FedUpUSA

Posts Tagged ‘Economy’

Share this list of shocking questions with everyone you know that needs to wake up.  Sometimes asking good questions is the best way to get someone that you care about to understand something.  When I attended law school, I became very familiar with something called “the Socratic method”.  It is a method that has been traditionally used in law schools all over the United States.  Law professors will bombard their students with questions, and the goal is to stimulate critical thinking and allow students to discover the answers for themselves.  Many times those of us that can see what is happening to this country get frustrated when we try to get others to see what is so apparent to us.  But instead of preaching to them, perhaps asking questions would be more helpful.  When you ask someone a question, they are almost forced to think about what you just said and come up with a response.  And without a doubt, the fact that America is in decline is undeniable.  Those that would choose to blindly have faith in the system are foolish, because it is glaringly obvious that the system is failing.  Our economy is heading for collapse and the world around us is becoming more unstable with each passing day.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the number of preppers in the United States is absolutely exploding.  Some estimates put the number of preppers in the U.S. as high as 3 million, and the movement continues to explode.

So exactly what is a “prepper”?  Well, the truth is that there is a tremendous amount of diversity among the people that fall under that label.

To me, you don’t have to move to Montana and store 500 cases of MREs in a nuclear fallout shelter to be considered a prepper.  I believe that anyone that can see a very serious crisis coming and that is taking steps to prepare for that crisis would be considered a prepper.  You might be living next to one and never even know it.  Many families have converted spare rooms into food pantries or are taking survival training on the weekends.  Others have renewed their interest in gardening or have started to invest in precious metals.  As far as I am concerned, anything that you can do to become more self-sufficient and more independent of the system is a good thing, because the system is rapidly failing.

Perhaps you are reading this and you are thinking that people who are “preparing for disaster” are being rather foolish.  Well, I encourage you to read the list of questions that I have compiled below and come to your own conclusions.

The following are 50 shocking questions that you should ask to anyone that is not a prepper yet…

#1 Why are sales of physical silver coins breaking all sorts of all-time records?  The U.S. Mint is on pace to sell more silver eagles during the first month of 2013 than it did during the entire year of 2007.

#2 Why has Germany announced that it will be moving gold from New York and Paris to its own vaults back home?  Is this a sign of a breakdown in trust among global central banks?

#3 Why is China systematically hoarding gold?

#4 Why have billionaires such as George Soros and John Paulson been hoarding massive amounts of gold?

#5 Why are billionaires buying up so much ranch land up in Montana?

#6 Why is Russia warning that we are rapidly approaching a global “currency war”?

#7 Why has Barack Obama chosen this moment to launch an all-out attack on the Second Amendment?

#8 Why does Barack Obama want doctors to ask their patients questions about firearms?

#9 Why is there an incredibly severe nationwide ammunition shortage all of a sudden?

#10 Why has a bill been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that “would ban Internet or mail order ammunition purchases“?

#11 Why are gun control advocates such as Piers Morgan pushing for us to become more like the UK when the UK actually has a much higher violent crime rate than we do?

#12 Why was a Forbes article that made a connection between the use of psychiatric drugs and the mass shootings that we have seen in recent years almost immediately taken down from the Internet?

#13 Why does the federal government want to start putting “black boxes” in all new motor vehicles?

#14 Why are some U.S. states now using computers to predict “future crimes“?

#15 Why are “black-clad federal SWAT teams” raiding farms and ranches all over the United States?

#16 Why are we all being trained to spy on one another?

#17 Why are highly advanced facial recognition cameras being put up all over the United States?

#18 Why have police departments all over America begun to deployunmanned surveillance drones in the skies over our cities?

#19 Why are schools all over America beginning to require students to carry IDs with RFID microchips in them wherever they go?

#20 Why are more Americans not outraged that nearly 400 TSA employees have been fired for stealing from travelers since 2003?

#21 Why are Americans not more outraged that TSA goons are manhandling the private areas of our women and our children in the name of “national security”?

#22 Why is an elderly survivor of the Nazi occupation of Austria, Kitty Werthmann, warning that America is heading down the exact same path that she experienced?

#23 If the economy is in good shape, then why are more than one out of every four U.S. workers with a 401(k) raiding those funds in order to pay current expenses?

#24 Why does the Federal Reserve continue to insist that the economy is “improving” when it obviously is not?

#25 Why can so few Americans explain how money is created in the United States?

#26 Why has the U.S. dollar declined in value by well over 95 percentsince the Federal Reserve was created?

#27 Why is the U.S. national debt more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created?

#28 Why isn’t the mainstream media in the U.S. discussing the fact that the U.S. dollar is in danger of losing its status as the primary reserve currency of the world?

#29 Why don’t more Americans know about the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble?

#30 Why did the U.S. national debt grow during the first four years of the Obama administration by about as much as it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that George W. Bush took office?

#31 Why is the middle class in America bringing home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before?

#32 If the U.S. economy is producing a healthy number of good jobs, then why are we spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on welfare?

#33 If the U.S. economy is not collapsing, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today?

#34 If America is still an economic powerhouse, then why have we lostmore than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001?

#35 Why are we losing half a million jobs to China every single year?

#36 Why were one out of every ten homes sold in the state of California last year purchased by Chinese citizens?

#37 Why has the percentage of men with jobs in the United States fallen so dramatically?  Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#38 Why are so many Americans poor today?  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.  Why is this happening?

#39 Why does the U.S. government have a website that teaches immigrants how to sign up for welfare programs once they arrive in the United States?

#40 Why has the number of gang members living in the United States risen by an astounding 40 percent just since 2009?

#41 Why does approximately one out of every three children in the United States live in a home without a father?  Can such a society prosper in the long run?

#42 Why are our supermarkets being flooded with genetically-modified foods when a whole host of studies have shown that they are potentially dangerous to human health?

#43 If the economy has “improved” during the Obama years, then why are hunger and poverty still absolutely skyrocketing in the United States?

#44 Why are more than a million public school students in the United States homeless?

#45 Why are more than 50 percent of all children in Detroit living in poverty?  Detroit used to be one of the greatest cities in the entire world.  How did such prosperity turn into such desolation?

#46 Why did a violent riot break out at an event where government-subsidized section 8 housing vouchers were being handed out in a suburb of Detroit earlier this month?  Is this the kind of unrest that we can expect to see all over the country when things get really bad?

#47 Why are cities all over the United States making it illegal to feed the homeless?

#48 Why is the UN trying to take control of the Internet?

#49 Why have global food supplies sunk to their lowest level in nearly 40 years?

#50 Why is global power concentrated in so few hands?  According to the Swiss Federal Institute, a network of 147 mega-corporations control 40 percent of all the wealth in the world, and in a previous article I described how just six obscenely powerful corporations completely dominate the media industry in the United States.  Is it good for such incredible power to be concentrated in the hands of so few people?

Please share this article with as many people as you can.  It only takes a few moments to share an article, but the person on the other end that reads it might have their life changed forever.

Do you have any questions that you think should be added to this list?  Please feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below…

The Economic Collapse

I don’t know about you, but I’m already sick of the so-called “Fiscal Cliff” battle in Congress. That’s the mandatory concoction of tax increases and spending cuts that kick in January 1st if Republicans and Democrats can’t reach a compromise.   Comedian Jon Stewart gave his perspective recently on The Daily Show.  He makes it very clear who is to blame for all this.

Nouriel has completely lost it, as has Niall Ferguson.

Is it one minute to midnight in Europe?

The failure of German public opinion to grasp the dire state of affairs in Europe today is inviting a repeat of precisely the crisis of the mid 20th century that European integration was designed to avoid.

Really?

Pray tell then, why is it that all these banks in Europe were permitted to issue credit without a single thing backing it beyond the belief that a new sucker would appear and take it off the issuer’s hands, thereby perpetuating a Ponzi Scheme of historic size?

I mean, it’s not like the consequences of this on an arithmetic basis weren’t known to everyone.  Stable economic conditions require that you not do that, or if you do allow it that the people who do it (1) can’t counterfeit the sovereign’s currency and (2) can’t become so intertwined in the financing of governments and major economic centers that their failure becomes an existential threat to your existence.

But both of those things happened, didn’t they?  And why?  Because the governments and people sat back and allowed it.

What is the situation today? Europe’s periphery is in depression. According to the IMF, gross domestic product will contract this year by 4.7 percent in Greece and 3.3 percent in Portugal. Unemployment is 24 percent in Spain, 22 percent in Greece and 15 percent in Portugal. Public debt already exceeds 100 percent of GDP in Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. These countries, along with Spain, are now effectively shut out of the bond market.

Good.  These nations lied to their people about what they could support and spend.  They got caught. Now the pain comes.  It is unavoidable — all we are arguing over is whether the governments will face the music and so will the citizens and banksters that were involved, or whether someone will try to shove it off on someone else.

The process of political fragmentation is also speeding up. In the last Greek elections, seven in 10 voters cast their ballots for smaller parties opposed to the austerity program imposed on Greece in return for two EU-led bailouts. Established parties are also losing out to splinter parties in Italy, where the comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement has just won control of the city of Parma, and in Germany, where a maverick party called the Pirates is all the rage. Less frivolous populists now have substantial support in France, the Netherlands and Norway. This trend is ominous.

There’s nothing ominous about it.  The people got nothing in Greece for their acquiescence.  The banksters got all the loot, and the people got fucked.  Royally, serially, repeatedly fucked.

Why should they stand for this?  What they should do is rise and remove some heads.  Peacefully if possible, the old-fashioned way if necessary.  Peaceful political process only works until the political process fails and is co-opted and stolen by the very people doing the looting.  Then it’s not a representative government anymore, it’s a jackbooted fascist dictatorship and the people have every right to overthrow it, exactly as was demonstrated here in The United States in 1776.

Men and women tend to suffer these ignobilities for far longer than they should, and this is probably a good thing on balance, as resolution when a dictatorship has taken over your nation is almost always messy and fraught with the highest of risks.  Nonetheless, if this is what has happened the solution is singular and clear to anyone who thinks clearly.

What we are left with as a question at this time is whether or not this has occurred.

The way out of this crisis seems clear.

First, there needs to be a program of direct recapitalization — via preferred non-voting shares — of euro-zone banks both in the periphery and the core by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and its successor the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

No.

The institutions that lent money that cannot be paid back must take their losses.  If they cannot then their stockholders and bondholders must be zeroed if necessary to cover depositors, and any alleged “superior” status on derivative instruments must be voided.  In short, depositors must be senior to all; the rest of the capital structure falls where it does.  And fall it will.

That’s fine.  These nations should, at the same time, both enact One Dollar of Capital for all institutions going forward and prosecute all banksters who blow sky high for effectively counterfeiting the currency, because that’s exactly what they did.  Put them all in prison.

Of course, over time, sound banks that restore capital through earnings would be able to buy back the public preferred shares. So this partial nationalization would be temporary.

There is no such thing as a “sound bank” that has lent out more than the sum of its collateral taken against loans and its capital.  Such a bank has practiced an effective fraudulent device in that it has issued credit fungible with currency that it knows at the time of issue cannot be repaid in the present tense.  It therefore haseffectively naked shorted the currency.

This is a pyramid scheme as indefinite exponential growth, for any positive growth rate, is arithmetically impossible.  All we are arguing over is when, not if, the scheme will collapse.

Pyramid schemes are broadly illegal and must be prosecuted.  If the government will not do so then the government must be replaced with one that will.

Finally, given the unsustainably high public debts and borrowing costs of certain member states, we see no alternative to some kind of debt mutualization.

Nonsense.

None of the nations who are in the Euro agreed to this.  Committing public frauds for years so as to force someone else to rescue you via “mutualization” and “integration” of political systems is tantamount to the taking of political power by force from the people and giving it to those who are not elected.

This is commonly known as an act of war and is full and fair justification for those who have this imposed upon them to take arms and repeal the literal subversion and replacement by force of their political process.

Giving up some sovereignty is inevitable.

No it’s not — those who committed frauds can be prosecuted and imprisoned instead.  This is the correct course of action.

Ultimately, as Chancellor Merkel herself acknowledged last week, monetary union always implied further integration into a fiscal and political union.

Perhaps in Merkel’s mind.  But she does not speak for the other nations and their people.  Simply put, she is not Fuehrer over Europe, and if this is attempted I expect that what Roubini “fears” will come to pass — because it damn well should if Germany, or anyone else, tries to impose “political union” by fraud, threat, coercion or, most-unfortunately, force.

After a month in lower Manhattan, ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is going global. Having already spread to other major cities in the U.S. and Europe, major protests are expected Saturday “around the globe from New Zealand to Alaska via London, Frankfurt, Washington and, of course, New York,” Reuters reports.

“Social unrest goes with bought and paid for politics, which is what we have,” says Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Associates. “Everybody is a bold-faced liar — Republicans and Democrats.”

Read more at Business Insider

The latest example of political hyperbole is that the U.S. Treasury is ready to default on its debt. An actual examination of the underlying facts is that the relative purchasing value of the currency has long ago swindled debt holder in U.S. Bonds of their promised returns. A default defined under this definition is part of the equation. Repudiation of the entire debt obligation is the real fear. Contrary to all the public scare tactics that the financial world will stop turning, the Federal Treasury has ample revenue to pay the interests on bonds and notes that come due. The essential issue is whether the new bond lenders are willing to roll over the debt that is coming due and keep the shell game going.

The late conservative journalist, Robert Novak’s favorite president was Calvin Coolidge, he is known for saying, The Business of America is Business.

The real statement comes from a speech by Calvin Coolidge called “The Press Under a Free Government” which was given before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. on January 17, 1925. The quote is really: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.” However, Coolidge goes on to say that, “Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence.” He discusses journalism and the thought that the business interests of newspaper owners should not taint reporting. He continues, “American newspapers have seemed to me to be particularly representative of this practical idealism of our people.”

A seminal truth about governments is that they do not function as a business. Every commercial enterprise eventually needs to pay their bills, since limitless borrowing is not an option for lenders. Bankruptcy is a favorite technique for repudiating debt, just ask the General Motors bondholders. Every survivor of the 2008 meltdown knows the rules of the game are now a moving target.

The media invariably seeks to blame the Congress for bringing the country to the brink. Most narrow in on the Republican Tea party freshmen as unreasonable. Little criticism is directed towards the intransigent Democratic leader Senator Reid. The reporting by the press no longer mirrors the standards of 1925 journalism, and the government no longer represents the practical idealism of the people.

Compare the recent settlement of the National Football League lockout with the drama of the Beltway National Theater. Both purports to have a countrywide audience, but only the NFL has avid fans. The government maintains their league through fear and phony promises. Football plays a man’s sport by dedicated lovers of the game. Presidents, Senators and Congressmen prepare their playbook to defeat their opponents, the citizens that elect them to office. The NFL is a business rewarded because of fan support. The Feds are a systemic extortion racket that forces its edicts upon a depressed and financially depleted citizenry.

The reason why the NFL players and owners settled their disputes, agreed to a decade era of labor peace, and anticipated prosperity is based upon the business nature of the conference. The reality why the Federal Government refuses to end the culture of deficit spending is based upon the dictatorial appetites of egomaniacs that serve their financial masters and deceive the public in an endless cycle of staged elections. As long as the State ignores the intrinsic nature of business principles, the social government will grow the welfare dependent society, as a way to dominate their subjects.

Tragically, many people know more about the free agency signing in the NFL, than the political positions of their own representatives. No one should be surprised about this development. Government is the ultimate monopoly and does not depend upon a free market of choice. Officials see spending as growth. However, the bigger a bureaucracy becomes, the more the financial lifeblood of business prosperity diminishes.

The will to correct this core failure is nonexistent, within the federal despotic fraternity. Their talent lies in designing new transfer programs to crony colleagues and constituents, funded by taxpayer levies or inventive exotic debt instruments.

No, wonder why so many American have totally given up on the political system. Unfortunately, that withdrawal of consent alone does not eliminate the treachery of career government officials. The GOP is poised to compromise and accept a dramatic rise in the debt ceiling. Their explanation will offend the most serious and sincere reformers. How else can the incessant spending end, unless the credit card is taken away from the addicted shopaholic?

The formidable financial sage, Paul Craig Roberts uses a political argument, when he warns about the response Obama might use to defeat sound business practices, in his article; The Unintended Consequences of Debt Ceiling Intransigence.

“The US dollar could plummet in exchange value and lose its role as world reserve currency. The US would no longer be able to pay its oil bill in its own currency, and as its balance of payments is heavily in the red, the US has no foreign currencies with which to pay its oil import bill. Or its manufactured goods import bill, or any other bill.

We are talking about a crisis beyond anything the world has ever seen. Does anyone think that President Obama is going to just sit there while the power of the US collapses? He doesn’t have to do so. There are presidential directives and executive orders in place, put there by George W. Bush himself, that President Obama can invoke to declare a national emergency, suspend the debt ceiling limit, and continue to issue Treasury debt. This is exactly what would happen.

The consequences would be that the power of the purse would transfer from Congress to the President. It would be the end of the power of Congress. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have already given away to the President Congress’ Constitutional right to decide whether the country goes to war. Now Congress would lose its power over debt, taxes, and the budget itself.”

Any sober reader should consider Roberts’ insights. Yet, what else can be done within the constitutional Federal system of separation of powers to stop the spending binge? The house of cards can no longer support the burden of the public financing through the fractional reserve fraud used by the Federal Reserve.

The alternative is for the Treasury to issue government bonds directly to the market. All interested paid to the banking elites that own and control the private Federal Reserve needs to take a thunderous haircut. This is the only solution to eliminate the curse of compound interest paid to a criminal cartel, which holds our country hostage.

The insane spending is unnecessary. No one who rationalizes that the federal budget is sustainable can be trusted. Anyone who refuses to cut and eliminate entire agencies is perpetuating an illegitimate bipartisan regime of coercive corruption.

The convoluted mechanics that will emerge to justify a higher debt limit will be just one more insult to the hard working citizens that conduct business on Main Street. The total disconnect of the government class from the most simple requirements of authentic wealth creation is at an all time high. The reason the Tea Party movement spontaneously erupted over the unbearable taxation demands demonstrates that common sense still lives in the minds and hearts of real Americans.

The socialistic mentality that relies on government to supply physiological reinforcement for their personal inadequacies and diminished mental capacities is no excuse for national betrayal. The Capitol Dome is the most distinctive landmark in this country. The weight of the burden from all government debt is undeniable. Even a mainstream newspaper like USA Today admits that the U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions.

“The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

“The (federal) debt only tells us what the government owes to the public. It doesn’t take into account what’s owed to seniors, veterans and retired employees,” says accountant Sheila Weinberg, founder of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, a Chicago-based group that advocates better financial reporting. “Without accurate accounting, we can’t make good decisions.”

Isn’t that lack of financial reporting, let alone accountability, the forestay of the political class? Do you really think that a sensible leader in the Calvin Coolidge tradition can be elected today? America is no longer a country that conducts business. The international banksters, who peddled the debt drug to a spending addict, own the global empire. The globalists are stealing any wealth that remains in a country of junkies. The political pimps that pump you full of dependency are masters of the delusion. The overdose leads to a terminal condition. Endure the withdrawal shock now, before it is too late.

Get your own house in order. Learn how to do business without debt. There is no signing bonus in this masochistic league of the establishment’s lie and steal game. The only sport left is to cheer for an early repudiation of the illegitimate public debt.

SARTRE

Sorry guys, the clock has rung. It’s not ringing any more, it has rung and the spring-powered alarm has run out.

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the second quarter of 2011, (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 percent.

That’s a monstrous revision to the first quarter. For those who forgot, we were told it was 1.8% on April 28th.

Oops.

Why the major change? Annual revisions. The answer is this: What recovery? Now I have to go back and revise all my working tables.

There is no recovery to speak of. Four years into this the policies of the government and Fed have failed.

It gets worse:

The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents, increased 3.2 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 4.0 percent in the first Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for gross domestic purchases increased 2.6 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 2.4 percent in the first.

Your standard of living is being shredded.

Real personal consumption expenditures increased 0.1 percent in the second quarter, compared
with an increase of 2.1 percent in the first.

Spending has effectively collapsed.

This puts into stark relief the reality of the government deficit spending – it is doing nothing more than covering up an economic Depression, and the so-called “exit plan” – that private consumption, investment and borrowing will “take the baton back” is not working.

The deficit spending must stop now before the tax base folds back and forces a disorderly collapse.

The Market Ticker

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