Trade

21 Signs That The Once Great U.S. Economy Is Being Gutted, Neutered, Defanged, Declawed And Deindustrialized

Once upon a time, the United States was the greatest industrial powerhouse that the world has ever seen.  Our immense economic machinery was the envy of the rest of the globe and it provided the foundation for the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world.  But now the once great U.S. economic machine is being dismantled piece by piece.  The U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized and very few of our leaders even seem to care.  It was the United States that once showed the rest of the world how to mass produce televisions and automobiles and airplanes and computers, but now our industrial base is being ripped to shreds.  Tens of thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas.  Many of our proudest manufacturing cities have been transformed into “post-industrial” hellholes that nobody wants to live in anymore.

Meanwhile, wave after wave of shiny new factories is going up in nations such as China, India and Brazil.  This is great for those countries, but for the millions of American workers that desperately needed the jobs that have been sent overseas it is not so great.

This is the legacy of globalism.  Multinational corporations now have the choice whether to hire U.S. workers or to hire workers in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.  The “great sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about so long ago is actually happening, and it has left tens of millions of Americans without good jobs.

So what is to become of a nation that consumes more than it ever has and yet continues to produce less and less?

Well, the greatest debt binge in the history of the world has enabled us to maintain (and even increase) our standard of living for several decades, but all of that debt is starting to really catch up with us.

The American people seem to be very confused about what is happening to us because most of them thought that the party was going to last forever.  In fact, most of them still seem convinced that our brightest economic days are still ahead.

After all, every time we have had a “recession” in the past things have always turned around and we have gone on to even greater things, right?

Well, what most Americans simply fail to understand is that we are like a car that is having its insides ripped right out.  Our industrial base is being gutted right in front of our eyes.

Most Americans don’t think much about our “trade deficit”, but it is absolutely central to what is happening to our economy.  Every year, we buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.

In 2010, the U.S. trade deficit was just a whisker under $500 billion.  This is money that we could have all spent inside the United States that would have supported thousands of American factories and millions of American jobs.

Instead, we sent all of those hundreds of billions of dollars overseas in exchange for a big pile of stuff that we greedily consumed.  Most of that stuff we probably didn’t need anyway.

Since we spent almost $500 billion more with the rest of the world than they spent with us, at the end of the year the rest of the world was $500 billion wealthier and the American people were collectively $500 billion poorer.

That means that the collective “economic pie” that we are all dividing up is now $500 billion smaller.

Are you starting to understand why times suddenly seem so “hard” in the United States?

Meanwhile, jobs and businesses continue to fly out of the United States at a blinding pace.

This is a national crisis.

We simply cannot expect to continue to have a “great economy” if we allow our economy to be deindustrialized.

A nation that consumes far more than it produces is not going to be wealthy for long.

The following are 21 signs that the once great U.S. economy is being gutted,  neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized….

#1 The U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world rose to 497.8 billion dollars in 2010.  That represented a 32.8% increase from 2009.

#2 The U.S. trade deficit with China rose to an all-time record of 273.1 billion dollars in 2010.  This is the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

#3 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#4 In the years since 1975, the United States had run a total trade deficit of 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.

#5 The United States spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#6 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output.  In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall.

#7 The number of net jobs gained by the U.S. economy during this past decade was smaller than during any other decade since World War 2.

#8 The Bureau of Labor Statistics originally predicted that the U.S. economy would create approximately 22 million jobs during the decade of the 2000s, but it turns out that the U.S. economy only produced about 7 million jobs during that time period.

#9 Japan now manufactures about 5 million more automobiles than the United States does.

#10 China has now become the world’s largest exporter of high technology products.

#11 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#12 The United States now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.

#13 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.

#14 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.

#15 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.

#16 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.

#17 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#18 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#19 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.

#20 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide.  So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States?  Zero.

#21 Ten years ago, the “employment rate” in the United States was about 64%.  Since then it has been constantly declining and now the “employment rate” in the United States is only about 58%.  So where did all of those jobs go?

The world is changing.

We are bleeding national wealth at a pace that is almost unimaginable.

We are literally being drained dry.

Did you know that China now has the world’s fastest train and the world’s largest high-speed rail network?

They were able to afford those things with all of the money that we have been sending them.

How do you think all of those oil barons in the Middle East became so wealthy and could build such opulent palaces?

They got rich off of all the money that we have been sending them.

Meanwhile, once great U.S. cities such as Detroit, Michigan now look like war zones.

Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was about 6 million dollars for the entire year.

As mentioned above, the U.S. trade deficit with China for 2010 was over 273 billion dollars.

What a difference 25 years can make, eh?

What do you find when you go into a Wal-Mart, a Target or a dollar store today?

You find row after row after row of stuff made in China and in other far away countries.

It can be more than a bit difficult to find things that are actually made inside the United States anymore.  In fact, there are quite a few industries that have completely and totally left the United States.  For certain product categories it is now literally impossible to buy something made in America.

So what are we going to do with our tens of millions of blue collar workers?

Should we just tell them that their jobs are not ever coming back so they better learn phrases such as “Welcome to Wal-Mart” and “Would you like fries with that”?

For quite a few years, the gigantic debt bubble that we were living in kind of insulated us from feeling the effects of the deindustrialization of America.

But now the pain is starting to kick in.

It has now become soul-crushingly difficult to find a job in America today.

According to Gallup, the U.S. unemployment rate is currently 10.1% and when you throw in “underemployed” workers that figure rises to 19.6%.

Competition for jobs has become incredibly fierce and it is going to stay that way.

The great U.S. economic machine is being ripped apart and dismantled right in full view of us all.

This is not a “conservative” issue or a “liberal” issue.  This is an American issue.

The United States is rapidly being turned into a “post-industrial” wasteland.

It is time to wake up America.

Empty Promises: 5 Reasons Why Barack Obama’s State Of The Union Address Was Completely Wrong About The Economy

Barack Obama’s State of the Union address sure sounded good, didn’t it?  There were lots of solemn promises, lots of stuff about America’s “bright future” and a line about how we are now facing this generation’s “Sputnik moment” that will surely make headlines all over the globe.  But we all knew that Barack Obama could give a good speech.  That has never been the issue.  What the American people really need are some very real answers to some very real problems.  So were there any real answers in Barack Obama’s State of the Union address?  Well, Barack Obama promised that America will “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build” the rest of the world.  He also pledged that America will become “the best place in the world to do business” and that the government must “take responsibility” for our deficit spending.  But does all of this rhetoric mean anything or is all this just another batch of empty promises to add to the long list of empty promises that Barack Obama has already made and broken?

The American people certainly don’t need any more empty promises.  Millions of American families have been pushed to the edge of desperation by this economy.

There has been a lot of talk that the economy is “turning around”, but in many areas of the country the employment situation continues to get even worse.  Payrolls decreased in 35 U.S. states during the month of December.

The truth is that the number of “good jobs” produced by the U.S. economy continues to shrink.  In fact, only 47 percent of working-age Americans have a full-time job at this point.

The American people are not going to buy this “economic recovery” as long as unemployment remains at epidemic levels in so many areas.  Just consider some of the stunningly high unemployment rates in some of our most important states….

Nevada – 14.5%

California – 12.5%

Florida – 12.0%

So did Barack Obama propose anything substantial that will actually create real jobs?

No.

Instead, all he had to offer was just a bunch of empty promises.  It is almost as if Obama believes that a really good inspirational speech will somehow make things better.  The following are just a few of the empty promises Obama made during his address to the nation….

Empty Promise #1: America Will “Out-Innovate” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

During the State of the Union address, Barack Obama promised that the United States will “out-innovate” the rest of the world and that this will create more jobs.

Oh really?

Perhaps we could create some more cutting edge products like the Apple iPhone, right?

After all, Apple iPhones were one of the most wildly successful American technological innovations of the past decade.  Surely this is the kind of innovation that Obama would like to see more of.

Well, do you know where Apple iPhones are made?

Apple iPhones are manufactured in China by workers making about 293 dollars a month (and that was after a big raise).

But it isn’t just the Apple iPhone that is made overseas.  The truth is that almost all high technology products are made outside of the United States.

In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide.  So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States?  Zero.

Ouch.

Not only that, another fact to note is that manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

So exactly how is more “innovation” going to produce millions of U.S. jobs if all of the high tech manufacturing continues to be shipped out of the United States?

Empty Promise #2: America Will “Out-Educate” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

For decades, U.S. presidents have promised that “education” is the key to competing with the rest of the world.

Okay, if suddenly every single person in the United States had an extra college degree, would that mean that more jobs would suddenly start popping into existence?

Of course not.

Right now, we can’t produce enough nearly enough jobs for all of the college graduates that we already have.

Sadly, the truth is that we are already experiencing an epidemic of unemployment among our college graduates.  According to the Project on Student Debt, unemployment for new college graduates stood at 8.7 percent in 2009, which was way up from 5.8 percent in 2008.

But that is not the whole story.

Millions of college graduates that have been able to find jobs have ended up taking jobs that they didn’t even need a college education for.  The “underemployment rate” among college graduates is absolutely exploding.

In 1992, there were just 5.1 million “underemployed” college graduates in the United States, but by 2008 there were 17 million “underemployed” college graduates in the United States.

Many of our brightest young minds are now flipping burgers, waiting tables and welcoming people to Wal-Mart.

In fact, in the United States today 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

Oh, but certainly the answer is to get more Americans to go to college, right?

It certainly sounds good in a speech for a politician to say that “more education” is the answer, but in the end all it amounts to is a hollow promise.

Getting more Americans to go to college will not create any more jobs, but it will create more debt.  Americans now owe more than $884 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.

Empty Promise #3: America Will “Out-Build” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

So Barack Obama says that we are going to “out-build” the rest of the world?

Well, that certainly sounds good.

But what exactly does that mean?

Does it mean that we are going to quit shutting down our factories and tearing down our economic infrastructure?

After all, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good since 2001.

So is Obama going to do something to stop the flood of jobs and factories that are leaving the United States?

No, in fact he intends to “increase” trade with countries such as China and India.  That is going to mean that thousands more factories and millions more jobs are going to be “outsourced”.

Well, what about building up infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power grids, dams and ports?

That is certainly a very good idea.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to spend approximately $2.2 trillion on infrastructure repairs and upgrades just to bring our existing infrastructure up to “good condition”.

So we desperately need some investment in that area.

But there is a big problem.

We are flat broke.

As will be discussed below, the U.S. government is flat broke.  Not only that, our state governments are flat broke and our local governments are flat broke.

So where will the trillions of dollars that we need for infrastructure come from?

Obama did not even come close to answering that question.

Empty Promise #4: America Will Become “The Best Place In The World To Do Business” And This Will Create More Jobs

It was incredible that Barack Obama could suggest that America is “the best place in the world to do business” with a straight face.

First of all, when you consider all forms of taxation, U.S. businesses face one of the most oppressive taxation regimes in the entire world.

But not only that, U.S. businesses also have to deal with one of the most horrific regulatory environments in the history of mankind.

As I have written about previously, the mountains of red tape that U.S. businesses have to wade through just continues to grow every single year.

The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies.  In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600.  Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long.

So is Barack Obama going to do anything about that?

Of course not.

In fact, Barack Obama and the Democrats have been really busy passing even more ridiculous regulations.

For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.

Empty Promise #5: Barack Obama Pledges To “Take Responsibility” For Our Deficit Spending

During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

In fact, since Barack Obama took office, the U.S. government has gotten us into so much new debt that it breaks down to $10,429.64 for each of the 308,745,538 people counted by the 2010 U.S. census.

So is that “taking responsibility” for our deficit spending?

When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.

Today it is over 14 trillion dollars.

Government debt is absolutely out of control.  At this point, the U.S. national debt is increasing by roughly 4 billion dollars every single day.

If all of this debt is not brought under control, it will bring down the entire U.S. financial system.  According to a recent U.S. Treasury report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will reach 19.6 trillion dollars in 2015.

Can you imagine being 20 trillion dollars in debt?

That is 20,000,000,000,000 dollars.

So it would be really great if Barack Obama could do something about all of this debt, but based on his track record perhaps we should not be holding our breath.

Not that Obama is to blame for all of this.

The sad reality is that both parties have been involved in a massive debt orgy for decades and decades.  Now the day of reckoning is almost here and it is going to be incredibly painful.

We are in so much trouble that it is hard to even try to put it into words.  None of our politicians are telling us the whole truth.  We are headed for a complete and total disaster.

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….

Economic War

Most Americans have no idea what an “economic war” is, and even fewer realize that economic warfare is being waged against the United States right now.  For generations, it has been drummed into our heads that “free trade” is always a good thing and that truly free trade will always benefit both sides in the long run.  None of our universities teach that trade can actually also be used as a brutally effective weapon of warfare and that economic warfare can bring down entire societies.  Nowhere in the mainstream media will you even get a hint that other nations are purposely trying to damage the U.S. economy for their own benefit.  But in a world where a “shooting war” with the United States is virtually unthinkable, those that wish to damage the U.S. must resort to other means to accomplish their goals.

The American people need to wake up and stop being so naive.  The truth is that much of the rest of the world absolutely hates our guts.  They resent our dominance and they are tired of us imposing our will on the rest of the globe.  For generations, Americans have been taught to view themselves as “the good guys”, but the sad fact of the matter is that most of the rest of the world does not view us as “the good guys” anymore.

In fact, there are quite a few nations out there that would actively like to do us harm.

So if they can’t shoot at us, then how can they harm us?

Well, they can try to destroy us financially and economically.

Today, major exporting nations around the globe are draining the United States of wealth, they are stealing our industries and they are feeding our national debt addiction.

For some of these nations, they may not actively want to destroy our economy, but they sure do want to steal what we have got.  They are more than happy to keep trading with us as long as they keep getting wealthier and their national economic infrastructure continues to get built up.  The fact that their economies are getting stronger at the expense of the U.S. economy is not really a huge concern for nations in this category.

However, there are also quite a few nations that do actively wish to do harm to the United States.  If trading with the United States will cause the U.S. to become poorer and to go into more debt, then that is a tool that they can use to reduce the power and influence of the Americans in the world.

Is this something that really happens?  Yes.  Do yourself a favor some time and read some economic articles and research papers from the other side of the world.  In some of these countries they are not afraid to openly talk about economic war.

So what are some of the goals of economic warfare?

Well, when it comes to the United States, the goal is to induce big corporations (or even entire industries) to leave the U.S. and set up shop somewhere else.  The idea is that the economic infrastructure of the United States will decline while the economic infrastructure of the “attacking nation” will be built up.  The jobs and wealth creation that once were a benefit to America will now benefit someone else.

Another goal is to transfer wealth from the target country (the United States) to the attacking country.  Each month the United States buys tens of billions of dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they buy from us.  Each month we send them big chunks of our national wealth and they send us oil and cheap plastic trinkets which we greedily consume.  As this continues month after month after month, the rest of the world is getting richer while the United States is becoming poorer.

In a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living, our federal government, our state governments and even our local governments are going into insane amounts of debt.  Debt is another tool of economic warfare.  As we continue to borrow trillions of dollars from the rest of the world, the ability of the United States to exert power and control over those nations diminishes.

The eventual goal of waging economic warfare against the United States is to make us so impoverished and so far in debt that our entire financial system crashes.  If the U.S. experiences a “financial armageddon”, it will greatly reduce America’s place in the world.  It could ultimately lead to the collapse of the U.S. government.  Other nations (or organizations) that wish to have more power would then be able to fill the void that would be created.

So what are the tools of economic warfare?

One is currency manipulation.  By keeping national currencies at an artificially low level, major exporting nations make their own exports much more attractive, thus stimulating job growth and wealth creation in their own nations.

Another tool of economic war is government subsidization of industries.  Virtually all governments do this to some degree these days, but some take it much farther than others.

For example, there are some governments in Asia that will openly pump huge piles of government money into industries that are considered to be of “national interest”.  There is simply no way that western industries can compete on an equal footing against that kind of unfair advantage.

In the United States, companies face one of the highest overall tax rates in the world, they face mountains of ridiculous regulations and they have to provide health care and retirement benefits for their employees.  But in other areas of the world the government takes care of health care for everyone, regulations are much less strict and corporate tax rates are much lower.

Is it any wonder why so many U.S. companies are having such a hard time today?

Another weapon of economic warfare is technology theft.

U.S. companies spend billions upon billions of dollars developing new technology that gets “stolen” one way or another by many foreign governments.

For example, there is one major Asian nation that offers huge tax incentives and kickbacks to big companies to get them to come over and set up shop there.  But these companies are also required to train and hire local workers and they must agree to certain “technology disclosures”.

Well, after a time the host nation sets us their own “domestic competitors” using the technology that they have acquired from the foreign company.  Then the “domestic competitors” are tremendously subsidized and are given huge advantages that the original foreign company simply cannot compete with.  Eventually the “domestic competitors” become the dominant players in the market.

This is happening over and over and over.  Companies are shutting down operations in the United States and are opening up facilities in other nations where the labor is much cheaper, where regulations are not nearly as suffocating and where taxes are much lower.  However, once these other nations learn the technology and are able to set up “domestic competitors”, the original companies are learning that maybe it wasn’t such a sweet deal they were being offered after all.

As the U.S. is being stripped of industry and is being deindustrialized, the American middle class is being absolutely devastated.  Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.  Sadly, the millions of jobs that have been sent overseas are never coming back.

Meanwhile, our national wealth is being drained from our bank accounts.  Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with one particular Asian nation was just 6 million dollars for the entire year.  But for this past August alone, the trade deficit with that same nation was over 28 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) dollars.

In other words, the U.S. trade deficit with that one Asian nation in August was more than 4,600 times larger than the U.S. trade deficit with that Asian nation was for the entire year of 1985.

So how are we maintaining our high standard of living if we are shipping all of our wealth overseas?

Well, what we are doing is going back to all those nations where we have sent our wealth and we are begging them to loan it back to us.

Our federal government now owes trillions of dollars to major exporting nations.  Our state governments also owe insane amounts of money to major exporting nations.  We are in debt up to our eyeballs and it gets worse every single year.

Meanwhile, our national economic infrastructure is being absolutely ripped to shreds….

*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.

*The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

*Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.

*As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing.  The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

*Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

The sad truth is that the U.S. is being dominated even in very high-tech industries.  The major exporting nations are becoming rich by creating wealth and we are becoming poor by voraciously consuming wealth.

Unfortunately, some of the major exporting nations that we have a massively imbalanced trade relationship with are doing this to us on purpose.  They see our weakness and the are taking advantage of it.  They believe that it is in their own national interests to make the United States weaker.

Sadly, a very significant percentage of those that will read this article will not believe it.  Most Americans have been so brainwashed when it comes to trade that they could never even conceive that it could possibly be used as a weapon of economic war.

But the truth is that there are even many prominent Americans that openly talk of weakening the U.S. economy and of reducing the standard of living of the U.S. middle class so that we can be more easily merged into the emerging global economic system.

It is time to wake up.  The United States is under economic attack.

More jobs are going to leave the United States this month.  More factories are going to leave the United States this month.  Tens of billions more dollars of our national wealth is going to be transferred out of the country this month.  Our federal, state and local governments are all going to go into more debt to foreigners this month.

Month after month after month this goes on.  It is being done by design.

Perhaps when the entire U.S. financial system collapses the American people will finally begin to understand.  The truth is that the greatest threats to our national security are not some impoverished goat herders hiding out in caves in Afghanistan.  Rather, the cold, hard reality of the situation is that our national economic infrastructure is being ripped apart and stolen right in front of our eyes and we have become so dumbed-down that we don’t even understand what is happening.

If you want to see “the future of America”, just tour some of the formerly great industrial centers of the upper Midwest some time.  Ask yourself why “the greatest economy on earth” has so many abandoned factories and boarded-up homes.  There are many decaying communities across America right now that are so depressing that the moment you enter them you get the sense that all of the hope has been sucked right out of them.

The U.S. economy is under attack and it is dying.  We are being looted and pillaged from coast to coast.  This is really happening.

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

Tipping Point: 25 Signs That The Coming Financial Collapse Is Now Closer Than Ever

The financial collapse that so many of us have been anticipating is seemingly closer then ever.  Over the past several weeks, there have been a host of ominous signs for the U.S. economy.  Yields on U.S. Treasuries have moved up rapidly and Moody’s is publicly warning that it may have to cut the rating on U.S. government debt soon.  Mortgage rates are also moving up aggressively.  The euro and the U.S. dollar both look incredibly shaky.  Jobs continue to be shipped out of the United States at a blistering pace as our politicians stand by and do nothing.  Confidence in U.S. government debt around the globe continues to decline.  State and local governments that are drowning in debt across the United States are savagely cutting back on even essential social services and are coming up with increasingly “creative” ways of getting more money out of all of us.  Meanwhile, tremor after tremor continues to strike the world financial system.  So does this mean that we have almost reached a tipping point?  Is the world on the verge of a major financial collapse?

Let’s hope not, but with each passing week the financial news just seems to get eve worse.  Not only is U.S. government debt spinning wildly toward a breaking point, but many U.S. states (such as California) are in such horrific financial condition that they are beginning to resemble banana republics.

But it is not just the United States that is in trouble.  Nightmarish debt problems in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and several other European nations threaten to crash the euro at any time.  In fact, many economists are now openly debating which will collapse first – the euro or the U.S. dollar.

Sadly, this is the inevitable result of constructing a global financial system on debt.  All debt bubbles eventually collapse.  Currently we are living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world, and when this one bursts it is going to be a disaster of truly historic proportions.

So will we reach a tipping point soon?  Well, the following are 25 signs that the financial collapse is rapidly getting closer….

#1 The official U.S. unemployment rate has not been beneath 9 percent since April 2009.

#2 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are currently 6.3 million vacant homes in the United States that are either for sale or for rent.

#3 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit with China could hit 270 billion dollars for the entire year of 2010.

#4 Back in 2000, 7.2 percent of blue collar workers were either unemployed or underemployed.  Today that figure is up to 19.5 percent.

#5 The Chinese government has accumulated approximately $2.65 trillion in total foreign exchange reserves.  They have drained this wealth from the economies of other nations (such as the United States) and instead of reinvesting all of it they are just sitting on much of it.  This is creating tremendous imbalances in the global economy.

#6 Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were approximately 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

#7 The United States now employs about the same number of people in manufacturing as it did back in 1940.  Considering the fact that we had 132 million people living in this country in 1940 and that we have well over 300 million people living in this country today, that is a very sobering statistic.

#8 According to CoreLogic, U.S. housing prices have now declined for three months in a row.

#9 The average rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage soared 11 basis points just this past week.  As mortgage rates continue to push higher it is going to make it even more difficult for American families to afford homes.

#10 22.5 percent of all residential mortgages in the United States were in negative equity as of the end of the third quarter of 2010.

#11 The U.S. monetary base has more than doubled since the beginning of the most recent recession.

#12 U.S. Treasury yields have been rising steadily during the 4th quarter of 2010 and recently hit a six-month high.

#13 Incoming governor Jerry Brown is scrambling to find $29 billion more to cut from the California state budget.  The following quote from Brown about the desperate condition of California state finances is not going to do much to inspire confidence in California’s financial situation around the globe….

“We’ve been living in fantasy land. It is much worse than I thought. I’m shocked.”

#14 24.3 percent of the residents of El Centro, California are currently unemployed.

#15 The average home in Merced, California has declined in value by 63 percent over the past four years.

#16 Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has come up with a new way to save money.  He wants to cut 20 percent of Detroit off from essential social services such as road repairs, police patrols, functioning street lights and garbage collection.

#17 The second most dangerous city in the United States – Camden, New Jersey – is about to lay off about half its police in a desperate attempt to save money.

#18 In 2010, 55 percent of Americans between the ages of 60 and 64 were in the labor market.  Ten years ago, that number was just 47 percent.  More older Americans than ever find that they have to keep working just to survive.

#19 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.

#20 The U.S. government budget deficit increased to a whopping $150.4 billion last month, which represented the biggest November budget deficit on record.

#21 The U.S. government is somehow going to have to roll over existing debt and finance new debt that is equivalent to 27.8 percent of GDP in 2011.

#22 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but this past summer China took over the number one spot.

#23 According to an absolutely stunning new poll, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to bail out of the profession over the next three years.

#24 As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been unemployed for half a year or longer.  Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.

#25 All over the United States, local governments have begun instituting “police response fees”.  For example, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come up with a plan under which a fee of $365 would be charged if police are called to respond to an automobile accident where no injuries are involved.  If there are injuries as a result of the crash that is going to cost extra.

America’s Message To The Rest Of The World: You Send Us Oil And Cheap Plastic Gadgets And We’ll Send You Our Wealth And Prosperity

Have you ever seen pictures of extravagant wealth from places such as Dubai or Abu Dhabi and wondered where in the world they got all that money from?  Have you ever read news stories that talk about China lending us hundreds of billions of dollars and wondered how they could possibly have so much wealth?  Well, it is actually quite simple.  They got much of it from us.  Every month, the United States buys much more from the rest of the world then they buy from us.  It is called a “trade deficit” and the United States has been running one for decades.  In essence, what is happening each month is that we are transferring somewhere between 40 to 50 billion dollars of our national wealth to the rest of the globe and they are sending us oil and cheap plastic gadgets that Americans greedily consume.  By the end of the year we have usually transferred somewhere around a half trillion dollars of our national wealth out of the country for good.

In order to maintain our standard of living, the U.S. government has been going to the countries we have been sending our wealth to and has been begging them to loan us massive amounts of their dollars.  At this point the U.S. government literally owes trillions of dollars to the rest of the world.

Scoffers say that it is just a bunch of “paper money” that we are sending them, but the truth is that it is hundreds of billions of dollars of “paper money” that is not in the hands of average Americans.  We have sent massive amounts of our wealth and prosperity overseas and it isn’t coming back unless we borrow it.

Today there are dozens and dozens of U.S. cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Camden, New Jersey that are turning into post-industrial hellholes while thousands of gleaming new modern factories are going up all over China.  42.9 million Americans are now on food stamps (a 16 percent increase in just one year) while the oil sheiks of the Middle East build opulent palaces that are extravagant beyond belief.

Most Americans do not realize how serious the U.S. addiction to foreign oil really is.  We are constantly being drained of our wealth by the oil powers of the Middle East.

So what are they doing with all of this money?  Well, let’s take a look at just a couple of examples.

Have you ever heard of the Emirates Palace? It is located in the United Arab Emirates and it cost approximately 3.8 billion dollars to build. The following is how one writer for a major UK newspaper described it after a visit….

The Emirates Palace has so many biggest and best boasts, it could have its own chapter in the Guinness Book of Records, but the atrium is the whistles and bells, the jaw-dropping big daddy of them all — 60 metres high, 42 metres wide and topped with the largest dome in the world. Staff need golf carts to negotiate their way around it. It is decorated with 13 colours of marble, ranging from sunrise yellow to sunset red (to reflect the many hues of the desert), and lots and lots and lots of gold: 6,040 square metres of gold leaf cover the largest gilded expanse ever created in one building. It’s even in the food. I ate gold leaf on my chocolate cake. Apparently, it aids digestion.

In Dubai, there is so much wealth that they pretty much build whatever they can dream up.  For example, in Dubai you will find the largest “indoor ski resort” in the world.  One travel site describes it this way….

When one thinks of Arabia, let alone Dubai, one likely pictures an arid desert of heat and sun. One does not think of snow skiing. Yet, that is what one can do at Ski Dubai, arguably the largest indoor ski resort in the world. The resort features 22,500 square meters of ski area. The heavily insulated building is kept at 30.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 21.2 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the night, which is when the snow is generated. The resort features five ski runs and is open year round.

But it is not just the Middle East that is getting incredibly wealthy off of the United States.  In a recent article entitled “China #1, United States #2? 25 Facts That Prove The Transition Is Really Happening” I detailed how China is in the process of surpassing the United States economically.

Over the past 25 years, the U.S. trade deficit with China has soared into the stratosphere.  In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year.  In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.

For many Americans this can be difficult to comprehend.  For a moment, imagine a giant map of the world and that there is a gigantic pile of money in China and a gigantic pile of money in the United States.  Then start taking 20 billion dollars from the pile of the United States and give it to China every single month.

After a while, what is going to happen?

Well, the United States is going to be a lot poorer and China is going to be a lot wealthier.

As we have become poorer, it has been harder and harder to maintain our very high standard of living.

The U.S. government has been borrowing larger and larger sums of money from the rest of the world in order to “stimulate” our economy, but in the process we are piling up horrific amounts of debt.

The national debt of the United States is now 13 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

If we did that again over the next 30 years, we would have a national debt of approximately $170 trillion by the year 2040.

Of course that will never happen.

Why?

Well, because the entire financial system would collapse and we would be forced into national bankruptcy long before we ever got into that much debt.

The truth is that we are already on the verge of total economic collapse.  In fact, CNS News is reporting that retiring U.S. Senator George Voinovich believes that the collapse could happen at any time now….

“I think we are on the edge of it right now. I really do,” said Voinovitch. “If we don’t do something about dealing with the debt and the budgets that aren’t being balanced for as far as your eye can see, we are over the cliff. We are on thin ice right now. And I don’t think that we can wait. We need to move forward. We need to move forward for our own benefit, but we also need to move forward because the world is watching us right now.”

Indeed, the world is watching us, and they are getting tired of financing our runaway debt.

Just this week there have been some very troubling signs.  For example, U.S. Treasuries just experienced their biggest two-day sell-off since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The rest of the world was deeply troubled when the Federal Reserve announced another round of quantitative easing.  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had promised that the Fed would not monetize U.S. government debt, but now that is exactly what is happening.  The rest of the world is less than thrilled by this.

In addition, many economists are warning that the tax cut deal that Barack Obama and the Republicans have agreed to will increase U.S. government debt even more.  In reaction to the deal, economist Nouriel Roubini recently posted the following message on his Twitter account….

“Obama-GOP tax deal costs $900 billion over two years. US kicking the can further down the road. Are bond vigilantes starting to wake up?”

A recent article on CNBC described what these “bond vigilantes” are….

Bond vigilantes – the term was coined by economist Ed Yardeni in the 1980s to describe major investors who demand higher yields to compensate for the perceived risks resulting from large deficits – could derail the country’s precarious recovery, some economists say.

The truth is that the U.S. government is not going to be able to borrow endless amounts of very cheap money forever.

At some point the U.S. is either going to face much higher interest rates on government debt or the Federal Reserve is going to have to step in and monetize the vast majority of all new government debt.

Either alternative will be absolutely disastrous.

Most Americans just assume that the wealth and prosperity that we have enjoyed for so many decades will always be with us.  But that is not the case.  We have been exporting our national wealth and our national prosperity so that we could fill up our shopping carts with cheap foreign-made plastic crap and so that we could fill up our cars with foreign oil.  It has been a fun ride while it lasted, but with each passing day a national financial implosion draws ever closer.

An economic nightmare is coming.

You better get ready.

Currency Crisis! So What Happens If The Dollar And The Euro Both Collapse?

Some analysts are warning that the U.S. dollar is in danger of collapse because of the exploding U.S. government debt, the horrific U.S. trade deficit and the new round of quantitative easing recently announced by the Federal Reserve.  Other analysts are warning the the euro is in danger of collapse because of the very serious sovereign debt crisis that is affecting nations such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and Spain.  So what happens if the dollar and the euro both collapse?  Well, it would certainly throw the current world financial order into a state of chaos, but what would emerge from the ashes?  Would the nations of the world go back to using dozens of different national currencies or would we see a truly global currency emerge for the very first time?

Up until recently, the idea of a world currency was absolutely unthinkable for most people.  In fact, the notion that all of the major nations around the globe would agree to a single currency still seems far-fetched to most analysts.  However, if enough “chaos” is produced by a concurrent collapse of the U.S. dollar and the euro, would that be enough to get the major powers around the world to agree to a new financial world order?

Let’s hope not, but it is getting hard to deny that we are heading for a major currency crisis, and if the U.S. dollar and/or the euro collapse, the world will certainly never be the same afterwards.

In case you missed it, China and Russia made a very big announcement the other day.

They told the world that instead of using the U.S. dollar to trade with each other, they will now be using their own national currencies.

Most Americans don’t realize it, but that is a very, very big deal.

The fact that the U.S. dollar has been the primary reserve currency of the world for decades has given the United States a tremendous amount of economic power.

But now nations are beginning to lose confidence in the U.S. dollar and they are slowly starting to move away from it.

When the Federal Reserve announced a new round of quantitative easing in early November, it created a huge backlash from other nations.  For decades, many other countries have been heavily investing in dollar-denominated assets, and now they are quite upset that those assets are going to be devalued.

Chinese Finance Vice Minister Zhu Guangyao used very strong language in denouncing the Fed’s new quantitative easing scheme earlier this month….

“As a major reserve currency issuer, for the United States to launch a second round of quantitative easing at this time, we feel that it did not recognize its responsibility to stabilize global markets and did not think about the impact of excessive liquidity on emerging markets.”

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was even more blunt.  He has called current Federal Reserve policy “clueless”, and he says that he is absolutely disgusted with the Federal Reserve at this point….

“They have already pumped an endless amount of money into the economy via taking on extremely high public debt and through a Fed policy that has already pumped a lot of money into the economy. The results are horrendous.”

So where is all of this going?

If the Federal Reserve keeps flooding the system with new dollars, the rest of the world could eventually totally reject the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries.

If that day ever arrives, the results would be beyond catastrophic as the following short video from the National Inflation Association demonstrates….

But it is not just the U.S. dollar that is in trouble.

The euro is in danger as well.

Just consider the financial problems that some major European nations are experiencing right now….

*Standard & Poor’s has slashed Ireland’s credit rating two notches to “A”, and is warning that there could be further downgrades.  The Irish budget deficit is projected to reach 32 percent of national output this year.  Ireland’s finances are being called “just one big pyramid scheme”, and they recently accepted a huge European bailout.  Unfortunately for Ireland, this bailout comes with strings.  The Irish government is now being forced to implement an austerity program that is being referred to as “draconian”.

*Analysts are projecting that Portugal is going to need a bailout of at least 50 billion euros.  The government of Portugal has implemented some harsh austerity measures in an attempt to get the red ink under control, and the people are not pleased.  On Wednesday, a massive national strike shut down travel and basic services across the country.

*Things are so bleak in Portugal right now that Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Amado recently stated that his nation “faces a scenario of exit from the euro zone” if a solution is not found for this financial crisis.

*Greece was the first nation to need a European bailout, and now there are rumors that they may need even more assistance.  The statistics agency for the EU, Eurostat, recently revealed that Greece’s budget deficit for 2009 was actually 15.4% of GDP rather than 13.6% of GDP as originally thought.  The Greek national debt is now well over 120 percent of GDP.  The financial problems in Greece never seem to stop.

*Belgium’s debt has reached 100 percent of annual national income, and the cost of insuring that country’s debt has now hit record levels.

*Even Spain is in trouble.  Rates on Spanish 10-year government bonds have risen to frightening heights in recent days, and the official unemployment rate in Spain is hovering around 20 percent.

*In a recent article entitled “A Spanish Bailout Would Test Europe’s Strained Finances“, the New York Times quoted Jordi Galí, the director of the Center for Research in International Economics at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University as saying that rumors that Spain is in financial trouble could end up making it a self-fulfilling prophecy….

“If investors expect Spain to have trouble refinancing its debt, now or somewhere down the road, then Spain will have trouble,” he added. “This is only aggravated by the fact that the reluctance of investors to purchase the country’s public debt leads to an increase in the interest rate it has to pay and thus in the budget deficit and the amount of debt it has to issue.”

So could this sovereign debt crisis actually cause the euro to collapse?

Well, it depends who you ask.

European Financial Stability Fund chief Klaus Regling says that there is “zero” chance that the euro will collapse….

“There is zero danger. It’s inconceivable that the euro would collapse.”

Other European leaders are not so sure about that.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy recently warned that if some of the weaker countries in Europe are forced to abandon the euro it will likely cause a total meltdown of the European Union….

“We’re in a survival crisis. We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don’t survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also warning that a failure of the euro could bring down the entire European Union….

“If the euro fails, then Europe fails.”

But is this likely to happen any time soon?

No, probably not, but in 2010 top European officials are actually acknowledging the possibility, and that shows just how serious things have gotten.

So if the U.S. dollar and the euro do collapse, what would happen?

Well, already many world leaders are openly speaking of the need for a true global currency.

After all, they argue, there won’t be any “currency wars” if we are all using the same currency.

In fact, the Institute of International Finance, an organization that represents 420 of the biggest banks and financial institutions on the globe, recently declared that the time has come to adopt a one world currency.

In fact, as I wrote in an article entitled “Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing“, a recent IMF policy paper actually proposed a name for the “global currency” that they believe could be coming….

A paper entitled “Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability” by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the “Bancor” and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency. The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here. Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor. This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy. Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets. So could a global currency known as the “Bancor” be on the horizon? That is now a legitimate question.

So will any of this ever come to fruition?

Well, it would likely take one whale of a crisis to get the countries of the world to agree to such a thing.

However, we do live at a time when the world financial system seems to be perpetually on the edge of chaos.  If at some point the U.S. dollar and the euro totally fall apart perhaps we will see a “new order” arise out of all of that chaos.

But let’s hope not.  Once we give any organization the power to issue a global currency the odds of us ever getting our economic sovereignty back will be greatly reduced.  The internationalists are going to use any crisis as an opportunity to argue for greater centralization of the world financial system, and it will be very important for the American people not to fall for those arguments.

Hopefully the U.S. dollar and the euro can remain stable currencies for at least a little while longer.  Because once they collapse things will never, ever be the same again.

Barack Obama: We Must Embrace Globalism And The Emerging One World Economy

Although it received very little coverage in the mainstream media, Barack Obama made some comments about globalism during his speech in Mumbai, India that were very eye-opening.  As he was discussing the new realities of world trade in 2010, Obama warned against “those who see globalization as a threat” and he spoke of the “integrated world” in which we all now live.  But is merging the entire globe into a one world economy, a one world financial system and a one world labor market really the best thing for the American people?

For the past two decades, all U.S. presidents have been heralding the benefits of merging the American economy with the rest of the globe.  George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all steadfastly supported the emerging one world economy.  These presidents have each used different terms to describe this process such as “globalism”, “globalization”, “an integrated world”, “the global economy” and even “a New World Order”, but they have all meant the same thing.  All of these presidents have sought to integrate the United States even more deeply into the developing one world economic system.

Barack Obama showed very clearly how he feels about globalism when he made the following statement during his speech in Mumbai….

“This will keep America on its toes. America is going to have to compete. There is going to be a tug-of-war within the US between those who see globalization as a threat and those who accept we live in a open integrated world, which has challenges and opportunities.”

This is something that Barack Obama has obviously thought quite a bit about. In fact, during the same speech he warned that those supporting globalization will need to “guard against” those who would seek to put up barriers to the full integration of the economies of the world….

“If the American people feel that trade is just a one-way street where everybody is selling to the enormous US market but we can never sell what we make anywhere else, then the people of the US will start thinking that this is a bad deal for us and it could end up leading to a more protectionist instinct in both parties, not just among Democrats but also Republicans. So, that we have to guard against.”

But in this new “global economy”, aren’t jobs leaving the United States and heading to developing nations at a blinding pace?  Of course, but apparently we are just supposed to shut up and accept this new reality.  In fact, Obama says that persistently high unemployment is “a new normal” that we are all just going to have to get used to.

Virtually all of the proponents of globalism understand that the process of merging the United States into a one world economy will be at least somewhat painful for the American people.  Our wages are going to have to go down and our standards of living are going to have to fall, according to them.

During this period of “adjustment”, a “struggling economy” is just going to have to be tolerated.  In fact, Obama says that the U.S. economy might not be “fixed” for quite some time.  Obama now claims that there is a limit to what the U.S. government can do to help the economy….

“Especially an economy this big, there are limited tools to encourage the kind of job growth that we need.”

But couldn’t Obama and the U.S. Congress pass laws that would discourage the offshoring and outsourcing of our jobs?

Of course.

Couldn’t they cut regulations and taxes and encourage firms to keep factories in the United States?

Of course.

But instead, Obama and the U.S. Congress have just been piling on more taxes and more regulations and have made the business environment in the U.S. so toxic that it is amazing that anyone is willing to stay in this country at this point.

Meanwhile, every single month more of our jobs, more of our factories and more of our wealth gets shipped overseas never to return.

Every day there is more depressing news about the U.S. economy.  For example, it has just been announced that Harley-Davidson has decided to open a shiny new assembly plant in India.  Meanwhile, formerly great American manufacturing cities such as Detroit have turned into rotting hellholes.

The American people are not being told the truth.  The following are 20 reasons why Barack Obama is wrong, wrong, wrong about globalization….

#1 American workers are being merged into a global labor pool where they must directly compete for jobs with workers on the other side of the globe that make less than ten percent of what an average American worker makes.  In such an environment, it is inevitable that jobs are going to flow away from areas where labor is expensive and to areas where labor is cheaper.

#2 Globalization has caused the U.S. trade deficit to absolutely explode.  In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year.  In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.

#3 Today, the United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that China spends on goods from the United States.  This represents a massive transfer of wealth from the American people to China.

#4 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

#5 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.

#6 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#7 Even high technology industries are leaving America.  Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#8 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output.  In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent.

#9 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing.  The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#10 With so much manufacturing leaving the United States, is it any wonder why people can’t find jobs?  The “official” unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months.

#11 Today, there are at least 1.5 million “99ers” – those Americans that have completely exhausted all 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and that still do not have jobs.

#12 Our dependence on foreign oil also represents an absolutely shocking transfer of wealth from the American people to the oil exporters of the Middle East.  Back in 1980, the United States imported approximately 37 percent of  the oil that we use.  Now we import nearly 60 percent of the oil that we use.

#13 Energy imports account for about approximately one-fourth of the U.S. trade deficit.

#14 In states such as Mississippi, people spend approximately 6.35 percent of their incomes just on gasoline, according to a recent report by the National Resources Defense Council.

#15 Americans end up paying to support American workers one way or another.  Either they buy American-made products and services that provide jobs for American workers, or they pay to support unemployed American workers on welfare.  Today, over 42 million Americans are on food stamps.  A record number of Americans are receiving long-term unemployment benefits.  One way or another, Americans are going to pay to take care of American workers.

#16 The U.S. trade deficit is running about 40 or 50 billion dollars a month in 2010.  The United States spends 40 to 50 billion more on goods and services from the rest of the world each month than they spend on goods and services from us.  That means that by the end of the year, approximately half a trillion dollars (or more) of our wealth will have left the United States for good.

#17 All of this wealth leaving the United States is having a huge impact on the standard of living of average Americans.  Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult.  In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.

#18 It is now just a matter of time until India is going to pass us as an economic power.  In fact, the economy of India is projected to become larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2050.

#19 It is now being projected that China will soon dwarf us as an economic power.  One prominent economist now says that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.  According to one recent study, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.

#20 China has been accumulating a gigantic mountain of dollars from all of the wealth we have been sending them each month, and they have been lending massive amounts of money back to us.  Over the past few decades, the communist Chinese have been able to accumulate approximately $2.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, and the U.S. government now owes them close to 900 billion dollars.  We constantly have to send top government officials over there to beg them to continue to lend us money.  This is a direct threat not only to our financial system, but also to our national security.

So, in light of all of those facts, can anyone out there possibly defend Barack Obama’s position that globalization is good and that we should be happy that we are being merged into a one world economy?

Sadly, there are very, very few politicians in either major political party that will even talk about the negative effects of the emerging one world economy.  It is almost as if there is an unspoken consensus that globalism is the future and that it is a good thing for America.

But it is not a good thing for America.  Unless fundamental changes are made, America will continue to bleed wealth, will continue to bleed factories and will continue to bleed jobs.

The American people need to wake up and starting saying “NO” to globalization.  If we continue to vote for politicians that support merging our economy with economies that allow workers to be paid slave labor wages, then we are going to see even more waves of horrific unemployment and we will continue to see the standard of living of middle class Americans diminish.

This is not a drill.  America is being deindustrialized.  The greatest economic machine in the history of the world is being dismantled.

Eventually, all of our cities are going to end up looking just like Detroit if we allow this to continue.

Is that what you want?

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