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Who Died And Made BP King Of The Gulf Of Mexico?

There is one question that I would really like an answer to.  Who died and made BP king of the Gulf of Mexico?  In recent weeks, BP has almost seemed more interested in keeping the American people away from the oil spill than in actually cleaning it up.  Journalists are being pushed around and denied access, disaster workers are being intimidated and abused and now BP has even go so far as to hire an army of private mercenaries to enforce their will along the Gulf coast.  Are we suddenly living in occupied Iraq?  How in the world did a foreign oil company get the right to start pointing guns at the American people?  The last time I checked, BP did not own the Gulf of Mexico and did not have the right to tell the American people where they can and cannot go.  The truth is that BP could have avoided all of this by running an open, honest and transparent operation from the start.  They could have welcomed help from all sources, they could have tried to be open with the media, and they could have tried to be fair with the volunteers and rescue workers.  But instead BP has been conducting this whole thing as if we are living in a totalitarian dictatorship and they are the dictators.

Over the last several weeks, members of the mainstream media attempting to cover the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been yelled at, harassed, kicked off public beaches and threatened with arrest.  The Obama administration keeps promising “to improve media access”, but so far their promises haven’t seemed to make much difference.  In fact, a recent AP report detailed several recent highly disturbing incidents of journalist intimidation….   

  • On June 5, sheriff’s deputies in Grand Isle threatened an AP photographer with arrest for criminal trespassing after he spoke to BP employees and took pictures of cleanup workers on a public beach.
  • On June 6, an AP reporter was in a boat near an island in Barataria Bay when a man in another boat identifying himself as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife employee ordered the reporter to leave the area. When the reporter asked to see identification, the man refused, saying “My name doesn’t matter, you need to go.”
  • According to a June 10 CNN video, one of the network’s news crews was told by a bird rescue worker that he signed a contract with BP stating that he would not talk to the media. The crew was also turned away by BP contractors working at a bird triage area — despite having permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to enter the facility.
  • On June 11 and 12, private security guards patrolling in the Grand Isle area attempted repeatedly to prevent a crew from New Orleans television station WDSU from walking on a public beach and speaking with cleanup workers.

    • But it is not just the media that are being pushed around.  The Louisiana Environmental Action Network is reporting that BP is actually threatening to fire fishermen hired to help with the oil spill cleanup for using respirators and other safety equipment that wasn’t provided by the company.

    Seriously.

    The workers say that they are only using their own safety equipment because BP has not provided what they need.  It is a fact that a large number of rescue workers have already gotten sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, so it certainly makes sense that those working to clean up the oil would want to do whatever they can to stay safe.

    But no, BP has to be a bunch of jerks about the whole thing.

    Even the EPA says that workers need to be careful.  Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s office of solid waste and emergency response, made the following statement during an interview on Thursday….   

    “There’s no way you can be working in that toxic soup without getting exposures.”

    It’s not just the oil that is the problem.  The chemical dispersants that BP is using in the Gulf are even more toxic than the oil.  In fact, because it is so extremely toxic, the UK’s Marine Management Organization has completely banned Corexit 9500, so if there was a major oil spill in the North Sea, BP would not be able to use it. 

    But the Obama administration has allowed BP to dump over a million gallons of Corexit 9500, Corexit 9527 and other highly toxic dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico.

    Apparently the truth is that BP would rather disperse the oil so that the spill doesn’t look so bad even if it means creating an ecological disaster of nightmarish proportions.

    You see, these days BP does what it wants, and anyone who doesn’t like it gets pushed out of the way. 

    Monique Harden, the co-director and attorney at the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, is so outraged over BP’s behavior that she recently made the following statement….

    “BP should not be running the Gulf region like a prison warden, and we’ve got to stop that.”

    But rather than becoming more open and taking responsibility for their actions, BP has now hired private security contractors to keep the American people away from the oil cleanup sites.

    In other words, BP has brought in a horde of private mercenaries (just like the U.S. uses in Iraq and Afghanistan) to muscle the American people around.

    Yeah, we are really going to appreciate that.

    Doesn’t BP understand that the American people do not respond well to this kind of nonsense?

    In fact, it is being alleged that BP has actually attempted to manipulate the search results on sites like Google and Yahoo.

    They seem absolutely obsessed with controlling what we see and think.

    Perhaps what BP should be obsessed with is stopping the oil from shooting out of the ground.

    Meanwhile, BP execs are busy testifying in front of Congress and making half-hearted apologies. 

    Carl-Henric Svanberg, the BP chairman, has even apologized for referring to those affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as “small people”.

    Isn’t that nice of him?

    While all of this is going on, BP is already trying to ensure that things go their way legally.  Back in May, BP requested that one particular judge be assigned to preside over all lawsuits related to the spill.  Well, it turns out that this particular judge gets tens of thousands of dollars a year in oil royalties and is paid travel expenses to attend oil industry conferences.

    Isn’t that convenient?

    But that is how the game is played these days.

    Meanwhile, the “oil volcano” on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico continues to pump out a nightmarish amount of oil every single day.  BP is even admitting that oil is escaping from the leak at such high pressure that if they try to cap it the entire well may blow.

    So this crisis may keep getting worse for months.

    By the time this is over, will anything in the Gulf be left alive?

    Even now, hordes of dolphins, fish, sharks, crabs, rays and other sea creatures find themselves trapped between the rapidly advancing oil and the shore.  Unprecedented numbers are showing up just off the Gulf coast in an attempt to escape certain death, but once the oil reaches shore there will be nowhere else for them to go.  The tragedy will be unspeakable.

    Things did not have to turn out this way.  BP and the Obama administration could have done things much differently.  But they didn’t. 

    Now we all have to live with the results.

    16 Burning Questions About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill That We Deserve Some Answers To

    The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a national nightmare that seems to have no ending.  Every day new details come out that are even more shocking than what we learned the day before.  The truth is that life will never be the same in the Gulf of Mexico or for those who live along the Gulf coast.  Now Barack Obama has made a big Oval Office speech and has tried to convince all of us that he is in charge of the crisis.  Well, perhaps if he had tried to take decisive action a month ago the American people may have rallied around him.  But right now the BP/government response to this disaster remains completely and totally chaotic.  Nobody seems to be able to stop the leak, and BP has made the environmental nightmare far worse by dumping over a million gallons of highly toxic dispersants into the Gulf.  U.S. government officials are running around holding press conferences and waiting for BP to do something.  Meanwhile oil is pouring ashore and toxic gases are being detected at very alarming levels.  The biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history is also quickly becoming one of the biggest economic disasters and potentially one of the biggest public health disasters.   

    The truth is that the American people deserve some answers about what in the world is going on down there in the Gulf.  BP does not own the Gulf of Mexico and they have no right to keep the American people from seeing what is happening.  There are some very serious health and environmental questions that have been raised in the media recently, but both BP and the U.S. government are not giving us any answers. 

    But we need some answers.  People are getting sick.  Crops are dying.  Wildlife is being devastated.  Birds are flocking north by the thousands.

    But BP and the U.S. government continue to treat us as though we are on a “need to know” basis and that what we “need to know” is not much.

    Actually, much of what they have decided to tell us throughout this crisis has turned out to be lies anyway.

    The truth is that it is about darn time that someone started telling it to us straight.  

    The following are 16 questions about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that we really need some answers to….

    #1) Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of more than 17,000 National Guard members along the Gulf coast to be used “as needed” by state governors.  So what are all of these National Guard troops going to be doing exactly?  Are the troops going to be used to stop the oil or to control the public?

    #2) Barack Obama has also announced the creation of a “Gulf recovery czar” who will be in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico region following the oil spill.  So is appointing a “czar” Obama’s idea of taking charge of a situation?

    #3) Because it is so incredibly toxic, the UK’s Marine Management Organization has completely banned Corexit 9500, so if there was a major oil spill in the UK’s North Sea, BP would not be able to use it.  So why is BP being allowed to use Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico?

    #4) It is being reported that 2.61 parts per million of Corexit 9500 (mixed with oil at a ratio of 1:1o) is lethal to 50% of fish exposed to it within 96 hours.  That means that 1 gallon of Corexit 9500/oil mixture is capable of rendering 383,141 gallons of water highly toxic to fish.  So why was BP allowed to dump 1,021,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 into the Gulf of Mexico, and why aren’t they being stopped from dumping another 805,000 gallons of these dispersants that they have on order into the Gulf?

    #5) If these dispersants are so incredibly toxic to fish, what are they going to do to crops?  What are they going to do to people?

    #6) If the smell of the oil on some Gulf beaches is already so strong that it burns your nostrils, then what in the world is this oil doing to to wildlife that encounter it?

    #7) Is it a bad sign that birds from the Gulf region are flocking north by the thousands?

    #8) Why is BP being allowed to use private security contractors to keep the American people away from the oil cleanup sites?

    #9) Why is BP openly attempting to manipulate the search results on sites like Google and Yahoo? 

    #10) Why has the FAA shut down the airspace above the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?  What don’t they want the American people to see?

    #11) Senator Bill Nelson of Florida says that there are reports that there are additional ruptures in the sea floor from which oil is leaking.  If there are quite a few of these additional ruptures, then how in the world does BP expect to completely stop this oil leak?

    #12) Why are scientists finding concentrations of methane at up to 10,000 times normal background levels in Gulf waters?

    #13) At some testing stations in the Gulf of Mexico, levels of benzene have been detected at over 3000 parts per billion, and levels of hydrogen sulfide have been detected as high as 1192 parts per billion.  Considering that these levels would be highly toxic to humans, why hasn’t the general public been warned?   

    #14) Why are so many Gulf oil spill disaster workers showing up at local hospitals complaining of a “mysterious illness”?

    #15) If “70% or 80%” of the protective booms are doing absolutely nothing at all to stop the oil, then what is going to stop the millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf from eventually reaching shore?

    #16) It is being reported that the deepsea oil plumes are creating huge “dead zones” where all creatures are dying as they are deprived of oxygen.  If this oil spill continues to grow could the vast majority of the Gulf of Mexico become one gigantic “dead zone”?

    ***UPDATE***

    A reader named Stacy has posted a very alarming comment regarding what is happening in her area down in Florida that we wanted to share with everyone….

    We live in the navarre, florida area and in the past week almost every family we know has had vomiting and diarreha. This could just be anecdotal – maybe we just have a stomach bug circulating, but it is strange. We had a huge storm the week before it happened that blew in from the gulf so who knows.

    Also, the city of destin, florida has taken it upon themselves to close the destin pass with their own purchased boom and barges. This is an elite destination and they are not waiting around for bp and their hired prison workers to clean the beaches. Apparently, the coast guard was at the meeting and told the locals that they will face criminal prosecution, but they don’t care. They are protecting their million dollar properties.

    9 Reasons Why Spain Is A Dead Economy Walking

    Barring an economic bailout of mammoth proportions, the economy of Spain is completely and totally doomed.  The socialist government of Spain is drowning in debt, unemployment is running rampant and everywhere you turn there are major economic problems.  So will Spain be the next Greece?  No.  When the economy of Spain implodes it is going to be a whole lot worse for the world economy.  The economy of Spain is more than four times the size of the economy of Greece.  Spain accounts for 11.5 percent of eurozone GDP while Greece only accounts for approximately 2.5 percent.  Spain is the 4th largest economy in the 16 nation eurozone and it is the 10th largest economy in the world.  If the economy of Spain fails it will cause a shockwave that will be felt in every corner of the globe.  In fact, there are quite a few analysts that believe if Spain defaults it would ultimately lead to the breakup of the eurozone.

    So will the EU step up and bail out Spain?  Well, there are rumors that EU officials have begun work on a bailout package for Spain which is likely to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, but on Monday the European Commission, the Spanish government and the German government all denied that the European Union was preparing a bailout for the Spanish economy.

    Of course we all know that politicians don’t always tell us the truth.

    So who knows what is going on over there right now.

    But the reality is that the economy of Spain is not going to make it much longer without serious help, and some EU officials are already using apocalyptic language to describe what an economic collapse in Spain would mean.

    For example, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso recently warned that democracy could completely collapse in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the burgeoning European debt crisis.

    So could democracy actually fail in those nations?

    Well, considering the fact that Greece, Spain and Portugal only became democracies in the 1970s, and that all three of those countries have a history of military coups, such a scenario is not that far-fetched.

    Without a doubt there would be serious public unrest in those nations if public services collapsed because their governments ran out of money.

    So are there signs that the economy of Spain is about to collapse?

    Well, yes, there are quite a few of them.

    The following are 9 reasons why Spain is a dead economy walking….

    #1) Even before this most recent crisis, unemployment in Spain was approaching Great Depression levels.  Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in the entire European Union. More than 20 percent of working age Spaniards were unemployed during the first quarter of 2010.  If people aren’t working they can’t pay taxes and they can’t provide for their families.

    #2) In an effort to stimulate the economy, Spain’s socialist government has been spending unprecedented amounts of money and that skyrocketed the government budget deficit to a stunning 11.4 percent of GDP in 2009.  That is completely unsustainable by any definition.

    #3) The total of all public and private debt in Spain has now reached 270 percent of GDP.

    #4) The Spanish government has accumulated way more debt than it can possibly handle, and this has forced two international ratings agencies, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, to lower Spain’s long-term sovereign credit rating.  These downgrades are making it much more expensive for Spain to finance its debt at a time when they simply can’t afford to pay more interest on their debt.

    #5) There are 1.6 million unsold properties in Spain.  That is six times the level per capita in the United States.  Considering how bad the U.S. real estate market is, that statistic is incredibly alarming.

    #6) The new “green economy” in Spain has been a total flop.  Socialist leaders promised that implementing hardcore restrictions on carbon emissions and forcing the nation over to a “green economy” would result in a flood of “green jobs”.  But that simply did not happen.  In fact, a leaked internal assessment produced by the government of Spain reveals that the “green economy” has been an absolute economic nightmare for that nation.  Energy prices have skyrocketed in Spain and the new “green economy” in that nation has actually lost more than two jobs for every job that it has created.  But Spain so far seems unwilling to undo all of the crazy regulations that they have implemented.

    #7) Spain’s national debt is so onerous that they are now caught in a debt spiral where anything they do will harm the economy.  If they cut government expenditures in an effort to get debt under control it will devastate economic growth and crush badly needed tax revenues.  But if the Spanish government keeps borrowing money their credit rating will continue to decline and they will almost certainly default.  The truth is that the Spanish government is caught in a “no win” situation.

    #8) But even now the IMF is projecting that the Spanish economy is going nowhere fast.  The International Monetary Fund says there will be no positive GDP growth in Spain until 2011, at which point it will still be below one percent.  As bleak as that forecast is, many analysts believe that it is way too optimistic considering the fact that Spain’s economy declined by about 3.6 percent in 2009 and things are rapidly getting worse.

    #9) The Spanish population has gotten used to socialist handouts and they are not going to accept public sector pay cuts, budget cuts to social programs and hefty tax increases easily.  In fact, there is likely to be some very serious social unrest before all of this is said and done.  On May 21st, thousands of public sector workers took to the streets of Spain to protest the government’s austerity plan.  But that was only an appetizer.  Spain’s two main unions are calling for a major one day general strike to protest the government’s planned reforms of the country’s labor market.  The truth is that financial shock therapy does not go down very well in highly socialized nations such as Greece and Spain.  In fact, the austerity measures that Spain has been pressured to implement by the IMF have proven so unpopular that many are now projecting that Spain’s socialist government will be forced to call early elections.

    So what is going to happen in Spain?

    The truth is that nobody can predict for sure how things are going to play out over the coming weeks and months.

    But what everyone can agree on is that the stakes are incredibly high.

    Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, world famous economist Nouriel Roubini put it this way: “If Greece goes under, that’s a problem for the eurozone. If Spain goes under, it’s a disaster.”

    But right now the entire population of Spain (along with much of the rest of the world) is completely distracted by the World Cup.  As long as the Spanish team does well, that is likely to keep the Spanish population sedated.  But if the Spanish team gets knocked out of the tournament early that will put the entire Spanish population in a really, really bad mood and that could mean a really chaotic summer for the nation of Spain.

    Obama To Use BP Oil Spill As An Opportunity To Push His Economy Killing Climate Change Bill

    Never one to to allow a “good crisis” to go to waste, Barack Obama is pledging to use the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as an opportunity to push the U.S. Congress to pass his controversial climate bill.  In fact, during a recent interview Obama directly compared the current crisis in the Gulf to 9/11, and indicated that he believed that it would fundamentally change the way that we all look at energy issues from now on.  But the truth is that Obama’s climate bill is the same economy killing legislation that it was before the BP oil spill.  It would still drive gas and electricity prices through the roof, it would still cause large numbers of U.S. businesses to flee overseas, it would still be one of the biggest tax increases in U.S. history and it would still usher in an unprecedented era of climate fascism.  But now thanks to the BP oil spill there is suddenly a lot more momentum in Congress for doing something about energy and about “climate change”.

    Of course the truth is that carbon dioxide is not causing climate change and high levels of carbon dioxide are actually very good for the environment, but reducing carbon emissions has almost become a religion for radical environmentalists, and Barack Obama is absolutely determined to push through his “cap and trade” carbon trading scheme.  In fact, just as 9/11 completely changed the war that Americans viewed the fight against terrorism, Barack Obama sees the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico fundamentally changing the way that Americans see energy issues.  During a recent interview, Obama told Politico columnist Roger Simon the following….

    “In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.”

    Not only that, but Obama considers it one of his greatest “leadership challenges” to make sure that we all “draw the right lessons” from the BP oil spill…. 

    “One of the biggest leadership challenges for me going forward is going to be to make sure that we draw the right lessons from this disaster.”

    So what are those “right lessons”?

    Well, apparently what we are all supposed to get out of this disaster are the lessons that Obama has been trying to “teach” us all along – that carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes are good for us.

    But Barack Obama is not the only one urging us to learn the “right lessons” from the BP oil spill.

    In a recent interview with ABC News, Microsoft’s Bill Gates also linked the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with “climate change”.  Gates warned that if we don’t make the necessary changes soon that we will suffer severe consequences….

    “We’ll have more crises like the oil spill and we’ll have the supply disruption. We’ll start to see more and more effects of the climate problem.”

    But would the climate bill that Obama is pushing really save us from “climate change”?

    Of course not.

    But Barack Obama’s climate change bill would do the following things….

    *It would drive gas and electricity prices through the roof.

    *It would crush the already fragile U.S. economy by piling a bunch of new taxes and regulations on U.S. businesses.  Needless to say, large numbers of them would begin looking for greener pastures.

    *It would increase worldwide pollution by forcing companies out of the U.S. and into nations that have no restrictions on pollution whatsoever.

    *When you add up all of the overt and hidden taxes in the bill, it would represent one of the biggest tax increases in U.S. history.

    *Since every action we take involves the production of carbon emissions (including every breath that we take), it would open the door for an era of tyrannical climate fascism where the U.S. government literally monitors every aspect of our lives to make sure that we are being “eco-friendly”.

    But Barack Obama makes this climate bill sound like it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  In fact, he continues to promise that the number of “green jobs” gained by this bill will far outweigh the number of other jobs lost.

    But is this true?

    Of course not.

    In fact, other countries that have tried a “cap and trade” scheme have experienced disastrous results.  For example, a leaked internal assessment produced by the government of Spain reveals that the “green economy” there has been an absolute economic nightmare for that nation.  Energy prices have skyrocketed in Spain and the new “green economy” in that nation has actually lost more than two jobs for every job that it has created.

    The unemployment rate in Spain is now hovering around 20 percent and the economy there is on the verge of complete and total collapse.  In fact, if the government of Spain does end up defaulting on their debts, it could make the financial crisis that has been unfolding in Greece look like a Sunday picnic.

    It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that a climate bill like the one Spain implemented will devastate the U.S. economy.  But facts haven’t gotten in the way of Barack Obama pushing his agenda before, so why should they now?

    However, it is not just Barack Obama that is pushing an agenda of trying to radically reduce carbon emissions.  All over the world, many of the global elite have joined forces with the radical environmentalists in an effort to “save the world” from the growing “threat” of carbon dioxide.

    And since each person on this planet is a source of constant carbon emissions,  many of those who truly believe in this radical environmental agenda consider the rapidly growing population of the earth to be the number one cause of climate change.

    You see, to those obsessed with “climate change”, just getting corporations around the globe to radically cut carbon emissions is not nearly going to be good enough.  The truth is that they know that in order to get carbon emissions down to where they want them to be, they are going to have to do something about the growing world population.

    To them, in the “war against climate change” anyone who breathes is the enemy.  In fact, according to an official UN report, no human can ever truly be “carbon neutral”.

    So please understand that for those obsessed with climate change, “carbon taxes” and “cap and trade” are just the beginning.  To truly achieve their goals, “one child policies” and “forced abortions” will also be necessary.

    So if Barack Obama does get his climate bill pushed through Congress and it does kill the U.S. economy, that would only be a “first step” for those truly dedicated to the radical environmental agenda.  What they have planned down the road is a whole lot more horrific.

    The Prepper's Cookbook

    The Dominant Force In World Financial Markets In 2010 Is Fear

    Extreme volatility is not a sign of health for financial markets.  But in 2010 financial markets around the globe are experiencing unprecented volatility.  Why?  It is because the entire world financial system has been gripped by fear.  In today’s crazed environment, it seems like just about anything can set off a major panic.  In fact, these days politicians have to be extremely careful about what they say about their national finances, because saying the wrong thing can literally send world markets into violent convulsions.  For instance, when a senior Hungarian official said that the Hungarian economy was in a “very grave situation” last week it sent world financial markets into a tailspin.  Panic was everywhere and everyone was talking about how Hungary could be the “next Greece”.  Of course on Monday Hungarian officials backed away from that comment and tried to reassure world markets that everything was fine, but the damage had been done.

    It was a perfect example of the spirit of irrational fear that has gripped the financial world.

    After all, even if Hungary did fall apart financially, it wouldn’t plunge the rest of the world into a depression.

    And the truth is that Hungary is not really in that bad shape financially.  Hungary’s budget deficit is about half the size of the Greek budget deficit and Hungary doesn’t even use the euro.

    But now investors all over the world are constantly scanning the news for the latest piece of information that will send waves of panic through the markets.

    In the current environment, fear is what moves the markets.

    The reality is that fear is the reason why the euro is plunging at breathtaking speed.

    Are many of the economies in Europe truly in really bad shape?

    Of course.

    However, it could be argued that the economies of the U.S. and Japan are in even worse shape in many ways.  Japan’s gross public debt has reached 201 percent of GDP and the United States has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

    But because of the extreme fear that has been generated, people are moving out of the euro and into dollars and yen.

    In fact, the euro is probably headed even lower.

    GFT Forex’s Boris Schlossberg believes that the euro could fall down to the 1.16/1.17 range before this current panic is over….

    “I think we run the risk of seeing 1.16/1.17 before the next selling phase dies down. The euro is just absolutely hated here. The European rescue package still faces some regional opposition. There were rumors the German high court could rule it was unconstitutional. They don’t have a federal mechanism to put it in place, and there’s worries that at any point in time, the rescue package could be sabotaged.”

    But all of this fear and panic is actually good for investors in gold and silver.

    Why?

    Because during times of fear and panic investors look to move their money into something that is secure, and gold and silver have been secure investments for thousands of years.

    So in this environment of fear, gold is absolutely soaring.  On Monday, the price of gold climbed 1.9 percent to $1239.30 per ounce.  That was the largest one day rise in the price of gold since February 16th.

    So how high will gold go?

    Well, the truth is that nobody knows.

    But if fear and panic continue to grip world financial markets in the months ahead, there is really no telling how high it could go.

    In fact, even many mainstream financial analysts are becoming extremely bullish on gold.

    As Dan Burrows of Daily Finance recently commented, “you don’t have to be a member of the build-a-bunker-in-Montana crowd to believe gold could hit $2,500 in the next couple of years.”

    But these days no investment is truly safe.  One really bad rumor these days can send any stock, any currency or any commodity into a tailspin.

    Fear is everywhere.  Governments and central banks are intervening in the markets in unprecedented ways, but it is still not enough to keep the markets from flopping around like a dying fish.

    So for those who are waiting for the financial markets to get back to “normal”, you are likely to be waiting for quite a long time.  The world economic situation is not going to be getting any better in the long-term.  So if financial markets are flipping out this much even now, just wait and see what happens when things really start falling apart.

    The U.S. Economic Collapse Top 20 Countdown

    So just how bad is the U.S. economy?  Well, the truth is that sometimes it is hard to put into words.  We have squandered the great wealth left to us by our forefathers, we have almost totally dismantled the world’s greatest manufacturing base, we have shipped millions of good jobs overseas and we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of mankind.  We have taken the greatest free enterprise economy that was ever created and have turned it into a gigantic house of cards delicately balanced on a never-ending spiral of paper money and debt.  For decades, all of this paper money and debt has enabled us to enjoy the greatest party in the history of the world, but now the bills are coming due and the party is nearly over.

    In fact, things are already so bad that you can pick almost every number and find a corresponding statistic that shows just how bad the economy is getting.

    You doubt it?

    Well, check this out….

    20 – Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th.  That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year.

    19 – According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March.  This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005.

    18 – According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in March the national rate of unemployment in the United States was 9.7%, but for Americans younger than 25 it was well above 18 percent.

    17 – The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high.

    16 – During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.

    15 – The Spanish government has just approved a 15 billion euro austerity plan.

    14 – The U.S. Congress recently approved an increase in the debt cap of the U.S. government to over 14 trillion dollars.

    13 – The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke.  In fact, the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which actually represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.

    12 – The U.S. national debt soared from the $12 trillion mark to the $13 trillion mark in a frighteningly short period of time.

    11– It is being reported that a massive network of big banks and financial institutions have been involved in blatant bid-rigging fraud that cost taxpayers across the U.S. billions of dollars.  The U.S. Justice Department is charging that financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia and 11 other banks in a conspiracy to rig bids on municipal financial instruments.

    10 – The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10 percent of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment during the January-March time period.  That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago.

    9 – The official U.S. unemployment number is 9.9%, although the truth is that many economists consider the true unemployment rate to be much, much higher than that.

    8 – The French government says that its deficit will increase to 8 percent of GDP in 2010, but by implementing substantial budget cuts they hope that they can get it to within the European Union’s 3 percent limit by the year 2013.

    7 – The biggest banks in the U.S. cut their collective small business lending balance by another $1 billion in November.  That drop was the seventh monthly decline in a row.

    6 – The six biggest banks in the United States now possess assets equivalent to 60 percent of America’s gross national product.

    5 – That is the number of U.S. banks that federal regulators closed on Friday.  That brings that total number of banks that have been shut down this year in the United States to a total of 78.

    4 – According to a study published by Texas A&M University Press, the four biggest industries in the Gulf of Mexico region are oil, tourism, fishing and shipping.  Together, those four industries account for approximately $234 billion in economic activity each year.  Now those four industries have been absolutely decimated by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and will probably not fully recover for years, if not decades.

    3 – Decent three bedroom homes in the city of Detroit can be bought for $10,000, but no one wants to buy them.

    2 – A massive “second wave” of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset over the next two to three years.  If this second wave is anything like the first wave, the U.S. housing market is about to be absolutely crushed.

    1 – The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.  But of course many on Wall Street and in the government would argue that there is nothing wrong with an economy where nearly half the people are dividing up 1 percent of the benefits.

    The Beginning Of The End by Michael T. Snyder

    Insider Trading Is Perfectly Legal – But Only For Members Of The U.S. Congress

    Did you know that insider trading is perfectly legal in the United States?  Well, not for 99.9% of the population.  It is actually only a very small percentage of the population that can legally indulge in insider trading – the members of the United States Congress.  In fact, a law that would ban insider trading by members of Congress has been stalled for years on Capitol Hill.  So why wouldn’t lawmakers in Washington D.C. want to apply the same rules to themselves that apply to the rest of us?  After all, how are we supposed to respect the integrity of those “serving” in Congress when they are playing by an entirely different set of rules?  The American people aren’t stupid.  They can see what is going on.  The truth is that there is a reason why approval ratings for Congress are at an all-time low.

    The sad thing is that this issue has gotten very little attention in the mainstream media.  Nobody seems really that upset about it.  But it is a travesty that our lawmakers can legally make trades in the open market based on inside information that they have gained by being in positions of authority.  As the Wall Street Journal recently explained, they can generally make all the money they want off of insider information without any fear of prosecution because “insider-trading laws generally do not apply to lawmakers, leaving them free to trade on nonpublic information.”

    But members of the U.S. Congress are generally in a greater position to influence the fortunes of individual companies than almost anyone else.  For example, certain members of the U.S. Congress may know that certain legislation is going to be introduced that would have a dramatic impact on the economic fortunes of a particular industry or corporation.  What would stop those members of Congress from making very profitable trades in the marketplace based on that information?

    Nothing.  Nothing at all.

    So, is there any evidence that members of Congress have been involved in this sort of activity?

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

    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 Congress could stop all of this by simply passing a law that bans insider trading by our lawmakers.

    But they refuse to do it.

    Instead, it is likely that our “leaders” will continue to make millions of dollars by betting against the U.S. economy and very few people will even raise an objection.

    In the upcoming Wall Street sequel, Gordon Gekko makes a statement that seems very appropriate for the world in which we now live….

    “Someone reminded me I once said ‘Greed is good’ – now it seems it’s legal”

    Is The Greek Debt Crisis Being Purposely Hyped And Manipulated?

    Everywhere you turn in the financial media right now you see some “expert” declaring that the Greek debt crisis has become a “contagion” which is going to spread all over the globe and which could potentially bring down the entire world economy.  Now certainly Greece has badly mismanaged their finances for decades, and without a doubt they have gotten themselves into a huge mess.  But could Greece bring down the entire world economy?  Hardly.  The truth is that you could remove Greece from the world economy tomorrow and most people would hardly notice.  The economy of Greece is only about 2% the size of the United States economy, and it takes in less than 0.1% of U.S. exports.  But we are being led to believe that Greece has suddenly become the epicenter of a financial crisis which is going to bring down everything.  Could it be that this Greek debt crisis is purposely being hyped and manipulated?  Could it be that this Greek debt crisis is yet another example of the “problem, reaction, solution” paradigm that the global elite have employed so many times before?

    Right now almost all of the governments in the western world operate debt-based economies that rely on ever-inflating amounts of paper money in order to survive.  The elite international bankers of the world have made a killing by creating money out of nothing and loaning it to the nations of the world.  The interest on those loans is the primary method by which the wealth of the world is slowly transferred into the hands of the ultra-wealthy.  When the interest on the loans starts to become too much for a particular nation, they borrow even more money so that they can stay afloat.  It is a debt trap that is designed to continue indefinitely.  Even the most powerful nations in the world are caught in this debt trap.  In fact, most people are absolutely amazed when they learn that it is mathematically impossible to pay off the national debt of the United States.  But the United States is far from alone in that respect.  Almost all of the other major nations in the world are in the exact same boat.

    So what normally happens when a nation like Greece gets into big trouble is that they just go out and borrow even more money from the international bankers.

    But this time the big financial powers are insisting on big budget cuts and other “austerity measures”.

    So what is the deal with that?

    Well, there are a couple of possibilities.

    The first alternative is that the IMF and the European Central Bank actually believe that the financial situation in Greece has gotten so desperate that they could actually be forced to default on their debt and so something dramatic needs to be done.  You see, the truth is that the international bankers want the game to continue no matter what.  They are a parasite, and they can’t keep draining a host if the host dies.  So it does them no good for the economy of Greece to completely die.  So maybe they are just trying to revive the host economy (Greece) so that they can continue slowly draining the wealth of that nation.

    And perhaps that is all that is happening here.  After Greece agreed to the required “austerity measures”, the EU and the IMF extended to Greece the bailout loans that they needed, and on Sunday European Union finance ministers agreed to create a 750 billion euro safety net for troubled eurozone countries.  The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, says that this safety net “proves that we shall defend the euro whatever it takes.”

    There are even rumors that the ECB is prepared to engage in a new round of quantitative easing.  That would entail very large loans to distressed governments in the eurozone in the form of buying up their bonds.

    Of course all of this “help” is just more debt that continues to put Greece into an even bigger hole, but at least Greece will not be faced with immediate default.

    The second alternative is that what is going on is the financial powers of the world are deliberately hyping and manipulating the Greek debt crisis because they actually want to crash the world economy.

    At this point, the debt crisis in Greece has been hyped for weeks on end, and the kind of alarm being raised about the situation is Greece just seems massively out of proportion.

    After reading some of the recent news reports coming out of Europe, you would think that the world is on the verge of a financial doomsday just because of what is happening in Greece.  The following excerpt from the Guardian is representative of what we have been seeing in recent days….

    “The growing crisis in the eurozone threatened to undermine the global economic recovery as markets plunged across the world on fears that European leaders may not be able to contain the debt contagion spreading from Greece.”

    In fact, just about wherever you turn some financial expert is coming forward with predictions that the “contagion” of the Greek debt crisis is going to spread and cause economic chaos all over the world….

    Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel:

    “What we have seen is that contagion has gone global”

    Japan’s deputy finance minister, Rintaro Tamaki:

    “All the financial markets are now in turmoil”

    Finance Minister Anders Borg of Sweden:

    “We now see herd behavior in the markets that are really pack behavior, wolfpack behavior.”

    The truth is that this Greek debt crisis could end up being the first domino in a sovereign debt crisis that will sweep the globe – if that is what the international bankers want.

    If the international bankers decide to cut off the ever-expanding flow of debt to the nations around the world it would create a disastrous financial crisis.  Without the loans that they desperately need, country after country would plunge into an economic nightmare that most people do not even think is possible.

    So would the international bankers ever do that?

    They have done it before.

    Just study the causes of the Great Depression.

    Now there are indications that it may be getting ready to happen again.

    Suddenly everyone is starting to talk about the “austerity measures” that will not only have to be implemented in Greece but all over the world.

    For example, check out this recent quote from an article in the Guardian….

    “Riots and strikes in Greece could be repeated in other countries which have yet to adopt their own austerity packages.”

    Other countries which have yet to adopt their own austerity packages?

    And it just isn’t Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal they are talking about.

    Bank of England governor Mervyn King recently warned that public anger over the “austerity measures” that soon must be implemented in the U.K. will be so intense that whatever party wins this election will be out of power for a generation.

    Austerity measures in the U.K.?

    Not only that, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is publicly saying that United States citizens will soon have to make difficult choices between higher taxes and reduced social spending.

    Why all of a sudden do nations all over the world have to implement austerity measures?  Why all of a sudden are we all being told that we are going to have to tighten our belts?

    Well, unless all of this was planned of course.

    And that is exactly what some out there are claiming is happening.  There is a belief by many that the financial powers of the world are going to create a world economic crisis (the problem) so that when everyone cries out for help (the reaction) they will be there with the solution they wish to propose (perhaps a world currency or increased global governance).

    In fact, Pastor Lindsey Williams even claims that an individual who is from these elite circles has told him exactly what is coming.  If you have never heard of Lindsey Williams you should really check out the video posted below.  He was the one (based on inside information from his source) who correctly predicted a couple years ago that oil would go down to 50 dollars a barrel when at the time it was pushing up into record territory.  When oil did in fact plunge down to 50 dollars a barrel people were not laughing at him anymore.  Now, the same source has told him that a massive economic downturn is planned over the next couple of years….

    So is Lindsey Williams right?

    As with so many things, time will tell.

    But when top banking officials all over the world start talking about “austerity measures” and the need to tighten our belts, it is best to start paying attention.

    We are moving into a time of extreme economic uncertainty.  To the folks that play around with hundreds of billions of dollars, you are nothing more than a pawn on a chessboard.  If you believe that “things are always going to be good” and that the people with real power in this world honestly care about you then you are going to end up in a whole lot of trouble.

    Now is the time to prepare while there is still time.  Someday when the U.S. economy does completely collapse and you have done nothing to prepare it will be far too late.

    Watch Downton Abbey

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