over the country are badly outdated. Sadly, at a time when we could use significant new investment in infrastructure, our spending on infrastructure is actually way down. Back during the 50s and the 60s, the U.S. was spending between 3 and 4 percent of GDP on infrastructure. Today, that figure is down to about 2.4 percent. But of course we don't have any extra money to spend on infrastructure because of our reckless spending and because of the massive amount of debt that we have accumulated. While the Obama administration is spending more than half a million dollars to figure out why chimpanzees throw poop, our national infrastructure is literally falling apart all around us. Once upon a time nobody else on the planet could match our infrastructure, and now we are in the process of becoming a joke to the rest of the world. (Read More....)
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 The financial chess game in Europe is still being played out, but in the end it is going to boil down to one very fundamental decision. Is Germany going to allow the ECB to print up trillions of euros and use those euros to buy up the sovereign debt of troubled eurozone members such as Spain and Italy or not? Nothing short of this is going to solve the problems in Europe. You can forget the ESM and the EFSF. Anyone that thinks they are going to solve the problems in Europe is someone that would also take a water pistol to fight a raging wildfire. No, the only thing that is going to keep Spain and Italy from collapsing under the weight of a mountain of debt is a financial nuke. The ECB needs to have the power to print up trillions of euros and use that money to buy up massive amounts of sovereign debt in order to guarantee that Spain and Italy will be able to borrow lots more money at very low interest rates. In fact, this is probably what European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has in mind when he says that he is going to "do whatever it takes to preserve the euro". However, there is one giant problem. The ECB is not going to be able to do this unless Germany allows them to. And after enduring the horror of hyperinflation under the Weimar Republic, Germany is not too keen on introducing trillions upon trillions of new euros into the European economy. If Germany allows the ECB to go down this path, Germany will end up experiencing tremendous inflation and the only benefit for Germany will be that the eurozone was kept together. That doesn't sound like a very good deal for Germany. (Read More....)
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 Do you want to know when the "economic collapse" is going to happen? Just open up your eyes and take a look. The "economic collapse" is already happening all around us. So many people talk about the coming economic collapse as if it is some massively hyped event that they will be able to point to on the calendar, and a lot of writers spend a lot of time speculating about exactly when it will happen. But as I have written about before, the economic collapse is not a single event. The economic collapse has been happening, it is happening right now, and it will be getting a lot worse. Yes, there will be moments of great crisis. We saw one of those "waves" back in 2008 and another "wave" is rapidly approaching. But all of the waves are part of a process that is continually unfolding. Over the past 40 years, the United States and Europe have piled up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and now a tremendous amount of pain is heading our way. Economic conditions in the United States and Europe have already deteriorated badly and they are going to continue to deteriorate. Nothing is going to stop what is coming. (Read More....)
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 The U.S. economy is in a massive amount of trouble. There aren't enough jobs. There isn't enough money to go around. Business activity is slowing down again. Household wealth has been falling. Food prices have been rising. Many state and local governments all over the country are flat broke and are drowning in debt. The federal government has been rolling up unprecedented amounts of debt in an attempt to keep things going, but everyone knows that kind of borrowing is simply unsustainable. So where do we go from here? We consume far more than we produce and we use debt to make up the difference. 40 years ago the total amount of debt in America (government, business and consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars. Today it is nearly 55 trillion dollars. How in the world did we let the total amount of debt in the United States grow more than 27 times larger over the past 40 years? Our economic system is fundamentally broken, but most Americans don't realize it yet because times are still relatively good. (Read More....)
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21 Facts About America’s Decaying Infrastructure That Will Blow Your Mind
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