‘Near Perfect’ Indicator That Precedes Almost Every Stock Market Correction Is Flashing A Warning Signal

Exclamation Marks - Public DomainAre we about to see U.S. stocks take a significant tumble?  If you are looking for a “canary in the coal mine” for the U.S. stock market, just look at high yield bonds.  In recent years, almost every single time junk bonds have declined substantially there has been a notable stock market correction as well.  And right now high yield bonds are steadily moving lower.  The biggest reason for this is falling oil prices.  As I wrote about the other day, energy companies now account for about 20 percent of the high yield bond market.  As the price of oil falls, investors are understandably becoming concerned about the future prospects of those companies and are dumping their bonds.  What is happening cannot be described as a “crash” just yet, but there has been a pretty sizable decline for junk bonds over the past month.  And as I noted above, junk bonds and stocks usually move in tandem.  In fact, junk bonds usually start falling before stocks do.  So does the decline in high yield bonds that we are witnessing at the moment indicate that we are on the verge of a significant stock market correction?

That is a question that CNBC asked in a recent article entitled “Near perfect sell signal says stocks should drop“…

The S&P 500 and the iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF are a mirror image since the start of the year, but since the end of October, high yield has diverged to the lower right, and yet the S&P 500 has continued to record highs. Since separating in October, the S&P 500 is up 3 percent, while the high-yield ETF is down 4 percent.

On 10 occasions since 2007, the high-yield ETF dropped 5 percent in 30 trading days. During nine of those instances, the S&P 500 fell as well, with an average return of negative 9 percent, according to CNBC analysis using Kensho.

Only once did high yield give a false sell signal. That was last year, when the market was already entranced by the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program, which has seemed to elevate stocks with an abnormal consistency. And even then, the S&P 500 managed just a 0.4 percent climb amid the junk debt rout.

Personally, I am convinced that this correlation between junk bonds and stocks is very significant.

Let’s just go back and look at what happened during the financial crash of 2008 for a moment.

In the chart posted below, you can see that high yield bonds began crashing in the middle of September that year…

High Yield Bonds 2008

But U.S. stocks did not crash at the same time.  In fact, the chart below shows that they did not really begin crashing until early October…

Dow Jones Industrial Average 2008

That is why analysts often refer to junk bonds as a “leading indicator”.  What happens to high yield debt is often a really good indicator of what is about to happen to stocks.

Now let’s take a look at what is happening today.

Since the beginning of November, junk bonds have been falling steadily…

High Yield Bonds November

Meanwhile, the Dow has continued to reach new heights…

Dow Jones Industrial Average November

This is not a state of affairs that can persist indefinitely.  Either junk bonds will rebound or U.S. stocks will start falling.

If the U.S. economy was on solid footing, you could perhaps argue that it could go either way.

Unfortunately, that is not the case.  At this point, the stock market has become completely divorced from economic fundamentals.  Price to earnings ratios are at absurd levels, margin debt is hovering near record highs, and the “real economy” continues to fall apart.  We are enjoying a massively inflated standard of living which is being propped up by the largest mountain of debt in world history, and it is only a matter of time before reality starts catching up with us.

And the signs of our long-term economic decline are all around us if you are willing to look at them.  For example, the lead headline on the Drudge Report today was about how China has now overtaken us and has become the largest economy on the planet

Hang on to your hats, America.

And throw away that big, fat styrofoam finger while you’re about it.

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.

It just happened — and almost nobody noticed.

The International Monetary Fund recently released the latest numbers for the world economy. And when you measure national economic output in “real” terms of goods and services, China will this year produce $17.6 trillion — compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S.A.

Meanwhile, some of the most iconic companies in the United States continue to struggle deeply.  For instance, Sears has just announced that the number of store closings for this year is going to reach a total of 235 and that the company lost more than half a billion dollars during the third quarter of 2014 alone…

Sears Holdings Corp., posted a disappointing third quarter Thursday that saw revenue, earnings, and sales at stores open at least a year all fall as the retailer tries to salvage its business.

Sears, which owns Kmart, lost $548 million, or $5.15 a share, for the period ended Nov. 1. That’s up from a loss of $534 million, or $5.03 a share, in the year-ago period.

Even though Sears is losing more than 500 million dollars a quarter, banks and investors continue to inject new money into the corporation.  That is a crying shame, because Sears is a company that is going to zero.  Anyone that is investing in Sears at this point is just pouring their money into a black hole.  As Kevin O’Leary would say, they are guilty of murdering money.

And of course what is happening to Sears is just part of the broader “retail apocalypse” that I keep writing about.  In order for retailers to thrive they need healthy consumers, and consumers are not financially healthy because the real economy is a disaster zone.

But these days so many people are in denial.  The stock market has been soaring for so long that many skeptics are now proclaiming that another 2008-style crash will never happen.  Even though the fact that we are in the midst of an absolutely insane financial bubble should be glaringly obvious to anyone with half a brain, these skeptics have convinced themselves that the current state of affairs can persist indefinitely.

Sadly, it looks like what is about to hit us in 2015 is going to serve as a very rude wake up call for them and for the millions of other Americans that currently have their heads in the sand.

The Dow Has Already Fallen More Than 1000 Points From The Peak Of The Market

Stock Market Decline - Photo by NodulationThat didn’t take long.  On Monday, the Dow was down another 326 points.  Overall, the Dow has now fallen more than 1000 points from the peak of the market (16,588.25) back in late December.  This is the first time that we have seen the Dow drop below its 200-day moving average in more than a year, and there are many that believe that this is just the beginning of a major stock market decline.  Meanwhile, things are even worse in other parts of the world.  For example, the Nikkei is now down about 1700 points from its 2013 high.  This is causing havoc all over Asia, and the sharp movement that we have been seeing in the USD/JPY is creating a tremendous amount of anxiety among Forex traders.  For those that are not interested in the technical details, what all of this means is that global financial markets are starting to become extremely unstable.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be much hope on the horizon for investors.  In fact, troubling news just continues to pour in from all over the planet.  Just consider the following…

-Major currencies all over South America continue to collapse.

-Massive central bank intervention has done little to slow down the currency collapse in Turkey.

-Investors pulled more than 6 billion dollars out of emerging market equity funds last week alone.

-The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) has risen above 20 for the first time in four months.

-Last month, new manufacturing orders in the United States declined at the fastest pace that we have seen since December 1980.

-Real disposable income in the United States has just experienced the largest year over year drop that we have seen since 1974.

-In January, vehicle sales for Ford were down 7.5 percent and vehicle sales for GM were down 12 percent.  Both companies are blaming bad weather.

-A major newspaper in the UK is warning that “growing problems in the Chinese banking system could spill over into a wider financial crisis“.

-U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is warning that the federal government could hit the debt ceiling by the end of this month if Congress does not act.

-It is being reported that Dell Computer plans to lay off more than 15,000 workers.

-The IMF recently said that the the probability that the global economy will fall into a deflation trap “may now be as high as 20%“.

-The Baltic Dry Index is now down 50 percent from its December highs.

If our economic troubles continue to mount, could we be facing a global “financial avalanche” fairly quickly?

That is what some very prominent analysts believe.

Below, I have posted quotes from five men that are greatly respected in the financial world.  What they have to say is quite chilling…

#1 Doug Casey: “Now is a very good time to start thinking financially because I’m afraid that this year, in 2014, we’re going to go back into the financial hurricane. We’ve been in the eye of the storm since 2009, but now we’re going to go back into the trailing edge of the storm, and it’s going to be much longer lasting and much worse and much different than what we had in 2008 and 2009.”

#2 Bill Fleckenstein: “The [price-to-earnings ratio] is 16, 17 times earnings,” Fleckenstein said on Tuesday’s episode of “Futures Now.” “Why would you pay 16 times for an S&P company? I don’t care about where rates are, because rates are artificially suppressed. Why isn’t that worth 11 or 12 times? Just by that analysis, you’d be down by a quarter or 30 percent. So there’s a huge amount of downside.”

#3 Egon von Greyerz of Matterhorn Asset Management: “Nothing goes (down) in a straight line, but the emerging market problems will accelerate and it will spread to the very overbought and the very overvalued stock markets and economies in the West.

So stock markets are now starting a secular bear trend which will last for many years, and we could see falls of massive proportions. At the end of this, the wealth that has been created in the last few decades will be destroyed.”

#4 Peter Schiff: “The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said.  “I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”

“We’re broke, Schiff added.  “We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”

#5 Gerald Celente: “This selloff in the emerging markets, with their currencies going down and their interest rates going up, it’s going to be disastrous and there are going to be riots everywhere…

So as the decline in their economies accelerates, you are going to see the civil unrest intensify.”

—–

Those that do not believe that we could ever see “civil unrest” on the streets of America should take note of what just happened in Seattle.

After the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, fans celebrated by “lighting fires, damaging historic buildings and ripping down street signs“.

If that is how average Americans will behave when something good happens, how will they act when the economy totally collapses and nobody can find work for an extended period of time?

We are rapidly approaching another great financial crisis.  Unfortunately, we didn’t learn any of the lessons that we should have learned last time.  It is being projected that the debt of the federal government will more than double during the Obama years, the “too big to fail banks” have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years, and the big banks have become more financially reckless than ever before.

When the next great financial crisis arrives (and without a doubt it is inevitable), millions more Americans will lose their jobs and millions more Americans will lose their homes.

Now is not the time to be buying lots of expensive new toys, going on expensive vacations or piling up lots of debt.

Now is the time to build up an emergency fund and to do whatever you can to get prepared for the great storm that is coming.

As you can see from the financial headlines, time is rapidly running out.

NASDAQ MarketSite TV studio - Photo by Luis Villa del Campo

Will The Day Of Rage In Saudi Arabia On March 11 Send The Price Of Oil Into Unprecedented Territory?

The price of oil is shaping up to be the number one economic story of 2011, and right now the eyes of the investing world are closely watching the developing situation in Saudi Arabia.  All of the other recent Middle East revolutions have been organized on the Internet, and now all over Facebook and Twitter there are calls for a “Day of Rage” in Saudi Arabia on March 11.  The Saudi monarchy is attempting to head off any protests by promising to give $37 billion in “benefits” to the people and by publicly proclaiming that all political demonstrations are specifically banned.  In addition, the Saudi government is stationing thousands of security forces at various potential “hot spots” around the country.  So far similar measures have not done much to quell unrest in other nations in the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia will be a true test of the revolutionary fervor that is sweeping the region.  The Saudis have a long history of brutally repressing their own people.  They simply do not mess around.  So a revolution in Saudi Arabia will not be nearly as “easy” as it was in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya.  However, if a revolution does sweep across Saudi Arabia, it is going to send the price of oil into unprecedented territory.  Saudi Arabia is the number one exporter of oil in the world, and if their oil fields get shut down even for a little while it is going to have a dramatic effect on the global economy.  With the world already on the verge of a major sovereign debt crisis, the last thing it needs is for the price of oil to start soaring into the stratosphere.

Right now the investing world is not sure what to think about all of this, and financial markets do not like uncertainty.  One piece of really bad news could send markets all over the globe crashing down.

Speculation in oil futures is absolutely rampant.  A recent report on CNN noted the following….

The speculative fervor is so remarkable that the big trading firms now have nearly twice as many long contracts open as they did in 2008, when oil spiked to $147 in the summer, a development that either foreshadowed or caused the global economic meltdown, depending on how you look at it.

In particular, the number of investors that are betting that a revolution in Saudi Arabia is going to send the price of oil up to $200 a barrel has exploded in recent days.

$200 a barrel?

Are people actually betting that is going to happen?

The all-time record is only $147 a barrel.  Just a few months ago it was absolutely unthinkable to most economists that we could potentially see $200 oil in 2011.

But it would be a mistake to assume that a full-blown revolution is guaranteed to break out in Saudi Arabia.  Remember, this is a nation that has a very, very long history of denying even the most basic freedoms to the people.

For example, in Saudi Arabia the practice of any religion other than Islam is strictly forbidden.  By law, citizens of Saudi Arabia are not permitted to change religion.  Even foreign visitors are forbidden to openly practice any other religion.  It is a whole different world.  You cannot go to the store and buy a Bible in Saudi Arabia.  In fact, if you try to pass out Bibles in Saudi Arabia you will be thrown into prison.

Beheadings and other brutal public executions still happen in Saudi Arabia to this day.

So if you plan of being a revolutionary in Saudi Arabia you had better put your big boy pants on, because the Saudis play hardball.

Much of the rest of the globe is desperately hoping that a revolution does not happen in Saudi Arabia because the global economic situation is precarious at best.

In Europe, if the price of oil causes a significant economic slowdown right now it could have global implications.  Moody’s Investors Service just slashed Greece’s debt rating three levels all the way down to B1.  But Greece is far from alone.  Several European governments are finding it much more expensive to finance their debts these days.  We are right on the edge of a major European sovereign debt crisis and the chaos in the Middle East could potentially be just the thing to spark a panic.

The United States could feel a rise in the price of oil even more than Europe because the U.S. economy is so spread out and it is so dependent on products from overseas.

Did you know that in 1960 only 8 percent of the things Americans bought were made overseas but that today 60 percent of the things Americans buy are made overseas?

It’s true.

So what would happen if the cost of transporting all of those products suddenly doubled?  All of the products we buy must be transported somehow, and a rise in transportation costs will be passed on to U.S. consumers.

But the truth is that the pain is already here.  Already, millions of American families are starting to feel some very real financial pain from the chaos in the Middle East.

From February 18th to March 4th, the average price of gasoline in the United States rose 33 cents.  That was the biggest two week increase ever recorded.

Ouch.

The rise in the price of oil has some broader economic implications as well.

The more the price of oil goes up the bigger our trade deficit is going become.  As the trade deficit gets bigger, that means that more money is going out of the country and less money is going to support American businesses and American workers.  When American workers lose jobs, that means that they aren’t producing wealth anymore and they aren’t paying taxes anymore.  Instead, they become a drain on the system as they start receiving government handouts.

When millions of Americans go from being productive, taxpaying workers to unemployed welfare cases it causes our federal budget deficit to become even larger.

Most Americans do not understand how connected our trade deficit and our federal budget deficit really are.  One feeds right into the other.

Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve seems to think that the solution to any economic problem these days is to print more money.

According to Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, if the price of oil goes up high enough, it could force the Federal Reserve to do even more quantitative easing.

Really?

One of the reasons why the price of oil and other commodities has been going up over the last six months is because of all of this reckless money printing.

Now Lockhart is saying that because of the oil price increases they may have to do more money printing?

How bizarre is that?

Unfortunately, several other top Fed officials have dropped hints about a possible “QE3” lately.  It just seems like the insanity never stops.

Let us hope that the Fed does not go there because the U.S. dollar is falling apart fast enough already.

In any event, the rest of 2011 is certainly going to be very interesting to watch.

Even if a revolution does not happen in Saudi Arabia, the price of oil will most likely continue to slowly move higher just as it has been doing for months.

But if a full-blown revolution does happen in Saudi Arabia, it could literally change the global economy almost overnight.  The entire world financial system would be thrown into a state of chaos.

Oil is the lifeblood of the world economy.  Without a continuous supply of very inexpensive oil, life as we know it would dramatically change.  Most of us just assumed that we would always live in a world where we would always have an endless supply of very cheap oil.

Well, the times they are a changing.

You had better buckle up because it is going to be a bumpy ride.

Economy News Nightmare: 20 Things That You Should Not Read If You Do Not Want To Become Very Angry

Today America is very, very frustrated.  In fact, we probably have not seen this level of anger in the country since World War 2 ended.  So why are so many Americans so frustrated and so angry right now?  Well, for most Americans it comes down to the economy.  Very few things are more frustrating than not being able to find a job that will enable you to pay the mortgage and feed your family.  Middle class Americans that do have a little bit of money are digging into their savings and investments at a staggering rate as they desperately try to keep their heads above water.  Millions of other families that do not have a “safety cushion” are on the verge of losing their homes or have already been callously tossed out onto the streets by big, greedy banks.  Meanwhile, our politicians continue to burden us with increasingly larger amounts of government debt and they stand idly by as our jobs and our industries are shipped overseas.  So even though the mainstream media seems absolutely puzzled by the growing anger in America, the truth is that it is not a great mystery.  The economy is an absolute nightmare, and if it gets even worse people are going to become even more angry.

The mainstream media and our top politicians are running around proclaiming that the economy has turned around, and yet all of the important long-term economic numbers continue to get worse.  Do they think that the American people are stupid?

Perhaps they are just trying to be “optimistic” and are trying to get us all to “believe” in the economic recovery.

Well, while it certainly does not hurt to “stay positive” and to “have faith” when there is some basis in reality for doing so, but what the mainstream media is asking us all to do is to stick our heads in the sand and to pretend that all of our horrific economic problems are not even there.

Until we recognize exactly what our problems are and how bad they have gotten we will never be able to come up with the appropriate solutions.

Our economy does not just need a “tweak” or two.  Our economy is a total nightmare at this point.

The following are 20 things about our nightmare of an economy that you will not want to read if you do not want to become very, very angry….

#1 Today, millions of American families are digging deep into their savings and investments in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. Over the past two years, U.S. consumers have withdrawn $311 billion more from savings and investment accounts than they have put into them.

#2 15 billion dollars: the total amount of compensation that Goldman Sachs paid out to its employees for 2010.

#3 The number of American families that were booted out of their homes and into the streets set a new all-time record in 2010.

#4 Dozens of packages that we buy in the supermarket have been reduced in size by up to 20%.  For example, there are now 2 less slices of cheese in a typical package of Kraft American cheese, and there is now 9 percent less toilet paper in a typical package of Scott toilet paper.  So now, you may think that you are paying the same amount for these items that you always have, but the truth is that you have been hit with a large price increase.

#5 One Canadian company is making a ton of money shipping “millions and millions of dollars” worth of manufacturing equipment from factories that are being shut down in the United States over to new factories that are being set up in China.

#6 In America today, the wealthiest 20% own a whopping 93% of all the “financial assets” in the United States.

#7 Only 35 percent of Americans now have enough “emergency savings” to be able to cover three months of living expenses.

#8 47 percent of all Americans now believe that China is the number one economic power in the world.

#9 If the U.S. banking system is healthy, then why does the number of “problem banks” continue to keep increasing?  This past week the number of U.S. banks on the unofficial list of problem banks reached 937.

#10 According to former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, the wealthiest 0.1% of all Americans make as much money as the poorest 120 million.

#11 U.S. housing prices have now fallen further during this economic downturn than they did during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

#12 According to some very disturbing new research, 45 percent of U.S. college students exhibit “no significant gains in learning” after two years in college.

#13 Americans now owe more than $884 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.

#14 The United Nations says that the global price of food hit an all-time record high in December, and the price of oil is surging towards $100 a barrel, but the U.S. government continues to insist that we barely have any inflation at all.

#15 The more Americans that are on food stamps the more profits that JP Morgan makes.  Today, an all-time record of 43.2 million Americans are on food stamps, and JP Morgan is making a lot of money processing millions of those benefit payments.

#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#17 Dozens of U.S. states are either implementing tax increases in 2011 or are considering proposals to raise taxes.

#18 The United States has had a negative trade deficit every single year since 1976.

#19 The U.S. national debt has crossed the $14 trillion mark for the first time, and at some point during 2011 it will cross the $15 trillion mark.

#20 What the U.S. economy really needs is for the government to get off all of our backs, but instead they continue to tighten their grip on us.  In fact, the Obama administration is proposing a “universal Internet ID” that would watch, track, monitor and potentially control everything that you do on the Internet.

Which Of The Currencies Of The World Is Going To Crash First?

Last year was an absolutely fascinating time for world currency markets.  The yen, the dollar and the euro all took their turns in the spotlight.  Each experienced wild swings at various times, but the overall theme that we saw was that faith in paper currencies is dying.  The biggest reason for this is the horrific sovereign debt crisis that has swept the globe.  The United States, Japan and a whole host of European nations are all drowning in debt.  The U.S. and Japan are both steamrolling toward insolvency, and several European nations would have already defaulted on their debts if they had not been bailed out.  So which of the major currencies of the world is going to crash first?  Will one (or more) of the big currencies fall before the end of 2011?  Once one major currency collapses will the rest start to fall like dominoes?  The truth is that the world has never seen a sovereign debt crisis of this magnitude in all of human history.  Almost the entire globe is drowning in a sea of red ink and it has brought us right to the brink of financial disaster.

So which of the currencies of the world is going to be the first to come crashing down?  Well, let’s take a quick look at the yen, the euro and the dollar….

The Yen

Japan has the 3rd biggest economy in the world, but they are also deeply swamped in debt.  At well over 200%, the Japanese government has the biggest debt to GDP ratio of all of the major industrialized nations.  In fact, it is estimated that this massive pile of Japanese government debt amounts to approximately 7.5 million yen for every person living in the entire nation of Japan.

So why hasn’t Japan defaulted yet?  Well, a big reason is because Japan has one of the highest personal savings rates on the entire globe, and Japanese citizens have been more than happy to gobble up huge amounts of Japanese government debt at very, very low interest rates.

However, Standard & Poor’s has warned that they may have to slash Japan’s credit rating if the debt gets much bigger, and once confidence starts to falter Japan is going to have to start paying higher interest rates.

At some point Japan is going to be facing a financial meltdown, but for the moment they are hanging in there.

The Euro

Several large European nations would have already defaulted on their debts if they had not been bailed out last year.  Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and Spain are all on very shaky ground right now.  Several of them have already had their credit ratings slashed.

Bond yields all over Europe have been absolutely soaring in recent months.  It is getting really expensive for many of these nations to take on new debt.  Interest rates on 10-year Greek bonds went from 6 percent up to 13 percent in just a single month at one point in 2010.  In fact, even some of the nations that aren’t in the most danger are even feeling the pain.  For example, the cost of insuring French debt hit a new record high on December 20th.

Right now there are all kinds of rumblings that more European nations are going to need bailouts very soon.  Professor Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citibank, is warning that quite a few EU nations could financially collapse in the next few months if they are not rapidly bailed out….

“The market is not going to wait until March for the EU authorities to get their act together. We could have several sovereign states and banks going under. They are being far too casual.”

So where is all of this bailout money coming from?  Well, a lot of it is coming from Germany and a significant amount of it is actually coming from the United States.

But will wealthy nations such as Germany be willing to pour hundreds of billions of euros into these financial black holes indefinitely?

Are the Germans going to accept a situation where they are permanently bailing out the “weak sisters” all over the rest of the continent?

Already some prominent politicians in Europe are calling for the European “bailout fund” to be doubled in size to about 2 trillion dollars.  Other analysts believe that it is going to take at least 4 or 5 trillion dollars to properly bail out all of the European nations that need it.

In any event, the truth is that the situation is really, really bad.  If at some point the bailouts stop, the defaults are going to begin.

The Dollar

The United States has the biggest national debt of all.  The 14 trillion dollar threshold has just been crossed, and the national debt is now less than 300 billion dollars away from the 14.294 trillion dollar debt ceiling.  If the U.S. Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. government will shortly begin to default on its debts.  Of course everyone fully expects that the U.S. Congress will indeed raise the debt ceiling just like they have every time before.

However, U.S. politicians are not going to be able to keep kicking the can down the road forever.  Today the U.S. national debt is more than 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.  Everyone around the world is beginning to realize that this debt is not even close to sustainable.  Investors are beginning to become more hesitant about loaning the United States money.  The Federal Reserve has been forced to step in and “buy” more and more of the debt the U.S. government is issuing.

Yields on U.S. Treasuries have been moving up in recent months and this could eventually become a huge problem.

Why?

Well, the sad truth is that the U.S. government has been increasingly using short-term debt.

At this point, the average maturity of U.S. government bonds has fallen to 4.4 years.  The is the lowest figure of all the major industrialized nations. That means that the U.S. government must constantly roll over massive amounts of debt.

As a point of comparison, UK government debt has an average maturity of approximately 13 years.  That obviously gives them a lot more breathing room.

For the United States, the situation could become incredibly dire if interest rates start to go up.

If interest rates on U.S. government debt reach an average of 7 percent, interest payments on the debt would gobble up approximately 45 percent of the tax revenue that the U.S. government takes in each year.

Yes, at that point the game would be over.

But what the United States has going for it that the European nations do not is that the United States can just have the Federal Reserve keep printing currency.  Unfortunately for the nations involved in the euro, they do not have that option.

That is why an increasing number of analysts believe that it will be the euro that will crash and burn first.

But only time will tell.

There are even many that believe that authorities at the highest level actually want the dollar, euro and yen to fail.

Why?

Well, many of the same individuals and groups that brought us NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, the OECD and the World Bank believe that it would be absolutely wonderful for humanity if we could all have a single, united global currency.  The “chaos” produced by the fall of our existing global currencies could provide the perfect “opportunity” to provide the grand “solution” that they have been hoping to introduce all along.

All over the world top politicians and financiers have been very open about the fact that a world currency is coming.  In fact, men like George Soros are openly talking about these things.  The United Nations has been publicly calling for the U.S. dollar to be replaced with a new global currency for some time now.  Just this week Chinese President Hu Jintao stated that “the current international currency system is the product of the past.”

So will the American people just sit back and accept it when their dollars are replaced with a new global currency?

Well, sadly, when things go badly most Americans seem to be willing to accept just about anything if it will mean that things will go back to “normal”.  When the global economy falls to pieces, and there already lots of signs that we are on the verge of such a collapse, will the American people be willing to say goodbye to the dollar if politicians from both major political parties tell them that the new global currency is the “answer” to our problems?

Hopefully the American people will wake up and will realize that “globalism” is rapidly wiping away almost everything that it means to be an “American”.  Now even many of our children and teens are primarily identifying themselves as “citizens of the world” rather than “citizens of the United States”.

Even if the U.S. dollar does collapse, it is absolutely imperative that we continue to have our own national currency.  The U.S. Constitution does not make any provision for any sort of “world currency”.  If we allow the globalists to push a truly global currency down our throats it will be another giant step towards the creation of a totalitarian one world system.

So what do you think about all of this?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….

Doom And Gloom

Have you noticed that most Americans seem to know far more about American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Justin Bieber and their favorite sports teams than they do about world affairs?  Most Americans cannot even find Tunisia and Algeria on a map, and if you told them that food riots are happening in those nations right now most of them would not even care anyway.  We have become a very self-centered, self-involved and self-absorbed nation.  Quite a few people have accused this column of being obsessed with “doom and gloom”, but the truth is that the world really is falling apart out there.  What are we supposed to do?  Are we all supposed to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is going to be okay?  Should we all not try to warn others so that they can prepare for what is coming?  Until people understand that we are facing absolutely massive problems they are not going to be motivated to take significant action, and hopefully those of us that are proclaiming “doom and gloom” are doing a good enough job of describing what is really going on out there that some people are starting to wake up and actually make changes.

Most Americans may not care, but the food riots that are starting to erupt around the globe are actually very serious.

Do you remember what happened back in the summer of 2008?

That summer, the price of oil spiked to an all-time high of $147 a barrel and that caused a substantial increase in the price of food all over the globe.  Suddenly millions of poor people couldn’t afford to feed themselves anymore and food riots erupted all over the world.

Well, here we are in 2011 and the price of oil hasn’t even reached $100 a barrel, and yet the food riots are already beginning.

Violent food riots are being reported in Tunisia, in Algeria, in Chile and in Mozambique.

In Tunisia, the riots have been so intense that the President of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has been forced to step down and flee for his life.

Yes, that is how serious things are getting already.

Unfortunately, it looks like the global food situation is only going to get even worse.

Australia is a major food producer and right now they are experiencing flooding of Biblical proportions.  In fact, it has been reported that at one point the flooding covered an area greater than France and Germany combined.

In Brazil, another major food producer, horrific flooding has killed more than 500 people so far.  This flooding is being called the “worst-ever natural disaster” in the history of Brazil.

Meanwhile, record cold temperatures and record snowfalls are playing havoc with winter crops all over the Northern Hemisphere.

But even before all of these weather disasters struck the price of food had been going up significantly.  The UN recently announced that the global price of food hit an all-time high during the month of December, and world leaders all over the globe are openly expressing concern about what 2011 is going to bring.

Sadly, the truth is that there has been a trend of rising food prices for quite some time. According to Forbes, corn is up 94% since June, soybeans are up 51% since June, and wheat is up 80% since last June.

As one of my readers recently pointed out to me, it usually takes about six months for the prices of agricultural futures to filter down into the supermarkets.  So the very high prices for agricultural commodities that we are seeing right now should really start to be felt around the globe by the middle of 2011.

In addition to everything else, reports continue to come in of thousands of birds and millions of fish suddenly dying all over the globe, and nobody seems to really know what is causing it.

Do you want some more doom and gloom?

*There are reports of “panic buying” of silver and other precious metals right now.

*Investors are bailing out of municipal bonds at an absolutely staggering rate.

*S&P and Moody’s have both warned once again that the United States is in danger of having its credit rating slashed if it does not get government debt under control.

*U.S. housing prices have now fallen further during this economic downturn than they did during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Meanwhile, America’s economic infrastructure continues to be taken apart piece by piece.

The United States is losing more jobs to China.  In fact, the United States is losing more high technology “green jobs” to China.

Evergreen Solar, a company that manufactures solar panels, is closing their factory in Devon, Massachusetts and they are moving their production facilities to China.  This is going to result in the loss of 800 good American jobs.

The following is what the company had to say in a statement about the move….

“Solar manufacturers in China have received considerable government and financial support and, together with their low manufacturing costs, have become price leaders within the industry.”

Is it any wonder that a recent survey found that 47 percent of Americans now believe that China is the world’s leading economic power while only 31 percent still believe that the United States is the world’s leading economic power?

As America continues to lose good jobs, millions of Americans find themselves simply unable to pay the bills.  In fact, at this point one out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government-run anti-poverty program.

As things have fallen apart in the United States, many private citizens have tried to step forward and do what they can to help people, but now in many areas of the country the government is actually stepping in and shutting down these private avenues of assistance.

For example, in the city of Houston, Texas a couple named Bobby and Amanda Herring has been feeding homeless people for over a year.  They never left behind any trash and no trouble was ever caused.

But now the city of Houston is shutting them down.

Why?

Because they don’t have a permit.

So will they be able to get a permit?  Well, it turns out that city officials are saying that this “Feed a Friend” effort most likely will be denied one.

Apparently the city “officials” believe that the homeless “are the most vulnerable to foodborne illness” and that therefore the warm meals that the Herrings were providing for them were potentially dangerous.

Can you believe this?

This is what happens when political correctness and bureaucracy get wildly out of control.

Now it is illegal to go out and feed homeless people?

What is American turning into?

As the economy continues to fall part, the iron grip of the government is likely only going to get tighter as it desperately tries to keep order.

But do we really need to be giving tickets to 6-year-olds?

Yes, you read that correctly.

According to one recent report, police in Texas have given “1,000 tickets to elementary school children in 10 school districts” over the past six years.

For more examples of how America is turning into a police state, please see my recent article entitled “Almost Everything Is A Crime In America Now: 14 Of The Most Ridiculous Things That Americans Are Being Arrested For“.

America is rapidly becoming a very dark place.

The truth is that there is a reason why so many websites are now reporting so much “doom and gloom”.  Things really are getting bad out there.

Sadly, most Americans have only known tremendous prosperity all of their lives, so they can’t even conceive of what it would be like to go through difficult times.

Most Americans have been conditioned to believe that while we may have brief “recessions” once in a while, in the end our economy will always get better and the good times will continue to roll.

But the good news is that an increasing number of Americans are waking up and are trying to warn their family and friends about what is coming.

So do you believe that the food shortages and the food riots are going to get even worse throughout the rest of 2011?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….

10 Things That Would Be Different If The Federal Reserve Had Never Been Created

The vast majority of Americans, including many of those who believe that they are “educated” about the Federal Reserve, do not really understand how the Federal Reserve really makes money for the international banking elite.  Many of those opposed to the Federal Reserve will point to the record $80.9 billion in profits that the Federal Reserve made last year as evidence that they are robbing the American people blind.  But then those defending the Federal Reserve will point out that the Fed returned $78.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury.  As a result, the Fed only made a couple billion dollars last year.  Pretty harmless, eh?  Well, actually no.  You see, the money that the Federal Reserve directly makes is not the issue.  Rather, the “magic” of the Federal Reserve system is that it took the power of money creation away from the U.S. government and gave it to the bankers.  Now, the only way that the U.S. government can inject more money into the economy is by going into more debt.  But when new government debt is created, the amount of money to pay the interest on that debt is not also created.  In this way, it was intended by the international bankers that U.S. government debt would expand indefinitely and the U.S. money supply would also expand indefinitely.  In the process, the international bankers would become insanely wealthy by lending money to the U.S. government.

Every single year, hundreds of billions of dollars in profits are made lending money to the U.S. government.

But why in the world should the U.S. government be going into debt to anyone?

Why can’t the U.S. government just print more money whenever it wants?

Well, that is not the way our system works.  The U.S. government has given the power of money creation over to a consortium of international private bankers.

Not only is this unconstitutional, but it is also one of the greatest ripoffs in human history.

In 1922, Henry Ford wrote the following….

“The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.”

It is important to try to understand how the international banking elite became so fabulously wealthy.  One of the primary ways that this was accomplished was by gaining control over the issuance of national currencies and by trapping large national governments in colossal debt spirals.

The U.S. national debt problem simply cannot be fixed under the current system.  U.S. government debt has been mathematically designed to expand forever.  It is a trap from which there is no escape.

Many liberals won’t listen because they don’t really care about ever paying off the debt, and most conservatives won’t listen because they are convinced we can solve the national debt problem if we just get a bunch of “good conservatives” into positions of power, but the truth is that we have such a horrific debt problem because it was designed to be this way from the beginning.

So how would America be different if we could go back to 1913 and keep the Federal Reserve Act from ever being passed?  Well, the following are 10 things that would be different if the Federal Reserve had never been created….

#1 If the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free money all this time, the U.S. government could conceivably have a national debt of zero dollars.  Instead, we currently have a national debt that is over 14 trillion dollars.

#2 If the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free money all this time, the U.S. government would likely not be spending one penny on interest payments.  Instead, the U.S. government spent over 413 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2010.  This is money that belonged to U.S. taxpayers that was transferred to the U.S. government which in turn was transferred to wealthy international bankers and other foreign governments.  It is being projected that the U.S. government will be paying 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019.

#3 If the U.S. government could issue debt-free money, there would not even have to be a debate about raising “the debt ceiling”, because such a debate would not even be necessary.

#4 If the U.S. government could issue debt-free money, it is conceivable that we would not even need the IRS.  You doubt this?  Well, the truth is that the United States did just fine for well over a hundred years without a national income tax.  But about the same time the Federal Reserve was created a national income tax was instituted as well.  The whole idea was that the wealth of the American people would be transferred to the U.S. government by force and then transferred into the hands of the ultra-wealthy in the form of interest payments.

#5 If the Federal Reserve did not exist, we would not be on the verge of national insolvency.  The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.  Remember when I used the term “debt spiral” earlier?  Well, this is what a debt spiral looks like….

#6 If the Federal Reserve did not exist, the big Wall Street banks would not have such an overwhelming advantage.  Most Americans simply have no idea that over the last several years the Federal Reserve has been giving gigantic piles of nearly interest-free money to the big Wall Street banks which they turned right around and started lending to the federal government at a much higher rate of return.  I don’t know about you, but if I was allowed to do that I could make a whole bunch of money very quickly.  In fact, it has come out that the Federal Reserve made over $9 trillion in overnight loans to major banks, large financial institutions and other “friends” during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.

#7 If the Federal Reserve did not exist, it is theoretically conceivable that we would have an economy with little to no inflation.  Of course that would greatly depend on the discipline of our government officials (which is not very great at this point), but the sad truth is that our current system is always going to produce inflation.  In fact, the Federal Reserve system was originally designed to be inflationary.  Just check out the inflation chart posted below.  The U.S. never had ongoing problems with inflation before the Fed was created, but now it is just wildly out of control….

#8 If the Federal Reserve had never been created, the U.S. dollar would not be a dying currency.  Since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its purchasing power.  By constantly inflating the currency, it transfers financial power away from those already holding the wealth (the American people) to those that are able to create more currency and more government debt.  Back in 1913, the total U.S. national debt was just under 3 billion dollars.  Today, the U.S. government is spending approximately 6.85 million dollars per minute, and the U.S. national debt is increasing by over 4 billion dollars per day.

#9 If the Federal Reserve did not exist, we would not have an unelected, unaccountable “fourth branch of government” running around that has gotten completely and totally out of control.  Even some members of Congress are now openly complaining about how much power the Fed has.  For example, Ron Paul told MSNBC last year that he believes that the Federal Reserve is now more powerful than Congress…..

“The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress.”

#10 If the Federal Reserve had never been created, the American people would be much more free.  We would not be enslaved to this horrific national debt.  Our politicians would not have to run around the globe begging people to lend us money.  Representatives that we directly elect would be the ones setting national monetary policy.  Our politicians would be much less under the influence of the international banking elite.  We would not be at the mercy of the financial bubbles that the Fed has constantly been creating.

There is a reason why so many of the most prominent politicians from the early years of the United States were so passionately against a central bank.  The following is a February 1834 quote by President Andrew Jackson about the evils of central banking….

I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out and, by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out.

But we didn’t listen to men like Andrew Jackson.

We allowed the Federal Reserve to be created in 1913 and we have allowed it to develop into an absolute monstrosity over the past century.

Now we are drowning in debt and we are on the verge of national bankruptcy.

Will the American people wake up before it is too late?

Two Americas: 12 Facts That Show That Those Who Are Too Big To Fail Are Thriving On The Bailout Money That Our Politicians Gave Them Even As The Economic Suffering Of Ordinary Americans Continues To Deepen

Most Americans have a deep aversion to the phrase “redistribution of wealth”, and rightly so.  On a fundamental level, it is just not right to take the money that one man has worked so hard to earn and “redistribute” it to someone else.  In the political realm, the phrase “a redistribution of wealth” is usually a reference to our ballooning social programs, but what most Americans don’t realize is that one of the biggest redistributions of wealth in world history took place during the Wall Street bailouts of a couple years ago.  Trillions of dollars of our money and of money that belongs to future generations was redistributed to the Wall Street bankers.  The Wall Street bankers did not earn this money and they did not deserve this money.  We were told that if Wall Street did not get this money that the global economy would collapse and that there would be martial law in the streets.  We were promised that this money would “fix” Wall Street and then the prosperity would “trickle down” to Main Street.  So did this happen?  Of course not.

What ended up happening is that Wall Street hoarded all of this cash.  Lending to individuals and small businesses actually decreased.  The Federal Reserve started handing out gigantic piles of nearly interest-free money which many of these big Wall Street banks immediately loaned back to the U.S. government at a significantly higher rate of interest.

Talk about easy money.

Now the big Wall Street banks and the ultra-wealthy are swimming in cash and sales of luxury goods in the United States are absolutely skyrocketing.  Meanwhile, millions of “ordinary” Americans continue to slip into poverty.

So is the answer to all of this just to “tax the rich” and redistribute the wealth again by giving more handouts to the poor?

Of course not.

The American people don’t need more handouts.

What the American people desperately need are some good jobs.

But Wall Street is hoarding the cash they got during the bailouts.

It would be one thing if these big Wall Street banks had made a ton of money based on their own efforts.  It is a very American thing to be able to enjoy the fruits of hard work.

However, the truth is that many big Wall Street banks and financial institutions may have completely imploded if not for the bailouts.

They were “too big to fail” and our politicians jumped to their service.

Our politicians redistributed wealth by taking trillions of dollars that belonged to us and to future generations and handed it to the folks on Wall Street.

So now the boys and girls over on Wall Street are thriving while tens of millions of “average” Americans are desperately suffering.

Does that seem right to you?

Isn’t it about time that the U.S. government gets out of the “redistribution of wealth” business altogether?

Just consider the following statistics.  Even as the economic suffering of ordinary Americans continues to deepen, those who got big piles of bailout money are living the high life….

#1 According to Stephen Lewis of Monument Securities, luxury retailers in the United States have seen an 8.1 percent increase in sales compared to a year ago, while “discount stores” that cater to the poor and the middle class have only seen a 1.2 percent increase in sales compared to a year ago.

#2 The sad truth is that just about every company that deals in luxury goods is booming, while those that primarily serve ordinary Americans are not doing nearly as well.  Just consider the following quote from a recent article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph….

Tiffany’s, Nordstrom, and Saks Fifth Avenue are booming. Sales of Cadillac cars have jumped 35pc, while Porsche’s US sales are up 29pc.

Cartier and Louis Vuitton have helped boost the luxury goods stock index by almost 50pc since October. Yet Best Buy, Target, and Walmart have languished.

#3 Elderly Americans in particular are really having a hard time of it right now.  A recent study by a law professor from the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States.  Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies.

#4 The number of Americans on food stamps has hit another all-time record.  There are now 43.2 million Americans enrolled in the food stamp program.

#5 According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, visits to soup kitchens are up 24 percent over the past year.

#6 Meanwhile, the price of food continues to go up.  This hits poor and middle class Americans much harder than it hits the wealthy.  According to a report on 55 top food commodities by the Food and Agriculture Organization, global food prices reached a new record high during December.

#7 Lester Brown, the president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, is publicly declaring that the world is just “one poor harvest” away from total chaos….

“The reality is that the world is only one poor harvest away from chaos. We are so close to the edge that politically destabilizing food prices could come at any time.”

#8 The price of clothes is also increasing dramatically.  It turns out that cotton is 80% more expensive now than it was back at the beginning of 2010.

#9 Americans will also be paying more at the gas pump this upcoming year.  In fact, former Shell Oil President John Hofmeister recently stated that Americans could be paying 5 dollars for a gallon of gasoline by the end of this upcoming year.

#10 Health insurance rates are also skyrocketing.  Blue Shield of California recently announced plans to raise health insurance rates by an average of 30% to 35% this year, and some individual policy holders could actually see their health insurance premiums rise by a whopping 59 percent.

#11 On top of everything else, the U.S. Census is now telling us that there are millions more poor people in America than they had previously calculated.  The U.S. Census Bureau recently revealed that the figure of 43.6 million Americans living in poverty that they announced last September was way too low and that actually 47.8 million Americans are now living in poverty.

#12 If all of these economic problems were not bad enough, now many state and local governments are seriously considering raising taxes.  In Illinois, there is now a proposal to raise state income tax rates by 75 percent.  A recent article that appeared on the CNBC website explained why Illinois is so desperate for cash….

In a moment when states around the country are wrestling with withered revenues, Illinois faces a deficit of at least $13 billion; more than $6 billion in unpaid bills to social service agencies, schools and funeral homes; the most underfinanced state pension system; and growing signs of concern from bond investors.

So won’t the big Wall Street banks and the ultra-wealthy get hit by these tax increases too?

Some of them will, but many of them have learned to “play the game” so well that they barely pay any taxes at all.

As I have written about previously, a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in offshore banks.  When taxes go up, the ultra-wealthy are not the ones that have their wealth “redistributed”.  Instead, it is poor saps like you and I that have our wealth “redistributed”.

In fact, the next time another “financial crisis” comes along, the financial “powers that be” will once again come running to Congress and come running to the Federal Reserve begging for more bailouts.

Now that the precedent has been set, it will only seem natural to redistribute even more of our wealth to the folks over on Wall Street so that we can “save” the financial system.

But the truth is that our financial system is completely doomed to fail in the long run and throwing our money into the financial system is like throwing our money into a black hole.

In the end, all of us are going to greatly suffer when the financial system finally crashes.  But for the moment the wealthy are partying with all of the money that they have looted from the rest of America, and the rest of us which were “small enough to fail” have been left to scratch and claw and fight with each other as we desperately try to survive in this horrible economy.