Globalism

Global Economy? 23 Facts Which Prove That Globalism Is Pushing The Standard Of Living Of The Middle Class Down To Third World Levels

From now on, whenever you hear the term “the global economy” you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class.  Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system.  Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do.  Therefore, the massive global corporations that now dominate our economy are able to pay workers in other countries slave labor wages and import the products that they make into the United States to compete with products made by “expensive” American workers.  This has resulted in a mass exodus of manufacturing facilities and jobs from the United States.

But without good, high paying jobs the U.S. middle class cannot continue to be the U.S middle class.  The only thing that the vast majority of Americans have to offer in the economic marketplace is their labor.  Sadly, that labor has now been dramatically devalued.  American workers now must directly compete for jobs with millions upon millions of workers on the other side of the world that toil away for 15 hours a day at slave labor wages.  This is causing jobs to leave the United States at an almost unbelievable rate, and it is putting tremendous downward pressure on the wages of millions of jobs that are still in the United States.

So when you hear terms such as “globalization” and “the global economy”, it is important to keep in mind that those are code words for the emerging one world economic system that is systematically wiping out the U.S. middle class.

A one world labor pool means that the standard of living for the U.S. middle class will continue falling toward the standard of living in the third world.

We keep hearing about how the U.S. economy is being transformed from a “manufacturing economy” into a “service economy”.  But “service jobs” are generally much lower paying than “manufacturing jobs”.  The number of good paying “middle class jobs” in the United States is rapidly decreasing.  So how can the U.S. middle class survive in such an environment?

What makes things even worse for manufacturers in the United States is that other nations often impose a “value-added tax” of 20 percent or more on U.S. goods entering their shores and yet most of the time we do not reciprocate with similar taxes.

But whenever someone mentions how incredibly unfair and unbalanced our trade agreements with other nations are, they are immediately labeled as a “protectionist”.

Well, someone should be looking out for U.S. interests when it comes to trade, because the current state of the global economy is ripping the U.S. middle class to shreds.

Right now, the United States consumes far more wealth than it produces.  This nation buys much, much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.  This is called a “trade deficit”, and it is one of the most important economic statistics.  The U.S. runs a massive trade deficit every single year, and it is wiping out our national wealth, it is destroying our surviving industries and it is absolutely shredding middle class America.

We cannot allow tens of thousands of factories to continue to leave the United States.  We cannot allow millions of jobs to continue to be “outsourced” and “offshored”.  We cannot allow tens of billions of dollars of our national wealth to continue to be transferred into foreign hands every single month.

The truth is that the global economy is bad for America.  The following are 23 facts which prove that globalism is pushing the standard of living of the middle class down to third world levels….

#1 From December 2000 to December 2010, the U.S. ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars.

#2 The U.S. trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009.

#3 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#4 The U.S. economy is rapidly trading high wage jobs for low wage jobs.  According to a new report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth.  Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.

#5 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

#6 In Germany, exports account for approximately 40 percent of GDP.  In China, exports account for approximately 30 percent of GDP.  In the United States, exports account for approximately 13 percent of GDP.

#7 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe?  Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.

#8 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.

#9 The U.S. economy now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.

#10 The United States currently has 7.7 million fewer payroll jobs than it did back in December 2007.

#11 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#12 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world.  In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

#13 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#14 In China, working conditions are so bad that large numbers of “employees” regularly try to commit suicide.  One major employer, Foxconn, has even gone so far as to install “anti-suicide nets” in an attempt to keep their employees from jumping off of their buildings.

#15 Wages for workers in China are incredibly low.  For example, one facility in the city of Longhua that makes iPods employs approximately 200,000 workers.  These workers put in endless 15-hour days but they only make about $50 per month.

#16 In Bangladesh, manufacturing workers toil in absolutely horrific conditions and make an average of about $38 per month.

#17 In Vietnam, teenage workers often work seven days a week for as little as 6 cents an hour making promotional Disney toys for McDonald’s.

#18 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed.

#19 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#20 In the United States today, 6.2 million Americans have been out of work for 6 months of longer.

#21 8.4 million Americans are currently working part-time jobs for “economic reasons”.  These jobs are mostly very low paying service jobs.

#22 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.

#23 According to Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citigroup, China will be the largest economy in the world by the year 2020, and India will surpass China by the year 2050.

Those that promote “free trade” can never explain how the U.S. middle class is going to continue to have plenty of jobs in the new global economy.

By merging our labor pool with the rest of the world, we have also merged our standard of living with the rest of the world.  High unemployment is rapidly becoming “the new normal” in America, and wages are going to continue to decline in many, many industries.

Already, there are quite a few formerly great U.S. cities (such as Detroit) that are beginning to resemble third world hellholes.  If something is not done about our massive trade imbalance, even more cities are going to follow Detroit into oblivion.

Unfortunately, most of our politicians continue to insist that globalism is good for our society.  They continue to insist that we should not be worried that jobs formerly done by middle class American workers are now being done by slave laborers on the other side of the globe.  They continue to insist that having 43 million Americans on food stamps is a temporary thing and that soon our economy will be better than ever.

Well, it is time to stop listening to the politicians that are promoting “the global economy”.  They are lying to us.

Globalism is great for nations such as China and it is helping multinational corporations make huge profits, but for the U.S. middle class it is an economic death sentence.

If you want an America where there are less jobs, where more Americans are on food stamps and other anti-poverty programs and where our cities continue to be transformed into deindustrialized hellholes, then you should strongly support the emerging global economy.

But if you care about the standard of living of the U.S. middle class and you want for there to be some kind of viable economic future for your children and your grandchildren then you had better start caring about these issues and doing something about them.

Please wake up America.

Barack Obama: We Must Embrace Globalism And The Emerging One World Economy

Although it received very little coverage in the mainstream media, Barack Obama made some comments about globalism during his speech in Mumbai, India that were very eye-opening.  As he was discussing the new realities of world trade in 2010, Obama warned against “those who see globalization as a threat” and he spoke of the “integrated world” in which we all now live.  But is merging the entire globe into a one world economy, a one world financial system and a one world labor market really the best thing for the American people?

For the past two decades, all U.S. presidents have been heralding the benefits of merging the American economy with the rest of the globe.  George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all steadfastly supported the emerging one world economy.  These presidents have each used different terms to describe this process such as “globalism”, “globalization”, “an integrated world”, “the global economy” and even “a New World Order”, but they have all meant the same thing.  All of these presidents have sought to integrate the United States even more deeply into the developing one world economic system.

Barack Obama showed very clearly how he feels about globalism when he made the following statement during his speech in Mumbai….

“This will keep America on its toes. America is going to have to compete. There is going to be a tug-of-war within the US between those who see globalization as a threat and those who accept we live in a open integrated world, which has challenges and opportunities.”

This is something that Barack Obama has obviously thought quite a bit about. In fact, during the same speech he warned that those supporting globalization will need to “guard against” those who would seek to put up barriers to the full integration of the economies of the world….

“If the American people feel that trade is just a one-way street where everybody is selling to the enormous US market but we can never sell what we make anywhere else, then the people of the US will start thinking that this is a bad deal for us and it could end up leading to a more protectionist instinct in both parties, not just among Democrats but also Republicans. So, that we have to guard against.”

But in this new “global economy”, aren’t jobs leaving the United States and heading to developing nations at a blinding pace?  Of course, but apparently we are just supposed to shut up and accept this new reality.  In fact, Obama says that persistently high unemployment is “a new normal” that we are all just going to have to get used to.

Virtually all of the proponents of globalism understand that the process of merging the United States into a one world economy will be at least somewhat painful for the American people.  Our wages are going to have to go down and our standards of living are going to have to fall, according to them.

During this period of “adjustment”, a “struggling economy” is just going to have to be tolerated.  In fact, Obama says that the U.S. economy might not be “fixed” for quite some time.  Obama now claims that there is a limit to what the U.S. government can do to help the economy….

“Especially an economy this big, there are limited tools to encourage the kind of job growth that we need.”

But couldn’t Obama and the U.S. Congress pass laws that would discourage the offshoring and outsourcing of our jobs?

Of course.

Couldn’t they cut regulations and taxes and encourage firms to keep factories in the United States?

Of course.

But instead, Obama and the U.S. Congress have just been piling on more taxes and more regulations and have made the business environment in the U.S. so toxic that it is amazing that anyone is willing to stay in this country at this point.

Meanwhile, every single month more of our jobs, more of our factories and more of our wealth gets shipped overseas never to return.

Every day there is more depressing news about the U.S. economy.  For example, it has just been announced that Harley-Davidson has decided to open a shiny new assembly plant in India.  Meanwhile, formerly great American manufacturing cities such as Detroit have turned into rotting hellholes.

The American people are not being told the truth.  The following are 20 reasons why Barack Obama is wrong, wrong, wrong about globalization….

#1 American workers are being merged into a global labor pool where they must directly compete for jobs with workers on the other side of the globe that make less than ten percent of what an average American worker makes.  In such an environment, it is inevitable that jobs are going to flow away from areas where labor is expensive and to areas where labor is cheaper.

#2 Globalization has caused the U.S. trade deficit to absolutely explode.  In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year.  In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.

#3 Today, the United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that China spends on goods from the United States.  This represents a massive transfer of wealth from the American people to China.

#4 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

#5 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.

#6 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#7 Even high technology industries are leaving America.  Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#8 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output.  In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent.

#9 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing.  The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#10 With so much manufacturing leaving the United States, is it any wonder why people can’t find jobs?  The “official” unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months.

#11 Today, there are at least 1.5 million “99ers” – those Americans that have completely exhausted all 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and that still do not have jobs.

#12 Our dependence on foreign oil also represents an absolutely shocking transfer of wealth from the American people to the oil exporters of the Middle East.  Back in 1980, the United States imported approximately 37 percent of  the oil that we use.  Now we import nearly 60 percent of the oil that we use.

#13 Energy imports account for about approximately one-fourth of the U.S. trade deficit.

#14 In states such as Mississippi, people spend approximately 6.35 percent of their incomes just on gasoline, according to a recent report by the National Resources Defense Council.

#15 Americans end up paying to support American workers one way or another.  Either they buy American-made products and services that provide jobs for American workers, or they pay to support unemployed American workers on welfare.  Today, over 42 million Americans are on food stamps.  A record number of Americans are receiving long-term unemployment benefits.  One way or another, Americans are going to pay to take care of American workers.

#16 The U.S. trade deficit is running about 40 or 50 billion dollars a month in 2010.  The United States spends 40 to 50 billion more on goods and services from the rest of the world each month than they spend on goods and services from us.  That means that by the end of the year, approximately half a trillion dollars (or more) of our wealth will have left the United States for good.

#17 All of this wealth leaving the United States is having a huge impact on the standard of living of average Americans.  Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult.  In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.

#18 It is now just a matter of time until India is going to pass us as an economic power.  In fact, the economy of India is projected to become larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2050.

#19 It is now being projected that China will soon dwarf us as an economic power.  One prominent economist now says that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.  According to one recent study, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.

#20 China has been accumulating a gigantic mountain of dollars from all of the wealth we have been sending them each month, and they have been lending massive amounts of money back to us.  Over the past few decades, the communist Chinese have been able to accumulate approximately $2.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, and the U.S. government now owes them close to 900 billion dollars.  We constantly have to send top government officials over there to beg them to continue to lend us money.  This is a direct threat not only to our financial system, but also to our national security.

So, in light of all of those facts, can anyone out there possibly defend Barack Obama’s position that globalization is good and that we should be happy that we are being merged into a one world economy?

Sadly, there are very, very few politicians in either major political party that will even talk about the negative effects of the emerging one world economy.  It is almost as if there is an unspoken consensus that globalism is the future and that it is a good thing for America.

But it is not a good thing for America.  Unless fundamental changes are made, America will continue to bleed wealth, will continue to bleed factories and will continue to bleed jobs.

The American people need to wake up and starting saying “NO” to globalization.  If we continue to vote for politicians that support merging our economy with economies that allow workers to be paid slave labor wages, then we are going to see even more waves of horrific unemployment and we will continue to see the standard of living of middle class Americans diminish.

This is not a drill.  America is being deindustrialized.  The greatest economic machine in the history of the world is being dismantled.

Eventually, all of our cities are going to end up looking just like Detroit if we allow this to continue.

Is that what you want?

9 Reasons Why Spain Is A Dead Economy Walking

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

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

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

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

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

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

So could democracy actually fail in those nations?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what is going to happen in Spain?

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

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

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

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

Europe’s Coming Summer Of Discontent

The summer of 2010 promises to be the most tumultuous summer in the short history of the European Union.  The sovereign debt crisis sweeping the continent threatens to cause economic and political instability on a scale not seen in Europe for decades.  The truth is that governments across the eurozone have accumulated gigantic piles of debt that simply are not sustainable.  Prior to the implementation of the euro, these European governments often “printed” their way out of messes like this, but now they can’t do that.  Now they either have to dramatically cut government expenses or they have to default.  But the austerity measures that the IMF and the ECB are pressuring these European governments to adopt are likely to have some very painful side effects.  Not only will these austerity measures cause a significant slowdown in economic growth, they are also likely to cause the same kinds of protests, strikes and riots that we saw in Greece to erupt all over Europe.

You see, most Europeans have become very accustomed to the social welfare state.  Tens of millions of Europeans aren’t about to let anyone cut their welfare payments or the wages on their cushy government jobs.  In most of the European nations that are experiencing big financial problems there are very powerful unions and labor organizations that do not want anything to do with austerity measures and that are already mobilizing.

As the IMF and the ECB continue to push austerity measures all over Europe this summer, the chaos that we witnessed in Greece could end up being repeated over and over again across the continent.  This could truly be Europe’s summer of discontent.

The following are just a few of the countries that we should be watching very carefully in the months ahead….

Spain

In many ways, the economic situation in Spain is now even worse than the economic situation in Greece.  Spain’s unemployment was already above 20 percent even before this recent crisis.  There are now 4.6 million people without jobs in Spain.  There are 1.6 million unsold properties in Spain, six times the level per capita in the United States.  Total public/private debt in Spain has reached 270 percent of GDP.

But this past week things really started to spin out of control in Spain.   Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph describes the current situation in Spain this way….

For Spain it has been a horrible week. The central bank seized CajaSur and imposed draconian write-down rules on banks to restore confidence. The Spanish Socialist and Workers Party (PSOE) of Jose Luis Zapatero then rammed a 5pc cut in public wages through the Cortes by a single vote, shattering consensus. The government cannot hope to pass a budget. Its own trade union base is planning a general strike.

The austerity measures that Spain has been pressured to implement have proven so unpopular in Spain that many are now projecting that Spain’s socialist government will be forced to call early elections.

Spain finds itself in a very difficult position.  They have a debt that they cannot possibly handle, the IMF and the ECB are pressuring Spain to implement austerity measures which are wildly unpopular with the public, and if Spain does implement those austerity measures it may send the Spanish economy into a downward spiral.

In addition, the fact that Fitch Ratings has stripped Spain of its AAA status has pushed Spain to the edge of financial oblivion.

A recent editorial inEl Pais spoke of the “perverse spiral” that Spain’s economy is entering….

“The Fitch note drives home the apparently unsolvable contradiction in which the Spanish economy finds itself. To maintain debt solvency Spain must squeeze public spending: yet this policy undermines the chances of recovery which itself causes further loss of confidence.”

And Spain’s very powerful labor organizations are not about to take these austerity measures sitting down.  In fact, the two largest trade unions in Spain are already calling for a general strike.

So could Spain end up being the next Greece?

France

France admitted on Sunday that keeping its top-notch credit rating would be “a stretch” without some tough budget decisions.

But French citizens are not too keen on belt-tightening.  We all remember the massive riots in France a few years ago when it was proposed the the work week should be shortened.  It certainly seems unlikely that the French will accept “tough budget decisions” without making some serious noise.

Italy

The Italian government recently approved austerity measures worth 24 billion euros for the years 2011-2012.  But the Italian public is less than thrilled about it.

In fact, Italy’s largest union has announced that it will propose to its members a general strike at the end of June to protest these measures.

Portugal

Under pressure from the IMF and the ECB, Portugal has agreed to impose fresh austerity measures that include much higher taxes and very deep budget cuts.

And the truth is that Portugal desperately needs to do something to get their finances under control.  Recent EU data shows that Portugal’s total debt is 331 percent of GDP, compared to only 224 percent for Greece.

So will the Portuguese public accept these austerity measures?

It doesn’t seem likely.

In fact, Fernando Texeira dos Santos, Portugal’s finance minister, says that he expects “violent episodes” comparable to those in Greece but insists that there is no other option.

So it promises to be a wild summer in Portugal.  The CGTP trade union federation in Portugal has promised to mobilize their members….

“Either we come up with a very strong reaction or we will be reduced to bread and water.”

Romania

They have already been rioting in the streets in Romania.

Tens of thousands of workers and pensioners recently took to the streets in Romania to protest the harsh austerity measures that the Romanian government is imposing at the request of the International Monetary Fund.

The Romanian people have been through incredibly hard times before, and they aren’t about to let the IMF and the ECB impose strict austerity measures on them without a fight.

Germany

It is being reported that Germans are bracing themselves for a “bitter” round of government budget cuts.  It seems that even Germany has some belt-tightening to do.

In addition, resentment is rising fast in Germany as the population there realizes that it is Germany that is going to be the one funding a large portion of the bailouts for these other European nations.

How long will the German people be able to control their tempers?

Ireland

The Wall Street Journal is warning that Ireland could be Europe’s next financial basket case.

Why?

Well, the Irish have gotten into a ton of debt, and they are now finding it very expensive to finance new debt.  The Irish government is now paying approximately 2.2 percentage points more than Germany is to borrow money for 10 years, while Spain (even with their economy in such a state of disaster) only has to pay 1.6 percentage points more than Germany.

But if “austerity measures” come to Ireland, how do you think the public will react?

It likely would not be pretty.

The United Kingdom

The exploding debt situation in the U.K. was a major issue in the most recent election.  David Cameron promised the voters to get the U.K.’s exploding debt situation under control.  But the coming budget cuts are likely to be incredibly painful.  In fact, Bank of England governor Mervyn King has even gone so far as to warn that public anger over the coming austerity measures will be so painful that whichever party is seen as responsible will be out of power for a generation.

But it isn’t just national governments that are in trouble in Europe.  The European Central Bank is warning that eurozone banks could face up to 195 billion euros in losses during a “second wave” of economic problems over the next 18 months.

The truth is that almost everyone is expecting the next couple of years to be very tough economically all across Europe.

But the vast majority of the European public is not going to understand the economics behind what is happening.  All most of them are going to know is that the budget reductions, tax increases and pay cuts really, really hurt and that is likely to result in a whole lot of anger.

When Europeans get really angry it isn’t pretty.  If what happened in Greece is any indication, this upcoming summer and fall could be a really wild one throughout Europe.

“Euroland, burned down. A continent on the way to bankruptcy”
-The front page of Der Spiegel, May 5th, 2010

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Fed Up

Do you ever get to the point where you are just fed up with the way that things are headed?  There are times when it seems as if we are all stuck in some kind of horrific nightmare that we can’t wake up from.  Day after day we get the privilege of watching our esteemed leaders down in Washington D.C. wreck the U.S. economy, push us towards socialism and globalism, and slowly erode our constitutional freedoms.  Day after day we get the privilege of watching corruption and greed run wild down on Wall Street.  Day after day those of us who are awake to what is going on find ourselves increasingly frustrated with the vast majority of Americans who are either too dazed, too drugged or too asleep to even care that the great nation that their forefathers built is in the process of crumbling all around them.  Not that there aren’t some promising signs out there.  Certainly Rand Paul’s recent victory in Kentucky shows that the American people are not automatically going to vote for the candidates backed by the establishment anymore.  But it seems like every piece of good news these days is accompanied by a dozen news stories that are so bad that they make you want to scream.  It is incredibly frustrating that tens of millions of Americans who bust their backs working incredibly long hours, who try to do what is right, and who truly do love their country are going to pay the price for the errors of a bunch of idiots down in Washington D.C. and New York.  The America that so many of us grew up in love with (the once great Republic with the greatest free enterprise system in the world) is being strangled out of existence by a horde of globalists, socialists and elitists.  Well, there are millions of us who are fed up.  I am fed up.  So today you are going to get an “editorial”.  Actually what you are going to get is an old-fashioned rant.  But the truth is that we live during times when ranting is appropriate.  Feel free to express your agreement or disagreement with the various things I am going to rant about below.  Hopefully if enough people start talking about these things, the American people will wake up and start taking their country back.

So exactly what am I fed up about?   

I’m fed up with politicians in Washington D.C. who prance around and talk about what a good job they are doing while they pile up the biggest debt in the history of the world.  We are stealing trillions of dollars from future generations, and if they get the chance they will curse us for the horrific debt that we have left them. 

I’m fed up with an unelected, privately-owned central bank issuing and controlling the currency of the United States.  Nobody but the U.S. government should be issuing U.S. dollars.  The reality is that the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is, and the international bankers have used it for decades to transfer the wealth of the nation into their own pockets.

I’m fed up with being told that the money I have worked so hard to earn needs to be “redistributed” to people who wouldn’t know a hard day of work if it came up and bit them on the rear.

I’m fed up with Tea Party activists who believe in the Constitution and who desperately want to see a return to the ideals that the American republic was founded upon being labeled as “extremists” by the media while those who are pushing a socialism and globalism on America are referred to as “centrist” and “mainstream”.

I’m fed up with anyone who suggests that it is a good idea for the government to get to look at an image of our naked bodies before we are allowed to get on an airplane.

I’m fed up with hearing that there are banks that are “too big to fail” and that it is necessary for tax money taken from me to be used to bail them out.

I’m fed up with a financial system that is so rigged that four of the biggest U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup) can have a “perfect quarter” with zero days of trading losses during the first quarter of 2010.

I’m fed up with a financial system where the Dow can plunge nearly 1000 points in a single hour and nobody can seem to be able to figure out what happened.

I’m fed up with being told that I need to reduce my “carbon footprint” when carbon dioxide does not cause global warming and over 95% of total carbon dioxide emissions would occur even if humans were not present on Earth.

I’m fed up with people telling me that we should be glad to pay all the new taxes in the “health care reform” law because socialized medicine is such a good idea.   

I’m fed up with the open manipulation of the gold and silver markets right under the noses of the federal government.

I’m fed up with politicians that spend money in order to get votes without any concern for the financial future of this nation whatsoever.

I’m fed up with a government that can protect the South Korean border so well that not a single person gets through illegally for decades, and yet has done such a bad job of protecting our own border that Phoenix, Arizona has become the car theft capital of the world.

I’m fed up with a government that is so embarrassed by the recent anti-illegal immigration law passed in Arizona that they apologize to the communist Chinese for it.

I’m fed up with yuppies who went out and bought McMansions that they could not possibly afford whining and crying now that they are losing their houses.

I’m fed up with politicians shipping our manufacturing base to the third world and then pretending that it is our fault when we can’t get jobs.

I’m fed up with people telling me how wonderful “free trade” and “the global economy” are while our once great manufacturing cities such as Detroit turn into rusted-out war zones.

I’m fed up with international organizations such as the IMF and the WHO telling us that they want the American people to start paying global taxes.

I’m fed up with politicians being treated like celebrities and rock stars when they are actually leading American right into the toilet.

I’m fed up with a president and a Congress that are rapidly dismantling the strategic nuclear arsenal that has helped keep America safe for decades.

I’m fed up with politicians who run over to China and beg them to keep buying even more of our debt.

I’m fed up with the United Nations and members of the U.S. government claiming that there are far too many people in the world and that we need to promote population control measures all over the globe.

I’m fed up with a Supreme Court that has absolutely no respect at all for the personal property rights of ordinary Americans.

I’m fed up with a government that insists that freakishly-altered genetically modified crops are good for us, and that allows companies like Monsanto to ruthlessly push these “Frankenfoods” on to dinner tables all across the United States.

I’m fed up with a public that is far more interested in the death of Michael Jackson and in what is going on with Jon & Kate than in the absolutely crucial economic and political issues that directly affect them and their families. 

I’m fed up with a government that is so incompetent when it comes to foreign policy that Russia and China are literally running circles around them.

I’m fed up with a government that allows nearly a million innocent babies to be killed year in and year out.

I’m fed up with watching Wall Street bankers rake in record-setting bonuses while nearly 40 million Americans are on food stamps.

I’m fed up with a national debt that is impossible to pay off, a dollar that has lost over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created and a financial system that is designed to fail.

If you don’t understand why the U.S. economic system is doomed, you should check out the video posted below.  The inevitable collapse of the U.S. financial system is beautifully illustrated in this brand new documentary entitled “Meltup”.  It is one of the best videos on the economic crisis that America is facing that has ever been posted on YouTube.  This video is likely to make you very mad, but after watching it you will have a much greater understanding of the economic nightmare that the United States is now facing….

So are you fed up too? Please feel free to leave a comment telling us what you are upset about….

The Declining Value Of Work

One of the great joys that men in free societies have long enjoyed is the ability to earn an honest wage for an honest day of work.  In particular, the amazing capitalist engine that powered the U.S. economy for decade after decade greatly rewarded the incredible hard work and industriousness of the American people.  America was known as the land of opportunity, and we built the largest middle class in the history of the world by working incredibly hard.  But today, all of that is fundamentally changing.  Thanks to rapid advances in technology, and thanks to the globalization of the work force, the labor of American workers is rapidly losing value.  Automation, robotics and computers have made many jobs obsolete.  Today one man can do the work that a hundred men used to do.  Not only that, but today American workers literally have to compete against workers from all over the globe.  Global corporations often find themselves having to choose whether to build a factory in the United States or in the third world.  But in the third world workers often earn less than 10% of what American workers earn, corporations are often not required to provide any benefits to workers, and there are usually hardly any oppressive government regulations.  How can American workers compete against that?

The truth is that labor is now a global commodity.  How can an American worker compete against a desperate, half-starving worker in the third world that will work like mad for a dollar an hour?

But this is what we get for letting the politicians push “free trade” down our throats.

Most American workers had no idea that free trade would mean that they would suddenly be competing for jobs against workers in the Philippines and Malaysia.

But that is the cold, hard reality of globalism.

All of this free trade has been very hard on American workers as factory after factory has closed, but it has allowed the big corporations to get exceedingly wealthy.

The top executives at the big global corporations are certainly enjoying all of this free trade.  Their salaries have soared.

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1.  Since the year 2000, that ratio has ranged between 300 to 500 to one.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

That is what globalism is all about.

The elite make out like bandits as they exploit third world labor pools, while the American middle class finds itself slowly being crushed out of existence.

According to the United Nations Gini Coefficient (which measures distribution of income), the United States has the highest level of inequality of all of the highly industrialized nations.

Increasingly, all of the rewards are going to those at the top, while the vast majority of Americans are left wondering why things just don’t seem to work out for them.

According to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, two-thirds of income increases between 2002 and 2007 went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

Life is good if you are in the top one percent.

Unfortunately, that does not include any of us.

Instead, the American middle class is gradually being pushed into lower paying service jobs.  But it is really hard to feed a family by cutting hair or by greeting the folks who come walking into the local Wal-Mart.

If you talk to many Americans, they just can’t seem to figure out why they can’t make things work out even though they are working as hard as they can.  Millions of Americans have found themselves taking on second (and in many cases third) jobs in an attempt to provide for their families.

But what they don’t understand is that the global elite have turned labor into a globalized commodity.

American workers are not faced with a level playing field.  Just check out some of the pay levels around the world that American workers must compete against….

In Bangladesh, a garment worker makes 22 cents an hour. The wage in Cambodia is 33 cents an hour; in Pakistan, 37 cents an hour; in Vietnam, 38 cents; in Sri Lanka, 43 cents; Indonesia, 44 cents; India, 55 cents; China, 86 cents; the Philippines, $1.07; and Malaysia, $1.18.

Do any of you want to work for $1.18 an hour with no benefits?

But that is your competition.

Wages are being driven down and big global corporations are loving it.

This isn’t capitalism.

This is the global elite pushing us into a cruel system of economic slavery where they control all of the wealth and the rest of us struggle to survive as we work our tails off for them.

Already we are seeing large numbers of Americans becoming absolutely desperate to get even a low paying job.

For example, over one three day period, approximately 10,000 people showed up to apply for 90 jobs making washing machines in Kentucky for $27,000 a year.

Can your family live on $27,000 a year?

But that is considered a good wage now.

Actually, the folks who are making really good wages now are those who work for the U.S. government.

Yes, life is good if you are a servant of the system.

Today, the average federal worker now earns about twice as much as the average worker in the private sector.

Of course government employees basically produce next to nothing except red tape.

The U.S. government doesn’t seem to care if they are productive or not.  They just keep borrowing more money and getting us into even more financial trouble.

But at least there is somewhere for middle class families to get decent jobs.

In fact, it is getting really hard to live a middle class lifestyle in America without relying on the government in some way.

The truth is that good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce.

That is why it is absolutely imperative for all of us to try to become as independent as possible.

That means getting out of debt.

That means starting our own businesses.

That means learning how to grow a garden.

Many of those who continue to blindly rely on the system to provide them with a “job” (“just over broke”) will end up bitterly disappointed in the end.

Millions of Americans have already lost their jobs and millions more Americans will lose their jobs as we move along through the next few years.

In fact, with all of the amazing advances in technology that we have seen over the past couple of decades, the global elite are starting to realize that they really don’t need 6 billion workers after all.

Instead, those among the global elite are increasingly viewing all of us as a burden.  They openly ask why they should have to take care of so many “useless eaters”.  After all, if the system does not need all of us to keep functioning, then what good are we to them?

So these days you are starting to hear a lot about the dangers of “overpopulation” and the need to control population growth.

In fact, just over one year ago Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and other very wealthy power brokers held a clandestine meeting in New York.

So what was the topic?

Population control.

One anonymous attendee of the meeting was quoted in a U.K. newspaper as saying that overpopulation “is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers.”

Are you starting to get the idea?

Instead of being viewed as valuable workers, now we are being viewed by the elite as pests that have multiplied to the point where we are now out of control.

What a strange world we live in now.

We need to get back to the America where good workers are valued and where hard work is rewarded.

We need to get back to the America where having a large middle class is an important national goal.

We need to get back to the America where we build American businesses, where we hire American workers and where we buy American products.

But unless the American people wake up, American workers are going to continue to be devalued.

Are we actually going to sit back and let American living standards decline to third world standards?

It is up to this generation to reject globalism and to reclaim the great free enterprise principles that this nation was founded on.

If someday our children and grandchildren exist in a world where they are considered just another part of the third world labor pool they will know who to blame.

What Is He Up To Now? George Soros Declares That Gold Is Now “The Ultimate Bubble”

What in the world is George Soros up to now?  At the 2010 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Soros recently made the following statement: “When interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop, and they are developing at the moment. The ultimate asset bubble is gold.”  So is Soros trying to scare people away from gold?  The truth is that the price of gold did rise about 40 percent last year.  In the current economic environment, there has been a flight to safety as nervous investors have flocked to precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum.  But are these bad investments that are overvalued right now?  Not at all.  The truth is that gold and silver are just about the only things that have held their value over the past 100 years.  An ounce of gold could buy you a really nice suit 100 years ago and an ounce of gold can buy you a really nice suit today.  But now that it is starting to come out that there could be massive reserves of gold and oil in Haiti, we should expect the ongoing manipulation of the precious metal markets only to intensify.  The truth is that the big dogs like Soros want everyone else to get out of gold and silver so that they can swoop in and get more for themselves.

If you are looking for a bubble, you don’t have to look any farther than the U.S. stock market.  Remember all of that “bailout” money and “stimulus” money that the U.S. government injected into the economy?  Well, it didn’t help you much, did it?  Nope.  So where did it go?  It went to pumping up Wall Street.  In a recent article, Bob Chapman did a great job of explaining what is happening….

Liquidity is not flowing into the economy it is pouring into Wall Street to aid and abet more speculation, which has sent the Dow from 6600 to 10,700.

That is why some analysts are calling this a “jobless” recovery.  They think that because the stock market has gone up we are having a recovery.  But it is a lie.  The reality is that the stock market is experiencing a “sucker’s rally” and all the insiders are busy selling their holdings off into that rally as Chapman explains further down in his article….

It should be noted that insiders are selling into the never-ending rally, and mutual funds have very little money flow coming into the funds. That, of course, is our government at work manipulating the market. Just last week insiders bought $18 million worth of shares and sold $419 million.

But let’s not just blame Wall Street.

They are not the only ones responsible for the mess that we are in.

The truth is that we have all made bad choices.  We have all bought stuff made in China for years and years just because it was a few cents cheaper.  We knew that it would put some of our neighbors out of work eventually but we didn’t care as long as we could save a buck or two. 

All we cared about was the lowest price.  In fact, for decades the U.S. government made obscenely lopsided trade deals with foreign nations (that were very much not in our favor) just so that we could get cheaper goods for the American consumer.  We were told that anything that was good for the “consumer” was good for the economy.  “Free trade” (or in other words, other countries getting to send us all the cheap stuff they wanted to) was going to be the solution to all of our problems.

But it wasn’t.

Instead, we found out that there was a very high cost to those low prices.

In his excellent article entitled “The Wal-Mart Model of Self-Destruction: Lowest Prices, Always”, Charles Hugh Smith captured the high cost of our obsession with low prices beautifully….

The propaganda of marketing has so hollowed out American culture that most citizens cannot recall a time that “Consumerism” wasn’t the unofficial religion of American society. And what is the First Commandment of “consumerist religion”? The lowest price is all that matters.

Quality doesn’t matter; we’re going to move/throw it away anyway.

Who made it doesn’t matter. The idea that you might pay more to keep your neighbor employed is akin to worshipping the Devil: all that matters is the lowest price.

The sad thing is that many of you who are reading this article will keep running out to bloated globalist retailers like Wal-Mart just to save a few pennies.  It doesn’t matter that their stores are filled with cheap garbage made in virtual sweat shops all over the globe and that Wal-Mart has probably decimated a large percentage of the local businesses in your area since they moved in.  But on the bright side, they do pay slightly over minimum wage and they do provide part-time employment for many of the people in your area.  Perhaps you can get a job with them when your job gets shipped overseas too.

The truth is that we all need to quit being “consumers” and we all need to start participating in our communities once again.  Instead of supporting a big global chain that takes all of the profits out of your local community, why don’t you go visit the struggling small business down the street instead?  Instead of pumping your cash into the giant shell game known as the stock market, why don’t you help a family member start a business or put it into something real like gold and silver instead?

We are all supporting the current globalist system by putting money into their banks, by investing in their stocks and by endlessly shopping in their stores. 

Imagine what would happen if we all suddenly decided to stop.