By Stephen Lendman
Opednews.com
July 23, 2011 at 03:22:40
The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan, united against working household interests. In fact, lawmakers yield on virtually everything big money wants, notably when banks and other corporate favorites are affected.
Last December, Obama capitulated to Republicans, rigging a deal for up to $1 trillion dollars in handouts, mostly to corporate giants and America's wealthy with working households almost entirely left out.
They still are, enduring a protracted Main Street depression, stiff-armed by Obama-led bipartisan crooks. In fact, he's more crime boss than president - stealing from the many for the few. More on his dirty scheme below.
As a result, America and other "(e)conomies are being turned into rentier ('tollbooths') to pay debts that ('real' ones) can't sustain," according to Michael Hudson. "It's a losing game," but goes on, criminally defrauding millions of people to assure creditors are paid, sucking massive amounts of wealth to their coffers, unreported by major media scoundrels, suppressing what people most need to know.
In fact, new audit figures show that Bernanke's Fed gave Wall Street and European banksters at least $16.1 trillion (called emergency loans) from December 1, 2007 - July 21, 2010, besides unknown amounts earlier and in the past year.
Moreover, it's well known that trillions of dollars are stolen, handed to corporate interests and never returned, as well as gotten in other illegal ways. As a result, taxpayers get stuck with the bill, the nation with unsustainable mounting debt, heading it eventually for ruin.
About $13 trillion in Fed bailouts went to US financial institutions, the rest to their counterparts in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis.
In addition, asset swaps (good ones for toxic corporate junk) were arranged with banks in Britain, Switzerland, Canada, South Korea, Norway, Mexico, and Singapore.
Moreover, the Wall Street controlled Fed mostly outsourced its lending operations to the same institutions responsible for engineering the financial crisis, letting them profit hugely at the public's expense.
Though unsustainable, the dirty game goes on, a take the money and run scam, leaving hollowed out economies and impoverished millions on their own sink or swim.
In dirty back room deals, Obama's out in front arranging it, doing what no Republican leader would dare. No wonder Hudson accused him of governing to the right of George Bush, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann - America's right-wing lunatic fringe.
Notably, only Republican Nixon could go to China when America had no diplomatic relations. Only Democrat Obama dares end America's decades-long social contract, especially Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and publicly funded pensions.
Hudson agrees, saying "(o)nly a Democrat posing as a left-winger could really pull off what (he's) proposing," pretending it's to sustain programs otherwise heading for insolvency.
In fact, pay-as-you-go payroll tax deductions sustain Social Security and Medicare, and will keep doing it if properly administered, needing only occasional modest adjustments.
Most workers, in part, fund public pensions, and Medicaid provides mandated safety net care for poor beneficiaries, jointly funded by the states and Washington, managed at the state level. MORE...
Showing posts with label Economic Depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economic Depression. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Rampant Unemployment = The Death Of The Middle Class
40 Facts That Prove The Working Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out
The Economic Collapse Blog
July 9, 2011
Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the United States is going to shrivel up and die. Right now, rampant unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America. Hopelessness and poverty are exploding and many are now wondering if we are actually witnessing the slow death of the middle class. There simply are not nearly enough “good jobs” to go around anymore, and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a “long-term structural problem” with the economy. The only thing that most working class Americans have to offer in the marketplace is their labor. If nobody will hire them they do not have any other ways to provide for their families. Well, there is a problem. Today wealth has become incredibly centralized. The big corporations and the big banks dominate everything. Thanks to incredible advances in technology and thanks to the globalization of our economic system, the people with all the money don’t have to hire as many ordinary Americans anymore. They can hire all the labor they want on the other side of the globe for a fraction of the cost. So the rich don’t really have that much use for the working class in America anymore. The only thing of value that the working class had to offer has now been tremendously devalued. The wealthy don’t have to pay a lot for physical labor anymore. Thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they aren’t coming back. The big corporations are thriving while tens of millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering. Almost all of the wealth being produced by our economy is going to a very centralized group of people at the very top of the food chain. The rich are getting richer and the working class is being systematically wiped out.
So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems to go away should not be a surprise to anyone. Today, the “official” unemployment rate went up to 9.2 percent even though a whopping 272,000 Americans“dropped out of the labor force” in June. The government unemployment figure that includes “discouraged workers” went up from 15.8% to 16.2%. The mainstream media is proclaiming that this was “a horrific report” because most economists were expecting much better news.
Well, guess what?
Things are going to get a whole lot worse.
More job cuts are coming. One recently released report found that the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased by 11.6% in June.
It is also being projected that state and local governments across the U.S. will slash nearly half a million more jobs by the end of next year.
Needless to say, things don’t look good.
Most people that still have jobs are desperately trying to hold on to them.
Employers know that most workers are easily replaceable these days, so wages are not moving up even though the cost of living is.
We are right in the middle of the worst employment downturn since World War 2. Jay-Z recently summed up the situation this way….
“Numbers don’t lie. Unemployment is pretty high.”
Jay-Z certainly has a way with words, eh?
If something is not done about the rampant unemployment in this nation, the death of the middle class will accelerate.
Most Americans just assume that the United States will always have a large middle class, but there is no guarantee that is going to happen. In fact, there is a whole lot of evidence that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking.
Take a few moments to read over the facts compiled below. Taken together, they provide compelling evidence that the working class is being systematically wiped out….
#1 Right now, the U.S. government says that 14.1 million Americans are unemployed.
#2 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.
#3 The number of Americans that are “not in the labor force” is at an all-time high.
#4 The United States has never had an employment downturn this deep and this prolonged since World War 2 ended.
#5 There are officially 6.3 million Americans that have been unemployed for more than 6 months. That number has risen by more than 3.5 million in just the past two years.
#6 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeks to find a new job. Just check out this chart….
#7 There are now about 7.25 million fewer jobs in America than when the recession began back in 2007.
#8 Back in 2000, the employment to population ratio was over 64 percent. Today, it is sitting at just 58.2%.
#9 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
#10 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic productin over 50 years.
#11 The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
#12 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#13 According to a report released in February from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23 percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.
#14 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#15 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.
#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#17 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.
#18 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.
#19 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#20 Since China entered the WTO in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown by an average of 18% per year.
#21 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#22 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#23 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.
#24 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#25 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed.
#26 There were more manufacturing jobs in the United States in 1950 than there are today.
#27 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population has gotten significantly larger.
#28 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.
#29 One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not expect their wages to keep up with soaring food prices and soaring gas prices over the next 12 months.
#30 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#31 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#32 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.
#33 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#34 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, which is an all-time record.
#35 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#36 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
#37 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#38 In the United States today, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#39 According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of all households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.
#40 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the United States is experiencing a long-term economic decline.
Every single day, more American families fall out of the middle class and into poverty. There are millions of American families out there tonight that are just barely hanging on by their fingernails.
More Americans than ever are constantly borrowing more money just to stay afloat. Even as rampant unemployment plagues this nation and even as wages remain stagnant, middle class Americans are increasing their use of credit.
A CNBC article noted the increase in consumer borrowing that we have seen recently….
The Federal Reserve says consumer borrowing rose $5.1 billion following a revised gain of $5.7 billion in April. Borrowing in the category that covers credit cards increased, as did borrowing in the category for auto and student loans.
It is very hard to live “the American Dream” without going into huge amounts of debt these days.
But for an increasing number of Americans, “the American Dream” is just a distant memory.
Tonight, there are large numbers of people living in the tunnels under the city of Las Vegas. As the wealthy live the high life in the casinos and hotels above them, an increasing number of desperate “tunnel people” are attempting to carve out an existence in the 200 mile long labyrinth of tunnels that stretches beneath Vegas. It is a nightmarish environment, but it is all those people have left.
Don’t look down on them, because you never know who might be next.
If you lost your current job, how long would you be able to survive?
Unfortunately, as bad as things are now, the reality is that this is just the beginning.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Do what you can to make sure that you and your family are not totally wiped out by the next wave of the economic collapse.
The Economic Collapse Blog
July 9, 2011
Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the United States is going to shrivel up and die. Right now, rampant unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America. Hopelessness and poverty are exploding and many are now wondering if we are actually witnessing the slow death of the middle class. There simply are not nearly enough “good jobs” to go around anymore, and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a “long-term structural problem” with the economy. The only thing that most working class Americans have to offer in the marketplace is their labor. If nobody will hire them they do not have any other ways to provide for their families. Well, there is a problem. Today wealth has become incredibly centralized. The big corporations and the big banks dominate everything. Thanks to incredible advances in technology and thanks to the globalization of our economic system, the people with all the money don’t have to hire as many ordinary Americans anymore. They can hire all the labor they want on the other side of the globe for a fraction of the cost. So the rich don’t really have that much use for the working class in America anymore. The only thing of value that the working class had to offer has now been tremendously devalued. The wealthy don’t have to pay a lot for physical labor anymore. Thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they aren’t coming back. The big corporations are thriving while tens of millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering. Almost all of the wealth being produced by our economy is going to a very centralized group of people at the very top of the food chain. The rich are getting richer and the working class is being systematically wiped out.
So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems to go away should not be a surprise to anyone. Today, the “official” unemployment rate went up to 9.2 percent even though a whopping 272,000 Americans“dropped out of the labor force” in June. The government unemployment figure that includes “discouraged workers” went up from 15.8% to 16.2%. The mainstream media is proclaiming that this was “a horrific report” because most economists were expecting much better news.
Well, guess what?
Things are going to get a whole lot worse.
More job cuts are coming. One recently released report found that the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased by 11.6% in June.
It is also being projected that state and local governments across the U.S. will slash nearly half a million more jobs by the end of next year.
Needless to say, things don’t look good.
Most people that still have jobs are desperately trying to hold on to them.
Employers know that most workers are easily replaceable these days, so wages are not moving up even though the cost of living is.
We are right in the middle of the worst employment downturn since World War 2. Jay-Z recently summed up the situation this way….
“Numbers don’t lie. Unemployment is pretty high.”
Jay-Z certainly has a way with words, eh?
If something is not done about the rampant unemployment in this nation, the death of the middle class will accelerate.
Most Americans just assume that the United States will always have a large middle class, but there is no guarantee that is going to happen. In fact, there is a whole lot of evidence that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking.
Take a few moments to read over the facts compiled below. Taken together, they provide compelling evidence that the working class is being systematically wiped out….
#1 Right now, the U.S. government says that 14.1 million Americans are unemployed.
#2 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.
#3 The number of Americans that are “not in the labor force” is at an all-time high.
#4 The United States has never had an employment downturn this deep and this prolonged since World War 2 ended.
#5 There are officially 6.3 million Americans that have been unemployed for more than 6 months. That number has risen by more than 3.5 million in just the past two years.
#6 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeks to find a new job. Just check out this chart….
#7 There are now about 7.25 million fewer jobs in America than when the recession began back in 2007.
#8 Back in 2000, the employment to population ratio was over 64 percent. Today, it is sitting at just 58.2%.
#9 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
#10 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic productin over 50 years.
#11 The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
#12 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#13 According to a report released in February from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23 percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.
#14 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#15 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.
#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#17 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.
#18 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.
#19 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#20 Since China entered the WTO in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown by an average of 18% per year.
#21 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#22 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#23 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.
#24 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#25 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed.
#26 There were more manufacturing jobs in the United States in 1950 than there are today.
#27 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population has gotten significantly larger.
#28 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.
#29 One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not expect their wages to keep up with soaring food prices and soaring gas prices over the next 12 months.
#30 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#31 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#32 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.
#33 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#34 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, which is an all-time record.
#35 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#36 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
#37 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#38 In the United States today, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#39 According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of all households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.
#40 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the United States is experiencing a long-term economic decline.
Every single day, more American families fall out of the middle class and into poverty. There are millions of American families out there tonight that are just barely hanging on by their fingernails.
More Americans than ever are constantly borrowing more money just to stay afloat. Even as rampant unemployment plagues this nation and even as wages remain stagnant, middle class Americans are increasing their use of credit.
A CNBC article noted the increase in consumer borrowing that we have seen recently….
The Federal Reserve says consumer borrowing rose $5.1 billion following a revised gain of $5.7 billion in April. Borrowing in the category that covers credit cards increased, as did borrowing in the category for auto and student loans.
It is very hard to live “the American Dream” without going into huge amounts of debt these days.
But for an increasing number of Americans, “the American Dream” is just a distant memory.
Tonight, there are large numbers of people living in the tunnels under the city of Las Vegas. As the wealthy live the high life in the casinos and hotels above them, an increasing number of desperate “tunnel people” are attempting to carve out an existence in the 200 mile long labyrinth of tunnels that stretches beneath Vegas. It is a nightmarish environment, but it is all those people have left.
Don’t look down on them, because you never know who might be next.
If you lost your current job, how long would you be able to survive?
Unfortunately, as bad as things are now, the reality is that this is just the beginning.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Do what you can to make sure that you and your family are not totally wiped out by the next wave of the economic collapse.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Economic Recovery?
Economic Collapse Blog
June 28, 2011
If this is supposed to be an "economic recovery" it sure is pathetic. In fact, as you will read below, the numbers tell us that this is the worst economic recovery that the American economy has ever seen. If what we had experienced was a "normal" recession and a "normal" recovery, then jobs, economic growth and home values would have come roaring back by now. But they haven't. The Federal Reserve injected unprecedented amounts of new money into the system and the federal government went into unprecedented amounts of new debt, but all of that effort has not accomplished much. It did buy us a little bit of time and a period of relative economic stability, but now there are all kinds of signs that we are about to go into another recession (or something even worse). So is it really honest for Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama to be using the term "economic recovery" to describe what is happening?
The truth is that what is really taking place is that the long-term economic decline of the United States is beginning to accelerate.
But most Americans simply don't understand what is going on.
The mainstream media teaches us to blame our politicians for the economy. One recent survey found that 44 percent of the American people believe that the U.S. economy is "worse than when Obama was inaugurated".
Yes, Barack Obama is a horrible president. But the economic downfall of this nation is not all his fault. George W. Bush was a horrible president too. So was Bill Clinton. Congress has been corrupt and incompetent for decades.
Of course the institution that is most responsible for our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. Thankfully, more Americans than ever are starting to realize this.
But if you listen to Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama, you would think that a great "economic recovery" has begun. They would have us believe that they know exactly what our problems are and that they know exactly how to get us out of this mess.
Unfortunately, what we have experienced is not much of an "economic recovery" at all. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is the worst "recovery" from a recession that the U.S. economy has ever seen....
On economic growth, real GDP has risen 0.8% over the 13 quarters since the recession began, compared to an average increase of 9.9% in past recoveries. From the beginning of the recession to April 2011, real personal income has grown just .9% compared to 9.4% for the same period in previous post 1960 recessions.
So what is really going on?
Sadly, what we are experiencing right now is a brief period of stability in the middle of a downward spiral toward economic oblivion.
The CEO of Pimco, Mohamed El-Erian, says that it should now be obvious to everyone that all of the efforts of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy simply have not been enough to solve the structural economic challenges that we are facing....
"It's clear that the stimulus-induced recovery hasn't overcome the structural challenges to large-scale job creation."
The U.S. economy is not producing enough jobs. Today, there are 25 million Americans that are either unemployed or underemployed.
But the inability to create jobs is not a new phenomenon for the U.S. economy. The truth is that between 2000 and 2007, the U.S. economy had its poorest stretch of job creation since the Great Depression.
However, since 2007 the employment situation in this country has gotten a lot worse. Take a minute and watch the stunning video posted below. It shows how rampant unemployment swept across this country between 2007 and 2011....
Our politicians promised us that globalization would be great for the U.S. economy.
Well, it was great for the big corporations to be able to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe, but things have not worked out so well for workers in this country.
Millions of our jobs have been lost. Millions more jobs are being lost. Yet our politicians do nothing to stop the bleeding.
Things have gotten so bad that even the top of the food chain is shipping jobs overseas.
Just consider this recent headline which appeared in Business Insider: "Goldman Sachs Is Firing Employees In The US So It Can Hire 1,000 In Singapore"
If even jobs at Goldman Sachs are being sent out of the country, are any of our jobs safe?
Many Americans would love to start a business instead of having to work for someone else, but the economic environment has become incredibly toxic for small businesses in the United States.
The rate of new business creation in the United States has been declining steadily since the 1980s. Our politicians are literally choking the entrepreneurial spirit to death in this country.
Today, more Americans than ever are dependent on the government. In fact, it has gotten to the point where the U.S. economy itself is highly dependent on the government.
So what is going to happen when the government is not handing out so many goodies?
The era of rampant spending in Washington D.C. seems to be coming to an end, at least for now. The U.S. national debt has become so outrageous that many members of Congress are finally determined to start making some cuts.
While it is true that cutting government spending is long overdue, most Americans don't realize that cutting government spending will also mean that "the economic sugar high" that we have been experiencing will start to wear off.
If we try to live within our means, that is going to cause a lot of economic pain, and the American people are not too good about making sacrifices these days.
Look, whoever is elected in 2012 is going to be in for a rough ride. Some very difficult economic times are ahead, and whoever is elected in 2012 is going to get blamed. By 2016, the president is probably going to be the most hated person in America.
But the truth is that these economic problems have been building for decades.
We didn't get here by accident, and our economic problems are not going to be solved overnight.
In fact, many financial analysts are warning that they are about to get a lot worse.
For example, David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff says that there is a 99 percent chance that the U.S. will fall into another recession by the end of 2012.
As the economy continues to crumble, U.S. cities will become increasingly hostile places in which to live.
According to a recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, 41 percent of Americans say that crime has increased where they live over the past year and only 6 percent of Americans say that crime has decreased where they live over the past year.
But just wait until the economy really collapses - that is when all hell will break loose.
In a recent article entitled "Is The Economy Improving?", I quoted statistic after statistic that showed that the U.S. economy is actually continuing to decline.
The American people are starting to lose patience. In fact, people all over the country are starting to get more than a little crazy. For example, there is a now a national "epidemic" of people robbing pharmacies in order to get a hold of painkillers.
Pharmacists all over the country are being robbed at gunpoint. Some prescription painkillers will reportedly sell for as much as 80 dollars a pill on the street. As a recent article in the Washington Post noted, things are getting really dangerous out there for pharmacists....
“It’s an epidemic,” said Michael Fox, a pharmacist on New York’s Staten Island who has been stuck up twice in the last year. “These people are depraved. They’ll kill you.”
Armed robberies at pharmacies rose 81 percent between 2006 and 2010, from 380 to 686, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says. The number of pills stolen went from 706,000 to 1.3 million. Thieves are overwhelmingly taking oxycodone painkillers like OxyContin or Roxicodone, or hydrocodone-based painkillers like Vicodin and Norco. Both narcotics are highly addictive.
But this is what our country is turning into.
We are a nation of addicts.
Our national addiction to debt and our national addiction to greed have brought us to the brink of economic disaster.
If you are waiting for an "economic recovery", you should stop waiting.
This is about as good as things are going to get.
From here on out, things are just going to keep going downhill.
Most Americans are going to be absolutely blindsided by the economic collapse that is coming.
But that doesn't have to be you.
You still have some time to get prepared.
June 28, 2011
If this is supposed to be an "economic recovery" it sure is pathetic. In fact, as you will read below, the numbers tell us that this is the worst economic recovery that the American economy has ever seen. If what we had experienced was a "normal" recession and a "normal" recovery, then jobs, economic growth and home values would have come roaring back by now. But they haven't. The Federal Reserve injected unprecedented amounts of new money into the system and the federal government went into unprecedented amounts of new debt, but all of that effort has not accomplished much. It did buy us a little bit of time and a period of relative economic stability, but now there are all kinds of signs that we are about to go into another recession (or something even worse). So is it really honest for Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama to be using the term "economic recovery" to describe what is happening?
The truth is that what is really taking place is that the long-term economic decline of the United States is beginning to accelerate.
But most Americans simply don't understand what is going on.
The mainstream media teaches us to blame our politicians for the economy. One recent survey found that 44 percent of the American people believe that the U.S. economy is "worse than when Obama was inaugurated".
Yes, Barack Obama is a horrible president. But the economic downfall of this nation is not all his fault. George W. Bush was a horrible president too. So was Bill Clinton. Congress has been corrupt and incompetent for decades.
Of course the institution that is most responsible for our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. Thankfully, more Americans than ever are starting to realize this.
But if you listen to Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama, you would think that a great "economic recovery" has begun. They would have us believe that they know exactly what our problems are and that they know exactly how to get us out of this mess.
Unfortunately, what we have experienced is not much of an "economic recovery" at all. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is the worst "recovery" from a recession that the U.S. economy has ever seen....
On economic growth, real GDP has risen 0.8% over the 13 quarters since the recession began, compared to an average increase of 9.9% in past recoveries. From the beginning of the recession to April 2011, real personal income has grown just .9% compared to 9.4% for the same period in previous post 1960 recessions.
So what is really going on?
Sadly, what we are experiencing right now is a brief period of stability in the middle of a downward spiral toward economic oblivion.
The CEO of Pimco, Mohamed El-Erian, says that it should now be obvious to everyone that all of the efforts of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy simply have not been enough to solve the structural economic challenges that we are facing....
"It's clear that the stimulus-induced recovery hasn't overcome the structural challenges to large-scale job creation."
The U.S. economy is not producing enough jobs. Today, there are 25 million Americans that are either unemployed or underemployed.
But the inability to create jobs is not a new phenomenon for the U.S. economy. The truth is that between 2000 and 2007, the U.S. economy had its poorest stretch of job creation since the Great Depression.
However, since 2007 the employment situation in this country has gotten a lot worse. Take a minute and watch the stunning video posted below. It shows how rampant unemployment swept across this country between 2007 and 2011....
Our politicians promised us that globalization would be great for the U.S. economy.
Well, it was great for the big corporations to be able to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe, but things have not worked out so well for workers in this country.
Millions of our jobs have been lost. Millions more jobs are being lost. Yet our politicians do nothing to stop the bleeding.
Things have gotten so bad that even the top of the food chain is shipping jobs overseas.
Just consider this recent headline which appeared in Business Insider: "Goldman Sachs Is Firing Employees In The US So It Can Hire 1,000 In Singapore"
If even jobs at Goldman Sachs are being sent out of the country, are any of our jobs safe?
Many Americans would love to start a business instead of having to work for someone else, but the economic environment has become incredibly toxic for small businesses in the United States.
The rate of new business creation in the United States has been declining steadily since the 1980s. Our politicians are literally choking the entrepreneurial spirit to death in this country.
Today, more Americans than ever are dependent on the government. In fact, it has gotten to the point where the U.S. economy itself is highly dependent on the government.
So what is going to happen when the government is not handing out so many goodies?
The era of rampant spending in Washington D.C. seems to be coming to an end, at least for now. The U.S. national debt has become so outrageous that many members of Congress are finally determined to start making some cuts.
While it is true that cutting government spending is long overdue, most Americans don't realize that cutting government spending will also mean that "the economic sugar high" that we have been experiencing will start to wear off.
If we try to live within our means, that is going to cause a lot of economic pain, and the American people are not too good about making sacrifices these days.
Look, whoever is elected in 2012 is going to be in for a rough ride. Some very difficult economic times are ahead, and whoever is elected in 2012 is going to get blamed. By 2016, the president is probably going to be the most hated person in America.
But the truth is that these economic problems have been building for decades.
We didn't get here by accident, and our economic problems are not going to be solved overnight.
In fact, many financial analysts are warning that they are about to get a lot worse.
For example, David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff says that there is a 99 percent chance that the U.S. will fall into another recession by the end of 2012.
As the economy continues to crumble, U.S. cities will become increasingly hostile places in which to live.
According to a recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, 41 percent of Americans say that crime has increased where they live over the past year and only 6 percent of Americans say that crime has decreased where they live over the past year.
But just wait until the economy really collapses - that is when all hell will break loose.
In a recent article entitled "Is The Economy Improving?", I quoted statistic after statistic that showed that the U.S. economy is actually continuing to decline.
The American people are starting to lose patience. In fact, people all over the country are starting to get more than a little crazy. For example, there is a now a national "epidemic" of people robbing pharmacies in order to get a hold of painkillers.
Pharmacists all over the country are being robbed at gunpoint. Some prescription painkillers will reportedly sell for as much as 80 dollars a pill on the street. As a recent article in the Washington Post noted, things are getting really dangerous out there for pharmacists....
“It’s an epidemic,” said Michael Fox, a pharmacist on New York’s Staten Island who has been stuck up twice in the last year. “These people are depraved. They’ll kill you.”
Armed robberies at pharmacies rose 81 percent between 2006 and 2010, from 380 to 686, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says. The number of pills stolen went from 706,000 to 1.3 million. Thieves are overwhelmingly taking oxycodone painkillers like OxyContin or Roxicodone, or hydrocodone-based painkillers like Vicodin and Norco. Both narcotics are highly addictive.
But this is what our country is turning into.
We are a nation of addicts.
Our national addiction to debt and our national addiction to greed have brought us to the brink of economic disaster.
If you are waiting for an "economic recovery", you should stop waiting.
This is about as good as things are going to get.
From here on out, things are just going to keep going downhill.
Most Americans are going to be absolutely blindsided by the economic collapse that is coming.
But that doesn't have to be you.
You still have some time to get prepared.
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