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 If the economy is getting better, then why does poverty in America continue to grow so rapidly? Yes, the stock market has been hitting all-time highs recently, but also the number of Americans living in poverty has now reached a level not seen since the 1960s. Yes, corporate profits are at levels never seen before, but so is the number of Americans on food stamps. Yes, housing prices have started to rebound a little bit (especially in wealthy areas), but there are also more than a million public school students in America that are homeless. That is the first time that has ever happened in U.S. history. So should we measure our economic progress by the false stock market bubble that has been inflated by Ben Bernanke's reckless money printing, or should we measure our economic progress by how the poor and the middle class are doing? Because if we look at how average Americans are doing these days, then there is not much to be excited about. In fact, poverty continues to experience explosive growth in the United States and the middle class continues to shrink. Sadly, the truth is that things are not getting better for most Americans. With each passing year the level of economic suffering in this country continues to go up, and we haven't even reached the next major wave of the economic collapse yet. When that strikes, the level of economic pain in this nation is going to be off the charts. (Read More....)
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 Is the U.S. economy about to experience a major downturn? Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of signs that economic activity in the United States is really slowing down right now. Freight volumes and freight expenditures are way down, consumer confidence has declined sharply, major retail chains all over America are closing hundreds of stores, and the "sequester" threatens to give the American people their first significant opportunity to experience what "austerity" tastes like. Gas prices are going up rapidly, corporate insiders are dumping massive amounts of stock and there are high profile corporate bankruptcies in the news almost every single day now. In many ways, what we are going through right now feels very similar to 2008 before the crash happened. Back then the warning signs of economic trouble were very obvious, but our politicians and the mainstream media insisted that everything was just fine, and the stock market was very much detached from reality. When the stock market did finally catch up with reality, it happened very, very rapidly. Sadly, most people do not appear to have learned any lessons from the crisis of 2008. Americans continue to rack up staggering amounts of debt, and Wall Street is more reckless than ever. As a society, we seem to have concluded that 2008 was just a temporary malfunction rather than an indication that our entire system was fundamentally flawed. In the end, we will pay a great price for our overconfidence and our recklessness. (Read More....)
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 Why are corporate insiders dumping huge numbers of shares in their own companies right now? Why are some very large investors suddenly making gigantic bets that the stock market will crash at some point in the next 60 days? Do Wall Street insiders expect something really BIG to happen very soon? Do they know something that we do not know? What you are about to read below is startling. Every time that the market has fallen in recent years, insiders have been able to get out ahead of time. David Coleman of the Vickers Weekly Insider report recently noted that Wall Street insiders have shown "a remarkable ability of late to identify both market peaks and troughs". That is why it is so alarming that corporate insiders are selling nine times as many shares as they are buying right now. In addition, some extraordinarily large bets have just been made that will only pay off if the financial markets in the U.S. crash by the end of April. So what does all of this mean? Well, it could mean absolutely nothing or it could mean that there are people out there that actually have insider knowledge that a market crash is coming. Evaluate the evidence below and decide for yourself... (Read More....)
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 You can thank the reckless money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing for the incredible bull market that we have seen in recent months. When the Federal Reserve does more "quantitative easing", it is the financial markets that benefit the most. The Dow and the S&P 500 have both hit levels not seen since 2007 this month, and many analysts are projecting that 2013 will be a banner year for stocks. But is a rising stock market really a sign that the overall economy is rapidly improving as many are suggesting? Of course not. Just because the Federal Reserve has inflated another false stock market bubble with a bunch of funny money does not mean that the U.S. economy is in great shape. In fact, the truth is that things just keep getting worse for average Americans. The percentage of working age Americans with a job has fallen from 60.6% to 58.6% while Barack Obama has been president, 40 percent of all American workers are making $20,000 a year or less, median household income has declined for four years in a row, and poverty in the United States is absolutely exploding. So quantitative easing has definitely not made things better for the middle class. But all of the money printing that the Fed has been doing has worked out wonderfully for Wall Street. Profits are soaring at Goldman Sachs and luxury estates in the Hamptons are selling briskly. Unfortunately, this is how things work in America these days. Our "leaders" seem far more concerned with the welfare of Wall Street than they do about the welfare of the American people. When things get rocky, their first priority always seems to be to do whatever it takes to pump up the financial markets. (Read More....)
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 Summer vacation is over and things are about to get very interesting in Europe. Most Americans don't realize this, but much of Europe shuts down for the entire month of August. I wish we had something similar in the United States. But now millions of Europeans are returning from their extended family vacations and the fun is about to begin. During August economic conditions continued to degenerate in Europe, but I figured that it wouldn't be until after August that the European debt crisis would take center stage once again. And as I wrote about last week, if there is going to be a financial panic, it typically happens in the fall. The stock market has seen quite a nice rally over the summer, and many investors are nervous that we could see a significant "correction" very soon. The month of September has been the absolute worst month for stock performance over the past 50 years, and it has also been the absolute worst month for stock performance over the past 100 years as well. Of course that does not guarantee that anything is going to happen this year. But things in Europe continue to get worse. Unemployment rates are spiking, manufacturing activity is slowing down, housing prices are crashing and major financial institutions are failing. What is happening in Europe right now appears to be an even worse version of what happened to the United States back in 2008. (Read More....)
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 Is the stock market going to crash by the end of this year? Are we on the verge of major financial chaos on a global scale? Well, this is the time of the year when investors start getting nervous. We all remember what happened during the fall of 1929, the fall of 1987 and the fall of 2008. However, it is important to keep in mind that we do not see a stock market crash in the fall of every year. Some years the stock market cruises through the months of September, October, November and December without any problems whatsoever. But this year conditions certainly seem to be right for a "perfect storm" to develop. Technical indicators are screaming that a stock market decline is imminent and sources in the financial industry all over the world are warning that a massive crisis is on the way. What you are about to read should alarm you. But it is not a guarantee that anything will or will not happen. When Ben Bernanke gives his speech at the Jackson Hole summit on Friday he could announce to the rest of the world that the Federal Reserve has decided to launch QE3 and that the Fed will be printing up trillions of new dollars. If that happened global financial markets would leap for joy. So it is always a dangerous thing when anyone out there tries to tell you that they can "guarantee" what is about to happen in the financial world. There are just so many moving parts. But if we do not see major intervention by the governments of the world or by global central banks a major financial crisis could rapidly develop this fall. The conditions are certainly right for a stock market collapse, and we could easily see a repeat of what happened back in 2008. (Read More....)
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 Who is the biggest loser in the ongoing decline of the U.S. economy? Is it the wealthy? No, the stock market has been soaring lately and their incomes are actually going up. Is it the poor? Well, the poor are definitely hurting very badly, but when you don't have much to begin with you don't have much to lose. Unfortunately, it is the middle class that has lost the most during this economic downturn. According to Bloomberg, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the recession were middle class jobs. That is an absolutely astounding figure. Yes, some executives lost their jobs during the last recession as did some minimum-wage workers. But overwhelmingly the jobs that were lost were middle income jobs. Sadly, the limited number of jobs that have been added since the end of the last recession have mostly been low income jobs. A higher percentage of Americans are working low income jobs than ever before, and the cost of living continues to rise at a very brisk pace. This is causing an erosion of the middle class unlike anything we have ever seen in American history. (Read More....)
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20 Signs That The U.S. Economy Is Heading For Big Trouble In The Months Ahead
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