FedUpUSA

Archive for June 25th, 2011

What the world is experiencing today did not happen by chance, it was planned that way.

What Congressman Louis McFadden said of the “Great Depression” is as true today as it was in the 1930s. As Chairman of the House Banking Committee he said, “It was no accident; it was a carefully contrived occurrence. The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all.”

What you are experiencing economically and financially today is nothing new. Just study history all the precedence is there. The bankers and their willing helpers do the same thing over and over again. As we have said often what these banks represent is corporatist fascism and monopoly. Through their great wealth they control most governments and their court systems. That is why your elected representatives do not listen to you. They have already been purchased by Wall Street and banking. These are the same people who have financed most wars on both sides for centuries. Through their banks, and the Bank for International Settlements, and the BIS, they control money laundering and the worldwide drug trade, which is the most lucrative of all enterprises. The centerpiece of all the financial powers of the Illuminists come from the control of the drug trade for centuries.

These bankers and denizens of Wall Street and the City of London control our societies and in particular, business, finance and economics – almost every event within society is controlled by these elitists; as we saw in the stock market dotcom bubble of the late 1990s and the real estate bubble that began in 2003 and ended in 2006. We exited the stock market in the second week of April of 2000 and then again at 14,000, calling for a Dow 6,600 bottom. We believe we have been in a secular bear market in stocks since 2000 and we haven’t as yet seen the bottom by any means. Markets are not longer free and are under constant manipulation by elitists behind government.

The media is filled with one fraud after another. The residential real estate market continues to fall trying to find a bottom. Banks throughout the US, UK and Europe are temporarily saved from insolvency by central banks printing money. In country after country we see runaway deficits. Economic progress is frozen. Inflation grows with each passing day as gold and silver move relentlessly higher. At the same time the poor get poorer and the middle-class is being destroyed. We are witnessing the deliberate destruction of an empire.

Never do we hear a comment pertaining to free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. It is like it didn’t exist. America has lost 11.7 million jobs and 440,000 businesses over the past 11 years, but Congress evidently is ignorant of the fact that keeping jobs at home is easier than creating new ones. The jobs lost are high paying and the replacement jobs are at the bottom rung. All that has to be done is for Congress to pass legislation implementing tariffs on goods and services and to rescind corporate tax breaks for transnational corporations. It is just that simple. Unfortunately, 95% of Congress is bought and paid for by the very interests that perpetuate this stripping of America. We as well hear nothing from economists or market commentators regarding what passes for free trade. We learned as a nation in the late 1700s that British mercantilism does not work. We then found, on our way to greatness as a nation, fair and equitable tariffs work very well. Not what we have seen for the past 30 years; the deliberate destruction of our nation and our jobs.

Every answer to the job’s problem or meeting competition is a subsidy of one form or another. We know such socialist solutions do not work, but government uses them and business welcomes them. Very simply, nothing has been fixed and the palliatives haven’t worked and that is why we are about to enter credit crisis II, with assistance from Greece and the rest of Europe. The US, UK and Europe are headed for default and nothing can be done to stop the inevitable crack up, all America now specializes in is financial fraud and corruption. We have a country run by a crime syndicate and even when caught the companies are merely fined and among the connected, no one ever goes to jail.

Our system has deliberately been programmed to fail. It has taken $4.3 trillion just to keep the system afloat until the characters behind the curtain decide to pull the plug. Greece could be the catalyst along with warfare spreading throughout the Middle East. Is this the diversion? The war that we predicted? It could be and we’ll shortly find out. The Bilderberg planners in Europe have been stunned by Greece’s refusal to commit national financial and economic suicide.

While the drama in Europe plays itself out the Fed creates money and credit to gobble up 80% of US Treasuries. This causes inflation to continue its relentless climb just as it has in other countries. The money and credit creation by central banks exposes the US, UK and Europe eventually to hyperinflation. We are now also entering the war phase as insolvency becomes more visible. This is as we have predicted over the last 11 years. Most major banks in the US, UK and Europe are insolvent, and are made to look solvent by keeping two sets of books and via accounting ledgermain. Their situations are going to become worse as time goes on as real estate heads for the bottom and stays on the bottom for some time to come. Unbeknownst to most the bank nightmare of commercial real estate is being financed by the Fed. When and if that stops the banks will have a new set of insurmountable problems. The banks are trapped in a dilemma of their own making and there is no way out. That is in spite of government, the BIS and the FASB allowing them to keep two sets of books. If you do that you will go to jail. Almost 30% of Americans have negative home equity and in Las Vegas it is 84%. By the end of 2011 those figures will be lots worse. Those who have home equity loans are close to 40% upside down. In another two years we envision dreadful conditions for both homeowners and banks. Making matters worse these banks have to hold more funds in reserve because the BIS believes speculation has to be reduced, because these funds may be needed to absorb more bad debts.

As we mentioned in previous issues the federal government is using federal pension funds to fund government operations until August 2nd, when presumably Congress will pass a new short-term debt limit. If we remember correctly government will need $250 to $300 billion by that date. We mentioned last week that government might use this opportunity to commandeer 401Ks and IRAs, and replace them with government guaranteed annuities. This threat is very real and if you do not cash in now you may not get the chance to later. Pay the tax and possible penalty and get out. Most workers are trapped in IRA’s and the only way they can get funds out is to borrow against them. Some 30% have already done so to live on having been laid off or to invest in gold and silver related assets. There is no political will in America to cut spending and any cuts will be in budget increases over the next ten years. In addition, the President has been given marching orders for war by those who control him to cover up what they have done to the country and to make ever more profits for the connected Illuminists. There has been no way back for America since June of 2003. The debt is beyond payable. The problems are all still there and they are not going to go away. Even if by some miracle a solution to the financial crisis was found, the system is still yet to be purged, so that the banking system could be allowed to go bankrupt, along with many others that have engaged in malinvestment. Then there would be the end of market manipulation, the prosecution of the common criminals on Wall Street and in banking. The end of the Fed, lobbying, campaign contributions, Patriot Acts I and II, Homeland Security, the TSA and many other government agencies. We also have to find out if we really have any gold. The list is copious if not endless. With all of this comes devaluation and default and probably a BBB debt rating. This is why all investments should be in gold and silver related assets. In addition, probably at the top of the list is the criminal prosecution of those on Wall Street, in banking and government who have committed fraud and treason. They should be tried, sentenced and their families relieved of all of their wealth. That should also be applied to those who committed treason and they should forfeit their lives.

There is no question that the recent antics of Fed Chairman Bernanke is leading to the conditioning of the public to higher inflation. He knows inflation is more than 10% not the 3.6% the US government admits too. He and his controllers know full well inflation is headed ever higher because deficit spending cannot be stopped and neither can the Fed’s creation of money and credit.

Read the rest.

Bob Chapman – The International Forecaster

If you do much grocery shopping, you have probably noticed that the cost of food has been rising at a very brisk pace over the past year.  So why are food prices rising so fast?  According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, inflation is still very low and the economy is improving.  So what is going on here?  When I go to the grocery store these days, there are very few things that I will buy unless they are on sale.  In fact, I have noticed that many of the new “sale prices” are the old regular prices.  Other items have had their packages reduced in size in order to hide the price increases.  But with millions of American families just barely scraping by as it is, what is going to happen if food prices keep rising this rapidly?

The food prices are especially painful if you are trying to eat healthy.  Most of the low price stuff in the grocery stores is garbage.  Eating the “typical American diet” is a highway to cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

But if you try to stick to food that is “healthy” or “organic” you can blow through hundreds of dollars in a heartbeat.  In fact, the reality is that tens of millions of American families have now essentially been priced out of a healthy diet.

Soon there will be millions more American families that will not even be able to afford an unhealthy diet.

Some recent statistics compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are absolutely staggering.  According to a recent CNBC article, over the past year many of the most popular foods in America have absolutely soared in price….

Coffee, for instance, is up 40 percent. Celery is 28 percent higher while butter prices rose 26.4 percent. Rounding out the top five are bacon, at 23.5 percent, and cabbage, at 23.3 percent.

Unfortunately, it looks like the trend of rising food prices is accelerating.  Just look at what the CNBC article says happened in the month of April alone….

Just in April—the most recent month for which data is available—grapes went up nearly 30 percent, cabbage jumped about 17 percent and orange juice surged more than 5 percent.

Meat is becoming more expensive as well.  Since March 2009, livestock prices have risen by 138%.

So when Ben Bernanke tells us that inflation is very low, that really is a lie.  On the stuff that people spend money on every day (like food and gas), prices have gone up dramatically.

Sadly, this is not just a phenomenon that is happening in the United States.  The truth is that the entire planet is rapidly approaching a horrific global food crisis.

Over the past year, the global price of food has risen by 37 percent and this has pushed approximately 44 million more people around the world into poverty.

When food prices rise in the U.S. it may be painful for millions of American families, but around the world a rise in food prices can mean the difference between surviving and not surviving.

That is why it has been so alarming that the global price of wheat has approximately doubled over the past year.

But it is not just wheat that has been soaring.  Check out what a recent Bloomberg article had to say about what has been happening to many key agricultural commodities over the past year….

Corn futures advanced 77 percent in the past 12 months in Chicago trading, a global benchmark, rice gained 39 percent and sugar jumped 64 percent. There will be shortages in corn, wheat, soybeans, coffee and cocoa this year or next, according to Utrecht, Netherlands-based Rabobank Groep. Prices also rose after droughts and floods from Australia to Canada ruined crops last year. European farmers are now contending with their driest growing season in more than three decades.

Even before this recent spike in food prices the world was struggling to get enough food to everybody.  It has been estimated that somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five.

So what is going to happen if food prices keep on rising at the current pace?

That is a very good question.

We really are starting to move into unprecedented territory.  Nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.

So why is all of this happening?

Well, a lot of people are blaming the Federal Reserve.  All of the “quantitative easing” that the Fed has done has flooded the financial markets with money.  All of that money had to go somewhere.  Much of it has pumped up the prices of hard assets such as oil, gold and agricultural commodities.

But it is not just the Fed that is to blame.  The truth is that central banks all over the world have been recklessly printing money.

When the amount of money in an economy goes up, the purchasing value of all existing money goes down.  In the United States, that means that your dollars will not go as far as they did before.

But it is not just monetary policy that is affecting food prices.  In 2010 and 2011 we have seen an unprecedented wave of natural disasters and crazy weather.  This has caused problems with crops all over the globe.

In addition, U.S. economic policies are also playing a role.  At this point, almost a third of all corn grown in the United States is used for fuel.  This is putting a lot of stress on the price of corn.

Also, there are some long-term trends that are not in our favor.  For example, the systematic depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer could eventually turn “America’s Breadbasket” back into the “Dust Bowl”.  If you have not heard of this problem I would encourage you to do some research on it.

Things are going to get a lot worse, but already America is having a really hard time feeding itself.  According to Feeding America’s 2010 hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.

So is that number unusual?

Yes, it sure is.

The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

That is not a good trend.

Another stat that I talk a lot about in this column is the number of Americans on food stamps.

Right now, there are 44 million Americans on food stamps.  Nearly half of them are children.

How did we ever get to the point as a nation where more than 20 million children end up on food stamps?

It is estimated that one out of every four American children is currently on food stamps, and it is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?

What is going to happen if there really is a major food crisis in this country someday?

Food prices have been going up for decades and they are going to continue to go up.  But the frightening thing is how fast they are increasing now.

As the U.S. middle class continues to be destroyed, the number of Americans that can’t afford to buy enough food is going to continue to rise.  Food prices are rising much faster than wages are, and that is not likely to change any time soon.

Food is rapidly becoming one of the most important global economic issues of this decade.  The farther one looks down the road, the bleaker things look for the global food situation.

I hope you are prepared for that.

The Economic Collapse

I remain amused by the complete silliness of statements coming from ECB officials. At best ECB proclamations are laughable, at worst they are completely counterproductive.

With that introduction, please consider ECB’s Mersch says Greek default would bring “chaos”

European Central Bank Governing Council member Yves Mersch said on Saturday a Greek sovereign debt default would lead to chaos, adding it was up to the parliament to deliver on its austerity promises.

Banks and policymakers moved closer to a deal on Friday to help Athens secure funds ahead of a parliamentary vote on austerity next week that Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou must win to avert default.

If the vote next week is lost, international lenders are unlikely to release a 12 billion euros funding tranche, meaning the government will run out of cash within days.

“Now it’s up to the Greek parliament. I observe,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Bank for International Settlements annual meeting in Basel.

“The next step will be to observe whether there will be delivery.”

When he asked about what would happen if Greece defaulted, Mersch said: “Chaos.”

Greece Default Irrelevant

Here is a succinct summation of the current state of Euro-Zone affairs.

1. Greece will default, but at this point it is irrelevant.
2. The situation in Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy is now so dire that it is does not matter whether or not Greece defaults.
3. Expect chaos

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Global Economic Analysis