Ronald Reagan

It is exceedingly difficult to be optimistic about the future of our nation when you see poll numbers like this. The Pew Research Center recently conducted a survey in which they asked Americans to name the president that has “done the best job in your lifetime”. You would think that Ronald Reagan would be the winner by a very wide margin, but he wasn’t. Instead, Barack Obama was the winner with 31 percent of the vote. Reagan came in second with 21 percent, Bill Clinton was third with 13 percent, and Donald Trump was fourth with just 10 percent. When you add the Obama and Clinton numbers together, you come up with a grand total of 44 percent of all Americans that believe that either Barack Obama or Bill Clinton was the best president during their lifetimes, and that is absolutely frightening. It essentially means that nearly half of the entire U.S. population has gone mad, and with numbers such as those it is very difficult to imagine how we are ever going to restore our Constitutional Republic.

Those that responded to the survey were asked to give their first and second choices to the question, and this is how the final numbers came out for first choice…

Obama: 31 percent
Reagan: 21 percent
Clinton: 13 percent
Trump: 10 percent
Kennedy: 7 percent
Carter: 4 percent
George W. Bush: 3 percent
George H.W. Bush: 3 percent
Eisenhower: 2 percent
Ford: 1 percent
Nixon: 1 percent
Johnson: 1 percent
Truman: 1 percent
Roosevelt: 1 percent

The way that the question was asked is obviously going to depress the numbers of presidents that served many decades ago. For example, I was not born yet when Eisenhower was president, so he would not be an option for me when naming the president that has “done the best job in my lifetime”. If the question had been framed differently, I think that Eisenhower and Kennedy would have done much better.

In particular, I think that Eisenhower doesn’t really get the credit that he deserved. America generally thrived under his leadership, but nobody ever really talks about him too much anymore.

Another thing that really jumps out about these numbers is how poorly both Bushes did.

George H.W. Bush’s presidency was largely considered to be a continuation of the Reagan administration, but he only got 3 percent of the vote. 7 percent did name him as their second choice, and most of those probably named Reagan as their first choice.

George W. Bush served much more recently, and to get only 3 percent of the vote shows how the American people really feel about him at this point. The president that served immediately before him (Bill Clinton) got 13 percent of the vote and the president that served immediately after him (Barack Obama) got 31 percent of the vote. To only receive 3 percent of the vote is an absolutely disastrous showing.

Overall, Democrats have to feel really good about these survey results. If you add the last four Republican presidents together, their grand total of 37 percent of the vote doesn’t even come close to the combined total of the last two Democratic presidents (44 percent).

Needless to say, Democrats overwhelmingly chose Obama or Clinton as their top choices in this poll…

A sizable majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say Barack Obama (71%) is the best (51%) or second best (20%) president in their lifetimes. About half of Democrats name Clinton (49%). Another 14% of Democrats name Kennedy as one of their top two, 12% name Reagan and 10% mention George W. Bush.

And Republicans overwhelmingly picked Reagan or Trump as their top choices…

A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Reagan (57%) ranks in the top two presidents in their lifetimes. Another 40% of Republicans name Trump, while 20% name George W. Bush, 16% name George H.W. Bush and 15% mention Clinton.

Perhaps the most alarming result from this survey was how Millennials voted. Our young adults are the future of this country, and a whopping 62 percent of them picked Barack Obama as their first or second choice…

Millennials (born 1981 to 1996) were the most likely to choose Obama, with 62 percent naming him as their first or second choice. Reagan was the top pick for Generation X (1965 to 1980), baby boomers (1946 to 1964) and the silent generation (1928 to 1945).

Unsurprisingly, party identification was very closely tied to a person’s answer. Obama was the first or second pick of 71 percent of Democrats but only 13 percent of Republicans.

Reagan was the clear favorite among Republicans with 57 percent (12 percent among Democrats). Trump was the second pick for Republicans at 40 percent. Only 3 percent of Democrats named Trump.

This is yet more evidence that we are undergoing a dramatic demographic shift in this nation.

Older Americans tend to vote more than younger Americans do, but older Americans are also slowly but surely dying off.

Unless something fundamentally changes, we aren’t going to have any Ronald Reagans or Donald Trumps in the future. Instead, what we are going to get are more Barack Obamas and Bill Clintons.

In fact, if Michelle Obama wanted to run for president in 2020 she would almost certainly win the Democratic nomination easily, and that is a chilling thing to admit.

But she almost certainly will not run, and instead it looks like Hillary Clinton is gearing up for one last run for the presidency.

Many conservatives assume that since Trump beat Clinton last time that he will beat her again.

And that might be true.

However, we should remember that Hillary did receive 3 million more votes than Trump did last time.

And we should also not forget that older voters are slowly but surely dropping off the voting rolls, and they are being replaced by an entirely new generation of young people that is extremely liberal.

That doesn’t mean that all hope is gone. We are at a crossroads, and at this moment we are in a battle for the soul of our nation.

If we want to win, then conservatives better wake up, because right now the left has far more passion and energy than we do.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Why won’t the American people listen to the warnings? David Stockman was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981, and he served as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985. These days, he is running a website called “Contra Corner” which I highly recommend that you check out. Stockman believes that a global “debt super-cycle” that has been building for decades is now bursting, and he is convinced that the consequences for the U.S. and for the rest of the planet will be absolutely catastrophic. His findings are very consistent with what I have been writing about on The Economic Collapse Blog, and if Stockman is correct the times ahead of us are going to be exceedingly painful.

But right now, most people don’t seem to be in the mood to listen to these types of warnings. Even though there is a mountain of evidence that the global economy has already plunged into recession, U.S. stocks had a great month in October, and so most Americans seem to think that the crisis has passed.

Of course the truth is that the stock market is not an accurate barometer of the economy and it never has been. Back in 2008, almost everything else started to go downhill before stocks did, and the same thing is happening once again. In a recent article, Stockman explained that stocks are surging to absolutely ridiculous levels even though corporate earnings are actually way down…

At this point, 75% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q3 results, and earnings are coming in at $93.80 per share on an LTM basis. That happens to be 7.4% below the peak $106 per share reported last September, and means that the market today is valuing these shrinking profits at a spritely 22.49X PE ratio.

And, yes, there is a reason for two-digit precision. It seems that in the 4th quarter of 2007 LTM earnings came in at 22.19X the S&P 500 index price. We know what happened next!

Why do so many refuse to see the parallels?

This crisis is unfolding so similarly to 2008, and yet most of the “experts” are willingly blind.

Much of the stock buying that has been happening in 2015 has been fueled by stock buybacks and by M&A (merger and acquisitions). Many firms have even been going into debt to buy back their own stocks, but now sources of financing are starting to dry up. This year we have already seen the most corporate debt downgrades since 2009, and big financial institutions are now becoming much more hesitant to loan giant stacks of cash to these large corporations at super low interest rates.

So it is very, very difficult to see how the equity markets are going to move much higher than they are right now.

Meanwhile, the global economy is starting to unravel right in front of our eyes. In his recent piece, Stockman discussed some of these data points…

In the last two days we posted the latest data on two crucial markers of global economic direction——-export shipments from Korea and export orders coming into the high performance machinery factories of Germany.

In a word, they were abysmal, and smoking gun evidence that the suzerains of Beijing have not stopped the implosion in China, and that their latest paddy wagon forays—–arresting the head of China’s third largest bank and hand-cuffing several hedge fund managers including the purported “Warren Buffett” of China—-are signs not of stabilization, but sheer desperation.

So it is not surprising that Korea’s October exports—–the first such data from anywhere in the world—were down by a whopping 16% from last year, and have now been down for 10 straight months. Needless to say, China is the number one destination for Korean exports.

Likewise, German export orders plummeted by 18% in September, and this was no one month blip.

For many more recent statistics just like these, please see my previous article entitled “18 Numbers That Scream That A Crippling Global Recession Has Arrived“.

If the global economy really was doing “just fine” as Barack Obama and others suggest, then why is the largest shipping line in the world eliminating jobs and scaling back capacity?…

A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S is scaling back capacity and cutting jobs in the world’s largest shipping line to adapt to a drop in demand.

The Danish company, which last month lowered its profit forecast for 2015 citing a gloomier outlook for the global shipping market, will shed 4,000 jobs in its Maersk Line unit as part of a program to “simplify the organization,” it said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday.

And why are some of the biggest banks in the western world laying off tens of thousands of workers?…

Standard Chartered Plc became the third European bank in less than two weeks to announce sweeping job cuts, bringing the total planned reductions to more than 30,000, or almost one in seven positions.

The London-based firm said Tuesday it will eliminate 15,000 jobs, or 17 percent of its workforce, as soaring bad loans in emerging markets hurt earnings. Deutsche Bank AG, based in Frankfurt, last week announced plans for 11,000 job cuts, while Credit Suisse Group AG said it would trim as many as 5,600 employees.

And if things are so great in the United States, why is Target suddenly closing stores?

The truth, of course, is that things are not great. Global GDP expressed in U.S. dollars is down 3.4 percent so far this year, and total global trade has plummeted 8.4 percent.

We have entered a major global economic slowdown, and like usual, equity markets will be the last to get the memo.

But when they finally do react, that is likely going to greatly accelerate our problems. Just like we saw in 2008, when there is fear and panic in the financial markets that tends to cause the flow of credit to freeze up. And that is something that we simply cannot afford, because the flow of credit has become the lifeblood of the global economy.

So no, “the crisis” is not “over”.

Rather, the truth is that “the crisis” is just beginning, and it will soon be making front page headlines all over the planet.

Poll Asks Americans To Name The Greatest President In Their Lifetimes – Barack Obama Wins With 31 Percent

Former Reagan Administration Official Warns That Financial Disaster Is Dead Ahead