Michael T. Snyder

Vote YES On Scottish Independence – Scotland Finally Has A Chance To Get Free From The British

September 11, 2014September 11, 2014 by Michael

Scottish voters finally have the opportunity to fulfill William Wallace’s dream of a Scotland that is free and independent of England forever. All they have to do is vote yes next week. Without a doubt, a divorce from the British would be quite messy, and life would probably be more comfortable in the short-term if Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom. But hopefully the people of Scotland are looking beyond short-term concerns. Today, the United Kingdom is a horribly repressive Big Brother police state that is dominated by bureaucratic control freaks. You can hardly even sneeze without violating some kind of law, rule or regulation. And the London banking establishment is at the very heart of the debt-based global financial system which is enslaving so much of the planet. Scotland finally has a chance to get free from all of this. All it is going to take is a yes vote on Scottish independence.

It looks like it is going to be an incredibly close vote. Recent polls show that the result could go either way. Needless to say, this is causing the British establishment to freak out quite a bit.

For example, a couple of large banks have attempted to sway the vote during this past week by publicly declaring that they will have to move to England if the vote for Scottish independence is successful…

The Royal Bank of Scotland announced Thursday that it is making contingency plans to move its legal incorporation to England in the event of a “yes” vote. In addition, Lloyds Banking Group said it had made arrangements to establish “new legal entities” in England should voters in Scotland decide to sever ties with Britain.

And there have been lots of other warnings of “economic disaster” for Scotland if it does not remain part of the United Kingdom…

Standard Life, the pensions company, disclosed that it was planning to move part of its business to England to protect its customers, while BP and Shell backed expert predictions that North Sea oil will have all but run out by 2050. It also emerged that nearly $2-billion has flowed out of U.K. equity funds in the past two months amid heightened uncertainty over what separation would mean for the economy.

Honestly, it is probably true that there would be some short-term economic disruptions for Scotland.

But in the long run the Scottish would probably be in quite good shape considering how much of the North Sea oil they would own. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Bloomberg article…

The discovery of North Sea riches in the 1970s planted the seed of modern-day Scottish nationalism as supporters of independence cried “It’s our oil!”

Four decades later, nothing will be more important to the economic future of Scotland than the oil industry should the country vote to end the 307-year union with the rest of the U.K.

Reserves of oil and gas would be split, possibly along the so-called median line, already used to allocate fishing rights. The division would hand the Scots about 96 percent of annual oil production and 47 percent of the gas, according to estimates for 2012 by the University of Aberdeen’s Alex Kemp and Linda Stephen cited by the Scottish government.

What most British politicians won’t tell you is that it would probably be the British that would suffer the most economically in the short-term and in the long-term.

In fact, if there is a yes vote for Scottish independence it is being projected that the value of the British pound will fall substantially and we could see a “negative shock” in British financial markets…

Adam Memon, the head of economic research at the Centre for Policy Studies, said: “The principal immediate threat would be to sterling and the stability of the financial markets. The recent selloff is a mere warning of what may come if the Scots actually do vote for independence.”

Threadneedle Investments said: “Given the constitutional and economic uncertainties attached to a potential break-up of the UK, a vote for independence would be likely to deliver a negative shock to UK financial assets and lead to meaningful currency weakness.”

And actually, the Scottish are not going nearly far enough with this vote for independence. For example, according to Yes Scotland a newly-independent Scottish government would continue to have allegiance to the Queen…

The Scottish Government’s proposal is that the Queen remains Head of State in Scotland, in the same way as she is currently Head of State in independent nations such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

This would be the position for as long as the people of Scotland wished our country to remain a monarchy.

Speaking as an American, let me say that getting rid of the British monarchy has worked out exceptionally well for us.

Hopefully the Scottish people will make a similar decision sooner rather than later.

If Scotland does indeed end up voting for independence, it could give momentum to similar movements all over Europe.

Just this week, hundreds of thousands of Catalans took to the streets in Barcelona to demand the right to vote on independence from Spain…

Thousands of Catalans have rallied in Barcelona, Spain, demanding the right to hold a referendum on independence.

Participants, waving Catalan flags and wearing the flag’s red and yellow colours, stood in a V-shape formation, indicating their desire for a vote.

Protesters were energised by Scotland’s forthcoming independence referendum – and many also waved the Scottish flag.

The regional government has called a referendum for 9 November. The Spanish government says the vote is illegal.

Could we end up seeing a number of new nations emerging from the chaos that is about to engulf Europe?

This is clearly not what the establishment wants. In fact, George Soros says that “this is the worst possible time” for Scottish independence.

That alone is a really good reason to vote yes.

Personally, I am rooting for the Scottish people on this one. I truly hope that they are finally able to win their freedom.

The people of Scotland have been pushed around by the British for centuries.

Now they finally have a chance to stand up to the tyranny of London.

They finally have a chance to get free.

Let us hope that they take it.

Most People Don’t Believe It, But We Are Right On Schedule For The Next Financial Crash

September 4, 2014 by Michael

People have such short memories. Even though we are repeating so many of the same patterns that we witnessed in 2000-2001 and 2007-2008, most people do not think that another financial crash is coming. In fact, with the stock market setting record high after record high lately, I have been taking quite a bit of criticism for my relentless warnings about the coming financial storm. Many of the comments go something like this: “Snyder you are a moron! Nothing you say ever comes true. The stock market is going to keep on rocking and Obama is going to lead this country back to greatness. I hope that you choke on all of your doom and gloom.” Of course these critics never offer any hard evidence that I have been wrong about anything. They just assume that since the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights that all of us “bears” must have been wrong.

But the truth is that what we are observing right now is classic bubble behavior. The stock market crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008 were all preceded by irrational market rallies in the spring or summer. The financial markets have become completely divorced from economic reality, and such a state of affairs never lasts forever. It is just a matter of time before a correction comes.

But every time there is a bubble, most people end up getting caught up in all of the euphoria. And it is happening again. In fact, CNBC has just reported that bearishness among market newsletter writers is the lowest that it has been since 1987. But of course we all remember what happened back in 1987…

Professional investors haven’t had this little fear about stocks since Ronald Reagan was president.

It was the same year Michael Jackson told us in a song he was “Bad.” The New York Giants won the Super Bowl.

And oh yeah … by the way … the stock market crashed.

As gauged by the weekly Investors Intelligence report, bearishness among market newsletter writers has fallen to 13.3 percent, a level it has not seen since 1987 as the market continues to set new highs despite a seemingly endless call for a long-overdue correction.

People need to understand that just because something has not happened yet does not mean that it is not going to happen.

In this day and age, we have extremely short attention spans and we do not have the patience to wait for much of anything. But the financial world is not a game of checkers. It is a game of chess where things can take an extended period of time to play out.

Those that are mocking those of us that are bearish should consider where we stand financially in comparison to previous crash cycles. For example, the derivatives bubble is 20 percent larger than it was back in 2008, the “too big to fail banks” are 37 percent larger than they were back in 2008 and global debt levels are 40 percent larger than they were back in 2008.

In other words, many of our long-term economic problems are a lot worse than they were just prior to the last major financial meltdown.

But most people pay such little attention to the fundamentals these days. All they can see is that little stock market ticker going up and up and up.

Other analysts with much stronger credentials than I are issuing similar ominous warnings about what is ahead for the financial markets.

For example, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller is warning that market valuations are tremendously bloated right now…

Shiller, a Yale University professor who is often cited as one of the most influential people in economics and finance in the world, created a metric that compares stock prices with corporate profits. The metric recently climbed above 25. That level has only been surpassed three times since 1881: 1929, 1999 and 2007.

Steep market tumbles followed each instance, including the bursting of the dotcom bubble in the early 2000s.

But it doesn’t take a genius to see this.

Just look at the chart of the NASDAQ that I have posted below. The “dotcom bubble” in 2000 is really easy to see. So why can’t more people recognize the bubble that is happening now?…

In so many ways this bubble is reminiscent of the “dotcom bubble” of 14 years ago. Consider the following numbers from a recent article by Brett Arends…

When you look at medians, or in other words the typical stock, valuations are higher today than they were at the peak in 1999-2000.

For example, the median stock today is 20 times earnings. In January 2000, it was 16 times.

The median stock today trades at 2.5 times “book” or net asset value. At the start of 2000 it was just 2.2 times.

The median stock today trades for 1.8 times annual per-share revenues. In 2000: just 1.4 times.

What we are experiencing is not normal.

And this is especially true considering the fact that our overall economic performance is tepid at best.

A stock market correction is coming.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Some of the most prominent names in the financial world are warning about the coming correction. Two of them were recently interviewed by CNBC…

A jolt to international confidence in central banks will lead to a 30 to 60 percent market decline, David Tice, president of Tice Capital and founder of the Prudent Bear Fund, told CNBC’s “Power Lunch.” When this happens, he said, markets will face a “period of extreme turmoil.”

This crash will be precipitated, he said, by a disillusionment with the Federal Reserve’s “confidence game,” which will then see inflation rise, and the Fed scramble to raise rates. At that point, Tice added, “the Fed starts to lose control.”

Another market watcher also called for an impending fall.

The Fed’s low interest rates could bring a “scary” 50-60 percent market correction, said technical analyst Abigail Doolittle.

“Unfortunately, I think it could come on a crash similar to what happened in 2007,” Doolittle, the founder of Peak Theories Research, said on “Squawk Box” a day after the S&P 500 closed above the 2,000 level for the first time ever. “It’s tough to know what the exact catalyst will be. But that’s the very nature of that kind of selloff. They start slowly and then happen very suddenly.”

And as Zero Hedge has pointed out, billionaires such as Sam Zell, George Soros, Stan Druckenmiller and Carl Icahn all seem to be “quietly preparing” for the next crash.

Yes, the next financial crash has taken longer to come to fruition than many had anticipated. But as I have discussed so many times before, this is a very good thing. We should want this period of relative stability to last for as long as possible. The longer that things remain relatively stable, the longer that all of us have to prepare and to position ourselves for the financial chaos that is coming.

At this point, the fact that we are in the midst of a massive financial bubble has become so obvious that even the Bank for International Settlements is publicly talking about it…

Financial markets have been exuberant over the past year, […] dancing mainly to the tune of central bank decisions. Volatility in equity, fixed income and foreign exchange markets has sagged to historical lows. Obviously, market participants are pricing in hardly any risks.

Many have expected me to “change my tune” about the coming collapse because of how well the stock market has been performing.

Well, that simply is not going to happen.

Our economic fundamentals have continued to deteriorate, and our financial system is in far worse shape than it was just prior to the financial crash of 2008.

The truth is that we are right on schedule for the next great financial crash.

You can choose to ignore the warnings if you would like, but ultimately time will reveal who was right and who was wrong.

30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed

August 19, 2014August 20, 2014 by Michael

The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace. Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment. But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate. Over the past decade or so, the percentage of Americans that are working has gone way down, the quality of our jobs has plummeted dramatically and the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously. Meanwhile, we have watched median household income decline for five years in a row, we have watched the rate of homeownership in this country decline for eight years in a row and dependence on the government is at an all-time high. Being a part of the middle class in the United States at this point can be compared to playing a game of musical chairs. We can all see chairs being removed from the game, and we are all desperate to continue to have a chair every time the music stops playing. The next time the music stops, will it be your chair that gets removed?

And in this economy, you don’t even have to lose your job to fall out of the middle class. Our paychecks are remaining very stable while the cost of almost everything that we spend money on consistently (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is going up rapidly. Bloomberg calls this “the no-raises recovery”…

Call it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.

Meager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.

There are so many families out there that are struggling right now. So many husbands and wives find themselves constantly fighting with one another about money, and they don’t even understand that what is happening to them is the result of long-term economic trends that are the result of decades of incredibly foolish decisions. Without middle class jobs, we cannot have a middle class. And those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years. Without enough good jobs to go around, we have seen the middle class steadily shrink and the ranks of the poor grow rapidly.

The following are 30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed…

1. In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall. But now the average household in the top 5 percent has 24 times as much wealth as the average household overall.

2. According to a study recently discussed in the New York Times, the “typical American household” is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.

3. One out of every seven Americans rely on food banks at this point.

4. One out of every four military families needs help putting enough food on the table.

5. 79 percent of the people that use food banks purchase “inexpensive, unhealthy food just to have enough to feed their families”.

6. One out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections“.

7. Only 48 percent of all Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.

8. The price of food continues to rise much faster than the paychecks of most middle class families. For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high of $3.884 a pound.

9. According to one recent study, 40 percent of all households in the United States are experiencing financial stress right now.

10. The overall homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995.

11. The homeownership rate for Americans under the age of 35 is at an all-time low.

12. According to one recent survey, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.

13. The average age of vehicles on America’s roads has hit an all-time high of 11.4 years.

14. Last year, one out of every four auto loans in the United States was made to someone with subprime credit.

15. Amazingly, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

16. One recent study found that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have “completely given up” looking for a job.

17. 36 percent of Americans do not have a single penny saved for retirement.

18. According to one survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

19. More than half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 a year in wages.

20. Only four of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America require a Bachelor’s degree or better.

21. In America today, one out of every ten jobs is filled by a temp agency.

22. Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school.

23. Median household income in the United States is about 7 percent lower than it was in the year 2000 after adjusting for inflation.

24. Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.

25. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

26. According to one study, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity.

27. Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

28. If the middle class was actually thriving, we wouldn’t have more than a million public school children that are homeless.

29. If you can believe it, Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.

30. In terms of median wealth per adult, the United States is now in just 19th place in the world.

NAFTA Is 20 Years Old – Here Are 20 Facts That Show How It Is Destroying The Economy

August 14, 2014August 14, 2014 by Michael

Back in the early 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement was one of the hottest political issues in the country. When he was running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would result in an increase in the number of high quality jobs for Americans that it would reduce illegal immigration. Ross Perot warned that just the opposite would happen. He warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound” as thousands of businesses and millions of jobs left this country. Most Americans chose to believe Bill Clinton. Well, it is 20 years later and it turns out that Perot was right and Clinton was dead wrong. But now history is repeating itself, and most Americans don’t even realize that it is happening. As you will read about at the end of this article, Barack Obama has been negotiating a secret trade treaty that is being called “NAFTA on steroids”, and if Congress adopts it we could lose millions more good paying jobs.

It amazes me how the American people can fall for the same lies over and over again. The lies that serial liar Barack Obama is telling about “free trade” and the globalization of the economy are the same lies that Bill Clinton was telling back in the early 1990s. The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with Paul Craig Roberts…

I remember in the 90′s when former Presidential candidate Ross Perot emphatically stated that NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) would create a giant “sucking sound” of jobs being extracted away from the U.S. He did not win the election, and NAFTA was instituted on Jan. 1, 1994. Now, 20 years later, we see the result of all the jobs that have been “sucked away” to other countries.

According to an article by the Economic Policy Institute on 1/3/14:

“Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring “good-paying American jobs,” a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Considering that thousands of kids are pouring over the border as we speak, well, how’d that work out for us?

Many Americans like to remember Bill Clinton as a “great president” for some reason. Well, it turns out that he was completely and totally wrong about NAFTA. The following are 20 facts that show how NAFTA is destroying the economy…

#1 More than 845,000 American workers have been officially certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance because they lost their jobs due to imports from Mexico or Canada or because their factories were relocated to those nations.

#2 Overall, it is estimated that NAFTA has cost us well over a million jobs.

#3 U.S. manufacturers pay Mexican workers just a little over a dollar an hour to do jobs that American workers used to do.

#4 The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States has more than doubled since the implementation of NAFTA.

#5 In the year before NAFTA, the U.S. had a trade surplus with Mexico and the trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars. Last year, the U.S. had a combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of 177 billion dollars.

#6 It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#7 One professor has estimated that cutting the total U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.

#8 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States. In fact, many of them are now being built in Mexico.

#9 NAFTA hasn’t worked out very well for Mexico either. Since 1994, the average yearly rate of economic growth in Mexico has been less than one percent.

#10 The exporting of massive amounts of government-subsidized U.S. corn down into Mexico has destroyed more than a million Mexican jobs and has helped fuel the continual rise in the number of illegal immigrants coming north.

#11 Someone making minimum wage in Mexico today can buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than the day before NAFTA went into effect.

#12 Overall, the United States has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

#13 Back in the 1980s, more than 20 percent of the jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#14 We have fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than we did in 1950 even though our population has more than doubled since then.

#15 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, only 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#16 As I wrote about recently, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

#17 Because we have shipped millions of jobs overseas, the competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely intense and this has put downward pressure on wages. Right now, half the country makes $27,520 a year or less from their jobs.

#18 When adults cannot get decent jobs, it is often children that suffer the most. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

#19 In 1994, only 27 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

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

For much more on this, please watch the video by Charlie LeDuff posted below. It is well worth a few minutes of your time…

So if NAFTA is so bad for American workers, then why don’t our politicians just repeal it?

Well, unfortunately most of them are not willing to do this because it is part of a larger agenda. For decades, politicians from both major political parties have been working to slowly integrate North America. The eventual goal is to turn North America into another version of the European Union.

Just check out what former general and CIA chief David Petraeus had to say about this…

“After America comes North America,” Petraeus said confidently in answering the question about what comes after the United States, the theme of the panel discussion. “Are we on the threshold of the North American decade, question mark? I threw that away — threw away the question mark — and boldly proclaimed the coming North American decade, says the title now.” He also boasted about how the three economies have been put “together” over the last 20 years as part of the “implementation” of the North American Free Trade Act.

The “highly integrated” forces of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, Petraeus continued, will become the world’s powerhouse for energy and science. “There are four revolutions that are ongoing at various levels in each of the countries but foremost in the United States,” said the former CIA chief, who now serves as chairman of the KKR Global Institute. “The energy revolution is the first of those, which has created the biggest change in geopolitics since the rise of China since 1978.” The other “revolutions” include IT, manufacturing, and life sciences, which, “as highly integrated as they are, allow you to argue that after America comes North America,” he added.

When you hear our politicians talk about “free trade”, what they are really talking about is integrating us even further into the emerging one world economic system. And over the past couple of years, Barack Obama has been negotiating a secret treaty which would send the deindustrialization of America into overdrive. The formal name of this secret agreement is “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and it would ultimately result in millions more good jobs being sent to the other side of the planet where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. The following is a description of this insidious treaty from one of my previous articles…

Did you know that the Obama administration is negotiating a super secret “trade agreement” that is so sensitive that he isn’t even allowing members of Congress to see it? The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the “NAFTA of the Pacific” and “NAFTA on steroids”, but the truth is that it is so much more than just a trade agreement. This treaty has 29 chapters, but only 5 of them have to do with trade. Most Americans don’t realize this, but this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, health care, the trading of derivatives, copyright issues, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more. It will also merge the United States far more deeply into the emerging one world economic system. Initially, twelve nations will be a party to this treaty including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Together, those nations represent approximately 40 percent of global GDP. It is hoped that additional nations such as the Philippines, Thailand and Colombia will join the treaty later on.

Unfortunately, most Americans are as uneducated about these issues as they were back in 1994.

That is why we need to get this information out to as many people as we can.

So what is your perspective on all of this? Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

CDC Getting Dozens Of Calls ‘About People Who Are Ill After Traveling In Africa’

August 5, 2014August 5, 2014 by Michael

Should we be alarmed that the CDC has received “several dozen calls” from hospitals around the country “about people who are ill after traveling in Africa”? As you will read about below, a lot more Ebola testing has been going on around the nation than we have been hearing about in the mainstream media. I can understand the need to keep people calm, but don’t we have a right to know what is really going on? And the media has also been very quiet about the fact that Ebola is now potentially spreading to even more countries. As you will read about below, a Liberian man just died from Ebola in Morocco, and a man that traveled to Saudi Arabia from Sierra Leone on Sunday night is being tested for Ebola after exhibiting “symptoms of the viral hemorrhagic fever”. Top officials in the U.S. keep assuring us that everything is going to be just fine, but the truth is that this is a crisis that is beginning to spiral out of control. On Tuesday, the CDC told Time Magazine that it had received dozens of calls from all over the United States about people that had gotten sick after traveling to Africa…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told TIME on Tuesday that it’s received several dozen calls from states and hospitals about people who are ill after traveling in Africa. “We’ve triaged those calls and about half-dozen or so resulted in specimen coming to CDC for testing and all have been negative for Ebola,” CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said, adding that the agency is expecting still more calls to come in.

Let’s certainly hope that there is nothing to be concerned about in any of those calls. As I pointed out yesterday, the consequences of having a major Ebola outbreak in the United States could potentially be absolutely catastrophic. Meanwhile, there is a case in Saudi Arabia that has health officials over there extremely concerned. A man that traveled to the country on Sunday night is being tested for the virus after showing symptoms of “viral hemorrhagic fever”…

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday it is testing a man for the Ebola virus after he showed symptoms of the viral hemorrhagic fever following a recent trip to Sierra Leone. The Health Ministry said the symptoms appeared in the 40-year-old Saudi man at a hospital in the western city of Jiddah. He is in critical condition and being treated in a unit with advanced isolation and infection-control capabilities. Different types of viral hemorrhagic fevers have been found in the kingdom, but no case of Ebola has ever been detected there, according to the ministry.

In addition, it is being reported by international media sources that a Liberian has died of the Ebola virus in Morocco. If that is true, that is extremely troubling. That would mean that we now have confirmed Ebola cases in five different countries. And remember, the Ebola virus can have an incubation period of up to three weeks, and Ebola victims can “look quite fit and healthy and can be walking around until shortly before their deaths“. Because of this, hospitals across America are being extremely cautions right now. The following is from a recent NPR report…

If you show up at a hospital emergency department with a high fever and you just happen to have been traveling in Africa, don’t be surprised if you get a lot of attention. Hospitals are on the lookout for people with symptoms such as a high fever, vomiting and diarrhea who had been traveling in parts of West Africa affected by Ebola, following instructions from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And there have been some high profile cases that have gotten a lot of attention in recent days. The woman that was being tested for Ebola in Ohio got a lot of media attention, but it turns out that she does not have the disease. We are still waiting to hear about the man that was admitted to Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. Officials say that he “probably does not have Ebola“, but the test results have not been released yet. In addition, Paul Joseph Watson has pointed out that CNN’s Sanjay Gupta has publicly revealed that there have actually been “about half a dozen patients” that have been tested for the virus in recent days…

During a segment concerning the admission of a potential Ebola victim at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta revealed that there have been at least six cases at the hospital which prompted doctors to test for Ebola but that the details were not divulged publicly. “There have been about a half a dozen patients who have had their blood tested because of concern, those particular patients their stories were not made public,” said Gupta, adding, “I’m not sure if that’s because of heightened concern by the hospital or what that means exactly.”

What else is going on around the nation that we have not heard about? Like I keep saying, let us hope and pray that Ebola does not start spreading here, because it can rapidly become a nightmare. Over in Africa, nearly 900 people have already died, but one doctor told CBS News that the true number is actually significantly higher because “many cases are going unreported”…

Already, the World Health Organization says 887 people have died, but a top doctor working at the heart of the outbreak in West Africa says many cases are going unreported. The senior doctor, who works for a leading medical organization in Liberia, explained to CBS News’ Debora Patta that what has helped set this outbreak apart from previous ones is the virus’ spread in urban areas. One of the epicenters of the disease is the Liberian capital of Monrovia, home to about a million people, or almost a quarter of the country’s population. The doctor, who spoke to CBS News on condition of confidentiality, said the disease is spinning out of control in Africa partly because it is extremely difficult to contain it in a sprawling, congested city center.

And it certainly does not help that infected bodies are being dumped into the streets over in Liberia. If that continues to happen, this epidemic could very rapidly turn into a raging inferno over there. There have been health scares in the past, but this one is very different. If you get Ebola, you are probably going to die. And right now the number of Ebola cases is growing at an exponential rate. If this outbreak is not brought under control soon, we could be facing the worst health crisis that we have seen in any of our lifetimes.

What Will It Mean If The Potential Ebola Victim In New York City Actually Has The Virus?

August 4, 2014 by Michael

On Monday, we learned that a “possible Ebola patient” was being treated at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. We are being told that this individual recently returned from a country in Africa where there have been confirmed cases of Ebola. So that would narrow it down to Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria. The patient is being described as a male “with high fever and gastrointestinal symptoms“. The hospital says that “necessary steps are being taken to ensure the safety of all patients, visitors and staff“. But could you imagine the panic that is going to be created if there actually is a confirmed case of Ebola in the heart of New York City? There is nothing in the post-World War II era that would even be comparable. Certainly 9/11 created fear for a short period of time, but a full-blown Ebola outbreak would create a panic that could potentially last for months or even years.

And this comes on the heels of another Ebola scare in the United Kingdom. According to a British news source, a seriously ill 72-year-old woman “collapsed and died” after getting off a plane from Sierra Leone at Gatwick Airport…

Airport staff tonight told of their fears of an Ebola outbreak after a passenger from Sierra Leone collapsed and died as she got off a plane at Gatwick.

Workers said they were terrified the virus could spread globally through the busy international hub from the West African country which is in the grip of the deadly epidemic.

The woman, said to be 72, became ill on the gangway after she left a Gambia Bird jet with 128 passengers on board. She died in hospital on Saturday.

Officials tell us that the plane was rapidly quarantined and that they were tracking down anyone that had been in contact with that woman.

I don’t know about you, but all of this is starting to remind me of some of the really bad Hollywood disaster movies that I have seen.

In my article yesterday, I included the following chart which shows how this Ebola outbreak is beginning to grow at an exponential pace…

Well, today the World Health Organization says that the total number of cases has risen to 1,663 and the total number of deaths has risen to 887. So just imagine what that chart would look like now. Yes, it is definitely not an exaggeration to use the word “exponential” to describe what is happening.

If Ebola does start spreading inside the United States, it would be incredibly disruptive to our way of life.

In areas where there were confirmed cases of Ebola, it is inevitable that schools would be shut down and large gatherings of people such as concerts and sporting events would be cancelled. In addition, due to fear of catching the virus, foot traffic at grocery stores and shopping malls would drop off dramatically. If the panic lasted for multiple months, our economy would essentially grind to a halt. Most economic activity still involves face to face interaction, and if people are afraid that if they go out in public they might catch a disease that will kill them, it would create an economic disaster of unprecedented proportions.

And what happens if strict travel restrictions (to prevent the spread of the disease) or plain old fear cause massive interruptions in our transportation system? Almost all economic activity involves moving something from one location to another, and if we are not able to move stuff around because of an Ebola pandemic, that would create nightmarish problems almost immediately. For example, the following is an excerpt from a report released by the American Trucker Associations that I discussed in a previous article…

*****

A Timeline Showing the Deterioration of Major Industries Following a Truck Stoppage

The first 24 hours

• Delivery of medical supplies to the affected area will cease.
• Hospitals will run out of basic supplies such as syringes and catheters within hours. Radiopharmaceuticals will deteriorate and become unusable.
• Service stations will begin to run out of fuel.
• Manufacturers using just-in-time manufacturing will develop component shortages.
• U.S. mail and other package delivery will cease.

Within one day

• Food shortages will begin to develop.
• Automobile fuel availability and delivery will dwindle, leading to skyrocketing prices and long lines at the gas pumps.
• Without manufacturing components and trucks for product delivery,
assembly lines will shut down, putting thousands out of work.

Within two to three days

• Food shortages will escalate, especially in the face of hoarding and consumer panic.
• Supplies of essentials—such as bottled water, powdered milk, and
canned meat—at major retailers will disappear.
• ATMs will run out of cash and banks will be unable to process
transactions.
• Service stations will completely run out of fuel for autos and trucks.
• Garbage will start piling up in urban and suburban areas.
• Container ships will sit idle in ports and rail transport will be disrupted, eventually coming to a standstill.

Within a week

• Automobile travel will cease due to the lack of fuel. Without autos and busses, many people will not be able to get to work, shop for groceries, or access medical care.
• Hospitals will begin to exhaust oxygen supplies.

Within two weeks

• The nation’s clean water supply will begin to run dry.

Within four weeks

• The nation will exhaust its clean water supply and water will be safe for drinking only after boiling. As a result gastrointestinal illnesses will increase, further taxing an already weakened health care system.

This timeline presents only the primary effects of a freeze on truck travel. Secondary effects must be considered as well, such as inability to maintain telecommunications service, reduced law enforcement, increased crime, increased illness and injury, higher death rates, and likely, civil unrest.

*****

Are you starting to get the picture?

A major transportation disruption would not just result in an economic downturn. Many Americans would start running out of food and basic supplies very rapidly. Without the ability to constantly resupply at the grocery store, a lot of people would start giving in to panic in just a matter of days.

And needless to say, a full-blown Ebola outbreak would wreak havoc on our financial system. The stock market would almost certainly collapse and we would witness a credit crunch that would be absolutely unprecedented. Nobody would want to lend to anybody in the midst of an Ebola pandemic. The flow of money through our system would come to a screeching halt, and we would be facing an economic nightmare that would make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic.

So let us hope and pray that this crisis goes away and that Ebola does not start spreading across the country.

Because if it does, it could potentially kill millions of people, destroy our economy and plunge this nation into utter madness.

20 Signs The Epic Drought In The Western United States Is Starting To Become Apocalyptic

July 15, 2014 by Michael

When scientists start using phrases such as “the worst drought” and “as bad as you can imagine” to describe what is going on in the western half of the country, you know that things are bad. Thanks to an epic drought that never seems to end, we are witnessing the beginning of a water crisis that most people never even dreamed was possible in this day and age. The state of California is getting ready to ban people from watering their lawns and washing their cars, but if this drought persists we will eventually see far more extreme water conservation measures than that. And the fact that nearly half of all of the produce in America comes out of the state of California means that ultimately this drought is going to deeply affect all of us. Food prices have already been rising at an alarming rate, and the longer this drought goes on the higher they will go. Let us hope and pray that this drought is permanently broken at some point, because otherwise we could very well be entering an era of extreme water rationing, gigantic dust storms and crippling food prices. The following are 20 signs that the epic drought in the western half of the United States is starting to become apocalyptic…

#1 According to the Los Angeles Times, downtown Los Angeles is now the driest that it has been since records began being kept all the way back in 1877.

#2 The California State Water Resources Control Board says that nearly 50 communities are already on the verge of running out of water.

#3 In a desperate attempt to conserve water, the state of California is considering banning watering lawns and washing cars. Once implemented, violators will be slapped with a $500 fine for each offense.

#4 It has been reported that a new social media phenomenon known as “drought shaming” has begun in California. People are taking videos and photos of their neighbors wasting water and posting them to Facebook and Twitter.

#5 Climate scientist Tim Barnett says that the water situation in Las Vegas “is as bad as you can imagine“, and he believes that unless the city “can find a way to get more water from somewhere” it will soon be “out of business”.

#6 The water level in Lake Mead has now fallen to the lowest level since 1937, and it continues to drop at a frightening pace. You can see some incredible photos of what has happened to Lake Mead right here.

#7 Rob Mrowka of the Center for Biological Diversity believes that the city of Las Vegas is going to be forced to downsize because of the lack of water…

The drought is like a slow spreading cancer across the desert. It’s not like a tornado or a tsunami, bang. The effects are playing out over decades. And as the water situation becomes more dire we are going to start having to talk about the removal of people (from Las Vegas).

#8 In some areas of southern Nevada, officials are actually paying people to remove their lawns in a desperate attempt to conserve water.

#9 According to Accuweather, “more than a decade of drought” along the Colorado River has set up an “impending Southwest water shortage” which could ultimately affect tens of millions of people.

#10 Most people don’t realize this, but the once mighty Colorado River has become so depleted that it no longer runs all the way to the ocean.

#11 Lake Powell is less than half full at this point.

#12 It is being projected that the current drought in California will end up costing the state more than 2 billion dollars this year alone.

#13 Farmers in California are allowing nearly half a million acres to lie fallow this year due to the extreme lack of water.

#14 The lack of produce coming from the state of California will ultimately affect food prices in the entire nation. Just consider the following statistics from a recent Business Insider article…

California is one of the U.S.’s biggest food producers — responsible for almost half the country’s produce and nuts and 25% of our milk and cream. Eighty percent of the world’s almonds come from the state, and they take an extraordinary amount of water to produce — 1.1 gallons per almond.

#15 As underground aquifers are being relentlessly drained in California, some areas of the San Joaquin Valley are sinking by 11 inches a year.

#16 It is being projected that the Kansas wheat harvest will be the worst that we have seen since 1989.

#17 The extended drought has created ideal conditions for massive dust storms to form. You can see video of one female reporter bravely reporting from the middle of a massive dust storm in Phoenix right here.

#18 Things are so dry in California right now that people are actually starting to steal water. For example, one Mendocino County couple recently had 3,000 gallons of water stolen from them. It was the second time this year that they had been hit.

#19 At the moment, close to 80 percent of the state of California is experiencing either “extreme” or “exceptional” drought.

#20 National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Boldt says that this is “the worst drought we probably have seen in our lifetime“.

Most people just assume that this drought will be temporary, but experts tell us that there have been “megadroughts” throughout history in the western half of the United States that have lasted for more than 100 years.

If we have entered one of those eras, it is going to fundamentally change life in America.

And the frightening thing is that much of the rest of the world is dealing with water scarcity issues right now as well. In fact, North America is actually in better shape than much of Africa and Asia. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “25 Shocking Facts About The Earth’s Dwindling Water Resources“.

Without plenty of fresh water, modern civilization is not possible.

And right now, the western United States and much of the rest of the world is starting to come to grips with the fact that we could be facing some very serious water shortages in the years ahead.

So what is the solution?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

Stone Cold Proof That Government Economic Numbers Are Being Highly Manipulated

June 25, 2014 by Michael

How in the world does the government expect us to trust the economic numbers that they give us anymore? For a long time, many have suspected that they were being manipulated, and as you will see below we now have stone cold proof that this is indeed the case. But first, let’s talk about the revised GDP number for the first quarter of 2014 that was just released. Initially, they told us that the U.S. economy only shrank by 0.1 percent in Q1. Then that was revised down to a 1.0 percent contraction, and now we are being informed that the economy actually contracted by a whopping 2.9 percent during the first quarter. So what are we actually supposed to believe? Sometimes I almost get the feeling that government bureaucrats are just throwing darts at a dartboard in order to get these numbers. Of course that is not actually true, but how do we know that we can actually trust the numbers that they give to us?

Over at shadowstats.com, John Williams publishes alternative economic statistics that he believes are much more realistic than the government numbers. According to his figures, the U.S. economy has actually been continually contracting since 2005. That would mean that we have been in a recession for the last nine years.

Could it be possible that he is right and the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. are wrong?

Before you answer that question, read the rest of this article.

It just might change your thinking a bit.

Another number that many have accused of being highly manipulated is the inflation rate.

But we don’t have to sit around and wonder if that figure is being manipulated. The truth is that even those that work inside the Federal Reserve admit that it is being manipulated.

As Robert Wenzel recently pointed out, Mike Bryan, a vice president and senior economist in the Atlanta Fed’s research department, has been very open about the fact that the way inflation is calculated has been changed almost every month at times…

The Economist retells a conversation with Stephen Roach, who in the 1970s worked for the Federal Reserve under Chairman Arthur Burns. Roach remembers that when oil prices surged around 1973, Burns asked Federal Reserve Board economists to strip those prices out of the CPI “to get a less distorted measure. When food prices then rose sharply, they stripped those out too—followed by used cars, children’s toys, jewellery, housing and so on, until around half of the CPI basket was excluded because it was supposedly ‘distorted'” by forces outside the control of the central bank. The story goes on to say that, at least in part because of these actions, the Fed failed to spot the breadth of the inflationary threat of the 1970s.

I have a similar story. I remember a morning in 1991 at a meeting of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s board of directors. I was welcomed to the lectern with, “Now it’s time to see what Mike is going to throw out of the CPI this month.” It was an uncomfortable moment for me that had a lasting influence. It was my motivation for constructing the Cleveland Fed’s median CPI.

I am a reasonably skilled reader of a monthly CPI release. And since I approached each monthly report with a pretty clear idea of what the actual rate of inflation was, it was always pretty easy for me to look across the items in the CPI market basket and identify any offending—or “distorted”—price change. Stripping these items from the price statistic revealed the truth—and confirmed that I was right all along about the actual rate of inflation.

Right now, the Federal Reserve tells us that the inflation rate is sitting at about 2 percent.

But according to John Williams, if the inflation rate was calculated the same way that it was in 1990 it would be nearly 6 percent.

And if the inflation rate was calculated the same way that it was in 1980 it would be nearly 10 percent.

So which number are we supposed to believe?

The one that makes us feel the best?

And without a doubt, “2 percent inflation” sounds a whole lot better than “10 percent inflation” does.

But anyone that does any grocery shopping knows that we are definitely not in a low inflation environment. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “Inflation? Only If You Look At Food, Water, Gas, Electricity And Everything Else“.

Of course the unemployment rate is being manipulated as well. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent New York Post article…

In case you are just joining this ongoing drama, the Labor Department pays Census to conduct the monthly Household Survey that produces the national unemployment rate, which despite numerous failings is — inexplicably — still very important to the Federal Reserve and others.

One of the problems with the report is that Census field representatives — the folks who knock on doors to conduct the surveys — and their supervisors have, according to my sources, been shortcutting the interview process.

Rather than collect fresh data each month as they are supposed to do, Census workers have been filling in the blanks with past months’ data. This helps them meet the strict quota of successful interviews set by Labor.

That’s just one of the ways the surveys are falsified.

The Federal Reserve would have us believe that the unemployment rate in the U.S. has fallen from a peak of 10.0 percent during the recession all the way down to 6.3 percent now.

But according to shadowstats.com, the broadest measure of unemployment is well over 20 percent and has kept rising since the end of the last recession.

And according to the Federal Reserve’s own numbers, the percentage of working age Americans with a job has barely increased over the past four years…

The chart above looks like a long-term employment decline to me.

But that is not the story that the government bureaucrats are selling to us.

So where does the truth lie?

What numbers are we actually supposed to believe?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

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