Debt

12 More Signs That Society Is Collapsing

What we are now witnessing is the slow motion unraveling of America.  Our economy is dying, the American people have lost faith in the government and in almost all of our other major institutions, and our society is collapsing.  Most Americans don’t understand why all of this is happening, but most of them do realize that something has fundamentally changed.  Earlier this year, McDonald’s held a “National Hiring Day” and a million Americans showed up to apply for jobs.  Only 62,000 of them were hired.  That means only 6.2% of the applicants got jobs.  So what are we supposed to tell the 93.8% that didn’t get hired?  Are they supposed to have any hope for the future when they can’t even get a minimum wage job at McDonald’s?  When I was a teenager, I went over to McDonald’s one day, filled out an application and was instantly hired.  My, how things have changed.  Now we have millions upon millions of young people that are staring directly into a very bleak future.  The level of frustration in this country is rising to frightening levels and large numbers of people are already showing that they will stoop to anything in order to survive.

In a recent article entitled “18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating” I focused primarily on the chaos that has been erupting in many of our urban areas.  But the truth is that, as you will see below, there are signs that society is collapsing coming out of very rural areas as well.  This phenomenon cannot just be pinned down to one area of the country or to one group of people.  From coast to coast people are already starting to lose it and the economic collapse has only just begun.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that what we are experiencing right now is rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming down the road.

So if people will behave this wildly now, what is our society going to look like someday when there are millions of Americans that have not had anything to eat for several days?

That is something to think about.

History has shown us that when people are really, really hungry they will do just about anything.

But right now we are not even close to that point and yet people all across America are going crazy.

The following are 12 more signs that society is collapsing….

#1 In my previous article, I detailed how the “mob robbery” phenomenon in Chicago is spinning wildly out of control.  Well, just this morning, the brother of Billy Corgan (the front man for the Smashing Pumpkins) was mugged and had his iPod stolen by a mob of teens while he was riding a Red Line train in Chicago.

Things have gotten so bad that now even The Wall Street Journal is taking notice of the rash of “mob robberies” that have been happening in Chicago.  The following is how a new article in the Journal described one of the recent attacks….

In another incident last Saturday evening, Krzysztof Wilkowski, after shopping on Michigan Avenue, was sitting on his scooter a couple of blocks away checking his phone for a restaurant when he got whacked in the face with a baseball.

At first, he said, he thought it was a prank, but then he looked up and saw 15 to 20 young men approaching. “My first reaction was, ‘I’m about to get robbed, what do I do?’ ” Mr. Wilkowski recalled in an interview.

The 34-year-old insurance company employee from a Chicago suburb grabbed the keys from his ignition and held tight to his phone. A few of the attackers dragged him off his scooter and pulled him onto Chicago Avenue where they punched him, hit him with his helmet and tried to grab his phone.

#2 Sadly, “mob robberies” are not just happening in Chicago.  The following is a video of a mob robbery that took place in Stockton, California….

This next video is an Associated Press video report about how police have become extremely concerned about the “flash mobs” that have been plaguing Philadelphia lately…..

This is a very, very disturbing trend.  Once these videos go up on YouTube, other groups of young people “copycat” them all over the country.

The next 10 signs are from some of my readers.  In response to my previous article that discussed how society is collapsing, a number of people left comments that described what is happening in their particular areas.  Sometimes so many dozens of comments get left that some real gems get overlooked.  The following is a sampling of what my readers have been sharing about how society is collapsing where they live….

#3 Golden Child (Third Richest County In America):

About a month ago I was robbed in broad daylight walking to the store on a picture perfect 75 degree sunny day at 1 PM by two high school dropout teenagers on the path in my nice suburban town which is located in third richest county in America! A few months before that I was beaten unconscious by random drunk young people on the path near my home that I woke up in the hospital getting stitches in my face. This will be one dangerous summer for places all across America.

#4 Chris (Fargo, North Dakota):

I live in Fargo,ND and we have been having a rash of crime lately. In the past 6 months we have had multiple gas station robberies, bank robberies, and the latest, a shooting at one of our three movie theaters.

#5 Sue (Ogden, Utah):

I am a teacher in Ogden, Utah and this last winter I had a second grade student tell me that if I didn’t tell him how old I was that he was going to “shoot me in the back of my head.” He was suspended from school because that is a threat of violence, but nothing changed. His parents are active gang members.

#6 Heather (Columbus, Ohio):

I live close enough to Columbus, OH to follow the news there. (Thankfully far enough away not to be regularly affected by it.) Every day there is a new report of a violent crime. I believe we are up to 70 or so murders on the year. 10 years ago this wasn’t the case. I could (and did) walk into the worst part of the city and be safe as long as I was vigilant. I wouldn’t try that for the world now. I used to be a bank teller there and there’d be maybe 1 robbery a month throughout the city. It’s at least one a week now, probably more than that. And it’s no longer the downtown banks that are getting robbed–it’s the suburban ones.

#7 The Baroness (Atlanta):

I live in Atlanta Georgia. Everyday there are signs. Today’s headlines are: Babysitter kills toddler, 2 shot outside teen party, Brick thrown from I-75 overpass and several more.

#8 Gas Panic (Unknown):

The first, a 21 year old pizza delivery girl who was held with a knife to her throat while making a delivery. They took all the money she had on her and even took the time to search her car! The second was a 30 year old woman who told me she was walking down the street and was solicited by a pimp telling her she could “make good money”. After she told him to get lost, he stabbed her in the back of the arm. She needed over twenty stitches and showed me the wound.

#9 NS (Fairbanks, Alaska):

Even in Fairbanks, Alaska, there has been similar “mob robbing” going on. Yes, it is spreading everywhere.

#10 Katherine (Unknown):

I’ve also seen a huge increase in theft, vandalism, sexual assault, and violence just in the past couple of years. This is in a city that used to make the list in top places to live in the U.S. year after year.

#11 Doktryn (Richmond, California):

I live in Richmond California aka the city with the 2nd highest murder rate next to New Orleans, aka the city where the probability of you being killed is 5x higher. It is getting very serious out here, and luckily I don’t live in the rough part, however I go to the rough part to try to witness and preach. People are walking zombies. At any point their lives can be taken but the fact is, this is all they know. It is completely hopeless and when you wrote about “American Hellholes” I live in one. Richmond, CA is a post-industrial warzone. I work in the manufacturing industry, and I got here not long ago, but if you just drive through the city, the boarded up homes and abandoned warehouses tell the tale of how a deindustrialized city quickly turns to a battlefield.

#12 IWillSurvive (Rural America):

In my area we have been able to sleep well enough and always known our neighbors – up until a few months ago I did not lock my cars or my home most of the time – there was no need. That has changed, neighbors are now siphoning gas out of cars from desperation, and stealing scrap lumber, metal, livestock, produce and anything else they can get their hands on to sell or eat. Over the last year or so the police departments of some areas have started taking these seriously and actually investigated and caught a few. They are sometimes groups of people working together to amass resources to sell. We now keep a vigilant eye on our little flock of chickens and we have a colony of rabbits as well. We no longer “free range” them on our property at all – the risk of theft is too high if others know we have them. We keep any resources away from the road on the back side of our property – we also keep two German Shepherd Dogs for guarding our property. Living in the country is NOT what it used to be.

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Sadly, this is just the beginning.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

As the economy collapses, the chaos is going to get a lot worse.

I wish that wasn’t true, but this is the world we live in now.

The recent article I did about the “economic hell” that American families are going through right now got a huge response, but honestly what we are experiencing right now is not even worth comparing to how nightmarish things are going to be when our economic system fully collapses.

We have been on the biggest debt binge that the world has ever seen.  Our debt-fueled prosperity has enabled us to enjoy an unprecedented standard of living.  But the largest debt bubble in the history of the world is going to pop, and when it does the party is going to be over.

You better get ready.

18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating

As the U.S. economy collapses, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is going to begin to disappear.  In fact, there are already an increasing number of signs that the collapse of society is accelerating.  In cities such as Chicago, roving packs of young people are “mob robbing” local businesses, randomly assaulting tourists and shoppers and are even pulling people out of vehicles.  This isn’t just happening in the “bad areas” anymore. Over the past couple of months this type of crime has been common in some of the wealthiest areas of Chicago.  In fact, many Chicago residents are now referring to “the Magnificent Mile” as “the Mug Mile”.  But it isn’t just in Chicago that this is happening.  During this past Memorial Day weekend, cities all over the United States experienced a stunning wave of mass violence.  We are supposed to be an “example” for the rest of the world, but as our economic wealth crumbles we are witnessing the collapse of society all around us.  So what is going to happen when the economy gets even worse?

The United States used to be a fairly civilized society.  But now very few people seem to care how they treat others.  That is even the case with our own government.  As you will see below, the government is now sending SWAT teams in and dragging people out of their homes over unpaid student loans.

So if the government is going to be so brutal, what kind of message does that send to our young people?

Today our young people are facing a future that looks incredibly bleak.  It is hard to have faith in the “system” when the “system” simply does not work any longer.

What are you supposed to say to a young person when you know very well that there are no jobs and that there is very little hope?

Most Americans don’t understand what is causing the collapse of the economy, but most of them do have a sinking feeling that something has seriously gone wrong.

For the last few years the American people have waited patiently for our politicians to “fix things”, but they have not gotten the job done.

Instead, our economic situation is still declining.

So now frustration is starting to boil over, and it is only going to get worse.

The following are 18 signs that the collapse of society is accelerating….

#1 In a brand new article, Janet Tavakoli has vividly described the wave of shocking violence that is currently sweeping the city of Chicago.  What she says is happening to Chicago right now is beyond alarming….

This year, all hell has broken loose in downtown Chicago. Years of under-hiring have resulted in a police force that is unprepared for wildings and gang violence. Moreover, concealed carry in Chicago is illegal, unless one follows the Constitution.

Tourists and residents have been attacked by mobs of youths on buses, on beaches, on bicycle paths, near the shops of the Magnificent Mile, and outside their homes. Mobs of shoplifters plagued “Mug Mile” stores.

Terror has descended on many of the wealthiest areas of Chicago.  Some are even calling on Chicago residents to completely avoid areas like the Magnificent Mile during the weekends until more police are brought in.

Mobs of young people are “swarming” retail stores, assaulting shoppers and pedestrians and even pulling people out of their cars.

The following is one eyewitness account of the “wildings” in Chicago that Tavakoli included in her recent article….

At about 11pm last Friday night, June 3rd, I heard shouting, screaming, horns blaring and tires screeching from my apartment…When I looked out my window to the street below I saw a crowd of about 20 young people…directly across the street from the entrance to my building. They were leaning on parked cars and clogging the street. They were screaming at people walking and driving by. I watched them stop vehicles, including taxi cabs, and pull people from the vehicles…It was a frightening scene and I was sure someone was going to be hurt.

#2 If you don’t pay your student loans you may find yourself getting dragged out of your home by a SWAT team.

You doubt this?

The following is how an article in The Daily Mail recently described one recent SWAT team raid in California that was apparently ordered by the Department of Education….

A father was dragged from his home and handcuffed in front of his children by a SWAT team looking for his estranged wife – to collect her unpaid student loans.

A stunned Kenneth Wright had his front door kicked in by the raiding party at 6 am yesterday before being dragged onto his front porch, handcuffed and led to a police car with his three children.

He says he was then detained for six hours while officers looked for his wife – who no longer lives at the house.

#3 One town in Connecticut was forced to shut down a beautiful new fountain because too many people were using it as a toilet.

#4 This most recent Memorial Day weekend, cities all over America literally turned into war zones.  There were reports of mass violence in Miami, New York, Chicago, Charlotte, Myrtle Beach, Nashville and Boston among other places.

If you want to see video of some of the violence in Miami as it was happening, you can view it here.  The video is quite disturbing so please don’t let any small children view it.

#5 One of the hottest books in America right now is a “children’s book” entitled “Go The F*k To Sleep“.

#6 A teenage girl in Washington state recently shot her Dad with a hunting bow because he took away her cell phone.

#7 In New York City, one 32-year-old man was recently charged with sexually assaulting an 85-year-old woman.

#8 Democratic strategist James Carville recently made national headlines when he told talk show host Don Imus the following….

“You know, look — this is a humanitarian — you know, you’re smart enough to see this . . . People, you know, if it continues, we’re going to start to see civil unrest in this country. I hate to say that, but I think it’s imminently possible.”

#9 According to one new study, the percentage of U.S. households that contain a married couple with children has fallen from 44.3% in 1960 to 20.2% today.

#10 In Atlanta, two dozen teens recently violently assaulted two Delta flight attendants on a train for no apparent reason.  The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the attacks….

Their “Clockwork Orange” style blitz was over soon after it began. The teens boarded the train, headed to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, at the Garnett station a little after midnight seemingly intent on instilling fear. They succeeded.

“There was blood everywhere, people were hollering and screaming,” a witness told Channel 2 Action News. “We were intimidated. People were terrified. People were trying to run. But there was nowhere to run.”

#11 Federal prosecutors in Indianapolis have announced that they have broken up one of the largest child pornography rings ever discovered.  It was based in Bloomington, Indiana.

Are any small towns still safe?

#12 Barack Obama’s food safety chief is defending armed raids of raw milk producers (including a raid on an Amish farmer) and he says that the FDA will “keep doing our public health job“.

#13 In Florida, a 45-year-old Polk County sheriff’s deputy has been charged with strapping children to a desk and spanking them with sex toys.

#14 In Sioux City, Iowa a 41 year old man recently walked into the office where his boss worked and beat the living daylights out of him.  The boss suffered four chipped teeth and needed surgery to repair his nose.  Apparently the boss was planning to fire the man.

#15 A 20-year-old woman in Oklahoma has been charged with killing the family cat and using the blood as part of a costume she planned to wear to a Lady Gaga concert.

#16 McDonald’s recently held a “National Hiring Day” and about a million Americans showed up to apply for jobs at McDonald’s restaurants all around the nation.  Well, in Cleveland a horrible fight broke out between some girls and it ended up with three people being run over by a car.  You can view video of this incident right here.  Please do not watch the video if you are sensitive to graphic violence.

#17 All over the United States, vicious restaurant brawls have been erupting with alarming frequency and many of them are being posted up on YouTube for the world to see.  You can see one example of this phenomenon right here.

#18 From coast to coast, “mob robbing” has become a very disturbing trend.

So what is a “mob robbing”?

Well, basically dozens of young people storm into a store together, grab whatever they want, and storm back out again.

Recent examples of this have been caught on video in Washington D.C. and in Las Vegas.

So does anyone still doubt that we are starting to see the collapse of society?

Sadly, things are going to get a whole lot worse.

In response to a recent article entitled “The Coming Economic Hell For American Families“, a frequent commenter on my site known as “El Pollo De Oro” left the following comment about the collapse of society that is beginning to unfold….

Yes, it’s going to be VERY violent in The Banana Republic of America. Carjacking, kidnapping, drug trafficking, armed robbery and murder for hire will be major growth industries in the BRA when millions of formerly middle class Americans, now the neo-poor/neo-peasants, become increasingly desperate. The horrifying violence in Mexico will become a fact of life on this side of the border, the brutal kidnappings of the Philippines and Papua New Guinea will plague the BRA as well. Formerly middle class Americans who find themselves living in shantytown slums won’t like their new accommodations, and many of them will turn to violent crime in the hope of improving their miserable circumstances.

The truth is that about the only thing keeping our society together has been the unprecedented affluence that we have been enjoying over the past few decades.

Once that affluence is gone, the true character of the American people will come out, and we may not like what we see.

That is one reason why I pound on the economic crisis this nation is facing day after day.  Once our wealth is gone, there is going to be chaos in the streets of America.

So what are you seeing in your area of the country?  Do you see signs that the collapse of society is accelerating where you live?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….

The Coming Economic Hell For American Families

Tens of millions of American families are about to go through economic hell and most of them don’t even realize it. Most Americans don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about things like “monetary policy” or “economic cycles”.  The vast majority of people just want to be able to get up in the morning, go to work and provide for their families.  Most Americans realize that things seem “harder” these days, but most of them also have faith that things will eventually get better.  Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get any better.  The number of good jobs continues to decline, the number of Americans losing their homes continues to go up, people are having a much more difficult time paying their bills and our federal government is drowning in debt.  Sadly, this is only just the beginning.

Since the financial collapse of 2008, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government have taken unprecedented steps to stimulate the economy.  But even with all of those efforts, we are still living in an economic wasteland.

So what is going to happen when the next wave of the economic crisis hits?

During one recent interview, Peter Schiff made the following statement….

If you look at the economic relapse that’s going on right now, look at Friday’s abysmal job numbers, look at the housing numbers, understand that all of this is taking place with record monetary and fiscal stimulus. What happens if we remove those supports?

At the end of June, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program is slated to end.  The U.S. Congress and state legislatures from coast to coast are talking about budget cuts.  The amount of borrowing and spending that has been going on is clearly unsustainable, but will the U.S. economy start shrinking again once the current “financial sugar high” has worn off?

Already, all sorts of bad economic news has been coming out and all kinds of economic indicators are turning south.  The American people are becoming increasingly restless.  One new poll has found that 59 percent of the American people disapprove of Barack Obama’s handling of the economy (which is a new high).  According to another recent poll, 63% of Americans say that they feel “not good” or “bad” about how the U.S. economy is performing.

If most Americans had good jobs, could afford their mortgages and could pay their bills, the economy would not be such a big issue.

Unfortunately, times are really tough for American families right now and they are about to get a lot tougher.

*Jobs*

The official unemployment rate just went up to 9.1 percent, but that figure only tells part of the picture.

There are some areas of the country where it seems nearly impossible to find a decent job.  Millions of Americans have fallen into depression as they find themselves unable to provide for their families.

According to CBS News, 45.1 percent of all unemployed Americans have been out of work for at least six months.  That is a higher percentage than at any point during the Great Depression.

Just two years ago, the number of “long-term unemployed” in the United States was only 2.6 million.  Today, that number is up to 6.2 million.

Can you imagine being out of work for 6 months or more?

How would you survive?

Just look at the chart below.  What we are going through now is really unprecedented.  The average duration of unemployment in this country is now close to 40 weeks….

So will things get any better soon?  Well, there were only about 3 million job openings in the United States during the month of April.  Normally there should be about 4.5 million job openings.  The economy is slowing down once again.  Good jobs are going to become even more rare.

There are millions of other Americans that are “underemployed”.  All over the United States you will find hard working Americans that are flipping burgers or working in retail stores because that is all they can get right now.

Most temp jobs and most part-time jobs don’t pay enough to be able to provide for a family.  But there are not nearly enough full-time jobs for everyone.

Sadly, the number of “middle class jobs” is about 10 percent lower than a decade ago.  There are simply less tickets to the “good life” than there used to be.

*Homes*

But without good jobs, the American people cannot afford to buy homes.

Without good jobs, the American people cannot even afford the homes that they are in now.

U.S. home prices have fallen 33 percent since the peak of the housing bubble.  That is more than they fell during the Great Depression.

This decline in housing prices has caused a lot of problems.

28 percent of all homes with a mortgage in the United States are in negative equity at this point.  There are millions of American families that are now paying on mortgages that are for far more than their homes are worth.

Millions of American families literally feel trapped in their homes.  They can’t afford to sell their homes, and if they simply walk away nobody will approve them for new home loans for many years to come.

Many Americans are sticking it out and are staying in their homes until they simply can’t pay for them anymore.

As the number of good jobs continues to decline, the number of Americans that are losing their homes continues to rise.

For the first time ever, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure in a single year during 2010.

If the economy slows down once again and millions more Americans lose their jobs this problem is going to get a lot worse.

*Bills*

Even if they aren’t losing their homes yet, millions of other Americans families are finding it increasingly difficult to pay the bills.

Wages have been very flat over the past few years and yet the cost of most of the basics just seems to keep going up and up.

According to Brent Meyer, a senior economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the cost of food and the cost of energy have risen at an annualized rate of 17 percent over the past six months.

Have your wages gone up by 17 percent over the past six months?

As 2009 began, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.83.  Today it is $3.77.

American families are finding that their paychecks are going a lot less farther than they used to, but Ben Bernanke keeps insisting that we have very little inflation in 2011.

Most Americans don’t care much about economic statistics – they just want to be able to do basic things like take their children to the doctor.

According to one recent survey, 26 percent of Americans have put off doctor visits because of the economy.

Sadly, soon a lot more American families will not be able to afford to go to the doctor.

According to one recent survey, 30 percent of all U.S. employers will “definitely or probably” quit offering employer-sponsored health coverage once Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014.

As the economic situation has unraveled, an increasing number of people are being forced to turn to the federal government for assistance.

One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.

Some of the hardest hit members of our society have been our children.  Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

Back in the old days, a large percentage of American families were self-sufficient, but that is no longer the case.

Back in 1850, approximately 50 percent of all Americans worked on farms.

Today, less than 2 percent of Americans do.

So these days when American families can’t feed themselves what do they do?

They turn to the federal government of course.

At the moment, approximately 44 million Americans are on food stamps.

But our federal government cannot afford to spend money like this forever.

According to a recent USA Today analysis, the U.S. federal government took on $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations during 2010.  USA Today says that the U.S. government now has $61.6 trillion in financial obligations that have not been paid for yet.

Wow!

Who is going to end up paying that bill?

So with so much bad news, are our leaders alarmed?

Not really.

According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, “growth seems likely to pick up somewhat in the second half of the year.”

Yeah, we’ll see how that prediction works out.

Others are not so sure that everything is going to turn out okay.

Recently, James Carville warned that we could literally see rioting in the streets if the economic situation does not turn around soon.  Just check out the last part of the video below….

The truth is that America is in decline.  Just like with all of the great empires of the past, our empire is starting to crumble too.

A recent article in the Guardian touched on some of the reasons for America’s decline….

The experience of both Rome and Britain suggests that it is hard to stop the rot once it has set in, so here are the a few of the warning signs of trouble ahead: military overstretch, a widening gulf between rich and poor, a hollowed-out economy, citizens using debt to live beyond their means, and once-effective policies no longer working. The high levels of violent crime, epidemic of obesity, addiction to pornography and excessive use of energy may be telling us something: the US is in an advanced state of cultural decadence.

The economic news is only part of the puzzle.  This country has rejected the ancient wisdom that was passed down to us and we have rejected the principles of our founding fathers.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and yet somehow we expected that everything would turn out okay.

Well, everything is not going to turn out okay.

All of this debt is going to come down on us like a ton of bricks and the U.S. economy is going to continue to fall apart.  Millions of American families are going to lose their jobs and their homes.

Economic hell is coming.

You better get ready.

10 Tipping Points Which Could Potentially Plunge The World Into A Horrific Economic Nightmare

The global economy has become so incredibly unstable at this point that it is not going to take much to plunge the world into a horrific economic nightmare.  The foundations of the world economic system are so decayed and so corrupted that even a stiff breeze could potentially topple the entire structure over.  Over the past couple of months a constant parade of bad economic news has come streaming in from Europe, Asia and the United States.  Signs of an impending economic slowdown are everywhere.  So what “tipping point” will trigger the next global economic downturn?  Nobody knows for sure, but potential tipping points are all around us.

Today, the global economic system is even more vulnerable than it was back in 2008.  Virtually none of the systemic problems that contributed to the 2008 collapse have been fixed.

Mark Mobius, the head of the emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management, was recently was quoted in Forbes as saying the following….

“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”

The “financial reform” law that Barack Obama and the Congress passed a while back was a complete and total joke.  They might as well have written the law on toilet paper for all the good that it is doing.

We did not learn from our mistakes and our future economic lessons are going to be even more painful.

The world is drowning in a mountain of debt, the global financial system is packed to the gills with toxic derivatives, everyone is leveraged to the hilt and the dominoes could start falling at any time.

I am not the only one that is warning that another financial collapse is coming.  In fact, a whole lot of people have been warning about the next financial collapse lately.

So what will the tipping point for the next collapse be?

The following are some potential nominees….

Tipping Point #1: Syria

Syria is a situation to watch very, very closely.  The Syrian government is in a lot of trouble right now.  Sadly, the instability inside Syria probably makes war with Israel even more likely.

Make no mistake – a war between Israel and Syria has been brewing for a long, long time and at some point it will happen.  When it happens, the entire Middle East may erupt in warfare.

Just the other day, a very troubling incident happened in the area around the Golan Heights.  The following is an excerpt from a report by The Daily Mail about the incident….

“About 20 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were killed and 325 injured yesterday when Israeli forces opened fire on them as they crossed the border from Syria into occupied territories, according to reports.”

At this point, the Syrian government is probably glad that the attention has been taken off of them at least for a while.  The Syrian government has been getting a lot of bad press lately.  The following is an excerpt from a recent report by Human Rights Watch about the treatment of protesters inside Syria….

“The methods of torture included prolonged beatings with sticks, twisted wires, and other devices; electric shocks administered with Tasers and electric batons; use of improvised metal and wooden ‘racks’; and, in at least one case documented by Human Rights Watch, the rape of a male detainee with a baton.

“Interrogators and guards also subjected detainees to various forms of humiliating treatment, such as urinating on the detainees, stepping on their faces, and making them kiss the officers’ shoes. Several detainees said they were repeatedly threatened with imminent execution.”

So in light of the “precedent” that we recently set in Libya, does this mean that we will be “forced” to conduct a “humanitarian mission” inside Syria as well?

Syria is one tipping point that we all need to keep a close eye on.

Tipping Point #2: Iran

The Iranian nuclear program is in the news again. A new report by RAND Corporation researcher Gregory S. Jones claims that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within 2 months.  His report is based on recent findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency.  According to Jones, airstrikes alone would be incapable of stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program at this point.  Instead, Jones says that a “military occupation” would be required.

It is a minor miracle that a war with Iran has not erupted yet.  It seems almost inevitable that at some point either the United States or Israel will use military force to try to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

When that happens, it is going to cause a major shock to the global economy.

Tipping Point #3: Libya

NATO has made it abundantly clear that Moammar Gadhafi will no longer be tolerated.  In fact, NATO apparently plans to reduce Tripoli to a heap of smoking ruins if that is what it takes to bring about the fall of Gadhafi.

What a “humanitarian mission” we have going in Libya, eh?  It turns out that NATO believes that the United Nations gave it permission to bomb television stations and to make attack runs with helicopters.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov recently said that by using attack helicopters, NATO has moved dangerously close to turning the Libya operation into a ground invasion….

“Using attack helicopters, in my view, is the last but one step before the land operation.”

So why is Libya a potential tipping point?

It isn’t because Gadhafi is a threat.  He is toast.

It is because the rest of the world is watching what is happening in Libya, and that is raising global tensions.

Even if Gadhafi falls, the Libyan operation will still be a failure because it has brought us all significantly closer to World War III.

Tipping Point #4: More Revolutions In The Middle East

The revolutions throughout the Middle East earlier this year sent oil prices absolutely skyrocketing and they have remained at elevated levels.

And in case you haven’t noticed, revolutions continue to sweep the Middle East.

Have you seen what has been happening in Yemen lately?

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has burns over 40% of his body and he has suffered a collapsed lung as a result of a recent attack.

If violence and protests throughout the Middle East become even more intense as the weather warms up this summer that could have a very significant impact on world financial markets.

Tipping Point #5: Fukushima

The mainstream news has gotten a bit tired of covering it, but the situation at Fukushima is still a complete and total disaster.

Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters admitted on Monday that three reactors experienced “full meltdowns” in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in March.

Did it really take them nearly three months to figure this out, or were they lying to the rest of the world all of this time?

The truth is that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is far worse than the mainstream media has been telling us.  If you doubt this, just check out this excellent article or this article by Natural News: “Land around Fukushima now radioactive dead zone; resembles target struck by atomic bomb“.

The economic impact of the Fukushima disaster is going to continue to unfold over an extended period of time.  It turns out that Japan is now officially in a recession.  Their economy contracted at a 3.7 percent annualized rate during the first quarter.

Look for more bad economic numbers to come out of Japan for the rest of the year.  Considering the fact that the Japanese economy is the third largest economy in the world, the fact that they are struggling so badly right now is not a good sign for the rest of us.

Tipping Point #6: Oil Prices

The price of oil is going to continue to be one of the biggest economic stories for the rest of this year and for 2012 as well.

The last time U.S. energy expenditures were over 9 percent of GDP was in 2008 and we quickly plunged into the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Well, we have reached the significant 9 percent figure once again in 2011, and many fear that once again high oil prices will cause another major economic decline.

Tipping Point #7: Government Austerity

In the United States, it is not just the federal government that is drowning in debt.

All over America, there are state and local governments that are financial basket cases.

I don’t always agree with the time frames that Meredith Whitney puts out there, but she is absolutely correct that we are going to see a massive municipal bond crisis. The following is an excerpt from a recent report about Whitney’s predictions on CNN….

“Meredith Whitney is issuing a fresh warning to mutual funds, banks, and politicians: The state of state finances is far worse than what you think, or at least than what you’ve been willing to tell the investors and taxpayers who will eventually carry the burden.”

Many state and local governments are attempting to get their budgets balanced by making huge budget cuts.  But most of the time these austerity programs also include the elimination of a lot of government jobs.

UBS Investment Research is projecting that state and local governments will combine to slash a whopping 450,000 jobs by the end of next year.

So where will the half a million good jobs come from to replace all of those lost jobs?

Tipping Point #8: The European Sovereign Debt Crisis

Greece is just the tip of the iceberg in Europe.

Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again last Wednesday.  This time Moody’s downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1.  At this point, the yield on 10-year Greek bonds is over 15 percent.

The EU has been going crazy trying to deal with the Greek debt crisis.  The truth is that a default by the Greek government would be absolutely catastrophic. If you do not understand the kind of chaos a Greek default would set off on world financial markets, just read this editorial.

But Greece is not the only major European nation with a massive debt problem.

The government of Ireland is already indicating that they may need another bailout.

Portugal, Spain and Italy are also on the verge of collapse.

So will the EU bail all of these nations out for years and years to come?

At some point will the whole house of cards come crashing down?

Everyone needs to keep watching what is going on in Europe.  The status quo is not sustainable and it cannot go on forever.

Tipping Point #9: The Dying U.S. Dollar

The euro is not the only major currency that is in trouble.

The U.S. dollar is also slowly dying.

On April 18th, Standard & Poor’s altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned that the U.S. could soon lose its prized AAA rating.

The sad truth is that faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries is rapidly declining.  The mainstream news is not reporting on it much, but right now the Chinese are rapidly dumping U.S. government debt.

As the dollar declines, so will the purchasing power of average Americans.  We are already seeing a tremendous amount of inflation in 2011.

But this is just the beginning.

A lot worse is going to be coming down the road.

Tipping Point #10: Drought

A lot of people that read my articles doubt that we will ever see a major global food crisis.

But one is coming.

It is just a matter of time.

Even now, many areas of the world are experiencing very serious droughts.  The following is from a recent  Bloomberg article….

Parts of China, the biggest grower, had the least rain in a century, some European regions are the driest in 50 years and almost half the winter-wheat crop in the U.S., the largest exporter, is rated poor or worse. Inventory is dropping 8.8 percent, the most in five years, Rabobank International says. Prices will advance 20 percent to as high as $9.25 a bushel by Dec. 31, a Bloomberg survey of 14 analysts and traders shows.

Are you concerned yet?

You should be.

But if you prefer some mindless pablum that will make you feel better, we have some of that for you too.

Larry Summers, the former director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, recently told CNBC the following….

“We definitely hit a slower patch, but I think the basic fact that the terrible financial strains we had are abating, remains in place, and I expect this recovery to continue for a substantial period of time.”

Does that make you feel better?

Larry Summers says that everything is going to be okay.

It would be great if Summers was actually right, but sadly he is not.

In fact, the worst economic times that America has ever seen are ahead.

The following is a brief excerpt from a recent interview with Dmitry Orlov about the coming economic collapse that was posted on shtfplan.com….

First you have financial collapse, which is basically the volume of debt that has to be taken on in order for the economy to continue functioning, cannot continue. We’re seeing that right now in Greece, we’re probably going to see that in Japan, we’re definitely at a point now in the United States where even if you raised the income tax to 100 percent, there’s absolutely no way of covering the liabilities of the U.S. federal government. So, we’re at that point now but the workout of the financial collapse is not all quite there. We don’t quite have a worthless currency but that’s in the works.

That, of course, is followed by commercial collapse especially in a country like the United States that imports two thirds of its oil. A lot of that is on credit and if a little bit of that oil goes missing then the economy starts to fall apart because nothing moves unless you burn oil in the United States and, of course, a lot of goods that are sold everywhere are imported again, on credit.

When the U.S. dollar dies and our financial system collapses we are not going to be able to get all of the things that we need from the rest of the world so cheaply any longer.

That is going to cause fundamental changes inside the United States.

Right now, the economic news just seems to get worse and worse, but this is just the beginning.

What is eventually going to happen in this country is going to be so nightmarish that most Americans could not even imagine it right now.

So are our leaders doing anything to prepare for the coming economic crisis?

No, they are too busy with other things.

The big political news of the day was U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner finally admitting that he sent out lewd photos of himself over Twitter to women that he was not married to.

We have become the laughingstock of the world and the economic collapse has not even happened yet.

Global Financial Markets Tremble As Bad Economic News Continues To Pour In

As the U.S. economy starts to slow down once again, global financial markets are beginning to tremble.  Over the past couple of weeks, all kinds of bad economic news has been pouring in.  The ADP jobs report was a “disaster”, the housing numbers are dismal, manufacturing has slowed way down and consumer confidence is dropping like a rock.  The Democrats and the Republicans are bickering over the debt ceiling and this is causing a lot of uncertainty as well.  All of this bad news is starting to spook investors.  On Wednesday, the Dow was down 279 points and the NASDAQ was down 65 points. It was the worst day of the year for the Dow, and many are wondering what is going to happen next if we see even more bad economic data.  QE2 is slated to end at the end of the month, and already the bond markets seem to be anticipating QE3.  If the U.S. economy enters another significant downturn during the second half of 2011, it seems quite likely that the Federal Reserve would attempt to do something to stimulate the economy and that would probably mean more money printing.

This article is essentially the second part to an article I wrote yesterday about how we are seeing warnings about the next financial collapse all over the place right now.  Panic is building and a lot of investors are trying to figure out where to put their money.  Suddenly everyone seems a whole lot less optimistic than they were a couple of months ago.

Michael Sheldon, the chief market strategist at RDM Financial, believes that all of the bad economic news we are seeing right now is clear evidence that we are entering an “economic slump”….

“Initially, we just had bad news from the weekly jobless claims data, but now we’re starting to see a broad-based economic slump.”

So what are some of the numbers that have investors so concerned?

Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently explained to CNBC why he is so alarmed right now….

“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”

The bad economic news just keeps rolling in.  It is almost as if someone has slammed on the economic brakes.

The following are a few more examples of the bad economic numbers that have come out over the past couple of days….

*According to the latest ADP Employment Services report, private employers in the United States only added 38,000 jobs last month.  That number had been expected to be somewhere around 175,000.  This jobs report is being called a “disaster“.

*Manufacturing activity in May was much lower than most economists were projecting.  The following is how CNBC described the newest numbers from ISM….

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists’ expectations for 57.7.

*Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday, and stated that they believe that there is a 50/50 chance that Greece will default.  This time Moody’s downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1, and that caused the euro to fall like a rock.

To get an idea of just how imbalanced the European financial system has become at this point, just check out this article.

*Earlier this week it was announced that U.S. home prices have declined 5.1% from a year ago.  Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen more than they did during the entire Great Depression.

*As I mentioned yesterday, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 in May.

So what is causing all of this?

Well, the truth is that the “sugar high” that the U.S. economy has been enjoying is coming to an end.

QE2 is almost over and the vast majority of the federal “stimulus money” has been spent.  Now the federal government is talking about getting spending under control and we are seeing austerity programs being implemented on the state and local level from coast to coast.

But without massive intervention by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. government will the U.S. economy be able to stand?

Douglas Borthwick, a managing director with Faros Trading in Stamford, Connecticut is not optimistic….

“The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it.”

The truth is that the Fed and the U.S. government went all-out in an attempt to keep the economy from falling into a total depression.  The U.S. government has been running budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the Fed has been printing money like mad.  If these measures are removed, the economic crisis we are experiencing might just get a whole lot worse.

How much worse?

Well, just check out what Peter Yastrow, a market strategist for Yastrow Origer, recently told CNBC….

“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.”

Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama keep talking about the “economic recovery” but most Americans know better.

According to one new poll, 66% of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.

Perhaps this is a sign that the American people are starting to wake up to the new economic realities that we are facing.

The U.S. economy is being ripped apart and shredded.  Thanks to our short-sighted trade policies, the Chinese economy has roared to life while the U.S. economy continues to ship jobs and factories overseas.

But instead of facing up to our economic problems and coming up with some solutions, our nation has been on a horrific debt binge over the last couple of decades in a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living.

One of the reasons why I pound on the economic news day after day is so that more people will really understand what is going on and will start to wake up.

In fact, if you have a family member of a friend that just doesn’t get it, the following is a great article to share with that person: “50 Things Every American Should Know About The Collapse Of The Economy“.

Look, even Barack Obama says that the present state of affairs is “unsustainable” and that changes have to be made.

But if the U.S. government decided that it was going to go to a balanced budget tomorrow, that would suck approximately a trillion and a half dollars out of the economy.

What do you think would happen if that came to pass?

Of course by going into even more debt we are destroying the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect future generations to pay it off.

It is absolutely disgusting what we have done and it is thievery on the highest level.

Everyone knows that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that at some point it is going to pop.

Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is for a little bit more time before economic disaster strikes.

Unfortunately, all of the latest economic news seems to be pointing toward another economic slowdown.

Hold on to your seats.

Suddenly Everyone Is Warning About The Next Financial Collapse

Are we about to see a repeat of 2008 (or something even worse)? Suddenly all kinds of people are coming out of the woodwork and warning that we could be on the verge of the next major financial collapse. Of course many economists and financial pundits just enjoy hearing themselves talk, and sometimes they will make outrageous claims just to get attention, but when so many ominous warnings come out all at once it does tend to make one sit up and take notice. The truth is that global financial markets are even more vulnerable today than they were in 2008, and all over the globe we are seeing trouble signs. Japan is trying to recover from the worst natural disaster that they have ever seen and they are dealing with a nuclear crisis that never seems to end. The Europeans are trying to put another bailout package for Greece together and about a half dozen more European nations that are drowning in debt will need bailouts after that. In the U.S., there are all kinds of signs pointing to the collapse of the economy and the politicians in Washington D.C. continue to “kick the can down the road” and hope that our economic problems will somehow fix themselves.  Oil prices are incredibly high and turmoil is sweeping the globe.  Conditions are certainly developing that could bring about a “perfect storm” and cause another global financial collapse.

The following is just a sampling of the financial warnings that we have seen in recent days from some prominent voices….

*Economist Nouriel Roubini: “I think right now we’re on the tipping point of a market correction. Data from the U.S., from Europe, from Japan, from China are suggesting an economic slowdown.”

*Jim Rogers: “I would expect to see some serious problems in the foreseeable future….By 2011, 2012, 2013, 2013, I don’t know when, we’re going to have an economic slowdown again.”

*Mark Mobius, the executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group: “There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”

*David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices: “Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight.”

*Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital: “I think we’re looking at some type of echo in the credit crisis coming up here. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

*Carl Icahn: “I do think that there could be another major problem. Now, will it happen next week, next year, i don’t know and certainly nobody knows, but i don’t think that the system is working properly. I really find it amazing that we’re almost back to where it was, where there’s so much leverage going on in the investment banks today. There’s just way too much leverage and way too much risk-taking, with other people’s money.”

Sadly, the world really did not seem to learn much of anything from 2008.  Global financial markets are still pretty much operating the same way that they did before the last crisis.

But back before the crisis in 2008 things were much more stable around the globe.

When the horrible earthquake and tsunami struck Japan earlier this year, most economists brushed it off and believed that Japan would be “resilient” and would bounce back very quickly.

At the time, I went directly against the mainstream consensus with this article: “14 Reasons Why The Economic Collapse Of Japan Has Begun“.

I followed that up with another article entitled “The Japanese Economy Is In Much Bigger Trouble Than Most People Think“.

So who was right?

Well, it turns out that Japan is now officially in a recession.  Their economy contracted at a 3.7 percent annualized rate during the first quarter.

As bad as that number is, just remember that the tsunami did not even hit until March 11th.

So what is the 2nd quarter number going to look like?

There is often a lag between a disaster and the economic effects of the disaster.  The economic impact of this nightmare is going to be felt in Japan for many years to come.  In fact, it is going to be very interesting to see what kind of earnings reports we seeing coming out of Japan in the months ahead.

The economic problems in Japan are also really starting to be felt around the rest of the globe.  The other day, USA Today published an article with the following headline: “U.S. economy damaged more than thought by Japan quake“.

Amazingly, everyone seems to be really surprised that the worst tsunami in modern history is having a significant economic impact.

Meanwhile, the crisis at Fukushima just continues to get worse.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Japanese are not even close to finding a solution to this crisis.

If you want to get a good idea just how bad things are getting around Fukushima, just read this article by Natural News: “Land around Fukushima now radioactive dead zone; resembles target struck by atomic bomb“.

The mainstream media has been doing their best to downplay the crisis at Fukushima, but the truth is that it is now a worse disaster than Chernobyl and life in that region will never be the same again.

Conditions are also ripe in Europe for another financial collapse.

Have you been watching what has been going on in Greece?

It’s crazy.  Without another bailout the Greek government will soon start defaulting on their debts.

The EU and the IMF don’t want to give Greece more bailout money unless there are some significant “strings” attached.  But they also know that if Greece is not bailed out it will cause complete chaos in the financial markets.

The Greek population does not want more bailouts and more austerity.  There have been protests all over the country. Greek citizens have been pulling billions out of Greek banks as the country descends into chaos.

In the end, another bailout deal will get pushed through and the can will be kicked down the road a little while longer.

But what about all of the other European nations that need bailouts?

The government of Ireland is already indicating that they may need another bailout.

Portugal, Spain and Italy (along with several other European nations) are also teetering on the brink of financial disaster.

Most Americans do not realize it, but the European sovereign debt crisis really could set off another global financial crash.  Everyone really should be watching Europe.  It is going to be a very interesting summer.

Of course the United States continues to be an economic basket case.

More depressing housing data came out today.  U.S. home prices are now 5.1% lower than they were a year ago and they have fallen back to mid-2002 levels. CNN is declaring that a housing “double-dip” has been confirmed.

Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen farther during this economic downturn than they did during the Great Depression.

Also, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 this month.

Americans are becoming more pessimistic about the economy.

According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was “getting better” at this time last year.  Today, that number is at just 27 percent.

We are seeing a tremendous about of inflation in 2011, but incomes are not rising.  Unemployment is still rampant and very few jobs are being created.  What is even sadder is that a very high percentage of the jobs that are being created are part-time or temporary jobs.

But this was supposed to be the “recovery”.  Barack Obama and the Congress pushed through “stimulus package” after “stimulus package”.  We added trillions to our national debt.  The Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazy.  An all-out effort was made to pump up the U.S. economy in the short-term.

So after all of that, is this what the “recovery” is going to look like?

Meanwhile, all of those efforts have also made our long-term economic problems even worse.

Because of our exploding national debt and the reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve, faith in the U.S. dollar is dying.  Even the United Nations is warning of a potential dollar collapse.

We are in big, big trouble.

This is about as good as things are going to get for the U.S. economy.  Despite unprecedented efforts, the U.S. economy is still struggling mightily and our long-term economic problems are scarier than ever.

Sadly, most Americans still believe that wonderful economic times are on the way.  Most believe that this downturn is just temporary and that things will soon be better than ever.

How do you think they are going to feel when they find out the truth?

When Faith In U.S. Dollars And U.S. Debt Is Dead The Game Is Over – And That Day Is Closer Than You May Think

A day is coming when the rest of the world will decide that it no longer has faith in U.S. dollars or in U.S. debt.  When that day arrives, the game will be over.  Traditionally, two of the biggest things that the U.S. economy has had going for it were the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries.  The U.S. dollar has been the default reserve currency of the world for decades.  All over the globe it was seen as a strong, stable currency that was desirable for international trade.  U.S. government debt has long been considered the “safest debt” in the entire world.  Whenever there was a major crisis, investors would flock to U.S. Treasuries because they were considered a rock.  Sadly, all of this is now changing.  Today the rest of the world is losing faith in the U.S. financial system.  In fact, even the United Nations is now warning of the collapse of the dollar.  But if the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries collapse, that will be an absolute nightmare for the U.S. economy.  If the rest of the world does not want our dollars someday, then what are we going to give them in exchange for all of the oil and all of the cheap imported goods they send us?  If the rest of the world does not want our debt someday, then how in the world are we going to be able to continue to consume far, far more wealth than we produce?

The rest of the world is watching the U.S. government run up record-setting budget deficits and they are watching the Federal Reserve print money like there is no tomorrow and they realize that the U.S. financial system is slowly imploding.

As mentioned above, now even the United Nations is warning that the U.S. dollar could collapse.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent news report put out by Reuters….

The United Nations warned on Wednesday of a possible crisis of confidence in, and even a “collapse” of, the U.S. dollar if its value against other currencies continued to decline.

In a mid-year review of the world economy, the UN economic division said such a development, stemming from the falling value of foreign dollar holdings, would imperil the global financial system.

But it is not just the United Nations that is concerned about the U.S. dollar.

On April 18th, Standard & Poor’s altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned that the U.S. could soon lose its prized AAA rating.

At one time, it would have been unthinkable for Standard & Poor’s to do such a thing.

But today it is amazing that it has taken them so long to make such a move.  U.S. government finances are falling apart.

When the credit rating of U.S. government debt starts declining, interest rates will go up.  Just ask the government of Greece how painful that can be.  Today, Greece is paying over 16 percent on 10 year bonds.

The following is what John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics recently had to say about why Standard & Poor’s issued such a warning about U.S. government debt….

S&P is noting the U.S. government’s long-range fiscal problems. Generally, you’ll find that the accounting for unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other programs on a net-present-value (NPV) basis indicates total federal debt and obligations of about $75 trillion. That’s 15 times the gross domestic product (GDP). The debt and obligations are increasing at a pace of about $5 trillion a year, which is neither sustainable nor containable. If the U.S. was a corporation on a parallel basis, it would be headed into bankruptcy rather quickly.

Look, the rest of the world is not stupid.  They know that the U.S. government is hurtling towards financial disaster.  The appetite among foreigners for U.S. government debt is decreasing rapidly.

In fact, according to Zero Hedge, foreigners are dumping U.S. debt at a very rapid pace right now.

In addition, the cost to insure U.S. debt has risen sharply in recent days.

Right now, the Federal Reserve has been buying up most new U.S. government debt with dollars that it has created out of thin air.  This is a giant Ponzi scheme, and it is a major contributing factor to the decline of faith in the U.S. dollar.

The dollar has fallen by 17 percent compared to other major national currencies since 2009.  What makes that fact even sadder is that all major currencies have been rapidly losing value compared to hard assets over that time period.  The dollar is just sliding faster than almost all of the other global currencies that are constantly losing value as well.

Anyone with half a brain could have seen that this would be the end result of reckless government borrowing, but unfortunately our politicians have been ignoring this problem for decades.

Now a day or reckoning is fast approaching and it is going to be very painful.

The U.S. government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  Just consider a few shocking facts about this unprecedented debt….

*If the U.S. national debt (more than 14 trillion dollars) was reduced to a stack of 5 dollar bills, it would reach three quarters of the way to the moon.

*The U.S. government borrows about 168 million dollars every single hour.

*If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

*It is now being projected that by the year 2021, interest payments on the national debt will amount to $1.1 trillion dollars a year.

In a previous article on The American Dream, I detailed some more absolutely horrifying statistics about U.S. government debt….

#1 If you divide the national debt up equally among all U.S. households, each one owes a staggering $125,475.18.

#2 The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.

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

#4 In the new budget that the Obama administration has proposed, the U.S. government would spend 3.7 trillion dollars in 2012 and by 2021 the U.S. government would be spending a whopping 5.6 trillion dollars per year.

#5 The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.

#6 The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.

#7 The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.

#8 The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.

#9 The U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

#10 Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the U.S. government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.

#11 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.  But this year alone the U.S. government is going to go about 1.6 trillion dollars more into debt.

#12 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

So have our politicians learned anything from the mistakes of the past?

No.

The U.S. government continues to spend money on some of the most ridiculous things imaginable.  For example, the Department of Health and Human Services has just announced a brand new $500 million program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.

Isn’t it good to see the government investing our hard-earned tax dollars so wisely?

Of course if our kids weren’t being constantly fed foods packed with sugar, high fructose corn syrup and aspartame we wouldn’t have to spend 500 million dollars to deal with this problem.

When it comes to government waste, nobody seems to do it any better than the U.S. government.

Our politicians continue to assume that the rest of the world will always want our dollars and our debt, but that is simply not the case.

Over the past couple of years, global leader after global leader has publicly talked about the need for a new world reserve currency.

In fact, globalist institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have been very busy discussing what the world is going to use as a global reserve currency after the death of the dollar.

The rest of the world is not sitting around waiting to see if the U.S. financial system is going to recover.  They are already making plans for the demise of the dollar.  They are increasingly using other currencies to trade with.  They are becoming more hesitant to buy more of our debt.  They are realizing that the days of U.S. dominance are coming to an end.

So what is that going to mean for us?

It is going to be a complete and total disaster.

Right now, we live far, far beyond our means.  We borrow gigantic piles of money to make up the difference between what we produce and what we consume.  We are absolutely dependent on the fact that the rest of the world will take our dollars in exchange for the things that we need.

The current situation is not sustainable.

It will come to an end.

When it does, our standard of living is going to feel like it has changed overnight.

50 Things Every American Should Know About The Collapse Of The Economy

Right now, we are witnessing a truly historic collapse of the economy, and yet most Americans do not understand what is going on.  One of the biggest reasons why the American people do not understand what is happening to the economy is because our politicians and the mainstream media are not telling the truth.  Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke keep repeating the phrase “economic recovery” over and over, and this is really confusing for most Americans because things sure don’t seem to be getting much better where they live.  There are millions upon millions of Americans that are sitting at home on their couches right now wondering why they lost their jobs and why nobody will hire them.  Millions of others are wondering why the only jobs they can get are jobs that a high school student could do.  Families all across America are wondering why it seems like their wages never go up but the price of food and the price of gas continue to skyrocket.  We are facing some very serious long-term economic problems in this country, and we need to educate the American people about why the collapse of the economy is happening.  If the American people don’t understand why they are losing their jobs, why they are losing their homes and why they are drowning in debt then they are going to keep on doing all of the same things that they have been doing.  They will also keep sending the same idiot politicians back to Washington to represent us.  There are some fundamental things about the economy that every American should know.  The American people need to be shocked out of their entertainment-induced stupor long enough to understand what is really going on and what needs to be done to solve our nightmarish economic problems.  If we do not wake up enough Americans in time, the economic collapse that is coming could tear this nation to shreds.

The U.S. economy was once the greatest economic machine in modern world history.  It was truly a wonder to behold.  It worked so well that entire generations of Americans came to believe that America would enjoy boundless prosperity indefinitely.

But sadly, prosperity is not guaranteed for any nation.  Over the past several decades, some very alarming long-term economic trends have developed that are absolutely destroying the economy.  If dramatic changes are not made soon, a complete and total economic collapse will be unavoidable.

Unfortunately, the American people will never agree to fundamental changes to our economic and financial systems unless they are fully educated about what is causing our problems.  We have turned our backs on the principles of our forefathers and the principles of those that founded this nation.  We have rejected the ancient wisdom that was handed down to us.

It has been said that those that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.

We are about to experience the consequences of decades of really bad decisions.

Hopefully we can get the American people to wake up.

The following are 50 things that every American should know about the collapse of the economy….

#1 Do you remember how much was made of the “Misery Index” during the presidency of Jimmy Carter?  At that time, the “Misery Index” was constantly making headlines in newspapers all across the country.  Well, according to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, if we calculated unemployment and inflation the same way that we did back during the Carter administration, then the Misery Index today would actually be higher than at any point during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

#2 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006.  Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month.

#3 According to the Wall Street Journal, there are 5.5 million Americans that are currently unemployed and yet are not receiving unemployment benefits.

#4 All over America, state and local governments are selling off buildings just to pay the bills.  Investors can now buy up government-owned power plants, prisons and municipal buildings from coast to coast.  For example, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey recently sold off 16 government buildings (including the police and fire headquarters) just to pay some bills.

#5 When Americans think of “government debt”, most of them only think of the federal government, but it is not just the federal government that has a massive debt problem.  State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.

#6 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#7 Credit card usage in the United States is on the increase once again.  During the month of March, revolving consumer credit jumped 2.9%.  Sadly, it looks like Americans have not learned their lessons about the dangers of credit card debt.

#8 Last year, Social Security ran a deficit for the first time since 1983, and the “Social Security deficits” in future years are projected to be absolutely horrific.

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

#10 Right now we are watching what could potentially be the worst Mississippi River flood ever recorded play out right in front of our eyes.  One agricultural economist at Mississippi State University believes that this disaster could do 2 billion dollars of damage just to farms alone.

#11 The “tornadoes of 2011” that we just saw in the southeast United States are being called the worst natural disaster that the U.S. has seen since Hurricane Katrina.  It has been estimated that up to 25 percent of all of the poultry houses in Alabama were either significantly damaged or destroyed.  It is also believed that millions of birds were killed.

#12 The economic effects of the BP oil spill just seem to go on and on and on.  The number of very sick fish in the Gulf of Mexico is really starting to alarm scientists.  The following is how one local newspaper recently described the situation….

Scientists are alarmed by the discovery of unusual numbers of fish in the Gulf of Mexico and inland waterways with skin lesions, fin rot, spots, liver blood clots and other health problems.

#13 The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.

#14 All over America, hospitals that care for the poor and needy are so overwhelmed and are so broke that they are being forced to shut down.  Recently, a local newspaper in Florida ran an article about two prominent charity hospitals in Illinois that have served the poor for more than 100 years but are now asking for permission to shut down….

Two charity hospitals in Illinois are facing a life-or-death decision. There’s not much left of either of them – one in Chicago’s south suburbs, the other in impoverished East St. Louis – aside from emergency rooms crowded with patients seeking free care. Now they would like the state’s permission to shut down.

#15 The U.S. dollar is in such bad shape that now even Steve Forbes is predicting that the U.S. is “likely” to go back to a gold standard within the next five years.

#16 Most Americans don’t realize how much the U.S. dollar has been devalued over the years.  An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $115.93 today.  An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $454.36 today.

#17 Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.

#18 U.S. oil companies will bring in about $200 billion in pre-tax profits this year.  They will also receive about $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks from the U.S. government.

#19 It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year.  Their biggest customer is the United States.

#20 According to the Pentagon, there are minerals worth over a trillion dollars under the ground in Afghanistan.  Now, J.P. Morgan is starting to tap those riches with the help of the U.S. military.

#21 Speaking of J.P. Morgan, most Americans don’t realize that they are actually the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States.  In fact, the more Americans that go on food stamps the more money that J.P. Morgan makes.

#22 When 2007 began, there were about 26 million Americans on food stamps.  Today, there are over 44 million on food stamps, and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#23 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#24 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year.  That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

#25 The financial system is more vulnerable today than it was back in 2008 before the financial panic. Today, the world financial system has been turned into a giant financial casino where bets are made on just about anything you can possibly imagine, and the major Wall Street banks make a ton of money from this betting system.  The system is largely unregulated (the new “Wall Street reform” law has only changed this slightly) and it is totally dominated by the big international banks. The danger from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them “financial weapons of mass destruction”. It is estimated that the “derivatives bubble” is somewhere in the neighborhood of a quadrillion dollars, and once it pops there isn’t going to be enough money in the entire world to bail everyone out.

#26 Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.

#27 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#28 In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China was “scrap and trash”.

#29 All over the United States, many of our once great manufacturing cities are being transformed into hellholes.  In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.

#30 During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.

#31 New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.

#32 America’s real estate crisis just seems to get worse and worse.  U.S. home prices have now fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble.

#33 According to a new report from the AFL-CIO, the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.

#34 The European debt crisis could cause a global financial collapse like the one that we saw in 2008 at any time.  The world economy is incredibly interconnected today, and the United States would not be immune.  A recent IMF report stated the following about the growing sovereign debt crisis in Europe….

Strong policy responses have successfully contained the sovereign debt and financial-sector troubles in the euro area periphery so far. But contagion to the core euro area and then onward to emerging Europe remains a tangible risk.

#35 According to one study, the 50 U.S. state governments are collectively 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations.

#36 A different study has shown that individual Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.

#37 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.

#38 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

#39 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

#40 The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011.  Thanks to our politicians, U.S. taxpayers are standing behind that debt.

#41 The U.S. government is over 14 trillion dollars in debt and the budget deficit for this year is projected to be about 1.5 trillion dollars.  However, if the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.

#42 Most Americans don’t understand that the Federal Reserve and the debt-based monetary system that it runs are at the very heart of our economic problems.  All of this debt is absolutely crushing us.  The U.S. government spent over 413 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2010, and it is being projected that the U.S. government will be shelling out 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019.

#43 Standard & Poor’s has altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and is warning that the U.S. could soon lose its AAA rating.

#44 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income.  Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.

#45 U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

#46 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.

#47 According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was “getting better” at this time last year.  Today, that number is at just 27 percent.

#48 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.

#49 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

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

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