Everywhere you turn these days, someone is proclaiming that the economy is improving. Barack Obama is endlessly touting the “improvement” in the economy, the mainstream media is constantly talking about “the economic recovery” and an increasing number of Americans seem to be buying into this line of thinking. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe that the economy will improve over the next year, while only 17 percent of Americans believe that it will get worse. But is the economy actually improving? Not really. At the moment things are relatively stable. Some economic statistics are improving slightly and some continue to get even worse. However, it is very important to keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons why things have stabilized is because the federal government is pumping more than a trillion dollars a year into the economy that it does not have. The Obama administration is engaging in a debt binge unlike anything America has ever seen before, and yet many economic indicators are still in decline. So what is going to happen when the federal government stops injecting gigantic waves of borrowed money into the economy? That is a frightening thing to think about. The best efforts of our “leaders” in Washington D.C. are not accomplishing a whole lot. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates as low as they can go and the federal government is spending unprecedented amounts of money. But even with the federal government and the Federal Reserve pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor, the economy is still not improving much at all. Millions upon millions of Americans out there are anticipating some sort of a “great economic recovery”, and they are going to be bitterly disappointed. (Read More...)
The Man Without A Plan
Barack Obama is a man without a plan. When you are young, they often tell you to “fake it until you make it”, but Barack Obama is taking this to ridiculous extremes. Barack Obama has absolutely no idea what he is doing when it comes to the economy, and yet he continues to give speeches in which he declares that he is the man for the job. The State of the Union speech the other night was just abysmal. The federal government is spending way too much money, and yet Barack Obama is proposing even more government spending. Entrepreneurs and small businesses are being taxed into oblivion and yet Barack Obama is proposing even higher taxes. Our economy is being strangled to death by crippling regulations, and yet Barack Obama is proposing a vast array of new regulations. Barack Obama always gives a nice speech, but it has become appallingly evident that he is totally out of ideas. So our country will continue to drift aimlessly along without a direction and without a plan until the next financial tsunami comes along and makes things even worse. (Read More...)
Are George Soros, The IMF And The World Bank Purposely Trying To Scare The Living Daylights Out Of Us?
Over the past couple of weeks, George Soros, the IMF and the World Bank have all issued incredibly chilling warnings about the possibility of an impending economic collapse. Considering the power and the influence that Soros, the IMF and the World Bank all have over the global financial system, this is very alarming. So are they purposely trying to scare the living daylights out of us? Soros is even warning of riots in the streets of America. Unfortunately, way too often top global leaders say something in public because they want to “push” events in a certain direction. Do George Soros and officials at the IMF and World Bank hope to prevent a worldwide financial collapse by making these statements, or are other agendas at work? We may never know. But one thing is for sure – many of the top financial officials in the world are using language that is downright “apocalyptic”, and that is not a good sign for the rest of 2012. (Read More...)
America After Dark: Desperate Meth Heads, Rampant Human Trafficking And Millions Of Criminal Predators Searching For A New Victim
When the sun goes down every night, America becomes a very frightening place. There are communities all over the country where drug dealing, human trafficking and gang violence have gotten so out of control that authorities don’t really know what to do about it. In America tonight, thousands of meth heads will break into homes as they desperately search for enough money for another hit. In America tonight, thousands of children will be sold for sex at truck stops and on street corners. In America tonight, millions of criminal predators will be searching for a new victim. From the top levels of the federal government all the way down to the most depraved criminals on the street, America is rotting. Once upon a time our tremendous affluence masked the moral decay that was happening in this nation, but now that the economy is falling apart the damage to the fabric of our society is being revealed. We have become a nation of addicts, junkies, thrill seekers and predators. When we finally see the U.S. economy fully collapse, millions of desperate, angry and depraved monsters will take out their sick frustrations on all the rest of us. (Read More...)
If The U.S. Government Keeps Spending Money Like This We Are Doomed And If The U.S. Government Stops Spending Money Like This We Are Doomed
If you increased your credit card spending by a couple thousand dollars per month would your lifestyle improve? Of course it would. By going into large amounts of debt, it is possible to live a lifestyle that you can’t really afford, at least for a while. But if you keep racking up huge amounts of credit card debt every single month, eventually it gets to a point where it is extremely difficult to even keep up with the minimum monthly payments and the credit card companies will not lend you any more money. Well, on a larger scale it is the same thing with government debt. Right now, the U.S. government is spending more than a trillion dollars more than it takes in every year. Even if the U.S. government spends all of that money on incredibly stupid stuff, it still gets into the pockets of ordinary Americans. In turn, those ordinary Americans use that money to pay the mortgage, buy food, shop at the mall, etc. All of this borrowing and spending by the U.S. government has created a “false prosperity” bubble that is not real. It may feel real to you right now, but it is unsustainable by definition. If the U.S. government suddenly started spending only the money that it actually brought in every year, our economy would be doomed and all of this “false prosperity” would rapidly disappear. But if the U.S. government continues to rack up debt at this pace we are doomed as well. In fact, every dollar that gets borrowed makes our eventual collapse ever worse. We are heading down the exact same road that Greece has gone. Eventually the rest of the world is not going to lend us gigantic mountains of super cheap money anymore. When the flow of cheap money stops, it can be extremely painful. Anyone that has ever seen the interest rates on their credit cards go above 20 percent knows how this feels. If we had addressed these problems as a nation a decade or two ago, perhaps we could have found a solution. But now there is no way out under our current financial system and a devastating economic collapse is on the horizon no matter what we do. (Read More...)
The Global Elite Are Hiding 18 Trillion Dollars In Offshore Banks
In recent days, the fact that Mitt Romney has millions of dollars parked down in the Cayman Islands has made headlines all over the world. But when it comes to offshore banking, what Mitt Romney is doing is small potatoes. The truth is that the global elite are hiding an almost unbelievable amount of money in offshore banks. According to shocking research done by the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks. And that figure does not even count any money being held in Switzerland. That is a staggering amount of money. Keep in mind that U.S. GDP in 2010 was only 14.58 trillion dollars. So why do the global elite go to such trouble to hide their money in offshore banks? Well, there are two main reasons. One is privacy and the other is low taxation. Privacy is a big issue for those that are involved in illegal enterprises such as drug running, but the biggest reason why people move money into offshore banks is in order to avoid taxes. Some set up bank accounts in foreign nations because they want to legally minimize their taxes and others set up bank accounts in foreign nations because they want to illegally avoid taxes. You would be absolutely amazed at what some large corporations and wealthy individuals do to get out of paying taxes. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the rest of us don’t have the resources or the knowledge to play these games, so we get taxed into oblivion. (Read More...)
17 Facts About The Decline Of The U.S. Auto Industry That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe
Very few things illustrate how dramatically America has been deindustrialized than the stunning decline of the U.S. auto industry. Once upon a time, the United States literally taught the rest of the world how to make cars. We were the ones that invented the assembly line. We were the ones that showed the rest of the world what mass production could do for an economy. For decades, we produced more cars than anyone else and we sold more cars than anyone else. Detroit was known as “the Motor City” and our manufacturing prowess dominated the planet. But now all of that has changed. Japan makes far more vehicles than we do today. So does Germany. As you read this, state of the art production facilities are going up all over China. Meanwhile, the U.S. auto industry continues to rot and thousands upon thousands of good automotive jobs continue to leave our shores. The rest of the world is making cars better than we are, they are making them cheaper than we are and they really don’t care that many of our formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into rotting, stinking hellholes. The U.S. auto industry was once a symbol of American dominance, but now it is just a symbol of American decline. If we want to remain a great nation, then we need to start becoming great at making things once again. (Read More...)
Warning Signs That We Should Prepare For The Worst
The warning signs are all around us. All we have to do is open up our eyes and look at them. Almost every single day there are more prominent voices in the financial world telling us that a massive economic crisis is coming and that we need to prepare for the worst. On Wednesday, it was the World Bank itself that issued a very chilling warning. In an absolutely startling report, the World Bank revised GDP growth estimates for 2012 downward very sharply, warned that Europe could be on the verge of a devastating financial crisis, and declared that the rest of the world better “prepare for the worst.” You would expect to hear this kind of thing on The Economic Collapse Blog, but this is not the kind of language that you would normally expect to hear from the stuffed suits at the World Bank. Obviously things have gotten bad enough that nobody is even really trying to deny it anymore. Andrew Burns, the lead author of the report, said that if the sovereign debt crisis gets even worse we could be looking at an economic crisis that could be even worse than the last one: “An escalation of the crisis would spare no-one. Developed- and developing-country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008/09.” Burns also stated that the “importance of contingency planning cannot be stressed enough.” In other words, Burns is saying that it is time to prepare for the worst. So are you ready? (Read More...)