Money

Black Friday Violence Worse Than Ever As American Consumers Fight Over Deals Like Crazed Animals

We all knew that this was coming, didn’t we?  Each year Black Friday violence just seems to get worse and worse.  What does it say about American consumers when they are willing to fight like crazed animals just to save a few bucks on cheap plastic crap made in China?  Not that retailers are innocent in any of this.  It certainly seems as though many of them purposely create wild situations on Black Friday where customers will rush like crazy people into their stores and nearly riot as they fight over discounted merchandise.  The more Black Friday madness there is, the more of an “event” it becomes, and the higher the profits of the retailers go.  This year there was more Black Friday hype than ever and there was also more Black Friday violence than ever.  It is being projected that this year a record-setting 152 million Americans will go shopping between Thanksgiving and Sunday night.  That may be good news for the big corporate retailers, but the shocking lack of character being displayed by American consumers all over the country this weekend is very bad news for the future of this nation.

Most Americans would agree that there is a tremendous amount of selfishness and greed on Wall Street, but as the videos posted below demonstrate, there is also a tremendous amount of selfishness and greed on “Main Street” as well.

This year, Black Friday violence included robberies, gunfire and shootings, but the most shocking incidents actually happened inside the big retail stores.

For example, as merchandise was being unveiled on Black Friday night at a Wal-Mart in the Los Angeles area, one woman actualy pulled out pepper spray and sprayed it at other customers that were gathered around her.

Did she do this because she felt threatened?

No, according to the Los Angeles Times, authorities say that the woman was just seeking a “competitive” edge.

It is being reported that at least 20 people were affected by the pepper spray.

The pepper spray incident just added to the wild and frenzied atmosphere inside that Wal-Mart last night.

The following is how the Los Angeles Times described the scene….

Employees attempted to hold back the scrum of shoppers and pick up merchandise even as customers trampled the video games and DVDs strewn on the floor.

“It was absolutely crazy,” he said.

Another customer said screams erupted after about 100 people waiting in line to snag Xbox gaming consoles and Wii video games got into a shoving match.

Alejandra Seminario, 24, said she was waiting in line to grab some toys at the store around 9:55 p.m. when people the next aisle over started shouting and ripping at the plastic wrap encasing gaming consoles, which was supposed to be opened at 10 p.m.

“People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray,” the Sylmar resident said.

Pepper spray was used at a Wal-Mart on the other side of the country as well.  Over in Kinston, North Carolina an off-duty police officer used pepper spray as an unruly shopper was being subdued.  Approximately 20 people (including some children) were affected by the pepper spray.

Most Americans are not really concerned over the fact that this country is rapidly heading into the toilet, but they sure will get worked up into a frenzy over some good deals.  Just check out the following video that was filmed in California.  In the video, a huge crowd can be seen storming the entrance of Urban Outfitters in the Thousand Oaks Mall on Black Friday night….

There are lots of other crazy videos of Black Friday madness on YouTube today as well.  Just check out some of the following examples….

*In Fresno, California law enforcement authorities were barely able to keep a stampede at the entrance of one store from turning into a riot.

*In this next video, you can see people going absolutely crazy over memory cards at about the 1:20 mark.

*On Black Friday night, American consumers will riot over just about anything.  For example, there was a huge panic over Tupperware at one Wall-Mart last night.

*Of course electronics is probably the hottest category in most stores on Black Friday night.  In some areas, the fighting over video games became incredibly intense.

*Some of the worst Black Friday rioting goes on inside Wal-Marts.  Just check out this shocking video of what happens inside a Wal-Mart on Black Friday night.

*Also, what happened last night at a Wal-mart Supercenter in Greenville, North Carolina, was nothing short of idiotic.

If this is how the American people will act just to save a few bucks on cheap plastic crap made in foreign countries, how are they going to act when the economy collapses?

If Americans will literally fight each other over saving 20 bucks, what is going to happen someday when millions of them don’t know where their next meal is going to come from?

Thankfully the economy is still in good enough shape that most Americans can participate in these orgies of consumerism.  But the reality is that the global financial system is in a massive amount of trouble, and it looks like we could be on the verge of another global financial collapse.

Do the American people have enough character to be able to deal with a full-blown economic depression?

In a recent article entitled “22 Signs That The Thin Veneer Of Civilization That We All Take For Granted Is Starting To Disappear“, I commented on the declining character of the American people….

Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved.  Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment.  Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent.  As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly.  Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes.

Over the past several decades, the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world has enabled us to enjoy unprecedented prosperity.  But it has been a “false prosperity”, and it is frightening to think about what America is going to look like when the good times finally end.

The other thing that is really disturbing about Black Friday is the fact that the vast majority of the products that Americans are fighting over are made overseas.

As I pointed out recently, 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year.

Since 2001, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities.

This country is bleeding jobs, bleeding businesses and bleeding wealth at a pace that is nearly impossible to fully grasp.

We are becoming poorer as a nation every single day, and yet Americans are seemingly more enamored with consumerism than ever before.

Most Americans could not care less about where something was made.  The only thing that matters to them is how cheap it is.

It doesn’t matter to them that a record-setting 2.6 million Americans slipped into poverty last year or that there are 10 percent fewer middle class jobs in America today than there were a decade ago.

We have become a nation that is so self-centered that it is hard to find the words to describe it.

Rather than caring about what is good for America, most of us only care about what is good for ourselves.

The madness that we see every Black Friday is just one more sign that our society is coming apart at the seams.

America has become a nation that is absolutely saturated with greed.  Unfortunately, all of that greed is going to make the hard economic times that are coming much, much more painful.

Trouble

The global economy is heading for a massive amount of trouble in the months ahead.  Right now we are seeing the beginning of a credit crunch that is shaping up to be very reminiscent of what we saw back in 2008.  Investors and big corporations are pulling huge amounts of money out of European banks and nobody wants to lend to those banks right now.  We could potentially see dozens of “Lehman Brothers moments” in Europe in 2012.  Meanwhile, bond yields on sovereign debt are jumping through the roof all over Europe.  That means that European nations that are already drowning in debt are going to find it much more expensive to continue funding that debt.  It would be a huge understatement to say that there is “financial chaos” in Europe right now.  The European financial system is in so much trouble that it is hard to describe.  The instant that they stop receiving bailout money, Greece is going to default.  Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain and quite a few other European nations are also on the verge of massive financial problems.  When the financial dominoes start to fall, the U.S. financial system is going to be dramatically affected as well, because U.S. banks have a huge amount of exposure to European debt.  The other day, I noted that investor Jim Rogers is saying that the coming global financial collapse “is going to be worse” than 2008.  Sadly, it looks like he is right on the money.  We are in a lot of trouble my friends, and things are going to get really, really ugly.

The sad thing is that we never have recovered from the last major financial crisis.  Right now, the U.S. economy is far weaker than it was back in 2007.  So what is going to happen if we get hit with another financial tsunami?  The following is what PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian said recently….

“What’s most terrifying, we are having this discussion about the risk of recession at a time when unemployment is already too high, at a time when a quarter of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, at a time then the fiscal deficit is at 9 percent and at a time when interest rates are at zero.”

Can things really get much worse than they are now?

Unfortunately, yes they can.

Not that things are not really, really bad right now.

In Los Angeles earlier this week, approximately 10,000 people lined up for free turkey dinners.

So how many people will be lining up for free food when the unemployment rate in the U.S. soars into double digits?

Right now there is so much economic pain in America that it is hard to describe.  According to a recent report from one nonprofit group, 45 percent of all people living in the United States “do not have enough money to cover housing, food, healthcare and other basic expenses”.

If this is where we are at now, how much trouble will we be in as a nation if a financial crisis worse than 2008 hits us in 2012?

The primary cause of the coming financial crisis will almost certainly be the financial meltdown that we are seeing unfold in Europe.

The economic downturn that began in 2008 caused the debt levels of quite a few European nations to soar to unprecedented heights.  It has gotten to the point where the debts of many of those nations are no longer sustainable.

So investors are starting to demand much higher returns for the much greater risk associated with investing in the bonds of those countries.

But that makes it much more expensive for those troubled nations to fund their debts, and that means that their financial troubles get even worse.

Over the past 12 months, what we have seen happen to bond yields over in Europe has been nothing short of amazing.

Just check out this chart of what has been happening to the yield on 2 year Italian bonds over the past 12 months.

And keep in mind that these bond yields have been spiking even while the European Central Bank has been buying up unprecedented mountains of bonds in an attempt to keep bond yields low.

There has been a fundamental loss of faith in the financial system, and it is not just happening in Europe.

Just check out this chart.  As that chart shows, credit default swap spreads all over the globe are absolutely skyrocketing and are now higher than we have seen at any point since the great financial crisis that shook the world during 2008 and 2009.

Panic and fear are everywhere – especially in Europe.  In fact, it looks like a run on the banks has already begun in Europe.

The following comes from a recent article in The Economist….

“We are starting to witness signs that corporates are withdrawing deposits from banks in Spain, Italy, France and Belgium,” an analyst at Citi Group wrote in a recent report. “This is a worrying development.”

Nobody wants to lend money to European banks right now.  There is a feeling that they are all vulnerable and could fail at any time, and this lack of confidence actually makes that possibility even more likely.

The following is a short excerpt from a recent CNBC article….

Money-market funds in the United States have quite dramatically slammed shut their lending windows to European banks. According to the Economist, Fitch estimates U.S. money market funds have withdrawn 42 percent of their money from European banks in general.

And for France that number is even higher — 69 percent. European money-market funds are also getting in on the act.

So what can be done?

Well, in a different CNBC article, Mitchell Goldberg was quoted as saying that even “a bazooka” is not going to be good enough to fix this situation….

“It’s too late for a bazooka,” said Mitchell Goldberg, president of ClientFirst Strategy. “Now we need inter-continental ballistic missiles. This is getting worse very quickly.”

This is kind of like watching a horrific car wreck happen in very slow motion.

The financial system of Europe is dying and everybody can see what is happening but nobody can seem to find a way to fix it.

Not that we are solving our own problems here in the United States.

The vaunted “supercommittee” that was supposed to get a handle on our debt problem was a complete and utter failure.

Barack Obama has shown that he has no clue what to do when it comes to the economy, and Ben Bernanke has been preoccupied with roaming around the country trying to get people to feel more “warm and fuzzy” about the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve actually has more power over our economy than anyone else.  But instead of fixing things they only keep making things even worse.

The only people that the Fed seems to be helping are the banksters.

What you are about to read should really, really upset you.  According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve has actually been tipping off their upcoming moves to top financial professionals.  In turn, these financial professionals have been using that information to make a lot of money for themselves and for their clients….

Hours after an Aug. 15 meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in his office, Nancy Lazar made a hasty call to investor clients: The Fed was dusting off an obscure 1960s-era strategy known as Operation Twist.

The news pointed to a boom in long-term bonds.

It was a good call. Over the next five weeks, prices on 10-year Treasury bonds soared, offering double-digit returns in an otherwise dismal year.

By the time the Fed announced its $400 billion Operation Twist on Sept. 21, the window for quick profits had all but slammed shut.

Ms. Lazar is among a group of well-connected investors and analysts with access to top Federal Reserve officials who give them a chance at early clues to the central bank’s next policy moves, according to interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal through open records searches.

You just can’t make stuff like this up.  The corruption at the Federal Reserve is totally out of control.  After nearly 100 years of total failure, it is time to shut down the Federal Reserve.

Not that Barack Obama should get a free pass for the role that he has played in this economic downturn.  He inherited a complete mess from Bush and has made it even worse.

Today, millions of business owners are so frustrated with Washington D.C. that they don’t know what to do.

For example, one business owner down in Georgia has posted signs with the following message on all of his company’s trucks….

“New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”

The business environment in this country becomes more toxic with each passing year, and the federal government has already strangled millions of small businesses out of existence.

In addition, politicians from both parties continue to stand aside as tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth get shipped out of the country.

During 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States.  We are committing national economic suicide, and the top politicians in both political parties keep cheering for more.

Well, millions of ordinary Americans can see what is happening and they are preparing for the worst.

The following report comes from an article that was recently posted on the website of the local CBS affiliate in St. Louis….

A chain of three stores that sells survival food and gear reports a jump in sales to people who are getting prepared for the “possible collapse” of society.

“We had to order fifty cases of the meals ready to eat to keep up with the demand in the past three months,” said manager Steve Dorsey at Uncle Sam’s Safari Outfitters Inc. in Webster Groves. “That’s not normal.  Usually we sell 20 to 30 cases in a whole year.”

So are you prepared for the coming collapse?

If you still have a great job and things are still going well for you, then you should definitely be thankful.  Compared to the rest of the world, most of us are incredibly blessed.

But let there be no doubt, the U.S. economy is going to get a lot worse in the years ahead.

Just because you have a job today does not mean that you will have one tomorrow.

Just because you have a nice car and a big home today does not mean that you will have them tomorrow.

We all need to try to become a lot less dependent on “the system”, because “the system” is failing.

A whole lot of trouble is coming.

You better get ready.

25 Bitter And Painful Facts About The Coming Baby Boomer Retirement Crisis That Will Blow Your Mind

For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude.  Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen.  Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come.  Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement.  At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully underfunded, and the Social Security system is on the road to complete and total disaster.  A massive wave of humanity is hitting retirement age at a moment in history when the U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams.  We do not have the resources to keep the promises that we made to the Baby Boomers, and most of them have not made adequate preparations for retirement.  What we have is a gigantic mess on our hands, and millions of Baby Boomers are going to find retirement to be very bitter and very painful.

A lot of younger Americans just assume that Social Security is enough to take care of the needs of elderly Americans.  But that is just not the case.

Have you ever tried to live solely on a Social Security check?

It is not easy.  The truth is that those checks are just not that large.

The following comes directly from the Social Security Administration….

The average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker was about $1,177 at the beginning of 2011.

Could you live on less than 300 dollars a week?

And keep in mind that the $1,177 monthly figure is just an average.  Many receive a lot less than that.

In addition, Social Security benefits have been seriously squeezed by inflation in recent years.  The cost of food and other basics has risen briskly and Social Security benefits have not.

Today, many elderly Americans have to make a choice between buying food, heating their homes or buying medicine that they need.  They simply do not have enough money to do all of them.

It would have been nice if all of the Baby Boomers had been busy saving money for retirement all these years, but that just did not happen.  In fact, the Baby Boomers as a group are trillions of dollars short of what they need for retirement.

So why doesn’t the U.S. government step in to help them out?

Well, the reality of the situation is that the U.S. government is flat broke.  The federal government is now over 15 trillion dollars in debt.  During the Obama administration so far, the U.S. government has accumulated more new debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

Lawmakers are already looking at ways to make the Social Security program less costly.  No, the federal government is not going to be riding to the rescue.

In fact, it will be a minor miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until the end of this decade, and it will be a major miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until 2030.

As for myself, I do not believe that I will ever see a single penny from Social Security, and many other working age Americans feel the same way.

Retirement is supposed to be a fun time, but sadly most Americans that are approaching retirement age are not going to have any “golden years” to look forward to.

Rather, millions of elderly Americans are going to find the years ahead absolutely agonizing as they struggle just to survive.

The following are 25 bitter and painful facts about the coming Baby Boomer retirement crisis that will blow your mind….

#1 According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

#2 According to a recent poll conducted by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about “maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement”.  Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.

#3 A study conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research has found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.

#4 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

#5 On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers started to retire.  For almost the next 20 years, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.

#6 At the moment, only about 13 percent of all Americans are 65 years of age or older.  By 2030, that number will soar to 18 percent.

#7 Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens.  By 2050 that number is projected to increase to 89 million.

#8 Back in 1991, half of all American workers planned to retire before they reached the age of 65.  Today, that number has declined to 23 percent.

#9 According to one recent survey, 74 percent of American workers expect to continue working once they are “retired”.

#10 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”.

#11 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.

#12 A study by a law professor at 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.

#13 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.

#14 What is causing most of these bankruptcies among the elderly?  The number one cause is medical bills.  According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.  Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#15 Public retirement funds all over the United States are woefully underfunded.  For example, it has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.

#16 Most U.S. states have huge pension obligations which threaten to bankrupt them.  For example, pension consultant Girard Miller told California’s Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities.  When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in the state of California.

#17 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management have calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states.  What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds.  That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars.  So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from?

#18 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.  Sadly, in the years ahead these “Social Security deficits” are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.

#19 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers.  According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

#20 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

#21 The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars.  In the years ahead expenses related to Social Security and Medicare are projected to skyrocket dramatically.

#22 The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the agency of the federal government that pays monthly retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of retirees that were covered under defined benefit pension plans that failed.  The retirement crisis has barely even begun and the PBGC is already dead broke.  The PBGC says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a huge bailout from the federal government.

#23 According to a survey by careerbuilder.com, 36 percent of all Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.

#24 More than 30 percent of all investors in the United States that are currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k plans invested in equities.  So what is going to happen to them if the stock market crashes?

#25 A survey taken earlier this year found that 20 percent of all U.S. workers admitted that they had postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the last 12 months.  Back in 2008, that number was only at 14 percent.

Our politicians should have addressed the retirement crisis decades ago before we got to the point of being in debt up to our eyeballs.

It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050, and the Congressional Budget Office says that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716% of GDP by the year 2080.

Obviously those figures will never be reached because our financial system would totally collapse long before then.

So what do we do?

We have tens of millions of elderly Americans that are completely and totally dependent on Social Security and Medicare, but those programs also threaten to bankrupt us as a nation.

Anyone that believes that there is a “quick fix” to these issues is being naive.

The “supercommittee” was supposed to address this problem, but they failed so spectacularly that they have become a national joke.

Sadly, most of our politicians just keep kicking the can down the road.  They hope that somehow things will just magically “work out”.

Well, the truth is that things are not going to “work out”.  The poverty level among the elderly is going to continue to increase.  Pension plans all over this nation are going to continue to fail in staggering numbers.  Social Security and Medicare are going to bleed more red ink with each passing year.

Something should have been done about this problem a long, long time ago.

But it wasn’t.

This crisis was ignored, dealing with it was put off time after time and all the doomsayers were laughed at.

Now the crisis is here, and we are all going to pay the price.

The Police State Vs. Occupy Wall Street: This Is Not Going To End Well For Any Of Us

Right now, we are watching the early rounds of a heavyweight fight between two extremely determined opponents.  Occupy Wall Street has no plans of losing this fight and neither do law enforcement authorities.  Perhaps those running the show actually believed that raiding Zuccotti Park and more than a dozen other “Occupy camps” around the nation would end these protests, but that is just not going to happen.  Whatever your opinion of Occupy Wall Street is, everyone should be able to agree that this is one dedicated bunch.  They are absolutely obsessed with their cause and in response to the recent raid on Zuccotti Park organizers are calling for “a national day of direct action” on Thursday.  But if Occupy Wall Street protesters want to take things to “the next level”, they should not underestimate the resolve of the police state.  Over the past decade, the homeland security apparatus of the federal government has been slowly but surely turning this country into a “Big Brother” police state.  Today, our law enforcement authorities are obsessed with watching us, listening to us, tracking us, recording us, and gathering information on all of us.  We are constantly reminded that we live in a prison grid (just think about what they do to you before you are allowed on an airplane) and they are not about to put up with anyone challenging their authority or their control.  Have you even known parents that constantly feel the need to prove that they are “the boss” of their children?  Well, that is essentially what the homeland security apparatus in this country has become.  All over the United States, law enforcement personnel are taught that every American is a potential terrorist and they are actually trained to “act tough”, to bark orders at us and to not let anyone question their authority.  If Occupy Wall Street believes that it can get the police state to “back down”, they are sorely mistaken.  Hopefully everyone will cool off a bit as the temperatures go down this winter.  But if we do see a “cooling off”, it probably will not last for long.  As the U.S. economy continues to get worse, these kinds of protests are going to keep growing and they will become even more intense.  Eventually, mass civil unrest will cause the streets of many of our major cities to closely resemble war zones.  When it is all said and done, this is not going to end well for any of us.

The stunning police raid of Zuccotti Park at 1 AM on Tuesday morning made headlines around the world.  Protesters were hauled off, tents were cut down and garbage trucks hauled off the personal possessions of those that had been encamped there.  It was swift and it was brutal.

But it was just another in a long line of raids that we have seen over the past couple of weeks.  Occupy camps in Portland, Oakland, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and several other cities have also been raided.

There is an increasing body of evidence that these raids have been coordinated.  For example, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan recently made the following statement during a recent interview about the Occupy movement….

I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation

Does anyone want to guess who was running that conference call?

Heidi Bogosian, the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, is convinced that the recent raids were coordinated at the federal level….

“We definitely feel, especially in a movement like this that has arisen so quickly in a number of cities, that there will be a coordinated national effort to try and shut it down”

Someone probably thought that cracking a few skulls and cutting up a few tents would probably make the hippies go away.

Yes, that might have worked in 1991.

But this is 2011.  Whether you agree with Occupy Wall Street or not, one thing that should be clear to all of us is that these boys and girls are deadly serious.

In response to the recent raids, organizers have declared “a national day of direct action” on Thursday.

One of the “major actions” being planned is a “shut down” of Wall Street.

Of course that will not happen because thousands of law enforcement personnel will be dispatched to protect Wall Street if necessary.

But what does seem clear is that Occupy Wall Street seems determined to take things to the next level.

In this video, a wild-eyed protester can be seen making the following statement….

“On the 17th, we gonna burn this city to the ************* ground.”

Later on in the video, the same protester makes an even more inflammatory statement….

“No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”

That is a very frightening statement.

As I noted the other day, one recent survey found that 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda”.

Let us hope that cooler heads prevail and that we don’t see outbreaks of violence.

If we do see violence in the coming days, it will just give law enforcement authorities an excuse to crack down even harder.

Up to this point, local law enforcement authorities have been advised to seek “legal reasons” for evicting Occupy protesters.

Since just about everything is illegal in America today, that has not been too difficult.  So far “zoning laws”, “curfew rules” and regulations that target homeless people have been used as justifications to evict Occupy protesters.

In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has said that protesters can gather in Zuccotti Park, but that “the rules” do not allow them to have tents, sleeping bags or any sort of heavy equipment.

So will the protesters go along with this, or will this turn into a prolonged struggle over Zuccotti Park?

It is hard to say, but one thing is for sure – police all over the nation have already shown that they are prepared to use brutal force against these protesters in order to get their way.

We have seen tear gas used, we have seen pepper spray cannons used, we have seen rubber bullets used and we have seen flash-bang stun grenades used.

And they are just warming up.  When it comes to protecting “national security”, there is a vast array of technologies and weapons that law enforcement authorities have at their disposal.

Many Americans are cheering the crackdown on these protesters, but we all should remember that real people are getting seriously injured.  For example, just check out this photo of 84-year-old Dorli Rainey after pepper spray was blasted directly into her face.

Rainey and several other Occupy Seattle protesters are still in the hospital.

Ready for another example?

You can see video of a female Occupy Cal protester being brutally yanked by her hair right here.

How would you feel if that was you?

We all need to realize that these confrontations are not just a bunch of “fun and games”.

A lot of people have been sent to the hospital already, and this is just the beginning.

One of the key things that the American people will need to understand is that they don’t have to pick sides.

When law enforcement authorities commit atrocities, we should denounce them.

When Occupy Wall Street protesters commit acts of violence or vandalism, we should denounce them.

It would be nice if all Occupy Wall Street protests would be 100% non-violent.

It would be nice if the police would be reasonable and would carry out their duties with gentleness and respect.

But sadly, those things are probably not going to happen.

The civil unrest we are seeing now is only the beginning.

Things are going to get a lot worse.

If things keep getting escalated to “the next level”, eventually we will see martial law imposed in some of our largest cities.

Don’t think that it can’t happen.

The United States is increasingly becoming a very unstable place.

As America comes apart at the seams, this is not going to end well for any of us.

22 Signs That The Thin Veneer Of Civilization That We All Take For Granted Is Starting To Disappear

In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust.  Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets.   Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of the people around us are going to act in a civilized manner.  Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear.  When I was growing up, I was taught that challenging times reveal our true character.  There are many that believe that the declining economy is causing a lot of the chaos that we are now witnessing, but perhaps what is going on is that these challenging economic times are simply revealing the character that has been there all along.  For decades, a “false prosperity” that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt has masked a lot of the internal rot that has taken hold in America.  But now that our prosperity is crumbling, our lack of values is becoming startlingly clear.

Greed, corruption and extreme self-centeredness have deeply infected our society.  We see this on Wall Street and in Congress, and we see this among those that are trying to survive on the mean streets of our largest cities.

Our nation is breaking down on every level.  If by some miracle we were able to fix our economy, that would mask our problems for a while, but it would not solve them.

Unfortunately, as I write about nearly every day, there are a whole host of indications that our economy is about to get even worse.  When it does, millions of Americans will become even more desperate, and as we are now seeing all over this country, desperate people do desperate things.

The following are 22 signs that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear….

#1 In Detroit, 100 bus drivers recently refused to drive their routes out of fear for their own personal safety.  An article posted on the website of the CBS affiliate in Detroit is quoting the head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, as saying that the drivers are “scared for their lives”….

“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.

#2 In Wilmington, Delaware recently, a man offered to help someone carry a television down the street, but quickly realized that it was his own television which had just been stolen out of his house….

A Wilmington resident who stopped home for lunch about noon today saw a man carrying a flat screen TV down the street and asked the man if he needed help.

He then recognized the television as his own, looked up and saw the door to his home ajar, said Master Sgt. Adam Ringle.

#3 Shocking video has surfaced of a young thug walking up to a defenseless elderly man in a Chicago subway station and knocking him out cold.  In the video, the friends of the young man are cheering him on and laughing at how easy it was to knock the old man out cold.

#4 Beating up old people for no reason seems to be catching on all over the country.  Just check out the following report from a recent article posted on philly.com….

AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of “get the old geezer.”

Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn’t enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear – his pride.

#5 All over the United States, police are brutalizing Occupy Wall Street protesters and spraying pepper spray directly in their faces.  Whatever you may think of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the reality is that this is not a sign that things are becoming “more stable” in America.  You can see video of one very disturbing confrontation right here.

#6 Clashes between police and protesters in Oakland, California recently became so violent that at one point the streets of Oakland resembled a war zone.

#7 Unfortunately, as the American people become increasingly frustrated with out system many of them are actually starting to consider violence as a solution.  According to one recent survey, 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda”.

#8 In New York recently, a confrontation between two female customers and a frustrated cashier ended with the cashier beating the living daylights out of them with a metal rod.  The following is how a local CBS affiliate in New York described this incident….

It appeared to have started when two female customers argued and yelled obscenities at the cashier when he questioned a $50 bill they gave him.

One of the female customers then slapped the cashier. A woman is then seen jumping over the counter while the other woman goes behind the register.

That’s when the cashier can be seen on the video disappearing into the back of the fast-food restaurant. He comes back with a metal rod and begins hitting the women.

You can see video of this violent confrontation right here.

#9 These days, many Americans are so “on edge” that just about anything will make them snap.  For example, a 60-year-old woman in New Mexico recently repeatedly stabbed her boyfriend because she thought that he was cheating during a game of Monopoly.

#10 If you thought that the above example was crazy, just check out what one man down in Georgia did recently.  He actually firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa.

#11 In Cleveland last week, a 49-year-old man was sent to the hospital after a poll monitor working for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections tried to bite his nose off.

#12 Not only do TSA agents make us feel like dehumanized cattle as we go through airport security, some of them are evening making fun of us at the same time.  For example, one TSA agent recently scribbled “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” on a TSA inspection notice after discovering a sex toy in the luggage of one female traveler.

#13 Identity theft is rising to very alarming levels all over the United States.  For example, a recent article in the Palm Beach Post described what has been going on down in Florida this year….

In the first half of this year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 20,000 complaints from Floridians whose identities had been stolen — nearly as many as in all of 2010. More than half of those reporting their Social Security numbers or other personal information had been ripped off and used to commit fraud or theft were in South Florida, with heavy concentrations in parts of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

“That kind of increase is really shocking,” said Vance Luce, deputy special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in South Florida, which investigates identity theft and financial crimes. “The fact that it’s on the upturn doesn’t surprise me at all, but that’s pretty alarming.”

#14 In the Seattle area, an elderly couple in their eighties was recently brutally attacked by a 31-year-old man armed with a crossbow and a hatchet.  The following description of this brutal crime comes from King 5 News….

Prosecutors say 31-year-old John Chase was walking down the highway when he saw Ralph Aldrich, 88, in his back yard. Detectives say Chase shot and killed Aldrich with a crossbow and then went inside the home and repeatedly hit 83-year-old June Aldrich with a hatchet.

#15 As America falls apart, more of us than ever are taking medication for depression.  At this point, more than 1 out of every 10 Americans over the age of 12 is taking prescription antidepressants.

#16 In some areas of the country, people have been literally tearing apart their own cities in an attempt to find things to sell.  I recently discussed this phenomenon on The American Dream Blog….

In Fresno, California the damage caused by thieves stealing copper wire from city street lights is costing the city about $50,000 a month.  So far, about 2,500 street lights have been stripped of their wiring.

#17 As people become more desperate, we are starting to see some truly bizarre crimes in many parts of the nation.  In northern Alabama, one team of crooks has been using a forklift to pull entire ATM machines out of the ground.

#18 Most Americans don’t realize this, but all over the U.S. livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers.  The following is from a recent Associated Press article….

While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn’t. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches.

Authorities say today’s thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it’s then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns.

#19 At this point, thieves are becoming so bold that they will steal literally anything that they are able to cart away.  For example, in the San Francisco area a while back thieves actually stole a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons.

#20 According to the FBI, the number of gang members in the United States has increased by a staggering 40 percent since 2009.  Right now, there are 1.4 million gang members terrorizing citizens on the streets of America.

#21 Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually been breaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them.  Many of those guns undoubtedly are ending up in the hands of gangs members.

#22 Be careful who you befriend online.  They might just hold you captive and use you as part of a Satanic sex ritual.  The following description of an incident that recently happened in Milwaukee comes from thesmokinggun.com….

Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man–who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online–told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.

Anger and frustration are growing to unprecedented levels in this country, and all of this anger and frustration is manifesting in thousands of different ways.

As I have written about previously, the rioting, the crime and the violence that we are seeing now is only just the beginning of what is coming.

Unless a miracle happens, our country is going to keep heading down the road toward societal collapse.  For even more examples that show that our country is starting to come apart at the seams, please see the following articles that I have authored previously….

-“18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating”

-“12 More Signs That Society Is Collapsing”

It won’t happen all at once, but unless our nation changes direction dramatically, we will see things get progressively worse and worse.

Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved.  Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment.  Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent.  As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly.  Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes.

What in the world is happening to America?

If you have a thought on this topic, please feel free to share your opinion by leaving a comment below….

Arrivederci Berlusconi

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  In just a matter of days, two of Europe’s most venerable leaders have been toppled.  George Papandreou was the third member of the Papandreou dynasty to be prime minister of Greece.  Silvio Berlusconi had dominated Italian politics for nearly two decades.  But now they are both heading out the door and the international media have been reporting on their resignations with the kind of enthusiasm that is normally reserved for sporting events.  “Down goes Papandreou!  Down goes Berlusconi!”  If you didn’t know better, you would almost be tempted to think that some of the recent news reports were describing a boxing match.  But this is what happens when debt problems spiral out of control.  It is the leaders who take the fall.  So will the resignations of Papandreou and Berlusconi help anything?  Of course not.  Europe is still headed for a financial collapse of epic proportions.

As I wrote about recently, it has been the fumbling of the Greek debt crisis by European leaders which has set the stage for the burgeoning financial crisis in Italy to go to a whole new level.

Once the Greek debt deal was announced, I warned that it would shatter confidence in the sovereign debt of the rest of the PIIGS and it would cause their bond yields to soar.

That is exactly what has happened.

The yield on 10 year Italian bonds (probably the most important financial number in the world at the moment) is now up to 6.7 percent.

Never before in the euro era has the yield on Italian bonds been as high as we have seen this week.

So why is this important?

Well, the reality is that Italy simply cannot afford to service its massive national debt when yields are this high.

We are officially in the danger zone.

Carl Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics, recently said the following about what would happen if Italian bond yields go up into the 8 to 10 percent range….

“If it has to pay those yields to finance itself, Italy is dead, and the sovereign crisis just blew up”

So watch that number very carefully over the next few months.

Italy is being called “too big to fail, too big to save”.  There is no way that Europe can afford Italy to crash, but there is also no way that the rest of Europe can put together enough money for a full scale bailout of Italy.

So there is panic in the air.

The Italian government is in a state of near chaos and over the past couple of weeks we have seen Berlusconi’s coalition break down.  Now Berlusconi has agreed to resign, and the future of Italian politics is murky at best.

The following is how a Reuters article described the agreement for Berlusconi step down….

Berlusconi confirmed a statement from President Giorgio Napolitano that he would step down as soon as parliament passed urgent budget reforms demanded by European leaders after Italy was sucked into epicenter of the euro zone debt crisis.

The votes in both houses of parliament are likely this month and they would spell the end of a 17-year dominance of Italy by the flamboyant billionaire media magnate.

Many believe that the departure of Berlusconi is going to pave the way for brutal austerity measures to be imposed on the Italian people.

Suddenly, it very much feels like we are watching a replay of what has happened in Greece over the past couple of years.  Just check out the following excerpt from a recent article in the London Evening Standard….

The Italians feel they’ve been humiliated by having to accept that monitors from the IMF will be arriving in the country this week to oversee a rise in pension ages, a sell-off of state assets and new rules to make jobs less secure.

Does that not sound like exactly what happened in Greece back near the beginning of their crisis?

In Greece, brutal austerity measures demanded by the EU and the IMF plunged the country into a depression, tax revenues plummeted, Greek debt exploded to even higher levels, bond yields soared into the stratosphere and the EU and the IMF demanded even more austerity measures be implemented.

Is the same sad story going to play out in Italy?

The Italians are definitely going to agree to some pretty significant budget cuts.  But if bond yields keep rising, they are going to wipe out all of the savings from the budget cuts and then some.

This is why I keep preaching about the horror of the U.S. national debt over and over and over.  If you don’t deal with it when you can, eventually interest rates rise to unbearable levels and a horror show quickly unfolds.

Anyway, right now Italy has a debt to GDP ratio of 118 percent.  If they keep expanding that debt it is going to result in a financial nightmare, but if they try to implement strict austerity measures it is also going to result in a financial nightmare.

They are damned if they do and they are damned if they don’t.

Of course we should not forget about Greece.

The EU has been freaking out for quite a while about what to do about tiny little Greece.

Now that George Papandreou has been kicked to the curb, it looks like Lucas Papademos is going to be the next prime minister of Greece.

Papademos previously served as the governor of the Greek central bank, as a vice president of the European Central Bank and as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

In other words, he would be the ideal choice of the international banking community.

Not that anyone is going to be able to do much for Greece at this point.  Greece is a financial basket case, and unless someone gives them gigantic piles of money for free that is going to continue to be the case.

A year ago, the yield on 2 year Greek bonds was a bit above 10 percent.  Today, the yield on 2 year Greek bonds is over 100 percent.

If you want to see what a financial meltdown looks like, just check out what is happening in Greece.

The rest of Europe is in panic mode too.  For example, France is desperate to keep their AAA credit rating.  In an article for the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard described the austerity measures that France is implementing in an attempt to head off a debt crisis of their own….

The belt-tightening plan — the second package since August, taking total cuts to €112bn — include a 5pc super-tax on big firms, a rise in VAT on restaurants and construction, and cuts on pensions, schools, health, and welfare. It is the latest squeeze in a relentless campaign of fiscal tightening across the eurozone.

In the end, all of this is too little, too late.

Europe is heading for a date with destiny.  They have spent themselves into oblivion and now they are going to pay the price.

Some members of the financial community fear that a full-blown crisis could erupt at any moment.  For example, according to Business Insider, Colin Tan of Deutsche Bank recently said that he believes that it is possible that “we could be in full crisis mode” by the time the week ends….

Its not inconceivable that we could be in full crisis mode by the end of this week. The situation with Italy feels increasingly like one that has little chance of materially improving until some
extreme pressure is put on someone to act. It may not come to a head this week but the signs are not good that we can avoid an extreme situation emerging soon.

For those of you that are freaking out about now, don’t worry too much.  A full-blown crisis is not going to happen this week.

But time is running out.

And when Europe comes apart, it is going to have a dramatic impact on the United States as well.

According to an article in the Financial Post, the Federal Reserve made the following statement in a report about a survey that it just released….

“About one-half of domestic bank respondents, mostly large banks, indicated that they make loans or extend credit lines to European banks or their affiliates or subsidiaries”

Big U.S. banks have a lot of exposure to European debt and to European banks.  When the financial dominoes start to fall, a lot of those dominoes are going to be in the United States.

One of the biggest dangers to be concerned about are all of the credit default swap contracts that U.S. banks have written on European debt.  Just check out what a recent article posted on the website of MSNBC had to say about that….

U.S. banks have written about $400 billion in CDS contracts on European sovereign debt, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Those payouts would be triggered if Greece or Italy defaults. Because financial institutions are not required to report their CDS holdings, little is known about which banks or investment firms are on the hook, and for how much.

As I have written about previously, there is a very good chance that the world could be facing a massive derivatives crisis at some point in the next five to ten years.

If you hear the news talk about a “problem with derivatives” or a “derivatives crisis” then you will want to pay very close attention.

Over the past 30 years, the global financial system has constructed a gigantic mountain of debt, risk and leverage unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

At some point the whole thing is going to come crashing down.

When it does, it is going to affect the entire globe.

A huge storm is coming.

Get prepared while you can.

 

12 Facts About Money And Congress That Are So Outrageous That It Is Hard To Believe That They Are Actually True

Do you want to get rich?  Just get elected to Congress.  The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are absolutely packed with wealthy people that are very rapidly becoming even wealthier.  The collective net worth of the members of Congress is now measured in the billions of dollars.  The people that we have elected to the House and Senate are absolutely swimming in money.  Unfortunately, it is not easy to get elected to Congress.  In this day and age you generally have to be heavily connected to those that are very wealthy to get into Congress because it takes gigantic amounts of cash to win campaigns.  But if you can get in to the club, you pretty much have it made.  The numbers that you are about to read are very difficult to believe and they should deeply sadden you.  They show that Congress has become all about money.  Congressional races are mostly financed by wealthy people, most of the people that we elect to Congress are very wealthy, and they rapidly get wealthier after they are elected.  All of this money has turned our republic into something far different than our founding fathers intended.

The following are 12 statistics about money and Congress that are so outrageous that it is hard to believe that they are actually true….

#1 The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress increased by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010.

#2 The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress is now slightly over 2 billion dollars.  That is “billion” with a “b”.

#3 This happened during a time when the net worth of most American households was declining rapidly.  According to the Federal Reserve, the collective net worth of all American households decreased by 23 percent between 2007 and 2009.

#4 The average net worth for a member of Congress is now approximately 3.8 million dollars.

#5 The net worth of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi increased by 62 percent from 2009 to 2010.  In 2009 it was reported that she had a net worth of 21.7 million dollars, and in 2010 it was reported that she had a net worth of 35.2 million dollars.

#6 The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, saw his wealth grow by 29 percent from 2009 to 2010.  He is now worth approximately 9.8 million dollars.

#7 More than 50 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are millionaires.

#8 In 2008, the average cost of winning a seat in the House of Representatives was $1.1 million and the average cost of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate was $6.5 million.  Spending on political campaigns has gotten way out of control.

#9 Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of the U.S. Congress – and they refuse to pass a law that would change that.

#10 The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.

#11 U.S. Representative Darrell Issa is worth approximately 220 million dollars.  His wealth grew by approximately 37 percent from 2009 to 2010.

#12 The wealthiest member of Congress, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, is worth approximately 294 million dollars.

So how are members of Congress becoming so wealthy?

Well, there are lots of ways they are raking in the cash, but one especially alarming thing that goes on is that members of Congress often make investments in companies that will go up significantly if legislation that is being considered by Congress “goes the right way”.

This is called a “conflict of interest”, but it happens constantly in Congress and nobody seems to get into any trouble for it.

The following is video of Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes ambushing Nancy Pelosi about one particular conflict of interest involving credit card legislation.  As you can see, she does not want to talk about it….

As noted above, insider trading is perfectly legal for members of Congress.

A law that would ban insider trading by members of Congress has been stalled for years on Capitol Hill.

So has this been a significant benefit to members of Congress?

Well, there has been at least one study that appears to indicate that members of Congress have been much more successful in the stock market than members of the general public have….

A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to – and were using – material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade.

Of course all of this could just be a coincidence, right?

Meanwhile, members of Congress keep telling the rest of us that we are just going to have to cut back because times are tough.

For example, during an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Nancy Pelosi actually claimed that we should try to encourage poor people to have less children because it costs the government so much money to take care of them….

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

This elitist attitude extends all the way into the White House as well.  Earlier this year, Barack Obama made the following statement….

“If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, or you might put off a vacation.”

Meanwhile, the Obamas are living the high life at taxpayer expense.  In a previous article I mentioned one outrageously expensive vacation taken by the Obamas that was paid for by our taxes….

“Back in August, Michelle Obama took her daughter Sasha and 40 of her friends for a vacation in Spain.

So what was the bill to the taxpayers for that little jaunt across the pond?

It is estimated that vacation alone cost U.S. taxpayers $375,000.”

There is a massive disconnect between what our politicians say and what our politicians do.

The high life is good enough for them, but the rest of us have got to “cut back” and suffer becomes times are hard.

But when it comes to money and Congress, the most corrupting influence of all is probably all of the campaign money that gets thrown around.

In America today, it takes gigantic mountains of money to run a successful campaign.

Sadly, the candidate that raises the most money almost always wins.  In federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.

More than 5 billion dollars were spent on political campaigns back in 2008.

That represents a huge number of favors that need to be paid back.

In 2012, it is being projected that 8 billion dollars could be spent on political campaigns.

When big corporations and wealthy individuals shovel huge piles of money into political campaigns, it is generally because they expect something in return.

Most of those that get sent to Congress realize that they never would have won if wealthy donors had not showered cash on them.  Most of them understand that they should not bite the hands that feed them if they want the cash to keep rolling in.

Politics in America has become a game that is played by the elite for the benefit of the elite.

Average Americans have the perception that they are involved in the process and that their opinions really matter, but mostly it is just an illusion.

It is so sad.

Meanwhile, members of Congress rapidly get wealthier and average American families continue to suffer.  In fact, the standard of living in the United States has fallen farther over the past three years than at any other time that has ever been recorded in U.S. history.

But for members of Congress the good times just keep on rolling.

Just as it has been for most of human history, the rich rule over the poor.

Does anyone out there believe that we have any hope of changing this?

This Is Only Just The Beginning

For a long time, there have been those that have warned that economic riots are coming to this nation.  Anger and frustration with the economy and with our financial system have grown to unprecedented levels, and this has fueled the rise of the various protest movements that we have seen over the last couple of years.  People are fed up and they want solutions.  Unfortunately, anger and frustration can express themselves in dangerous and unpredictable ways.  What we have seen in Oakland, in Seattle and in other major U.S. cities this week is only just the beginning of the massive economic riots that are coming to this country.  Yes, “anarchists” were responsible for quite a bit of the violence that we have seen this week, but they were not the only ones involved.  Some protesters were getting violent too, and there has also been quite a bit of police brutality.  Of course the vast majority of Occupy Wall Street protesters do not want anything to do with violence and they recognize that violence is not the answer.  But that is the thing with anger and frustration.  It is hard to contain them in neat, self-disciplined packages.  As the economy continues to get worse, the protests will grow and unfortunately so will the violence.  You can preach the benefits of non-violence all day long to some people but they just will not get it.  America has reached a turning point, and what we are seeing now is only just the beginning of the madness.  In the years ahead we are going to see rioting that is going to be absolutely unprecedented.

According to a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, 43 percent of all Americans believe that the economy is in “very poor” shape.  Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, millions of Americans have lost their homes and tens of millions of Americans have been sickened by what they have seen happen on Wall Street over the last four or five years.  It is easy to understand why people are frustrated and are marching in the streets.  As I wrote about yesterday, approximately one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps.  Poverty is rapidly spreading and large numbers of families have lost everything.  People want answers, and it is understandable why so many are joining these protest movements.

Over the last couple of years, people such as Gerald Celente and myself have been warning that economic riots are coming.  Those of us that have written about such things have been called “doom and gloomers” and “conspiracy theorists”.

But after the events of the last couple of months, almost everyone is starting to realize that something big is happening.

On Wednesday, huge crowds of protesters brought the city of Oakland, California to a standstill.  Some media organizations said that there were 5,000 protesters, but others claimed that there may have been up to 20,000 people marching at one point.

A group of approximately 3,000 protesters marched over and shut down the Port of Oakland, which is the fifth largest deepwater port in the United States.

In other areas of the city, windows were smashed, graffiti was sprayed on buildings and senseless acts of vandalism were committed.  There were also quite a few intense confrontations with police and dozens of protesters ended up getting arrested.

The following is how an article in USA Today described what went down….

Riot police arrested more than 80 protesters in the city’s downtown, where bands of demonstrators threw chunks of concrete and metal pipes as well as lit roman candles and firebombs, police said. Five protesters and several officers were injured.

You can see shocking pictures of some of the vandalism that was going on during these protests right here.

At one point, one group of protesters took over an empty building that had once been used to help the homeless.  The following is what an article in the Los Angeles Times says happened next….

Demonstrators managed to gain entry to an empty building that had housed the Traveler’s Aid Society, a nonprofit organization that assists the homeless but had suffered funding cuts. Leaflets indicated that protesters had targeted the building for “reuse.” They branded it a new “community center” in Twitter feeds. Video from a local ABC affiliate’s helicopter showed jubilant crowds flowing in and out of the building, where a banner marked “Occupy Everything” hung. Others built a barricade nearby, presumably to discourage police.

Shortly before midnight, local media reported that police officers from various agencies were suiting up in riot gear. Some demonstrators set the barricade aflame. Firefighters doused it. A police statement later said protesters had hurled rocks, explosives, bottles and flaming objects at officers.

Does any of this solve anything?

Of course not.

But when people are angry and frustrated it can be difficult to talk sense to them.

America has become a powder keg, and it is going to be very difficult for anyone to control what is going on.

However, it also must be noted that not all of the violence was initiated by Occupy Oakland protesters.  There were dozens of Black Bloc “anarchists” that were running around committing random acts of violence.  Some Occupy Oakland protesters were actually seen trying to prevent these “anarchists” from committing acts of violence.

In fact, it is certainly possible that someone may be using these Black Bloc “anarchists” to discredit the protests.  It has happened to other protest movements in the past.

In any event, it is very true that the “anarchists” were very much involved with much of the violence.  You can see some video of “anarchists” in action right here.

But Oakland was not the only city where protesters were becoming more aggressive.

In Seattle, protesters surrounded a Sheraton hotel where JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was giving a speech. According to some media reports, some of the protesters were actually planning to make a “citizen’s arrest”.

Their plans were cancelled, however, when police dispersed them with a shower of pepper spray.

The funny thing is that Dimon was actually promoting some of the ideas of the Occupy Wall Street movement during his speech.

The following excerpt from his speech comes from the Seattle Times….

“America has become more inequitable in the last 10 or 20 years. That’s a fact,” he said. “I don’t personally think that’s a good thing. I’ve been a big supporter of progressive taxes.”

But that is the funny thing about economic riots.  Just because you agree with the crowd, that does not mean that the crowd is not going to turn on you anyway.

Earlier that same day in Seattle, there was quite a bit of violence as police confronted groups of protesters.  The following is how the Seattle Times described the action….

Earlier in the day, Seattle police arrested six people, five of whom had sprawled across the floor inside a Chase Bank on Capitol Hill.

Officers launched pepper spray, shoved protesters out of the way and yanked others from under a police van during a tense 30-minute confrontation. Police said at least 10 officers were physically assaulted during the arrests, and at least two of them had minor injuries.

In New York City, a different kind of confrontation took place.  Approximately  100 military vets showed up in uniform and marched over to the New York Stock Exchange.  Once they arrived, they stopped directly in front of the building which was protected by a line of heavily armed NYPD officers.  It was a tense moment, but fortunately there was no violence.

This kind of “stare down” cannot be a sign of good things.  What would have happened if even a single person had lost their cool?

While standing in formation in front of the New York Stock Exchange, the vets were heard chanting the following slogans….

“We are veterans! We are the 99 percent!”

“Corporate profits on the rise, soldiers have to bleed and die!”

Things are certainly getting very, very interesting.

The Occupy Wall Street protests started off very peacefully, but sadly there is no guarantee that the violence we are seeing now is not going to escalate even further.

One recent survey found that 31 percent of those involved with the Occupy Wall Street protests “would support violence to advance their agenda”.

That is a frightening statistic.

Hopefully everyone will calm down and the protesters will realize that they will get much farther ahead by non-violent means.

But once again, anger and frustration are difficult to predict or control.  The more angry and frustrated that the American people get, the more chaotic the streets of our cities are going to become.

Sadly, while the vast majority of Americans agree that we have major problems, there is tremendous disagreement about what the solutions are.  There are some good ideas floating around out there, but there are also some groups that are promoting some very, very bad ideas.

For example, there are some elements involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests that are actually promoting communism as the answer.

During the recent craziness in Oakland, some protesters actually hung a very large black banner downtown that said the following: “DEATH TO CAPITALISM“.

But is that really the answer?

Of course not.

Yes, our system is deeply, deeply corrupt and deeply, deeply broken.

Yes, it is understandable that people are very frustrated with it.

But communism is not the answer.

Look, when Republicans defend the abuses of the big banks and the big corporations they are wrong to do so.

When Democrats defend big government and advocate even more big government as the answer, they are also very wrong.

The truth is that neither side is right.

We need to dramatically reduce the size of government and we need to dramatically reduce the size and the power of the big corporations.  That would mean a lot more liberty and freedom for the rest of us, and it would empower individuals and small businesses.

But most people don’t understand this.  Most people think that they have to either take the side of the big corporations or the side of big government.

Sadly, the cold, hard truth is that most of the time big government and the big corporations are working together, and it is not for our benefit.

Most people feel a sense of powerlessness these days.  Most people feel like things never seem to change no matter who they vote for.

People want things to change, but they don’t feel as though they have a way of bringing that change about.

This is not just happening in the United States.  As the global economy has faltered, anger and frustration have been growing all over the planet.

In fact, the International Labor Organization is warning that civil unrest could erupt all over the globe if the current economic crisis gets even worse.

We are moving into unprecedented times.

Nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.

But the warning signs are there.

Pressure just keeps building and building and building.

According to a recent Fox News poll, 76 percent of all Americans are “dissatisfied with how things are going in the country”.  At the beginning of this year, that number was only at 61 percent.

When people get desperate, they do desperate things.

We can certainly hope that things will settle down, at least for a little while, but at some point another major financial crisis is going to erupt and the economy is going to get even worse.

So what will this country look like when that happens?

This is not the America that your grandparents grew up in.

Prepare accordingly.

+ More