An increasing number of politicians and celebrities are openly declaring that if the economy continues to decline, it could lead to civil unrest, more crime and outbreaks of violence all over America. But instead of loudly denouncing the coming violence, many of them are making it sound like the natural response for those that have lost hope in the economy is to resort to violence. This is extremely unfortunate. The truth is that violence is not the solution to any of our problems. Violence is only going to make things worse. But right now a lot of big names are warning that if significant changes are not made soon, the only alternative is going to be civil unrest and violence. In fact, one of the latest to make a bold declaration like this is Vice President Joe Biden. According to Biden, there are going to be a lot more rapes and a lot more murders if Congress does not pass Obama’s jobs plan.
The following are comments that Biden made about Flint, Michigan during a recent speech he gave to promote the jobs bill….
“In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes–just to pick two categories–climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don’t rectify it.”
So is there some truth to what Biden is saying?
Of course there is. Many of our cities are rapidly being transformed into hellholes where crime is rising dramatically.
But instead of fixing the underlying problems, Biden is saying that if we don’t spend more federal money in these local communities we are going to have chaos in the streets.
Sadly, this sounds so much like what a lot of other prominent people have been saying lately.
“You know, look — this is a humanitarian — you know, you’re smart enough to see this . . . People, you know, if it continues, we’re going to start to see civil unrest in this country. I hate to say that, but I think it’s imminently possible.”
Much more frightening is what Michael Moore recently told Keith Olbermann. The following is a comment that Michael Moore recently made during an interview on Current TV….
“The smart rich know they can only build the gate so high. And, and, sooner or later history proves that people when they’ve had enough aren’t going to take it anymore. And much better to deal with it nonviolently now, through the political system, than what could possibly happen in the future, which nobody wants to see”
“I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million. And if they are unable to live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the reeducation camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded”
Are “reeducation camps” and acts of violent revenge going to solve any of our problems?
Of course not.
But this is a mindset that is growing.
There are millions upon millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now. The mainstream media is not telling them the truth about the economy and neither are our politicians. So the American people simply do not understand what is going on.
That means that they are prime candidates to be drawn into radical protest movements.
So far, the Occupy Wall Street protests have been non-violent, but that doesn’t mean that some of the protesters do not have violence on their minds.
“One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution, and Indian so-called Revolution.
Gandhi, Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the ruling class is using constantly to mislead us. French Revolution made fundamental transformation. But it was bloody.
India, the result of Gandhi, is 600 million people living in maximum poverty.
So, ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class.
Long live revolution! Long live socialism!”
You can see video of these shocking comments right here.
In past decades, the American population endured tough times with dignity and grace for the most part.
But times are different now. The American people have become addicted to endless prosperity, and now that things are going downhill they want someone to blame. As the economy continues to crumble, we are going to see some national “temper tantrums” that are going to be absolutely mind blowing.
But let us not diminish in any way the very real pain and suffering that tens of millions of Americans are going through right now. About a million families a year are losing their homes, the number of good jobs continues to decline and many of our communities are rapidly turning into hellholes.
Unfortunately, there are signs that things will soon get even worse for our local communities. For example, the largest county in Alabama is preparing for what would be the biggest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States.
And this is just the beginning.
Hundreds of other state and local governments from coast to coast are on the verge of bankruptcy. The cry for bailouts from the federal government is going to get louder and louder, but the federal government has already piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and there is only so much more debt that it can take on before our entire financial system collapses.
All of the long-term trends are pointing to a total collapse of the economy. If you think that people are angry now, just wait until that happens. We are going to see outbreaks of rioting and looting and crime and violence that will be absolutely unprecedented.
The American people are not morally equipped to handle a severe depression. We simply do not have the same character that previous generations possessed. We have gotten very soft and very spoiled and very selfish.
But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a remnant that will hold on to the truth and that will stand for what is right.
When things are the darkest, that is when the greatest heroes are called for.
Let us work together to wake up America, and let us continue shining a light in the darkness.
We must work while it is still day, because night is coming soon.
According to a brand new Gallup poll, 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in a recession right now. Of course the government insists that the recession ended quite some time ago, but apparently the message is not sinking in. Not only that, most Americans also do not believe that things are going to get better any time soon. According to the Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans believe that the economy will be the same as it is right now or will be even worse one year from now. Two years ago, only 35 percent of Americans felt that way. Talk about pessimism! So are we depressed as a nation? Have too many people been reading the Economic Collapse Blog? How do we account for such strange numbers?
Certainly there are some areas of the country that are still doing quite well. If you live in an area that is closely tied to the federal government (Washington D.C.), the big Wall Street banks (New York) or corporate America (Silicon Valley, etc.), then you can go out on the weekends and find packed restaurants and mall parking lots that are overflowing.
But most of the rest of the country is really hurting.
Tonight, there are millions upon millions of Americans that won’t sleep well at all because they are trying to figure out how to get back on their feet. It can be really tough to keep going when you have been searching for work for years and still nobody will hire you. If you have a family, it is easy to feel like a failure when you have to look your spouse and your children in the eyes day after day knowing that they are depending on you.
If you have never been through it, then you should not mock those that are depressed because they cannot find work. Losing a good job and not being able to find another one can be an absolutely soul-crushing experience.
So why do 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in a recession right now?
Well, it is because that is what it feels like for most people.
For example, a reader identified as Carol recently shared the following with us….
My unemployment ends the end of December, yes, I will be one of the 99′ers, one that did not sit at home and eat potato chips, drink soda and watch TV. I have no health insurance, I support myself and cannot afford it. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis last fall. Not to mention, degenerative disc disease, and osteoporosis. But I have continued to pursue work and regain employment, despite my health. I have no other choice but to fight and PRAY!
It amazes me at the stupidity of the general population, who still have their heads in the sand. The majority have no idea what is actually going on in our country on the political or economic side.
What would you do if you found out you were sick, you had no job, no health insurance and you were rapidly running out of money?
Please pray for those that are out of work. You never know when it will be you that needs some assistance.
For those that still believe that the economy is doing “great”, let’s review some of the cold, hard facts….
*46.2 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010.
*The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 2.6 million last year. That was the largest increase since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
*49.9 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all.
*The percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.
*More than 45 million Americans (a new all-time record) are on food stamps.
If you are still doing really well, be thankful for that. Don’t use the fact that you are on top of the hill as an opportunity to look down on others.
Unfortunately, as I talked about in a recent article, the U.S. economy continues to get even worse.
It certainly does not help that we continue to see millions of jobs shipped overseas. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are proposing anything that will stop the bleeding.
A lot of very skilled Americans are being put out of work by all of this offshoring. For example, a reader identified as GlennA recently shared the following with us….
Yes, lurking in the shadows, that’s been me. A professional man with a master’s degree in a technical who has not worked at a full-time job with benefits since mid 2009. Spent my last 2 years with the company offshoring to India all my team’s work. I hear through the grapevine that quality there has gone completely off a cliff, but profits are OK.
Have had only sporadic benefitless contract work ever since, and am now down to my last few bucks.
All of the horrible natural disasters that we have experienced this year are not helping things either. As I have written about previously, in many ways this has been the worst year for natural disasters in modern U.S. history.
In a recent article for Newsday, Jennifer Wheary described the impact these horrible natural disasters have had on many areas of the country that were already facing tough economic times….
But after decades of disappearing jobs, declining wages and increasing expenses, this is no longer the case. As a result, people across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, the Carolinas, Texas and elsewhere lack the savings needed to weather these unexpected economic shocks. Well before the spate of recent bad weather, or the recent recession, millions of middle- and working-class families were already under water.
Right now, even the vast majority of American families that still do have jobs are barely scraping by. At this point, “financial security” is just a far off dream for most Americans.
So what are our leaders doing about this?
Well, as I have written about previously, the Obama jobs plan is a complete joke. It is really quite sad if that was his best shot. His plan would spend a lot of money, but just like the last “stimulus plan”, it would not create many jobs at all.
The Federal Reserve has decided that it better jump into action again. The Federal Reserve has just announced that it is going to sell $400 billion of its short-term U.S. Treasuries and will use that money to buy $400 billion of long-term U.S. Treasuries. The Fed is hoping that this will lower interest rates on mortgages and home loans and will help to spur the economy.
So will this fix our economic problems? No, it will have even less of an impact than QE2 did. But the Fed wants to at least appear as if it is trying to do something.
The Federal Reserve has also pledged an “unlimited” amount of dollars to help bail out big European banks in October, November and December.
It is quite frustrating that virtually nobody in the mainstream media seems upset that the Federal Reserve is going to be showering European banks with cheap loans. Apparently they must all think that this is a wonderful idea, or perhaps they are just too preoccupied with talking about “The X Factor”.
In any event, it does look like the global financial system may need some propping up very soon. Yesterday, I shared 21 signs that the financial world is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Well, here are a couple more….
Right now, corporate insiders are selling 7 dollars of stock for every 1 dollar of stock that they are buying.
That is a very troubling sign.
Another troubling sign is that Moody’s has just downgraded the credit ratings of Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.
The last time we saw so much financial chaos was back in 2008.
We all remember what happened back then.
At this point, things are still so bad that 80 percent of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.
So what are things going to look like if there is another major financial crash in the coming months?
Will we soon see millions more Americans going dumpster diving as they hunt for something to eat?
Will we see even more tent cities start popping up all over the nation?
Will we see even more elderly people freeze in their own homes because they can’t afford to heat them?
Already, more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty.
How much worse can things get?
Unfortunately, they can get a lot worse.
If you think that Americans are depressed now, just wait and see what happens after the next financial crisis.
This country is going to become unglued in a major way.
Buckle up and hold on tight because it is going to be a bumpy ride.
Have you ever thought about getting your food out of a trash can? Don’t laugh. Dumpster diving has become a hot new trend in America. In fact, dumpster divers even have a trendy new name. They call themselves “freegans”, and as the economy crumbles their numbers are multiplying. Many freegans consider dumpster diving to be a great way to save money on groceries. Others do it because they want to live more simply. Freegans that are concerned about the environment view dumpster diving as a great way to “recycle” and other politically-minded freegans consider dumpster diving to be a form of political protest. But whatever you want to call it, the reality is that thousands upon thousands of Americans will break out their boots, rubber gloves and flashlights and will be jumping into dumpsters looking for food once again tonight.
So is this actually legal?
In some areas, dumpster diving is considered to be legal. In other areas, dumpster divers are technically breaking trespassing laws. Although in most areas the police have so many other problems that they aren’t really concerned about cracking down on dumpster divers.
One of the biggest issues facing dumpster divers is safety. Crawling around in back alleys and side streets in the middle of the night is not exactly the safest thing to do. But the lure of large amounts of free food is enough to keep some people coming back over and over again.
During the recent economic downturn, the popularity of dumpster diving has exploded. Today, there are dumpster diving meetup groups, dumpster diving Facebook groups, and even entire organizations such as Food Not Bombs that openly encourage their members to go dumpster diving.
If your family was going hungry, would you go dumpster diving?
You might be surprised at who is doing it. Dumpster diving is not just for the homeless and the unemployed anymore. A lot of people that have decent jobs have picked up on the trend.
A programmer by day, Todd takes to the streets of North Carolina by night, digging through Dumpsters at drug stores and grocery stores all around his rural neighborhood.
“You would be simply amazed at what businesses throw out,” he said. “I’ve only had to buy two loaves of bread all year. … Last week I had a trunk full of cereal, cookies, chips and ramen noodles.”
Todd slinks in and out of smelly places with low-light flashlights to evade rent-a-cops who will shoo him away. Most nights, his 14-year-old son comes along.
Dumpster diving has become such a prominent trend that even big television news networks are doing stories about it….
The truth is that dumpster diving is just another sign of the times.
Food prices continue to rise and this is putting incredible stress on the budgets of average American families. We just saw another huge rise in food prices during the month of August. Just check out the following data from a recent article posted on The Economic Policy Journal….
The index for finished consumer foods jumped 1.1 percent (13.2 percent annualized) in August, the third straight rise. Over thirty percent of the August advance can be traced to meat prices, which climbed 2.4 percent (28.8 percent annualized). Higher prices for processed poultry and eggs for fresh use also were major factors in the increase in the finished foods index.
If you are married and have a couple of children it can cost a lot of money to feed them every single month. It is not hard to understand the allure of dumpster diving for people that are having a hard time making ends meet.
Other Americans are choosing to dumpster dive because they believe that it helps them live a simpler lifestyle. There is a growing movement of people in America that are rejecting all of the “consumerism” that we see all around us.
Today, the average U.S. household has 13 different credit cards. We are constantly being bombarded with ads that tell us that we need more stuff in order to be happy.
Well, a lot of people have decided that is a lot of bunk and they are doing whatever they can to simplify.
Other dumpster divers are absolutely horrified by how much food is wasted in America.
It has been estimated that 263,013,699 pounds of food is thrown out in the United States every single day.
Can you imagine?
We are probably the most wasteful nation on the planet. With the number of hungry people in the world, it is absolutely criminal how much food that we waste.
So in that sense, it is probably a good thing that dumpster divers are saving some of that food from the landfills and are finding positive uses for it.
But what is going to happen when the economy gets even worse and we start seeing fights over the food that has been left in dumpsters?
In my recent special report about poverty in America, I noted that 46.2 million Americans are now living in poverty. For now, the U.S. government is helping feed over 45 million Americans through the food stamp program, but what is going to happen once the social safety net starts to break?
The number of good jobs in America continues to decline, and thousands more Americans fall into poverty every single day. Things have gotten so bad that other countries are actually making videos that make fun of our poverty.
This country is rapidly losing confidence in our leaders and hopelessness is spreading like wildfire. Today it was revealed that Barack Obama’s disapproval rating has now set a new high of 55%. Not only that, 62% of the American people disapprove of the way that he is handling the economy. It turns out that they don’t really think much of the Obama jobs plan after all.
Unfortunately, even though our economy is rapidly falling apart and most of our leaders are either deeply corrupt or completely incompetent, most Americans are still way too apathetic. If you can believe it, the American people spend a whopping 53 million minutes a month on Facebook.
Hopefully we can get more Americans to wake up. Hopefully we can get them to understand that they need to get active, that they need to prepare and that they need to get their priorities in order.
Right now, dumpster diving is cute and fun and an interesting way to save money, but in the future there will be millions of Americans digging around in trash cans if we don’t get this economy turned around.
This country is rapidly changing, and not for the better.
The bad news about the economy just keeps rolling in. If this is an economic recovery, what in the world is the next “recession” going to look like? Today there was another huge truckload of bad economic news. The stock market had another 400 point “correction”, applications for unemployment benefits are up again, inflation is higher than expected, home sales have dropped again and Europe is coming apart at the seams. The financial markets have been in such a state of chaos recently that days like today don’t even seem “unusual” anymore. But we should all be alarmed at what is happening. We haven’t seen anything quite like this since the darkest days of 2008 and 2009. If more bad news keeps pouring in, we may soon have a very real panic on our hands.
So now we have high unemployment and high inflation. Oh goody! All of this stagflation is almost enough to make one nostalgic for the 1970s.
*The housing market is getting even worse. According to the National Association of Realtors, sales of previously owned homes dropped 3.5 percent during July. That was the third decline in the last four months. Sales of previously owned homes are even lagging behind last year’s pathetic pace. Mortgage rates are now the lowest they have been since the 1950s, but there are very few interested buyers in the marketplace.
The survey’s broadest measure of manufacturing conditions, the diffusion index of current activity, decreased from a slightly positive reading of 3.2 in July to -30.7 in August. The index is now at its lowest level since March 2009
*Morgan Stanley now says that the U.S. and Europe are “hovering dangerously close to a recession” and that there is a good chance we could enter one at some point in the next 6 to 12 months.
All of this bad news is sending the price of gold through the roof. The price of gold soared to a brand new all-time high of $1,829.70 an ounce on Thursday morning. So far, the price of gold is up almost 30 percent in 2011.
Meanwhile, millions of average American families are deeply suffering and are desperately hoping that things won’t get even worse. Everywhere you turn, there is a tremendous amount of stress in the air.
As the economy crumbles, good paying full-time jobs are becoming increasingly scarce. People are hurting and they are looking for leadership.
Well, Barack Obama is running around the country promising that he will unveil some “solutions” very shortly.
So what are those solutions going to include? Well, the plans are still in the development stage, but the Obama administration is reportedly considering the following….
-The creation of a new government agency that will be dedicated to job creation. This will entail more government spending and more government paper pushers, but it will probably not do much to create good paying full-time jobs.
-Pushing even more free trade agreements through Congress. That way even more of our good jobs can be shipped to countries on the other side of the globe where paying slave wages to workers is still legal.
-A “reverse boot camp” that will train military veterans for civilian jobs. That sounds like a good idea, but we already have millions and millions of highly trained Americans that can’t get jobs.
-An extension of the payroll tax cut for at least another year. That will put more money into the pockets of U.S. workers, but it will also mean less revenue for the federal government. The existing payroll tax cut has not exactly resulted in a “jobs boom”, but removing that tax cut is certainly not going to help the economy either.
-An extension of long-term unemployment benefits. Yes, that will help the unemployed survive and will give them some money to spend into the economy, but it will not create many jobs for them. Plus it will put the government into even more debt.
-The creation of an infrastructure bank. Like most of the proposals above, this will entail even more government spending. I know that a “shovel-ready” joke is called for about now, but I can’t think of one at the moment.
The ironic thing is that Barack Obama is riding around on his multistate “jobs tour” in a $1.2 million bus that was made in Canada.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Things have gotten so bad out there that even Wal-Mart is suffering now. Sales at Wal-Mart stores that have been open for at least a year have fallen for nine quarters in a row.
Not that anyone should have much sympathy for Wal-Mart, but it is a sign of just how bad things are getting out there.
So is there much hope for the future? Well, considering the fact that only 32 percent of 15-year-olds in the United States are proficient in math, things don’t look good.
Our education system is a joke, tens of thousands of factories have already closed, more are closing every day, millions of jobs have been shipped overseas and most of our politicians are either incompetent or corrupt (or both).
So you would think that with all of our problems, authorities would be focused on the big issues.
But no, time after time they just keep picking on average Americans.
For example, a woman that lives in the Salem, Oregon area that is fighting terminal bone cancer tried to raise some money for her medical bills by holding a few garage sales on the weekends.
Well, the authorities in Salem got wind of this and now they are shutting her down.
This is absolutely unbelievable. A video news report about this incident is posted below….
Massive fraud and corruption at the big banks caused a worldwide financial crisis in 2008 and yet not a single Wall Street executive has gone to prison because of it.
Yet a cancer-stricken lady tries to hold a few yard sales to pay her bills and authorities come down on her like a ton of bricks.
Does that seem fair to you?
Our world is getting crazier every day. The bad news is going to keep pouring in. Global financial markets are being held together with chicken wire and duct tape. At some point the pyramid of corruption and con games is going to come crashing down.
If you still have faith in the system, you are not very wise. We are heading for an economic collapse that will be absolutely unprecedented, and you need to be getting prepared.
According to a whole host of polls and surveys, the American people are incredibly angry right now. The American people are hopping mad at the government, the American people are hopping mad about the economy and the American people are hopping mad about the direction that this country is headed. Never before in modern U.S. history have the American people been this angry. There is vast disagreement about what the solutions to our problems actually are, but what everyone can agree on is that the American people are absolutely seething with anger right now. The statistics that you are about to read are mind blowing. We used to be such a happy country. Once upon a time we were one of the happiest places on earth. But as the economy has fallen to pieces anger has been steadily growing. If something is not done to turn the economy around eventually this anger is going to erupt in frightening and unpredictable ways.
The American people are not equipped to handle hard times. We are incredibly spoiled. Most of us have only known good times, and most of us have been taught that we will have endless prosperity all of our lives because we live in the greatest nation on earth.
Well, “the greatest nation on earth” is about to get a massive wake up call. We are up to our eyeballs in debt and we are bleeding jobs, businesses and wealth at an astounding pace. Our economy is dying right in front of our eyes, and most Americans have been so “dumbed-down” that they don’t even realize what is happening.
But what most Americans do know is that things are “bad” and they want someone to “fix” things. They know that something is “not right” and they want things to go back to the way things used to be. The longer it takes for things to return to “normal”, the angrier they are going to get.
The following are 16 statistics which prove that the American people are absolutely seething with anger right now….
#1 A new Washington Post poll has found that a whopping 78 percent of Americans are dissatisfied “with the way this country’s political system is working”.
#2 That same poll found that only 26 percent of Americans believe that the federal government can solve the economic problems that we are now facing.
#4 According to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, Congress has a disapproval rating of 82%.
#5 A new Rasmussen survey has found that 85 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress “are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people.”
#6 That same survey found that 46 percent of the American people believe that most members of Congress are corrupt. That figure was a new all-time high.
#7 According to a different Rasmussen survey, only 17 percent of Americans now believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed.
#8 A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll discovered that 73 percent of the American people believe that the nation is “on the wrong track”.
#9 A recent poll taken by Rasmussen found that 68 percent of Americans believe that we are actually in a recession right now.
#10 According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that lack confidence in U.S. banks is now at an all-time high of 36%.
#11 U.S. consumer confidence is now at its lowest level in 30 years.
#13 That same poll found that approximately 80 percent of Americans believe that it is “difficult” to find a job these days.
#14 According to one recent poll, 39 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy has now entered a “permanent decline”.
#15 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.
#16 According to a brand new Rasmussen survey, 48% of Americans believe that reductions in government spending are “at least somewhat likely” to result in civil unrest inside the United States.
So why doesn’t the government step in and spend a whole bunch of money and make everything all better?
Well, the problem is that we have done this time after time before and now we are broke.
We have been living way, way beyond our means for decades and now the bills are coming due.
David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States, has been warning about our debt problem for years. Walker says that the United States is heading for a “sudden and very painful” economic collapse….
“Here’s the bottom line. If you take the total liabilities of the United States – public debt, unfunded pensions, retiree health care, under funding with regard to social security, with regard to medicare, a range of commitments and contingencies – as of September 30 2010 we would have had to have had $61.6 trillion dollars in the bank in order to be able to defease those obligations.”
The cold, hard truth is that the U.S. national debt should have been addressed many years ago when it was still relatively small.
At this point, there is no solution to our national debt problem under our current financial system.
Most state governments are also facing huge financial problems. The state government of Illinois is so broke at this point that it can’t even afford to bury the poor people that are dying.
But Illinois is not alone. All over the country, state and local governments have been implementing austerity measures.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, state and local governments have slashed more than half a million jobs since August 2008.
That is a whole lot of good jobs that aren’t there anymore.
But government debt is not the only debt problem that we are facing. Personal debt is also a raging crisis.
According to USDebtClock.org, the total amount of personal debt in the United States is now over 16 trillion dollars. The exploding levels of personal debt have created a tremendous amount of stress in households from coast to coast.
When I was growing up, it seemed like almost everyone was in the middle class. But today the middle class is shrinking at lightning speed.
According to author David DeGraw, 17.3% of all Americans were living in poverty during 2009. Not only that, DeGraw also says that 9 major U.S. cities have a poverty rate of over 25 percent.
Can you imagine that?
In fact, there are some cities such as Detroit where the poverty rate is over 35 percent.
It is hard to believe what is happening to America. Today, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps. That number has increased by approximately 12 percent in the last year alone.
There are currently 34 million Americans that need a full-time job. Unemployment is rampant and there is intense competition even for part-time jobs that pay minimum wage.
So where did all of the jobs go?
Well, as I have written about previously, globalism is absolutely devastating our economy. Millions of our jobs have been shipped to countries where labor is far, far cheaper and they aren’t coming back.
In addition, millions of Americans that do still have jobs are also deeply struggling right now. There are millions and millions of Americans that are working part-time jobs because that is all that they can find right now. Millions of other Americans are flat broke and are discovering that their paychecks are “shrinking” due to inflation. Wages have barely risen while prices for food and other necessities are skyrocketing.
Most families are really struggling to get by right now.
According to the Washington Post, the average yearly income of the bottom 90 percent of U.S. income earners is $31,244.
It is really hard to pay a mortgage and feed a family on that income.
The only people that seem to be doing well are at the very top.
The average yearly income of the top 0.1% of U.S. income earners is 5.6 million dollars.
Not that making money is a bad thing, but when an economic system funnels all of the rewards to the very top you know something is deeply broken.
The poorest 50% of all Americans now own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
A lot of poor Americans have literally fallen off the map. The Daily Mail recently did a feature on one tent city that has been constructed deep in a forest in New Jersey….
In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression these are the ramshackle homes of the desperate and destitute U.S. families who have set up their own ‘Tent City’ only an hour from Manhattan.
More than 50 homeless people have joined the community within New Jersey’s forests as the economic crisis has wrecked their American dream.
You can see shocking pictures of this tent city right here.
So it is no wonder why so many Americans are so angry.
If you lost your job or your home you would probably be angry too.
Most Americans just want to be able to go to work, make a decent living, pay the mortgage and provide for their families.
But in America today that is becoming increasingly difficult to do.
Our economy is a giant mess and the American people are becoming very angry.
If the economy gets even worse, they are going to become even angrier.
You should let the video footage of the wild violence that just took place in London burn into your memory because the same things are going to be happening all over the United States as the economy continues to crumble. We have raised an entire generation of young people with an “entitlement mentality”, but now the economy is producing very few good jobs that will actually enable our young people to work for what they feel they are entitled to. If you are under 30 in America today, things look really bleak. The vast majority of the good jobs are held by people that are older, and they aren’t about to give them up if they can help it. It is easy for the rest of us to tell young Americans to “take whatever they can”, but the reality is that there is intense competition for even the most basic jobs. For instance, McDonald’s recently held a “National Hiring Day” during which a million Americans applied for jobs. Only 6.2% of the applicants were hired. In the old days you could walk down to McDonald’s and get a job whenever you wanted to, but now any job is precious. The frustration among our young people is palpable. Most of them feel entitled to “the American Dream” and they feel like the system has failed them. Unfortunately, many of them are already turning to violence. But the economic riots and the civil unrest that we have already seen are nothing compared to what is coming. Americans are angry, and as the economy continues to collapse that anger is going to reach unprecedented heights.
In recent days, even many in the mainstream media have been openly wondering if the riots that happened in London could happen here too. There is a growing acknowledgement that this country is headed down a very dark path.
The sad thing is that these riots accomplish absolutely nothing. The recent London riots did not create any jobs and they certainly did not solve any economic problems. Instead, they actually hurt the economy even more because a huge am0unt of property was destroyed and people are even more afraid to continue with business as usual.
But when people get to the end of their ropes, most of the time they are not thinking rationally. When frustration erupts, the results can be very, very messy.
All over the United States we are already seeing some very troubling signs of the violence that is coming. The following are 10 signs that economic riots and civil unrest inside United States are now more likely then ever….
#1 Going to the state fair used to be such a fun thing for American families to do. But now no place is safe. The following is how one local ABC News affiliate described the “flash mob” attacks that took place at the Wisconsin state fair recently….
Milwaukee police said that around 11:10 p.m., squads were sent to the area for reports of battery, fighting and property damage being caused by an unruly crowd of “hundreds” of people. One officer described it as a “mob beating.”
Police said the group of young people attacked fair goers who were leaving the fair grounds. Police said that some victims were attacked while walking. They said others were pulled out of cars and off of motorcycles before being beaten.
One eyewitness said that the flash mob attacks at the Wisconsin state fair absolutely overwhelmed the limited police presence that was there….
When I saw the amount of kids coming down the road, all I kept thinking was, ‘There’s not enough cops to handle this.’ There’s no way. It would have taken the National Guard to control the number of kids that were coming off the road. They were knocking people off their motorcycles.
#2 According to a new Rasmussen survey, 48% of Americans believe that reductions in government spending are “at least somewhat likely” to result in civil unrest inside the United States. Unfortunately, perception often greatly influences reality.
#3 U.S. consumer confidence is now at its lowest level in 30 years.
#4 Joblessness among young Americans is at an epidemic level, and when rioting does break out it is usually young people that are leading the way. That is why the following statistics from an article in The Atlantic are so troubling….
One in five Americans are between 15 and 29-years old. And one in five of those Americans are unemployed. For minorities and the under-educated, the picture is much worse. Black teenagers have an unemployment rate of 44 percent, twice the rate for white teens.
#5 We are starting to see mindless violence in a lot of areas that used to be considered safe. In Kansas City on Saturday night, three young people were hit with bullets as they walked the streets of the Country Club Plaza. Mayor Sly James was about 50 yards away when the gunfire erupted. Authorities in Kansas City are considering a stricter curfew for that area.
#6 “Flash mobs” have become such a problem in Philadelphia that the mayor has imposed a strict curfew on young people. Now all teens between the ages of 13 and 18 must be indoors by 9 o’clock at night. The mayor also says that teens need to start pulling up their pants….
“Pull your pants up and buy a belt ’cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.”
#7 All over the United States we are seeing that many struggling Americans will do just about anything for money. For example, in Detroit recently three masked men crashed a vehicle through the entrance of a gas station and took off with an entire ATM machine.
#8 Desperate people do desperate things. Many of America’s “forgotten poor” are trying to survive any way that they can. For instance, a group of vagrants recently set up “a makeshift camp” near Prospect Park lake in Brooklyn. According to the New York Post, many nearby residents have been disturbed by what these “drifters” are doing to survive….
The drifters have been illegally trapping and cooking up the critters that call the park home, including squirrels, ducks and swan-like cygnets.
They used crude tactics to hunt their prey, including barbed fishing hooks that ripped off the top half of one poor gosling’s beak. They then cooked the meat over illegal fires. Some of the animals were eaten raw.
#9According to CNN, sales of safes and vaults are absolutely soaring right now. One store owner told CNN that she believes that she is selling a lot more safes now because people are scared that civil unrest could be coming….
“Folks are worried about the decreasing value of the dollar, burglaries on the rise in their neighborhoods … and even the possibility that the unrest we are seeing in other parts of the world slipping over to our country.”
#10 Over the past 100 years, the American population has moved steadily into our big cities and the surrounding suburbs. This has created virtual “ghost towns” in our rural areas from coast to coast. Back in 1910, 72 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, only 16 percent of Americans live in rural areas. But when you crowd huge masses of people close together that makes riots and civil unrest much more likely.
Most Americans are already fed up, and the economy is not even that bad yet. One recent survey found that 73 percent of Americans believe that the nation is “on the wrong track”. Another recent poll found that only 17 percent of Americans now believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed.
Millions of very frustrated young people believe that the economic system has failed them and that the political system no longer holds any answers.
America is rapidly approaching a breaking point. I have written previously about the collapse of society that we are already witnessing all over the United States. When the economy totally breaks down, most Americans are not going to be able to handle it.
Sadly, instead of coming together and trying to do something productive, many Americans will resort to rioting, looting and civil unrest. We have already seen this during local emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina.
But mindless violence accomplishes absolutely nothing positive. It just always makes things worse.
Unfortunately, logic and reason are not going to be enough to stop the gigantic wave of frustration that is coming. For most of the rest of us, it will be hard enough to get out of the way and protect our own families from the economic riots and the civil unrest that are coming.
The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. Hatred and anger are growing by the day. The United States is becoming a very frightening place.
So get ready. Our politicians certainly don’t have any answers for us. The debt ceiling deal was a complete and total joke, and corruption is absolutely rampant in Washington right now. Barack Obama is getting ready to leave for yet another vacation, and most of our politicians are only focused on the next election.
So don’t expect a “miracle” from those that are supposed to be leading us.
They don’t care about you.
You need to take care of yourself and your family and your friends.
A massive economic collapse is coming, and most Americans are going to be totally blindsided by it.
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.
More Americans than ever are desperate for money and many of them will do just about anything to get it. The crumbling U.S. economy has pushed millions of ordinary Americans to the brink of utter desperation. When it comes time to choose between being able to survive or breaking the law, many people are choosing to break the law. These days it seems like Americans will do just about anything for money. All over the country, there are areas where just about anything that is not bolted down is being stolen. A lot of people have resorted to making money however they can – selling drugs, selling their bodies, shoplifting, invading homes, taking bribes, running credit card scams and even stealing from their own family members. You will have a hard time believing some of the things that you are about to read below. When people have their backs pushed up against the wall, often they find that they are willing to do things that they never imagined that they would do. Things are getting crazy out there on the streets of America, and as the economy continues to decline things are going to get a lot crazier.
The following are 15 examples that show many Americans have become so desperate that they will do just about anything for money….
#1 In Utah, one unemployed 28 year old man is offering to be “human prey” for hunters for the bargain price of $10,000. For an additional $2,000, he will let people hunt him down while he is running around naked.
Across the country, in states like Illinois, Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Florida, there have been reports of thieves stealing unsecured air conditioning units weighing as much as 125 pounds.
#4 Even police officers are committing desperate acts these days. Just check out what one police officer in Chicago is charged with doing….
A Chicago Police officer stole $50,000 from his ailing elderly father to pay off his bills and gambling debts and unsuccessfully attempted to swipe his dad’s retirement savings by impersonating him
#6 In another area of Atlanta, thieves have been breaking down walls and busting bathroom fixtures with sledgehammers in order to get their hands on copper, brass and steel….
Kids in two Atlanta communities won’t have their neighborhood pools to help beat the summer heat, at least for now. Thieves used what is believed to be sledge hammers to bust walls and break fixtures in bathrooms at Adams and South Bend parks to steal copper, brass and steel.
#7 One grandmother in Florida has been accused of trying to sell her newborn grandson for $75,000.
#8 In Antioch, California a total of approximately 300 power poles were recently knocked down by thieves and stripped of their copper wiring.
#9 In Minnesota recently, a mob of teen girls brutally pummeled a mother and her two daughters until they were black and blue. Apparently the mob of teen girls was enraged over a pair of missing sunglasses.
#10 In Asheville, North Carolina thieves recently took off with 4 metal tables and 16 metal chairs that were sitting outside a pizzeria.
#12 In Oregon, thieves recently broke into a Salvation Army community center and stole 3 large air conditioning units. Now all the people that come to that facility for help and for community programs this summer will be absolutely sweltering.
#13 In the Cleveland area, two young boys that had set up a lemonade stand were robbed in broad daylight. The crooks got away with approximately 12 dollars.
#15 A 59 year old man from North Carolina named Richard James Verone was so desperate for money that he actually robbed a bank and got caught on purpose so that he could be put in prison and be given free health care.
One day Verone walked into an RBC Bank in North Carolina, handed a clerk a note demanding exactly one dollar and sat down and waited for the police to arrive and arrest him.
Verone has a growth on his chest and two ruptured disks but he does not have any health insurance. He is hoping that in prison he will get the medical treatment that he needs.
As society continues to unravel, prison is going to look like an appealing option for more and more people.
At least in prison you get fed, you have a roof over your head and they will take care of your medical needs.
For a whole lot of Americans, that would be a major step up.
Have you noticed that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear?
America is becoming a cold, cruel place and lawlessness is everywhere.
For many more signs that our society is starting to crumble, please see these two articles….
For ages, Americans have looked down on the crime and the depravity that goes on in other areas of the world.
Well, now America has all of the crime and depravity it can handle and it is going to get a lot worse as millions of formerly middle class Americans descend into poverty.
A regular commenter on my website who identifies himself as “El Pollo de Oro” recently described the kind of chaos that he believes is coming to the streets of America….
I live in Philadelphia, a city that used to have a ton of blue-collar manufacturing jobs as well as a great deal of white-collar employment, but the blue-collar manufacturing jobs have disappeared–and on the white-collar side, a college degree isn’t necessarily the ticket to prosperity it once was. Philly has its share of nasty, dangerous ghetto areas as well as ritzy, upscale areas like Rittenhouse Square. But then, there are parts of Mexico City that look like Beverly Hills except that the signs are en español. A minority of Chilangos are filthy rich, which is what you expect in a Third World country: an uber-rich minority and a poor majority. And when The Banana Republic of America (formerly the USA) signed on for globalism and ignored Ross Perot’s warning, it opted to become a Third World country—which means that you can kiss the American middle class goodbye.
But there will be some growth industries in The Banana Republic of America: kidnapping, drug smuggling, murder for hire, carjacking, armed robbery. And if you want a taste of what life will be like in American cities in the future, just spend a few weeks in Guatemala City, Johannesburg or Caracas—all of which have the type of horrible crime rates that BRA cities can look forward to in the future. Desperate people do desperate things, and hardcore desperation will be in the norm in the BRA. It won’t be fun (unless, of course, being robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight is one’s idea of a good time).
Welcome to life in a rotting, decaying Third World hellhole. Welcome to the collapse of the Roman Empire. Welcome to life in The Banana Republic of America, formerly the USA.
America is changing. The safe, secure environment that we all used to take for granted is dying. The number of truly desperate people rises by the day, and many of those desperate people are willing to do just about anything for money.
The United States used to have a thriving middle class, but our economic system has been so manipulated over the decades that now almost all of the economic rewards go to the very top of the food chain.
25 years ago, the wealthiest 12 percent of all Americans controlled 33 percent of all the wealth. Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans control 40 percent of all the wealth.
In the United States today, we are actually witnessing the death of the middle class. Our jobs have been shipped overseas, the banks have enslaved us to debt, the government keeps finding more ways to tax us and the Federal Reserve keeps debasing our currency.
Everywhere you go, despair is in the air. According to a brand new Reuters/Ipsos poll, 63 percent of Americans believe that the nation is on the wrong track.
Fortunately, many Americans are responding to these signs of trouble by preparing.
One local Oklahoma newspaper recently did an article that profiled a few of the growing number of Americans that are preparing for hard times….
Rod and Lauretta Smith estimate they could survive a year without going to the grocery store.
A large garden on their 5-acre property in south Tulsa produces hundreds of quarts of canned and frozen beans, tomatoes and other vegetables. Chickens provide eggs.
The Smiths are among a small but growing number of people stocking up on food to become more self-reliant in a time marked by natural disasters and economic uncertainty.
The truth is that all of us should try to become less dependent on the system. The Democrats, the Republicans, the Federal Reserve and the big corporations are not there to help you. They are not going to come riding to the rescue if you lose your job and your home.
We all need to do what we can to become more independent and to prepare ourselves and our families for the incredibly difficult economic times that are inevitably coming. Those that have faith that their jobs will always be there or that the government will always take care of them will be deeply disappointed.
The system is dying and society is coming apart.
The only rational thing to do is to prepare for what is coming.
The U.S. economy is like a rubber band that is being pulled in several different directions at the same time. Everyone knows that at some point it is going to snap, but nobody is quite sure exactly when it is going to happen. Right now, the state of the economy is not good, and it is going to get a whole lot worse. Sadly, most Americans don’t even understand the economic fundamentals well enough to be able to ask the right questions to our politicians. Today, the United States consumes far more wealth than it produces every single month. That means we are continually getting poorer. U.S. debt is also rising at a far greater rate than U.S. GDP is. On an individual level, if your assets were going down every single month and if you were going into more debt every single single month it would be easy to understand what was happening. However, most Americans can’t really seem to grasp what is taking place on a national level. Our politicians and the mainstream media just keep telling them that everything is going to be okay and they just keep believing it.
These days our leaders are resorting to increasingly desperate measures in order to help revive the economy. On Thursday, Barack Obama decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic oil reserve.
Yes, that will drive down oil prices for a few days, but what is going to happen someday if we actually need to use that strategic oil reserve?
But in many ways you can’t blame Obama for trying. He desperately wants to get reelected and he knows that his campaign will be highly dependent on the state of the economy. Look for Obama to pull out all the stops as we get closer to the fall of 2012.
Sadly, the truth is that it almost does not matter what the Democrats or the Republicans do at this point. The long-term trends are so powerful now that it would take a miracle to reverse them. We are facing an “economic tsunami” that is just going to keep on destroying middle class America.
If you went to a store today, and there were two somewhat similar products sitting on the shelf and one cost ten times more than the other one, which one would you buy?
Well, that is the situation facing American workers today. They have been pushed into one giant globalized labor pool, but big corporations are allowed to pay workers on the other side of the globe slave labor wages. It costs ten times more (at least) to hire a blue collar American worker than it does to hire a blue collar worker in most areas of Asia.
As a result of the globalization of labor, we have seen a mass exodus of jobs out of the United States, and wages for many of the jobs that remain have been significantly depressed.
There simply are not nearly enough jobs for all Americans at this point.
Recent college grads are finding this out. A new study that was conducted by Rutgers University discovered that over 30 percent of all those that graduated from college between 2006 and 2010 were not able to get a job within six months of graduation.
But unemployment is only part of the story. There are millions upon millions of Americans that are “underemployed” today.
There are hordes of highly educated, hard working Americans that are working temporary or part-time jobs at close to minimum wage because that is all they can get.
With good jobs being so scarce, American families are finding it more difficult than ever to make ends meet.
One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not expect their wages to keep up with the rising cost of basics such as food and gasoline over the next year.
I talked about the rising cost of food in my recent article entitled “Why Are Food Prices Rising So Fast?” Today, one out of every seven Americans is already on food stamps, and if the cost of living keeps rising this quickly we are going to see millions more of our fellow citizens clamoring for government assistance.
The decline of the American consumer is having other effects as well.
For example, pre-orders for Christmas toys from China are way down.
It looks like this holiday season is not going to be as “merry” as usual.
It would be nice if we could say that the economy is improving, but that simply is not the case.
American households are in a far different place than they were prior to the recent recession.
For example, did you know that home values in the United States have plummeted $6.6 trillion since the peak back in 2007?
U.S. homeowners have taken the brunt of that decline. According to the Federal Reserve, average home equity has fallen from 61 percent in 2001 to 38 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
That is a colossal shift.
If U.S. homeowners only own 38 percent of their homes, then who owns the rest?
The banks do.
Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
Health care is another area where American families are getting squeezed.
“There’s a lot of emotion in this market at the moment, and the conversations among traders are nearly all leaning toward the bear side”
As the financial system spins out of control, the Federal Reserve is increasing the number of workers that it is “embedding” at the big Wall Street banks.
I guess the Fed wants to keep a closer eye on things as they come crashing down.
Sadly, so much of this would be much easier to fix if our nation was not drowning in debt.
Since Barack Obama was elected, the national debt has increased by nearly 4 trillion dollars. If you and I went out today and started repaying that 4 trillion dollars at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 120,000 years to do it.
Most Americans have a hard time comprehending these kinds of numbers. Janet Tavakoli tried to put our debt situation into perspective in her latest column….
David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general, says it’s even worse than that. When he takes into account future obligations for Medicare, Social Security, Federal debt, Military retirement, Civil servant retirement, and more, we owe $546,663 per household. That doesn’t even include your local debt — it may not be as bad as if you lived in Illinois, but it’s substantial nonetheless — and personal debt including mortgages and consumer debt that average more than $120,000 per household.
But you don’t have to toss wild numbers around to get an idea of how much trouble we are in.
As I have written about recently, there is increasing evidence all around us that the collapse of society is accelerating. We are seeing disturbing reports of civil unrest pop up all over the U.S. at an alarming rate.
According to a CBS affiliate in Chicago, earlier this week approximately 50 young people conducted a shocking mob robbery of a drug store located on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago….
Some 50 young people barged into a Walgreens at Michigan and Chicago on the Magnificent Mile on Tuesday afternoon. They took bottled drinks and sandwiches off the shelves, then ran off, CBS 2′s Suzanne Le Mignot reports.
When large groups of young people get together and agree to commit crimes that should be a huge red flag for all of us.
We are a nation that is deeply, deeply divided. Hatred is growing and the love of most Americans is growing cold.
As I have written about previously on “The American Dream“, the American people are actually encouraged to hate one another these days….
The truth is that the “establishment” is constantly trying to divide us and get us fighting with one another. They pit the Republicans against the Democrats (even as though control both sides). They pit one race against another. They pit one gender against another. We are told that the rich are against the poor, the north is against the south, urban is against rural and that there are even “generational battles” going on. Frustration and hate are rapidly growing in the United States today, and a lot of that frustration and hate is unfortunately aimed at the targets that the mainstream media has programmed all of us to hate. Meanwhile, those at the top of the pyramid who are controlling the whole game love it when we are divided because we can never become united and challenge their control.
We need to come together as a nation. If we don’t, we are going to face an unprecedented nightmare when the economy collapses.
So what do you think about the state of the economy? Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….
According to a brand new Gallup poll, 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in a recession right now. Of course the government insists that the recession ended quite some time ago, but apparently the message is not sinking in. Not only that, most Americans also do not believe that things are going to get better any time soon. According to the Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans believe that the economy will be the same as it is right now or will be even worse one year from now. Two years ago, only 35 percent of Americans felt that way. Talk about pessimism! So are we depressed as a nation? Have too many people been reading the Economic Collapse Blog? How do we account for such strange numbers?
Joe Biden: There Will Be A Huge Increase In Murders And Rapes If The Federal Government Doesn’t Spend More Money To Help The Economy
The following are comments that Biden made about Flint, Michigan during a recent speech he gave to promote the jobs bill….
So is there some truth to what Biden is saying?
Of course there is. Many of our cities are rapidly being transformed into hellholes where crime is rising dramatically.
But instead of fixing the underlying problems, Biden is saying that if we don’t spend more federal money in these local communities we are going to have chaos in the streets.
Sadly, this sounds so much like what a lot of other prominent people have been saying lately.
For example, Democratic strategist James Carville recently made national headlines when he told talk show host Don Imus that civil unrest is “imminently possible”….
Much more frightening is what Michael Moore recently told Keith Olbermann. The following is a comment that Michael Moore recently made during an interview on Current TV….
Even more bizarre is what Roseanne Barr had to say during a recent appearance on RT….
Are “reeducation camps” and acts of violent revenge going to solve any of our problems?
Of course not.
But this is a mindset that is growing.
There are millions upon millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now. The mainstream media is not telling them the truth about the economy and neither are our politicians. So the American people simply do not understand what is going on.
That means that they are prime candidates to be drawn into radical protest movements.
So far, the Occupy Wall Street protests have been non-violent, but that doesn’t mean that some of the protesters do not have violence on their minds.
For example, the following is what one speaker at the Occupy Los Angeles protests recently had to say about violence….
You can see video of these shocking comments right here.
In past decades, the American population endured tough times with dignity and grace for the most part.
But times are different now. The American people have become addicted to endless prosperity, and now that things are going downhill they want someone to blame. As the economy continues to crumble, we are going to see some national “temper tantrums” that are going to be absolutely mind blowing.
For even more on how anger and frustration are rising in America, please see an article I did the other day entitled: “Buckle Up: America Is Getting Very Angry And The Protests Are Going To Become Much More Frightening“.
But let us not diminish in any way the very real pain and suffering that tens of millions of Americans are going through right now. About a million families a year are losing their homes, the number of good jobs continues to decline and many of our communities are rapidly turning into hellholes.
Unfortunately, there are signs that things will soon get even worse for our local communities. For example, the largest county in Alabama is preparing for what would be the biggest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States.
And this is just the beginning.
Hundreds of other state and local governments from coast to coast are on the verge of bankruptcy. The cry for bailouts from the federal government is going to get louder and louder, but the federal government has already piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and there is only so much more debt that it can take on before our entire financial system collapses.
All of the long-term trends are pointing to a total collapse of the economy. If you think that people are angry now, just wait until that happens. We are going to see outbreaks of rioting and looting and crime and violence that will be absolutely unprecedented.
The American people are not morally equipped to handle a severe depression. We simply do not have the same character that previous generations possessed. We have gotten very soft and very spoiled and very selfish.
But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a remnant that will hold on to the truth and that will stand for what is right.
When things are the darkest, that is when the greatest heroes are called for.
Let us work together to wake up America, and let us continue shining a light in the darkness.
We must work while it is still day, because night is coming soon.