Obama

Obama And Romney Both Favor A One World Economic System That Kills American Jobs

Either way this election turns out, American jobs are going to continue to get slaughtered by the millions.  During this campaign, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have both attempted to portray each other as the “outsourcer in chief“.  Unfortunately, they are both right.  Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have both participated in the outsourcing of American jobs, and both are openly admitting to the American people that they favor the emerging one world economic system which will continue to destroy millions of American jobs.  In fact, they argue with each other about which of them will be more aggressive in pursuing more “free trade” agreements over the next four years.  Unfortunately, the “free trade” agreements that the U.S. government enters into are never “fair trade” agreements.  As a result, over the past decade we have lost tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of national wealth.  This year alone, we will buy about half a trillion dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they will buy from us.  This trade deficit will be about 7 times larger than the trade deficit of any other nation on earth.  Our economy will continue to bleed jobs at a horrifying pace, but Obama and Romney insist that the answer to our problems is even more “free trade”.  What makes all of this even more dreadful is that most Americans continue to fall for this nonsense.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that merging our labor pool with the labor pools of nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages was going to kill American jobs and drive down wages for the jobs that remain in the United States.

Why should some giant predator corporation pay you 15 dollars an hour plus benefits when they can pay a worker on the other side of the planet a dollar an hour with no benefits to do the same job?

During the second presidential debate, when Obama was asked why high tech products such as the iPhone could not be made here in the United States, Obama openly admitted that there are some jobs that aren’t ever going to come back.

But why does that have to be so?

Why can’t those jobs come back to America?

It seems to me that if you cracked down on nations that are cheating such as China, imposed a system of common sense tariffs and cut the corporate tax rate to a level more consistent with the rest of the world that you could get a lot of those jobs flooding back in by the end of next year.

But Obama is so blinded by his faith in the emerging one world economy that such measures are unimaginable to him.

In recent years, the Obama administration has entered into new “free trade” agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia.  In addition, the Obama administration is making the Trans-Pacific Partnership (“the NAFTA of the Pacific“) a very high priority.

Considering what a nightmare the first NAFTA was, do we really need another one?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a treaty that would essentially ban all “Buy American” laws.  It is being touted as one of the most comprehensive “free trade” agreements in history, and it would open up the door for millions more good jobs to be shipped out of the country.

The workers of America simply cannot afford another four years of Barack Obama.

In fact, the Obama administration has actually spent billions of taxpayer dollars to create jobs in other countries.  The following is from a pro-Republican website…

Over his four years in office, Obama promised that he would focus on creating “jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.” However, as he racked up trillions in new debt, billions of dollars did go to create jobs that were outsourced or spent overseas. Whether it is electric cars made in Finland or solar panels in Mexico, taxpayers would be astonished to learn that their hard earned money went abroad for jobs that weren’t created in the United States.

You can get all the details right here.  Needless to say, the Obama administration has been an absolute disaster on these issues.

So would Romney be an improvement when it comes to trade?

That is very doubtful.

The truth is that Mitt Romney was involved in outsourcing jobs while he was at Bain Capital.  The following is from a recent article posted on Forbes.com…

David Corn of Mother Jones reports that “according to government documents . . . Romney, when he was in charge of Bain [Capital], invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.”

This didn’t happen after 1999, when Mitt Romney says he left Bain Capital to run the Salt Lake City Olympics (Corn was one of the first reporters to raise questions, now gaining wide exposure, of whether Romney really left Bain then), but the year before. On April 17, 1998, Brookside Capital Partners Fund, a Bain Capital affiliate of which Romney was the sole shareholder, sole director, president, and chief executive, invested an estimated $14.2 million in Global-Tech, an appliance maker in Dongguan, China. Global-Tech made products for American companies like Sunbeam, Hamilton Beach, Mr. Coffee, and Proctor-Silex. In September 1998 Global-Tech’s CEO announced that the company was postponing a factory expansion because Sunbeam was slowing its rate of outsourcing, and said, “Although it appears that customers such as Sunbeam are not outsourcing their manufacturing as quickly as we had anticipated, we still believe that the long-term trend toward outsourcing will continue.”

Since Romney left, Bain Capital has become even more aggressive with outsourcing jobs.  In fact, Bain Capital has been forcing American workers to train their Chinese replacements even in the midst of this campaign.  Aren’t they concerned that they are making their former boss look bad?  The following is from an article written by an American worker that is having his job shipped to China by Bain Capital…

On Monday, November 5th Bain Capital is outsourcing my job to China. On Tuesday, November 6th I’m casting my vote against Mitt Romney.

Yes, I blame Mitt Romney for the loss of my job. Here’s why.

I’ve worked at the same factory in Freeport, Ill. for thirty-three years, making sensors and controls for the auto industry. It’s tough work, but it pays a living wage with health benefits that folks can count on, and it fuels our town’s economy and tax base.

That’s been changing since Bain Capital came to town. Two years ago, our factory was sold to Sensata Technologies, a company created by Bain Capital, and they told us that by December 2012, all 170 of our jobs would be shipped to China. They even made us train our Chinese replacements.

Layoff notices have been sent out, and some folks have already been laid off. Where there was once lots of people and energy and life, now there’s only the discoloration on the floor where the machinery used to be. It’s depressing. They’re not just dismantling the equipment and the plant; they’re dismantling our community.

All of this outsourcing is killing America.

Back in 1950, the population of this country was less than half of what it is now, and yet there were more Americans working in manufacturing back in 1950 than there are today.

The decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States has been really dramatic since the year 2000.

In 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing, but now there are less than 12 million…

I think that it is interesting to note that China joined the WTO in 2001.  Since that time we have been losing jobs to them at an astounding pace.  According to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute, U.S. trade with China “cost more than 2.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2011”.

The Chinese slap huge tariffs on many of our goods, they manipulate currency rates to make sure that U.S. companies cannot compete, they steal our intellectual property and they deeply subsidize their own businesses.

And yet Obama and Romney insist that this is “free trade”.

What a joke.

And our tax structure is absolutely killing us as well.  The following is from a recent article by Ernest F. Hollings…

A U.S. manufacturer exporting to China pays the 35% Corporate Tax and a 17% VAT when its exports reach Shanghai.  A China manufacturer exports tax free to the U.S.

Are you starting to get the picture?

Our trade policy is a complete and total disaster, and yet Obama and Romney continue to insist that we just need to become even more integrated with the emerging one world economic system.

Well, in a previous article I listed 22 statistics which prove that the current path that we are on has been absolutely disastrous for American workers…

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

#2 The United States has a trade imbalance that is more than 7 times larger than any other nation on earth has.

#3 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the globe since 1975.  That 8 trillion dollars could have gone to support U.S. businesses and pay the wages of U.S. workers.  Federal, state and local taxes would have been paid on that 8 trillion dollars if it had stayed in the United States.

#4 When NAFTA was passed in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars.  In 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.

#5 In 2001, American consumers spent 102 billion dollars on products made in China.  In 2011, American consumers spent 399 billion dollars on products made in China.

#6 The Chinese undervalue their currency by about 40 percent in order to gain a critical advantage over foreign competitors.  This means that many Chinese companies are able to absolutely thrive while their competition in the United States goes out of business.  The following is from a recent Fox News article….

To keep Chinese products artificially inexpensive on US store shelves, Beijing undervalues the yuan by 40 percent. It pirates US technology, subsidizes exports and imposes high tariffs on imports.

#7 According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.

#8 The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 295.4 billion dollars.  That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

#9 Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was only about 6 million dollars (million with an “m”) for the entire year.

#10 U.S. consumers spend about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that Chinese consumers spend on goods and services from the United States.

#11 The United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

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

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

#14 During 2010 alone, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities closed their doors in America every single day.

#15 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.

#16 As I have written about previously, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.

#17 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.

#18 The percentage of working age Americans that are employed right now is actually smaller than it was at the end of the last recession.

#19 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.

#20 Due in part to the globalization of the labor pool, only about 24 percent of all jobs in the United States are “good jobs” at this point.

#21 Without enough good jobs, more Americans than ever before are falling into poverty.  Today, more than 100 million Americans are on welfare.

#22 In recent years the U.S. economy has embraced “free trade” and the emerging one world economy like never before.  Instead of increasing the number of jobs in our economy, it has resulted in the worst stretch of job creation in the United States in modern history….

If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.

At this point, more than 41 percent of all working age Americans do not have a job, and the vast majority of the new jobs that are being created are low paying jobs.

Median household income has fallen for four years in a row.  In fact, median household income is down by more than $4000 since Barack Obama entered the White House.

One recent survey found that about 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.  We are a country that is full of broke people.

What we need are more good jobs.  But Obama and Romney are both determined to keep shipping good jobs out of the country.

The path that we are on will only lead to disaster.  Please wake up America.

A Jobs Report Conspiracy?

Well, isn’t that convenient?  The Obama campaign desperately needed the last employment report to be released before the election to show that the unemployment rate had fallen below 8 percent, and somehow it magically happened.  Even though non-farm payroll employment only increased by 114,000 last month (not enough to even keep up with population growth), the official unemployment rate fell from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent.  So how did that happen?  Well, the unemployment number is not based on the survey of employers that showed that 114,000 jobs were added to the economy last month.  Rather it is based on a survey of households.  And that survey showed that the total number of Americans employed last month increased by a whopping 873,000 – almost eight times the number that the employer survey showed.  That figure for September (873,000) was the biggest one month increase in 29 years.  And it just happened to come at the exact perfect time for Barack Obama.  So was there a jobs report conspiracy?  Examine the evidence and decide for yourself.

The number of Americans with a job fell by 195,000 in July.

Then it fell by another 119,000 in August.

But somehow in September it miraculously exploded in the other direction and 873,000 jobs were added to the economy?

If you believe that, I have a bridge that I want to sell you.

Somehow, the largest increase in jobs in 29 years happened just when Barack Obama needed it the most.

Nah, that doesn’t sound fishy to me at all.

We are being told that a big reason for the huge increase was the number of Americans working part-time for “economic reasons”.  That number surged from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September.

Why the sudden jump?

Nobody can really explain it.

And if you look at the U6 unemployment rate, nothing has really changed at all.  U6 is still at 14.7 percent just like it was last month.

But the media is not going to talk about the U6 rate.  Instead, all of the headlines are going to be about “7.8 percent”.

According to the survey of employers, the U.S. economy added fewer jobs in September than it did in August, and it added fewer jobs in August than it did in July.

So according to the survey of employers, the employment situation in the United States is getting worse.

But according to the household survey, we just had the greatest month of job creation since the first term of Ronald Reagan.

Something does not add up.

And as I have written about previously, the unemployment rate would actually be up around 11 percent instead of 7.8 percent if not for the millions of workers that the government claims “dropped out of the labor force” over the past few years because they became too discouraged to look for work.

So unemployment in America is still a massive crisis, but the media is boldly proclaiming that things are getting better and that we are on the road to recovery.

Of course Obama looks like the cat who ate the canary today.  He is just thrilled with the “7.8 percent” number.

But the truth is that according to the employer survey, job growth in the United States is actually slower than last year.  The following is from the Calculated Risk blog….

All that said, the economy has only added 1.3 million payroll jobs over the first nine months of the year. At this pace, the economy would only add around 1.8 million private sector jobs in 2012; less than the 2.1 million added in 2011.

Are you starting to see why people are so skeptical of this jobs report?

When the “7.8 percent” figure was released, there was immediately a wave of shock and unbelief throughout the financial world and all over the Internet.

The following is a sampling of skeptical quotes about this jobs report….

Former GE chief Jack Welch

Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers

Chapwood Capital Investment Management Managing Partner Ed Butowsky

I feel like I’m watching a movie. There is no way in the world these numbers are accurate.

Neil Irwin of the Washington Post

“Weird that payrolls are exactly on forecast but household survey is far better.”

Conn Carroll, senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner

While it is highly improbable that BLS conspired to cook the books, there is still a huge 756,000 job gap between the number of jobs employers told the Labor Department they created in September (114k), and the number of Americans who told the labor department that they got new jobs (873k).

U.S. Representative Allen West

I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch, Chicago style politics is at work here. Somehow by manipulation of data we are all of a sudden below 8 percent unemployment, a month from the Presidential election. This is Orwellian to say the least and representative of Saul Alinsky tactics from the book “Rules for Radicals”- a must read for all who want to know how the left strategize . Trust the Obama administration? Sure, and the spontaneous reaction to a video caused the death of our Ambassador……and pigs fly.

Gluskin Sheff’s David Rosenberg

That the 7.8 percent jobless rate takes it to the level that prevailed when the President took office in January 2009 has raised many an eyebrow. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. But I don’t believe in the Household Survey either. 

This notoriously volatile indicator has become even more so in recent months. It showed a 195K slide in July and a 119K decline in August, to only then reveal a massive 873K surge in September.

Radio host Laura Ingraham

“Jobs #s from Labor Secretary Hilda Solis are total pro-Obama propaganda–labor force participation rate at 30-yr low. Abysmal!”

Americans for Limited Government

“Either the Federal Reserve, which has its fingers on the pulse of every element of the economy, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics manufacturing survey report are grievously wrong or the number used to calculate the unemployment rate are wrong, or worse manipulated. Given that these numbers conveniently meet Obama’s campaign promises one month before the election, the conclusions are obvious.”

Rick Santelli of CNBC

“I told you they’d get it under 8 percent — they did! You can let America decide how they got there!”

Of course the backlash in the media against skepticism of the jobs report has been very forceful.

Already, those that are doubtful of the legitimacy of the jobs report are being called “truthers” – as if there is something wrong with wanting to know the truth.

Sadly, that is how things work these days.  If you don’t like the viewpoint that some people are expressing, you just label them “conspiracy theorists”.

And when someone is labeled a “conspiracy theorist”, that is code for “that person is so crazy that you should not listen to anything they say”.

But the truth is that we live in a world where often people do things that they are not supposed to be doing.

When something rather strange happens, it is not wrong to investigate and try to figure out what is going on.

And this jobs report seems very, very odd.

It sure does seem rather strange that the household survey is showing almost 8 times as many jobs created as the employer survey does.

It sure does seem rather strange that 873,000 more Americans were working in September (the largest increase in 29 years) after decreases in both July and August.

It sure does seem rather strange that the unemployment rate dropped under 8 percent at the exact moment when Barack Obama needed it the most.

But perhaps all of this is just a coincidence.

What do you think?

16 Critical Economic Issues That Obama And Romney Avoided During The Debate

Did you watch the presidential debate on Wednesday night?  It is absolutely amazing how they can have an hour and a half debate about the economy and say so little.  It seemed like both candidates were falling all over each other wanting to talk about how much they value education, but will more education really solve our problems?  After all, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011.  So perhaps they should just both agree that education is a good thing and start talking about how to create more jobs for all of us.  If you want to grade the debate from a technical standpoint, clearly Romney was the winner of the debate.  Romney was full of energy and was generally sharp with his answers.  Obama looked like he had just popped a couple of antidepressants and was ready for nap time.  As a result, this might have been the worst blowout in the history of presidential debates.  A CNN/ORC International poll that was taken right after the debate found that 67 percent of all Americans that had watched the debate thought that Romney was the winner.  Never before had any presidential candidate crossed the 60 percent mark in the history of their post-debate polling.  So Romney definitely had a big night.  But the reality is that both candidates were telling the American people what they want to hear.  If either Obama or Romney told the truth about what we are facing they would lose votes, and in a race this tight both of them really want to avoid doing that.  Obama and Romney both desperately want to win this election, and the words that are coming out of their mouths have been carefully crafted to appeal to the “undecided voters” in the swing states.  If you actually believe that they can deliver on everything that they are promising, then you must not have been paying much attention to U.S. politics over the past several decades.

Perhaps the biggest failure on Wednesday night was debate moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS.  His questions were about as far from “hard hitting” as you could get.

The hour and a half debate was almost entirely about the economy, and yet almost all of the critical economic issues were ignored.

Yes, Obama and Romney have slight differences when it comes to tax rates and regulations, but those small differences are not going to do much to change the direction of this country one way or another.

Meanwhile, there were some really huge issues about the economy that were not addressed at all last night….

1 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the Federal Reserve was not mentioned a single time.

2 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, Ben Bernanke was not mentioned a single time.

3 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, quantitative easing was not mentioned a single time.

4 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the term “derivatives” was not used a single time.  Considering the fact that derivatives could bring down our financial system at any moment, this is an issue that should be talked about.

5 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of the millions of jobs that have been shipped out of the country.  Considering the fact that both Obama and Romney have played a role in this, it is probably a topic they both want to avoid.  Overall, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

6 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate mentioned that the velocity of money has plunged to a post-World War II low.

7 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the fact that the rest of the world is beginning to reject the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency was not mentioned a single time, but this has enormous implications for our economy in the years ahead.

8 – The fact that the Social Security system is headed for massive trouble was only briefly touched on during the debate.  At the moment, there are approximately 56 million Americans that are collecting Social Security benefits.  By 2035, that number is projected to grow to an astounding 91 million.  Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years.  When are our politicians going to honestly address this massive problem?

9 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the nightmarish drought the country is experiencing right now was not mentioned a single time.

10 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the financial meltdown in Europe was basically totally ignored.  But considering the fact that Europe has a larger economy and a much larger banking system than we do, perhaps someone should have asked Obama and Romney what they plan to do when the financial system of Europe implodes.

11 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the student loan debt bubble was only briefly mentioned.

12 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was not a single word about the fact that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is now larger than it has been at any point since the Great Depression.

13 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of TARP (which they both supported at the time).  Would they both bail out the big banks if another financial crisis erupted?

14 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of the economic stimulus packages (which they both supported at the time).  Would they both want more “economic stimulus” if we entered another recession?

15 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate talked about the fact that most of the jobs our economy is producing now are low income jobs.  In fact, since the end of the last recession, 58 percent of the jobs that have been created are low paying jobs.

16 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate mentioned that more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government or that more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially dependent on the government.  I can’t blame Romney for avoiding this point though – he probably wanted to avoid the phrase “47 percent” at all costs.

Is this really the best that America can do?

Tens of millions of Americans tuned in hoping to become more informed about the candidates, and instead what they got was an hour and a half of tap dancing as Obama and Romney constantly tossed out buzzwords such as “education”, “energy independent” and “middle class”.

I honestly don’t know how you can possibly have a debate about the economy without talking about the Federal Reserve, quantitative easing, the trade deficit, Europe or the decline of the U.S. dollar.

But it just happened right in front of our eyes.

I don’t think that I can ever remember another presidential debate that lacked substance as much as this one did.

So what did you all think about the debate?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

21 Facts About America’s Decaying Infrastructure That Will Blow Your Mind

You can tell a lot about a nation by the condition of the infrastructure.  So what does our infrastructure say about us?  It says that we are in a very advanced state of decay.  At this point, much of America is being held together with spit, duct tape and prayers.  Our roads are crumbling and thousands of our bridges look like they could collapse at any moment.  Our power grid is ancient and over a trillion gallons of untreated sewage is leaking from our aging sewer systems each year.  Our airports and our seaports are clogged with far more traffic than they were ever designed to carry.  Approximately a third of all of the dam failures that have taken place in the United States since 1874 have happened during the past decade.  Our national parks and recreation areas have been terribly neglected and our railroads are a bad joke.  Hurricane Katrina showed how vulnerable our levees are, and drinking water systems all over the country are badly outdated.  Sadly, at a time when we could use significant new investment in infrastructure, our spending on infrastructure is actually way down.  Back during the 50s and the 60s, the U.S. was spending between 3 and 4 percent of GDP on infrastructure.  Today, that figure is down to about 2.4 percent.  But of course we don’t have any extra money to spend on infrastructure because of our reckless spending and because of the massive amount of debt that we have accumulated.  While the Obama administration is spending more than half a million dollars to figure out why chimpanzees throw poop, our national infrastructure is literally falling apart all around us.  Once upon a time nobody else on the planet could match our infrastructure, and now we are in the process of becoming a joke to the rest of the world.

The following are 21 facts about America’s failing infrastructure that will blow your mind….

#1 The American Society of Civil Engineers has given America’s crumbling infrastructure an overall grade of D.

#2 There are simply not enough roads in the United States today.  Each year, traffic jams cost the commuters of America 4.2 billion hours and about 2.8 million gallons of gasoline.

#3 It is being projected that Americans will spend an average of 160 hours stuck in traffic annually by the year 2035.

#4 Approximately one-third of all roads in the United States are in substandard condition.

#5 Close to a third of all highway fatalities are due “to substandard road conditions, obsolete road designs, or roadside hazards.”

#6 One out of every four bridges in America either carries more traffic than originally intended or is in need of repair.

#7 Repairing all of the bridges in the United States that need repair would take approximately 140 billion dollars.

#8 According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, our decaying transportation system costs the U.S. economy about 78 billion dollars annually in lost time and fuel.

#9 All over America, asphalt roads are being ground up and are being replaced with gravel roads because they are cheaper to maintain.  The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt roads into gravel roads, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have transformed at least some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.

#10 There are 4,095 dams in the United States that are at risk of failure.  That number has risen by more than 100 percent since 1999.

#11 Of all the dam failures that have happened in the United States since 1874, a third of them have happened during the past decade.

#12 Close to half of all U.S. households do not have access to bus or rail transit.

#13 Our aging sewer systems spill more than a trillion gallons of untreated sewage every single year.  The cost of cleaning up that sewage each year is estimated to be greater than 50 billion dollars.

#14 It is estimated that rolling blackouts and inefficiencies in the U.S. electrical grid cost the U.S. economy approximately 80 billion dollars a year.

#15 It is being projected that by the year 2020 every single major container port in the United States will be handling at least double the volume that it was originally designed to handle.

#16 All across the United States, conditions at many of our state parks, recreation areas and historic sites are deplorable at best.  Some states have backlogs of repair projects that are now over a billion dollars long….

More than a dozen states estimate that their backlogs are at least $100 million. Massachusetts and New York’s are at least $1 billion. Hawaii officials called park conditions “deplorable” in a December report asking for $50 million per year for five years to tackle a $240 million backlog that covers parks, trails and harbors.

#17 Today, the U.S. spends about 2.4 percent of GDP on infrastructure.  Meanwhile, China spends about 9 percent of GDP on infrastructure.

#18 In the United States today, approximately 16 percent of our construction workers are unemployed.

#19 China has plans to build 55,000 miles of highways by the year 2020.  If all of those roads were put end to end, it would be longer than the total length of the entire U.S. interstate system.

#20 The World Economic Forum ranks U.S. infrastructure 23rd in the world, and we fall a little bit farther behind the rest of the developed world every single day.

#21 It has been projected that it would take 2.2 trillion dollars over the next 5 years just to repair our existing infrastructure.  That does not even include a single penny for badly needed new infrastructure.

So where did we go wrong?

Well, one of the big problems is that we have become a very materialistic society that is obsessed with short-term thinking.  Investing in infrastructure is something that has long-term benefits, but these days Americans tend to only be focused on what is happening right now and most politicians are only focused on the next election cycle.

Another major problem is that there is so much corruption and waste in our system these days.  The government certainly spends more than enough money, but very little of that money is spent wisely.  A lot of the money that could be going toward rebuilding our infrastructure is being poured down the toilet instead.  For much more on this, please read my previous article entitled “16 Sickening Facts That Show How Members Of Congress And Federal Workers Are Living The High Life At Your Expense“.

Unfortunately, it is probably appropriate that our infrastructure is decaying because we are decaying in just about every other way that it is possible for a society to decay.

We are decaying economically, politically, mentally, emotionally, physically, morally and spiritually.

We are a complete and total mess.  So why shouldn’t what is happening to our infrastructure on the outside match what is happening to us as a nation on the inside?

And sadly, we simply do not have the money that we need for infrastructure because of all the debt that we have piled up.  The federal government, our state governments and our local governments are all struggling to stay afloat in an ocean of red ink, and unfortunately that means that spending on infrastructure is likely to be cut even more in the years ahead.

So get used to rotting, crumbling, decaying infrastructure.  What you see out there right now is only just the beginning.

The Real Unemployment Numbers Are Worse Than You Are Being Told

According to the Obama administration, the unemployment rate in the United States has been slowly coming down over the past couple of years.  But is that actually true?  When you take a closer look at the data you quickly realize that the real unemployment numbers are much worse than we are being told.  For example, if the labor force participation rate was the same today as it was back when Barack Obama first took office, the unemployment rate in the United States would be a whopping 11.2 percent.  But every month the Obama administration has been able to show “progress” because of the fiction that hundreds of thousands of Americans are “disappearing” from the labor force each month.  Frankly, the way that they come up with these numbers is an insult to our intelligence.  Personally, I much prefer the employment-population ratio.  It is a measure of the percentage of working age Americans that actually have jobs.  I like to call it “the employment rate”.  So what happened to the “employment rate” in August?  It fell slightly to 58.3 percent.  It is lower than it was when the last recession supposedly ended, and it is almost as low as it has been at any point since the very beginning of this crisis.  A few times during this economic downturn it has actually hit 58.2 percent.  Needless to say, things are not getting any better.  So why aren’t the American people being told the truth?

After every other recession in the post-World War II era, the employment rate has always rebounded.

But not this time.

Does this look like a recovery to you?….

So how in the world can Barack Obama claim that we are better off now?

In August 2010, 58.5 percent of working age Americans had jobs.

In August 2012, 58.3 percent of working age Americans had jobs.

So where is the recovery?

It is two years later and a smaller percentage of Americans are employed.

It is very frustrating to me that we are not being told the truth about the unemployment numbers.  The following are some more indications that the real unemployment numbers are much worse than we are being told….

-In July, 142,220,000 Americans were working.  In August, only 142,101,000 Americans were working.  So the number of Americans working fell by 119,000 and yet the government would have us believe that the unemployment rate actually declined from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent.

-According to the federal government, 96,000 jobs were added to the economy in August and the U.S. labor force shrank by 368,000 even though our population is continually growing. If the size of the U.S. labor force had stayed the same, the official unemployment rate would have actually gone up to 8.4 percent.

-Almost all of the new jobs added in August were the result of the “birth-death” model used by the Labor Department to estimate jobs added by new businesses.  That model has been heavily criticized for being inaccurate.  If you take the 87,000 jobs added by that model out of the equation, then the U.S. economy only added 9,000 jobs in August.  But it takes somewhere around 125,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with the growth of the population.

-If the labor participation rate was sitting where it was when Barack Obama first took office, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.2 percent.

-If the labor participation rate was sitting at the 30 year average of 65.8 percent, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.7 percent.

-John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics would put the “real” rate of unemployment up around 23 percent after adding in all workers that have given up looking for work and all underemployed workers.

-The labor participation rate for men has fallen to 69.9 percent.  This is the lowest level that it has been since the U.S. government began tracking this statistic back in 1948.

-There was more bad news for manufacturing in this latest report.  During the month of August the U.S. manufacturing sector lost approximately 15,000 jobs.

-The official unemployment rate has now been above 8 percent for 43 months in a row.

-The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been below 59 percent for 36 months in a row.

-The employment numbers for both June and July were revised downward significantly.  For June, it turns out that only 45,000 jobs were added to the economy as opposed to the 64,000 that were originally reported.  For July, it turns out that only 141,000 jobs were added to the economy as opposed to the 163,000 that were originally reported.

-Incredibly, 58 percent of the jobs created since the end of the last recession have been low income jobs.

-The U.S. economy currently has 4.7 million less jobs than it did when the last recession started.

So what is the solution to these problems?

The media is breathlessly proclaiming that more quantitative easing is on the way and that the Federal Reserve will save the economy and send the stock market soaring to new heights.

A headline on CNBC on Friday boldly declared the following: “Market Sees ‘Helicopter Ben’ Coming to the Rescue“.

You can almost hear the chopper blades whirling now.

Apparently Bernanke has had a love of showering the economy with money for a very long time.  For example, you can see a picture of a young Ben Bernanke in action right here.

Of course that is a joke, but you get the point.

In recent years Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the rest of his cohorts have printed money like there is no tomorrow.

So have the previous rounds of quantitative easing solved our problems?

Of course not.

The employment rate is even lower today than it was two years ago.

But all of that money printing has sent the stock market soaring and it has enabled the big Wall Street banks to make an obscene amount of money.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve, the Obama administration and the big Wall Street banks don’t really care about you.

They don’t really care that the middle class is rapidly shrinking and that the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by more than 14 million since Barack Obama became president.

What they care about is what is good for them.

As I have written about previously, if we continue on the same path that we have been on for the past several decades, there will never be enough jobs in America ever again.

On our current trajectory, we will end up just like Greece where the unemployment rate is now up to 24.4 percent.

Once upon a time the economy of Greece was thriving.

But today, many formerly middle class Greek citizens are leaving Greece and are picking up whatever work they can find….

As a pharmaceutical salesman in Greece for 17 years, Tilemachos Karachalios wore a suit, drove a company car and had an expense account. He now mops schools in Sweden, forced from his home by Greece’s economic crisis.

“It was a very good job,” said Karachalios, 40, of his former life. “Now I clean Swedish s—.”

Karachalios, who left behind his 6-year-old daughter to be raised by his parents, is one of thousands fleeing Greece’s record 24 percent unemployment and austerity measures that threaten to undermine growth.

Would you be willing to do that?

Don’t laugh.

Someday when the unemployment rate in the United States gets that high we will see large numbers of desperate Americans leaving this country in search of work somewhere else.

Already, an increasing number of Americans are buying expired food at auctions.

Times are hard and people are trying to get by any way that they can.

More than 100 million Americans are already on welfare and things have not even gotten that bad yet.

This is nothing compared to what is coming.

As you can see from the chart posted near the top of this article, the last economic downturn appears to have permanently weakened the U.S. economy.

Now the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.

How much worse will things get when it finally hits us?

That is something to think about.

Obama Has Stolen $5.3 Trillion From Our Children In Order To Make Himself Look Good

Barack Obama has destroyed the future of America in order to improve his chances of winning the next election.  Under Obama, 5.3 trillion dollars has been ruthlessly stolen from our children and our grandchildren.  That money has been used to pump up the debt-fueled false prosperity that we have been experiencing.  When the U.S. government borrows money that it does not have from someone else (such as China) and spends that money into the economy it is going to make our economic numbers look better.  Even if the government spends that money on incredibly stupid things, it still gets into the hands of average Americans who in turn spend that money on food, gas, clothes, etc.  If we were to go back and take that extra 5.3 trillion dollars out of the U.S. economy, I guarantee you that we would be in a rip-roaring depression right now.  We would look a lot like Greece at this point.  For several years Greece has been raising taxes and cutting government spending in an attempt to balance the budget and these austerity measures have resulted in an unemployment rate of over 23 percent and an economy that has contracted by close to 25 percent.  Most Americans don’t want to go through pain like that so they are okay with continuing to financially rape our children and our grandchildren.  Just imagine how you would feel if your parents died tomorrow and you found out that they had left you with a million dollar debt that you were legally obligated to pay off.  How would you feel, knowing that you had just been sold into debt slavery for the rest of your life?  Well, that is how our children and our grandchildren are going to feel.  We are destroying the greatest economic machine the world has ever seen, we are accumulating the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, and the coming economic collapse that we have caused is going to wipe out the promising future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  If they get the chance, future generations of Americans will curse us bitterly and will spit on our graves.  What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is the kind of stuff that horror movies are made of.  You should be ashamed of yourself America.

The federal budget deficit for 2012 will be larger than the entire U.S. national debt was 30 years ago.  In 1982 Ronald Reagan was in the White House and the U.S. national debt was considered to be a tremendous national crisis.  But somehow we have allowed our national debt to grow from about a trillion dollars back then to approximately $16,000,000,000,000 today.

By the end of Obama’s first term, the U.S. national debt will have grown more than it did from the time that George Washington became president to the time that George W. Bush became president.

That is hard to believe.

Obama is going to outdo all the presidents from George Washington through Bill Clinton in just one term.

Amazing.

At this point, the U.S. national debt is more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

This has allowed us to enjoy a standard of living far beyond what we deserved to.  We have stolen from the future to make the present more pleasant.

But hardly anybody wants the party to end.  Especially not our Congress critters – they are living like kings and queens at our expense.  Our “representatives” in Washington D.C. love to give speeches about being “financially responsible”, but most of them never take any serious action about the debt because the way things are working now has been incredibly good to them.

And the truth is that both political parties have been responsible.  In 2010, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives with a clear mandate to get government spending under control.  Not a single penny of government money can be spent without their permission.  But since they took control, the U.S. national debt has increased by another 1.8 trillion dollars.

At this point, this current Congress (controlled by both Republicans and Democrats) has added more to the national debt than the first 97 Congresses combined.

We expect this kind of nonsense from the Democrats, but the Republicans are supposed to know better.

Of course our entire financial system is designed to permanently entrap our federal government in an endless spiral of debt, but neither political party ever talks about that.

Sadly, the U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.

But we never hear about the link between the Federal Reserve and our national debt from either political party or on the mainstream news.

So most Americans do not even realize that our system is designed to create government debt.

It is absolutely disgusting.

We say that we care about our kids, and yet we are passing down a $16,000,000,000,000 debt to them.

Talk about child abuse.

Most people have a really hard time grasping how much money 16 trillion dollars actually is.

If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

And it would take you more than half a million years to spend 16 trillion dollars.

This is a debt that is impossible to pay back.  Just look at how it has exploded over the past 40 years….

In a previous article I discussed the distressing rate at which our debt is growing….

It took more than 200 years for the U.S. national debt to reach 1 trillion dollars.  In 1986, the U.S. national debt reached 2 trillion dollars.  In 1992, the U.S. national debt reached 4 trillion dollars.  In 2005, the U.S. national debt doubled again and reached 8 trillion dollars.  Now the U.S. national debt is about to cross the 16 trillion dollar mark.  How long can this kind of exponential growth go on?

If we can’t even slow down the growth of our debt, how do we ever expect to repay a single penny?

The sad truth is that we aren’t ever going to start paying down our debt.  We have gotten to the point where if we take our foot off the debt accelerator we plunge directly into a depression and the entire system collapses.  It is like a really sick version of the movie “Speed”.

Where is Keanu Reeves when you need him?

Since Barack Obama entered the White House, he has approved a whole host of measures that have been good for the economy in the short-term.  TARP, the stimulus packages, the auto industry bailout and the payroll tax cut are just a few examples.

Barack Obama has wanted to do everything he possibly can to stimulate the economy in the short-term so that he can win again in 2012.

But what about the future?

Barack Obama could not care less about the future.  He is just like so many of our other politicians.  He is blinded by selfish ambition.

Since Barack Obama became president, the U.S. national debt has increased by an average of more than $64,000 per taxpayer.

Are you willing to write a check for your share?

No?

Oh, let’s just pass this horrific debt on to our children, right?

The path that we are on as a nation cannot go on too much longer.  The truth is that we are headed for financial oblivion.

A recently revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” projects that U.S. government debt will rise to about 400 percent of GDP by the year 2050.

Of course we will never get to the point.  Our financial system will collapse long before then.

Sadly, the United States already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain does.

So why are we not like Greece or Spain yet?

Well, it is because we are still able to borrow huge piles of money very, very cheaply.

But at some point that will come to an end, and when it does the consequences are going to be nightmarish.

Historically, the interest rate on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has averaged 6.68 percent.  If the average rate of interest on U.S. debt rose to that level today, we would be paying more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

And when you consider our future unfunded liabilities things get even more frightening.

According to Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, the “fiscal gap” is “the present value difference between projected future spending and revenue”.  His calculations have led him to the conclusion that the United States is facing a fiscal gap of 222 trillion dollars.

And this gap is rising at a breathtaking pace.

The following is an excerpt from a recent article co-authored by Kotlikoff….

In 2007, the first year the CBO produced the Alternative Fiscal Scenario, the gap, by our reckoning, stood at $175 trillion. By 2009, when the CBO began reporting the AFS annually, the gap was $184 trillion. In 2010, it was $202 trillion, followed by $211 trillion in 2011 and $222 trillion in 2012.

But if we interrupt this debt cycle we immediately go into a depression.

We are a debt addict that will die without more debt.

Meanwhile, our national ability to produce wealth is going down the toilet.

All over the country businesses are shutting down, factories are being closed and millions of jobs are being sent overseas.

As I wrote about the other day, American families are steadily getting poorer.  The middle class is shrinking and the tax base is shriveling up.

Many Americans end up flat broke at the end of their lives these days.  In fact, one study found that nearly half of all retirees end up with $10,000 or less when they die.

So where is all of the money for servicing this gigantic national debt going to come from?

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

So what is the solution?

If we keep spending money like this we are doomed, but if we stop spending money like this we are doomed.

And debt is not just a problem that the federal government is facing.

Posted below is a chart that shows the growth of all forms of debt in the United States over the past several decades.  40 years ago, there was less than 2 trillion dollars of total debt owed in the United States.  Now there is nearly 55 trillion dollars of debt owed.  This generation has destroyed the future and has set the stage for an unprecedented economic collapse.  Shame on you America….

The Audit The Fed Bill Gets Passed By The House But Obama And The Democrats Are Going To Kill It

On Wednesday, Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve was overwhelmingly passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.  The vote was 327 to 98.  You would think that a bill with such overwhelming support would easily become law.  But it won’t, because Barack Obama and the Democrats plan to kill it.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already said that the Senate will not even consider the bill.  But of course if Barack Obama called Harry Reid and told him that he wants this bill to get through the Senate so that he could sign it then Harry Reid would be singing a much different tune.  Sadly, we all know that is not going to happen.  Barack Obama’s good buddy Ben Bernanke called the Audit the Fed bill a “nightmare scenario” last week, and Obama is certainly not going to do anything to upset Bernanke – especially this close to the election.  Obama needs Bernanke to do everything that he possibly can to stimulate the economy so that Obama will look as good as possible in November.  The sad truth is that there is absolutely no chance that the Audit the Fed bill will become law and that is a crying shame.

So why is an audit of the Federal Reserve so important?

Why does Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke consider an audit of the Federal Reserve to be a “nightmare scenario” that must be avoided at all costs?

Well, perhaps it is because there has never been a true comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve since it was created back in 1913.

The Federal Reserve has more power over the economy than anyone else in the country does, and yet they are virtually unaccountable and the American people have very little idea what has been going on behind closed doors over at the Fed for the past 100 years.

A very limited audit of the Fed that was passed a couple of years ago that examined transactions during the last financial crisis discovered that the Federal Reserve had actually loaned out more than 16 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free money to the “too big to fail” banks between 2007 and 2010.

Keep in mind that U.S. GDP for the entire year of 2011 was only slightly more than 15 trillion dollars.

The Federal Reserve loaned out trillions upon trillions of dollars to their friends and never told the American people about it.

Whoa.

You would think that Congress would be quite eager to see what else has been going on over at the Federal Reserve.

But instead, many Democrats are completely and utterly opposed to auditing the Fed any further.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank (a Democrat) seemed to regard the bill as a joke even after it overwhelmingly passed in the House.  Frank stated that “nobody here thinks this will ever become law“.

According to Politico, there is zero chance that the bill will get through the U.S. Senate….

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said the Senate will not consider the bill, effectively killing its chances of becoming law.

But we all know that if Obama wanted this bill to become law that it would be a done deal.

If Barack Obama came out tomorrow in front of the television cameras and declared his support for this bill it would sail right through the Senate.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has made it very clear that it considers a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve to be a really, really bad idea.

For example, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner once stated that auditing the Fed is a “line that we don’t want to cross” and that if we did audit the Fed it would be “problematic for the country”.

So what exactly did he mean by that?

That is a very good question.

In any event, people should take this as an opportunity to confront Barack Obama about the Audit the Fed bill wherever he goes.

Perhaps Obama will prove me wrong.

Perhaps Obama will show that he is willing to stand up to the Federal Reserve.

In fact, if Obama gets this bill pushed through Congress and signs it into law, I will not criticize him for an entire month.

But we all know that will never happen.

The Federal Reserve is going to be able to continue to keep their secrets hidden from the American people.

The following is what Ron Paul had to say following the vote on Wednesday….

“I think the whole idea that they can deal in trillions of dollars and know that nobody is allowed to ask them a question is a moral hazard.”

And Ron Paul is right.

If the Federal Reserve can zap trillions of dollars into existence out of thin air and loan that money to their friends at the big banks and to central banks in other countries, then it should not be too much to ask them to be accountable to the American people.

Over the coming months, the American people will heatedly debate whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would be better for the U.S. economy.

But the truth is that the Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy than the president of the United States does.

The Federal Reserve has been called the “fourth branch of government” because of how much power it has.  The Federal Reserve sets our interest rates, it determines the level of our money supply, it regulates and secretly bails out our banks, it determines the “target rates” for unemployment and inflation, and every small move the Fed makes causes global financial markets to swing wildly.

The Federal Reserve does all of this without ever having to be accountable to the American people.  In fact, whenever a bill is introduced that would shed some light on their activities they whine and cry about how important their “independence” is.

In a previous article, I described how preposterous this all is….

For a moment, imagine that there is a privately-owned organization in the United States that can create U.S. dollars out of thin air whenever it wants and can loan that money to whoever it wants to.  Imagine that this organization is able to act with the full power of the U.S. government behind it, but that nobody in the organization is ever elected by the American people, and that for all practical purposes the organization is not accountable to the president or to Congress.  Imagine that the organization is able to make trillions of dollars of secret loans to banks, to foreign governments and even to their close friends without ever having to face a comprehensive audit.  Does that sound preposterous?  Well, such an organization actually exists.

The American people need to stand up and demand an audit of the Federal Reserve.

We deserve to know what is going on over there.

Sadly, the mainstream media makes it sound as if hell has a better chance of freezing over than this bill does of becoming law.  The following is from a USA Today article that was posted on Wednesday….

The bill stands no chance of becoming law because the Democratic-controlled Senate will not take it up. The vote, however, served as a symbolic swan song for Paul, who is not seeking re-election. It is also an indicator of how Paul’s economic views have gone more mainstream, particularly within the Republican Party, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that shook Americans’ confidence in Wall Street and the federal government.

Well, let us hope that this kind of a bill keeps getting introduced in Congress.

Perhaps someday we actually will get a real audit of the Federal Reserve.

When that happens, the following is a list of questions that I would like to see asked by those auditing the Fed….

If the Federal Reserve is supposed to prevent shocks to our economy, then why have there been 10 different economic recessions since 1950 and why are we about to enter another one?

Was the Federal Reserve involved in the manipulation of Libor?

What role did the Federal Reserve play in creating the housing bubble that resulted in an unprecedented housing crash?

Why has the value of the U.S. dollar fallen by 83 percent since 1970?

Why is the Federal Reserve paying U.S. banks not to lend money?

Why did Barack Obama nominate Ben Bernanke for a second term as head of the Federal Reserve when Bernanke has a track record of failure that makes the Chicago Cubs look like a roaring success?

Why is the U.S. national debt more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913?

Why were the Federal Reserve and the personal income tax both pushed through Congress in the same year in 1913?

Why does the Federal Reserve argue that it is “not an agency” of the federal government in court?

Why do all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank?

Do you have any other questions that you would like to have asked during an audit of the Federal Reserve?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

The Bad Jobs Report Is Just A Very Small Taste Of The Economic Nightmare That Is Coming

Another month, another bad jobs report.  For the month of May, the U.S. economy only added 69,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose to 8.2%.  Many are calling this a total “disaster” and are worried that the U.S. economy could be headed back into another recession.  Economists had been expecting 150,000 payroll jobs would be added, so the 69,000 number really shocked a lot of people.  The truth is that the economy needs to add approximately 125,000 new jobs every single month just to keep the unemployment rate steady.  So yes, this bad jobs report is not welcome news at all – especially for the Obama administration.  When Barack Obama first took office the unemployment rate was sitting at 7.6 percent and now it is sitting at 8.2 percent.  Some “recovery”, eh?  But the reality is that this jobs report was really not that “devastating” even though the stock market had its worst day of the year.  Unemployment in America is still about at the same level as it was back at the beginning of 2012.  The tough stretch that we are going through right now is only a very small taste of the economic nightmare that is on the horizon.  If you think that things are a “disaster” right now, just wait until you see what is coming.

At the moment, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 are either unemployed or underemployed, and there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.

But this is only just the beginning.

During the next major economic downturn, the unemployment rate in the United States is going to soar well up into the double digits.

Many Americans will look back on 2010, 2011 and 2012 as “the good old days”.

Right now, there are only small pockets of the country that are total economic hellholes.

For example, Yuma, Arizona has an unemployment rate of 26 percent, and El Centro, California has an unemployment rate of 26.2 percent.

In the future, those kinds of numbers are going to become the norm all over the nation.

Sadly, most Americans have no idea what is coming.

Today, I wanted to share with you all a couple of chilling economic forecasts that I have been made aware of recently.

The first is from Raoul Pal.  According to Zero Hedge, Raoul Pal “previously co-managed the GLG Global Macro Fund in London for GLG Partners, one of the largest hedge fund groups in the world. Raoul came to GLG from Goldman Sachs where he co-managed the hedge fund sales business in Equities and Equity Derivatives in Europe… Raoul Pal retired from managing client money in 2004 at the age of 36 and now lives on the Valencian coast of Spain, from where he writes.”

The following is from a Zero Hedge summary of a recent presentation by Raoul Pal….

  • We don’t know exactly what is to come, but we can all join the very few dots from where we are now, to the collapse of the first major bank…
  • With very limited room for government bailouts, we can very easily join the next dots from the first bank closure to the collapse of the whole European banking system, and then to the bankruptcy of the governments themselves.
  • There are almost no brakes in the system to stop this, and almost no one realises the seriousness of the situation.
  • The problem is not Government debt per se. The real problem is that the $70 trillion in G10 debt is the collateral for $700 trillion in derivatives…
  • Yes, that equates to 1200% of Global GDP and it rests on very, very weak foundations
  • From an EU crisis, we only have to join one dot for a UK crisis of equal magnitude.
  • And then do you think Japan and China would not be next?
  • And then do you think the US would survive unscathed?
  • That is the end of the fractional reserve banking system and of fiat money.
  • It is the big RESET.

It continues:

  • Bonds will be stuck at 1% in the US, Germany, UK and Japan (for this phase).
  • The whole bond market will be dead.
  • Short selling on bonds – banned
  • Short selling stocks – banned
  • CDS – banned
  • Short futures – banned
  • Put options – banned
  • All that is left is the Dollar and Gold

It only gets better. We use the term loosely:

  • We have around 6 months left of trading in Western markets to protect ourselves or make enough money to offset future losses.
  • Spend your time looking at the risks of custody, safekeeping, counterparty etc. Assume that no one and nothing is safe.
  • After that…we put on our tin helmets and hide until the new system emerges

So how soon does Raoul Pal think all of this is going to happen?….

From a timing perspective, I think 2012 and 2013 will usher in the end.

You can find his entire presentation entitled “The End Game” right here.

What Raoul Pal is saying lines up very well with what Steve Quayle’s anonymous international banking source is telling him….

There is no stopping this…We are still on track as I have been predicting for a while now for a fall/winter collapse of the Eurozone and naked exposure of all derivative markets the world over. Europeans will go through a major reset, after time they will recover as Europeans do not carry the type of personal debt that Americans do. It is for America that I worry. Look for these signs next:

1- JPM will be bailed out again but it will not stop the coming market crash. More details will emerge about their derivative swap failure $150 billion and counting.

2-BOA (BAC Bank of America) will fold and be absorbed into JPM as a way to prop up the bleeding Giant. JPM will get the best picking of this deal just like they got with Bear Stearns.

3- Massive layoffs at Citigroup and Wells Fargo

4- Goldman Sachs finally pays the piper, look for massive cuts there as well as BIG Losses

5- Bond market bust which leads to freeze of all bond sales

6- Derivative bust the next one will be BOA followed by Citigroup

7- All CDS shorts and swaps will freeze.

8- Total Meltdown

You can read the rest of what that source is saying right here.

As I have been saying all along, there are two keys that you need to be watching right now….

#1 Europe

#2 Derivatives

Sadly, the articles that I write about Europe tend to get far less of a response than my other articles get.  Most Americans simply do not understand that what is happening in Europe right now is going to significantly affect their daily lives.

And most Americans have very little understanding of derivatives.  But as you just read, there are some in the financial community that are warning that we could see the derivatives bubble burst very soon.

Time is running out.  This period of relative stability that we are currently experiencing will not last forever.

You better get ready.

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