Americas Coming Economic Crisis
and How You Can Prepare for it.
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Could 2012 be the year when the second debt bubble pops?


“’The problem with socialism,’ Lady Thatcher once said, ‘is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.’ This time, it is worse: we are running out of our children’s money, and our grandchildren’s money. We are assuming we will have a never-ending supply of borrowed money, and we have no backup plan if this supply chokes up. Things may feel safe at the moment. We can still borrow easily from international markets. So could Lehman Brothers on 12 September 2008 — the day before the bank imploded.”



The Calm Before The Storm

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The mainstream media is full of happy economic news these days.  The S&P 500 has shot up 16 percent since the beginning of July.  Ford Motor Company just reported a profit that jumped nearly 70 percent in the third quarter.  It was Ford's best third quarter performance ever and it was the 6th quarterly profit in a row for the company.  Other major firms have announced earnings that have far exceeded expectations in recent weeks.  Hooray!  The pundits are proclaiming that the economic collapse is over and that the U.S. economy has won.  It is almost enough to make one tear into a stirring rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again".  But perhaps we should take a moment and get a hold of ourselves first.  After all, the underlying economic fundamentals have not changed.  The same long-term trends that were ripping the U.S. financial system apart a month or two ago are still continuing to do so.  Millions upon millions of American families are still deeply suffering.  So exactly what in the world is going on here?  Well, this is what is known as a "sucker's rally".  Those on the inside know better than to throw money at this market.  In fact, corporate insiders are now selling off stock so fast you would think it is going out of style.  Meanwhile, hordes of innocent rubes are jumping back into the stock market thinking that it is the perfect time to get in. 


The truth is that these "good times" are only temporary.  Don't get used to them.  The following are reasons why people should be getting really, really nervous about the state of the U.S. economy.... 


Corporate insiders are selling off stock at a blinding pace and are looking for the exits.  Alan Newman, the editor of the Crosscurrents newsletter, examined a number of the top performing stocks in the market including Google, Apple and Target and found that the ratio of corporate insider stock sold to corporate insider stock purchased over the last six months for those companies was 3,177 to 1.  At the group of firms that Newman looked at, corporate insiders had purchased 38,000 shares of stock over the last six months and yet had sold off over 120 million shares.


The U.S. Federal Reserve is going to initiate a new round of quantitative easing in November.  It does not take a genius to figure out that this is very likely to push up inflation and have very serious consequences for the U.S. dollar.


Economists at Goldman Sachs are projecting that the Fed will have to purchase at least $4 Trillion in assets during this next round of quantitative easing to get the U.S. economy moving in a positive direction once again.


Investors have very little faith in the U.S. dollar (and in paper currencies in general) at this point.  Precious metals are soaring to obscene heights.  The price of gold has increased more than 20 percent in 2010.  The price of silver has skyrocketed about 40 percent this year.  These are not signs that indicate that the U.S. financial system is stable.


Robin Griffiths, a technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, on CNBC said that the U.S. dollar is in danger of becoming "toxic waste".


U.S. lending institutions repossessed an all-time record total of 102,134 homes in the month of September.  That was the first time that home repossessions in the U.S. had ever exceeded the 100,000 mark during a single month.


During the months of August and September, the state of Nevada had an unemployment rate of 14.4 percent, which was the highest in the history of the state.  Not that the rest of the country is doing any better.  The state of California has become a complete and total economic disaster zone, and the city of Detroit, Michigan is literally dying.


The "official" unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months.


The number of people unemployed in the state of California is approximately equivalent to the populations of Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.


According to the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, there are approximately 3 million more vacant housing units than usual in the United States.


China has reduced the export quota on rare earth elements for the second half of 2010 by 72%, thus strengthening their position in the world economy even more.  Rare earth elements are absolutely crucial to the manufacture of a vast array of high technology products, and now even more of them will have to be made in China.


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.


Wheat, corn and other staples are absolutely soaring in price on world markets.  These higher food prices are going to hit U.S. consumers hard.


In 2007, 3 U.S. banks failed.  In 2008, 25 U.S. banks failed.  In 2009, 140 U.S. banks failed.  Last Friday, it was announced that 139 U.S. banks have failed so far this year and it is not even the end of October yet.


Total student loan debt in the United States is climbing at a rate of approximately $2,853.88 per second.


Back in 1980, the United States imported approximately 37 percent of  the oil that we use.  Now we import nearly 60 percent of the oil that we use.


According to an analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the health care reform legislation that Congress didn't read but passed into law anyway will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes on the American people by the year 2019.


Median household income in the U.S. declined from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009.  That was the second yearly decline in a row.


One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in a government anti-poverty program, and yet the number of Americans signing up for food stamps and other social programs just continues to set new all-time records month after month after month.


The number of Americans working part-time jobs "for economic reasons" is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.


American 15-year-olds do not even rank in the top half of all advanced nations when it comes to math or science literacy.


According to a recent poll conducted by CNBC, 92 percent of Americans believe that the performance of the U.S. economy is either "fair" or "poor".


After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff came to the conclusion that the U.S. government is now facing a "fiscal gap" of $202 trillion dollars.


A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the earth more than 380 times.  That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S national debt.


According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. national debt is rapidly closing in on 14 trillion dollars and and will climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015. 


The U.S. economy is in the midst of a long-term decline.  There are always going to be moments when it seems like things are getting a bit better, but then reality will kick in and the depressing slide will continue.

If you really want to understand what is happening to the U.S. economy, do not become fixated on the short-term numbers.  Instead, always keep an eye on the long-term trends.

The U.S. economy is dying.  We are getting whipped by the rest of the world and we are drowning in a sea of debt.  A little rally in the stock market is not going to do a thing to fix our very deep fundamental economic problems.





Economic Stress Points In 2011 Could Be Setting The Stage For A Global Economic Meltdown

 

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Is the world approaching a devastating global economic meltdown?  Right now there are a large number of factors that are creating economic stress points all over the globe.  All of the crazy money printing that the Federal Reserve and other central banks have been doing is putting inflationary pressure on agricultural commodities, oil and precious metals.  Massive floods, horrific droughts and extreme weather patterns all over the globe are ruining crops and creating food shortages.  Some nations are now actually hoarding food, and in other nations rising prices have sparked food riots.  The price of oil has been moving back towards $100 a barrel, and if it stays at a high level for an extended period of time that is going to have very serious consequences for the global economy.  In addition, the growing sovereign debt crisis could erupt again at any time.  Half a dozen nations in Europe are on the verge of insolvency, Japan's national debt is now well over 200 percent of GDP, and the global financial system is growing increasingly concerned about the exploding national debt of the United States.  The truth is that the entire world financial system is a house of cards balanced on a razor's edge and it could come down at any time.

Sadly, very little has changed since the world financial system experienced almost a complete meltdown back in 2008.  Global financial markets are still a whirlpool of debt and speculation.  One really bad week could put us right back where we were prior to the infamous Wall Street bailouts.  Very little in our world is truly stable anymore.  As we have seen recently in Egypt, the globe can literally change almost overnight.  All it would take is for one really bad event to happen and world financial markets would instantly start imploding.
So when will the coming economic collapse happen?  Nobody knows for sure, but the fact that the global economy is increasingly becoming less stable as we approach the year 2012 is making a lot of people very nervous.
The following are 47 statistics that indicate that economic stress points in 2011 could be setting the stage for a global economic meltdown in 2012....

#1 According to the United Nations, global food prices set a new all-time record during the month of January.

#2 In early February the worst freeze in 60 years wiped out entire crops all across the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico.  Already, it has been reported that some U.S. supermarkets have doubled or even tripled prices for certain produce items.

#3 It is being reported that due to the recent horrible freeze in Mexico cases of tomatoes that would usually cost shop owners between 12 and 15 dollars are now going for up to $40.

#4 One of China's key agricultural provinces is facing its worst drought in 200 years.

#5 The Food and Agriculture Organization says that up to two-thirds of China's wheat crop could be at risk of failing due to weather conditions.

#6 Officials in Mexico are estimating that four million tons of corn have been lost because of the recent freeze.  That represents a full 16 percent of Mexico's annual corn harvest.

#7 The price of corn has doubled over the last six months and it recently hit a new all-time high.

#8 The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that corn supplies are the tightest that they have been in 15 years.

#9 It appears that Chinese imports of corn will be about 9 times larger than the U.S. Department of Agriculture originally projected them to be for 2011.

#10 The price of wheat has more than doubled over the past year and it hit a 30-month high on Monday.

#11 In the event of a global catastrophe, current global stockpiles of wheat would only be able to feed the world for 82 days.

#12 According to Forbes, the price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

#13 The price of cotton has more than doubled over the past year.

#14 The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.

#15 The price of sugar is the highest it has been in 30 years.

#16 The United Nations is projecting that the global price of food will increase by another 30 percent by the end of 2011.

#17 In the U.K., the official rate of inflation is now twice as high as the target rate of inflation.

#18 Inflation in China is starting to get out of control.  For example, food prices in China rose 10.3 percent during the month of January.

#19 Almost 14 percent of all credit card accounts in the United States are currently 90 days or more delinquent.

#20 New home sales in the state of California were at the lowest level ever recorded in the month of January.

#21 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of job openings in the United States declined for a second straight month during December.

#22 Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income.

#23 It is estimated that there are about 5 million homeowners in the United States that are at least two months behind on their mortgages, and it is being projected that over a million American families will be booted out of their homes this year alone.

#24 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#25 700,000 Americans have signed up for a credit card that has interest rates that go as high as 59.9%.

#26 Americans now owe more than $889 billion on student loans, which is even more than they owe on credit cards.

#27 The FDIC is "insuring" U.S. bank deposits that total 5.4 trillion dollars with a deposit insurance fund that is currently sitting at approximately negative 8 billion dollars.

#28 The Social Security trust fund will run a deficit of 56 billion dollars this year.  Just a couple of years ago government planners were promising that we would not have any Social Security deficits until at least 2016 or 2017.

#29 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.

#30 4.2 million Americans have been unemployed for one year or longer at this point.

#31 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.

#32 According to a recent Gallup poll, 35 percent of Americans believe that unemployment is currently the most important problem in the United States.  Another 29 percent believe that the economy is currently our biggest problem.

#33 Gallup also says that 19.6 percent of the workforce in America is currently either unemployed or underemployed.

#34 The U.S. government says that 504,000 Americans "dropped out of the labor force" in January.

#35 The Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit will be1.65 trillion dollars for fiscal 2011.

#36 It is estimated that the total U.S. national debt will be greater than 100 percent of GDP by the end of this fiscal year.

#37 The U.S. government relies on foreign nations such as China and Japan to finance 40 percent of all new government debt.

#38 State and local government debt is now sitting at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.

#39 The Chinese are now hoarding gold like there is no tomorrow.  In fact, Chinese demand for gold has now risen to approximately 25% of total global production.

#40 According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum, the world is going to need another $100 trillion in credit to support projected "economic growth" over the next decade.

#41 According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, visits to soup kitchens are up 24 percent over the past year.

#42 One out of every seven Americans is now on food stamps.

#43 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.

#44 During the last school year, almost half of all school children in the state of Illinois came from families that were considered to be "low-income".

#45 According to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.  A major economic downturn could quickly wipe out millions of families.

#46 Gasoline prices in the United States are now the highest that they have ever been in the middle of February.

#47 Faith in our economic system continues to decline.  According to one new report, only 26 percent of Americans now trust the U.S. financial system.





We Have Sold Our Children Into Perpetual Debt Slavery

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What we have done to future generations over the past 30 years is absolutely criminal.  30 years ago the U.S. national debt was a bit under one trillion dollars, and at that time it was considered a huge national crisis.  Today, the national debt is 14 times larger and the years ahead look absolutely apocalyptic at this point.  We have literally sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery.  We have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and our children and our grandchildren will be burdened with it for the rest of their lives.  All of our politicians keep talking about how it is vitally important that we do something about all of this debt "soon", but they just can't seem to stop wildly spending our money.  They keep telling us that now is not the time for deficit reduction because it would harm "the economic recovery", but the "right time" for deficit reduction never seems to come along.  The national debt statistics in this article are meant to shock you.  Hopefully they will shock you enough to actually take action.  Up to this point, the vast majority of Americans have been extremely apathetic about the horrific crime that we are committing against future generations.
How would you feel if you found out one day that your parents had run up a million dollars in debt that now you were obligated to pay off? Would you be absolutely furious? Of course you would be, and rightly so. So how do you think future generations will feel about us? We were once the wealthiest nation on the planet, but we have taken that great inheritance and we have squandered it. Now we are handing our children and our grandchildren the largest debt the world has ever seen.
How in the world can we do that? How can we consign our descendants to perpetual debt slavery and still feel good about ourselves? The America that we have all been enjoying so much today is going to be wiped out by all of this debt. We have literally stolen the future. We just had to keep spending more and more and more and more. The greed of this generation will be remembered for a very, very long time. The truth is that both political parties are responsible.  Both of them have voted over and over and over to keep running up these huge budget deficits.Now we have reached a point where a horrific financial meltdown is basically inevitable.  We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and it is only a matter of time until it bursts. The following are national debt statistics which prove that we have sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery....
As of November 16th, the U.S. national debt was $15,000,000,000,000.00.
If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
If the federal government began repaying the national debt at a rate of $10 million dollars a day it would take approximately 3,800 years to pay off the national debt.
Today, the U.S. national debt is increasing by roughly 4 billion dollars every single day.
The U.S. government is borrowing approximately 2.63 million more dollars every single minute.
On September 30th, 1980 the U.S. national debt was 907 billion dollars.  Just thirty years later, the U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger.
According to a recent U.S. Treasury report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will reach 19.6 trillion dollars in 2015.
It is being projected that the U.S. government will be paying 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019.
A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times.  That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.
The U.S. Congress has raised the federal debt ceiling six times in just the past three years.
The 111th Congress added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.
The 111th Congress got us into so much new debt that it breaks down to $10,429.64 for each of the 308,745,538 people counted by the 2010 U.S. census.
The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
When you break down the debt that the U.S. government owes to China alone it comes to over $10,000 for every single American family.
If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.  Almost unbelievably, the U.S. government will accumulate well over a trillion dollars more debt in 2011.
If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
But the American people don't want to hear that we have spent decades creating a horrific debt crisis that is not going to be easy to fix.  They just want someone to "tweak" a few things and get us back to being the greatest economy on earth.  Unfortunately, it is simply not that easy. 
But what do you tell a nation that is completely addicted to debt? On an individual level, it can be a lot of fun to wildly run up credit card debt, but at some point you have to stop and start paying down that debt. Unfortunately, on a national level we can't even get our politicians to slow down the rate at which our debt is increasing. 
The U.S. government is essentially bankrupt at this point.  It is just a matter of playing out the hand. The rest of the world is starting to realize this, and confidence in the U.S. dollar is beginning to significantly decline. Things did not have to turn out this way, but Americans did not listen to the warnings and so now this is where we are at as a nation. The mainstream media continues to perpetuate the myth that the U.S. economy is on the road to a grand recovery and that eventually we can get a handle on all this debt and that somehow everything is going to be okay.  Well, everything is not going to be okay. All that is on the horizon is great financial pain, and the sad thing is that it could have all been avoided.But now the game is over and the day of reckoning is coming soon.

We are going to reap what we have sown.






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