The Debt

Currency Crisis! So What Happens If The Dollar And The Euro Both Collapse?

Some analysts are warning that the U.S. dollar is in danger of collapse because of the exploding U.S. government debt, the horrific U.S. trade deficit and the new round of quantitative easing recently announced by the Federal Reserve.  Other analysts are warning the the euro is in danger of collapse because of the very serious sovereign debt crisis that is affecting nations such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and Spain.  So what happens if the dollar and the euro both collapse?  Well, it would certainly throw the current world financial order into a state of chaos, but what would emerge from the ashes?  Would the nations of the world go back to using dozens of different national currencies or would we see a truly global currency emerge for the very first time?

Up until recently, the idea of a world currency was absolutely unthinkable for most people.  In fact, the notion that all of the major nations around the globe would agree to a single currency still seems far-fetched to most analysts.  However, if enough “chaos” is produced by a concurrent collapse of the U.S. dollar and the euro, would that be enough to get the major powers around the world to agree to a new financial world order?

Let’s hope not, but it is getting hard to deny that we are heading for a major currency crisis, and if the U.S. dollar and/or the euro collapse, the world will certainly never be the same afterwards.

In case you missed it, China and Russia made a very big announcement the other day.

They told the world that instead of using the U.S. dollar to trade with each other, they will now be using their own national currencies.

Most Americans don’t realize it, but that is a very, very big deal.

The fact that the U.S. dollar has been the primary reserve currency of the world for decades has given the United States a tremendous amount of economic power.

But now nations are beginning to lose confidence in the U.S. dollar and they are slowly starting to move away from it.

When the Federal Reserve announced a new round of quantitative easing in early November, it created a huge backlash from other nations.  For decades, many other countries have been heavily investing in dollar-denominated assets, and now they are quite upset that those assets are going to be devalued.

Chinese Finance Vice Minister Zhu Guangyao used very strong language in denouncing the Fed’s new quantitative easing scheme earlier this month….

“As a major reserve currency issuer, for the United States to launch a second round of quantitative easing at this time, we feel that it did not recognize its responsibility to stabilize global markets and did not think about the impact of excessive liquidity on emerging markets.”

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was even more blunt.  He has called current Federal Reserve policy “clueless”, and he says that he is absolutely disgusted with the Federal Reserve at this point….

“They have already pumped an endless amount of money into the economy via taking on extremely high public debt and through a Fed policy that has already pumped a lot of money into the economy. The results are horrendous.”

So where is all of this going?

If the Federal Reserve keeps flooding the system with new dollars, the rest of the world could eventually totally reject the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries.

If that day ever arrives, the results would be beyond catastrophic as the following short video from the National Inflation Association demonstrates….

But it is not just the U.S. dollar that is in trouble.

The euro is in danger as well.

Just consider the financial problems that some major European nations are experiencing right now….

*Standard & Poor’s has slashed Ireland’s credit rating two notches to “A”, and is warning that there could be further downgrades.  The Irish budget deficit is projected to reach 32 percent of national output this year.  Ireland’s finances are being called “just one big pyramid scheme”, and they recently accepted a huge European bailout.  Unfortunately for Ireland, this bailout comes with strings.  The Irish government is now being forced to implement an austerity program that is being referred to as “draconian”.

*Analysts are projecting that Portugal is going to need a bailout of at least 50 billion euros.  The government of Portugal has implemented some harsh austerity measures in an attempt to get the red ink under control, and the people are not pleased.  On Wednesday, a massive national strike shut down travel and basic services across the country.

*Things are so bleak in Portugal right now that Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Amado recently stated that his nation “faces a scenario of exit from the euro zone” if a solution is not found for this financial crisis.

*Greece was the first nation to need a European bailout, and now there are rumors that they may need even more assistance.  The statistics agency for the EU, Eurostat, recently revealed that Greece’s budget deficit for 2009 was actually 15.4% of GDP rather than 13.6% of GDP as originally thought.  The Greek national debt is now well over 120 percent of GDP.  The financial problems in Greece never seem to stop.

*Belgium’s debt has reached 100 percent of annual national income, and the cost of insuring that country’s debt has now hit record levels.

*Even Spain is in trouble.  Rates on Spanish 10-year government bonds have risen to frightening heights in recent days, and the official unemployment rate in Spain is hovering around 20 percent.

*In a recent article entitled “A Spanish Bailout Would Test Europe’s Strained Finances“, the New York Times quoted Jordi Galí, the director of the Center for Research in International Economics at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University as saying that rumors that Spain is in financial trouble could end up making it a self-fulfilling prophecy….

“If investors expect Spain to have trouble refinancing its debt, now or somewhere down the road, then Spain will have trouble,” he added. “This is only aggravated by the fact that the reluctance of investors to purchase the country’s public debt leads to an increase in the interest rate it has to pay and thus in the budget deficit and the amount of debt it has to issue.”

So could this sovereign debt crisis actually cause the euro to collapse?

Well, it depends who you ask.

European Financial Stability Fund chief Klaus Regling says that there is “zero” chance that the euro will collapse….

“There is zero danger. It’s inconceivable that the euro would collapse.”

Other European leaders are not so sure about that.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy recently warned that if some of the weaker countries in Europe are forced to abandon the euro it will likely cause a total meltdown of the European Union….

“We’re in a survival crisis. We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don’t survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also warning that a failure of the euro could bring down the entire European Union….

“If the euro fails, then Europe fails.”

But is this likely to happen any time soon?

No, probably not, but in 2010 top European officials are actually acknowledging the possibility, and that shows just how serious things have gotten.

So if the U.S. dollar and the euro do collapse, what would happen?

Well, already many world leaders are openly speaking of the need for a true global currency.

After all, they argue, there won’t be any “currency wars” if we are all using the same currency.

In fact, the Institute of International Finance, an organization that represents 420 of the biggest banks and financial institutions on the globe, recently declared that the time has come to adopt a one world currency.

In fact, as I wrote in an article entitled “Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing“, a recent IMF policy paper actually proposed a name for the “global currency” that they believe could be coming….

A paper entitled “Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability” by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the “Bancor” and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency. The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here. Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor. This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy. Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets. So could a global currency known as the “Bancor” be on the horizon? That is now a legitimate question.

So will any of this ever come to fruition?

Well, it would likely take one whale of a crisis to get the countries of the world to agree to such a thing.

However, we do live at a time when the world financial system seems to be perpetually on the edge of chaos.  If at some point the U.S. dollar and the euro totally fall apart perhaps we will see a “new order” arise out of all of that chaos.

But let’s hope not.  Once we give any organization the power to issue a global currency the odds of us ever getting our economic sovereignty back will be greatly reduced.  The internationalists are going to use any crisis as an opportunity to argue for greater centralization of the world financial system, and it will be very important for the American people not to fall for those arguments.

Hopefully the U.S. dollar and the euro can remain stable currencies for at least a little while longer.  Because once they collapse things will never, ever be the same again.

Happy Thanksgiving! Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Four Years Ago?

As you gather around the table with your family this Thanksgiving, ask yourself this question: are you better off today than you were four years ago?  Unfortunately, most Americans are not.  Both political parties have controlled the White House during the last four years – Barack Obama has been in office for nearly two years and before him it was George W. Bush – and yet no matter what politicians we send to Washington D.C. things just seem to keep getting worse.  We buy more than we produce, we spend more than we bring in, we have 18 times as many “problem banks” as we did 4 years ago, the number of Americans on food stamps continues to set a new all-time record every month and we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world.  But at least the majority of Americans are still prosperous enough to enjoy a happy Thanksgiving inside a warm, comfortable home.  Unfortunately, if things keep going the way they are going, we are going to experience a national economic nightmare that nobody will be thankful for.

If you watch the economic statistics from week to week and month to month, it will seem like sometimes they are getting worse and sometimes they are getting better.  However, once you take a longer-term view of things, exactly what is happening to us starts to come clearly into focus.  The truth is that the United States is in the midst of a long-term economic collapse, and many economic statistics just keep getting worse every single year.

The following are 11 statistics that reveal just how far the U.S. economy has fallen over the past four years….

#1 In November 2006, the “official” U.S. unemployment rate was 4.5 percent.  Today, the “official” U.S. unemployment rate has been at 9.5 percent or greater for more than a year.

#2 At Thanksgiving back in 2006, 26 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, there are over 42 million Americans on food stamps and that number is climbing rapidly.

#3 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009.  Median household income declined the year before that too.  Meanwhile, prices have continued to rise throughout that period.

#4 At the end of the third quarter in 2006, 47 banks were on the FDIC “problem list”.  At the end of the third quarter in 2010, 860 banks were on the FDIC “problem list”.

#5 California home builders began construction on 1,811 homes during the month of August, which was down 77% from August 2006.

#6 In 2006, new home sales in the United States were near record highs.  In 2010, new home sales in the United States are at record lows as the following graph from Calculated Risk demonstrates….

#7 A recent survey of last year’s college graduates found that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation.  That was up substantially from 63 percent in 2006.

#8 According to one analysis, the United States has lost a total of 10.5 million jobs since 2007.

#9 In 2006, the Social Security program took in somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion more dollars than it paid out.  Of course the U.S. government spent all that money instead of setting it aside.  So now more U.S. retirees than ever are ready to start drawing on Social Security and a “tipping point” is rapidly coming.  Social Security will pay out more in benefits in 2010 than it receives in payroll taxes.  This was not supposed to happen until at least 2015, and the years ahead look very, very grim….

#10 The U.S. government’s debt ceiling has been raised six times since the beginning of 2006.

#11 In 2006, the U.S. national debt was getting close to 9 trillion dollars.  Today, the U.S. national debt is well past 13 trillion dollars and is rapidly closing in on 14 trillion dollars.

So is there much hope for an economic turnaround any time soon?

No, not really.

Even the Federal Reserve, usually one of the biggest cheerleaders for the U.S. economy, is not very optimistic right now.  In fact, the Fed has just announced that they are projecting that unemployment will still be at about 8 percent when the next presidential election arrives in 2012.

Actually, if the official unemployment rate was to get that low by then that would really be something to celebrate.  Many economists fear that unemployment will be even higher than it is now by then.

Several years ago, a very foolish politician (Dick Cheney) famously said that “deficits don’t matter”.  That is kind of like saying that credit card balances don’t matter.  For decades, politicians from both political parties have been running up staggering amounts of government debt as if it would never catch up with us.  For decades, Americans have been addicted to debt and have been buying more than they produce.  We have enjoyed living beyond our means for so long that most of us simply have no idea that there are any consequences for doing so.

Living on debt is fun on the way up, but on the way down the pain can be excruciating.  We are about to experience that on a national level, and it is going to be an absolute nightmare.

Did any of you actually believe that we were just going to go on living way, way, way beyond our means indefinitely?

America has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and unfortunately we are all going to pay the price for that.

So enjoy your turkey while you can.  In future years we may have a lot less to be thankful for.

11 Reasons Why North Korea Is The Most Bizarre Nation On Earth

Is the United States about to go to war with the most bizarre nation on earth?  A lot of Americans would actually welcome “the Korean War Part 2”, but before people get too excited it is important to keep in mind that we have never been at war with a nation that actually possesses nuclear weapons.  At this point it is unclear exactly how powerful North Korea’s nuclear weapons are, but nearly everyone does agree that they are crazy enough to use them.  North Korea reportedly has thousands of missile batteries that are capable to hitting the 10 million people that live in Seoul.  The death and devastation that an all-out strike on Seoul could potentially cause is almost unimaginable.  In fact, the 24.5 million people living either in or around Seoul make it the second largest metropolitan area in the world.  The next conflict on the Korean peninsula will be extremely bloody.  Nobody should be wishing for that.

Unfortunately, the next Korean war seems closer than ever.  Tensions on the peninsula are at a record high.  Today, North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world.  Some reports claim that they have over 1 million soldiers on active duty.  But South Korea is highly militarized as well, and there are 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea that the North Koreans would have to contend with.

Right now the rest of the world is getting quite nervous, because a war between nuclear powers could get out of hand very quickly.  If North Korea hits South Korea with nuclear weapons, it seems almost certain that the U.S. would hit North Korea with nukes.  The death and destruction that would result would be unprecedented.

So what does China think about all of this?  Well, North Korea would not be acting so belligerent right now if they did not have permission from China.  Perhaps China is trying to send a message to the West.

On the other hand, there are others that believe that it could go a lot deeper than that.  The regime in North Korea is on the verge of collapsing in on itself.  Even the Chinese are getting tired of propping up their government and dealing with their nonsense.  The truth is that a new Korean war could benefit the Chinese in several ways.

First of all, South Korea (the biggest U.S. ally in the region) would be absolutely devastated even if they “won” the war.  That would cripple an incredibly important geopolitical chess piece.

Secondly, the U.S. would be embroiled in yet another costly conflict and would undoubtedly suffer some costly losses as well.  The opinion of the rest of the world toward the United States would darken even more – especially if nuclear weapons were used.

Thirdly, China could gain a ton of “leverage” by stabbing North Korea in the back after the conflict had started.  In return for supporting the U.S./South Korean coalition, China could ask for all kinds of things that they wouldn’t even dream of getting right now.  In fact, it is not unthinkable to imagine China walking away with a significant chunk of North Korea in the aftermath of the war.  The Chinese government is regularly involved in “border disputes” (just Google it), and China would never pass up a chance to pick up a big slice of new territory.

In the end, the “winner” of any new war on the Korean peninsula would probably be China.  The U.S. would get rid of the “North Korean problem”, but it would come at a great cost.  It is hard to imagine any scenario that would end up greatly benefiting the United States.

Let us hope that a new all-out Korean war does not erupt.  North Korea is ruled by delusional leaders who are insane enough to actually use nuclear weapons.  If you doubt this, just consider the following 11 facts….

#1 The first “Great Leader” of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, is deeply revered in North Korea.  In fact, there are over 500 statues of Kim Il-sung scattered throughout the country.  Many Koreans apparently believe that Kim Il-Sung actually created the world.

#2 It is said that hanging up pictures of Kim Il-Sung is compulsory for every household in North Korea.

#3 Millions of North Korean citizens have literally starved to death over the past 10 years.

#4 The North Korean constitution actually guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

#5 It has been reported that during times of extreme hunger in North Korea, cannibalism is quite common.  Several years ago the Washington Post shared what one 29-year-old female defector told them about what is going on inside the country….

“When one is very hungry, one can go crazy. One woman in my town killed her 7-month-old baby, and ate the baby with another woman.”

The sad thing is that the 29-year-old female defector didn’t even consider what she had seen to be wrong….

“I can’t condemn cannibalism. Not that I wanted to eat human meat, but we were so hungry. It was common that people went to a fresh grave and dug up a body to eat meat. I witnessed a woman being questioned for cannibalism. She said it tasted good.”

#6 In 1987, North Korea began construction on the Ryugyong Hotel, which would have been the tallest hotel in the world if it had been finished on schedule in 1989.  Instead, construction of the bizarre 105-story skyscraper that somewhat resembles a pyramid was suspended in 1992, and the unfinished structure was just a massive concrete shell towering over Pyongyang completely empty for the next 16 years.  Work began once again on the project in 2008, and it is anticipated that it will finally be completed in 2012.

#7 One of North Korea’s greatest “tourist attractions” is the Pueblo – a U.S. naval vessel that the North Koreans captured from “the imperialist Americans” back in 1968.

#8 According to North Korean media, Kim Jong-il is a phenom at just about everything.  It is claimed that he shot 38 under par (including 11 holes-in-one) the first time he ever played golf.

#9 Christians are slaughtered in some of the most brutal ways imaginable in North Korea.  The following is just one example…..

“While Interviewee 17 was in the North Korean Army, his unit was dispatched to widen the highway between Pyongyang and the nearby port city of Nampo. They were demolishing a vacated house in Yongkang county, Yongkang district town, when in a basement between two bricks they found a Bible and a small notebook that contained 25 names, one identified as pastor, two as chon-do-sa (assistant pastors), two as elders, and 20 other names, apparently parishioners, identified by their occupations. The soldiers turned the Bible and notebook over to the local branch of Department 15 of the Korean Workers Party (KWP), but the Party officials said it was up to the military police unit, Bowisaryungbu gigwanwon, to investigate. Tracked down at their place of work through the listing of occupation in the notebook, the 25 persons were picked up without formal arrest by the military bowibu. The interviewee was not aware of any judicial procedures for those seized. In November 1996, the 25 were brought to the road construction site. Four concentric rectangular rows of spectators were assembled to watch the execution. Interviewee 17 was in the first row. The five leaders to be executed – the pastor, two assistant pastors, and two elders – were bound hand and foot and made to lie down in front of a steamroller. This steamroller was a large construction vehicle imported from Japan with a heavy, huge, and wide steel roller mounted on the front to crush and level the roadway prior to pouring concrete. The other twenty persons were held just to the side. The condemned were accused of being Kiddokyo (Protestant Christian) spies and conspiring to engage in subversive activities. Nevertheless, they were told, “If you abandon religion and serve only Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, you will not be killed.” None of the five said a word. Some of the fellow parishioners assembled to watch the execution cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steamroller. Interviewee 17 thought, at the time, that these church people were crazy. He thought then that religion was an “opiate,” and it was stupid for them to give up their lives for religion. He heard from the soldiers who took away the other twenty prisoners that they were being sent to a prison camp.”

#10 A few years ago when China was sending humanitarian aid into North Korea the North Koreans decided that they would just start keeping the trains as well.  The Chinese crews were sent back over the border on foot.

#11 A song entitled “No Motherland Without You” was written specifically for Kim Jong-il and is one of the most popular songs in North Korea.  It is regularly sung by the North Korean military.

Are you convinced yet?  The truth is that North Korea is very, very dangerous and they should not be underestimated.  Let us hope that the United States never has to fight another war with them.

Black Friday: A Festival Of Greed In The Midst Of A Sea Of Pain And Suffering

Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving when millions of Americans line up before the crack of dawn at retail stores across the nation hoping to find great deals on cheap plastic stuff made outside the United States.  The Friday after Thanksgiving has become an “unofficial holiday” in recent years, and in fact in many ways it is starting to become as big as Thanksgiving itself.  A recent search on Google News found over 31,000 stories about “Thanksgiving” and over 24,000 stories about “Black Friday”.  Almost every major news organization has been running stories about Black Friday for weeks now.  Some of the biggest retailers, including Wal-Mart, Sears, Old Navy and Toys R Us, have had such success with Black Friday sales that they have decided to stay open for Thanksgiving now.  You would think that we could all have one day off to spend with family and friends to give thanks for all that we have been blessed with, but apparently that is not going to be possible.  Just like so many of our other holidays, the true purpose behind having a holiday called “Thanksgiving” is being totally obliterated by a tsunami of greed.  Meanwhile, more Americans than ever are living in poverty this year and very few people even seem to notice.

Not that there is anything wrong with enjoying all the things you and your family have been blessed with.  However, perhaps we should all take time this week to remember the tens of millions of Americans that are going to be deeply suffering this winter.  They keep telling us that “the recession is over” and yet poverty continues to spread like an out of control plague.  But for most Americans life is still relatively “normal”, and so the horrible suffering going on out there doesn’t really affect them.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is dying.  Americans have been living beyond their means for decades, and now we are starting to pay the price for the gigantic mountains of debt that we have accumulated.  But instead of preparing for harder times and looking for ways to help those who are hurting, most Americans are preparing for another orgy of shopping this holiday season….

*According to a new study by America’s Research Group and UBS, more Americans than ever before will be out shopping this Black Friday.

Meanwhile, nearly 15% of all American households experienced a food shortage at some point during 2009, and experts anticipate that the final number for 2010 will be even worse.

*Approximately 48.9 percent of all Americans plan to shop on Black Friday this year.

Meanwhile, many other Americans only have a very, very cold winter to look forward to.  According to the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, more than 10 million U.S. households will not be able to afford to heat their homes this winter without assistance, which would be a new all-time record.

*The National Retail Federation estimates that holiday retail sales will hit $447.1 billion for 2010.

Meanwhile, more Americans are on food stamps than ever before.  Today, more than 43 million Americans are enrolled in the food stamp program.  The number of Americans on food stamps has increased almost 60 percent since 2007.  If our economy is getting better, then why is hunger spreading like an out of control virus?….

*Millions of American families will be streaming into Wal-Mart and Target to buy foreign-made electronic gadgets this upcoming Friday.

Meanwhile, millions of other American families would gladly give up their Thanksgiving meals in exchange for a decent job for a family member.  According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one person that is looking for a full-time job.  Unfortunately, there are not even close to enough jobs to go around in post-industrial America.

*Consumer Reports has posted a Black Friday shopping guide that encourages people to be prepared to wait in line out in the cold for several hours if they want to get the “best deals”….

It’s not always worth breaking down the ‘door.’ … But consumers shouldn’t bother to show up unless they are willing to wait in line, sometimes for hours before the store opens, and should be prepared for possible disappointment. There are no guarantees.

Meanwhile, there are millions of American children that barely have enough to eat.  According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.

The age of consumerism is coming to a close so enjoy it while it lasts.

Sadly, many proponents of “free trade” (which is actually not “free” or “fair” at all) point to the “great deals” available on Black Friday as evidence that globalism works.

Yes, you might get 20 extra bucks off on that 32-inch television, but in the end American workers are going to be supported somehow.

Either we provide jobs for American workers that enable them to feed their families or we provide for them by giving them food stamps and unemployment checks.

The United States has lost over 42,000 factories since 2001.  Are you willing to have your taxes raised to provide food and shelter for all of those displaced workers?

The following is how Wikipedia defines deindustrialization….

Deindustrialization (also spelled deindustrialisation) is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially heavy industry or manufacturing industry. It is an opposite of industrialization.

In case you haven’t noticed, that is what is happening to America.

The United States is rapidly becoming a post-industrial nation.

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

Not that all trade is a bad thing.  Trading with other nations such as Canada and Germany that have similar standards of living and that pay their workers similar wages could potentially be beneficial to both sides.

However, merging our economy with nations such as communist China was a colossal mistake.  In China, most workers earn less than a tenth of what most American workers make.  Today, our factories, our jobs and our wealth are being transferred to China at a pace that is almost unbelievable.

In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year.  In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.

In case you are wondering, that is not a good trend.

Every single month, tens of billions of dollars more goes out of the United States than comes into it.

In other words, we are being drained.

But that isn’t going to stop tens of millions of Americans from running out on Black Friday and buying huge piles of stuff that nobody really needs with money that they can’t really afford to spend.

America is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, but nearly everyone in the media keeps expecting the economy to “snap out of it” and for the good times to start rolling once again.

Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get better.  This is about as good as things are going to get.

The federal government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  Our state and local governments are drowning in a sea of red ink.  Average Americans are seeing their incomes decline and their standards of living go down.  The greatest economic machine in world history is being dismantled and most Americans have become so dumbed-down that they don’t even understand what is going on.

But as they say, ignorance is bliss.

So enjoy this “Black Friday” while you still can.  Perhaps the memories of these good times will keep us warm during the truly dark days that are ahead.

The Prepper's Blueprint

Full Spectrum Dominance: 8 Examples Of How The Government Is Attempting To Take Total Control Of Our Food, Our Health, Our Money And Even Our Dignity

Over the past several decades, no matter which political party has been in power the government has continued to become a larger part of our lives. These days many people are speaking of the “nanny state” that we have created, but the reality is far worse than that. The truth is that the government has become a gluttonous, out of control behemoth that is gobbling up everything in sight and that is attempting to exert full spectrum dominance over our lives.  Today, the government seems to have an insatiable hunger to watch us, track us and control us.  Now they even want to feel our private parts before we get on an airplane.  No matter what politicians we send to Washington D.C., it just seems to get worse and worse.  Anyone who still believes that we live in “the land of the free” is completely and totally delusional.

It isn’t just in one particular area that all of this government intrusion into our lives is so offensive.  What we are witnessing is the government slowly digging its fingers even deeper into our lives in a thousand different ways.  Sadly, most Americans see the government as the one who is supposed to take care of them from the cradle to the grave, as the one who is supposed to fix all of the problems in society and as the one who is their ultimate authority.

This is in direct contradiction to the concept of a “limited government” that our Founding Fathers tried so desperately to enshrine in our founding documents.  The American people need a big-time wake up call.  The following are 8 examples of how the U.S. government is attempting to take even more control over our lives….

#1 Taking Total Control Of Our Food – S. 510 “The Food Safety Modernization Act”

S. 510, “The Food Safety Modernization Act”, is another huge power grab by the FDA and the federal government over our food supply.  The bill is written so broadly and so vaguely that nobody really knows what it means.  The potential for abuse of these vague new powers would be staggering.  So will the government abuse these powers?  Those who are in favor of the bill say that of course the government will be reasonable, but those who are opposed to the bill point to all of the other abuses that are currently taking place as evidence that we simply cannot trust the feds with vague, undefined powers.

Fortunately, the Tester Amendment has been attached to S. 510 at least for now, but big agriculture is not happy about this, and they will be doing everything they can to get it kicked out of the final version of the law.  In any event, if this food safety law does get passed, tens of millions of Americans will be left wondering what they are allowed to grow in their back yards, what seeds they are allowed to save and what can and cannot be sold at farmer’s markets.

In case you think this is paranoid, just consider what is already happening.  It has been documented that the feds recently raided an Amish farmer at 5 AM in the morning because they claimed that he was was engaged in the interstate sale of raw milk in violation of federal law.  If the feds are willing to stoop so low as to raid Amish farmers, do you think they will have any hesitation when the time comes to raid your home?

#2 Taking Total Control Of Air Travel – The Dehumanizing Full Body Scanners And “Enhanced Pat-Downs”

Totalitarian governments throughout history have always sought to dehumanize their subjects.  Sadly, that is exactly what is happening in America today.  If you want to get on an airplane in the United States, you will now be forced to either let TSA agents gawk at your naked body or let TSA agents grope your entire body including your genitals.

What these TSA agents are being instructed to do to ordinary Americans is so bizarre that it is hard to believe.  It is being reported that in many instances TSA agents are actually reaching down the pants of male travelers and up the skirts of female travelers.  One retired special education teacher was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an “enhanced pat-down” by TSA agents.  Quite a number of women that have been through these “enhanced pat-downs” have used the phrase “sexual assault” to describe the experience.

So is this what America has become?  A place that is so “dangerous” that we all must be treated like prison inmates?  Large numbers of Americans are swearing that they will simply not fly anymore, but what happens when these “enhanced pat-downs” start showing up at our schools, our shopping centers and our sporting events someday?

#3 Taking Total Control Of Our Health Care – The Loss Of Our Health Freedom

Once upon a time, Americans had control over their own health care decisions.  That is no longer true today.  Thanks to major changes in our health care laws, the health care landscape in America has been dramatically changed.  Americans are now forced to participate in the officially-sanctioned health care system by purchasing health insurance.  But Americans cannot just get any kind of health insurance policy that they want.  Our health insurance choices are now tightly constrained by thousands of regulations.

Not only that, but doctors in America no longer have the freedom to treat patients however they see fit.  Only “approved” treatments are permissible, and now the federal government is going to be telling doctors which of those “approved” treatments are “cost-effective” enough.  As the new health care laws are fully implemented over the next decade, the American people are going to become truly horrified not only about how much their health insurance premiums are going up, but also about how much health freedom they have actually lost.

#4 Taking Control Of Our Money – Multiplying Taxes

Whenever one tax goes down, it seems like several other taxes either go up or get invented.  The truth is that Americans are being drained by the federal government, state governments and local governments in dozens upon dozens of different ways.  To our various levels of government, our primary function is to serve as a revenue source.  Each year it seems like they find more ways to stick it to us.  In fact, it looks like 2011 is going to be a banner year for tax increases.  If you doubt this, just see my previous article entitled “2011: The Year Of The Tax Increase“.

#5 Taking Control Of Our Businesses – Thousands Of Ridiculous Regulations

Why would anyone in America even attempt to be an entrepreneur today?  Most small businesses are literally being strangled by hordes of red tape.

Just consider how things have changed in America.  The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies.  In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600.  Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long.

The following is just one example of how bizarre things have gotten in this country.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.

Do we really need to spend 14 million more hours telling Americans that if they keep eating hamburgers and fries that they are likely to get fat?

But it is not just the federal government that is the problem.  One reader recently described how difficult  it was to try to run a business in the state of California….

Had 10 employees, but one almost exclusively to deal with government regs, taxes, reporting etc, Received a $144 penalty for a .33 (yes, cents)error on my quarterly payroll taxes from Cal Franchise Tax Board. I called to ask if that was not a bit repressive, why level penalize someone for what was obvisouly a didminimus error? I was told “we would have penalized you if it was .03!” I said, I did not volunteer to be the income tax collector for the State and Fed government, you should be paying me to do all this work and insane paper pushing. Reply: “That is part of the PRIVILIGE of being a business owner!!!”

#6 Taking Control Of Our Environment – The Green Police

The government is using the “green movement” as an excuse to take an unprecedented amount of control over our lives.  From coast to coast, communities have been given government grants to track our trash with RFID microchips. The following are just some of the communities that will now be using microchips to track what we throw away….

*Cleveland, Ohio

*Charlotte, North Carolina

*Alexandria, Virginia

*Boise, Idaho

*Dayton, Ohio

*Flint, Michigan

Not only that, but some cities are now starting to fine citizens for not recycling properly.

In Cleveland, Ohio if an RFID tracking chip signals that a recycle bin has not been brought out to the curb within a certain period of time, a “trash supervisor” will actually sort through the trash produced by that home for recyclables.

According to Cleveland Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens, trash bins that contain over 10 percent recyclable material will be subject to a $100 fine.

Does that sound like America to you?

Now we don’t even have the freedom to throw out trash the way we want to.

#7 Taking Away Our Independence – The Exploding Welfare State

You don’t have much freedom if you can’t take care of yourself.  But in America today, tens of millions of Americans have literally become completely dependent on the government for survival.  Over 42 million Americans are now on food stamps.  Approximately one out of every six Americans is enrolled in a federal anti-poverty program.

The number of Americans living in poverty has increased for three consecutive years, and the 43.6 million poor Americans in 2009 was the highest number that the U.S. Census Bureau has ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.

The more Americans that are destitute and totally dependent on the government the easier it will be for the government to control them.  Today a rapidly growing percentage of Americans fully expect the government to take care of them.  But this is not what our founders intended.

#8 Taking Away Our Patriotism – We Are Even Losing The Freedom To Be Proud Of America

Do you ever think things will get so repressive in America that a group of high school students will be forbidden from singing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial?  Well, that has already happened.  Do you think that areas of our nation will ever become so anti-American that they will forbid students from riding to school with an American flag on their bikes?  Well, that has already happened.

Fortunately, there was such an uproar over what happened to 13-year-old Cody Alicea that it made national headlines and he ended up being escorted to school by hundreds of other motorcycles and bicycles – most of them displaying American flags as well.  The school reversed its policy and now Cody can ride his bike to school every day proudly displaying the American flag.

But what if nobody had decided to stand up?

That school would have gotten away with banning the flag if the American people had allowed them to.

Our liberties and our freedoms are under attack from a thousand different directions and they are being stripped away from us at a blinding pace.

It has gotten to the point where most of us just sit in our homes and enjoy the “freedom” of digesting the “programming” that is constantly being hurled at us through our televisions.  Of course the vast majority of that programming is produced by just 6 monolithic corporations that control almost everything that we watch, hear and read.

Power and money have become more highly concentrated in America today than ever before, and yet most Americans don’t even realize it.

Most Americans are so busy just trying to survive from month to month that they don’t even have time to think about the deeper issues.  At the end of the night most of them are so exhausted from serving the system that all they can do is collapse on the sofa and turn on some programming.

But the American people desperately need to wake up.  Without liberty and freedom our country cannot work.  But our freedoms and liberties are being stripped away a little bit more each and every day.

The America that so many of us grew up adoring is dying right in front of our eyes.  If you plan on saying something about it, you better do so before it is too late.

Tent Cities, Homelessness And Soul-Crushing Despair: The Legacy Of Decades Of Government Debt And Mismanagement Of The Economy

For decades, our politicians have been deeply addicted to government debt, they have stood idly by as millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they have passed countless business-crushing regulations and they never thought that it would catch up with us.  Well, it has.  America has been living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world, and now that bubble is starting to pop.  There has never been such an extended period of unemployment in the United States since the Great Depression, and millions of Americans are losing their homes.  Homelessness is skyrocketing, tent cities are popping up everywhere and countless numbers of American families are experiencing the soul-crushing despair that comes from desperately trying to hang on for month after month after month.

Now, because of the horrific hole that our politicians have dug for us, we are faced with some heartbreaking choices.  For example, right now the U.S. Congress is deciding whether or not to extend long-term unemployment benefits for the nation’s jobless.

Extending those benefits through the end of February would add another $12.5 billion to the U.S. national debt.  But not doing it would cut off the only lifeline that many Americans have just in time for the holidays.

The extension of jobless benefits that was passed last summer expires on December 1st.  If these long-term benefits are not renewed, approximately 2 million unemployed Americans will lose their checks.

But what can the U.S. Congress do?  Just keep going into endless amounts of debt?  As I have written about previously, the United States is never going to see another balanced budget ever again under the current system.  The U.S. government is flat out broke.  Somehow our politicians desperately need to find a way for the federal budget to stop hemorrhaging red ink.

There is no more “extra money” to spend.  The U.S. government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we are headed for a complete and total economic disaster because of it.

But what are we going to do?  Are we going to let millions of Americans starve in the streets?

It’s not just the rapidly rising number of homeless Americans that is the problem.  Millions of Americans are not going to be able to heat their homes this winter.  Millions of others are going to have to choose between buying medicine and buying food because they will not be able to afford both.

How would you like to be at a point where you could not go to the doctor because you knew that you could not pay the deductible?

How would you like to be at a point where you had to decide whether to buy diabetes medicine or to buy macaroni and cheese to feed your family?

More than 42 million Americans are now on food stamps, and that number keeps going up month after month after month.

Just think about that.

42 million Americans would not be able to eat if the U.S. government did not give them handouts.

The safety net is getting awfully crowded.

If you really want to see some soul-crushing desperation, go check out the flood tunnels under the city of Las Vegas.  But do not do this alone – it is very dangerous down there.  Today, there are hordes of “tunnel people” who call those dark tunnels home.  Nobody knows for sure how many people are down there (some people say that it is well into the thousands), but everyone agrees that the number is rapidly growing.

But in many major U.S. cities there are no flood tunnels to go to.  Instead, in many areas of the United States huge tent cities have sprouted.  The following is a video news report from the BBC about the tent cities that are popping up all over America….

But it is not just “drug addicts” and the “mentally ill” that are going to these tent cities.  One anonymous unemployed woman identified only as “Kaynonymous” is a highly educated professional who figures that she will end up in a tent city soon….

“I’m a 99er too. 53, female, single and once on track with an IT career. No one in their right mind would consider me for an IT position after being gone from the field for over 2 years. I have officially been a 99er since May 2010. In Aug. 2010 all of my savings and retirement funds were finally depleted–not only can I no longer make my mortgage payment, I can no longer afford utilities either. I’m just not sure that the 99ers ever had a voice outside of union organizers and even with them it was too little too late. Guess I’ll be seeing ya’ll in the soup kitchens and tent cities. I do still have my tent…”

So we should just extend the long-term unemployment benefits, right?  Well, according to a recent poll commissioned by the National Employment Law Project, 73 percent of Americans want Congress to continue paying out extended unemployment benefits.

But it is not just that simple.

America is broke.

The entire financial system is dying.

The U.S. government desperately needs to stop spending so much money.

But how can we turn our backs on people who are desperately hurting?

There are millions of Americans that have just about reached the end of their ropes.  For example, one 43-year-old woman named Jacqueline recently expressed some of the extreme frustration that she is experiencing on her blog….

I am one of the 6 million poor, unemployed middle-aged Americans struggling without any safety net or income other than food stamps. I have resorted to salvaging scrap metal just to survive while keeping up an increasingly hopeless job search. On May 4th, 2010 just three weeks before my 43rd birthday ago I got slapped with a diagnosis of very early stage glaucoma when I had a six year long overdue optical exam for badly needed new glasses. Without treatment — including ophthalmologist’s glaucoma monitoring exams — I will end up blind and permanently disabled. It’s not a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of when.

As a society, we will be judged by how we treat those who are the most vulnerable.  It can seem easy to bash those who have lost everything, but someday you might end up in that position.  In the following video, police in St. Petersburg, Florida are seen using box cutters to slice up the tents that the homeless were sleeping in….

Hopefully you were deeply disturbed by that video.

We have gotten ourselves into a giant mess, and things are only going to get worse.

Unfortunately, some extremely painful decisions are going to have to be made.

The truth is that we are so deeply in debt that the U.S. government just cannot be spending any extra money right now.

However, we also cannot turn our backs on millions of American families that are going to lose their homes and go hungry if we do not help them.

So what do we do?

What hurting Americans need most of all are not handouts – what they really need are good jobs.

But good jobs are being shipped overseas at a breathtaking pace.  The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.  The greatest economic machine in the history of the world is literally having its guts ripped out, and most of you kept voting in jokers who supported all of this deindustrialization.

For decades, our politicians kept telling us how wonderful globalization would be for America.  We didn’t listen when Ross Perot warned us about “the great sucking sound” that these “free trade” agreements would bring about.

Well, look how all of that turned out.  In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year.  In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.

In case you can’t figure it out, that means that 28 billion dollars of our national wealth was transferred to China in just one month.

This is happening month after month after month.

And yet Barack Obama continues to get up and tell us how wonderful globalism is.  During his recent trip to India, Barack Obama made the following statement….

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

Yes, globalization is a threat.  We should have never merged our economy with the economy of China where workers make less than a tenth of what an American worker makes.

Jobs are flooding out of the U.S. and they are flooding into places like India and China where labor is far, far cheaper.

But without good jobs, how in the world are average Americans going to pay the bills?

The answer is that an increasing number of them are not.  1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008.

Incomes are going down.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009.

Things are getting worse instead of getting better.

And things are going to continue to get worse because the U.S. government goes into more debt every single month, most state and local governments go into more debt every single month, and thanks to America’s exploding trade deficit, tens of billions of our national wealth gets transferred out of the United States every single month.

The U.S. economy is dying.  There are going to be even more tent cities and even more hungry Americans.  The scale of the economic nightmare that we are facing in the years ahead is going to be unimaginable.

So if you get to enjoy a warm dinner and you get to sleep in a warm bed tonight, please consider yourself to be very fortunate.  Someday soon you also may find those things cruelly stripped away from you.

12 Facts That Will Blow Your Mind – Federal Employees And Members Of Congress Are Getting Rich While Those Of Us Who Pay Their Salaries Suffer

Do you remember the days when getting elected to Congress or choosing to work for the government was referred to as “public service”?  The idea was that you would be making a sacrifice for the greater good of the country.  Well, those days are long gone.  Today, getting elected to Congress or working for the federal government is a good way to get rich.  Median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009, and yet the personal wealth of members of Congress and the salaries of federal workers (especially at the higher levels) continue to explode.  A lot of corrupt politicians and federal fat cats are raking in stunning amounts of cash, and we are the ones paying the bill.  There is certainly nothing wrong with making a lot of money, but does it seem right that so many of our “public servants” are getting filthy rich while so many of the rest of us are barely getting by?

Posted below are 12 facts that will blow your mind.  Most Americans have no idea just how obscenely wealthy many members of Congress are, and most Americans are totally clueless about how cushy some of these U.S. government jobs are.  If there is one place in America where the good times are still rolling (other than Wall Street), it would have to be Washington D.C.

Members of Congress and employees of the government are supposed to work for us.  We are the ones who pay their salaries.  But today, they are the ones “living the dream” while most of the rest of us scramble just to survive from month to month….

#1 According to an article in the Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s net worth soared from $13.7 million in 2008 to $21.7 million in 2009.

#2 In 2005, 7420 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year.  In 2010, a whopping 82,034 federal workers are making $150,000 or more per year.  That is more than a tenfold increase in just five years.

#3 More than half of the members of the U.S. Congress are millionaires.

#4 The total compensation that the U.S. government workforce is going to take in this year is approximately 447 billion dollars.

#5 Today, all members of Congress earn at least $175,000.  This is far, far more than the average American makes.

#6 60 percent of the federal government workforce is represented by labor unions.

#7 The median wealth of a U.S. Senator in 2009 was 2.38 million dollars.

#8 In 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense had just nine civilians earning $170,000 or more.  When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. Department of Defense had 214 civilians earning $170,000 or more.  In June 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense had 994 civilians earning $170,000 or more.

#9 Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of the U.S. Congress – and they refuse to pass a law that would change that.

#10 According to a recent study conducted by the Heritage Foundation, federal workers earn 30 to 40 percent more money on average than their counterparts in the private sector.

#11 When you factor in such things as retirement and health care benefits, the compensation gap between federal workers and private sector employees gets even larger.  Just consider the following quote from the Heritage Foundation study mentioned above….

“Including non-cash benefits adds to this disparity. The average private-sector employer pays $9,882 per employee in annual benefits, while the federal government pays an average of $32,115 per employee.”

#12 The personal wealth of members of the U.S. Congress collectively increased by more than 16 percent from 2008 to 2009.

So can the U.S. government continue to afford to shell out nearly half a trillion dollars to federal employees every single year?

Of course not.

The truth is that the U.S. government is flat broke and yet most of our politicians still seem extremely resistant to consider anything that would even slow down the wild spending that has been going on.

So what do we get for the $447 billion that we are spending on federal workers every single year?

Not a whole lot – unless you consider paperwork, bureaucracy and a gigantic pile of ridiculous regulations to be a good thing.

America needs a fundamental shift in attitude.  Instead of expecting a “nanny state” to take care of us, we should desperately try to reshape the federal government into a much smaller entity that will finally get off our backs.

We have been living beyond our means for decades, and we cannot afford to pay for this bloated behemoth of a government for much longer.

Hopefully Americans will wake up and do something about this nonsense before it is too late.  Because right now the federal government has become an out of control monster that is gobbling up everything in sight.

Could The Financial Crisis Erupting In Ireland, Portugal, Greece And Spain Lead To The End Of The Euro And The Break Up Of The European Union?

The Irish banking system is melting down right in front of our eyes.  Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain are all drowning in debt.  It is becoming extremely expensive for all of those nations to issue new debt.  Officials all over Europe are begging Ireland to accept a bailout.  Portugal has already indicated that they will probably be next in line.  Most economists are now acknowledging that without a new round of bailouts the dominoes could start to fall and we could see a wave of debt defaults by European governments.  All of this is pushing the monetary union in Europe to its limits.  In fact, some of Europe’s top politicians are now publicly warning that this crisis may not only mean the end of the euro, but also the end of the European Union itself.

Yes, things really are that serious in Europe right now.  In order for the euro and the European Union to hold together, two things have got to happen.  Number one, Germany and the other European nations that are in good financial condition have got to agree to keep bailing out nations such as Ireland, Portugal and Greece that are complete economic basket cases.  Number two, the European nations receiving these bailouts have got to convince their citizens to comply with the very harsh austerity measures being imposed upon them by the EU and the IMF.

Those two things should not be taken for granted.  In Germany, many taxpayers are already sick and tired of pouring hundreds of billions of euros into a black hole.  The truth is that the Germans are not going to accept carrying weak sisters like Greece and Portugal on their backs indefinitely.

In addition, we have already seen the kinds of riots that have erupted in Greece over the austerity measures being implemented there.  If there is an overwhelming backlash against austerity in some parts of Europe will some nations actually attempt to leave the EU?

Right now the focus is on Ireland.  The Irish banking system is a basket case at the moment and the Irish government is drowning in red ink.  European Union officials are urging Ireland to request a bailout, but so far Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen is not taking the bait.  The Irish government does not seem too keen on having even more austerity measures imposed upon it by the EU and the IMF.

According to Nadeem Walayat, the harsh austerity measures that Ireland has endured during this past year have only made Ireland’s financial problems even worse….

The people of Ireland having endured over a year of austerity on the promise that it was all necessary to suffer pain today by cutting public spending so as to reduce the annual budget deficit to sustainable level for economic gains tomorrow. Instead the exact opposite is taking place as the Irish economy contracts due to economic austerity whilst its bankrupt banks are sending the countries debt and liabilities soaring, thus resulting in a far worse budgetary position than where Ireland was before the austerity measures were implemented as the bond markets are waking up to evitable debt default which is sending interest rates demanded to hold Irish debt soaring to new credit crisis highs.

But the big Irish banks are bleeding cash fast.  For example, the Bank of Ireland recently reported “a 10 billion euro outflow of deposits from early August until the end of September.”  Irish banks and the Irish government need help whether they are willing to admit it or not.

But Ireland is not the only one in trouble.  Portugal became the latest European nation to push the panic button when Portuguese Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos announced that his country was in such bad financial shape that it might have to seek a bailout package.

Things are so bleak in Portugal right now that Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Amado says that his nation “faces a scenario of exit from the euro zone” if a solution is not found for this financial mess.

On top of all this, word is coming out that Greece is in even worse financial condition than initially believed.  The statistics agency for the EU, Eurostat, revealed on Tuesday that Greece’s deficit for 2009 was actually 15.4% of GDP rather than 13.6% of GDP as originally thought.

The Greek national debt is now well over 120 percent of GDP.  It seems inevitable at this point that Greece will need more bailouts if they are to remain part of the EU.

Spain is also starting to feel the heat.  Spain’s short-term debt financing costs jumped sharply on Tuesday, and officials in Spain are begging the Irish government to accept the bailout they are being offered so that the “contagion” does not spread.

But could a few mid-size countries in Europe really cause the next great global financial crisis?

Yes.

In the UK, veteran Conservative MP Peter Tapsell is warning that a total collapse in Ireland “could pose as great a threat to the world economy as did Lehman Brothers, AIG and Goldman Sachs in September 2008”.

Already we are seeing world financial markets getting rattled by all this news.

Fears regarding what is happening in Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal helped push the Dow Jones industrial average down nearly 200 points on Tuesday.

But the real story is that this financial crisis in Europe could potentially cause the break up of the euro and of the European Union.

The truth is that the euro and the European Union are inseparably linked at this point.  In fact, EU President Herman Van Rompuy is warning that if some of the weaker countries in Europe are forced to abandon the euro it will likely cause the total destruction of the European Union….

“We’re in a survival crisis. We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don’t survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also warning that a failure of the euro could bring down the entire European Union….

“If the euro fails, then Europe fails.”

But officials in Europe are not going to let the dream of a united Europe slip away easily.  Right now they are working really hard to keep Europe together, and that means some “tough love” has to be imposed on the “weak sisters”.  As these weaker European economies collapse, they are being forced to accept harsh EU mandates in exchange for bailouts.  As Ambrose Evans Pritchard recently pointed out, “forced austerity” is quite similar to serfdom….

Greece is now under an EU protectorate, or the “Memorandum” as they call it. This has prompted pin-prick terrorist attacks against anybody associated with EU rule. Ireland and Portugal are further behind on this road to serfdom, but they are already facing policy dictates from Brussels, but will soon be under formal protectorates as well in any case. Spain has more or less been forced to cut public wages by 5pc to comply with EU demands made in May. All are having to knuckle down to Europe’s agenda of austerity, without the offsetting relief of devaluation and looser monetary policy.

In the end, Europe is going to move in one of two directions.  Either this financial crisis will finally be the thing that breaks up the euro and the European Union, or it will result in a Europe that is ruled even more strongly by EU bureaucrats.

As this crisis unfolds over the next couple of years, the EU is going to try to grab more power and more control.  They are going to ask national governments to give up substantial amounts of power and sovereignty in exchange for bailouts.  So far it is working.

But at some point will one nation say that enough is enough?

Perhaps that one nation could be Ireland.  The citizens of Ireland actually voted “no” on the EU Constitution, but then the EU forced them to vote a second time so that they could “get it right”.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if it is Ireland that ends up lighting the fuse that breaks up the euro and the European Union?  The Irish are a fiercely independent people, and they have a history of resisting tyranny.

In any event, this is going to be an extremely interesting winter across the EU.  If things go badly, the entire global financial system could be plunged into mayhem.  Let us hope that does not happen.

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