All Of A Sudden, Fish Are Dying By The MILLIONS All Over The Planet

Fish Deaths - Public DomainWhy are millions upon millions of dead sea creatures suddenly washing up on beaches all over the world?  It is certainly not unusual for fish and other inhabitants of our oceans to die.  This happens all the time.  But over the past month we have seen a series of extremely alarming mass death incidents all over the planet.  As you will see below, many of these mass death incidents have involved more than 30 tons of fish.  In places such as Chile and Vietnam, it has already gotten to the level where it has started to become a major national crisis.  People see their coastlines absolutely buried in dead sea creatures, and they are starting to freak out.

For example, just check out what is going on in Chile right now.  The following comes from a Smithsonian Magazine article entitled “Why Are Chilean Beaches Covered With Dead Animals?“…

Compared to other countries, Chile is almost all coast, and that geographical fluke means that the country is known for its beautiful beaches. But that reputation may be on the wane thanks to a new sight on Chilean shores: dead animals. Lots of them. Heaps of them, in fact. As Giovanna Fleitas reports for the Agence France-Presse, the South American country’s beaches are covered with piles of dead sea creatures—and scientists are trying to figure out why.

Tales of dead animals washing up on shore are relatively common; after all, the ocean has a weird way of depositing its dead on shore. But Chile’s problem is getting slightly out of hand. As Fleitas writes, recent months have not been kind to the Chilean coast, which has played host to washed-up carcasses of over 300 whales, 8,000 tons of sardines, and nearly 12 percent of the country’s annual salmon catch, to name a few.

Authorities in Chile are scrambling to come up with a reason for why this is happening, but nobody appears to be quite sure what is causing this tsunami of death.

In Vietnam, things are even worse.  At this point, so many dead fish and clams have been washing up along the coast that soldiers have been deployed to bury them

Millions of fish have washed up dead along a 125-kilometre stretch of the Vietnamese coast in one of the communist country’s worst environmental disasters.

Soldiers have been deployed to bury tonnes of fish, clams and the occasional whale that began dying in early April along the north-central coast, including some popular tourist beaches.

Vietnamese officials facing growing anger over the disaster have not announced the official cause of the deaths, which have affected the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families.

Elsewhere in Asia, there have been similar incidents.  For example, CNN is reporting that one lake in southern China is currently dealing with 35 tons of dead fish…

At least 35 tons of dead fish appeared in a lake in southern China, leaving residents stunned.

The piles of fish washed up in a lake in Hainan province on Wednesday, Chinese state media reported.

Residents expressed concerns on pollution, but local authorities said the fish died as a result of salinity change.

On the other side of the world, similar incidents have also happened in major lakes.  Here is one example from Bolivia

Thousands of dead fish have washed up onto the shores of a lake in Bolivia.

Just before they died, some of the fish had just hatched from their eggs in lake Alalay, in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba.

No one yet knows the number of dead fish, but they have stockpiled five cubic metres (177 cubic feet) so far, so it’s possible there is over a tonne of dead fish in the lake.

And here is an example from Brazil

More than 200 tons of dead fish were removed from the Furnas Lake on Sunday (1st) in Alfenas (MG). According to the Military Police of the Environment, both fish raised in ponds, networks and those who are released, all of the tilapia species in the lake were affected. The damage to the psicultores is estimated at around R $ 900 thousand.

I could go on and on all day with examples such as these.

Just within the last month, 40 tons of fish died in India, 65 tons of fish died in Cambodia, 70 tons of fish died in Colombia, and millions of fish “suddenly died” in Indonesia.

So why is this happening?

I don’t know.

Could it be possible that these mass deaths are somehow related to the alarming earth changes that we see happening all around us?

Without a doubt, we have seen a dramatic rise in seismic activity during the early portions of 2016.  There has been a series of very destructive earthquakes around the world in recent months, and once dormant volcanoes are coming to life all over the globe with distressing regularity.

Of course humanity has done much to destroy the planet as well, and we continue to deal with the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  I do think that it is very interesting to note that most of these mass fish deaths have happened in nations that border the Pacific Ocean.

I am certainly not claiming to have an answer for why so many fish are dying.  All I know is that millions upon millions of dead fish are washing up on shores all over the globe, and people are really starting to freak out about this.

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and major disasters seem to be getting more frequent and more intense.  Just look at what is happening up in Alberta right now.

I believe that we are entering the “perfect storm” that myself and so many others have been warning about for so long.

Or could it be possible that I am just being overly dramatic?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

Violent Shaking Along The Ring Of Fire Continues A Progression Of Disasters That Began In September

The Ring Of Fire - Photo from WikipediaHave you noticed that seismic activity along the Ring of Fire appears to be dramatically increasing?  According to Volcano Discovery, 39 volcanoes around the world have recently erupted, and 32 of them are associated with the Ring of Fire.  This includes Mt. Popocatepetl which sits only about 50 miles away from Mexico City’s 18 million inhabitants.  If you are not familiar with the Ring of Fire, it is an area roughly shaped like a horseshoe that runs along the outer perimeter of the Pacific Ocean.  Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 75 percent of all volcanic eruptions occur along the Ring of Fire.  Just within the last 24 hours, we have witnessed a 4.4, a 5.4 and a 5.7 earthquake in Alaska, a 6.8 earthquake in Chile and 20 earthquakes in Indonesia of at least magnitude 4.3.  And as you will see below, this violent shaking along the Ring of Fire seems to continue a progression of major disasters that began back during the month of September.

For whatever reason, our planet suddenly seems to be waking up.  Unfortunately, the west coast of the United States is one of the areas where this is being felt the most.  The little city of San Ramon, California is about 45 miles east of San Francisco, and over the past several weeks it has experienced a record-breaking 583 earthquakes

A total of 583 small earthquakes have shaken San Ramon, California, in the last three weeks or so – more than five times the record set 12 years ago, according to the latest US Geological Survey updates.

“It’s the swarm with the largest number of total earthquakes in San Ramon,” said USGS scientist David Schwartz, who is more concerned about the size of quakes than he is the total number of them. Still, the number tops the previous record set in 2003, when 120 earthquakes hit over 31 days, with the largest clocking in at a magnitude of 4.2.

Could this be a prelude to a major seismic event in California?

We shall see what happens.

Meanwhile, records are being shattered in the middle part of the country as well.

For instance, the state of Oklahoma has already set a brand new yearly record for earthquakes

The state recorded its 587th earthquake of 3.0 magnitude or higher early this week, breaking the previous record of 585. That record was set for all of 2014, meaning that Oklahoma has now had more 3.0 magnitude or higher earthquakes so far in 2015 than it did in all of 2014. So far this year, E&E News reports, Oklahoma’s averaged 2.5 quakes each day, a rate that, if it continues, means the state could see more than 912 earthquakes by the end of this year.

Oklahoma has also experienced 21 4.0 magnitude or greater earthquakes so far this year — an increase over last year, which saw 14.

And just over this past weekend there was a very disturbing series of earthquakes in the state

Starting with a magnitude-4.1 temblor at 5:11 a.m. close to the Oklahoma-Kansas border, the region experienced a series of six earthquakes within a 75-minute period Saturday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website.

The largest earthquake Saturday morning was the 4.1, which had an epicenter nine miles northwest of Medford, Okla., 59 miles southwest of Wichita.

That was followed by five more quakes near Medford with magnitudes of 2.5, 2.8, 2.5, 3.1 and 2.9 – the last of which came at 6:24 a.m.

A seventh earthquake – this one a magnitude-4.2 temblor – was recorded at 12:29 p.m., 10 miles north-northwest of Medford.

So why aren’t more Americans alarmed that these records are being broken?

We are seeing things that we have never seen before, and I believe that it will soon get even worse.

And this dramatic increase in seismic activity that we are now seeing appears to fit into a larger pattern of major disasters that we have been witnessing over the past couple of months.

As we approached the end of the summer, all of a sudden massive wildfires erupted all across the western third of the country.  According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the only time in U.S. history when wildfires had burned more acres by the end of October was during the record-setting year of 2006.

In 2015, a lot of these wildfires have really been threatening highly populated areas.  I know, because at one point a major fire came within about 10 miles of my own house.  Since the beginning of August, Barack Obama has made an astounding 25 disaster declarations related to fires, and by the end of September the horrible fires that were threatening key areas of the state of California were making headlines all over the world.

Then as we got to the very end of the month of September, a new kind of disaster began to take center stage.  As I wrote about just recently, the storm that would later became known as Hurricane Joaquin developed into a tropical depression on September 28th.

Even though that hurricane never made landfall in the United States, moisture from that storm caused a tremendous amount of chaos along the east coast.

The governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, said that it was the most rain that some areas of her state had witnessed “in a thousand years”, and it is being projected that the economic damage that was done by all of the flooding “will probably be in the billions of dollars”.

Shortly after the flooding in South Carolina, a massive storm dumped an enormous amount of rain on southern California.  Because that area had been experiencing severe drought for so long, all of that rain caused tremendous flooding and massive mudslides.  Rivers of mud literally several feet thick completely stopped traffic along many major roads across the region.  If you got caught in those rivers of mud, you were lucky to get out with your life.  In fact, authorities pulled one dead man out of a vehicle that got completely buried by mud several days after the storms had passed.  It took them that long to finally get to him.

The middle of the country was not spared either.  Hurricane Patricia ended up being one of the strongest hurricanes ever measured, and the remnants of that storm dumped an incredible amount of rain on the state of Texas.  There was so much flooding that a train was literally knocked off the tracks by the water.  And about a week after that there was more flooding in the state that caused at least six deaths.

Overall, it has really been a bad couple of months for major disasters, and this sequence of events seems to have begun during the month of September.

So what should we make of all this?  Please feel free to add your voice to the discussion by posting a comment below…

Obama’s Secret Treaty Would Be The Most Important Step Toward A One World Economic System

Barack Obama behind Resolute Desk in the Oval Office - Public DomainBarack Obama is secretly negotiating the largest international trade agreement in history, and the mainstream media in the United States is almost completely ignoring it.  If this treaty is adopted, it will be the most important step toward a one world economic system that we have ever seen.  The name of this treaty is “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and the text of the treaty is so closely guarded that not even members of Congress know what is in it.  Right now, there are 12 countries that are part of the negotiations: the United States, Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.  These nations have a combined population of 792 million people and account for an astounding 40 percent of the global economy.  And it is hoped that the EU, China and India will eventually join as well.  This is potentially the most dangerous economic treaty of our lifetimes, and yet there is very little political debate about it in this country.

Even though Congress is not being allowed to see what is in the treaty, Barack Obama wants Congress to give him fast track negotiating authority.  What that means is that Congress would essentially trust Obama to negotiate a good treaty for us.  Congress could vote the treaty up or down, but would not be able to amend or filibuster it.

Of course now the Republicans control both houses of Congress.  If they are foolish enough to blindly give Barack Obama so much power, they should all immediately resign.

And it is critical that people understand that this is not just an economic treaty.  It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress.  Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has deeply wanted for years are in this treaty.  If adopted, this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare, copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more.  This treaty includes many of the rules that alarmed Internet activists so much when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all “Buy American” laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.

In other words, it is the treaty from hell.

In addition to imposing Obama’s vision for the world on 40 percent of the global population, it is also being described as a “Christmas wish-list for major corporations”.  Of the 29 chapters in the treaty, only five of them actually deal with economic issues.  The rest of the treaty deals with a whole host of other issues of great importance to the global elite.

The following list of issues addressed by this treaty is from a Malaysian news source

• domestic court decisions and international legal standards (e.g., overriding domestic laws on both trade and nontrade matters, foreign investors’ right to sue governments in international tribunals that would overrule the national sovereignty)

• environmental regulations (e.g., nuclear energy, pollution, sustainability)

• financial deregulation (e.g., more power and privileges to the bankers and financiers)

• food safety (e.g., lowering food self-sufficiency, prohibition of mandatory labeling of genetically modified products, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease)

• Government procurement (e.g., no more buy locally produced/grown)

• Internet freedom (e.g., monitoring and policing user activity)

• labour (e.g., welfare regulation, workplace safety, relocating domestic jobs abroad)

• patent protection, copyrights (e.g., decrease access to affordable medicine)

• public access to essential services may be restricted due to investment rules (e.g., water, electricity, and gas)

Why can’t we get this type of reporting in the United States?

And if this treaty is ultimately approved by Congress, we will essentially be stuck with it forever.

This treaty is written in such a way that the United States will be permanently bound by all of the provisions and will never be able to alter them unless all of the other countries agree.

Are you starting to understand why this treaty is so dangerous?

This treaty is the key to Obama’s “legacy”.  He wants to impose his will upon 40 percent of the global population in a way that will never be able to be overturned.

Of course Obama is touting this treaty as the path to economic recovery.  He promises that it will greatly increase global trade, decrease tariffs and create more jobs for American workers.

But instead, it would be a major step toward destroying what is left of the U.S. economy.

Over the past several decades, every time a major trade agreement has been signed we have seen even more good jobs leave the United States.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this is happening.  If corporations can move jobs to the other side of the planet to nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, they will make larger profits.

Just think about it.  If you were running a corporation and you had the choice of paying workers ten dollars an hour or one dollar an hour, which would you choose?

Plus there are so many other costs, taxes and paperwork hassles when you deal with American workers.  For example, big corporations will not have to provide Obamacare for their foreign workers.  That alone will represent a huge savings.

Any basic course in economics will teach you that labor flows from markets where labor costs are high to markets where labor costs are lower.  And at this point it costs less to make almost everything overseas.  As a result, we have already lost millions upon millions of good jobs, and countless small and mid-size U.S. companies have been forced to shut down because they cannot compete with foreign manufacturers.

Later this month, consumers will flock to retail stores for “Black Friday” deals.  But if you look carefully at those products, you will find that almost all of them are made overseas.  We buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us, and that is a recipe for national economic suicide.

We consume far more wealth that we produce, and anyone with half a brain can see that is not sustainable in the long run.  The only way that we have been able to maintain our high standard of living is by going into insane amounts of debt.  We are currently living in the largest debt bubble in the history of the planet, and at some point the party is going to end.

Please share this article with as many people as you can.  We need to inform people about what Obama is trying to do.

If Obama is successful in ramming this secret treaty through, it is going to do incalculable damage to what is left of the once great U.S. economy.

Are We On The Verge Of A Massive Emerging Markets Currency Collapse?

Currency CollapseThis time, the Federal Reserve has created a truly global problem.  A big chunk of the trillions of dollars that it pumped into the financial system over the past several years has flowed into emerging markets.  But now that the Fed has decided to begin “the taper”, investors see it as a sign to pull the “hot money” out of emerging markets as rapidly as possible.  This is causing currencies to collapse and interest rates to soar all over the planet.  Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, Ukraine, Chile, Indonesia, Venezuela, India, Brazil, Taiwan and Malaysia are just some of the emerging markets that have been hit hard so far.  In fact, last week emerging market currencies experienced the biggest decline that we have seen since the financial crisis of 2008.  And all of this chaos in emerging markets is seriously spooking Wall Street as well.  The Dow has fallen nearly 500 points over the last two trading sessions alone.  If the Federal Reserve opts to taper even more in the coming days, this currency crisis could rapidly turn into a complete and total currency collapse.

A lot of Americans have always assumed that the U.S. dollar would be the first currency to collapse when the next great financial crisis happens.  But actually, right now just the opposite is happening and it is causing chaos all over the planet.

For instance, just check out what is happening in Turkey according to a recent report in the New York Times

Turkey’s currency fell to a record low against the dollar on Friday, a drop that will hit the purchasing power of everyone in the country.

On a street corner in Istanbul, Yilmaz Gok, 51, said, “I’m a retiree making ends meet on a small pension and all I care about is a possible increase in prices.”

“I will need to cut further,” he said. “Maybe I should use my natural gas heater less.”

As inflation escalates and interest rates soar in these countries, ordinary citizens are going to feel the squeeze.  Just having enough money to purchase the basics is going to become more difficult.

And this is not just limited to a few countries.  What we are watching right now is truly a global phenomenon

“You’ve had a massive selloff in these emerging-market currencies,” Nick Xanders, a London-based equity strategist at BTIG Ltd., said by telephone. “Ruble, rupee, real, rand: they’ve all fallen and the main cause has been tapering. A lot of companies that have benefited from emerging-markets growth are now seeing it go the other way.”

So why is this happening?  Well, there are a number of factors involved of course.  However, as with so many of our other problems, the actions of the Federal Reserve are at the very heart of this crisis.  A recent USA Today article described how the Fed helped create this massive bubble in the emerging markets…

Emerging markets are the future growth engine of the global economy and an important source of profits for U.S. companies. These developing economies were both recipients and beneficiaries of massive cash inflows the past few years as investors sought out bigger returns fostered by injections of cheap cash from the Federal Reserve and other central bankers.

But now that the Fed has started to dial back its stimulus, many investors are yanking their cash out of emerging markets and bringing the cash back to more stable markets and economies, such as the U.S., hurting the developing nations in the process, explains Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist at BlackRock.

“Emerging markets need the hot money but capital is exiting now,” says Koesterich. “What you have is people saying, ‘I don’t want to own emerging markets.'”

What we are potentially facing is the bursting of a financial bubble on a global scale.  Just check out what Egon von Greyerz, the founder of Matterhorn Asset Management in Switzerland, recently had to say…

If you take the Turkish lira, that plunged to new lows this week, and the Russian ruble is at the lowest level in 5 years. In South Africa, the rand is at the weakest since 2008. The currencies are also weak in Brazil and Mexico. But there are many other countries whose situation is extremely dire, like India, Indonesia, Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine, and Venezuela.

I’m mentioning these countries individually just to stress that this situation is extremely serious. It is also on a massive scale. In virtually all of these countries currencies are plunging and so are bonds, which is leading to much higher interest rates. And the cost of credit-default swaps in these countries is surging due to the increased credit risks.

And many smaller nations are being deeply affected already as well.

For example, most Americans cannot even find Liberia on a map, but right now the actions of our Federal Reserve have pushed the currency of that small nation to the verge of collapse

Liberia’s finance minister warned against panic today after being summoned to parliament to explain a crash in the value of Liberia’s currency against the US dollar.

“Let’s be careful about what we say about the economy. Inflation, ladies and gentlemen, is not out of control,” Amara Konneh told lawmakers, while adding that the government was “concerned” about the trend.

Closer to home, the Mexican peso tumbled quite a bit last week and is now beginning to show significant weakness.  If Mexico experiences a currency collapse, that would be a huge blow to the U.S. economy.

Like I said, this is something that is happening on a global scale.

If this continues, we will eventually see looting, violence, blackouts, shortages of basic supplies, and runs on the banks in emerging markets all over the planet just like we are already witnessing in Argentina and Venezuela.

Hopefully something can be done to stop this from happening.  But once a bubble starts to burst, it is really difficult to try to hold it together.

Meanwhile, I find it to be very “interesting” that last week we witnessed the largest withdrawal from JPMorgan’s gold vault ever recorded.

Was someone anticipating something?

Once again, hopefully this crisis will be contained shortly.  But if the Fed announces that it has decided to taper some more, that is going to be a signal to investors that they should race for the exits and the crisis in the emerging markets will get a whole lot worse.

And if you listen carefully, global officials are telling us that is precisely what we should expect.  For example, consider the following statement from the finance minister of Mexico

“We expected this year to be a volatile year for EM as the Fed tapers,” Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray said, adding that volatility “will happen throughout the year as tapering goes on”.

Yes indeed – it is looking like this is going to be a very volatile year.

I hope that you are ready for what is coming next.

Wheelbarrow of Money

Obama’s Super Secret Treaty Which Will Push The Deindustrialization Of America Into Overdrive

Barack Obama With His Hand On The Resolute DeskDid you know that Barack Obama has been secretly negotiating the most important trade agreement since the formation of the World Trade Organization?  Did you know that this agreement will impose very strict Internet copyright rules, ban all “Buy American” laws, give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and force even more domestic manufacturing offshore?  If you have not heard about this treaty, don’t feel bad.  Obama has refused to even give Congress a copy of the draft agreement and he has banned members of Congress from attending the negotiations.  The plan is to keep this treaty secret until the very last minute and then to railroad it through Congress and have it signed into law by October.  The treaty is known as “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and the nations that are reported to be involved in the development of this treaty include the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.  Opponents of this treaty refer to it as “the NAFTA of the Pacific”, and if it is enacted it will push the deindustrialization of America into overdrive.

The “one world” economic agenda that Barack Obama has been pushing is absolutely killing the U.S. economy.  As you will see later in this article, we are losing jobs and businesses at an astounding pace.  And each new “free trade” agreement makes things even worse.

For example, just check out the impact that the recent free trade agreement that Obama negotiated with South Korea is having on us

  • A 10 percent decline of U.S. exports to Korea
  • The U.S. trade deficit with Korea has climbed 37 percent
  • U.S. auto industry has been crippled
  • Loss of U.S. control where international trade, banking and finance is concerned
  • A projected 159,000 jobs will be lost

Wait a second – I though that “free trade” agreements were actually supposed to increase exports.

So why have they declined by 10 percent?

Did someone make a really bad deal?

And of course we have all seen the economic devastation that NAFTA has wrought.

When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States actually had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars.  By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.

And “free trade” with China has turned out to be a complete and total nightmare as well.

Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year.

In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars.  That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

But instead of learning from the mistakes of the past, Barack Obama is pressing for more “free trade” agreements.

The New York Times is calling the Trans-Pacific Partnership “the most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995“.  It is reportedly going to include a whole host of provisions which would never be able to get through Congress on their own.  Even though this treaty will affect all of our daily lives, the Obama administration is keeping this treaty a total secret.  In fact, Obama won’t even show it to Congress even though members of Congress have asked repeatedly to see it…

The agreement, under negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom. It would include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more to join. President Obama has said he wants to sign it by October.

Although Congress has exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of trade, so far the executive branch has managed to resist repeated requests by members of Congress to see the text of the draft agreement and has denied requests from members to attend negotiations as observers — reversing past practice.

While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released.

So exactly who in the world does this guy think that he is?  Why won’t Obama let us know exactly what is in this treaty?

Fortunately, there have been a few leaks.  One thing that we have discovered is that this new treaty would reportedly ban all “Buy American laws“.

That certainly would not be popular if it got out.

And do you remember SOPA?

The American people wanted nothing to do with the very strict Internet copyright provisions of SOPA and loudly expressed their displeasure to members of Congress.

Unfortunately, now the provisions of SOPA are back.  It is being reported that most of the provisions of SOPA have been quietly inserted into this treaty.  If this treaty is enacted, those provisions will become law and the American people will not be able to do anything about it.

And according to the New York Times, there are all sorts of other disturbing things that have been slipped into the treaty…

And yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in Nafta — a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy.

The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.

Are you starting to understand why the Obama administration is keeping this treaty such a secret?

If the details of this treaty were revealed to the American people right now, it would create such an uproar that Congress would never approve this treaty.

So please share this article with as many people as you can.  We have got to get the American people educated about this.

Enough damage has already been done to the U.S. economy by “free trade” agreements.  Just consider the following statistics…

-The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

-Back in the year 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing.  Now there are less than 12 million.

-There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.

-According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

-According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

-Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.

-Without enough good jobs, more Americans are becoming dependent on the government.  If you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps has gone from about 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.

-Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

And things continue to get even worse.  The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index declined to 49.0 in May.  Any reading below 50 indicates contraction.

That was the lowest reading that we have seen since June 2009.  Just like most of the rest of the world, we are rapidly heading toward another major economic downturn.

And if you want a perfect visual example of what deindustrialization is doing to America, just look at the city of Detroit.

It was once one of the greatest manufacturing cities in the history of the world, but now it is a rotting, decaying, festering hellhole.

According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit, and at this point the city is so broke that there is talk that the female giraffe at the Detroit Zoo could be sold off to help pay the bills.

For much more on how deindustrialization is ripping the guts out of the U.S. economy, please see the following articles…

1) “55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America

2) “40 Ways That China Is Beating America

3) “Show This To Anyone That Believes That ‘Things Are Getting Better’ In America

4) “10 Amazing Charts That Demonstrate The Slow, Agonizing Death Of The American Worker

5) “22 Stats That Show How The Emerging One World Economy Is Absolutely Killing American Workers

What Barack Obama is trying to do is a mind blowing mistake.

The “one world” economic agenda that he is pursuing is destroying the American worker and the American middle class.

U.S. workers are being thrown into a global labor pool with workers on the other side of the planet that live in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.

Do you want to directly compete with a worker on the other side of the globe that is doing your job for a dollar an hour with no benefits?

If not, you need to stand up and make your voice be heard.

There is no way in the world that American workers should have to compete for jobs with workers making slave labor wages in communist China.

What we desperately need are some red-blooded economic patriots to arise and to tell both political parties that we do not want this “one world” economic agenda.

So what do you think?

Will the American people wake up, or will our economy continue to lose thousands of businesses and millions of jobs?

Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…

Is Obama Negotiating A Treaty That Would Essentially Ban All “Buy American” Laws?

69 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have sent Barack Obama a letter expressing their concern that a new international treaty currently being negotiated would essentially ban all “Buy American” laws.  This new treaty is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it is going to be one of the biggest “free trade” agreements in history.  Critics are referring to it as the “NAFTA of the Pacific“, and it would likely cost the U.S. economy even more jobs than NAFTA did.  At the moment, the Trans-Pacific Partnership includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore.  Barack Obama is pushing hard to get the United States into the TPP, and Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada, Japan and South Korea are also reportedly interested in joining.  But quite a few members of Congress have heard that “Buy American” laws will essentially be banned under this agreement, and this has many of them very concerned.  You can read the entire letter that was sent to Obama right here.  Unfortunately, the leaders of both major political parties are overwhelmingly in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so the objections of these 69 members of Congress are likely to fall on deaf ears.  The Trans-Pacific Partnership will accelerate the flow of American jobs out of this country, and meanwhile our politicians will continue to insist that they are doing everything that they can to “create jobs”.

There is not much protecting American jobs these days.  The “Buy American” laws are one of the last remaining barriers that helps protect against much, much cheaper foreign labor, but now “Buy American” laws are in danger of being banned permanently as a recent article in the Huffington Post explained….

Since the 1930s, the American government has offered preferential treatment to American producers in the awarding of federal contracts. If a domestic producer offers the government a more expensive bid than a foreign producer, it can still be awarded the contract under certain circumstances, but more recent free trade agreements have granted other nations the same negotiating status as domestic firms. The Obama administration is currently pushing to grant the several nations involved in the Trans-Pacific deal the same privileged status, according to the Thursday letter.

The big problem is that foreign companies often have huge advantages over firms based in America.

In the United States, we have minimum-wage laws.  On the other side of the globe, it is legal to pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits.

In the United States, we have thousands upon thousands of laws and regulations that businesses must comply with.  On the other side of the globe, there is often very little red tape.

The truth is that “free trade” is a really bad deal for the average American worker.  In the emerging one world economic system, labor has become a global commodity and U.S. workers must now compete for jobs with people on the other side of the planet.

Since U.S. workers are often 10 to 20 times more expensive than workers on the other side of the world, there has been a massive outflow of jobs from this country.  Treaties such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will accelerate those job losses.

You would think that our politicians would notice that our formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into hellholes.

For example, the following is how James Kunstler described what he saw when he traveled through Gary, Indiana recently….

Between the ghostly remnants of factories stood a score of small cities and  neighborhoods where the immigrants settled five generations ago. A lot of it was foreclosed and shuttered. They were places of such stunning, relentless dreariness that you felt depressed just imagining how depressed the remaining denizens of these endless blocks of run-down shoebox houses must feel. Judging from the frequency of taquerias in the 1950s-vintage strip-malls, one inferred that the old Eastern European population had been lately supplanted by a new wave of Mexicans. They had inherited an infrastructure for daily life that was utterly devoid of conscious artistry when it was new, and now had the special patina of supernatural rot over it that only comes from materials not found in nature disintegrating in surprising and unexpected ways, sometimes even sublimely, like the sheen of an oil slick on water at a certain angle to the sun. There was a Chernobyl-like grandeur to it, as of the longed-for end of something enormous that hadn’t worked out well.

The economic guts of this country are being ripped to shreds right in front of our eyes.

Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.

That number is so crazy that it is hard to fully grasp.

The truth is that the “free trade” agenda of globalists such as Barack Obama is absolutely devastating our economy.

There are hundreds of statistics which prove this.  I don’t have space in this article to reproduce them all, but if you are interested in examining many of them I recommend checking out the following articles….

1) 35 Facts About The Gutting Of America’s Industrial Might That Should Make You Very Angry

2) 47 Signs That China Is Absolutely Destroying America On The Global Economic Stage

3) America Is Being Transformed From A Wealthy Nation Into A Poor Nation At Breathtaking Speed

4) 17 Facts About The Decline Of The U.S. Auto Industry That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

5) If You Are A Blue Collar Worker In America You Are An Endangered Species

6) The Worst In The World – The U.S. Balance Of Trade Is Mind-Blowingly Bad

7) Free Trade Or Fair Trade? 20 Reasons Why All Americans Should Be Against The Insane Trade Policies Of The Globalists

When you combine a market that has expensive labor with markets that have ultra-cheap labor, it is inevitable that large numbers of jobs will migrate to the areas that have the ultra-cheap labor.

This isn’t rocket science.

That is why “Buy American” laws are such a good thing.  They help to protect American jobs.

But even if you do not work in an industry where large numbers of jobs are being sent out of the country, the loss of jobs still affects you.  The millions of Americans that are being displaced from jobs that have been sent overseas end up applying for other kinds of jobs.  So they become your competition.  This increases the demand for the jobs that remain and it keeps wages down.

As I wrote about the other day, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.  Many of those jobs have been replaced by low income jobs, but you can’t support a family on a low income job.

The Obama administration tells us that the unemployment rate is going down, but the truth is that there are now almost 101 million working age Americans that do not have jobs.

Instead of looking at the “unemployment rate” which is manipulated so much, what I prefer to do is to look at the “employment rate“.  And sadly, the percentage of Americans with a job has been steadily declining.  The following are the percentages of working age Americans with a job during April during the past six years….

April 2007: 63.0%

April 2008: 62.7%

April 2009: 59.8%

April 2010: 58.7%

April 2011: 58.4%

April 2012: 58.4%

Some Americans have decided to escape the lousy job market by going back to school.  Others have decided to retire early.  Yet others have decided to become full-time dependents of the government, and a shocking number have decided to try to get on to the Social Security disability rolls.

But most Americans that are unemployed just want to get back to work.  Many suffer in complete anonymity and many never take a single penny from the government.  They just want someone to hire them so that they can put in an honest day of work for an honest day of pay once again.

Even if you still have a good job, it could be gone tomorrow.  This point was underscored by a comment that a reader identified as “DaytoDay” left on a recent article….

Well, I can relate to this, I just lost my job Tuesday. I worked for Uhaul and on the DAY that I became eligible for my benefits and 401k they canned me, exactly 90 days.

So, it’s just another reminder that those who work for corporations are nothing more than numbers. It’s sad reality, they don’t care if you have a family to feed, they don’t care about your bills, and they damn sure don’t care about quality…

I was notified while working, and was instantly let go, up until that point, there had been no warnings, no emails, no conferences, nothing… They simply fired me to avoid paying the benefits and 401k that was would have been entitled to.

And to think, this is the reward for being a good hard worker?

Other Americans are not able to find any work at all.  This is especially true for young Americans.  Millions upon millions of hard working Americans are graduating from college only to find that the “real world” can be very cruel.

For example, just check out the comment that a reader named “Simon” left on one of my recent articles….

I graduated from a top university just after the Collapse of 2008 (Class of ’09). I had already seen the number of customers at my college job go way down in that year. Got my four-year degree, had good grades, good work record. Now I live in south FL and I can’t even get a job in fast food, there is so much competition for minimum-wage jobs. No one wants to hire me to wait tables or bag groceries because I have a prestigious degree. The only thing I got out of college was 10 grand in debt, which is actually quite small (I came from a poor family, so I got a lot of free tuition to bribe me to be part of the university indoctrination). Good thing I defaulted on my loans a year or two ago or I would be in worse trouble. I just throw out all their threatening letters and never answer their calls- my friend told me it would work, and it did. Of course I’m no longer a “good citizen”- I don’t earn money, don’t pay taxes, don’t have health insurance, my credit is horrible, I’ll never buy a home or a new car—but who cares?

Millions of other Americans that have lost their jobs have been forced to take whatever they can get.  A reader identified as “Gary2” recently left a comment on one of my articles describing what his family has been through….

Check this out—I had 12 years as a good worker (regional manager level position) several promotions-steller reviews-which I kept copies of BTW) regular good pay increases heck I even saved a persons life, got a big award plack for it, pictures with everyone etc and 4 months later was downsized–no warning no thanks for helping them pass many JACHO inspections (I was a regional manager for a hospital chain) nothing. Just that we decided to outsource your entire department and that you are no longer needed.

So now I get to be grossly underemployed making 1/2 of what I used to make with NO benefits. My wife is no longer a stay at home raise the kids mom and is also working. Together we still make less than I did on my own. This sucks.

As millions upon millions of Americans suffer deeply month after month, it is creating a volcano of anger and frustration that could absolutely devastate our society at some point.  A reader identified as “Cinderella Man” left the following comment on a recent article….

If anyone thinks that almost 50 million Americans on food stamps is a sign of recovery and pardon my language but you have **** for brains. The other day I went shopping and I spent $170 on my ten bags of food and I watched a man and his daughter ring up ten packs of cheap balogna he meekly asked the clerk if those were the 10 for 10 deal and she said yes. Then the Dad said to the daughter “I hope you like it were going to be eating it till we bust!” This is what our world has come to. A man is feeding his kid trying to stretch their meager food stamp budget by eating balogna for several meals. I couldnt help but think of the movie of my namesake Cinderella Man with Russell Crowe when his wife was frying balogna for every meal back during the first Great Depression. Ive seen it all in these past 4 years. From beautiful women in souplines and ****** hotels to living in my car and watching inflation destroy all of our lives. We are all 9 meals from anarchy.

Sadly, thousands upon thousands more good jobs are being lost each and every month.

But our politicians continue to integrate us even more deeply into the emerging one world economic system.  Huge numbers of jobs will continue to leave this nation and the standard of living for most American workers will continue to decline.

So have any of you ever had your job shipped out of the country?  Feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….