Author Nomi Prins: The Corporate Mugging of America

1 of 2:

Added: 3. February 2011

2 of 2:

Added: 3. February 2011

Overdose – The Next Financial Crisis (Documentary)

Just in case you still haven’t watched this:

George Carlin: The American Dream


1 of 3:

2 of 3:

3 of 3:

An ABC – Four Corners documentary about the coming economic crisis, featuring Gerald Celente and Peter Schiff. Original air date: 23rd August, 2010.

See also:

– Prof. Nouriel Roubini: No Defence Left Against Double-Dip Recession

American Deaths In Afghanistan Surpass Highest Annual Record

US: Record 1 in 6 Americans in Government Anti-Poverty Programs

California Delays $2.9 Billion School, County Payments In September Amid Budget Impasse

US Home Sales in July: Record Drop Of 27 Percent, The Largest Monthly Drop On Record

US Cities Sell Parking, Airports, Zoo To Help Closing Budget Gaps

Nearly 50 Percent leave Obama Mortgage-Relief Program

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: And Now We’re Headed For The GREATEST Depression

US: Jobless Claims Jump to Highest Level Since November

US: Bankruptcies Reach Nearly 5-Year High

US Cities Face Up To MASSIVE Cuts

Why the US is as busted as a busted flush – IMF analysis suggests the US is fiscally bankrupt

John Williams: ‘Times That Try Our Souls’ (U.S. Bankruptcy – Hyperinflation – Great Depression), Preparedness Can Save Your Life:

The government is effectively bankrupt. Using GAAP accounting principles, the annual deficit is running in the range of $4 trillion to $5 trillion. That’s beyond containment. The government can’t cover it with taxes. They’d still be in deficit if they took 100% of personal income and corporate profits. They’d also still be in deficit if they cut every penny of government spending except for Social Security and Medicare. Washington lacks the will to slash its social programs severely, to change its approach to ever bigger government. The only option left going forward is for the government eventually to print the money for the obligations it cannot otherwise cover, which sets up a hyperinflation.

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: And Now We’re Headed For The GREATEST Depression

The fake “recovery” was nice while it lasted, says famous apocalyptic forecaster Gerald Celente, founder of the Trends Research Institute. But now the fun’s over, and we’re headed for what Celente describes as the “Greatest Depression.”

Specifically, the always startling Celente says the country is headed for rising unemployment, poverty, and violent class warfare as the government efforts to keep the economy going begin to fail.

The crux of the problem, Celente argues, is that the middle class has been wiped out. America used to be a land of opportunity for all, where hard-working people could build their own small businesses in their own communities and live prosperous and fulfilling lives. But now a collusion of state and corporate interests that Celente describes as “fascism” have conspired to help only the biggest companies and the richest Americans. This has put a shocking amount of the country’s wealth in the hands of a privileged few and left the rest of the country to subsist on chicken-feed wages and low job satisfaction as Wal-Mart “associates” — or worse.

Read moreThe No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: And Now We’re Headed For The GREATEST Depression

Judge Napolitano on Freedom Watch With Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo And Gerald Celente

Listen to Gerald Celente America!
Rome is burning:

John Williams: ‘Times That Try Our Souls’ (U.S. Bankruptcy – Hyperinflation – Great Depression), Preparedness Can Save Your Life

So what have the elitists planned for the US? Total collapse and/or WW III?

Former CIA And Military Officials To Obama: Israel Prepares To Attack Iran This Month


Part 1 of 3:

Added: 11. August 2010

Part 2 of 3:

Added: 11. August 2010

Part 3 of 3:

Added: 11. August 2010

Read moreJudge Napolitano on Freedom Watch With Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo And Gerald Celente

John Williams: ‘Times That Try Our Souls’ (U.S. Bankruptcy – Hyperinflation – Great Depression), Preparedness Can Save Your Life

Highly recommended reading.

The Greatest Depression is here.


john-williams-shadowstatscom

When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admits to seeing an “unusually uncertain” economy ahead, it’s pretty terrifying to imagine what he’s really thinking. What John Williams envisions-and he’s by no means looking to the far horizon-is a systemic collapse, a hyperinflationary great depression and the cessation of normal commerce. Despite that bleak outlook, however, when the economist and editor of ShadowStats.com sat down for this exclusive Energy Report interview, he also had some good news.

The Energy Report: A few months back, John, you said, “if you strangle liquidity you always contract an economy and deliberately or not, liquidity is being strangled, resulting in sharp declines in consumer credit, commercial and industrial loans.” Does this mean it would spur more economic growth if banks actually started lending?

John Williams: It sure wouldn’t hurt. We’re still seeing contractions in liquidity, and that’s adjusted for inflation. In real terms, M3 money supply is down almost 8% year-over-year. It’s the sharpest fall in the post -World War II era. It’s not so much the depth of the decline in the liquidity or the duration, but the fact that the liquidity turns negative year-over-year that signals the economy turning down.

We had the signal in December of 2009 indicating intensification of the downturn, in this case, within six to nine months. We’re in that timeframe now and see softening numbers. People are talking about a weaker economy. Even Mr. Bernanke has described the economy as “unusually uncertain” in terms of its outlook. Wording like that from the Fed is a pretty good indication that something’s afoot.

Read moreJohn Williams: ‘Times That Try Our Souls’ (U.S. Bankruptcy – Hyperinflation – Great Depression), Preparedness Can Save Your Life

US Job Losses In July Are Double Expected Figure

There is no recovery! This is the Greatest Depression.

US: Food stamp Use Hit Record 40.8 Million in May


• American firms shed 131,000 jobs in July

• UK thinktank warns British ‘depression’ will last until 2012

us_job-losses-in-july-are-double-expected-figure
Job seekers speak with recruiters during a career fair in Chicago but there are fears that a recovery in the US economy will not mean a revival in employment (Getty Images)

Employers in the US shed twice as many jobs as expected in July, adding to fears that the recovery in the world’s largest economy will not see a revival in employment.

The dismal US job figures came as the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted a protracted depression for the UK economy.

Across the Atlantic talk of a double-dip recession was revived when the government revealed 131,000 jobs were lost last month. That dwarfed forecasts for a fall of 65,000. June’s drop was also revised to a far steeper 221,000 from 125,000.

Read moreUS Job Losses In July Are Double Expected Figure

Mike Krieger: Goodbye Disneyland! – The Neo-Feudalistic, Gulag Casino Economy Has Already Begun

Mike Krieger, formerly a macro analyst at Bernstein, and currently running his own fund, KAM LP, summarizies the pretend reality we are all caught in now, knowing full well America is set on a crash course with reality at some point, yet sticking our collective heads in the sand, as the collapse will be some time in the “indefinite” future. In the meantime, banks will continue to boost US GDP by peddling “financial innovation” and restructuring advice to countries like Greece… and nothing else.


Goodbye Disneyland, by Mike Krieger

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.  It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.  Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.  The heresy of heresies was common sense.  And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.  For, after all how do we know that two and two make four?  Or that the force of gravity works?  Or that the past is unchangeable?  If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
– Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
– Thomas Jefferson

We Must Move to a Free Market and Shun the Welfare-Warfare State or all will be Lost

Unfortunately for all of us, the primary economic policy of the U.S. government as well as many others around the world is an extend and pretend strategy that is economic suicide primarily in that it keeps the irresponsible in their assets and it makes the responsible shudder and shun productive investments.  Whether it be a homeowner that is subsidized to stay in a home that he cannot afford or a bank that doesn’t want to come clean on the extent of its bad assets, the result is the same.  Complete economic inertia.  Now of course there has been a rebound in demand, but my argument has been and continues to be that this is the most unproductive rebound in aggregate demand that perhaps the world has ever seen.  Whether it be in the U.S. or China, the demand is taking away spare capacity in many areas indeed but we must question the methods.  This is where the whole idea of inflation comes into play.  The whole reason why printing a million dollars and giving it to everyone doesn’t work is because this “liquidity” is not created through a productive process.  It is purely an injection of new dollars into the economy.  The basic rule of supply/demand kicks in.  In the average person’s pocket, this money is unlikely to be “invested” in productive capital endeavors, rather the vast majority of it will simply be spent to consume the resources of that which can be supplied by the already existing capital stock.  So in many ways it isn’t that the creation of the money itself that is the biggest problem, it is the distribution channel of that money.  Only a small percentage of the population that receives the million dollars has the ability, drive and discipline to invest the money into something that will create economic value for the society at large rather than just blow it on a flat screen television.  This is the entire premise of why a free market economy works when it is allowed to work (which I would argue is not possible under the current Federal Reserve system).  The Fed is a socialist organization that SETS the most important price in the economy, the price of money.  Even worse, when they set that price at say 0% as is basically the case today that 0% or anything close to it is not offered to all the small businessmen or potential entrepreneurs out there.  It might not even be so bad if the low interest rates weren’t simply being used to gamble or play a carry trade with treasuries.  Of course, the banks or anyone else for that matter playing a spread by borrowing at near zero to buy long-term treasuries is doing irreparable harm to this nation.  They are complicit in the gross misallocation of capital to the government, capital that can then be doled out at will to favored interests.  So all we have today is essentially a creation of money and credit out of thin air that is allocated to two major constituents.  First, it has primarily been used to maintain the people of wealth, power and political connections (on both sides of the isle) before the crash entrenched in their socioeconomic roles.  Second, is to pay off political favors.  Those who supported the President in his campaign have been paid back handsomely and are today much more powerful and secure than before whether we are talking unions or the oligopoly banks.  If we wish to have any hope of a sustainable recovery preventing the inevitable social unrest to come from truly getting dangerous we must restore the free market and end the union of big business and government, which historically has presented an extremely dangerous situation.  For those that are in big business and think they have made a great move by joining forces with the state I suggest you go back and read your history.  You never will possess the ultimate power, you will be seduced into thinking you do and then when the time is right government can eliminate you and your fortune with the stroke of a pen.  Power is granted to you by this authority when you engage in this unholy union and it can be taken away on whim and your wealth confiscated. Selling out freedom and your fellow citizens for some extra money or government contracts will come back to haunt you.  Your legacy to the United States will be a neo-feudalistic, gulag casino economy that has already begun. Below is a link to an excellent interview with Bill Moyers on PBS about our financial oligarchy (I believe many industries here are becoming oligarchies but the financial one is the most powerful) and the need to stop its cancerous growth.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/watch.html

There Will be Surplus…In 2050!

Read moreMike Krieger: Goodbye Disneyland! – The Neo-Feudalistic, Gulag Casino Economy Has Already Begun

Gerald Celente: This time they will close the Banks & Wall Street (03/27/10)

‘Fascism is coming to America’


Added: 28th Mar 10

More from Gerald Celente:

Gerald Celente: ‘It’s the greatest bank robbery in world history and the banks are doing the robbing.’

Gerald Celente: ‘The Crash is Coming in 2010.’

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street

Survivor, America: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse,’ Gerald Celente Says

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: The Terror And The Crash of 2010

If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.
– New York Post

When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.
– CNN Headline News

There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.
– CNBC

Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.
– The Wall Street Journal

A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.
– The Economist

Study: Epidemic of Vitamin D Deficiency

vitamin-d

(NaturalNews) There is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency sweeping across our modern world, and it’s an epidemic of such depth and seriousness that it makes the H1N1 swine flu epidemic look like a case of the sniffles by comparison. Vitamin D deficiency is not only alarmingly widespread, it’s also a root cause of many other serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.

A new study published in the March, 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that a jaw-dropping 59 percent of the population is vitamin D deficient. In addition, nearly 25 percent of the study subjects were found to have extremely low levels of vitamin D.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Richard Kremer at the McGill University Health Center, said “Abnormal levels of vitamin D are associated with a whole spectrum of diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders.”

This new study also documents a clear link between vitamin D deficiency and stored body fat. This supports a theory I’ve espoused here on NaturalNews for many years: That sunshine actually promote body fat loss. Vitamin D may be the hormonal mechanism by which this fat loss phenomenon operates.

The research findings on vitamin D, by the way, get even better…

Activator for the immune system

Recent research carried out at the University of Copenhagen has revealed that vitamin D activates the immune system by “arming” T cells to fight off infections.

Read moreStudy: Epidemic of Vitamin D Deficiency

How to invest for a global-debt-bomb explosion; Prepare for an apocalyptic anarchy (Market Watch)

Must-read!


Prepare for an apocalyptic anarchy ending Wall Street’s toxic capitalism

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Wake up investors. Are you prepared for the economic anarchy coming after a global-debt time bomb explodes? Are you thinking outside the box? Investing differently? Act now — tomorrow will be too late.

Start by looking past the endless cable skirmishes between Rush, Glenn, Bill and Shawn versus Harry, Nancy, Ben and Barack. Look way past the insurgency bonding Sarah and her diehard Tea Party revolutionaries with Ron Paul’s Neo-Reaganite ideologues, Fat-Cat Bankers and the Party of No, all planning a massive frontal assault on the 2010 elections, hell-bent on destroying the presidency. All that’s the sideshow.

The Big One is coming soon, bigger than the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 subprime credit meltdown combined. A huge market blowout. And as Bloomberg-BusinessWeek predicts: “The results won’t be pretty for investors or elected officials.”

After the global-debt bomb explodes don’t expect a typical bear correction followed by a new bull. Wall Street’s toxic pseudo-capitalism is imploding. Be prepared for a massive meltdown. Yes, already the third major bubble-bust of the 21st century, triggered once again by Wall Street’s out-of-control Fat Cat Bankers. And it’s dead ahead.

Can your family survive in the anarchy after the debt bomb explodes?

America’s already descending into economic anarchy. We’re all trapped in a historic economic supercycle, a turning point that must bleed through a no-man’s land of lawless self-destructive anarchy before a neo-capitalistic world can re-emerge. Investors tell me they “feel” it at a deep level, “know” it’s happening. They keep asking: “What’s the best investment strategy to prepare now?”

This is no joke, folks. Are you prepared? Or preparing? Will your family survive in a post-apocalyptic world, when anarchy is rampant in America? Look at Washington, Wall Street and Corporate America today. You know it’s already begun.

You are witnessing a fundamental breakdown of the American dream, a systemic breakdown of our democracy and our capitalism, a breakdown driven by the blind insatiable greed of Wall Street: Dysfunctional government, insane markets, economy on the brink. Multiply that many times over and see a world in total disarray. Ignore it now, tomorrow will be too late.

Read moreHow to invest for a global-debt-bomb explosion; Prepare for an apocalyptic anarchy (Market Watch)

Rep. Ron Paul: State of the Republic Address – ‘Dangerous Times Indeed.’

“The collapse of the financial system is still in its early stage.”

“The social unrest will illicit cries for the government to exert unusual force to head off a complete breakdown of law and order. The ultimate trap will be set for a system of government claiming to protect a free society.”

“If more power and police authority are not given to the Federal government, it will be argued that only anarchy will result. If more government policing power is given, it will mean a lethal threat to civil liberties.”

“We are rapidly moving toward a dangerous time in our history. Society as we know it is vulnerable to political and social unrest. This impending crisis comes as a consequence of our flawed foreign and domestic economic policies, a silly notion about money, ignorance about central banking, ignoring the onerous power and mischief of out of control intelligence agencies, our unsustainable welfare state and a willingness to sacrifice privacy and civil liberties in an attempt to achieve safety and security from an inept government.”

“Dangerous times indeed.”

“The only way that we can prevent blood from running in the streets is to offer a better idea of the proper role of government in a society that desires, first and foremost, liberty.”

1 of 3:

Added: 21. Januar 2010

2 of 3:

Added: 21. Januar 2010

3 of 3:

Added: 21. Januar 2010

The Fed and the US government are destroying America:

America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship! (MUST-READ!)

The CFR Controls American News/Media

Senate Proposes Increasing US Debt Limit to $14.3 Trillion: “If Congress does not enact this legislation, and soon, then the Treasury would default on its debt for the first time in history,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus

US: Unfunded Benefits Dig States’ $3 Trillion Hole

Illinois enters a state of insolvency: ‘We’re close to de facto bankruptcy, if not de jure bankruptcy.’

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street

Peter Schiff: The Lunacy of US Government Programs

– Former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis: Larry Summers, Robert Rubin: Will The Harvard Shadow Elite Bankrupt The University And The Country?

Read moreRep. Ron Paul: State of the Republic Address – ‘Dangerous Times Indeed.’

Survivor, America: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse,’ Gerald Celente Says

“It’s only going to get worse,” is the sobering forecast of Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute.

As discussed in a prior segment, Celente believes the “bailout bubble” is going to burst and the U.S. economy will slip back into recession, if not worse, in 2010.

Like all forecasters, Celente isn’t always right but he has predicted a number of major events, as detailed here.

So if Celente is right about 2010, what will that mean for the average American? Celente says we’re going back to basics, making do with less and adopting the following mantra: “Waste not, want not. Use it up wear it out. Make it due, due without.”

On his Website, Celente offers the following predictions, further discussed in the accompanying video:

Read moreSurvivor, America: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse,’ Gerald Celente Says

US slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels

December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began.

wall-street-crash-of-1929
History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, pictured Photo: AP

The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters.

Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism.

The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after people lose their job, and exhaust their savings. The local sheriff will escort them out of the door, often with some sympathy — just like the police in 1932, mostly Irish Catholics who tithed 1pc of their pay for soup kitchens.

Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody’s Economy.com expects another 2.4m homes to go this year. Taken together, this looks awfully like Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

Judges are finding ways to block evictions. One magistrate in Minnesota halted a case calling the creditor “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive”. We are not far from a de facto moratorium in some areas.

This is how it ended between 1932 and 1934, when half the US states declared moratoria or “Farm Holidays”. Such flexibility innoculated America’s democracy against the appeal of Red Unions and Coughlin Fascists. The home siezures are occurring despite frantic efforts by the Obama administration to delay the process.

Read moreUS slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels

PIMCO’S Bill Gross: ‘Let’s Get Fisical’ (… or why the US will not make it.)

On Thursday I had posted Bloomberg’s summary on the monthly investment outlook by PIMCO’s Bill Gross:

PIMCO’s Bill Gross warns on risks of US deficit: ‘Our government doesn’t work anymore, or perhaps more accurately, when it does, it works for special interests and not the American people.’

But that summary missed a lot of important points.

Here is just one excerpt as a starter:

“Here’s the problem that the U.S. Fed’s “exit” poses in simple English: Our fiscal 2009 deficit totaled nearly 12% of GDP and required over $1.5 trillion of new debt to finance it. The Chinese bought a little ($100 billion) of that, other sovereign wealth funds bought some more, but as shown in Chart 2, foreign investors as a group bought only 20% of the total – perhaps $300 billion or so. The balance over the past 12 months was substantially purchased by the Federal Reserve. …”

If that doesn’t bother you, then I do not know what will. The Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air like there is no tomorrow and the bad news is that that is exactly what the elite that controls the US government and the Federal Reserve has planned for America:

In the next two years (or just a little more than that) we will see hyperinflation in the US, people in America will become desperately poor and the Greatest Depression will turn the US into a Third World country.

(In 2009 Bill Gross was named the world’s 32nd most powerful man by Forbes.)

Now here is the full article by Bill Gross, ‘The King of Bonds’ (Must-Read!):


Let’s Get Fisical

bill-gross-1

Quixotic journeys often make for great literature, but by definition are rarely productive. I am, after all, referring to windmills here – not their 21st century creation, but their 17th century chasing. Futility, not productivity, was the ultimate fate of Cervantes’ man from La Mancha. So it is with hesitation, although quixotic obsession, that I plunge headlong into a discussion of American politics, healthcare legislation, resultant budget deficits and – finally – their potential effect on financial markets. There will be windmills aplenty in the next few pages and not much good can come of these opinions or my tilting in their direction. Still, I mount my steed, lance in hand, and ride forward.

Question: What has become of the American nation? Conceived with the vision of liberty and justice for all, we have descended in the clutches of corporate and other special interests to a second world state defined by K Street instead of Independence Square. Our government doesn’t work anymore, or perhaps more accurately, when it does, it works for special interests and not the American people. Washington consistently stoops to legislate 10,000-page perversions of healthcare, regulatory reform, defense, and budgetary mandates overflowing with earmarks that serve a monied minority as opposed to an all-too-silent majority. You don’t have to be Don Quixote to believe that legislators – and Presidents – often do not work for the benefit of their constituents: A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reported that over 65% of Americans trust their government to do the right thing “only some of the time” and a stunning 19% said “never.” What most politicians apparently are working for is to perpetuate their power – first via district gerrymandering, and then second by around-the-clock campaigning financed by special interest groups. If, by chance, they’re ever voted out of office, they have a home just down the street – at K Street – with six-figure incomes as a starting wage.

What amazes me most of all is that politicians can be bought so cheaply. Public records show that combined labor, insurance, big pharma and related corporate interests spent just under $500 million last year on healthcare lobbying (not much of which went to politicians) for what is likely to be a $50-100 billion annual return. The fact is that American citizens have never been as divorced from their representatives – and if that description fits the Democratic Congress now in control – then it applies to Republicans as well – past and present. So you watch Fox, or is it MSNBC? O’Reilly or Olbermann? It doesn’t matter. You’re just being conned into rooting for a team that basically runs the same plays called by lookalike coaches on different sidelines. A “ballot box” pox on all their houses – Senators, Representatives and Presidents alike. There has been no change, there will be no change, until we the American people decide to publicly finance all national and local elections and ban the writing of even a $1 check for our favorite candidates. Undemocratic? Hardly. Get on the internet, use Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter to campaign for your choice. That’s the new democracy. When special interests, even singular citizens write a check, it represents a perversion of democracy not the exercise of the First Amendment. Any chance that any of this will happen? Not one ghost of a chance. Forward Don Quixote, the windmills are in sight.

Distressed as I am about the state of American democracy, a rational money manager cannot afford to get mad or “just get even” when it comes to investing clients’ money. Still, like pilots politely advertise at the end of most flights, “We know you have a choice of airlines and we thank you for flying ‘United’.” Global investment managers likewise have a choice of sovereign credits and risk assets where stable inflation and fiscal conservatism are available. If 2008 was the year of financial crisis and 2009 the year of healing via monetary and fiscal stimulus packages, then 2010 appears likely to be the year of “exit strategies,” during which investors should consider economic fundamentals and asset markets that will soon be priced in a world less dominated by the government sector. If, in 2009, PIMCO recommended shaking hands with the government, we now ponder “which” government, and caution that the days of carefree check writing leading to debt issuance without limit or interest rate consequences may be numbered for all countries.

Read morePIMCO’S Bill Gross: ‘Let’s Get Fisical’ (… or why the US will not make it.)

We’re Screwed! Hyperinflation like in the Weimar Republic; Great Depression worse than in the 1930s

The US is already beyond hope!

See also:

John Williams of Shadowstats: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression

This is the Greatest Depression.


ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the risk of hyperinflation. Worst-case scenario? Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system.

john-williams-shadowstatscom
Courtesy of John WilliamsEconomist/statistician John Williams shifts through the government’s rose-tinted data

Do you believe everything the government tells you? Economist and statistician John Williams sure doesn’t. Williams, who has consulted for individuals and Fortune 500 companies, now uncovers the truth behind the U.S. government’s economic numbers on his Web site at ShadowStats.com. Williams says, over the last several decades, the feds have been infusing their data with optimistic biases to make the economy seem far rosier than it really is. His site reruns the numbers using the original methodology. What he found was not good.

Maymin: So we are technically bankrupt?

Williams: Yes, and when countries are in that state, what they usually do is rev up the printing presses and print the money they need to meet their obligations. And that creates inflation, hyperinflation, and makes the currency worthless.

Obama says America will go bankrupt if Congress doesn’t pass the health care bill.

Well, it’s going to go bankrupt if they do pass the health care bill, too, but at least he’s thinking about it. He talks about it publicly, which is one thing prior administrations refused to do. Give him credit for that. But what he’s setting up with this health care system will just accelerate the process.

Where are we right now?

In terms of the GDP, we are about halfway to depression level. If you look at retail sales, industrial production, we are already well into depressionary. If you look at things such as the housing industry, the new orders for durable goods we are in Great Depression territory. If we have hyperinflation, which I see coming not too far down the road, that would be so disruptive to our system that it would result in the cessation of many levels of normal economic commerce, and that would throw us into a great depression, and one worse than was seen in the 1930s.

What kind of hyperinflation are we talking about?

I am talking something like you saw with the Weimar Republic of the 1930s. There the currency became worthless enough that people used it actually as toilet paper or wallpaper. You could go to a fine restaurant and have an expensive dinner and order an expensive bottle of wine. The next morning that empty bottle of wine is worth more as scrap glass than it had been the night before filled with expensive wine.

We just saw an extreme example in Zimbabwe. … Probably the most extreme hyperinflation that anyone has ever seen. At the same time, you still had a functioning, albeit troubled, Zimbabwe economy. How could that be? They had a workable backup system of a black market in U.S. dollars. We don’t have a backup system of anything. Our system, with its heavy dependence on electronic currency, in a hyperinflation would not do well. It would probably cease to function very quickly. You could have disruptions in supply chains to food stores. The economy would devolve into something like a barter system until they came up with a replacement global currency.

What can we do to avoid hyperinflation? What if we just shut down the Fed or something like that?

We can’t. The actions have already been taken to put us in it. It’s beyond control. The government does put out financial statements usually in December using generally accepted accounting principles, where unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security are included in the same way as corporations account for their employee pension liabilities. And in 2008, for example, the one-year deficit was $5.1 trillion dollars. And that’s instead of the $450 billion, plus or minus, that was officially reported.

Wow.

These numbers are beyond containment. Even the 2008 numbers, you can take 100 percent of people’s income and corporate profit and you’d still be in deficit. There’s no way you can raise enough money in taxes.

What about spending?

If you eliminated all federal expenditures except for Medicare and Social Security, you’d still be in deficit. You have to slash Social Security and Medicare. But I don’t see any political will to rein in the costs the way they have to be reined in. There’s just no way it can be contained. The total federal debt and net present value of the unfunded liabilities right now totals about $75 trillion. That’s five times the level of GDP.

Read moreWe’re Screwed! Hyperinflation like in the Weimar Republic; Great Depression worse than in the 1930s

John Williams of Shadowstats: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression

“The US Has No Way of Avoiding a Financial Armageddon,” Says John Williams.

us-hyperinflationary-great-depression

John Williams, who runs the popular counter government data manipulation site Shadowstats, has thrown down the gauntlet to deflationists, and in an extensive report concludes that the probability of a hyperinflationary episode in America over the next year has reached critical levels. While the debate between deflationists and (hyper)inflationists has been a long and painful one, numerous events set off in motion by the Bernanke Fed (as a direct legacy of the Greenspan multi-decade period of cheap and boundless credit) may have well cast America as the unwilling protagonist in the sequel of the failed monetary policy economic experiment better known as Zimbabwe.

Williams does not mince his words:

The U.S. economic and systemic solvency crises of the last two years are just precursors to a Great Collapse: a hyperinflationary great depression. Such will reflect a complete collapse in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, a collapse in the normal stream of U.S. commercial and economic activity, a collapse in the U.S. financial system as we know it, and a likely realignment of the U.S. political environment. The current U.S. financial markets, financial system and economy remain highly unstable and vulnerable to unexpected shocks. The Federal Reserve is dedicated to preventing deflation, to debasing the U.S. dollar. The results of those efforts are being seen in tentative selling pressures against the U.S. currency and in the rallying price of gold.

And even as Bernanke continues existing in a factless vacuum where he sees no asset bubbles, Williams takes aim at the one party almost exclusively responsible for the economic carnage that will soon transpire:

The crises have been generated out of and are centered on the United States financial system, triggered by the collapse of debt excesses actively encouraged by the Greenspan Federal Reserve. Recognizing that the U.S. economy was sagging under the weight of structural changes created by government trade, regulatory and social policies — policies that limited real consumer income growth — Mr. Greenspan played along with the political and banking systems. He made policy decisions to steal economic activity from the future, fueling economic growth of the last decade largely through debt expansion.

The Greenspan Fed pushed for ever-greater systemic leverage, including the happy acceptance of new financial products, which included instruments of mis-packaged lending risks, designed for consumption by global entities that openly did not understand the nature of the risks being taken. Complicit in this broad malfeasance was the U.S. government, including both major political parties in successive Administrations and Congresses.
As with consumers, the federal government could not make ends meet while appeasing that portion of the electorate that could be kept docile by ever-expanding government programs and increasing government spending. The solution was ever-expanding federal debt and deficits.

Purportedly, it was Arthur Burns, Fed Chairman under Richard Nixon, who first offered the advice that helped to guide Alan Greenspan and a number of Administrations. The gist of the wisdom imparted was that if you ran into problems, you could ignore the budget deficit and the dollar. Ignoring them did not matter, because doing so would not cost you any votes.
Back in 2005, I raised the issue of a then-inevitable U.S. hyperinflation with an advisor to both the Bush Administration and Fed Chairman Greenspan. I was told simply that “It’s too far into the future to worry about.”

Indeed, pushing the big problems into the future appears to have been the working strategy for both the Fed and recent Administrations. Yet, the U.S. dollar and the budget deficit do matter, and the future is at hand. The day of ultimate financial reckoning has arrived, and it is playing out.

Looking at the events over the past year demonstrates that Williams is not just being a drama queen.

Effective financial impairments and at least partial nationalizations or orchestrated bailouts/takeovers resulted for institutions such as Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Washington Mutual, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with a number of further troubled financial institutions. The Fed moved to provide whatever systemic liquidity would be needed, while the federal government moved to finance corporate bailouts and to introduce significant stimulus spending.

Curiously, though, the Fed and the Treasury let Lehman Brothers fail outright, which triggered a foreseeable run on the system and markedly intensified the systemic solvency crisis in September 2008. Whether someone was trying to play political games, with the public and Congress increasingly raising questions of moral hazard issues, or whether the U.S. financial wizards missed what would happen or simply moved to bring the crisis to a head, remains to be seen.

More on the impending timing of the complete economic collapse of the US financial system:

Read moreJohn Williams of Shadowstats: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression

Ron Paul: Be Prepared for the Worst

Quotes from the Great Depression


The large-scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly.

ron-paul-be-prepared-for-the-worst

Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession.

A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset bubble.

Anytime the central bank intervenes to pump trillions of dollars into the financial system, a bubble is created that must eventually deflate. We have seen the results of Alan Greenspan’s excessively low interest rates: the housing bubble, the explosion of subprime loans and the subsequent collapse of the bubble, which took down numerous financial institutions. Rather than allow the market to correct itself and clear away the worst excesses of the boom period, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury colluded to put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars. Those banks and financial institutions that took on the largest risks and performed worst were rewarded with billions in taxpayer dollars, allowing them to survive and compete with their better-managed peers.

Read moreRon Paul: Be Prepared for the Worst

Fall Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H. Obama (The Full Movie HQ)

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
– Benjamin Franklin


Added: 22. October 2009

Fall Of The Republic documents how an offshore corporate cartel is bankrupting the US economy by design. Leaders are now declaring that world government has arrived and that the dollar will be replaced by a new global currency.

President Obama has brazenly violated Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution by seating himself at the head of United Nations’ Security Council, thus becoming the first US president to chair the world body.

A scientific dictatorship is in its final stages of completion, and laws protecting basic human rights are being abolished worldwide; an iron curtain of high-tech tyranny is now descending over the planet.

A worldwide regime controlled by an unelected corporate elite is implementing a planetary carbon tax system that will dominate all human activity and establish a system of neo-feudal slavery.

Read moreFall Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H. Obama (The Full Movie HQ)

Vice President Joe Biden Declares The US Is in A Depression

Joe Biden: “It’s a depression. It’s a depression for millions of Americans.”

Added: 19. Oktober 2009

Related information:

Niall Ferguson (’Ascent of Money’): The US Dollar Is Dying a Slow Death; There Has Been No Stock Market Rally

Gerald Celente: ‘Their is no recovery; It’s a coverup. We are already in the Greatest Depression.’

Read moreVice President Joe Biden Declares The US Is in A Depression

Gerald Celente: ‘Their is no recovery; It’s a coverup. We are already in the Greatest Depression.’

“We are already in the Greatest Depression.”


Date: 19th Oct 09

If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.
– New York Post

When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.
– CNN Headline News

There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about. – CNBC

Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.
– The Wall Street Journal

A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.
– The Economist

Read moreGerald Celente: ‘Their is no recovery; It’s a coverup. We are already in the Greatest Depression.’

US: The Speculative Bubble in Equities and the Case for Deflation, Stagflation and Implosion

“If the Fed continues to apply monetary stimulus and subsidy into this system, without a significant reform, the dollar will eventually “break” and the real economy will temporarily collapse. This will result in the mother of all stagflation.”

In my opinion the US dollar will collapse, the real economy will collapse, the stock market will collapse, but not only temporarily, unless you see time from the perspective of an oak tree.

Stagflation would be great. It rather looks like a hyperinflationary depression to me.

Let’s see.

German miracle in the US?!:

“The traditional solution has been a military conflict, which stifles dissent against the government while generating artificial demand sufficient to energize the productive economy. It is a means of exporting your social misery, official corruption, and fiscal irresponsibility to another, weaker people.”

“One only has to look at the “German miracle” of the 1930’s to see this progression from artificial stimulus, to domestic seizure of assets, to scapegoating and aggressive wars of acquisition, as described above. But this progress out of economic depression had made Hitler and Mussolini the darlings of Wall Street and the international financiers. Indeed, Time Magazine had even named Hitler their “Man of the Year” for this economic miracle, even though it was a fraudulent house of cards.”

Maybe that is what Obama’s  ‘change’ is all about.

We are living in interesting times. That’s for sure.


As part of their program of ‘quantitative easing’ which is another name for currency devaluation through extraordinary expansion of the monetary base, the Fed has very obviously created an inflationary bubble in the US equity market.

(Click on images to enlarge them)

monetarybase

Why has this happened? Because with a monetary expansion intended to help cure an credit bubble crisis that is not accompanied by significant financial market reform, systemic rebalancing, and government programs to cure and correct past abuses of the productive economy through financial engineering, the hot money given by the Fed and Treasury to the banking system will NOT flow into the real economy, but instead will seek high beta returns in financial assets.

price-earnings-ratio

Why lend to the real economy when one can achieve guaranteed returns from the Fed, and much greater returns in the speculative markets if one has the right ‘connections?’

bankcredit

The monetary stimulus of the Fed and the Treasury to help the economy is similar to relief aid sent to a suffering Third World country. It is intercepted and seized by a despotic regime and allocated to its local warlords, with very little going to help the people.

price-earnings-ratio-2

By far this presents the most compelling case for a deflationary episode. As the money that is created flows into financial assets, it is ‘taxed’ by Wall Street which takes a disproportionately large share in the form of fees and bonuses, and what are likely to be extra-legal trading profits.

If the monetary stimulus is subsequently dissipated as the asset bubble collapses, except that which remains in the hands of the few, it leaves the real economy in a relatively poorer condition to produce real savings and wealth than it had been before. This is because the outsized financial sector continues to sap the vitality from the productive economy, to drag it down, to drain it of needed attention and policy focus.

At the heart of it, quantitative easing that is not part of an overall program to reform, regulate, and renew the system to change and correct the elements that caused the crisis in the first place, is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. The optimal time to reform the system was with the collapse of LTCM, and prior to the final repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the raging FIRE sector creating serial bubbles.

These injections of monetary stimulus to maintain a false equilibrium is in reality creating an increasingly unsustainable and unstable monetary disequilibrium within the productive economy. As the real economy contracts, the amount of money supply that the economy can sustain without triggering a monetary inflation decreases, and in a nonlinear manner. This is because the money multiplier does not ‘work’ the same in reverse, owing to the ability of private individuals and corporations to default on debt.

Ironically, with each iteration of this stimulus and seizure of wealth, the dollar becomes progressively weaker because there is a smaller productive economy to support it, even if there are less dollars, despite the nominal gains in GDP which are an accounting illusion. This has been further enabled by the dollar’s status as reserve currency backed by nothing since 1971, which has created an enormous overhang of dollars in the hands of other nations.

Read moreUS: The Speculative Bubble in Equities and the Case for Deflation, Stagflation and Implosion

Peter Schiff: ‘The real economic crash has just started’ (Oct. 03, 2009)

1 of 9:

2 of 9:

3 of 9:

Read morePeter Schiff: ‘The real economic crash has just started’ (Oct. 03, 2009)

Spain tips into a full-blown economic depression

Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression with unemployment approaching levels not seen since the Second Republic of the 1930s and little chance of recovery until well into the next decade, according to a clutch of reports over recent days.

Two Miura fighting bulls are silhouetted against the sky at the Miura ranch near Lora del Rio, southern Spain
Bull run is over: Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression akin to that seen in the 1930s Photo: AP

The Madrid research group RR de Acuña & Asociados said the collapse of Spain’s building industry will cause the economy to contract for the next three years, with a peak to trough loss of over 11pc of GDP. The grim forecast is starkly at odds with claims by premier Jose Luis Zapatero, who still says Spain’s recession will be milder than elsewhere in Europe.

RR de Acuña said the overhang of unsold properties on the market, or still being built, has reached 1,623,000 . This dwarfs annual demand of 218,000, and will take six or seven years to clear. The group said Spain’s unemployment will peak at around 25pc, comparable to the worst chapter of the Great Depression.

Spanish workers typically receive 50pc to 60pc of their former pay for eighteen months after losing their job. Then the guillotine falls. Spain’s parliament has rushed through a law guaranteeing €420 a month for long-term unemployed, but this will not prevent a social crisis if the slump drags on.

Separately, UBS said unemployment will reach 4.8m and may go as high as 5.4m if the job purge in the service sector gathers pace. There is the growing risk of a “Lost Decade” akin to Japan’s malaise after the Nikkei bubble.

Roberto Ruiz, the bank’s Spain strategist, said salaries must fall by 10pc in real terms to regain lost competitiveness, replicating the sort of wage squeeze seen in Germany after reunification.

Read moreSpain tips into a full-blown economic depression

US: Hyperinflation Nation

Hyperinflation Nation starring Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Tom Woods, Gerald Celente, and others.

Prepare now before the US dollar is worthless.

Part 1 :

Read moreUS: Hyperinflation Nation