FedUpUSA

Archive for November 21st, 2011

Well, that’s not precisely the headline over at Business Insider, but I take exception to theirs; so, I fixed it for them.

ECONOMIST: Bernanke Is Going To End Up Bailout Out All Of Europe

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s apologetic take on the Fed’s negative  role in causing the Great Depression may translate into a willingness to bail  out Europe, writes economics blogger James Pethokoukis.

Bernanke will not be willing to let the European Central Bank’s  ineffectiveness infect U.S. banks and destroy the global economy.

He points to statements from well-known independent economist Ed Yardeni to  elaborate on that idea:

Given the ECB’s reluctance to act, I suspect  that the Fed will spearhead the formation of a Global Liquidity Facility  (GLF) to avert a global financial meltdown. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke  demonstrated that he is a master at putting together such emergency measures  back in 2008. In effect, it would act as the world’s central  bank. Mr. Bernanke is clearly very worried about the prospect that the  European sovereign debt crisis is a contagion that could spread to the US, as  evidenced by his bizarre town hall meeting with troops returning from Iraq on  November 10. The GLF would receive deposits from the Fed and other participating  central banks, including the ECB. The funds would be used to buy the bonds of  debt-challenged governments that would be required to accept strict supervision  of their fiscal and regulatory policies by the IMF.

Regardless of Bernanke’s avowed commitment to save the  United States from a repeat of the Great Depression, the political will to truly  prop up the rest of the world doesn’t seem to exist in the U.S.

If Congress is breathing down the Fed’s neck, just wait until the “U.S.  taxpayer” is absorbing the fiscal profligacy of Italy and Greece.

Here’s the problem:  Bernanke doesn’t HAVE anything with which to bailout Europe.  Yeah, yeah, he’s got his ‘printing press’ but you see, the thing doesn’t work without DEBT.  He can only fire that thing up when there is actual demand for debt.  Except no one can afford a loan.  No one wants a loan and no one is going to borrow in this economic depression.  So, Bennie’s printing press has a big old crow bar stuck in it.

So, what will he do?  What bankers have been doing since they came into existence.  Use the governments they control to force the taxpayers to supply the debt demand.  Since 99% of us cannot take on any  more debt, the government will do it for us.  They’ll just spend money they don’t have, creating more demand for debt, and the Federal Reserve, in its benevolence, will oblige and provide the loans.  More debt on the backs of the US taxpayer.  Thus my change in Business Insider’s headline.

One must understand that the Federal Reserve and its member banks (the primary dealers all private, for-profit, institutions), which are responsible for the creation of our money through demand for debt, are lending to our government, which in turn, allows our government to spend money it doesn’t have.  The reason that the private banks do this is because control of the government is how they can get to the taxpayer.   The taxpayer is an ‘infinite’ source for the payment of interest, even as the money for payment of that interest is never created.  In essence, the leverage, from their perspective, is unlmited.  The banks profit off of all Americans regardless of whether or not Americans personally borrow money.  This is why you see our US Treasury Secretaries working hand-in-hand with the Federal Reserve, which is completely contrary to the US Treasury Secretary’s job description, which is supposed to be to protect the assets (that would be the taxpayers) of the United States.

Bankers never intentionally lend at a loss.  Never.

We’re done folks.

CNBC reporting that there are now clients running out of the markets entirely because they do not believe their customer funds are safe.

That’s the end of it.  The belief that there are more MF Globals has now taken hold.  The thieves have pushed it too far and now we’ve got the start of a global liquidity run, and with good reason.

The authorities both in the regulatory side and on the prosecutorial side have reufsed to put a stop to the thievery and now the risk factors have turned into realized risk.

The market is done folks.  You can be right but if you make your bet in the markets, are right, and then get screwed anyway when someone steals the money and nobody goes to jail there comes a time when people begin to understand that it can happen to them and will unless they depart the market.

We’re there folks.

Oh sure, there will be rallies and there will be selloffs.  But there is no longer a market, there is no longer a thing to trade, and there is no longer a reason to believe that superior analysis will lead to profit or even safety.

This isn’t just about speculators – it is also about farmers, shippers, airlines, manufacturing concerns, everyone in business who has a need to hedge.

More than four years ago I said that the government had to step in and demand that both off-balance sheet games be ended permanently and in all forms and that all derivatives had to be put on an exchange, without exception, and that every dollar of underwater position had to be backed by an actual dollar of capital in real money, held and known to be safe.

The regulators refused and now it appears that what was put up on a regulated exchange was effectively stolen.

Well folks, then none of your investment accounts — not your IRA, 401k, not even your bank account — is safe.

Diversification is a strategy but the risk remains.  It is up to you to decide how much you’re willing to risk losing to a crook.  If the answer is “none” or you cannot reduce the at-risk portion of your assets to what you’re willing to lose to fraud then you can no longer participate in the market at all, in any form, nor even do business with a bank.

That sucks, but it is what it is and if this meme spreads — and it will until it’s stopped — we run the risk of a “sudden stop” economic event.

I hope you’re ready for it — I am to the best of my ability, and you ought to be.

Does anyone need any additional evidence that our political system is completely broken?  The bipartisan congressional supercommittee that was given two months to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over the next decade has failed to reach an agreement.  It is an epic failure and a national embarrassment.  The truth is that they never even came close to an agreement.  In fact, as you will read below, the two sides on the panel have been barely even talking to each other.  In the end, the supercommittee was a super joke.  Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt has passed the 15 trillion dollar mark and we are facing trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.  We are heading directly for a national financial disaster, and our “leaders” seem powerless to do anything about it.

According to the supercommittee’s rules, any plan would have had to have been submitted to the Congressional Budget Office by Monday in order to give the CBO 48 hours to analyze how much the plan would reduce budget deficits over the coming decade.

When the supercommittee was announced, it made headlines all over the world, but now it is ending with a whimper.

The supercommittee was never a good idea in the first place, but you would have thought that they could have come up with something over the course of two months.

But instead all they are giving us are a whole bunch of excuses and a whole lot of hot air.

What a joke.

Is it really that difficult to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts over a decade?

It isn’t as if they would even be cutting very deeply.  $1.2 trillion in cuts would not even cut the budget by $150 billion a year.  We would still be talking about trillion dollar deficits way into the future.

But instead of agreeing to some token cuts, they have chosen to do nothing and to blame each other.

So now $1.2 trillion in “automatic budget cuts” will go into effect starting in 2013.  But even that $1.2 trillion figure contains a lot of “fuzzy math”.  For example, it includes $169 billion in “projected savings” from “reduced interest costs” on the national debt.

I would love to see how they came up with that figure.

In any event, the truth is that none of these numbers really matter at all.

Why?

None of the budget cuts go into effect until after the 2012 election.  That means that this Congress can vote to repeal the automatic cuts well before then.

Some in Congress are already pushing for this.  For example, U.S. Senator John McCain said the following recently….

“It’s something we passed. We can reverse it.”

Or, even more likely, once the new president and the new Congress are elected in 2012 they will almost certainly choose to abandon this agreement.

When it comes to politics, the only thing that matters is what happens before the next election.

All of this talk of future cuts is just an illusion.  When the next president and the next Congress come to power, they will want to do their own thing.

So after all of the huffing and puffing over the last couple of years, what has actually been accomplished as far as reducing our horrific budget deficits?

Not much at all.

We racked up a $1.3 trillion budget deficit during the fiscal year that just ended, and this fiscal year we will be somewhere in the same neighborhood.

We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and at some point all of this is going to end very, very badly.

The total amount of debt in this country (government, business and consumer) has been rising much, much faster than our national income has.  If you don’t believe this, just check out this chart.

In particular, government debt is totally out of control.  When Barack Obama first took office, the national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.

It is now over 15 trillion dollars.

We are in debt up to our eyeballs and we desperately need our leaders to do something about it.

But according to a recent Politico article, the members of the supercommittee haven’t even been talking to each other….

The supercommittee last met Nov. 1 – three weeks ago! It was a public hearing featuring a history lesson, “Overview of Previous Debt Proposals,” with Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin. The last PRIVATE meeting was Oct. 26. You might as well stop reading right there: The 12 members (6 House, 6 Senate; 6 R, 6 D) were never going to strike a bargain, grand or otherwise, if they weren’t talking to each other. Yes, we get that real deal-making occurs in small groups. But there never WAS a functioning supercommittee: There was Republican posturing and Democratic posturing, with some side conversations across the aisle.

Can you believe that?

Could it really be true that they have not met since November 1st?

Is Congress really that much of a joke?

According to Real Clear Politics, the approval rating for Congress is sitting at about 12 percent right now.

After this, it may get even lower.

Instead of working on a solution to our problems, the members of the supercommittee have been busy going on television and telling us who to blame.

The following is a short exceprt from a recent article in the Washington Post….

Republicans on the supercommittee held a conference call Saturday morning, and aides said members from both parties continued to talk by phone. But neither side was predicting a last-minute breakthrough. Instead, seven panel members booked appearances on the Sunday talk shows, as both sides readied their best arguments for why the other is at fault.

Our politicians are obsessed with finding someone else to blame and with getting ready for the next election.

Meanwhile, the ship is going down and people are starting to panic.

And this is not going to look good to the rest of the world at all.  There is a very real risk that one of the other major credit rating agencies will decide to downgrade U.S. debt.

The second downgrade of debt is often more important than the first.  When the first downgrade happened, U.S. debt still had a AAA rating from the other two major credit rating agencies.

But after another downgrade, the average credit rating of U.S. debt will be less than AAA.  That will mean that U.S. debt will no longer be a cash proxy.  A lot of transactions that take place right now in the financial world would not be able to happen if that takes place.

So what do our leaders need to do?

Well, the truth is that we should recognize that they are in a really, really tough position.  Decades of nightmarish decisions have left us out of good options under our current financial system.

The reality is that members of Congress are damned if they do and they are damned if they don’t.

This is what I mean – if we don’t deal with our national debt now, everyone agrees that a massive day of reckoning is coming down the road.  Greece is an example of what happens when debt catches up with a nation.

However, if we did cut the federal budget very deeply right now, it would almost certainly bring on a huge economic contraction.

Right now, insane federal spending is one of the only things keeping this economy afloat.  If you were to suddenly pull half a trillion dollars (or more) of federal spending out of the economy, it would have a devastating impact.

A lot of people out there correctly argue for a huge reduction in federal spending, but they greatly underestimate the amount of pain that it would cause.

Let there be no doubt, all of this federal debt has enabled us to enjoy a “false prosperity” for several decades, and when we dramatically cut back on spending a lot of that “false prosperity” is going to disappear.

Our “real economy” is rapidly being gutted and America is becoming poorer as a nation every single day.  One way that we have been making up the difference is by going into almost unbelievable amounts of government debt.  When the government debt bubble pops, the pain is going to be enormous.

If you do not believe this right now, you will believe it soon enough.

Not that we should keep going into huge amounts of debt.

Every dollar that we “borrow” is actually being stolen from our children and our grandchildren.

In fact, that is what Thomas Jefferson believed.  According to Jefferson, when the federal government borrows money in one generation which must be paid back by future generations it is equivalent to stealing….

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

We have got to stop stealing from future generations.  If they get the chance, they will curse us for what we have done to them.

Anyone out there that supports our current system of running endless budget deficits is supporting a horrific crime against our children and our grandchildren.

But once again, we all need to clearly understand that when the borrowed money stops flowing out of Washington D.C., our economy is going to get much worse.

Are you prepared for the unemployment rate to double?

Are you prepared for foreclosures to soar to unprecedented heights?

Are you prepared for economic pain unlike anything you have ever seen before?

According to the New York Times, there are 100 million Americans that are either living in poverty or that are considered to be among the “near poor” right now.

So how bad will things get if we plunge into a depression?

Anyone that believes that we can drastically cut the federal budget and improve the economy at the same time under our current system is not being rational.

Just look at what is happening to Greece.  They implemented substantial budget cuts (although not nearly big enough to bring them to a balanced budget) and they have plunged into a nightmarish economic depression.

Right now, we are in a position where we are going to experience a horrific amount of pain whatever we do.  If we keep piling up debt at this rate we will experience a nightmare, but if we pop the debt bubble and try to live within our means we will also experience a nightmare.

There is a way out of this, but our politicians are not talking about it.  As I have written about previously, if the federal government abolishes the Federal Reserve and starts issuing debt-free money, we could eliminate our federal budget deficits, cut taxes and improve the economy all at the same time.

But nobody is even talking about debt-free money.

Instead, all of our politicians are talking about “fixing” the current system.

Well, let me tell you, it is impossible to solve our problems under the current system.  If we insist on maintaining our current debt-based financial system, it will only end in a massive amount of pain.

The American people need to get educated about our financial system.  They need to learn that the Federal Reserve and the debt-based currency that they issue are at the very heart of our economic problems.

Back in 1913, prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the national debt was only about $2.9 billion.

Today, our national debt is over 5000 times larger.

Debt-based central banking is a perpetual debt machine.  It is at the heart of our financial problems and it is also at the heart of the financial problems that Europe is experiencing.

Unfortunately, the American people don’t understand this, and there are virtually no politicians out there that are even talking about this.

Very dark days are ahead for America.

You had better get prepared.

The Economic Collapse

As global equity markets gap downward the trading day after I suggested Watch The Pandemic Bank Flu Spread, can kicking will get progressively harder from this point on. As I have said in my many interviews, the only way out of this is debt destruction, which will crush big European banks leveraged up on debt marked at par of close enough to it.

Having made clear that default was the only way out, Iceland has once again proven me correct. And just to jog the memory, I made it clear that default was the only way out nearly two years ago…

Online Spreadsheets (professional and institutional subscribers only)

• Greek Default Restructuring Scenario Analysis
• Greek Default Restructuring Scenario Analysiswith Sustainable Debt/GDP Limits and Haircuts
• Portugal’s Debt Ridden Finances: An Analysis of Haircuts, Restructuring and Strategy – Professional Analysis
• The Spain Sovereign Debt Haircut Analysis for Professional/Institutional Subscribers
• Ireland Default Restructuring Scenario Analysis with Sustainable Debt/GDP Limits and Haircuts

Bloomberg reports: Iceland May Hold Krona Auctions Within Weeks

The island, whose banks defaulted on $85 billion in 2008, is moving into the final stages of its resurrection plan as the last vestiges of crisis management are gradually removed. Iceland’s decision, taken together with the International Monetary Fund, to impose capital controls three years ago was key to surviving the bleakest moments of the crisis and helped prevent an all-out run on the island’s assets, Gudmundsson said.

“Without the capital controls it would have been much more difficult to ensure stability in the exchange rate, calling for much higher interest rates and an inability to shelter the domestic economy as well as we did,” he said. “With the turbulence in the international markets lately, the capital controls have sheltered Iceland considerably, since there’s no way of doing a run on the financing of the Icelandic state or the financing of the Icelandic banks.”

It is clear that capital controls are coming to the EU, and I’m sure there already in place in some form or fashion. It is quite ironic how the so-called “in the know” pundits alleged that Iceland would be osctrazied from the captial markets for defaulting when they are the ones actually
returning to the markets as the TPTB in the EU are being shunned. Just default already and get it over with, or you just may find yourself working for an Icelandic boss momentarily… You can try to save all of your banks and end up saving no banks at all, or you can go the logical route – the route that Iceland democratically allowed their populace to choose, which also so happened to be the right way. Hmmm… Democaracy! Capitalism! We just don’t seem to be seeing those concepts in the Euro area much these days…

Outperforming Euro Area

Iceland’s economy will grow faster than the euro-area average this year and next, the IMF estimated in September. The cost of insuring against an Icelandic default, using credit default swaps, is lower than the average for the euro area.

Iceland’s economy will grow 2.5 percent this year and next, versus 1.6 percent in the euro area this year and 1.1 percent in 2012, the IMF said Sept. 20. Next year, Iceland’s current account surplus will widen to 3.2 percent of the economy and unemployment will be 6 percent, versus 9.9 percent joblessness in the euro area, the fund said.

The stabilization of the island’s economy has allowed the central bank to press ahead with capital liberalizations that the government estimates won’t be fully dropped until 2013. The approach allows foreign investors eager to offload their krona holdings to transfer them to foreign or local investors willing to commit long-term to the island, according to the central bank.

‘Nuff said. Now, on to my other premonitions, predilections and predictions for which my subscribers pay me so dearly for… CNBC reports Moody’s Warns On French Rating Outlook

A rise in interest rates on French government debt and weaker growth prospects could be negative for the outlook on France’s credit rating, Moody’s warned in a report on Monday, adding to pressure on European debt markets.

Worries that France has the weakest economic fundamentals among the euro’s six AAA-rated countries have drawn the euro zone’s second largest economy into the firing line in the debt crisis this month.

The rating agency said the deteriorating market climate was a threat to the country’s credit outlook, though not at this stage to its actual rating.

“Elevated borrowing costs persisting for an extended period would amplify the fiscal challenges the French government faces amid a deteriorating growth outlook, with negative credit implications,” Senior Credit Officer Alexander Kockerbeck said in Moody’s Weekly Credit Outlook dated Nov.21.

“As we noted in recent publications, the deterioration in debt metrics and the potential for further liabilities to emerge are exerting pressure on France’s creditworthiness and the stable outlook (though not at this stage the level) of the government’s Aaa debt rating,” the Moody’s note read.

The yield differential between French and German 10-year government bonds rose above 200 basis points last week, a new euro-era high.

Moody’s said that at that spread level, France pays nearly twice as much as Germany for long-term funding, adding that a 100 basis point increase in yields roughly equates to an additional three billion euros in yearly funding costs.

In early Monday trade, the French 10-year spread was up about 20 basis points at 167 bps following publication of Moody’s report but remained well short of the 202 bps hit last week.

The CAC 40 index, which was down 1.7 percent in opening trade, was down 2.2 percent after an hour of trade.

“With the government’s forecast for real GDP growth of a mere one percent in 2012, a higher interest burden will make achieving targeted fiscal deficit reduction more difficult,” Moody’s said.

On Oct 17, Moody’s said it could place France on negative outlook in the next three months if the costs for helping to bail out banks and other euro zone members overstretched its budget.

“The French social model cannot be financed if the French economy’s potential is not preserved.

The stress on banks’ balance sheets can lead to further increases of liabilities on the government’s balance sheet when further state support to banks is needed, it added.

The events are unfolding like clockwork. Just go back a few months – or a year – or two years – in the BoomBustBlog archives for the Eurozone topic…

Italy’s Woes Spell ‘Nightmare’ for BNP – Just As I Predicted But Everybody Is Missing The Point!!!

BNP, the Fastest Running Bank In Europe? Banque BNP Exécuter

Right now, we are watching the early rounds of a heavyweight fight between two extremely determined opponents.  Occupy Wall Street has no plans of losing this fight and neither do law enforcement authorities.  Perhaps those running the show actually believed that raiding Zuccotti Park and more than a dozen other “Occupy camps” around the nation would end these protests, but that is just not going to happen.  Whatever your opinion of Occupy Wall Street is, everyone should be able to agree that this is one dedicated bunch.  They are absolutely obsessed with their cause and in response to the recent raid on Zuccotti Park organizers are calling for “a national day of direct action” on Thursday.  But if Occupy Wall Street protesters want to take things to “the next level”, they should not underestimate the resolve of the police state.  Over the past decade, the homeland security apparatus of the federal government has been slowly but surely turning this country into a “Big Brother” police state.  Today, our law enforcement authorities are obsessed with watching us, listening to us, tracking us, recording us, and gathering information on all of us.  We are constantly reminded that we live in a prison grid (just think about what they do to you before you are allowed on an airplane) and they are not about to put up with anyone challenging their authority or their control.  Have you even known parents that constantly feel the need to prove that they are “the boss” of their children?  Well, that is essentially what the homeland security apparatus in this country has become.  All over the United States, law enforcement personnel are taught that every American is a potential terrorist and they are actually trained to “act tough”, to bark orders at us and to not let anyone question their authority.  If Occupy Wall Street believes that it can get the police state to “back down”, they are sorely mistaken.  Hopefully everyone will cool off a bit as the temperatures go down this winter.  But if we do see a “cooling off”, it probably will not last for long.  As the U.S. economy continues to get worse, these kinds of protests are going to keep growing and they will become even more intense.  Eventually, mass civil unrest will cause the streets of many of our major cities to closely resemble war zones.  When it is all said and done, this is not going to end well for any of us.

The stunning police raid of Zuccotti Park at 1 AM on Tuesday morning made headlines around the world.  Protesters were hauled off, tents were cut down and garbage trucks hauled off the personal possessions of those that had been encamped there.  It was swift and it was brutal.

But it was just another in a long line of raids that we have seen over the past couple of weeks.  Occupy camps in Portland, Oakland, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and several other cities have also been raided.

There is an increasing body of evidence that these raids have been coordinated.  For example, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan recently made the following statement during a recent interview about the Occupy movement….

I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation

Does anyone want to guess who was running that conference call?

Heidi Bogosian, the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, is convinced that the recent raids were coordinated at the federal level….

“We definitely feel, especially in a movement like this that has arisen so quickly in a number of cities, that there will be a coordinated national effort to try and shut it down”

Someone probably thought that cracking a few skulls and cutting up a few tents would probably make the hippies go away.

Yes, that might have worked in 1991.

But this is 2011.  Whether you agree with Occupy Wall Street or not, one thing that should be clear to all of us is that these boys and girls are deadly serious.

In response to the recent raids, organizers have declared “a national day of direct action” on Thursday.

One of the “major actions” being planned is a “shut down” of Wall Street.

Of course that will not happen because thousands of law enforcement personnel will be dispatched to protect Wall Street if necessary.

But what does seem clear is that Occupy Wall Street seems determined to take things to the next level.

In this video, a wild-eyed protester can be seen making the following statement….

“On the 17th, we gonna burn this city to the ************* ground.”

Later on in the video, the same protester makes an even more inflammatory statement….

“No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”

That is a very frightening statement.

As I noted the other day, one recent survey found that 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda”.

Let us hope that cooler heads prevail and that we don’t see outbreaks of violence.

If we do see violence in the coming days, it will just give law enforcement authorities an excuse to crack down even harder.

Up to this point, local law enforcement authorities have been advised to seek “legal reasons” for evicting Occupy protesters.

Since just about everything is illegal in America today, that has not been too difficult.  So far “zoning laws”, “curfew rules” and regulations that target homeless people have been used as justifications to evict Occupy protesters.

In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has said that protesters can gather in Zuccotti Park, but that “the rules” do not allow them to have tents, sleeping bags or any sort of heavy equipment.

So will the protesters go along with this, or will this turn into a prolonged struggle over Zuccotti Park?

It is hard to say, but one thing is for sure – police all over the nation have already shown that they are prepared to use brutal force against these protesters in order to get their way.

We have seen tear gas used, we have seen pepper spray cannons used, we have seen rubber bullets used and we have seen flash-bang stun grenades used.

And they are just warming up.  When it comes to protecting “national security”, there is a vast array of technologies and weapons that law enforcement authorities have at their disposal.

Many Americans are cheering the crackdown on these protesters, but we all should remember that real people are getting seriously injured.  For example, just check out this photo of 84-year-old Dorli Rainey after pepper spray was blasted directly into her face.

Rainey and several other Occupy Seattle protesters are still in the hospital.

Ready for another example?

You can see video of a female Occupy Cal protester being brutally yanked by her hair right here.

How would you feel if that was you?

We all need to realize that these confrontations are not just a bunch of “fun and games”.

A lot of people have been sent to the hospital already, and this is just the beginning.

One of the key things that the American people will need to understand is that they don’t have to pick sides.

When law enforcement authorities commit atrocities, we should denounce them.

When Occupy Wall Street protesters commit acts of violence or vandalism, we should denounce them.

It would be nice if all Occupy Wall Street protests would be 100% non-violent.

It would be nice if the police would be reasonable and would carry out their duties with gentleness and respect.

But sadly, those things are probably not going to happen.

The civil unrest we are seeing now is only the beginning.

Things are going to get a lot worse.

If things keep getting escalated to “the next level”, eventually we will see martial law imposed in some of our largest cities.

Don’t think that it can’t happen.

The United States is increasingly becoming a very unstable place.

As America comes apart at the seams, this is not going to end well for any of us.

The Economic Collapse