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Just A Coincidence That A Historic Blizzard Named ‘Jonas’ Hit D.C. On The Anniversary Of Roe v Wade?

Jonas - Photo from WikipediaOn January 22nd, one of the worst east coast blizzards in history slammed into Washington D.C. like a freight train.  More than three feet of snow was dumped on some areas, hundreds of thousands of people were left without power, and coastal cities all long the eastern seaboard experienced flooding to a degree not seen since Hurricane Sandy.  Tens of millions of people live in communities that were completely paralyzed by this storm, and it is being projected that the total amount of economic damage done will ultimately be in the billions of dollars.  January 22nd also happens to be the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states.  Since that Supreme Court decision, more than 58 million babies have been murdered in abortion clinics in America.  Could it be possible that it is more than just a “coincidence” that both of these events happened on January 22nd?

In a previous article, I noted that this east coast blizzard was officially given the name “Jonas”.  It turns out that “Jonas” is actually a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name “Jonah”.

In the Bible, Jonah was sent to the city of Ninevah to warn that the judgment of God was about to come.  Some are suggesting that it may not be any accident that a historic blizzard named after this Biblical prophet hit Washington D.C. on the exact anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision.

And without a doubt, this was a whopper of a storm.  According to USA Today, some cities broke their all-time records for snowfall from a single storm…

It was the biggest snowstorm ever recorded for three cities — Baltimore (29.2 inches), Allentown, Pa. (31.9) and Harrisburg, Pa. (34), the National Weather Service said. New York City picked up 26.8 inches of snow, missing its all-time record by one-tenth of an inch.

In the D.C. area things were absolutely crazy.  Dulles Airport got a total of 29.3 inches of snow, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport got 29.2 inches of snow.  Some of the outlying areas actually got closer to three feet of snow, and it could take weeks for transportation in the region to get back to normal.

New York City got absolutely pummeled as well.  CNN is reporting that John F. Kennedy International Airport got 31 inches of snow and New York’s Central Park has been buried under 27 inches of snow.

In addition to crazy amounts of snow, vast stretches right along the coast had to deal with tremendous flooding.  In fact, CNN is reporting that the flooding was even worse than during Hurricane Sandy in some areas…

Margate City, just down the coast from Atlantic City, was also affected.

“In a lot of our business areas and our back bay areas, water is coming over the bulkhead in a lot of the same areas as Hurricane Sandy hit,” Lt. Matt Hankinson of the Margate City Police Department said. “Some areas I would say it’s thigh- to waist-deep.”

Farther south in North Wildwood, the high tide was much higher than anticipated and caught many of the town’s 5,000 year-round residents off guard — with flooding levels that actually exceeded those during Hurricane Sandy, said Patrick Rosenello, the city’s mayor.

Meanwhile, a very powerful El Nino pattern continues to send storm after storm slamming into the west coast.  It didn’t get much publicity because of the giant blizzard on the east coast, but the California coastal city of Pacifica just declared a state of emergency due to the damage from these storms.  The following comes from the Daily Mail…

As the East Coast is hit with one of the most powerful storms in recent years, the West Coast is continuing to be slammed with storms thanks to El Nino.

The city of Pacifica in northern California declared a state of emergency Friday after continuous El Nino storms slammed into the city’s coastline,KNTV reported.

A sinkhole and a severely damaged sea wall are part of the destruction in the city from the wild winter weather.

‘El Nino is hitting the city’s coastline very hard and creating almost daily reports of impacts to both public and private property,’ City Manager Lorie Tinfow told KNTV.

All of this continues a very unusual pattern of disasters that we have been witnessing over the past six months.  Just consider what we have seen happen since last September…

-Around the turn of the year the middle part of the country experienced absolutely horrific flooding.  The only thing people can really compare it to is the great flood of 1993, and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon says that some communities saw floodwaters get to “places they’ve never been before”.  Normally if the middle of the country is going to see flooding like this, it is going to happen when the snow begins to thaw in the spring.  For something like this to happen in December is absolutely unprecedented.

-Prior to that, a conveyor belt of storms that barreled into coastal areas of Oregon and Washington caused horrible flooding in many areas.  In fact, in early December we witnessed the wettest day in the history of Portland, Oregon.  The resulting landslides and floods made headlines all over the nation.

-Before that, the remnants of Hurricane Patricia caused nightmarish flooding in many parts of Texas.  The flooding was so bad that at one point an entire train was knocked off the tracks.

-Out on the west coast, flash flooding in southern California sent rivers of mud streaming across highways in southern California.  The lifeless body of one man that had his vehicle completely buried in mud was recovered several days later because that is how long it took emergency workers to get to him.

-To kick things off, moisture from Hurricane Joaquin caused horrible flooding all up and down the east coast back in early October.  The governor of South Carolina said that it was the worst rain that some parts of her state had seen in 1,000 years.

All of this flooding has happened since the end of September.

Never before in U.S. history have we ever seen a series of catastrophic floods like this within such a concentrated space of time.

And let us not forget that 2015 was also the worst year for wildfires in all of U.S. history, the state of Oklahoma absolutely shattered their yearly record for earthquakes, and much of the rest of the country has been experiencing highly unusual natural disasters.  In fact, the state of Alaska was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake just today.

In addition, my regular readers already know that global financial markets have just had their worst start to a year in all of modern history.

Could someone be trying to tell us something?

Most people out there would dismiss such a suggestion without even thinking about it.  To most Americans, it must just be a “coincidence” that we have been hit by major disaster after major disaster since the month of September.

But there are others that would point out that you eventually reap what you sow, and this nation has been doing a tremendous amount of evil for a very long time.

As I mentioned at the top of this article, America has murdered more than 58 million babies since 1973.  Instead of being horrified at our crimes, we just continue to shake our fist at God as we celebrate all of the evil that we are doing.  In fact, Barack Obama took time out of his day on Friday to actually celebrate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade…

President Barack Obama issued a statement today, celebrating the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutionally protected right.

“Today, we mark the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which affirmed a woman’s freedom to make her own choices about her body and her health,” said Obama.

Despite being shown our guilt over and over again, we have absolutely refused to change our ways, and so now we will pay the price for our crimes.

As I have said on television, on the radio and in my articles, 2016 is the year when everything changes.

Bear Market: The Average U.S. Stock Is Already Down More Than 20 Percent

Angry BearThe stock market is in far worse shape than we are being told.  As you will see in this article, the average U.S. stock is already down more than 20 percent from the peak of the market.  But of course the major indexes are not down nearly that much.  As the week begins, the S&P 500 is down 9.8 percent from its 2015 peak, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 10.7 percent from its 2015 peak, and the Nasdaq is down 11.0 percent from its 2015 peak.  So if you only look at those indexes, you would think that we are only about halfway to bear market territory.  Unfortunately, a few high flying stocks such as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google have been masking a much deeper decline for the rest of the market.  When the market closed on Friday, 229 of the stocks on the S&P 500 were down at least 20 percent from their 52 week highs, and when you look at indexes that are even broader things are even worse.

For example, let’s take a look at the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index.  According to the Bespoke Investment Group, the average stock on that index is down a staggering 26.9 percent from the peak of the market…

Indeed, the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index – a broad basket of large, mid and small company stocks – shows that the average stock’s distance from its 52-week high is 26.9%, according to stats compiled by Bespoke Investment Group through Friday’s close.

“That’s bear market territory!” says Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, the firm that provided USA TODAY with the gloomy price data.

So if the average stock has fallen 26.9 percent, what kind of market are we in?

To me, that is definitely bear market territory.

The rapid decline of the markets last week got the attention of the entire world, but of course this current financial crisis did not begin last week.  These stocks have been falling since the middle part of last year.  And what Bespoke Investment Group discovered is that small cap stocks have been hurt the most by this current downturn…

Here’s a statistical damage assessment, provided by Bespoke Investment Group, of the pain being felt by the average U.S. stock in the S&P 1500 index:

* Large-company stocks in the S&P 500 index are down 22.6%, on average, from peaks hit in the past 12 months.

* Mid-sized stocks in the S&P 400 index are sporting an average decline of 26.5% since hitting 52-week highs.

* Small stocks in the S&P 600 index are the farthest distance away from their recent peaks. The average small-cap name is 30.7% below its high in the past year.

After looking at those numbers, is there anyone out there that still wants to try to claim that “nothing is happening”?

Over the past six months or so, the sector that has been hit the hardest has been energy.  According to CNN, the average energy stock has now fallen 52 percent…

And then there’s energy. The dramatic decline in crude oil prices rocked the energy space. The average energy stock is now down a whopping 52% from its 52-week high, according to Bespoke. The only thing worse than that is small-cap energy, which is down 61%.

If you go up to an energy executive and try to tell him that “nothing is happening”, you might just get punched in the face.

And it is very important to keep in mind that stocks still have a tremendous distance to fall.  They are still massively overvalued by historical standards, and this is something that I have covered repeatedly on my website in recent months.

So how far could they ultimately fall?

Well, Dr. John Hussman is convinced that we could eventually see total losses in the 40 to 55 percent range…

I remain convinced that the U.S. financial markets, particularly equities and low-grade debt, are in a late-stage top formation of the third speculative bubble in 15 years.

On the basis of the valuation measures most strongly correlated with subsequent market returns (and that havefully retained that correlation even across recent market cycles), current extremes imply 40-55% market losses over the completion of the current market cycle, with zero nominal and negative real total returns for the S&P 500 on a 10-to-12-year horizon.

These are not worst-case scenarios, but run-of-the-mill expectations.

If the market does fall about 40 percent, that will just bring us into the range of what is considered to be historically “normal”.  If some sort of major disaster or emergency were to strike, that could potentially push the market down much, much farther.

And with each passing day, we get even more numbers which seem to indicate that we are entering a very, very deep global recession.

For instance, global trade numbers are absolutely collapsing.  This is a point that Raoul Pal hammered home during an interview with CNBC just the other day…

Looking at International Monetary Fund data, “the year-over-year change in global exports is at the second lowest level since 1958,” Raoul Pal, Publisher of the Global Macro Investor told CNBC’s”Fast Money”this week.

Basically, it means economies around the world are shipping their goods at near historically low levels. “Something massive is going on in the global economy and people are missing it,” Pal added.

The steep decline in 2015 exports is second only to 2009, when the global recession led to a 37 percent drop in export growth.

We have never seen global exports collapse this much outside of a recession.

Clearly we are witnessing a tremendous shift, and it boggles my mind that more people cannot see it.

As for this current wave of financial turmoil, it is hard to say how long it will last.  As I write this article, markets all over the Middle East are imploding, stocks in Asia are going crazy, currencies are crashing, and carry trades are being unwound at a staggering pace.  But at some point we should expect the level of panic to subside a bit.

If things do temporarily calm down, don’t let that fool you.  Global financial markets have not been this fragile since 2008.  Any sort of a trigger event is going to cause stocks all over the world to slide even more.

And let us not minimize the damage that has already been done one bit.  As you just read, the average stock on the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index is already down 26.9 percent.  The financial crisis that erupted during the second half of 2015 has already resulted in trillions of dollars of wealth being wiped out.

When people ask me when the “next financial crisis” is coming, I have a very simple answer for them.

The next financial crisis is not coming.

The next financial crisis is already here.

An angry bear has been released after nearly seven years in hibernation, and the entire world is going to be absolutely shocked by what happens next.

Missouri Ravaged By Historic Flooding As Disaster After Disaster Continues To Hit America

Rain - Public DomainWhy does this keep happening to America?  Since the month of September, the United States has been absolutely pummeled by a devastating series of disasters, and this most recent one may be the worst of all.  Right now, communities all along the Mississippi, Missouri and Arkansas rivers are dealing with “historic” flooding.  In Missouri, it is being said that nobody “that is living has ever seen anything like this“, and it is being projected that rivers could reach levels not seen since “the Great Flood” of 1993.  Portions of Interstate 44 have been totally shut down, and thousands of people have either already been evacuated from their homes or are preparing to evacuate.  It would be difficult to overstate the utter devastation that we are witnessing.  Personally, I have some very good friends in southern Missouri, and I will definitely be keeping them in my prayers.

The governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, is warning people to be very careful.  Thirteen people have already been killed by the flooding, and Nixon says that the waters are going “places they’ve never been before”…

Thirteen people in Missouri have died in floods caused by severe storms over the weekend, and although the rain has moved on, swollen rivers are still rising and won’t crest for days, Gov. Jay Nixon said.

“It’s very clear that Missouri is in the midst of a very historic and dangerous flooding event,” Nixon told reporters Tuesday. “The amount of rain we’ve received, in some places in excess of a foot, has caused river levels to not only rise rapidly, but to go to places they’ve never been before.”

A state of emergency was declared in Missouri on Monday, and yesterday Governor Nixon activated the National Guard.  But the river is still rising, and the worst is yet to come.

At this point, some communities have already been totally wiped out.  This includes the little town of Rockaway Beach, which is not too far away from Branson.  The following comes from USA Today…

In Missouri, some areas have already been hit hard by the first wave of rising water. Rockaway Beach, located near Branson in southwest Missouri, was swamped by waters from the swollen White River.

The tourist town of 800 “has just been demolished,” Mayor Don Smith told KYTV. “It’s devastating, and we are all so exhausted.”

It is being reported that the Mississippi River is now a mile wide is some places, and there are debris piles that are up to two stories tall.  Authorities are projecting that the flooding along some areas of the river will match or break all-time records that were set back in 1993…

In some parts of the Missouri, rivers are expected to crest as high as they did during devastating flooding in 1993, which is known as the “great flood,” Nixon said.

The National Weather Service predicted that the Mississippi River at Chester, Illinois, would crest at 49.7 feet Friday, matching the 1993 record, the governor’s office said. The Mississippi at Thebes was expected to crest Saturday at a record-breaking 47.5 feet.

The Mississippi River is expected to reach nearly 15 feet above flood stage on Thursday at St. Louis, which would be the second-worst flood on record, behind only the devastating 1993 flood.

What is happening in the center of the country right now is just the continuation of a trend that has been building for months.  Just check out this list of flooding events that we have seen in the U.S. since the end of the summer…

-Moisture from Hurricane Joaquin caused the worst flooding in the history of the state of South Carolina.

-Flash flooding caused “rivers of mud” to cover highways in southern California.

-The remnants of Hurricane Patricia caused tremendous flooding in many parts of Texas.

-One of the strongest El Ninos ever recorded has sent an endless stream of storms barreling into coastal areas of Oregon and Washington.  This has caused horrible flooding in some areas.

Meanwhile, we continue to witness a rise in earthquake activity as well.

Oklahoma, which had already shattered an all-time state record for earthquakes in 2015, was hit by a 4.3 magnitude earthquake yesterday.

And just within the last 24 hours, a 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit near San Bernardino, California, and a 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook northwestern Washington and Vancouver Island.

Also, let’s not forget all of the wildfires that have been happening.  On Christmas Day, a massive 1,200 acre blaze erupted near Ventura, California, and that topped off a year during which wildfires burned more acres in America than ever before.

Of course I could also mention the extremely rare EF-4 tornado that ripped through Garland, Texas just a few days ago and the ongoing multi-year drought that is still plaguing most of the state of California.

On top of everything else, a huge solar storm is going to hit our planet on New Year’s Eve.  Fortunately, authorities do not expect that it will do that much damage.

Nobody can deny that our weather is getting really, really crazy.

So precisely why is this happening?

There is certainly a lot of debate about this.  It is almost as if someone flipped a switch in September and turned on a disaster machine, because since that time there has been an endless parade of major events.

Do you have a theory that can explain what we are witnessing?

If so, please feel free to share it with the rest of us by posting a comment below…

58 Facts About The U.S. Economy From 2015 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

58The world didn’t completely fall apart in 2015, but it is undeniable that an immense amount of damage was done to the U.S. economy.  This year the middle class continued to deteriorate, more Americans than ever found themselves living in poverty, and the debt bubble that we are living in expanded to absolutely ridiculous proportions.  Toward the end of the year, a new global financial crisis erupted, and it threatens to completely spiral out of control as we enter 2016.  Over the past six months, I have been repeatedly stressing to my readers that so many of the exact same patterns that immediately preceded the financial crisis of 2008 are happening once again, and trillions of dollars of stock market wealth has already been wiped out globally.  Some of the largest economies on the entire planet such as Brazil and Canada have already plunged into deep recessions, and just about every leading indicator that you can think of is screaming that the U.S. is heading into one.  So don’t be fooled by all the happy talk coming from Barack Obama and the mainstream media.  When you look at the cold, hard numbers, they tell a completely different story.  The following are 58 facts about the U.S. economy from 2015 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 These days, most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  At this point 62 percent of all Americans have less than 1,000 dollars in their savings accounts, and 21 percent of all Americans do not have a savings account at all.

#2 The lack of saving is especially dramatic when you look at Americans under the age of 55.  Incredibly, fewer than 10 percent of all Millennials and only about 16 percent of those that belong to Generation X have 10,000 dollars or more saved up.

#3 It has been estimated that 43 percent of all American households spend more money than they make each month.

#4 For the first time ever, middle class Americans now make up a minority of the population. But back in 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle class households.

#5 According to the Pew Research Center, the median income of middle class households declined by 4 percent from 2000 to 2014.

#6 The Pew Research Center has also found that median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013.

#7 In 1970, the middle class took home approximately 62 percent of all income. Today, that number has plummeted to just 43 percent.

#8 There are still 900,000 fewer middle class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began, but our population has gotten significantly larger since that time.

#9 According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

#10 For the poorest 20 percent of all Americans, median household wealth declined from negative 905 dollars in 2000 to negative 6,029 dollars in 2011.

#11 A recent nationwide survey discovered that 48 percent of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 believe that “the American Dream is dead”.

#12 Since hitting a peak of 69.2 percent in 2004, the rate of homeownership in the United States has been steadily declining every single year.

#13 At this point, the U.S. only ranks 19th in the world when it comes to median wealth per adult.

#14 Traditionally, entrepreneurship has been one of the primary engines that has fueled the growth of the middle class in the United States, but today the level of entrepreneurship in this country is sitting at an all-time low.

#15 For each of the past six years, more businesses have closed in the United States than have opened.  Prior to 2008, this had never happened before in all of U.S. history.

#16 If you can believe it, the 20 wealthiest people in this country now have more money than the poorest 152 million Americans combined.

#17 The top 0.1 percent of all American families have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all American families combined.

#18 If you have no debt and you also have ten dollars in your pocket, that gives you a greater net worth than about 25 percent of all Americans.

#19 The number of Americans that are living in concentrated areas of high poverty has doubled since the year 2000.

#20 An astounding 48.8 percent of all 25-year-old Americans still live at home with their parents.

#21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month, and nearly 47 million Americans are living in poverty right now.

#22 In 2007, about one out of every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, that number is one out of every five.

#23 According to Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, the authors of a new book entitled “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America“, there are 1.5 million “ultrapoor” households in the United States that live on less than two dollars a day. That number has doubled since 1996.

#24 46 million Americans use food banks each year, and lines start forming at some U.S. food banks as early as 6:30 in the morning because people want to get something before the food supplies run out.

#25 The number of homeless children in the U.S. has increased by 60 percent over the past six years.

#26 According to Poverty USA, 1.6 million American children slept in a homeless shelter or some other form of emergency housing last year.

#27 Police in New York City have identified 80 separate homeless encampments in the city, and the homeless crisis there has gotten so bad that it is being described as an “epidemic”.

#28 If you can believe it, more than half of all students in our public schools are poor enough to qualify for school lunch subsidies.

#29 According to a Census Bureau report that was released a while back, 65 percent of all children in the U.S. are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government.

#30 According to a report that was published by UNICEF, almost one-third of all children in this country “live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income”.

#31 When it comes to child poverty, the United States ranks 36th out of the 41 “wealthy nations” that UNICEF looked at.

#32 An astounding 45 percent of all African-American children in the United States live in areas of “concentrated poverty”.

#33 40.9 percent of all children in the United States that are being raised by a single parent are living in poverty.

#34 There are 7.9 million working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” right now and another 94.4 million working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force”.  When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 102.3 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

#35 According to a recent Pew survey, approximately 70 percent of all Americans believe that “debt is a necessity in their lives”.

#36 53 percent of all Americans do not even have a minimum three-day supply of nonperishable food and water at home.

#37 According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the U.S. government was actually using honest numbers the unemployment rate in this nation would be 22.9 percent.

#38 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, only about 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#39 The labor force participation rate for men has plunged to the lowest level ever recorded.

#40 Wholesale sales in the U.S. have fallen to the lowest level since the last recession.

#41 The inventory to sales ratio has risen to the highest level since the last recession.  This means that there is a whole lot of unsold inventory that is just sitting around out there and not selling.

#42 The ISM manufacturing index has fallen for five months in a row.

#43 Orders for “core” durable goods have fallen for ten months in a row.

#44 Since March, the amount of stuff being shipped by truck, rail and air inside the United States has been falling every single month on a year over year basis.

#45 Wal-Mart is projecting that its earnings may fall by as much as 12 percent during the next fiscal year.

#46 The Business Roundtable’s forecast for business investment in 2016 has dropped to the lowest level that we have seen since the last recession.

#47 Corporate debt defaults have risen to the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.  This is a huge problem because corporate debt in the U.S. has approximately doubled since just before the last financial crisis.

#48 Holiday sales have gone negative for the first time since the last recession.

#49 The velocity of money in the United States has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.  Not even during the depths of the last recession was it ever this low.

#50 Barack Obama promised that his program would result in a decline in health insurance premiums by as much as $2,500 per family, but in reality average family premiums have increased by a total of $4,865 since 2008.

#51 Today, the average U.S. household that has at least one credit card has approximately $15,950 in credit card debt.

#52 The number of auto loans that exceed 72 months has hit at an all-time high of 29.5 percent.

#53 According to Dr. Housing Bubble, there have been “nearly 8 million homes lost to foreclosure since the homeownership rate peaked in 2004”.

#54 One very disturbing study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either currently have medical bill problems or are paying off medical debt.  And collection agencies seek to collect unpaid medical bills from about 30 million of us each and every year.

#55 The total amount of student loan debt in the United States has risen to a whopping 1.2 trillion dollars.  If you can believe it, that total has more than doubled over the past decade.

#56 Right now, there are approximately 40 million Americans that are paying off student loan debt.  For many of them, they will keep making payments on this debt until they are senior citizens.

#57 When you do the math, the federal government is stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

#58 An astounding 8.16 trillion dollars has already been added to the U.S. national debt while Barack Obama has been in the White House.  That means that it is already guaranteed that we will add an average of more than a trillion dollars a year to the debt during his presidency, and we still have more than a year left to go.

What we have seen so far is just the very small tip of a very large iceberg.  About six months ago, I stated that “our problems will only be just beginning as we enter 2016″, and I stand by that prediction.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic collapse that is beginning to accelerate once again.  Our economic infrastructure has been gutted, our middle class is being destroyed, Wall Street has been transformed into the biggest casino in the history of the planet, and our reckless politicians have piled up the biggest mountain of debt the world has ever seen.

Anyone that believes that everything is “perfectly fine” and that we are going to come out of this “stronger than ever” is just being delusional.  This generation was handed the keys to the finest economic machine of all time, and we wrecked it.  Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have culminated in a crisis that is now reaching a crescendo, and this nation is in for a shaking unlike anything that it has ever seen before.

So enjoy the rest of 2015 while you still can.

2016 is almost here, and it is going to be quite a year…

There Sure Is A Lot Of Buzz About A Potential Terror Attack On Christmas Day Or New Year’s Eve

2016 - Public DomainI have never seen more buzz about a potential terror attack during the holiday season than I am seeing right now.  Over the past couple of weeks, the mainstream media and the alternative media have both been full of headlines about the possibility of terrorism on Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve.  And personally, I have had numerous people contact me with their concerns or regarding something that they have heard from others.  In addition to threats from ISIS, there are many out there that are completely convinced that we could soon see a major false flag incident in the United States.  So are any of these rumors true?  Will we soon see a major terror incident in America?  I want to make it very clear that I do not know.  As an attorney, I have been trained to come to conclusions based on the evidence, and at this moment I do not have anything completely solid to report to you.  But I do believe that it is noteworthy that there is so much buzz about a potential terror attack that is coming in from so many different directions.

For example, earlier today a mainstream news report indicated that authorities had discovered a “credible threat” against New York City.  The phrase “credible threat” was later retracted, but it is a fact that NYPD Commissioner William Bratton did hold “an emergency meeting” on Tuesday to address the threat of terror…

Top NYPD brass including Commissioner William Bratton held an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss the need for increased vigilance, sources said.

All New York City police officers received a bulletin Tuesday afternoon outlining the department’s tactical plan and warning officers to stay vigilant, according to sources. That internal memo mentioned social media being used as a tactic and that a possible attack could come without warning.

Expect to see increased police presence at iconic locations across multiple boroughs, including Times Square, St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Midnight Mass on Thursday, and Barclays Center in Brooklyn, marking the first time a threat has sparked a swell of police presence in a borough other than Manhattan.

In Germany, it is being reported that a former ISIS fighter is telling authorities that ISIS is planning “coordinated attacks across multiple European cities”…

ISIS are threatening coordinated attacks across multiple European cities, a former militant who escaped from the terror group has revealed.

The former Islamic State fighter – called Harry S – recently escaped from the group in Syria and is now being questioned by the authorities in Germany.

He says, along with other fighters, he was asked if he would “bring jihad to their homeland”.

Could he be telling the truth?

You never know.  He might just be blowing a lot of hot air.  But after what recently took place in Paris and San Bernardino, we all need to be more diligent.

And without a doubt, it is quite probable that the next attack could be bigger than anything else that we have seen so far.  That same ex-ISIS fighter told the Germans that ISIS wants “something that happens everywhere at the same time”…

Worryingly, as reported by Der Spiegel, he told police: “They want something that happens everywhere at the same time.

“All you need is to take a big knife, and go down to the streets and slighter every infidel you encounter.”

And there is some evidence that radical Islamists have been planning just such an attack inside the United States.  Just check out what authorities found when they recently raided the home of a 19-year-old jihadist in Pennsylvania…

Thursday, The U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrest of 19-year-old Jalil Ibn Ameer Aziz, who lived in a home with his parents in the 1700 block of Fulton Street in Harrisburg.

According to an affidavit, Aziz was preparing to conduct or assist in an attack in the U.S. An investigation also revealed that Aziz attempted to aid ISIS supporters in traveling to Syria for the purpose of becoming ISIS fighters.

On November 27, investigators raided Aziz’s home and found five loaded M4-style high-capacity magazines, a modified kitchen knife, a thumb drive, medication and a balaclava inside a backpack Aziz’s kept inside a closet.

We also know that the San Bernardino shooters had accumulated quite an arsenal in their home as well.  Mike Adams of Natural News believes that this is yet more evidence that a “multi-city ISIS attack” was being planned…

I have reason to believe that a massive, multi-city ISIS attack will be unleashed across America in the near future.

Why do I believe this? Because the evidence points to the likelihood that the San Bernardino ISIS terrorists disobeyed orders and prematurely initiated their attack on a relatively small group. The twelve pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition found in their apartment point to the realization that they were preparing for something much larger.

If you’re a terrorist, you don’t build twelve pipe bombs and then leave them behind during your attack. You use them in large crowds, of course, to maximize the bloodshed and terror factor. The very existence of these pipe bombs — if indeed they weren’t planted by the feds — means that another, larger attack was in the planning stages and approaching activation.

Whether we see a major attack within the next couple of weeks or not, it is inevitable that the next one will happen at some point.  I think that the holidays are a flashpoint in particular because they have a great deal of symbolic meaning and because there are such large public gatherings of people around Christmas and on New Year’s Eve.

And the federal government recognizes this as well.  As Christmas draws closer, FEMA has been helping churches prepare for “active shooter incidents“, and the feds will be keeping a very close eye on New Year’s Eve celebrations in New York City and elsewhere.

Of course many Americans do not have much faith in the ability of the federal government to protect them.  In fact, there are some that are simply going to avoid any large public gatherings of people until after the holidays are over.

So are those individuals being paranoid or prudent?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

Add 2 More Attacks To The List As The Year End Explosion Of Islamic Terror Continues

Terror - Public DomainDoesn’t it seem like there is another Islamic terror attack somewhere in the world almost every day now?  Today, there was a throat slashing at a subway station in London, and three female suicide bombers carried out a devastating attack in Chad that killed at least 27 and injured at least 90.  Inspired by the success of ISIS, radical Islamists all over the planet are rising up and striking vulnerable targets.  According to Wikipedia, there have been dozens of terror attacks worldwide so far this year, and the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino were some of the biggest news stories of 2015.  Unfortunately, I believe that this is just the beginning.  I am fully convinced that the seeds of terror that have been planted up until now will produce an increasingly bitter harvest as we head into 2016 and beyond.

The throat slashing that just happened in London is another in a series of seemingly random attacks that is creating fear all over Europe right now.  Reportedly, the attacker yelled “this is for Syria” as he struck at his victim…

A man was stabbed in the ticket hall at Leytonstone station this evening by another man who witnesses say shouted “This is for Syria” as he slashed his throat.

Another three are thought to have been injured.

The Met Police said its counter-terrorism command unit is now investigating the incident.

Police said they used a taser on the suspect as he threatened others with a knife, before they managed to arrest him.

An alternate account of this attack in the Guardian sounds even more gruesome…

One person, who claims to have witnessed the attack, took to social media to reveal details of the horror. Laurynas Godvisa said: “So as I was going to Leytonstone station was dressed to go to Christmas dinner with people from work.

“As I walked down I just saw a lot of people running but I ignored it and kept walking to get my train, but suddenly what I saw I couldn’t believe my eyes and what I saw was I guy with a knife and a dead guy on the floor.

“I was so scared I ran for my life. After good 10-15 police came and got the guy and arrested him.

“And as he was coming out this is what he said: ‘This is what happens when you **** with mother Syria all of your blood will be spilled.’”

On a daily basis, we all rely on the fact that the people we encounter in public are not going to try to kill us.

But what happens when attacks start happening regularly at soft targets such as schools, churches, subway stations, shopping malls and sporting events?

It isn’t going to take many mass casualty events in the western world before people really start freaking out.

In other areas of the world, we already see these sorts of mass casualty events on a regular basis.  And I am not just talking about the Middle East.  For example, just check out what happened earlier today in Africa…

A deadly attack took the lives of at least 27 people in Africa. A local market on the island of Koulfoua, in Chad was struck, according to the BBC and AP, injuring at least 90.

A Chad police spokesman said three female suicide bombers carried out Saturday’s attack.

The Lake Chad region straddles the borders of Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.

In Nigeria, Islamic terror has become a part of daily life.  It wasn’t always that way, but now Boko Haram is creating havoc all over the place.

Given enough time, the same thing would happen in the United States.  We have all seen what just happened in San Bernardino, and more radical Islamists are coming into this country all the time.  Sadly, the truth is that Sayed Farook and Tashfeen Malik are just the very small tip of a very large iceberg.

The mainstream media is keeping very quiet about the fact that Sayed Farook had been arguing with a 52-year-old pro-Israel Messianic Jewish Christian co-worker named Nicholas Thalasinos and had openly threatened to kill him.  A radical Muslim taking revenge on a conservative Christian because of what he believed doesn’t fit any of the “narratives” that the mainstream media is trying to push, and so that part of the story is being almost entirely ignored.  In fact, I just read an extremely long article on the attack by the Washington Post, and there was not a single mention of Thalasinos in the entire article.

But the mainstream media is telling us that Farook and Malik had both been radicalized, and it is being reported that Malik even went so far as to pledge her allegiance to ISIS.  The following comes from the Daily Mail…

New details have emerged about the radicalization of a Pakistani woman who along with her American husband killed 14 people in San Bernardino California and pledged allegiance to ISIS.

Tashfeen Malik who moved to the US last year when she married Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, had spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia and relatives say she began to be radicalized in college.

Relatives of Malik in Pakistan, estranged from their wealthy family members who live in Saudi Arabia, said she used to wear Western-style clothing but later switched to more traditional garments such as a burka, which covers the the entire body.

These kinds of radicals are moving to America on a constant basis now, and Barack Obama wants to accelerate this process.

During recent television appearances and on a DVD that I made earlier this year, I went on the record with my prediction that a horrible wave of Islamic terrorism was coming to America.

Unfortunately, what we have seen so far is just a preview.

Eventually we are going to see attacks on soft targets that are going to kill hundreds or even thousands.

And as the terrorists see the panic and fear that they are able to create, it will just embolden them to try to launch even bigger and more destructive attacks.

If you don’t think that this can happen in America, just look at what is already happening around the rest of the world.  From 2013 to 2014, the number of people around the world killed by terrorism increased by 80 percent, and this year the plague of Islamic terror has gotten even worse.

Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and our society is extremely vulnerable to various forms of terrorism.  And as we have seen with Sayed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, anyone that is willing to commit extremely destructive acts of violent terrorism will suddenly become world famous.  Terrorists desperately want to focus attention on themselves, and they love to create fear, and in this day and age it is very easy to do both.

I wish that I could be more optimistic, but as we head into 2016 I have a feeling that this outbreak of Islamic terror is only going to get worse.  This is going to fundamentally change all of our lives, and we need to be ready to deal with that reality.

World War III Draws Closer As Russia Accuses Turkey Of Being ‘Secret Allies’ With ISIS

2S19 Msta-S - Photo from Wikimedia CommonsAre Russia and Turkey on the verge of going to war?  In remarks that were almost entirely ignored by the western media, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the Turkish government of being “secret allies” with ISIS on Friday.  And on Monday, the Russians announced that they would be attempting to seal the border between Syria and Turkey, and we also learned that the Russians have been rushing heavy artillery units into Syria.  As tensions between Russia and Turkey continue to escalate, could we be in danger of seeing World War III erupt in the Middle East?

The Russians have clearly become convinced that Turkey is at the core of the problems in Syria, and that is why the Russians now plan to completely seal Syria’s border with Turkey.  Lavrov seems to think that this will represent a giant step toward defeating terror groups such as ISIS…

“We are convinced that by blocking the border we will in many respects solve the tasks to eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”

And the Russians are right about this.  ISIS militants use Turkey as a home base, and it has been documented that Turkey has been “training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals”.

It was already common knowledge that Turkey was doing all of these things, but now the Russian government is publicly accusing the Turkish government of being “secret allies” with ISIS.  When Lavrov chose to use these words on Friday, he knew exactly what he was saying…

“We think it highly cynical when some of the countries speak about their commitment to the corresponding United Nations Security Council resolutions and declare themselves members of anti-terrorist coalitions but in reality are playing a game where terrorists are allocated the role of secret allies,” Lavrov stressed. “We have more and more questions about Ankara’s real plans and the degree of its readiness to exterminate terrorism, in particular in Syria, and its commitment to the normalization of the situation in Syria.”

So why would Turkey want to be allies with ISIS?

Well, first of all the Turkish government hates the Assad regime in Syria and would love to see it eliminated.

Secondly, ISIS has been selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil in Turkey, and it has been alleged that the Turkish president’s own family is involved.

This was all supposed to be on the down low, but now the Russians are extremely angry and they are airing this dirty laundry for all the world to see.  On Monday, Vladimir Putin said that his government had “received additional information” that ISIS is shipping oil to Turkey on an “industrial scale”…

Russia has received additional intelligence confirming that oil from deposits controlled by Islamic State is moved through Turkey on an industrial scale, said Vladimir Putin. President Recep Erdogan said he will resign if this is confirmed.

Moscow has grounds to suspect that the Su-24 was downed by Turkish jets on November 24 to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey, he said speaking on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris on Monday.

“At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale,” he said.

“We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers,” Putin said.

And of course it isn’t just the Russians that are making these claims.

Mowaffak al Rubaie is a former member of the Iraqi Governing Council, and he says that sales of ISIS oil in Turkey have amounted to approximately 100 million dollars a month…

“In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell … $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold …[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price,” Mowaffak al Rubaie said in an interview with RT.

“Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market.”

“Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market  is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it’s operation,” he added. “Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate.”

You can’t sell 100 million dollars of stolen oil a month without the U.S. government knowing about it.

That means that Barack Obama has been fully aware of what has been going on, and he hasn’t told the American people the truth.

One of the reasons for his silence could be the fact that the president of Turkey’s own son has been involved.  Just check out what Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said just the other day…

“All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well.”

For much more on all of this, please see my previous article entitled “The Biggest Obama Scandal? He Knows That Turkey Is Buying Oil From ISIS And He Is Doing Nothing To Stop It“.

Previously, the Russians had promised not to commit ground forces in Syria, but now that appears to be changing.

According to Debka, the Russians have already deployed three battalions of 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers at this point…

First, a body of three battalions of 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers was deployed at Khmeimin and has already started pounding rebel lines and command centers in the area. This heavy artillery system, capable of firing 152mm bombs at a rapid pace, is a veteran of Russia’s former campaigns against Islamic terrorist groups, especially in the Russian war against Islamic rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s.

In addition to the 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers, the Russians have also brought in TOS-1 220mm multiple rocket launchers…

Another heavy weapons system that Russia brought to Syria in recent days is the TOS-1 220mm multiple rocket launcher. This system, which is mounted on the chassis of a T-72 tank, has been deployed near the embattled Syrian cities of Hama and Homs.

With each passing day, we seem to be inching ever closer to the start of World War III.

And it is important to keep in mind that if war does break out, Turkey is a member of NATO, and so the U.S. would be obligated by treaty to help defend the Turks.

So let’s keep a close eye on what is happening in the Middle East, because it could end up having tremendous implications for all of us.

Do You Remember When Black Friday Actually Still Mattered In America?

Bored - Public DomainOnce upon a time, “Black Friday” was a major event in the United States.  Yes, the mainstream media is still endlessly hyping it up, and major retailers are still rolling out their “incredible deals”, but it appears that most Americans are tiring of this particular gimmick.  Or perhaps it is just that U.S. consumers don’t have as much discretionary income as they once did.  As you will see below, retail traffic this Black Friday was “much, much slower” than anticipated.  And expectations were not great anyway – the number of shoppers was down last year, and it was being projected that there would be another decline in 2015.  Yes, there were still a few fights on Black Friday, but mostly the “holiday” was marked by giant piles of unsold merchandise sitting around collecting dust.  The inventory to sales ratio in the U.S. has surged to levels not seen since the last recession, and so the truth is that most retailers were hoping for much more contrived chaos on Black Friday than we actually witnessed.

Personally, I wish that this whole phenomenon would just simply disappear, because it definitely doesn’t bring out the best in the American people.

Who wants to see fellow citizens trampling one another and fighting with one another for cheaply made electronics that aren’t even manufactured in this country anyway?

Black Friday was always a disgusting spectacle, and now it appear to be fading.

Let’s start with Thanksgiving sales.  More stores than ever are opening on Thanksgiving Day itself, and according to SunTrust that was a total “bust” this year…

We believe Thanksgiving shopping was a bust. We note that traffic seemed below last year both on- and off-mall. Members of our team who went to the malls first had no problem finding parking or navigating stores. Crowds were tame and, with some exceptions there seemed to be more browsing than buying and less items purchased. We heard many people discussing that deals were not that compelling compared to years past. Interestingly, many retailers closed at midnight- which contributed to a sharp decline in traffic shortly thereafter. Off-mall, members of our team visited Walmart and Target for the openings and had no problem finding parking. Customers at both were focused on electronics. Lines, even early, were about half of what they were last year and quickly dissipated. The only off-mall big box retailer we visited with consistently long lines and customers making multiple item purchases was Kohl’s — where buys were focused on deals not available online.

Once Black Friday rolled around, things didn’t get any better.  For example, one analyst said that traffic at the Mall of America didn’t “look much busier than an average Saturday morning”…

At the Mall of America in Minneapolis, the largest in the country, Edward Yruma, managing director at KeyBanc Capital Markets, said he’s seeing less traffic than years past as well. He was there from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. last night and arrived again at 8 a.m. this morning.

“It doesn’t look much busier than an average Saturday morning,” said Yruma.

And in North Carolina, retailers saw “much less traffic than was anticipated”…

Jeff Simpson, a director at Deloitte Consulting LLP’s retail practice, surveyed shopping centers in North Carolina and saw smaller crowds than expected for Black Friday.

“Across the board, much less traffic than was anticipated,” he said. “Much, much slower.”

Of course this wasn’t much of a surprise.  A global recession has already begun, and investors were dumping retail stocks ahead of Thanksgiving in anticipation of a horrible shopping season.  The following comes from the New York Post…

Wall Street, fearful that consumers are running out of cash heading into the crucial Christmas retail season, are selling off retail stocks and everything else sensitive to consumer spending.

So why are consumers running out of cash?

Well, it is because the middle class is dying, poverty in America is exploding and the cost of living continues to soar.

Just look at what is happening to healthcare costs.  It turns out that employees that work for medium and large companies in the U.S. are now paying more than double for health insurance than they were a decade ago…

Employees of midsize and large companies in 2015 paid an average of $4,700 for their health insurance, up from $2,001 in 2005, according to recent analysis from Aon Hewitt.

For much more on how the cost of living is absolutely crippling families all over this nation, please see my previous article entitled “Inflation Is Crushing The Middle Class“.

Meanwhile, things continue to get worse around the rest of the globe as well.  The number of unemployed job seekers just hit a brand new record high in France, Puerto Rico is on the verge of a major debt default, and on Friday there was an absolutely massive stock market decline in China…

In China, equities saw a significant sell off as a result of investigations by the Chinese securities regulatory body into several brokerages for breaking regulations. The Shanghai Composite closed 199 points, or 5.48 percent, lower; the Shenzhen Composite closed 6.1 percent lower, the Chinext was down 6.1 percent, and the CSI300 Index saw a decline of 5.38 percent.

Chinese brokerages took major hits, with Citic Securities, Founder Securities, and China Merchants closing 10.1, 10, and 9.98 percent lower after news broke that the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has launched investigations into these firms to weed out short selling and speculation.

I hope that you enjoyed this Thanksgiving as much as you possibly could, because all of the underlying economic numbers are absolutely screaming that hard times are ahead.

This year, Americans are going to spend an average of $130 on “self-gifting” and more than $800 on the holiday season overall.  People are spending money that they don’t have on things that they don’t need, and meanwhile very few of us are actively preparing for what promises to be a very challenging 2016.

So yes, let us enjoy the time that we have with our families, but let us also not be completely oblivious to the huge changes that are literally happening all around us.

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