Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
If you posted an Obama Joker poster or Tea Party literature on a public bulletin board, the Justice Department is warning you are a possible terrorist.
Click here to download the BJA hand-out.
According to a hand-out distributed by the Bureau of Justice Assistance [3], a component of the Justice Department, “extremist literature distributed at the mall or posted on public bulletin boards” is suspicious and a potential indicator of terrorist activities.
In other words, anybody who posted an Infowars.com poster near a mall should be reported to the authorities as a possible domestic terrorist.
The Department of Homeland Security [4] has designated returning veterans, Second Amendment activists, and members of state militias as “rightwing extremists” who are to be considered potential terrorists. The Missouri Information Analysis Center [5], under the direction of the DHS, expanded the list of possible terrorists to include supporters of Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin.
According to the BJA, extremists may be drawn to “radical bookstores, weapons dealers, campaign offices, and activist group centers.”
The BJA hand-out customized for shopping malls and centers is available for download from the Dallas Police Department [6].
“It is important to the Dallas Police Department that citizens are alert, vigilant and report suspicious activity. The importance is as critical today as it was immediately after the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States. We ask citizens to be aware of their surroundings and report suspicious activity. A quick accurate description of events can make a big difference in both Criminal and Terrorism related investigations,” a explains a page entitled “Suspicious Activity & Behaviors Indicators – Homeland Security” posted on the site.
Notice how crime and terrorism, according to the Dallas police, are inseparable. The Dallas Police Department did not come up with this “nexus” between crime and terrorism on its own. The connection was established by the State Department [7].
For instance, the State Department considers Mexican drug cartels to be terrorists. It is not clear if the State Department also considers Wachovia Bank a terrorist organization. Earlier this year, the bank was caught red-handed laundering billions of dollars for Mexican cartels [8]. The Justice Department agreed to not prosecute Wachovia, once again demonstrating that there is one set of standards for criminal bankers and another for lowly citizens.
View Article With Links HERE
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Censored Gulf truth: Tourist beach 'tar balls as far as you can see'
Examiner.com
Deborah Dupré
Today on Pensacola's Fort Pickens Beach, oil tar balls, blobs of crude oil cover the sand as far as the eye can see. Newly identified Targeted Individual, 'Pcola' Gregg Hall, in his daily Gulf mission, walked and videoed two miles of the ugly truth Americans are not suppose to see but are suppose to visit for swimming, playing in the sand and eating the seafood.
The new Southern Hospitality slogan seems to be, "Y'all come on down so we can poison you, too. Be sure to bring the children."
"There are thousands of tar balls," reports Hall. (See Youtube video below at the far end of this page.)
"There is also discoloration of the sand."
Hall documents the "solid oil and tar" just below the top layer of sand where children are encouraged to play.
"Everywhere I go... Come see for yourself."
Yesterday, Hall revealed to the Examiner that which describes his joining the ranks of "America's greatest people" as a Targeted Individual. He explained that "an organized group" is determined to prevent his daily work, exposing oil industry atrocities involved in the Deepwater Horizon/BP explosion and so-called "clean-up."
Asked if he views the Gulf activities as a military operation, he said that at first, he would not have said that.
"After all I've seen, I'd have to say, 'Yes, this is a military operation."
He also mentioned the unmarked planes spraying the chemicals. "No identification numbers on them at all. We worked out they are Evergreen Air planes."
Intel Hub then reported, "For those who do not know Evergreen Air is a CIA front company for chemtrail operations within the United States, weapons and arms dealing, drug running and rendition tortures.( Audio)
Evergreen Air Facility, Arizona desert north of Tuscon, "top secret... heavily secured by armed personnel" - Intel Hub
Intel Hub reported an Evergreen Air whistleblower explanation :
"During his time at the facility he was involved in retro fitting 727 and 747-c aircraft with liquid discharge tanks and aerosol sprayer devices. He has also confirmed reports of triangular black jets at the facility as well during his time there in the early 1990’s.
It is also important to note that the facility owns fully functional warbirds that have been fully restored from WWII, where all of the weapon systems and bomb bay doors are operable on the craft. This type of craft is not authorized by civilian, public or private use within the U.S. This would indicate that Evergreen Air is indeed a CIA operation."
"What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico and to our beaches as a result of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent runaway oil well has sickened me and appalled me," states Hall on his website, The Truth.
"I am a lover of the earth and have been a 'water baby' all my life...
"Where I once ran the beach morning and night for exercise, I am now running it to expose the truth to the world about what is really going on with my pictures and videos, uploaded in real time from my iphone daily."
Hall is the sole Gulf Coast resident who has documented and widely distributed the hazardous beach conditions on a daily basis since the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April.
He has spoken to countless officials patrolling the beach, parents allowing their children to swim in the poisoned water, other reporters and VIPs.
"I talk to everyone the same. It doesn't matter whether you're the queen or the man down the street. I'm going to tell you what's really going on here and show you with my videos," Hall told the Examiner today
"I just tell it like it is. I don't need to sensationalize. The truth about the Gulf is bad enough."
Learn more from Hall next week when Jeff Rense interviews him about what main stream news does not want you to know about the Gulf Operation and what it feels like to be a Targeted Individual in today's United States military dictatorship.
Listen to the Jeff Rense Radio program Monday, October 11, from 8-9pm Pacific.
View Article With Links and Pics HERE
Deborah Dupré
Today on Pensacola's Fort Pickens Beach, oil tar balls, blobs of crude oil cover the sand as far as the eye can see. Newly identified Targeted Individual, 'Pcola' Gregg Hall, in his daily Gulf mission, walked and videoed two miles of the ugly truth Americans are not suppose to see but are suppose to visit for swimming, playing in the sand and eating the seafood.
The new Southern Hospitality slogan seems to be, "Y'all come on down so we can poison you, too. Be sure to bring the children."
"There are thousands of tar balls," reports Hall. (See Youtube video below at the far end of this page.)
"There is also discoloration of the sand."
Hall documents the "solid oil and tar" just below the top layer of sand where children are encouraged to play.
"Everywhere I go... Come see for yourself."
Yesterday, Hall revealed to the Examiner that which describes his joining the ranks of "America's greatest people" as a Targeted Individual. He explained that "an organized group" is determined to prevent his daily work, exposing oil industry atrocities involved in the Deepwater Horizon/BP explosion and so-called "clean-up."
Asked if he views the Gulf activities as a military operation, he said that at first, he would not have said that.
"After all I've seen, I'd have to say, 'Yes, this is a military operation."
He also mentioned the unmarked planes spraying the chemicals. "No identification numbers on them at all. We worked out they are Evergreen Air planes."
Intel Hub then reported, "For those who do not know Evergreen Air is a CIA front company for chemtrail operations within the United States, weapons and arms dealing, drug running and rendition tortures.( Audio)
Evergreen Air Facility, Arizona desert north of Tuscon, "top secret... heavily secured by armed personnel" - Intel Hub
Intel Hub reported an Evergreen Air whistleblower explanation :
"During his time at the facility he was involved in retro fitting 727 and 747-c aircraft with liquid discharge tanks and aerosol sprayer devices. He has also confirmed reports of triangular black jets at the facility as well during his time there in the early 1990’s.
It is also important to note that the facility owns fully functional warbirds that have been fully restored from WWII, where all of the weapon systems and bomb bay doors are operable on the craft. This type of craft is not authorized by civilian, public or private use within the U.S. This would indicate that Evergreen Air is indeed a CIA operation."
"What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico and to our beaches as a result of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent runaway oil well has sickened me and appalled me," states Hall on his website, The Truth.
"I am a lover of the earth and have been a 'water baby' all my life...
"Where I once ran the beach morning and night for exercise, I am now running it to expose the truth to the world about what is really going on with my pictures and videos, uploaded in real time from my iphone daily."
Hall is the sole Gulf Coast resident who has documented and widely distributed the hazardous beach conditions on a daily basis since the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April.
He has spoken to countless officials patrolling the beach, parents allowing their children to swim in the poisoned water, other reporters and VIPs.
"I talk to everyone the same. It doesn't matter whether you're the queen or the man down the street. I'm going to tell you what's really going on here and show you with my videos," Hall told the Examiner today
"I just tell it like it is. I don't need to sensationalize. The truth about the Gulf is bad enough."
Learn more from Hall next week when Jeff Rense interviews him about what main stream news does not want you to know about the Gulf Operation and what it feels like to be a Targeted Individual in today's United States military dictatorship.
Listen to the Jeff Rense Radio program Monday, October 11, from 8-9pm Pacific.
View Article With Links and Pics HERE
This Is Starting To Get Very Real: Agricultural Commodity Prices Have Exploded And Now The Price Of Food Is Beginning To Rise Substantially In The United States And All Over The World
endoftheamericandream.com
Do you believe that you will always be able to run out to Wal-Mart or to the local supermarket and buy massive amounts of inexpensive food? If so, you might want to think again. During 2010, agricultural commodity prices have absolutely exploded. Nearly every single important agricultural commodity has seen a double digit percentage price increase. In fact, the S&P GSCI Agriculture Index recently surged to a fresh two year high. Now food producers and retailers are starting to pass those commodity price increases on to consumers. Today when I went to the supermarket I was absolutely startled by some of the price increases that I witnessed. On some of the items that I most commonly purchase, prices were up 20 or 30 percent. So just what in the world is going on here? Well, it turns out that there was a lot of bad weather around the world this year, so many harvests were worse than projected. In addition, the growing population of the world has an increasingly voracious appetite for food. When supply gets tighter as demand continues to go up that means that prices are going to increase.
On a recent article on our sister site entitled "Rampant Inflation In 2011? The Monetary Base Is Exploding, Commodity Prices Are Skyrocketing And The Fed Wants To Print Lots More Money" a reader named Erica left a comment describing the food prices that she is seeing in her area....
Food inflation is real, and it is here. Just yesterday I compared my receipt from a grocery run to prices I have from the same exact store from September 15, 2009. Bacon? Up 52% to $13.69 from $8.99 for 4 lbs. Butter? Up 73% to $9.99 from $5.79 for 4 lbs. Pure vanilla extract up 14% to $6.79 from $5.95. Chopped dried onions up a mere 2% but minced garlic (wet) was up 32%.
These price increases are not a coincidence. This is happening all over the United States.
Food inflation is here and it is not going away any time soon.
In fact, food inflation is hitting consumers hard all over the globe this fall....
*According to the United Nations, international wheat prices have soared 60 to 80 percent since July.
*Since the beginning of 2010, the price of bread has gone up 17 percent and the price of meat has gone up 15 percent in European Union countries.
*The inflation rate in Russia rose to 7 percent in September primarily because of rising food costs.
*Turkey’s inflation rate accelerated to 9.2 percent in September, and authorities there are primarily blaming rising food prices for the increase.
*Food riots have already erupted in the poverty-stricken country of Mozambique and the government there is desperately trying to maintain order.
*Food prices have doubled in Afghanistan and authorities are warning that there could be an outbreak of famine unless the nation quickly receives more humanitarian aid.
So is there hope that things are going to get better in the years ahead?
No, not really.
In fact, global demand for food is only going to increase in the years to come.
Global demand for meat and poultry is forecasted to increase 25 percent by 2015.
Overall, it is being projected that global demand for food will more than double over the next 50 years.
So where in the world will all of that extra food come from?
That is a very good question.
Meanwhile, rising food prices threaten to send a new wave of inflation sweeping across the globe.
Mark O’Byrne, the executive director of GoldCore in Dublin, was recently quoted in Bloomberg as saying that the Federal Reserve "continues to be worried about low inflation, but the rising prices seen in agricultural commodities such as wheat would suggest that they may be looking in the rear-view mirror and should be more concerned about inflation, especially in the medium and long term."
As mentioned earlier, wheat prices have soared 60 to 80 percent this year, but wheat is not the only agricultural commodity that is going up big time.
In a recent article entitled "An Inflationary Cocktail In The Making", Richard Benson listed many of the other agricultural commodities that have spiked in price in 2010....
*Coffee: 45%
*Barley: 32%
*Oranges: 35%
*Beef: 23%
*Pork: 68%
*Salmon: 30%
*Sugar: 24%
So are American families seeing large increases in pay to keep up with all of this food inflation?
No, actually incomes are going down.
Median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009.
In fact, of the 52 largest metro areas in the nation, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income in 2009.
American families are being squeezed like never before, and the last thing that they need is for the price of food to start moving up substantially.
But it isn't just the price of food that is going up.
Health insurance companies across the United States are announcing that health insurance premiums are going to go up substantially this year because of the new health care law.
American consumers can only be stretched so far.
Eventually something has got to give.
In fact, we are already seeing more Americans beginning to fall into poverty than ever before. Today, one out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
Unfortunately, there is every indication that the Federal Reserve wants to make inflation every worse.
It seems like almost every single day now a different official from the Federal Reserve makes public comments about how another round of quantitative easing is going to be necessary in order to stimulate the U.S. economy.
But if the Federal Reserve pumps even more paper money into the financial system isn't that going to put inflationary pressure on the economy?
Of course.
It is time to wake up.
Your dollars are never going to stretch farther than they do today.
The price of food is going to continue to go up.
But perhaps you disagree. Please feel free to leave your opinion in the comments section below....
View Article With Links HERE
Do you believe that you will always be able to run out to Wal-Mart or to the local supermarket and buy massive amounts of inexpensive food? If so, you might want to think again. During 2010, agricultural commodity prices have absolutely exploded. Nearly every single important agricultural commodity has seen a double digit percentage price increase. In fact, the S&P GSCI Agriculture Index recently surged to a fresh two year high. Now food producers and retailers are starting to pass those commodity price increases on to consumers. Today when I went to the supermarket I was absolutely startled by some of the price increases that I witnessed. On some of the items that I most commonly purchase, prices were up 20 or 30 percent. So just what in the world is going on here? Well, it turns out that there was a lot of bad weather around the world this year, so many harvests were worse than projected. In addition, the growing population of the world has an increasingly voracious appetite for food. When supply gets tighter as demand continues to go up that means that prices are going to increase.
On a recent article on our sister site entitled "Rampant Inflation In 2011? The Monetary Base Is Exploding, Commodity Prices Are Skyrocketing And The Fed Wants To Print Lots More Money" a reader named Erica left a comment describing the food prices that she is seeing in her area....
Food inflation is real, and it is here. Just yesterday I compared my receipt from a grocery run to prices I have from the same exact store from September 15, 2009. Bacon? Up 52% to $13.69 from $8.99 for 4 lbs. Butter? Up 73% to $9.99 from $5.79 for 4 lbs. Pure vanilla extract up 14% to $6.79 from $5.95. Chopped dried onions up a mere 2% but minced garlic (wet) was up 32%.
These price increases are not a coincidence. This is happening all over the United States.
Food inflation is here and it is not going away any time soon.
In fact, food inflation is hitting consumers hard all over the globe this fall....
*According to the United Nations, international wheat prices have soared 60 to 80 percent since July.
*Since the beginning of 2010, the price of bread has gone up 17 percent and the price of meat has gone up 15 percent in European Union countries.
*The inflation rate in Russia rose to 7 percent in September primarily because of rising food costs.
*Turkey’s inflation rate accelerated to 9.2 percent in September, and authorities there are primarily blaming rising food prices for the increase.
*Food riots have already erupted in the poverty-stricken country of Mozambique and the government there is desperately trying to maintain order.
*Food prices have doubled in Afghanistan and authorities are warning that there could be an outbreak of famine unless the nation quickly receives more humanitarian aid.
So is there hope that things are going to get better in the years ahead?
No, not really.
In fact, global demand for food is only going to increase in the years to come.
Global demand for meat and poultry is forecasted to increase 25 percent by 2015.
Overall, it is being projected that global demand for food will more than double over the next 50 years.
So where in the world will all of that extra food come from?
That is a very good question.
Meanwhile, rising food prices threaten to send a new wave of inflation sweeping across the globe.
Mark O’Byrne, the executive director of GoldCore in Dublin, was recently quoted in Bloomberg as saying that the Federal Reserve "continues to be worried about low inflation, but the rising prices seen in agricultural commodities such as wheat would suggest that they may be looking in the rear-view mirror and should be more concerned about inflation, especially in the medium and long term."
As mentioned earlier, wheat prices have soared 60 to 80 percent this year, but wheat is not the only agricultural commodity that is going up big time.
In a recent article entitled "An Inflationary Cocktail In The Making", Richard Benson listed many of the other agricultural commodities that have spiked in price in 2010....
*Coffee: 45%
*Barley: 32%
*Oranges: 35%
*Beef: 23%
*Pork: 68%
*Salmon: 30%
*Sugar: 24%
So are American families seeing large increases in pay to keep up with all of this food inflation?
No, actually incomes are going down.
Median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009.
In fact, of the 52 largest metro areas in the nation, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income in 2009.
American families are being squeezed like never before, and the last thing that they need is for the price of food to start moving up substantially.
But it isn't just the price of food that is going up.
Health insurance companies across the United States are announcing that health insurance premiums are going to go up substantially this year because of the new health care law.
American consumers can only be stretched so far.
Eventually something has got to give.
In fact, we are already seeing more Americans beginning to fall into poverty than ever before. Today, one out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
Unfortunately, there is every indication that the Federal Reserve wants to make inflation every worse.
It seems like almost every single day now a different official from the Federal Reserve makes public comments about how another round of quantitative easing is going to be necessary in order to stimulate the U.S. economy.
But if the Federal Reserve pumps even more paper money into the financial system isn't that going to put inflationary pressure on the economy?
Of course.
It is time to wake up.
Your dollars are never going to stretch farther than they do today.
The price of food is going to continue to go up.
But perhaps you disagree. Please feel free to leave your opinion in the comments section below....
View Article With Links HERE
11 Long-Term Trends That Are Absolutely Destroying The U.S. Economy
theeconomiccollapseblog.com
The U.S. economy is being slowly but surely destroyed and many Americans have no idea that it is happening. That is at least partially due to the fact that most financial news is entirely focused on the short-term. Whenever a key economic statistic goes up the financial markets surge and analysts rejoice. Whenever a key economic statistic goes down the financial markets decline and analysts speak of the potential for a "double-dip" recession. You could literally get whiplash as you watch the financial ping pong ball bounce back and forth between good news and bad news. But focusing on short-term statistics is not the correct way to analyze the U.S. economy. It is the long-term trends that reveal the truth. The reality is that there are certain underlying foundational problems that are destroying the U.S. economy a little bit more every single day.
11 of those foundational problems are discussed below. They are undeniable and they are constantly getting worse. If they are not corrected (and there is no indication that they will be) they will destroy not only our economy but also our entire way of life. The sad truth is that it would be hard to understate just how desperate the situation is for the U.S. economy.
Long-Term Trend #1: The Deindustrialization Of America
The United States is being deindustrialized at a pace that is almost impossible to believe. But now that millions upon millions of people have lost their jobs, more Americans than ever are starting to wake up and believe it.
A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 69 percent of Americans now believe that free trade agreements have cost America jobs. Ten years ago the majority of Americans had great faith in the new "global economy" that we were all being merged into, but now the tide has turned.
So why have Americans lost faith in "free trade"?
Well, it turns out that the current system is neither "free trade" nor "fair trade". Many other nations impose extremely high tariffs on U.S. goods and put up ridiculous barriers to American products and yet the United States has generally let everyone else openly manipulate currency rates and flood our shores with whatever cheap products they want.
The results have been disastrous. Jobs and factories have been leaving the United States at a blinding pace.
The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. Approximately 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 workers while they were still in operation.
An economy without a manufacturing base does not have a bright long-term future. Yet our politicians have allowed our manufacturing base to be systematically dismantled.
As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
How is the United States supposed to have a bright economic future if it consumes everything in sight and yet makes very little?
Something needs to be done.
In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall.
Needless to say, millions of blue collar workers now find themselves unable to find jobs. Today, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one person that is looking for a full-time job and there is no sign that things are going to improve much any time soon.
Long-Term Trend #2: The Exploding U.S. Trade Deficit
Each month, tens of billions more dollars go out of the United States than come into it. In other words, every single month the United States gets poorer.
Recently, the U.S. trade deficit has been coming in at around 40 to 50 billion dollars a month. About half of that is with communist China.
Between 2000 and 2009, America's trade deficit with China increased nearly 300 percent.
Sadly, things are getting even worse.
As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
There is a reason why China has been able to loan the U.S. government nearly a trillion dollars. They have literally been bleeding us dry.
The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.
Does that sound like "fair trade" to you?
According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
Half a million jobs in just one year?
And that doesn't even take into account the trade deficit that we have with all the other nations around the world.
We have literally built China into a superpower.
One prominent economist is now projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
But it isn't just China that is a problem.
Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994, 300,000 U.S. farms have gone out of business.
Globalism has forced U.S. workers to directly compete with the cheapest labor in the world for jobs. That is not good for American workers and it is not good for America.
Long-Term Trend #3: The Shrinking Middle Class
As jobs continue to flee the United States and as wages continue to be depressed, America's middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate.
According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck. That was up substantially from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
Unfortunately, a growing number of Americans have found it impossible to make it from month to month without direct financial assistance from the federal government.
41 million Americans are now on food stamps. One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government. Economic pain is everywhere.
Tens of millions of Americans now live in poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans that they have ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.
Long-Term Trend #4: The Growing Size Of The U.S. Government
No matter whether it is a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, the size of the U.S. government has continued to grow by leaps and bounds in recent years.
This is a tremendous drain on the U.S. economy. The government produces very little value for the economy and yet costs a colossal amount to maintain.
In addition, multiplying government regulations have caused the United States to be a very difficult environment to operate a business in.
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.
Long-Term Trend #5: The Constantly Growing U.S. National Debt
The United States has accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and every single month it gets worse.
According to an official U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and will climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
Do we really want to pass on a 20 trillion dollar debt to our children and grandchildren?
But the truth is that the situation is actually a lot worse than that.
If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
Needless to say, that is not anywhere close to sustainable. We are literally destroying our economic future with all of this debt.
Long-Term Trend #6: The Ongoing Devaluation Of The U.S. Dollar
The Federal Reserve constantly destroys the value of the U.S. dollar. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power.
An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $440.33 today.
Inflation is like a hidden tax. The value of the dollars you are holding right now will decline a little bit more each and every month.
And now that the Federal Reserve is threatening to unleash another round of quantitative easing, it appears that the value of our dollars will soon be declining even more rapidly.
Long-Term Trend #7: The Derivatives Bubble
The one thing that the "Wall Street reform bill" should have done was that it should have done something about the horrific abuses in the derivatives markets. Instead, the Wall Street reform bill did next to nothing about derivatives and instead imposed hundreds of other useless regulations on Wall Street.
Most Americans don't even know what derivatives are. Basically, they are side bets. They have no underlying value of their own. But today derivatives have taken center stage on Wall Street. Our financial markets have become a gigantic casino.
The total value of all derivatives worldwide is estimated to be somewhere between 600 trillion and 1.5 quadrillion dollars. And thanks to the U.S. Congress, the derivatives bubble is still growing.
It would be hard to understate the danger that the derivatives bubble represents. The danger from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them "financial weapons of mass destruction".
When the derivatives bubble finally pops, there will not be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
Long-Term Trend #8: The Health Care Industry
The United States health care system is completely and totally broken. It has become a gigantic money making machine for health insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and greedy lawyers.
Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world and yet they get shockingly little in return.
Health care expenses are the number one reason why people file for personal bankrupty in the United States. Surprisingly, most of those who get bankrupted by health care expenses actually have health insurance.
The health insurance system in the United States is a complete and total mess. Health insurance premiums are busting the budgets of tens of millions of American families and yet they are getting ready to go up yet once again.
Already, large numbers of health insurance companies across the United States have announced that they plan to increase health insurance premiums in response to the new health care law.
But do health insurance companies actually need more money? Even as the rest of the U.S. economy deeply struggles, America's health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent in 2009.
At least someone is doing well in this economy.
The truth is that the U.S. health care system needs to be totally and completely reinvented. The system we had before did not work. Barack Obama's new health care system will be far worse. Meanwhile, the health care industry is literally choking the life out of the U.S. economy.
Long-Term Trend #9: Financial Power Is Becoming Concentrated In Fewer And Fewer Hands
Once upon a time, the United States had a very diverse financial system. But today financial power is becoming concentrated in fewer and fewer hands with each passing year.
More U.S. banks fail every single week. In fact, the number of bank failures is on pace to far surpass the total of 140 U.S. banks that failed last year.
There are now nearly 900 banks (well over 10 percent of all U.S. banks) on the FDIC list of problem banks.
Meanwhile, the "too big to fail" banks continue to pick up market share. The "big four" U.S. banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) had approximately 22 percent of all deposits in FDIC-insured institutions back in 2000. As of June 30th of last year that figure was up to 39 percent.
Putting an increasing amount of financial power into the hands of just a few elite banks is a recipe for disaster any way you want to cut it.
Long-Term Trend #10: Rampant Corruption On Wall Street
Our financial system has become an absolute cesspool of corruption. In the past I have written extensively about all of the corruption that Goldman Sachs has been involved in, but they are far from alone.
In fact, it seems like new stories of financial corruption emerge almost daily now.
For example, just recently Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and GMAC Mortgage have all suspended foreclosures in many U.S. states due to serious concerns about foreclosure procedures.
But there is a lot of corruption that is a lot worse than that. The rampant manipulation of the gold and silver markets was completely blown open by an industry insider earlier this year, but the U.S. government had to be publicly shamed before they would even agree to look into it.
The truth is that corruption on Wall Street has become so common that it is almost impossible to keep up with it all. It seems like no matter what stone you turn over on Wall Street these days you find yet more corruption.
But if the core of our financial system is so incredibly corrupt, how long will it be before it collapses in on itself?
Long-Term Trend #11: The Growing Retirement Crisis That Threatens To Bankrupt America
The Baby Boomers may end up bankrupting America after all. A retirement tsunami is coming that threatens to drown our nation in a sea of red ink.
The truth is that Americans have not been preparing for retirement on their own. One shocking new study indicates that Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
In fact, approximately half of all workers in the United States have less than $2000 saved up for retirement.
So what about corporate pension plans?
Are they in good shape?
No.
One recent study found that America's 100 largest corporate pension plans were underfunded by $217 billion as of the end of 2008.
But sadly, the pension plans run by U.S. state governments are in even worse shape.
Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability of all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That means that collectively, the 50 U.S. state governments are 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations.
But the biggest mess of all may be the U.S. Social Security system.
The sad reality is that anyone that has studied it closely knows that it is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, and the scam has just about run its course.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.
Oops.
But things get really hairy when you start looking down the road.
The present value of projected scheduled benefits surpasses earmarked revenues for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare by about 46 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.
Ouch.
It is time to face facts people.
We are in deep, deep, deep trouble.
An increasing number of Americans are starting to realize this. They may not always know the specifics of what is going wrong, but more people than ever realize that something is broken. According to one recent survey, 63 percent of Americans believe that the United States is on the wrong track.
And we are very much on the wrong track. We have squandered the great wealth that our parents and grandparents left us and we are wrecking the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen.
If we do not get our act together, someday people will look back and will curse this generation for how incredibly stupid we were.
View Article With Links HERE
The U.S. economy is being slowly but surely destroyed and many Americans have no idea that it is happening. That is at least partially due to the fact that most financial news is entirely focused on the short-term. Whenever a key economic statistic goes up the financial markets surge and analysts rejoice. Whenever a key economic statistic goes down the financial markets decline and analysts speak of the potential for a "double-dip" recession. You could literally get whiplash as you watch the financial ping pong ball bounce back and forth between good news and bad news. But focusing on short-term statistics is not the correct way to analyze the U.S. economy. It is the long-term trends that reveal the truth. The reality is that there are certain underlying foundational problems that are destroying the U.S. economy a little bit more every single day.
11 of those foundational problems are discussed below. They are undeniable and they are constantly getting worse. If they are not corrected (and there is no indication that they will be) they will destroy not only our economy but also our entire way of life. The sad truth is that it would be hard to understate just how desperate the situation is for the U.S. economy.
Long-Term Trend #1: The Deindustrialization Of America
The United States is being deindustrialized at a pace that is almost impossible to believe. But now that millions upon millions of people have lost their jobs, more Americans than ever are starting to wake up and believe it.
A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 69 percent of Americans now believe that free trade agreements have cost America jobs. Ten years ago the majority of Americans had great faith in the new "global economy" that we were all being merged into, but now the tide has turned.
So why have Americans lost faith in "free trade"?
Well, it turns out that the current system is neither "free trade" nor "fair trade". Many other nations impose extremely high tariffs on U.S. goods and put up ridiculous barriers to American products and yet the United States has generally let everyone else openly manipulate currency rates and flood our shores with whatever cheap products they want.
The results have been disastrous. Jobs and factories have been leaving the United States at a blinding pace.
The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. Approximately 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 workers while they were still in operation.
An economy without a manufacturing base does not have a bright long-term future. Yet our politicians have allowed our manufacturing base to be systematically dismantled.
As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
How is the United States supposed to have a bright economic future if it consumes everything in sight and yet makes very little?
Something needs to be done.
In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall.
Needless to say, millions of blue collar workers now find themselves unable to find jobs. Today, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one person that is looking for a full-time job and there is no sign that things are going to improve much any time soon.
Long-Term Trend #2: The Exploding U.S. Trade Deficit
Each month, tens of billions more dollars go out of the United States than come into it. In other words, every single month the United States gets poorer.
Recently, the U.S. trade deficit has been coming in at around 40 to 50 billion dollars a month. About half of that is with communist China.
Between 2000 and 2009, America's trade deficit with China increased nearly 300 percent.
Sadly, things are getting even worse.
As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
There is a reason why China has been able to loan the U.S. government nearly a trillion dollars. They have literally been bleeding us dry.
The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.
Does that sound like "fair trade" to you?
According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
Half a million jobs in just one year?
And that doesn't even take into account the trade deficit that we have with all the other nations around the world.
We have literally built China into a superpower.
One prominent economist is now projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
But it isn't just China that is a problem.
Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994, 300,000 U.S. farms have gone out of business.
Globalism has forced U.S. workers to directly compete with the cheapest labor in the world for jobs. That is not good for American workers and it is not good for America.
Long-Term Trend #3: The Shrinking Middle Class
As jobs continue to flee the United States and as wages continue to be depressed, America's middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate.
According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck. That was up substantially from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
Unfortunately, a growing number of Americans have found it impossible to make it from month to month without direct financial assistance from the federal government.
41 million Americans are now on food stamps. One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government. Economic pain is everywhere.
Tens of millions of Americans now live in poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans that they have ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.
Long-Term Trend #4: The Growing Size Of The U.S. Government
No matter whether it is a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, the size of the U.S. government has continued to grow by leaps and bounds in recent years.
This is a tremendous drain on the U.S. economy. The government produces very little value for the economy and yet costs a colossal amount to maintain.
In addition, multiplying government regulations have caused the United States to be a very difficult environment to operate a business in.
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.
Long-Term Trend #5: The Constantly Growing U.S. National Debt
The United States has accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and every single month it gets worse.
According to an official U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and will climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
Do we really want to pass on a 20 trillion dollar debt to our children and grandchildren?
But the truth is that the situation is actually a lot worse than that.
If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
Needless to say, that is not anywhere close to sustainable. We are literally destroying our economic future with all of this debt.
Long-Term Trend #6: The Ongoing Devaluation Of The U.S. Dollar
The Federal Reserve constantly destroys the value of the U.S. dollar. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power.
An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $440.33 today.
Inflation is like a hidden tax. The value of the dollars you are holding right now will decline a little bit more each and every month.
And now that the Federal Reserve is threatening to unleash another round of quantitative easing, it appears that the value of our dollars will soon be declining even more rapidly.
Long-Term Trend #7: The Derivatives Bubble
The one thing that the "Wall Street reform bill" should have done was that it should have done something about the horrific abuses in the derivatives markets. Instead, the Wall Street reform bill did next to nothing about derivatives and instead imposed hundreds of other useless regulations on Wall Street.
Most Americans don't even know what derivatives are. Basically, they are side bets. They have no underlying value of their own. But today derivatives have taken center stage on Wall Street. Our financial markets have become a gigantic casino.
The total value of all derivatives worldwide is estimated to be somewhere between 600 trillion and 1.5 quadrillion dollars. And thanks to the U.S. Congress, the derivatives bubble is still growing.
It would be hard to understate the danger that the derivatives bubble represents. The danger from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them "financial weapons of mass destruction".
When the derivatives bubble finally pops, there will not be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
Long-Term Trend #8: The Health Care Industry
The United States health care system is completely and totally broken. It has become a gigantic money making machine for health insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and greedy lawyers.
Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world and yet they get shockingly little in return.
Health care expenses are the number one reason why people file for personal bankrupty in the United States. Surprisingly, most of those who get bankrupted by health care expenses actually have health insurance.
The health insurance system in the United States is a complete and total mess. Health insurance premiums are busting the budgets of tens of millions of American families and yet they are getting ready to go up yet once again.
Already, large numbers of health insurance companies across the United States have announced that they plan to increase health insurance premiums in response to the new health care law.
But do health insurance companies actually need more money? Even as the rest of the U.S. economy deeply struggles, America's health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent in 2009.
At least someone is doing well in this economy.
The truth is that the U.S. health care system needs to be totally and completely reinvented. The system we had before did not work. Barack Obama's new health care system will be far worse. Meanwhile, the health care industry is literally choking the life out of the U.S. economy.
Long-Term Trend #9: Financial Power Is Becoming Concentrated In Fewer And Fewer Hands
Once upon a time, the United States had a very diverse financial system. But today financial power is becoming concentrated in fewer and fewer hands with each passing year.
More U.S. banks fail every single week. In fact, the number of bank failures is on pace to far surpass the total of 140 U.S. banks that failed last year.
There are now nearly 900 banks (well over 10 percent of all U.S. banks) on the FDIC list of problem banks.
Meanwhile, the "too big to fail" banks continue to pick up market share. The "big four" U.S. banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) had approximately 22 percent of all deposits in FDIC-insured institutions back in 2000. As of June 30th of last year that figure was up to 39 percent.
Putting an increasing amount of financial power into the hands of just a few elite banks is a recipe for disaster any way you want to cut it.
Long-Term Trend #10: Rampant Corruption On Wall Street
Our financial system has become an absolute cesspool of corruption. In the past I have written extensively about all of the corruption that Goldman Sachs has been involved in, but they are far from alone.
In fact, it seems like new stories of financial corruption emerge almost daily now.
For example, just recently Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and GMAC Mortgage have all suspended foreclosures in many U.S. states due to serious concerns about foreclosure procedures.
But there is a lot of corruption that is a lot worse than that. The rampant manipulation of the gold and silver markets was completely blown open by an industry insider earlier this year, but the U.S. government had to be publicly shamed before they would even agree to look into it.
The truth is that corruption on Wall Street has become so common that it is almost impossible to keep up with it all. It seems like no matter what stone you turn over on Wall Street these days you find yet more corruption.
But if the core of our financial system is so incredibly corrupt, how long will it be before it collapses in on itself?
Long-Term Trend #11: The Growing Retirement Crisis That Threatens To Bankrupt America
The Baby Boomers may end up bankrupting America after all. A retirement tsunami is coming that threatens to drown our nation in a sea of red ink.
The truth is that Americans have not been preparing for retirement on their own. One shocking new study indicates that Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
In fact, approximately half of all workers in the United States have less than $2000 saved up for retirement.
So what about corporate pension plans?
Are they in good shape?
No.
One recent study found that America's 100 largest corporate pension plans were underfunded by $217 billion as of the end of 2008.
But sadly, the pension plans run by U.S. state governments are in even worse shape.
Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability of all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That means that collectively, the 50 U.S. state governments are 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations.
But the biggest mess of all may be the U.S. Social Security system.
The sad reality is that anyone that has studied it closely knows that it is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, and the scam has just about run its course.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.
Oops.
But things get really hairy when you start looking down the road.
The present value of projected scheduled benefits surpasses earmarked revenues for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare by about 46 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.
Ouch.
It is time to face facts people.
We are in deep, deep, deep trouble.
An increasing number of Americans are starting to realize this. They may not always know the specifics of what is going wrong, but more people than ever realize that something is broken. According to one recent survey, 63 percent of Americans believe that the United States is on the wrong track.
And we are very much on the wrong track. We have squandered the great wealth that our parents and grandparents left us and we are wrecking the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen.
If we do not get our act together, someday people will look back and will curse this generation for how incredibly stupid we were.
View Article With Links HERE
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