It is incredibly hard to put into words the absolute horror that is happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. The millions of gallons of oil that have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s efforts to fight the massive leak are turning the Gulf into a lifeless toxic stew of oil and chemicals. The damage caused to wildlife in the Gulf by this spill will be incalculable. Entire species are at risk of being wiped out. Scientists are telling us that the primary dispersant being used by BP ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. This is by far the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history, and there is no end in sight. It is a worse environmental and economic disaster than all of the hurricanes of the past ten years combined. The great wetlands and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico will never be the same in our lifetimes. The seafood and tourism industries in the Gulf are being completely destroyed. The thousands of jobs and businesses being wiped out by this disaster could potentially throw the entire Gulf coast region into a depression. The damage already caused by this oil spill is beyond measure and yet the government tells us that up to 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil a day continue to flow into the Gulf of Mexico.
Federal officials have expanded the “no fishing” area in the Gulf of Mexico to 75,920 square miles. That is 31 percent of all federal waters in the Gulf. As the oil continues to spread out there may soon be nowhere to fish.
And the oil is starting to come ashore in more places. Red-brown oil was found on Alabama’s Dauphin Island on Tuesday. As Gulf coast residents slowly watch this oil destroy everything around them they are starting to realize that this is it.
Life along the Gulf of Mexico will simply never be the same again.
The following are 30 shocking quotes about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that reveal the soul-crushing horror this disaster is causing….
“They’ve been used at such a high volume that it’s unprecedented. The worst of these – Corexit 9527 – is the one they’ve been using most. That ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. With 800,000 gallons of this, we can only imagine the death that will be caused.”
#5)Dr. Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Texas:
“Bluefin tuna spawn just south of the oil spill and they spawn only in the Gulf. If they were to go through the area at a critical time, that’s one instance where a plume could destroy a whole species.”
#6)Carol Browner, Barack Obama’s adviser on energy and climate:
“This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we have ever faced in this country. It is certainly the biggest oil spill and we are responding with the biggest environmental response.”
“It is so big and expanding so fast that it’s pretty much beyond human response that can be effective. … You’re looking at a long-term poisoning of the area. Ultimately, this will have a multidecade impact.”
“I just started crying. I couldn’t quit crying. I’m shaking now. To know that our beach may be black or brown, or that we can’t get in the water, it’s so sad.”
#18)Qin Chen, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on the possibility that a hurricane could push massive amounts of oil ashore along the Gulf:
“A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico this year would be devastating.”
“I’m sure, every time they hear a negative word, their skin crawls, ’cause they need these jobs. … This is what’s going to put their kids in school, and what pays the rent.”
“The greatest environmental disaster with no end in sight! Eleven workers dead. Millions of gallons of oil gushing for months (and possibly years) to come. Jobs vanishing. Creatures dying. A pristine environment destroyed for generations. A mega-corporation that has lied and continues to lie, and a government that refuses to protect the people.”
“There has been failure, particularly with the effort to protect our coast and our marsh. And that was the biggest topic of discussion in a very frank meeting we had with the president.”
“You get hit by a hurricane and you can rebuild. But when that stuff washes up on the white sands of Pensacola Beach, you can’t just go and get more white sand.”
#25)Wilma Subra, a chemist who has served as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency:
“Every time the wind blows from the south-east to the shore, people are being made sick.”
“We’ll see dead bodies soon. Sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, whales: the impact on predators will be seen in a short time because the food web will be impacted from the bottom up.”
So just how bad is the U.S. economy? Well, the truth is that sometimes it is hard to put into words. We have squandered the great wealth left to us by our forefathers, we have almost totally dismantled the world’s greatest manufacturing base, we have shipped millions of good jobs overseas and we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of mankind. We have taken the greatest free enterprise economy that was ever created and have turned it into a gigantic house of cards delicately balanced on a never-ending spiral of paper money and debt. For decades, all of this paper money and debt has enabled us to enjoy the greatest party in the history of the world, but now the bills are coming due and the party is nearly over.
In fact, things are already so bad that you can pick almost every number and find a corresponding statistic that shows just how bad the economy is getting.
You doubt it?
Well, check this out….
20 – Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year.
19 – According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005.
18 – According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in March the national rate of unemployment in the United States was 9.7%, but for Americans younger than 25 it was well above 18 percent.
16 – During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
11– It is being reported that a massive network of big banks and financial institutions have been involved in blatant bid-rigging fraud that cost taxpayers across the U.S. billions of dollars. The U.S. Justice Department is charging that financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia and 11 other banks in a conspiracy to rig bids on municipal financial instruments.
10 – The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10 percent of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment during the January-March time period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago.
9 – The official U.S. unemployment number is 9.9%, although the truth is that many economists consider the true unemployment rate to be much, much higher than that.
8 – The French government says that its deficit will increase to 8 percent of GDP in 2010, but by implementing substantial budget cuts they hope that they can get it to within the European Union’s 3 percent limit by the year 2013.
7 – The biggest banks in the U.S. cut their collective small business lending balance by another $1 billion in November. That drop was the seventh monthly decline in a row.
6 – The six biggest banks in the United States now possess assets equivalent to 60 percent of America’s gross national product.
5 – That is the number of U.S. banks that federal regulators closed on Friday. That brings that total number of banks that have been shut down this year in the United States to a total of 78.
4 – According to a study published by Texas A&M University Press, the four biggest industries in the Gulf of Mexico region are oil, tourism, fishing and shipping. Together, those four industries account for approximately $234 billion in economic activity each year. Now those four industries have been absolutely decimated by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and will probably not fully recover for years, if not decades.
2 – A massive “second wave” of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset over the next two to three years. If this second wave is anything like the first wave, the U.S. housing market is about to be absolutely crushed.
1 – The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. But of course many on Wall Street and in the government would argue that there is nothing wrong with an economy where nearly half the people are dividing up 1 percent of the benefits.
Do you know if your bank will be there next month? For a growing number of Americans, that is becoming a very real question. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 775 banks (approximately ten percent of all U.S. banks) are now on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s list of “problem” banks. This year we have already seen more than six dozen banks fail, and the frightening thing is that we are seeing a rapid acceleration in bank failures even though we are supposedly in a “recovery” right now. So what happens if the economy takes a bad turn and hundreds of these banks that are barely surviving start failing?
Right now an increasing number of Americans are not paying their loans, and this is shredding the balance sheets of small and medium size banks all over the United States. In fact, during the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
16 consecutive quarters?
Once is a coincidence.
Twice is a trend.
Sixteen times in a row is a total nightmare.
Is there anyone out there that is still convinced that the economy is getting better?
If so, perhaps this will convince you otherwise….
There were 252 banks on the FDIC’s “problem list” at the end of 2008.
There were 702 banks on the FDIC’s “problem list” at the end of 2009.
Now there are 775 banks of the FDIC’s “problem list”.
Are you starting to see a trend?
Federal regulators have already closed 73 banks in 2010, more than double the number shut down at this time last year.
The truth is that the U.S. banking system is coming apart like a 20 dollar suit.
So is the FDIC worried?
No, they insist that they have plenty of money to cover all of the banks that are going to fail.
Meanwhile, the U.S. financial system continues to shrink even after the unprecedented amount of “stimulus money” that the U.S. government has been shoveling into the economy.
The M3 money supply is now contracting at a frightening pace.
In fact, the current rate of monetary contraction now matches the average rate of monetary contraction the U.S. experienced between 1929 and 1933.
But don’t worry.
We aren’t going into a Depression.
Everything is going to be just fine.
Just look deep into Obama’s eyes and keep repeating the word “change” to yourself over and over.
Yes, it is time for the alarm bells to start going off.
The Telegraph recently quoted Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research as saying the following about the deep problems that the U.S. is facing….
“The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly.”
If banks continue to cut their lending, the M3 is going to continue to shrink.
But as noted above, Americans are increasingly getting behind on their loans, so why should banks loan money to a bunch of deadbeats?
Right now U.S. banks are increasingly tightening their lending standards, and this is making it much tougher to get a loan.
In fact, in 2009 the biggest U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in lending since 1942.
But there is only one problem.
The U.S. economy is completely and totally dependent on credit.
Without easy credit, the entire U.S. economic machine is going to slowly grind to a halt.
So what do you do?
The reality is that we have one gigantic financial mess on our hands, and in many ways it is starting to look like the 1930s all over again.
But perhaps someone out there has a way to get us out of this nightmare. Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts, opinions or solutions….
Could the world economy be headed for a depression in 2011? As inconceivable as that may seem to a lot of people, the truth is that top economists and governmental authorities all over the globe say that the economic warning signs are there and that we need to start paying attention to them. The two primary ingredients for a depression are debt and fear, and the reality is that we have both of them in abundance in the financial world today. In response to the global financial meltdown of 2007 and 2008, governments around the world spent unprecedented amounts of money and got into a ton of debt. All of that spending did help bail out the global banking system, but now that an increasing number of governments around the world are in need of bailouts themselves, what is going to happen? We have already seen the fear that is generated when one small little nation like Greece even hints at defaulting. When it becomes apparent that quite a few governments around the globe cannot handle their debt burdens, what kind of shockwave is that going to send through financial markets?
The truth is that we are facing the greatest sovereign debt crisis in modern history. There is no way out of this financial mess that does not include a significant amount of economic pain.
When you add mountains of debt to paralyzing fear to strict austerity measures, what do you get?
What you get is deflationary pressure and financial markets that seize up.
Some of the top financial authorities in the world are warning us that unless something substantial is done, that is exactly what we are going to be seeing as 2010 turns into 2011.
Of course some governments around the world could try to put these economic problems off for a while by printing and borrowing even more money, but we all know by now that only makes the long-term problems even worse.
For now, however, it seems as though most governments are opting for the austerity measures that the IMF seems determined to cram down the throats of everyone.
So what will austerity measures mean for the global economy?
Think “stimulus” in reverse.
Yes, things are going to get messy.
It looks like there is going to be a great deal of economic fear and a great deal of economic pain in 2011 and the years beyond that.
So are we headed for “the depression of 2011″?
Well, let’s hear what some of the top financial experts in the world have to say….
“We are still in the middle of this crisis and there is more trouble ahead of us, even if there is a recovery. During the great depression the economy contracted between 1929 and 1933, there was the beginning of a recovery, but then a second recession from 1937 to 1939. If you don’t address the issues, you risk having a double-dip recession and one which is at least as severe as the first one.”
“Dealing with a banking crisis was difficult enough, but at least there were public-sector balance sheets on to which the problems could be moved. Once you move into sovereign debt, there is no answer; there’s no backstop.”
“The crisis in Greece is going to spread to Spain and it’s going to be very difficult to deal with. They are bailing out debt with more debt and it isn’t sustainable. It’s a wonderful scenario for gold.”
“LEAP/E2020 believes that the global systemic crisis will experience a new tipping point from Spring 2010. Indeed, at that time, the public finances of the major Western countries are going to become unmanageable, as it will simultaneously become clear that new support measures for the economy are needed because of the failure of the various stimuli in 2009, and that the size of budget deficits preclude any significant new expenditures.”
“Whatever yardstick you care to choose – share-price moves, the rates at which banks lend to each other, measures of volatility – we are now in a similar position to 2008.”
“The green shoots of recovery have now turned into poison ivy. The abyss has again been filled with more debt and more fiat currency. In the process the Fed and now the ECB have lost all credibility.”
“The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history.”
“The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly.”
“The default rate for commercial mortgages held by banks in the first quarter hit its highest level since at least 1992 and is expected to surpass that by year-end and peak in 2011, according to a study by Real Capital Analytics.”
“The U.S. government’s Aaa bond rating will come under pressure in the future unless additional measures are taken to reduce projected record budget deficits, according to Moody’s Investors Service Inc.”
“When creditors ultimately decide to curtail loans to America, U.S. interest rates will finally spike, and we will be confronted with even more difficult choices than those now facing Greece. Given the short maturity of our national debt, a jump in short-term rates would either result in default or massive austerity. If we choose neither, and opt to print money instead, the run-a-way inflation that will ensue will produce an even greater austerity than the one our leaders lacked the courage to impose. Those who believe rates will never rise as long as the Fed remains accommodative, or that inflation will not flare up as long as unemployment remains high, are just as foolish as those who assured us that the mortgage market was sound because national real estate prices could never fall.”
“City budget shortfalls will become more severe over the next two years as tax collections catch up with economic conditions. These will inevitably result in new rounds of layoffs, service cuts, and canceled projects and contracts.”
“Faced with continued budgetary constraints, school leaders across the nation are forced to consider an unprecedented level of layoffs that would negatively impact economic recovery and deal a devastating blow to public education.”
“In my estimation, there is still close to an 80% probability (Bayes’ Rule) that a second market plunge and economic downturn will unfold during the coming year. This is not certainty, but the evidence that we’ve observed in the equity market, labor market, and credit markets to-date is simply much more consistent with the recent advance being a component of a more drawn-out and painful deleveraging cycle.”
“Do your friends a favor. Tell them to “batten down the hatches” because there’s a HARD RAIN coming. Tell them to get out of debt and sell anything they can sell (and don’t need) in order to get liquid. Tell them that Richard Russell says that by the end of this year they won’t recognize the country. They’ll retort, “How the dickens does Russell know — who told him?” Tell them the stock market told him.”
As the number of bank failures in the United States continues to accelerate, many analysts are warning that we could soon see unprecedented changes in the U.S. banking industry. In fact, there are some economists that are warning that we could be about to witness the greatest banking consolidation in U.S. history. As dozens of small and medium size banks have failed, the megabanks have systematically been gobbling up larger and larger slices of market share. In fact, if current trends continue, it doesn’t take much imagination to foresee a future where the entire U.S. banking industry has been consolidated down to between 5 and 10 “superbanks”. So would that be so bad? Well, yes it would. It would represent a massive shift in financial power away from the American people to big, global corporate banks. But if you happen to be a fan of big, global corporate banks perhaps you will really love what is about to happen to the U.S. banking industry.
On Friday, federal regulators seized Pinehurst Bank, which brought the total number of U.S. banks closed this year to 73. At this point in 2009, only 36 banks had failed.
That means that the number of bank failures has doubled compared to the same time period a year ago.
Is that a good trend?
Well, it is a good trend if you are one of the megabanks that is gobbling up the remnants of these banks that were “small enough to fail”.
And the sad thing is that we are likely to see dozens and dozens more small and medium size banks fail in the coming months.
The FDIC recently announced that the number of banks on its “problem list” climbed to 702 at the end of 2009. That is extremely alarming considering the fact that only 552 banks were on the problem list at the end of September 2009 and only 252 banks that were on the problem list at the end of 2008.
In fact, the FDIC is expecting so many banks to fail that they are opening up new offices just to handle all the expected failures. The FDIC has opened a massive 100,000 square foot satellite office near Chicago that will house up to 500 temporary staffers and contractors to manage receiverships and liquidate assets from what they are expecting will be a gigantic wave of failed Midwest banks. Not only that, but the FDIC has also opened similar offices in Irvine, California and Jacksonville, Florida.
But can the FDIC realistically handle all of these bank failures?
No.
The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke.
So if the FDIC completely runs out of money, where will all the necessary funds come from?
From U.S. taxpayers of course.
It seems that we are the ultimate bailout machine.
Meanwhile, the biggest U.S. banks are hoarding cash in preparation for hard times. In fact, the biggest banks in the United States cut their collective small business lending balance by another 1 billion dollars in November 2009. That drop was the seventh monthly decline in a row.
The truth is that in 2009, the biggest U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in lending since 1942.
So what were they doing with their money?
Well, thanks to the Federal Reserve, the megabanks were using the U.S. Treasury carry trade to make huge gobs of cash. In fact, the little game that they are playing with U.S. Treasuries is working so well that four of the biggest U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup) had a “perfect quarter” with zero days of trading losses during the first quarter of 2010.
The truth is that the game is rigged to benefit the largest financial institutions, and they are slowly but surely gobbling up the entire U.S. banking market.
Back in 2000, the “Big Four” U.S. banks – Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo – held approximately 22 percent of all deposits in FDIC-insured institutions. As of June 30th of last year that figure was up to 39 percent.
The Founding Fathers of this country warned us of the danger of big banks getting too much power, but we have not listened to their warnings.
Now we have monolithic global banks that are so immense in size that we seem almost powerless to control them.
It should interest you to know that my Intel source inside the Fed says absolutely no later than November the banking system should implode. Presently 75% of banks have problems and that the top 5 banks will take over all the others in a general nationalization. There is tremendous fear and uneasiness in the banking world.
Now, let us hope that Bob Chapman’s source is wrong. Certainly the U.S. banking system is in a state of complete and total chaos, but hopefully we can make it into 2011 without a complete implosion of the banking industry.
However, Bob Chapman has been in the industry for decades and he would not have put out a warning like this without good reason. Let us just pray that what this source is warning of does not actually come to pass.
But Bob Chapman is not the only one warning of difficult times ahead.
CNBC recently quoted Brian Kelly, the founder of Kanundrum Capital, as saying that the chances of a global depression breaking out have increased dramatically in recent days….
“Two weeks ago I would give the global depression scenario a one percent chance, but the chances have increased to 10 percent today.”
In fact, world famous economist Nouriel Roubini is absolutely convinced that there is a good deal of economic trouble ahead of us….
“We are still in the middle of this crisis and there is more trouble ahead of us, even if there is a recovery. During the great depression the economy contracted between 1929 and 1933, there was the beginning of a recovery, but then a second recession from 1937 to 1939. If you don’t address the issues, you risk having a double-dip recession and one which is at least as severe as the first one.”
So will the end of 2010 be a very difficult time for the U.S. economy?
Only time will tell.
But what does seem certain is that small and medium size banks will continue to fail in large numbers, and the big dominant banks will continue to gobble up market share.
We are witnessing a dramatic consolidation of the U.S. banking industry, and the only question seems to be how fast it is all going to play out.
If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery. In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. But is that really the case? Of course not. You would have to be delusional to believe that. What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time. But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse. The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever. At some point the charade is going to come crashing down.
And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving. German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money. But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiralled out of control.
Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase. So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn’t mean much of anything. As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.
Any “recovery” that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary. The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.
But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.
So the following are 25 questions to ask anyone who is delusional enough to believe that this economic recovery is real….
#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy? In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?
#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?
#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago. Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?
#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?
#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that “terrible cuts” are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?
#7) But it just isn’t California that is in trouble. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?
#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate. So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?
#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?
#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April. So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?
#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?
#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster. In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?
#13) The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high. Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?
#14) The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke. So what do you think will happen if a significant number of small banks do start failing?
#15) Existing home sales in the United States jumped 7.6 percent in April. That is the good news. The bad news is that this increase only happened because the deadline to take advantage of the temporary home buyer tax credit (government bribe) was looming. So now that there is no more tax credit for home buyers, what will that do to home sales?
#16) Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently told the U.S. government that they are going to need even more bailout money. So what does it say about the U.S. economy when the two “pillars” of the U.S. mortgage industry are government-backed financial black holes that the U.S. government has to relentlessly pour money into?
#17)43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. Tens of millions of Americans find themselves just one lawsuit, one really bad traffic accident or one very serious illness away from financial ruin. With so many Americans living on the edge, how can you say that the economy is healthy?
#18) The mayor of Detroit says that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent. So can the U.S. really be experiencing an economic recovery when so many are still unemployed in one of America’s biggest cities?
#19) Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year. Do you think that is a good trend or a bad trend?
#20) One new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession. So are the vast majority of Americans just stupid or could we still actually be in a recession?
#21) The bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. So is Barack Obama’s mantra that “what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street” actually true?
#22) Richard Russell, the famous author of the Dow Theory Letters, says that Americans should sell anything they can sell in order to get liquid because of the economic trouble that is coming. Do you think that Richard Russell is delusional or could he possibly have a point?
#23) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. In fact, that was almost twice the level of a year earlier. Does that look like a good trend to you?
#24) In March, the price of fresh and dried vegetables in the United States soared 49.3% – the most in 16 years. Is it a sign of a healthy economy when food prices are increasing so dramatically?
#25) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005. So shouldn’t we at least wait until the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is not setting new all-time records before we even dare whisper the words “economic recovery”?
Do you ever get to the point where you are just fed up with the way that things are headed? There are times when it seems as if we are all stuck in some kind of horrific nightmare that we can’t wake up from. Day after day we get the privilege of watching our esteemed leaders down in Washington D.C. wreck the U.S. economy, push us towards socialism and globalism, and slowly erode our constitutional freedoms. Day after day we get the privilege of watching corruption and greed run wild down on Wall Street. Day after day those of us who are awake to what is going on find ourselves increasingly frustrated with the vast majority of Americans who are either too dazed, too drugged or too asleep to even care that the great nation that their forefathers built is in the process of crumbling all around them. Not that there aren’t some promising signs out there. Certainly Rand Paul’s recent victory in Kentucky shows that the American people are not automatically going to vote for the candidates backed by the establishment anymore. But it seems like every piece of good news these days is accompanied by a dozen news stories that are so bad that they make you want to scream. It is incredibly frustrating that tens of millions of Americans who bust their backs working incredibly long hours, who try to do what is right, and who truly do love their country are going to pay the price for the errors of a bunch of idiots down in Washington D.C. and New York. The America that so many of us grew up in love with (the once great Republic with the greatest free enterprise system in the world) is being strangled out of existence by a horde of globalists, socialists and elitists. Well, there are millions of us who are fed up. I am fed up. So today you are going to get an “editorial”. Actually what you are going to get is an old-fashioned rant. But the truth is that we live during times when ranting is appropriate. Feel free to express your agreement or disagreement with the various things I am going to rant about below. Hopefully if enough people start talking about these things, the American people will wake up and start taking their country back.
So exactly what am I fed up about?
I’m fed up with politicians in Washington D.C. who prance around and talk about what a good job they are doing while they pile up the biggest debt in the history of the world. We are stealing trillions of dollars from future generations, and if they get the chance they will curse us for the horrific debt that we have left them.
I’m fed up with an unelected, privately-owned central bank issuing and controlling the currency of the United States. Nobody but the U.S. government should be issuing U.S. dollars. The reality is that the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is, and the international bankers have used it for decades to transfer the wealth of the nation into their own pockets.
I’m fed up with being told that the money I have worked so hard to earn needs to be “redistributed” to people who wouldn’t know a hard day of work if it came up and bit them on the rear.
I’m fed up with Tea Party activists who believe in the Constitution and who desperately want to see a return to the ideals that the American republic was founded upon being labeled as “extremists” by the media while those who are pushing a socialism and globalism on America are referred to as “centrist” and “mainstream”.
I’m fed up with hearing that there are banks that are “too big to fail” and that it is necessary for tax money taken from me to be used to bail them out.
I’m fed up with a financial system that is so rigged that four of the biggest U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup) can have a “perfect quarter” with zero days of trading losses during the first quarter of 2010.
I’m fed up with a financial system where the Dow can plunge nearly 1000 points in a single hour and nobody can seem to be able to figure out what happened.
I’m fed up with being told that I need to reduce my “carbon footprint” when carbon dioxide does not cause global warming and over 95% of total carbon dioxide emissions would occur even if humans were not present on Earth.
I’m fed up with people telling me that we should be glad to pay all the new taxes in the “health care reform” law because socialized medicine is such a good idea.
I’m fed up with politicians that spend money in order to get votes without any concern for the financial future of this nation whatsoever.
I’m fed up with a government that can protect the South Korean border so well that not a single person gets through illegally for decades, and yet has done such a bad job of protecting our own border that Phoenix, Arizona has become the car theft capital of the world.
I’m fed up with yuppies who went out and bought McMansions that they could not possibly afford whining and crying now that they are losing their houses.
I’m fed up with politicians shipping our manufacturing base to the third world and then pretending that it is our fault when we can’t get jobs.
I’m fed up with people telling me how wonderful “free trade” and “the global economy” are while our once great manufacturing cities such as Detroit turn into rusted-out war zones.
I’m fed up with international organizations such as the IMF and the WHO telling us that they want the American people to start paying global taxes.
I’m fed up with politicians being treated like celebrities and rock stars when they are actually leading American right into the toilet.
I’m fed up with a Supreme Court that has absolutely no respect at all for the personal property rights of ordinary Americans.
I’m fed up with a government that insists that freakishly-altered genetically modified crops are good for us, and that allows companies like Monsanto to ruthlessly push these “Frankenfoods” on to dinner tables all across the United States.
I’m fed up with a public that is far more interested in the death of Michael Jackson and in what is going on with Jon & Kate than in the absolutely crucial economic and political issues that directly affect them and their families.
I’m fed up with a government that allows nearly a million innocent babies to be killed year in and year out.
I’m fed up with watching Wall Street bankers rake in record-setting bonuses while nearly 40 million Americans are on food stamps.
I’m fed up with a national debt that is impossible to pay off, a dollar that has lost over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created and a financial system that is designed to fail.
If you don’t understand why the U.S. economic system is doomed, you should check out the video posted below. The inevitable collapse of the U.S. financial system is beautifully illustrated in this brand new documentary entitled “Meltup”. It is one of the best videos on the economic crisis that America is facing that has ever been posted on YouTube. This video is likely to make you very mad, but after watching it you will have a much greater understanding of the economic nightmare that the United States is now facing….
So are you fed up too? Please feel free to leave a comment telling us what you are upset about….
Today, the number of Americans who are able to financially survive without any reliance on the U.S. government whatsoever is declining at a staggering rate. Whether it is through direct handouts, entitlement programs, student loans, government bailouts, government contracts or direct employment, the truth is that now a solid majority of the American people are at least partially dependent on the federal government for their economic survival. The sad thing is that the majority of the American people say that there is too much government in their lives when opinion polls are taken, but if you try to take the government check that they are getting away from them those same people will scream bloody murder. But the truth is that it is getting to be really, really hard to be completely independent of the U.S. government economically. That is because the U.S. government has their hands in almost everything. The ideal of a “limited federal government” has long since faded away. Very few people seem to believe in it anymore. Instead, Americans today look to the federal government as the answer to all of our problems, as the provider of all of our needs, and as the regulator of every single detail of our lives.
The U.S. government has become the “Big Mother” that we all scramble to for a handout when we get into trouble.
When you sit down and really analyze it, you quickly realize that there is no way that the U.S. government can be extricated from the U.S. economy now. Instead of the free enterprise system that we once had in this country, today we have a situation where the U.S. government has become the very core of the economy. It is the hub around which everything else in the economy revolves.
You don’t believe this?
The following are 11 signs that the U.S. government has become an overgrown monstrosity that almost every American is dependent upon for economic survival….
#1) The Explosion Of Government Handouts
39.68 million Americans are now on food stamps. Millions of others are completely dependent on the extended unemployment benefits that they are receiving. Millions of other Americans are able to survive financially because of the dozens of other welfare programs that the U.S. government subsidizes. More Americans are receiving some form of welfare than ever before in history, and each month the numbers continue to go up. Could there come a day when we all receive government handouts every month?
#2)The Entitlements Programs That Threaten To Destroy U.S. Government Finances
Entitlements are the single biggest U.S. government expense. These programs include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social Ponzi schemes. Tens of millions of Americans receive government assistance through these programs. In fact, nearly 51 million Americans received $672 billion in Social Security benefits in 2009. We all have friends or family members who receive these kinds of payments. But cutting so many people a check year after year is slowly but surely destroying U.S. government finances. According to an official U.S. government report, rapidly growing interest costs on the national debt together with spending on major entitlement programs will absorb approximately 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019. That is before a penny is spent on anything else. This is clearly not a sustainable financial situation by any definition, but who wants to tell tens of millions of Americans that their checks are going to be reduced?
#3) The U.S. Government Is Now Even Paying Mortgages
Yes, you read that right. As part of the “stimulus” package, the U.S. government is going to send money to some of the states that were hit the hardest by the real estate crisis. So what is that money going to be used for? Well, Florida, Michigan, California and Arizona have all announced that they plan to use $1.4 billion the Obama administration is sending their way to help the unemployed and the “underwater” pay their mortgages.
#4) Without The Student Loan Program A Huge Percentage Of College Students Would Not Get An Education
The federal student loan program (which was recently entirely nationalized) helps millions of college students pay for their education. Without this assistance by the government, a lot less students would be going to college. In fact, many of you that are reading this article directly benefited from the federal student loan program.
#5) The Bailout Of AIG
One of the biggest insurance companies in the world, AIG, would not be in existence today if not for direct federal government intervention. It kind of makes you wonder what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would think about a federal government that hands big bags of cash to a giant insurance company so that it can survive. Whether it was so they could pay off their debts to Goldman Sachs or whether it was so that they could keep paying out record-setting bonuses, the truth is that AIG would not have made it without the federal government stepping in.
#6) The “Too Big To Fail” Banks
But it wasn’t just AIG that got bailed out. A number of big banks may have gone under if not for the U.S. government. The U.S. government decided that they were “too big to fail”. Well, what about all the small banks that are going under? The truth is that they are “too small to bother with”. We now live in a nation where the U.S. government is the one who decides which banks live and which banks die like dogs. Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy?
#7) The Bailout Of General Motors
But not only does the federal government bail out financial institutions – it is also now in the car business. Yes, grand old General Motors may have ended up on the scrap heap of history if not for the U.S. government stepping in. So if you work for General Motors or if you work for any company that does business with General Motors, you can thank Uncle Sam for the fact that you still have a job.
#8) The Bailouts Of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
If the U.S. government had not bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we may not have much of a mortgage industry at this point at all. According to Inside Mortgage Finance, government-related entities backed 96.5% of all home loans during the first quarter of 2010, which was up from 90% in 2009. So if you borrowed money to buy a home over the past couple of years, there is a very strong likelihood that the U.S. government was involved.
#9) The U.S. Government – The Nation’s Biggest Employer
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 2 million civilians work for the federal government, excluding the Postal Service. When you add in all U.S. military personnel, that number goes much higher.
The truth is that as the government continues to expand (become more bloated), more Americans than ever are hopping aboard the gravy train. Today, the average federal worker now earns about twice as much as the average worker in the private sector. So if you want to do little work, produce little of real value and enjoy super cushy benefits, maybe you should apply for a job with the federal government too.
#10) Millions Of Americans Are Employed By Firms That Rely On Government Contracts
When considering the impact of the U.S. government on the economy, you can’t forget the hundreds of companies that would go out of business if their U.S. government contracts were taken away. There are literally millions of people who work for companies that do business with the government. If the government disappeared it would cause economic chaos for those firms. The truth is that a whole lot of people make a really good living plugging into the sweetest revenue source of them all – the U.S. government.
#11) The U.S. Government Takeover Of The Health Care System
The U.S. government takeover of the health care system is going to fundamentally change the economics of the health care industry. The U.S. government will now play a major role in deciding which hospitals get built and which do not. Approximately 17% of U.S. GDP is spent on health care, and now the U.S. government has unprecedented control over where that money goes. Over a dozen new taxes have been established by the new health care reform law, and the U.S. government is going to pour an unprecedented amount of money into the system. So will this result in all of us getting better health care? We’ll just have to wait and see.
The truth is that the Founding Fathers never envisioned a federal government that completely dominated that national economy. But that is what we have got. As of now, only a very small percentage of Americans are still able to say that they are completely financially independent of the U.S. government.
You see, in economic terms the U.S. government is not just the elephant in the room. It is the elephant that sat on the room and nearly suffocated everything else out of existence.
As Americans, we live in an economy that is so intertwined with the government that it is impossible to separate the two anymore.
But the really bad news is that the U.S. government is in massive financial trouble. According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. Many economists regard that as an incredibly dangerous threshold to cross.
If U.S. government finances collapse, it will mean the collapse of the entire U.S. economy as well. There is simply no separating the two. And considering the fact that the U.S. government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, things don’t look promising.
America is headed for an unprecedented economic collapse, and the U.S. government is leading the way. If you can get financially independent, now is the time to try to do that, but the reality is that we will all feel massive economic pain when this thing comes crashing down.
One of the great joys that men in free societies have long enjoyed is the ability to earn an honest wage for an honest day of work. In particular, the amazing capitalist engine that powered the U.S. economy for decade after decade greatly rewarded the incredible hard work and industriousness of the American people. America was known as the land of opportunity, and we built the largest middle class in the history of the world by working incredibly hard. But today, all of that is fundamentally changing. Thanks to rapid advances in technology, and thanks to the globalization of the work force, the labor of American workers is rapidly losing value. Automation, robotics and computers have made many jobs obsolete. Today one man can do the work that a hundred men used to do. Not only that, but today American workers literally have to compete against workers from all over the globe. Global corporations often find themselves having to choose whether to build a factory in the United States or in the third world. But in the third world workers often earn less than 10% of what American workers earn, corporations are often not required to provide any benefits to workers, and there are usually hardly any oppressive government regulations. How can American workers compete against that?
The truth is that labor is now a global commodity. How can an American worker compete against a desperate, half-starving worker in the third world that will work like mad for a dollar an hour?
But this is what we get for letting the politicians push “free trade” down our throats.
Most American workers had no idea that free trade would mean that they would suddenly be competing for jobs against workers in the Philippines and Malaysia.
But that is the cold, hard reality of globalism.
All of this free trade has been very hard on American workers as factory after factory has closed, but it has allowed the big corporations to get exceedingly wealthy.
The top executives at the big global corporations are certainly enjoying all of this free trade. Their salaries have soared.
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has ranged between 300 to 500 to one.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
That is what globalism is all about.
The elite make out like bandits as they exploit third world labor pools, while the American middle class finds itself slowly being crushed out of existence.
According to the United Nations Gini Coefficient (which measures distribution of income), the United States has the highest level of inequality of all of the highly industrialized nations.
Increasingly, all of the rewards are going to those at the top, while the vast majority of Americans are left wondering why things just don’t seem to work out for them.
Instead, the American middle class is gradually being pushed into lower paying service jobs. But it is really hard to feed a family by cutting hair or by greeting the folks who come walking into the local Wal-Mart.
If you talk to many Americans, they just can’t seem to figure out why they can’t make things work out even though they are working as hard as they can. Millions of Americans have found themselves taking on second (and in many cases third) jobs in an attempt to provide for their families.
But what they don’t understand is that the global elite have turned labor into a globalized commodity.
American workers are not faced with a level playing field. Just check out some of the pay levels around the world that American workers must compete against….
In Bangladesh, a garment worker makes 22 cents an hour. The wage in Cambodia is 33 cents an hour; in Pakistan, 37 cents an hour; in Vietnam, 38 cents; in Sri Lanka, 43 cents; Indonesia, 44 cents; India, 55 cents; China, 86 cents; the Philippines, $1.07; and Malaysia, $1.18.
Do any of you want to work for $1.18 an hour with no benefits?
But that is your competition.
Wages are being driven down and big global corporations are loving it.
This isn’t capitalism.
This is the global elite pushing us into a cruel system of economic slavery where they control all of the wealth and the rest of us struggle to survive as we work our tails off for them.
Already we are seeing large numbers of Americans becoming absolutely desperate to get even a low paying job.
For example, over one three day period, approximately 10,000 people showed up to apply for 90 jobs making washing machines in Kentucky for $27,000 a year.
Can your family live on $27,000 a year?
But that is considered a good wage now.
Actually, the folks who are making really good wages now are those who work for the U.S. government.
Yes, life is good if you are a servant of the system.
Of course government employees basically produce next to nothing except red tape.
The U.S. government doesn’t seem to care if they are productive or not. They just keep borrowing more money and getting us into even more financial trouble.
But at least there is somewhere for middle class families to get decent jobs.
In fact, it is getting really hard to live a middle class lifestyle in America without relying on the government in some way.
The truth is that good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce.
That is why it is absolutely imperative for all of us to try to become as independent as possible.
That means getting out of debt.
That means starting our own businesses.
That means learning how to grow a garden.
Many of those who continue to blindly rely on the system to provide them with a “job” (“just over broke”) will end up bitterly disappointed in the end.
Millions of Americans have already lost their jobs and millions more Americans will lose their jobs as we move along through the next few years.
In fact, with all of the amazing advances in technology that we have seen over the past couple of decades, the global elite are starting to realize that they really don’t need 6 billion workers after all.
Instead, those among the global elite are increasingly viewing all of us as a burden. They openly ask why they should have to take care of so many “useless eaters”. After all, if the system does not need all of us to keep functioning, then what good are we to them?
In fact, just over one year ago Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and other very wealthy power brokers held a clandestine meeting in New York.
Instead of being viewed as valuable workers, now we are being viewed by the elite as pests that have multiplied to the point where we are now out of control.
What a strange world we live in now.
We need to get back to the America where good workers are valued and where hard work is rewarded.
We need to get back to the America where having a large middle class is an important national goal.
We need to get back to the America where we build American businesses, where we hire American workers and where we buy American products.
But unless the American people wake up, American workers are going to continue to be devalued.
Are we actually going to sit back and let American living standards decline to third world standards?
It is up to this generation to reject globalism and to reclaim the great free enterprise principles that this nation was founded on.
If someday our children and grandchildren exist in a world where they are considered just another part of the third world labor pool they will know who to blame.
It is incredibly hard to put into words the absolute horror that is happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. The millions of gallons of oil that have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s efforts to fight the massive leak are turning the Gulf into a lifeless toxic stew of oil and chemicals. The damage caused to wildlife in the Gulf by this spill will be incalculable. Entire species are at risk of being wiped out. Scientists are telling us that the primary dispersant being used by BP ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. This is by far the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history, and there is no end in sight. It is a worse environmental and economic disaster than all of the hurricanes of the past ten years combined. The great wetlands and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico will never be the same in our lifetimes. The seafood and tourism industries in the Gulf are being completely destroyed. The thousands of jobs and businesses being wiped out by this disaster could potentially throw the entire Gulf coast region into a depression. The damage already caused by this oil spill is beyond measure and yet the government tells us that up to 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil a day continue to flow into the Gulf of Mexico.
The U.S. Economic Collapse Top 20 Countdown
In fact, things are already so bad that you can pick almost every number and find a corresponding statistic that shows just how bad the economy is getting.
You doubt it?
Well, check this out….
20 – Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year.
19 – According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005.
18 – According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in March the national rate of unemployment in the United States was 9.7%, but for Americans younger than 25 it was well above 18 percent.
17 – The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high.
16 – During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
15 – The Spanish government has just approved a 15 billion euro austerity plan.
14 – The U.S. Congress recently approved an increase in the debt cap of the U.S. government to over 14 trillion dollars.
13 – The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke. In fact, the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which actually represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.
12 – The U.S. national debt soared from the $12 trillion mark to the $13 trillion mark in a frighteningly short period of time.
11– It is being reported that a massive network of big banks and financial institutions have been involved in blatant bid-rigging fraud that cost taxpayers across the U.S. billions of dollars. The U.S. Justice Department is charging that financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia and 11 other banks in a conspiracy to rig bids on municipal financial instruments.
10 – The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10 percent of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment during the January-March time period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago.
9 – The official U.S. unemployment number is 9.9%, although the truth is that many economists consider the true unemployment rate to be much, much higher than that.
8 – The French government says that its deficit will increase to 8 percent of GDP in 2010, but by implementing substantial budget cuts they hope that they can get it to within the European Union’s 3 percent limit by the year 2013.
7 – The biggest banks in the U.S. cut their collective small business lending balance by another $1 billion in November. That drop was the seventh monthly decline in a row.
6 – The six biggest banks in the United States now possess assets equivalent to 60 percent of America’s gross national product.
5 – That is the number of U.S. banks that federal regulators closed on Friday. That brings that total number of banks that have been shut down this year in the United States to a total of 78.
4 – According to a study published by Texas A&M University Press, the four biggest industries in the Gulf of Mexico region are oil, tourism, fishing and shipping. Together, those four industries account for approximately $234 billion in economic activity each year. Now those four industries have been absolutely decimated by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and will probably not fully recover for years, if not decades.
3 – Decent three bedroom homes in the city of Detroit can be bought for $10,000, but no one wants to buy them.
2 – A massive “second wave” of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset over the next two to three years. If this second wave is anything like the first wave, the U.S. housing market is about to be absolutely crushed.
1 – The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. But of course many on Wall Street and in the government would argue that there is nothing wrong with an economy where nearly half the people are dividing up 1 percent of the benefits.