Canadian Banks Have 4 Billion in cash available in their vaults ONLY. Total Cash in the system is 50 Billion. Total Loans outstanding: 1.5 Trillion. Fraud? You decide: (Interesting Video for Americans too.)
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Coming Nationwide: Minimum Wage Dropping in Colorado
DENVER -- Colorado's minimum wage will drop 3 cents in the new year, marking the first decrease in any state's minimum wage since the federal minimum was adopted in 1938.
Colorado's wage is dropping from $7.28 an hour to the federal minimum of $7.25. That's because Colorado is one of 10 states that tie the minimum wage to inflation. The goal is to protect low-wage workers from having flat wages as the cost of living goes up.
But Colorado's provision also allows wage declines. That means the minimum wage is going down because the state's consumer price index fell 0.6 percent last year.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Colorado's wage is dropping from $7.28 an hour to the federal minimum of $7.25. That's because Colorado is one of 10 states that tie the minimum wage to inflation. The goal is to protect low-wage workers from having flat wages as the cost of living goes up.
But Colorado's provision also allows wage declines. That means the minimum wage is going down because the state's consumer price index fell 0.6 percent last year.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Proof: No Recovery and Getting Worse
Third-quarter tax revenue for state and local governments was down 6.7 percent through Sept. 30, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of decline.
Tax revenue in this year's third quarter totaled $266.5 billion, compared with $285.6 billion reported for the third quarter of 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Revenue has been dropping as the recession cuts into tax receipts from corporate earnings, personal incomes and sales.
In Florida, general sales tax revenue fell 8.2 percent in the third quarter, compared with the same period in 2008. Corporate net income tax fell by 11.1 percent.
Nationwide, general sales tax revenue in the third quarter was down 9 percent. Individual income tax revenue declined 11.7 percent, and corporate income tax revenue dropped 18 percent.
Property tax revenue was the only one of four main tax categories to rise, climbing 3.5 percent nationwide as changes in real estate assessments used to set tax rates trailed declines in market prices.
LINK HERE
US States Running Out Of Employment Money
Twenty-five US states are running out of federal funds to pay unemployment benefits to jobless Americans.
According to The Washington Post, currently 25 states have been forced to borrow USD 25 billion from the federal government to keep their unemployed a float.
The Department of Labor estimates that by 2011 some 40 states will have run out of employment money and will be in need of borrowing USD 90 billion from the federal government.
State authorities currently have two options: Raising taxes or shrinking aid payments.
However, government consultant Leonard Simon says the federal government must create jobs at the state level. "It is surprising to see how wide spread it is" he said.
LINK HERE
According to The Washington Post, currently 25 states have been forced to borrow USD 25 billion from the federal government to keep their unemployed a float.
The Department of Labor estimates that by 2011 some 40 states will have run out of employment money and will be in need of borrowing USD 90 billion from the federal government.
State authorities currently have two options: Raising taxes or shrinking aid payments.
However, government consultant Leonard Simon says the federal government must create jobs at the state level. "It is surprising to see how wide spread it is" he said.
LINK HERE
8 Countries on The Verge Of Going Under
The European Commission (EC) itself has warned that the finances of half of the Eurozone's sixteen economies are at risk of becoming 'unsustainable', essentially bankrupt. As shown in the Wall Street Journal graphic below, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Greece are all teetering on the brink.
While relatively better off European nations would prefer not to bail out their flailing neighbors, the problem with the euro currency union is that their fates are ultimately all tied together via the euro, even if politically they believe themselves to be separate countries. Thus an old criticism of the euro system is appearing more relevant than ever.
LINK HERE
While relatively better off European nations would prefer not to bail out their flailing neighbors, the problem with the euro currency union is that their fates are ultimately all tied together via the euro, even if politically they believe themselves to be separate countries. Thus an old criticism of the euro system is appearing more relevant than ever.
LINK HERE
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
No Jobs For 10 Years
The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America's unemployed - and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises. At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won't happen until much later - perhaps not until the next decade. The deepest and most enduring recession since the 1930s has battered America's work force. The unemployed number 15.4 million. The jobless rate is 10 percent. More than 7 million jobs have vanished. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. And household income, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk in the past decade. Most economists say it could take until at least until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop down to a historically more normal 5.5 percent. And with the job market likely to stay weak, some also foresee another decade of wage stagnation. Even though the economy will likely keep growing, the pace is expected to be plodding. That will make employers reluctant to hire. Further contributing to high unemployment is the likelihood of more people competing for jobs, baby boomers delaying retirement and interest rates edging higher. All this would come after a decade that created relatively few jobs: a net total of just 464,000. By contrast, 21.7 million new jobs were generated between 1989 and 1999. - Huffington Post
Conclusion: Deprived of market signals, investors have a hard time determining what's an efficient business and what is not. They've decided, with considerable reason, that too-big-too-fail banks are probably a good investment. Well, this may be so, but it does nothing for the larger economy. Putting good money after bad into these large fiat-money sinkholes only retards real innovation and sets the economy up for another bout of inflationary bleeding and boom-bust madness. What's needed is a return to a private market gold-and-silver standard that will provide real feedback to those who want to purchase equity in winning entrepreneurial companies. See, it's not hard to explain, but for some reason, the story just doesn't get told, certainly not in the mainstream press.
LINK HERE
2010 Could Be a Year That Sparks Unrest
IF THE world appears to have escaped relatively unscathed by social unrest in 2009, despite suffering the worst recession since the 1930s, it might just prove the lull before the storm. Despite a tentative global recovery, for many people around the world economic and social conditions will continue to deteriorate in 2010. An estimated 60m people worldwide will lose their jobs. Poverty rates will continue to rise, with 200m people at risk of joining the ranks of those living on less than $2 a day. But poverty alone does not spark unrest—exaggerated income inequalities, poor governance, lack of social provision and ethnic tensions are all elements of the brew that foments unrest.
LINK HERE
10 Predictions for 2010
LINK HERE
USA's Highest Grossing Restaurant Opened During The Great Depression: Bankrupt
NEW YORK – Tavern on the Green, once America's highest-grossing restaurant, is singing its culinary swan song.
The former sheepfold at the edge of Central Park, now ringed by twinkling lights and fake topiary animals, is preparing for New Year's Eve, when it will serve its last meal. Just three years ago, it was plating more than 700,000 meals annually, bringing in more than $38 million.
But that astronomical sum wasn't enough to keep the landmark restaurant out of bankruptcy court. Its $8 million debt is to be covered at an auction of Baccarat and Waterford chandeliers, Tiffany stained glass, a mural depicting Central Park and other over-the-top decor that has bewitched visitors for decades.
Even the restaurant's name is up for grabs. At stake is whether another restaurateur taking over the 27,000 square feet of space, owned by the city, can reopen as Tavern on the Green.
For 75 years, since it first opened amid the Great Depression, the Tavern has attracted clients from around the world.
LINK HERE
Feds: 4 Trillion Dollars For Next Market Crash
(snippet)
Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.
-- Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can’t authorize these funds unless “there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back.” Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well.
More Bailouts
-- The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms’ debts. Bondholders can sleep easy -- there are more bailouts to come.
LINK HERE
The World Has Traded Freedom for Security
LINK
Americans are Lured into Debt Servitude by Promises of Mega Wealth
Many Americans are not buying the recent stock market rally. This is being reflected in multiple polls showing negative attitudes towards the economy and Wall Street. Wall Street is so disconnected from the average American that they fail to see the 27 million unemployed and underemployed Americans that now have a harder time believing the gospel of financial engineering prosperity. Americans have a reason to be dubious regarding the recovery because jobs are the main push for most Americans. A recent study shows that over 70 percent of Americans derive their monthly income from an actual W-2 job. In other words, working is the prime mover and source of their income. Yet the financial elite have very little understanding of this concept. Why? 42 percent of financial wealth is controlled by the top 1 percent. We would need to go back to the Great Depression to see such lopsided data.
Many Americans are still struggling at the depths of this recession. We have 37 million Americans on food stamps and many wait until midnight of the last day of the month so checks can clear to buy food at Wal-Mart. Do you think these people are starring at the stock market? The overall data is much worse:
LINK HERE
Your New Years Resolution: Move Your Money
Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.
The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.
LINK HERE
The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.
LINK HERE
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
More Bailout Money For GMAC "Bank":3.5 Billion
Washington -- The Treasury Department plans to announce as early Wednesday afternoon that it will give GMAC Inc. around $3.5 billion in additional capital, sources told The Detroit News.
Detroit-based GMAC and the Treasury Department have been in talks for months to finalize the amount of money the company would receive. The Treasury Department said earlier this year it would invest up to $5.6 billion more in GMAC -- on top of $13.4 billion GMAC has received over the last year.
GMAC spokeswoman Gina Proia declined to say how much the company expected to get.
"As we have previously stated, GMAC has been conducting a strategic review of its business and evaluating options to address the challenges at ResCap and the mortgage operations," Proia said referring to GMAC's residential mortgage unit. "Critical objectives in the process would be to take actions that position GMAC for improved financial performance and to repay the U.S. government."
LINK HERE
Chinese Firm Says Won't Pay Goldman Sachs on Options Losses
BEIJING, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A small Chinese power generator on Tuesday rejected demands from a Goldman Sachs unit to pay for nearly $80 million lost on two oil hedging contracts, part of a long-running dispute over how China deals with derivatives losses.
Goldman Sachs (GS.N) was one of the foreign banks, along with Citigroup (C.N), Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), blamed by the state assets watchdog for providing "extremely complicated" and difficult to understand derivatives products.
Shenzhen Nanshan Power (000037.SZ) (200037.SZ) said in a statement that it received several notices from J. Aron & Company, a trading subsidiary of Goldman Sachs (GS.N), for at least $79.96 million as compensation for terminating oil option contracts.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Goldman Sachs (GS.N) was one of the foreign banks, along with Citigroup (C.N), Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), blamed by the state assets watchdog for providing "extremely complicated" and difficult to understand derivatives products.
Shenzhen Nanshan Power (000037.SZ) (200037.SZ) said in a statement that it received several notices from J. Aron & Company, a trading subsidiary of Goldman Sachs (GS.N), for at least $79.96 million as compensation for terminating oil option contracts.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
U.S. Treasury Bond Market Crash Not Stocks the Big Story of 2010
Let’s pretend the US is a company.
For starters, this company has a massive debt problem. The official number is $12 trillion and counting, which is roughly the equivalent of one year’s annual production. On the surface, that’s not TOO bad.
However, if you treat the US’s balance sheet according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) you have to also consider future liabilities in the form of Social Security and Medicare, which puts total debt at $65 trillion: an amount equal to 5 years’ worth of production: a REAL issue.
A debt load of this size requires massive sales and cash flow to service it. However, the problem is that the company’s primary sales segment (tax receipts) is plummeting. Indeed, individual income tax receipts are down nearly 30% from last year (a year that the economy was already falling off a cliff). Similarly, corporate tax receipts are negative.
Now, the company has just gotten a new CEO (the old one left after racking up this massive debt load). However, rather than trimming the fat from the company, he’s decided to INCREASE its operating costs/ annual spend. So the company is now having to issue MORE debt (roughly $150 billion a month) at the same time that it is trying to roll some of its OLD debt over.
This MIGHT work if the company’s current debt holders (foreign governments, especially China and Japan), weren’t already beginning to doubt that they’d ever get their money back.
Indeed, a few weeks ago, the Treasury Department released its Treasury International Capital Data for October: the numbers showing foreign interest in new debt issuance. The following is a BIG deal:
Net foreign acquisition of long-term securities, taking into account adjustments, is estimated to have been $8.3 billion (Graham’s note: we’ve issued nearly $2 TRILLION in debt this year).
LINK HERE
As Slump Hits Home, Civilians Doing Investigative Work
MESA, Ariz. -- The police department in this city of 470,000 has lost about 50 officers, and is hiring lower-paid civilians to do investigative work. The Little League has to pay the city $15 an hour to turn on ball-field lights. The library now closes its main location on Sundays, and city offices are open only four days a week. This holiday season, the city didn't put up festive lights along the downtown streets.
Mesa’s tax receipts, depressed by the recession, will likely come back one of these days. But Mayor Scott Smith doesn’t believe city services will return to prerecession levels for a long time, if ever. “We are redefining what cities are going to be,” says Mr. Smith, a Republican who ran a homebuilding company before his election last year.
Months after many economists declared the recession over, cities are only now beginning to feel the full brunt of it. Recessions often take longer to trickle down to local government, in part because it takes time for the sales and property-tax revenues on which municipalities depend to catch up with a depressed economy.
LINK HERE
Mesa’s tax receipts, depressed by the recession, will likely come back one of these days. But Mayor Scott Smith doesn’t believe city services will return to prerecession levels for a long time, if ever. “We are redefining what cities are going to be,” says Mr. Smith, a Republican who ran a homebuilding company before his election last year.
Months after many economists declared the recession over, cities are only now beginning to feel the full brunt of it. Recessions often take longer to trickle down to local government, in part because it takes time for the sales and property-tax revenues on which municipalities depend to catch up with a depressed economy.
LINK HERE
If YRC Trucking Stops Everything Stops
There is a tremendous amount of reasons why you should be paying attention to the trucking industry at the current moment. Arrow Trucking just went down the drain on Thursday, December 24, 2009--- halting all operations, canceling fuel cards, and telling drivers (by direction of Daimler Financial who funded the entire fleet of trucks) to return their rigs to the nearest Freightliner dealer and get a bus ticket home. I have recently seen this article concerning YRCTrucking (YRC Worldwide) and that GOLDMAN SACHS IS TRYING TO BANKRUPT YRC through bad derivatives and credit default swaps. Keep in mind that YRC(W) is the largest, most comprehensive network in North America and one of the largest in the world for that matter. IT IS OF GREAT CONCERN to pay attention to such a matter.
Trucking Bankruptcies threaten 3 major necessities:
Food
Goods/Materials (commodities necessary for everyday life [-life essentials/non-life essentials])
Fuel Delivery
Why the concern that I insist?..........
LINK HERE
Trucking Bankruptcies threaten 3 major necessities:
Food
Goods/Materials (commodities necessary for everyday life [-life essentials/non-life essentials])
Fuel Delivery
Why the concern that I insist?..........
LINK HERE
Monday, December 28, 2009
Wall Street's 10 Greatest Lies of 2009
(snippets)
1) The economy has improved.
Earlier this month, Bernanke declared, “Having faced the most serious financial crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression, our economy has made important progress during the past year. Although the economic stress faced by many families and businesses remains intense, with job openings scarce and credit still hard to come by, the financial system and the economy have moved back from the brink of collapse."
2) If you give banks capital, they will lend it out.
On Jan. 13, 2009 Bernanke concluded that "More capital injections and guarantees may become necessary to ensure stability and the normalization of credit markets.” He said that "Our economic system is critically dependent on the free flow of credit." He was referring to the big banks. Not the little people.
3) Taxpayers are being repaid.
On December 17, the Treasury Department announced: ”As a result of our efforts under EESA (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that spawned TARP), confidence in our financial system has improved, credit is flowing, and the economy is growing. The government is exiting from its emergency financial policies and taxpayers are being repaid.”
LINK HERE
1) The economy has improved.
Earlier this month, Bernanke declared, “Having faced the most serious financial crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression, our economy has made important progress during the past year. Although the economic stress faced by many families and businesses remains intense, with job openings scarce and credit still hard to come by, the financial system and the economy have moved back from the brink of collapse."
2) If you give banks capital, they will lend it out.
On Jan. 13, 2009 Bernanke concluded that "More capital injections and guarantees may become necessary to ensure stability and the normalization of credit markets.” He said that "Our economic system is critically dependent on the free flow of credit." He was referring to the big banks. Not the little people.
3) Taxpayers are being repaid.
On December 17, the Treasury Department announced: ”As a result of our efforts under EESA (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that spawned TARP), confidence in our financial system has improved, credit is flowing, and the economy is growing. The government is exiting from its emergency financial policies and taxpayers are being repaid.”
LINK HERE
Invisible Homeless In The Suburbs
You don't see them standing on corners rattling cups for change. You don't see them holding up cardboard "Will Work for Food" signs at busy intersections or playing musical instruments on O'Hare walkways.
They are the thousands of homeless families in the suburbs that shuffle from couch to couch at the homes of friends and relatives, or sleep in cars, shelters, businesses and rundown motels.
They are people like Angela and David Johnson, and their two children - Riley, 7, and Deagan, 5 - a suburban family that, like thousands of others, started off with a bright future but through either bad decisions or circumstances ended up scratching and clawing for day-to-day existence in the cold shadows of homelessness.
LINK HERE
They are the thousands of homeless families in the suburbs that shuffle from couch to couch at the homes of friends and relatives, or sleep in cars, shelters, businesses and rundown motels.
They are people like Angela and David Johnson, and their two children - Riley, 7, and Deagan, 5 - a suburban family that, like thousands of others, started off with a bright future but through either bad decisions or circumstances ended up scratching and clawing for day-to-day existence in the cold shadows of homelessness.
LINK HERE
Federal Reserve: Keep Rates Low To Create a Stock Market Bubble
Millions of Americans are paying a high price for a safe place to put their money: extremely low interest rates on savings accounts and certificates of deposit.
Joe Parks, a retired accountant, said retirees and the elderly would take up to a three-quarters of a percent cut in income.
The elderly and others on fixed incomes have been especially hard hit. Many have seen returns on savings, C.D.’s and government bonds drop to niggling amounts recently, often costing them money once inflation, fees and taxes are considered.
“Open a Savings Plus Account today and get a great rate,” read an advertisement in the Dec. 16 Newsday for Citibank, which was then offering 1.2 percent for an account. (As low as it was, the offer was good only for accounts of $25,000 and up.)
“They’re advertising it in the papers as if they’re actually proud of that,” said Steven Weisman, a title insurance consultant in New York. “It’s a joke.”
(snippet)
Many think the Federal Reserve is fueling a stock market bubble by keeping rates so low that investors decide to bet on stocks instead. Mr. Parks of Better Investing moved more money into the stock market early this year, when C.D.’s he held began maturing and he could not nearly recover the income they had generated by rolling them over.
LINK HERE
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
LINK HERE
Joe Parks, a retired accountant, said retirees and the elderly would take up to a three-quarters of a percent cut in income.
The elderly and others on fixed incomes have been especially hard hit. Many have seen returns on savings, C.D.’s and government bonds drop to niggling amounts recently, often costing them money once inflation, fees and taxes are considered.
“Open a Savings Plus Account today and get a great rate,” read an advertisement in the Dec. 16 Newsday for Citibank, which was then offering 1.2 percent for an account. (As low as it was, the offer was good only for accounts of $25,000 and up.)
“They’re advertising it in the papers as if they’re actually proud of that,” said Steven Weisman, a title insurance consultant in New York. “It’s a joke.”
(snippet)
Many think the Federal Reserve is fueling a stock market bubble by keeping rates so low that investors decide to bet on stocks instead. Mr. Parks of Better Investing moved more money into the stock market early this year, when C.D.’s he held began maturing and he could not nearly recover the income they had generated by rolling them over.
LINK HERE
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
LINK HERE
Sunday, December 27, 2009
The New Unemployment: No More Permanent Employment
One of the ways we kid ourselves is calling our unemployment rate 10 percent. In government-speak that's the "U-3" number, which counts just current job seekers. What it doesn't count are "discouraged" workers, who have given up looking, and the "involuntarily part-time" or underemployed workers, who also can't find full-time work.
That's the "U-6" number, a more recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics metric. Today it's more than 17 percent, which means real unemployment is approaching one in five Americans. And, yes, that's a (post-Depression) record.
Growing evidence suggests that something far more fundamental than just another economic cycle may be going on. The modern office/factory-model job as we know it actually could be headed for extinction. Goodbye, permanent employment. Hello, contingent work, contractual employment and "composite" careers.
Many of us know people like my relative (by marriage) who's a part-time associate pastor who also delivers newspapers, does home remodeling and sells Melaleuca. It's a living -- in fact, he's been doing it for years by choice. We're also seeing more and more six-month and one-year contract jobs with employers who don't want to commit to workers beyond that. This may well be the shape of things to come.
William Bridges, the visionary executive development consultant and author who named this phenomenon "dejobbing," foresaw this years ago: "What is disappearing is not just a certain number of jobs -- or jobs in certain industries or jobs in some part of the country or even jobs in America as a whole. What is disappearing is the very thing itself, the job."
Try this experiment: If you've worked long enough to have had multiple jobs, tally up that total number. Then subtract however many of those positions no longer exist. Unless you're in health care, education or some other recession-resistant field, the number you have left may surprise you by its tininess.
In my own case, I've had (not counting freelance writing stints) six full-time jobs. Of those, only two still exist. And of the four that went bye-bye, three of those employers no longer exist (two newspapers and a public relations firm).
LINK HERE
That's the "U-6" number, a more recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics metric. Today it's more than 17 percent, which means real unemployment is approaching one in five Americans. And, yes, that's a (post-Depression) record.
Growing evidence suggests that something far more fundamental than just another economic cycle may be going on. The modern office/factory-model job as we know it actually could be headed for extinction. Goodbye, permanent employment. Hello, contingent work, contractual employment and "composite" careers.
Many of us know people like my relative (by marriage) who's a part-time associate pastor who also delivers newspapers, does home remodeling and sells Melaleuca. It's a living -- in fact, he's been doing it for years by choice. We're also seeing more and more six-month and one-year contract jobs with employers who don't want to commit to workers beyond that. This may well be the shape of things to come.
William Bridges, the visionary executive development consultant and author who named this phenomenon "dejobbing," foresaw this years ago: "What is disappearing is not just a certain number of jobs -- or jobs in certain industries or jobs in some part of the country or even jobs in America as a whole. What is disappearing is the very thing itself, the job."
Try this experiment: If you've worked long enough to have had multiple jobs, tally up that total number. Then subtract however many of those positions no longer exist. Unless you're in health care, education or some other recession-resistant field, the number you have left may surprise you by its tininess.
In my own case, I've had (not counting freelance writing stints) six full-time jobs. Of those, only two still exist. And of the four that went bye-bye, three of those employers no longer exist (two newspapers and a public relations firm).
LINK HERE
Walking Away From The House She Can Afford
Many homeowners who are tens thousands of dollars underwater on their mortgages — meaning they owe more than the value of their homes — have decided it's just not worth it. Some, like Heather Baker, can even afford their payments, but they're walking away anyway.
Baker is done with being a homeowner. Last month, she stopped paying her mortgage.
"Who says that my American dream has to be a home with a white picket fence and all of that?" says Baker, sitting at her dining room table.
But that's not what she was saying three years ago when she bought her four-bedroom home in a distant suburb of Washington, D.C. Baker was about to turn 40 and felt like she needed to own.
"I was like, 'Wow, you know, I need to have a home. I need to be in a home,' " Baker says. "My birthday was in September. I purchased the house in August. So I got the house before I turned 40, but it wasn't a great investment."
A Bad Investment
She figures the house she bought for $465,000 won't sell for more than $225,000 now. That lower figure is what a house down the street went for earlier this year in a foreclosure auction. Like a lot of people, Baker bought her house with no money down. The mortgage broker she worked with told her she qualified for the loan based on her credit score alone.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Baker is done with being a homeowner. Last month, she stopped paying her mortgage.
"Who says that my American dream has to be a home with a white picket fence and all of that?" says Baker, sitting at her dining room table.
But that's not what she was saying three years ago when she bought her four-bedroom home in a distant suburb of Washington, D.C. Baker was about to turn 40 and felt like she needed to own.
"I was like, 'Wow, you know, I need to have a home. I need to be in a home,' " Baker says. "My birthday was in September. I purchased the house in August. So I got the house before I turned 40, but it wasn't a great investment."
A Bad Investment
She figures the house she bought for $465,000 won't sell for more than $225,000 now. That lower figure is what a house down the street went for earlier this year in a foreclosure auction. Like a lot of people, Baker bought her house with no money down. The mortgage broker she worked with told her she qualified for the loan based on her credit score alone.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Size of Derivatives Bubble = $190K Per Person on Planet or 1.144 Quadrillion
The Invisible One Quadrillion Dollar Equation -- Asymmetric Leverage and Systemic Risk
According to various distinguished sources including the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland -- the central bankers' bank -- the amount of outstanding derivatives worldwide as of December 2007 crossed USD 1.144 Quadrillion, ie, USD 1,144 Trillion. The main categories of the USD 1.144 Quadrillion derivatives market were the following:
1. Listed credit derivatives stood at USD 548 trillion;
2. The Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivatives stood in notional or face value at USD 596 trillion and included:
a. Interest Rate Derivatives at about USD 393+ trillion;
b. Credit Default Swaps at about USD 58+ trillion;
c. Foreign Exchange Derivatives at about USD 56+ trillion;
d. Commodity Derivatives at about USD 9 trillion;
e. Equity Linked Derivatives at about USD 8.5 trillion; and
f. Unallocated Derivatives at about USD 71+ trillion.
Quadrillion? That is a number only super computing engineers and astronomers used to use, not economists and bankers!
LINK HERE
According to various distinguished sources including the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland -- the central bankers' bank -- the amount of outstanding derivatives worldwide as of December 2007 crossed USD 1.144 Quadrillion, ie, USD 1,144 Trillion. The main categories of the USD 1.144 Quadrillion derivatives market were the following:
1. Listed credit derivatives stood at USD 548 trillion;
2. The Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivatives stood in notional or face value at USD 596 trillion and included:
a. Interest Rate Derivatives at about USD 393+ trillion;
b. Credit Default Swaps at about USD 58+ trillion;
c. Foreign Exchange Derivatives at about USD 56+ trillion;
d. Commodity Derivatives at about USD 9 trillion;
e. Equity Linked Derivatives at about USD 8.5 trillion; and
f. Unallocated Derivatives at about USD 71+ trillion.
Quadrillion? That is a number only super computing engineers and astronomers used to use, not economists and bankers!
LINK HERE
China: 1000 Tons of Gold Will Reach 10,000 Tons in 8-10 years
In 1981, China had 395 tonnes of gold holdings; it increased to 500.8 tonnes in 2001, and 600 tonnes in 2002. In April 2009, China officially announced that it has increased its gold holdings to 1054 tonnes. Since then, Chinese officials and People’s Bank of China have been meticulously chalking out plans to build up gold reserves in the next one decade.
According to Zhang of the China Gold Association (CGA), India’s decision to buy IMF gold has been the real boost for China’s recent spirited moves to step up gold reserves.
“In view of the declining US dollar value, it is paramount that China steps up gold reserves. How to do this is the only question that China is debating these days. The possible steps include opening up new gold mines, aggressively going for gold mining, buying gold from the open market etc. All said and done, it is imperative that China needs to buy more gold,” Zhang points out.
Free Republic: “We recommend that China’s gold reserve should reach 6000 tons in 3~5 years, and probably reach as high as 10,000 tons in 8~10 years,” according to Ji Xiaonan on November 28 at the third Chinese Industry Stability Forum. He is the head of the supervisory committee at the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
LINK HERE
Central Banks Keen to Stock Up On Gold
LINK HERE
According to Zhang of the China Gold Association (CGA), India’s decision to buy IMF gold has been the real boost for China’s recent spirited moves to step up gold reserves.
“In view of the declining US dollar value, it is paramount that China steps up gold reserves. How to do this is the only question that China is debating these days. The possible steps include opening up new gold mines, aggressively going for gold mining, buying gold from the open market etc. All said and done, it is imperative that China needs to buy more gold,” Zhang points out.
Free Republic: “We recommend that China’s gold reserve should reach 6000 tons in 3~5 years, and probably reach as high as 10,000 tons in 8~10 years,” according to Ji Xiaonan on November 28 at the third Chinese Industry Stability Forum. He is the head of the supervisory committee at the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
LINK HERE
Central Banks Keen to Stock Up On Gold
LINK HERE
Friday, December 25, 2009
Getting It Cheap: Rothschilds to invest millions in Latvia
Representatives of the Rothschild dynasty are considering investing tens of million of euros in the Baltic countries.
The Baltic Course reported with reference to a story in the newspaper Telegraf last week that the Rothschild family is mostly interested in infrastructure development projects and concessions.
Representatives of the Rothschild family have expressed interest to meet with Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis to discuss these matters, according to sources close to the premier.
LINK HERE
Economic Reality Blog
Here
The Baltic Course reported with reference to a story in the newspaper Telegraf last week that the Rothschild family is mostly interested in infrastructure development projects and concessions.
Representatives of the Rothschild family have expressed interest to meet with Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis to discuss these matters, according to sources close to the premier.
LINK HERE
Economic Reality Blog
Here
Ponzi Scheme: Federal Reserve Using "Households" As Phantom Debt Buyers
To our surprise, the only group to actually substantially increase their purchases in 2009 is defined in the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Report as the “Household Sector”. This category of buyers bought $15 billion worth of treasuries in 2008, but by Q3 2009 had purchased a whopping $528.7 billion worth. At the end of Q3 this Household Sector category now owns more treasuries than the Federal Reserve itself.
So to summarize, the majority buyers of Treasury securities in 2009 were:
Foreign and International buyers who purchased $697.5 billion.
The Federal Reserve who bought $286 billion.
The Household Sector who bought $528 billion to Q3 – which puts them on track purchase $704 billion for fiscal 2009.
These three buying groups represent the lion’s share of the $1.885 trillion of debt that was issued by the US in fiscal 2009.
We must admit that we were surprised to discover that “Households” had bought so many Treasuries in 2009. They bought 35 times more government debt than they did in 2008. Given the financial condition of the average household in 2009, this makes little sense to us. With unemployment and foreclosures skyrocketing, who could afford to increase treasury investments to such a large degree? For our more discerning readers, this enormous “Household” investment was made outside of Money Market Funds, Mutual Funds, ETF’s, Life Insurance Companies, Pension and Retirement funds and Closed-End Funds, which are all separate reporting categories. This leaves a very important question - who makes up this Household Sector?
LINK HERE
2010 Economy Recovery: Rejoice
LINK HERE
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Unlimited Bailout: Fannie, Freddie Lifeline for 3 Years
Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury Department will remove the caps on aid to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the next three years, to allay investor concerns that the companies will exhaust the available government assistance.
The two companies, the largest sources of mortgage financing in the U.S., are currently under government conservatorship and have caps of $200 billion each on backstop capital from the Treasury. Under the new agreement announced today, these limits can rise as needed to cover net worth losses through 2012.
The Obama administration is “beginning to realize it’s not getting better and it’s not likely to get better” soon in the housing market, said Julian Mann, who helps oversee $5.5 billion in bonds as a vice president at First Pacific Advisors LLC in Los Angeles. “They don’t want the foreclosures now, so they’re saying, we’ll pay whatever it takes to continue to kick the can down the road.”
LINK HERE
The two companies, the largest sources of mortgage financing in the U.S., are currently under government conservatorship and have caps of $200 billion each on backstop capital from the Treasury. Under the new agreement announced today, these limits can rise as needed to cover net worth losses through 2012.
The Obama administration is “beginning to realize it’s not getting better and it’s not likely to get better” soon in the housing market, said Julian Mann, who helps oversee $5.5 billion in bonds as a vice president at First Pacific Advisors LLC in Los Angeles. “They don’t want the foreclosures now, so they’re saying, we’ll pay whatever it takes to continue to kick the can down the road.”
LINK HERE
Merry Christmas We are Screwed: Depression Worse Than The 1930's Coming
ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the risk of hyperinflation. Worst-case scenario? Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system.
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.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Fiscal Crisis For Hawaii, Arizona and Oklahoma
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hawaii's meticulous tourism records are thick with minus symbols, the basis for a projected state budget gap of $1.23 billion that Governor Linda Lingle says is a "fiscal crisis" that cannot be closed with spending cuts alone.
While strains of "Mele Kalikimaka" greet tourists, Lingle's proposal this week to balance Hawaii's budget over its two-year cycle ending in June 2011 lacked similar Christmas season cheer because visitor numbers and spending are weak, Georgina Kawamura, Lingle's director of budget and finance, told Reuters in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
"I can only remain hopeful that we are now at the bottom and will start to pick up," Kawamura said.
For the current fiscal year, Hawaii's budget is seen suffering a $721 million gap, followed by a projected $509.5 million deficit in the coming fiscal year.
"The stark reality of continuing declining general fund revenues means the state does not have sufficient resources to cover all expenditures," Lingle said on Monday in a bluntly worded budget message to lawmakers.
She said it is possible Hawaii's revenues may not recover to pre-recession levels until 2014.
LINK HERE
Arizona Collapse Near
LINK HERE
Oklahoma Has Biggest Deficit of All States
LINK HERE
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
61 Year Old Trucking Firm Going Bankrupt: Freight Down 20%
Arrow Trucking Co., the 61-year-old Tulsa-based flatbed carrier, has suspended operations indefinitely, laying off employees and stranding scores of drivers around the country by cancelling fuel credit cards, company employees and drivers said.
After closing down the company phone system Tuesday morning and not accepting cell phone messages throughout the day, the company issued a statement from CEO Doug Pielsticker at 6:21 p.m.
“The company has been in negotiations with its principal lender,” Pielsticker said.
“Those negotiations are continuing, but the lender has elected to proceed with securing its collateral. The company is communicating with several interested parties and continues to seek a prompt resolution.”
One of Arrow’s lenders is Daimler Financial Services, which owns the company’s Freightliner trucks.
Beginning just before noon Tuesday, callers to Arrow’s west Tulsa offices were greeted with a recorded message: “Drivers, if you’re in Freightliner KW, please take your truck to the nearest Freightliner shop. Call this hot line number to Daimler, (877) 294-9679. They will arrange for you a bus ticket home.”
A spokesman for Daimler said the company is offering stranded drivers a bus ticket home or $200 in cash.
But many drivers didn’t have enough gas to make it to a Freightliner shop, Tulsa or even their next delivery.
LINK HERE
Mother Of All Financial Crises Coming: California
(snippet)
We’re left with the question: what happens when California defaults?
The worst case would be the mother of all financial crises. According to the California State Treasurer’s office, California has over $68 billion in public debt, but the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters has tried to count total California public debt, including that of local municipalities, and his total reaches $500 billion. Whatever the amount, the impact of default could be larger than the debt amount would imply. Other states – New York, Illinois, New Jersey, for example – are in almost as bad shape as California, and they could follow California’s example. The realization that a state could default would shock markets every bit as much as when Lehman Brothers failed. Given the precarious state of our economy and the financial sector, another fiscal crisis would be disastrous, with impacts far beyond California’s borders.
What would a California default look like? In a sense, we’ve already seen California default, when that state issued vouchers. If any company tried that, they would be in bankruptcy court in days. Issuing vouchers didn’t trigger a California crisis because banks were willing to honor the vouchers. If banks refuse to honor the vouchers next time, employees and vendors won’t be paid, and state operations will come to a halt. This could happen if our legislature locks up and is unable to act on the current $21 billion problem.
LINK HERE
Small-business bankruptcies rise 81% in California
With credit tight and consumers still pinching their pennies, many business owners find they can't go on.
LINK HERE
UN to Produce Bullion coins as World Currency
The announcement by the United Nations this week that it will license the minting of silver and gold bullion coins bearing the UN logo may be the button that launches metal prices into orbit.
In its wide-ranging report this fall, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) stated that the system of currencies and international banking practices within today’s economies were inadequate, and responsible for the present economic crisis. The report advocates that the present monetary system, wherein the dollar acts as the global reserve currency be re-examined “with urgency”.
LINK HERE
Billionaires Get Taxed at 15% ONLY
Video Link Here
While You Were Sleeping… The Economy Collapsed
One of the most powerful forces in human psychology is the force of habit. Consistency, apathetic comfort, ties men to the ocean bottom to squeeze every ounce of oxygen from their last breath until it is gone, and we wake up at 50 or 60, only realizing then that we have done the same things and thought the same thoughts for decades without err. Repetition makes us easy to startle and easy to control. Any sudden break in daily routine can cause most people to freeze; animals gripped with terror at the very possibility of necessary individual action or adaptation.
This same repetition induces a type of “sleepwalk” in the average person, a zombie-like reanimation of brain functions that shriveled up and died years before, giving the impression of “life,” but in reality, it is merely a life on autopilot.
This is what makes catastrophes so catastrophic. It is not always the events themselves that reap such destruction, but people’s delayed reactions and dulled senses. The more ignorant the populace, the more magnified and painful such events become. Our lack of knowledge and reasonable action sets our own house ablaze, brings economies to ruin, and murders civilizations. Others may tip the problems into motion, but in the end, all of us, each and every individual, is responsible for the final result.
It is nearly Christmas, 2009, and the dangers of routine are never more blindingly obvious than they are at this time of year. A dangerous economic storm looms, its effects culminating most likely sometime in 2010. Many people know its there, they can feel it, but the chains of routine drag them back. “Our world will remain the same tomorrow as it was today…” they tell themselves, “…how could things possibly change?”
LINK HERE
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Are Americans a Broken People?
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?
Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?
What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population?
Can anything be done to turn this around?
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them?
Yes. It is called the "abuse syndrome." How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims' faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker. So the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.
Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes?
In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance, and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal.
Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry, yet only a handful of U.S. citizens have protested these circumstances.
LINK HERE
New Taxes for New Hampshire Small Businesses
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?
What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population?
Can anything be done to turn this around?
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them?
Yes. It is called the "abuse syndrome." How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims' faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker. So the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.
Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes?
In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance, and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal.
Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry, yet only a handful of U.S. citizens have protested these circumstances.
LINK HERE
New Taxes for New Hampshire Small Businesses
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
10 New Taxes To Pay For Healthcare
Taxes that will be passed down to you:
So-called Cadillac plans -- any employer sponsored plan that costs more than $8,500 per year -- will face a 40% additional marginal tax.
Taking money out of your Health Savings Account early, for non-medical purposes, will get you slapped with a 20% tax. That's up from 10% now.
Big pharmaceutical manufacturers will face a $2.3 billion annual "assessment."
Device makers, like the maker of this pacemaker, will face a $2 billion annual tax
Love your flexible spending account? What you can donate to it is capped at $2500 per year. Previously, there was no cap.
Health insurers will get hit with a new $6.7 billion annual fee.
If your employer pays for your drugs, but you're eligible for Medicare Part D, that's no longer tax deductible.
Want a nose job or a boob job? Uncle Sam will take 5% off the top
Are you rich and going to the hospital? That will cost you 0.5% extra.
Health insurance providers will face lower tax deductibility.
LINK HERE
MSNBC: Unemployment Fund Broke In Most States
The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.
The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments.
Debates over the state benefit programs have erupted in South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Vermont and Indiana. And the budget gaps are expected to spread and become more acute in the coming year, compelling legislators in many states to reconsider their operations.
Currently, 25 states have run out of unemployment money and have borrowed $24 billion from the federal government to cover the gaps. By 2011, according to Department of Labor estimates, 40 state funds will have been emptied by the jobless tsunami.
"There's immense pressure, and it's got to be faced," said Indiana state Rep. David Niezgodski (D), a sponsor of a bill that addressed the gaps in Indiana's unemployment program. "Our system was absolutely broke."
LINK HERE
The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments.
Debates over the state benefit programs have erupted in South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Vermont and Indiana. And the budget gaps are expected to spread and become more acute in the coming year, compelling legislators in many states to reconsider their operations.
Currently, 25 states have run out of unemployment money and have borrowed $24 billion from the federal government to cover the gaps. By 2011, according to Department of Labor estimates, 40 state funds will have been emptied by the jobless tsunami.
"There's immense pressure, and it's got to be faced," said Indiana state Rep. David Niezgodski (D), a sponsor of a bill that addressed the gaps in Indiana's unemployment program. "Our system was absolutely broke."
LINK HERE
Monday, December 21, 2009
The End is Inching Closer: Ford Offers Buyouts to ALL Factory Workers
(AP) Ford Motor Co. says it is offering buyout and early retirement incentives to all of its 41,000 U.S. hourly workers to further reduce its factory work force.
Company spokesman Mark Truby said Ford still has too many factory workers for its current sales levels.
He would not say how many workers the company wants to leave but said Ford is working that out with the United Auto Workers union. Ford currently has about 600 blue-collar workers laid off but available for recall.
The buyout offer includes $50,000 cash plus a $25,000 car voucher or $20,000 more in cash. The retirement package includes $40,000 cash for skilled trades and $20,000 for production workers.
LINK HERE
The National Inflation Association Predictions For 2010
December 21, 2009
NIA's Top 10 Predictions for 2010
The National Inflation Association is pleased to announce its top 10 predictions for 2010.
1) We will learn the 2009 holiday shopping season was a bust.
The Commerce Department reported seasonally adjusted November retail sales up 1.3% from October. However, if you apply the average seasonal adjustments that were used during the years 2006 and 2007, which account for a normal spike in November sales due to the holiday shopping season, retail sales were actually down 1.3% in November.
NIA believes any year-over-year increase in 2009 holiday season retail sales will be bottom bouncing from 2008 and not an indication of an economic recovery. Most likely, adjusted for inflation, retail sales will be flat over a year ago. We expect to see a sharp sell off in many retail stocks, as a full economic recovery appears to be already priced into their share prices.
2) We will see a major decline in the Dow/Gold ratio.
The Dow/Gold ratio is currently 9.3, having bounced from the low of 7 it saw in early 2009. We are likely to see a decline in the Dow/Gold ratio to below 7 in 2010.
Many people who have bought U.S. stocks on the bet of an economic recovery, will soon realize the economy is not recovering and stocks have been rallying only due to inflation. Although some people selling stocks may once again mistakenly move to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven, we believe an increasing amount of people will avoid the U.S. dollar and buy gold as a safe haven.
3) We will see a sharp decline in the Gold/Silver ratio.
The Gold/Silver ratio is currently 64, above the average of the past 100 years of 50. Between the years 1,000 and 1,873 when silver was used as real money, the Gold/Silver ratio traded between 10 and 16. In recent history, the Gold/Silver ratio dipped below 20 on two occasions, once in 1968 and once again in 1980.
NIA believes silver prices will continue to outperform gold in 2010, as the world once again begins looking at silver as money, instead of just an industrial metal. The Gold/Silver ratio could decline to below 50 in 2010.
4) The U.S. Dollar Index will see short-term bounce, then huge crash.
We are at a point where there are more people who are bearish on the U.S. dollar than ever before, which means from a technical standpoint it is overdue for a short-term bounce. However, we would not consider going long the dollar even as a trade. A huge crash in the U.S. dollar could occur at any time.
The world has become flooded with U.S. dollars. Foreigners currently hold over $10 trillion in dollar-denominated assets that can be dumped at any time. With the Federal Reserve continuing to expand its monetary base to record highs, as soon as banks begin lending their excess reserves we could see a spike in consumer prices and a rush to get out of U.S. dollars.
5) Oil will rise back above $100 per barrel.
MORE HERE
Forbes: US GDP Level is 840%
(snippet)
If the government stays on the course it's been on for the past forty years without a radical change, the federal government will soon have a $10 trillion budget.
In other words, the federal budget deficit will be $1.4 trillion. Just to make the size more visible, that's $1,400 billion.
Our colleague Rob Arnott, who always does terrific research, wrote in his recent report that "at all levels, federal, state, local and GSEs, the total public debt is now at 141% of GDP. That puts the United States in some elite company--only Japan, Lebanon and Zimbabwe are higher. That's only the start. Add household debt (highest in the world at 99% of GDP) and corporate debt (highest in the world at 317% of GDP, not even counting off-balance-sheet swaps and derivatives) and our total debt is 557% of GDP. Less than three years ago our total indebtedness crossed 500% of GDP for the first time."
Add the unfunded portion of entitlement programs and we're at 840% of GDP.
The world has not seen such debt levels in modern history. This debt is not serviceable. Imagine that total debt is 557% of GDP, without considering entitlements. The interest on the debt will consume all the tax revenues of the country in the not-too-distant future. Then there will be no way out but to create more debt in order to finance the old debt.
It assures a period of economic devastation. In a last, desperate attempt, politicians at the federal and local levels will raise taxes to astronomical heights to raise revenues. And that only assures destruction of the economy. Forget the fable of economic recovery. Unless there is a change in Washington by next year's election, there will be no way to turn back.
Japan's recession is now 19 years old. It has the highest debt-to-GDP level (227%) of any industrialized country.
LINK HERE
Serious U.S. mortgage delinquencies up 20 percent
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
If the government stays on the course it's been on for the past forty years without a radical change, the federal government will soon have a $10 trillion budget.
In other words, the federal budget deficit will be $1.4 trillion. Just to make the size more visible, that's $1,400 billion.
Our colleague Rob Arnott, who always does terrific research, wrote in his recent report that "at all levels, federal, state, local and GSEs, the total public debt is now at 141% of GDP. That puts the United States in some elite company--only Japan, Lebanon and Zimbabwe are higher. That's only the start. Add household debt (highest in the world at 99% of GDP) and corporate debt (highest in the world at 317% of GDP, not even counting off-balance-sheet swaps and derivatives) and our total debt is 557% of GDP. Less than three years ago our total indebtedness crossed 500% of GDP for the first time."
Add the unfunded portion of entitlement programs and we're at 840% of GDP.
The world has not seen such debt levels in modern history. This debt is not serviceable. Imagine that total debt is 557% of GDP, without considering entitlements. The interest on the debt will consume all the tax revenues of the country in the not-too-distant future. Then there will be no way out but to create more debt in order to finance the old debt.
It assures a period of economic devastation. In a last, desperate attempt, politicians at the federal and local levels will raise taxes to astronomical heights to raise revenues. And that only assures destruction of the economy. Forget the fable of economic recovery. Unless there is a change in Washington by next year's election, there will be no way to turn back.
Japan's recession is now 19 years old. It has the highest debt-to-GDP level (227%) of any industrialized country.
LINK HERE
Serious U.S. mortgage delinquencies up 20 percent
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Bob Chapman: This has Been Done By Design, There Is No Such Thing As Coincidence
(snippet)
At the same time the Fed and Wall Street are trying to cover-up, as they did 2-1/2 years ago what became a credit crisis. Last time they ramped up the stock market and they are attempting to do the same thing again. It is a masking of two underlying problems. They are doing what they did before, pushing up the value of shares, of companies that are on the edge of serious problems. In this process they have virtually nationalized banks and given them the funds to re-leverage in the market and take it again to today’s heights. The market has again become divorced from economic reality. They are again about to find out printing money and taxing is not going to solve the problem. On the way to the printing press and along the path of monetization the government has forgotten that they are in serious financial conditions and in the coming year will not be able to fund their deficit. The revenues are not to be had and foreigners are more and more reluctant to shoulder America’s debt. That means another credit crisis and further monetization of debt. Very simply, the US government is bankrupt. They can either default or lay the burden on future generations. The immediate answer is for government to cut spending on such trivialities, such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Allow the citizens to live in penury and poverty. These are the people who helped build America into what it is and they are to be cast aside as the Fed rescues its owners, the bankers, who deliberately caused the problem in the first place.
The deficit for fiscal 2010 should be close to $2 trillion, up from $1.4 trillion in 2009. The projection for the next ten years is at least $10 trillion. That means an increase of 150% to be serviced by 60% increase in tax revenue in a world where current receipts are off 30%. Even in better times recently tax revenues only increased by 12% during the biggest real estate and stock booms ever. We are about to find out that the muddle through theory does not work. Just for good measure we will add that unfunded liabilities increased by $9 trillion last year alone. That is ten years of deficits in just one year. Who in their right mine is going to fund and support such profligacy?
LINK HERE
Sent to me by Tom (with thanks)--- VERY INTERESTING
(snippet)
Reader Walter passed along this distressing sighting from Chris Floyd’s blog. American civil liberties were gutted last week, and the media failed to take note of it.
The development? If the president or one of his subordinates declares someone to be an “enemy combatant” (the 21st century version of “enemy of the state”) he is denied any protection of the law. So any trouble-maker (which means anyone) can be whisked away, incarcerated, tortured, “disappeared,” you name it. Floyd’s commentary:
LINK HERE
China: World Has No More Money To Buy U.S. Treasuries
IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US's shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday.
The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds.
Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their value, and markets always watch any such comments closely for signs of any shift in how it manages its assets.
China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange reaffirmed this month that the dollar stands secure as the anchor of the currency reserves it manages, even as the country seeks to diversify its investments.
In a discussion on the global role of the dollar, Zhu told an academic audience that it was inevitable that the dollar would continue to fall in value because Washington continued to issue more Treasuries to finance its deficit spending.
He then addressed where demand for that debt would come from.
"The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries," Zhu said, according to an audio recording of his remarks. "Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible."
"The US current account deficit is falling as residents' savings increase, so its trade turnover is falling, which means the US is supplying fewer dollars to the rest of the world," he added. "The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries."
China continues to see its foreign exchange reserves grow, albeit at a slower pace than in past years, due to a large trade surplus and inflows of foreign investment. They stood at US$2.3 trillion at the end of September.
LINK HERE
The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds.
Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their value, and markets always watch any such comments closely for signs of any shift in how it manages its assets.
China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange reaffirmed this month that the dollar stands secure as the anchor of the currency reserves it manages, even as the country seeks to diversify its investments.
In a discussion on the global role of the dollar, Zhu told an academic audience that it was inevitable that the dollar would continue to fall in value because Washington continued to issue more Treasuries to finance its deficit spending.
He then addressed where demand for that debt would come from.
"The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries," Zhu said, according to an audio recording of his remarks. "Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible."
"The US current account deficit is falling as residents' savings increase, so its trade turnover is falling, which means the US is supplying fewer dollars to the rest of the world," he added. "The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries."
China continues to see its foreign exchange reserves grow, albeit at a slower pace than in past years, due to a large trade surplus and inflows of foreign investment. They stood at US$2.3 trillion at the end of September.
LINK HERE
Glenn Beck: 800 Billion More for Fannie and Freddie in 2 weeks
Citadel Broadcasting to File for Bankruptcy
Citadel Broadcasting Corp., the third-largest radio broadcaster in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in New York on Sunday.
Citadel, which owns and operates 224 stations across the country, listed debt of more than $2.4 billion and assets of about $1.4 billion.
As of Sunday morning, only Citadel's voluntary petition had been filed with the bankruptcy court.
Citadel is expected to file a deal supported by lenders collectively owed $2 billion, known as a "prearranged" deal in bankruptcy parlance.
LINK HERE
"Just in Time Shipping" Your Future Survival
(snippet)
In fact, most stores operate on a system known as, “just in time shipping.” In other words, products arrive just in time to be put on the shelves to replace whatever has been purchased. That’s why, when a store has a particularly good sale on an item, once it’s sold out, it might be out of stock for days or weeks. There are no extras hidden in the back room. Retailers keep their inventories to a bare minimum in order to save money and to not end up with a stockpile of a product that isn’t selling.
One impressive feature of this system is that it is run by computers and can actually forecast which products will be needed where and when. For example, when the weather in a certain area takes a turn toward higher temperatures, the system will automatically begin shipping items such as sun block and beach toys. An oncoming hurricane will trigger the shipment of bottled water, baby formula and ice. You can read more about this impressive system here.
Now, what does this information have to do with your family's survival and preparedness? Imagine there’s a major crisis in our country that slows the shipping business down to a crawl. It could be a natural disaster affecting the busy ports along the west coast. Excessively high diesel prices could drive some trucking companies out of business and reduce the amount of goods being shipped via our highways. Whatever the event, the just in time shipping strategy may leave the average American family high and dry in the middle of a major crisis.
The American Trucking Association presents a sobering view of possible consequences to a partial or complete interruption to our nation’s trucking business. You should take a few minutes and read the entire paper, but here is a brief summary of a possible timeline in the event of a truck stoppage.
Within 24 hours:
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Martin Armstrong:Looking Behind The Curtain - The "Real" Conspiracy
Martin Armstrong takes a break from his usual cyclical talk to give us his description of what he has seen "behind the curtain". With nothing left to lose, sitting in prison, Martin is one who claims to have glimpsed behind the curtain, and who is able to talk about it.You will likely find some of the things Martin says to be shocking. But I have noticed a consistency in his recollections that flows through his various articles. He often mentions different parts of the same stories from his past in his many articles. This makes me think that at least he is not making these things up. They are true recollections. I believe that to Martin, this may be his most important article written while in prison. It is his "tell all".
LINK HERE
LINK HERE
Outrage: Washington Having Its Best Year Ever at Your Expense
(snippet)
Consider this outrage: Last summer, internships in D.C. paid city youths for essentially doing nothing. The government gave several hundred disadvantaged kids "internships" to come and learn about politics and the capital. They were supposed to show up every day, check in, and shadow some politicos. Apparently, over the whole summer, only a couple showed up out of hundreds, yet they all got paid. Imagine the lessons they learned. It's a mockery of the ethics of hard work and responsibility.
But it gets worse. The newspaper USA Today reports that before the recession started, the Department of Transportation employed only one person earning more than $170,000 a year. (I might argue even one is too many). Today, more than 1,690 people there earn more than $170,000.
That's not a typo... In 18 months, the government has increased the number of people in one federal department making more than $170,000 by hundreds of thousands of percent. While the average American worries about making ends meet, these federal bureaucrats are taking more and more of our tax dollars. Moreover, I don't understand how there needs to be more than a few people at the Department of Transportation making that kind of money, yet there are thousands of them.
Look, the average federal worker makes $71,206 versus $40,331 in the private sector. I think this is absurd. And the counterargument from the government affairs director at a federal employees union is laughable. It's "because the government employs skilled people," he told the USA Today.
Folks, please listen... This nonsense will lead to higher and higher taxes. Unless we tell people in power to stop the nonsense immediately, things will go from bad to worse really quickly. I can't spend more than I earn. Neither can you. What makes lazy government bureaucrats think it works differently when they're spending someone else's money?
I encourage you to do what I do and write your local and national elected officials and tell them to stop spending our hard-earned money and start cutting taxes so people can get back to work. And also remember in upcoming election cycles to vote for people who will be fiscally responsible (we'll try and keep track of this for the 2010 elections). Sitting around and doing nothing about it is simply condoning the behavior.
LINK HERE
Officials and Experts Warn of Crash-Induced Unrest
Numerous high-level officials and experts warn that the economic crisis could lead to unrest world-wide – even in developed countries:
Today, Moody's warned that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world, that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension may become just as important signs of whether a country will be able to adapt as traditional economic metrics, that a fiscal crisis remains a possibility for a leading economy, and that 2010 would be a “tumultuous year for sovereign debt issuers”.
The U.S. Army War College warned in 2008 November in a monograph titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development” of crash-induced unrest:
The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” “An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on. “Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said:
LINK HERE
Today, Moody's warned that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world, that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension may become just as important signs of whether a country will be able to adapt as traditional economic metrics, that a fiscal crisis remains a possibility for a leading economy, and that 2010 would be a “tumultuous year for sovereign debt issuers”.
The U.S. Army War College warned in 2008 November in a monograph titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development” of crash-induced unrest:
The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” “An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on. “Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said:
LINK HERE
Friday, December 18, 2009
US House Passes $636 Billion Military Spending Bill
With overwhelming bipartisan support, the United States House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a massive $636 billion military appropriations bill for 2010.
The bill includes some $128 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does not fully fund the Obama administration’s escalation in Afghanistan, making likely further appropriations for war spending next year.
The deployment of 30,000 additional US troops is expected to cost $35 to $40 billion a year. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that the first of the new troops ordered to Afghanistan have begun to arrive.
All told, US military spending in 2010 will be close to $700 billion. If one adds the hundreds of billions of dollars in military-related spending included in the budgets of other departments, the total is as much as $1 trillion.
The overwhelming support for the bill, which passed 395-34, demonstrates the bipartisan agreement in Washington on the war policy of the Obama administration. The vote comes shortly after President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize speech, in which he outlined an expansion of US militarism.
LINK HERE
$57,077.60 -- That's What We're Paying Each Minute for the Occupation of Afghanistan
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
The bill includes some $128 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does not fully fund the Obama administration’s escalation in Afghanistan, making likely further appropriations for war spending next year.
The deployment of 30,000 additional US troops is expected to cost $35 to $40 billion a year. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that the first of the new troops ordered to Afghanistan have begun to arrive.
All told, US military spending in 2010 will be close to $700 billion. If one adds the hundreds of billions of dollars in military-related spending included in the budgets of other departments, the total is as much as $1 trillion.
The overwhelming support for the bill, which passed 395-34, demonstrates the bipartisan agreement in Washington on the war policy of the Obama administration. The vote comes shortly after President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize speech, in which he outlined an expansion of US militarism.
LINK HERE
$57,077.60 -- That's What We're Paying Each Minute for the Occupation of Afghanistan
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Homeowners: Morgan Stanley Is Walking Away. Why Shouldn't You?
To the extent that Morgan Stanley is leading by example, the securities colossus is sending an unlikely message to underwater homeowners: Walk away.
The Wall Street firm is itself walking away from five San Francisco office buildings it purchased as part of a landmark $2.43 billion deal near the height of the real estate boom. But don't call it a foreclosure or a default -- not when this kind of money is involved. A spokeswoman interviewed by Bloomberg News called it "a negotiated transfer to our lenders."
The buildings were bought in 2007 by a fund managed by the firm and supplied with cash from Morgan Stanley and investors. They may be worth half the price Morgan Stanley paid just two years ago, according to Bloomberg.
Businesses and corporations walk away from mortgages all the time, says Brent T. White, a law professor at the University of Arizona. But homeowners don't -- largely due to feelings of moral obligation and guilt.
Nevertheless, a quarter of homeowners with a mortgage are currently "underwater," which means they owe more on their property than the house is worth, according to real estate research firm First American CoreLogic. Property prices aren't returning to their boom highs anytime soon. Even those lenders and servicers willing to modify mortgages are balking at writing down principal, government data shows.
LINK HERE
Nation's 4 Biggest Banks Cut Business Lending By $100 Billion Since April
LINK HERE
The Wall Street firm is itself walking away from five San Francisco office buildings it purchased as part of a landmark $2.43 billion deal near the height of the real estate boom. But don't call it a foreclosure or a default -- not when this kind of money is involved. A spokeswoman interviewed by Bloomberg News called it "a negotiated transfer to our lenders."
The buildings were bought in 2007 by a fund managed by the firm and supplied with cash from Morgan Stanley and investors. They may be worth half the price Morgan Stanley paid just two years ago, according to Bloomberg.
Businesses and corporations walk away from mortgages all the time, says Brent T. White, a law professor at the University of Arizona. But homeowners don't -- largely due to feelings of moral obligation and guilt.
Nevertheless, a quarter of homeowners with a mortgage are currently "underwater," which means they owe more on their property than the house is worth, according to real estate research firm First American CoreLogic. Property prices aren't returning to their boom highs anytime soon. Even those lenders and servicers willing to modify mortgages are balking at writing down principal, government data shows.
LINK HERE
Nation's 4 Biggest Banks Cut Business Lending By $100 Billion Since April
LINK HERE
The 2010 Food Crisis Means Financial Armageddon
If you read any economic, financial, or political analysis for 2010 that doesn’t mention the food shortage looming next year, throw it in the trash, as it is worthless. There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the world to dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.
The 2010 Food Crisis Means Financial Armageddon
Over the last two years, the world has experience faced a series of unprecedented financial crisis: the collapse of the housing market, the freezing of the credit markets, the failure of Wall Street brokerage firms (Bear Stearns/Lehman Brothers), the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the failure of AIG,
Iceland’s economic collapse, the bankruptcy of the major auto manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), etc… In the face of all these challenges, the demise of the dollar, derivative markets, and the modern international system of credit has been repeatedly anticipated and feared. However, all these doomsday scenarios have so far been proved false, and, despite tremendous chaos and losses, the global financial system has held together.
The 2010 Food Crisis is different. It is THE CRISIS. The one that makes all doomsday scenarios come true. The government bailouts and central bank interventions which have held the financial world during the last two years will be powerless to prevent the 2010 Food Crisis from bringing the global financial system to its knees.
LINK HERE
India Food Prices Climb 19.95%, the Most in 11 Years
LINK HERE
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Reason You Should Use Cash Only: Banks Fleecing The Unemployed
December 16, 2009 "Consortium News" -- While posting breathtaking profits in the last two quarters – Wells Fargo’s $3.2 billion, Citigroup’s $3 billion and Chase’s $2.7 billion – U.S. banks have figured out a way to squeeze some extra dollars from those who can least afford it, the unemployed.
Here’s how it works. In the past two years, states have been overwhelmed with unemployment claims. Always eager to serve, America’s banks offered a deal the states couldn’t refuse.
Sign a contract — which won’t cost you a dime — and send us your weekly unemployment funds, the banks said. In return, we’ll issue our VISA or MasterCard debit cards to your laid-off workers, on which we’ll post their benefits electronically.
Thirty states signed on with the usual suspects — Citi, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America — and some smaller ones, too. More states are lining up.
In a stroke, states dropped all their costs for printing and mailing checks. Andrew James, with North Carolina’s Employment Security Commission, told me that in the past year, his state saved a whopping $10 million. During the same time, Nevada saved $800,000, Maryland $400,000 and West Virginia $340,000.
But if the system is good for the states, it's great for the banks. A February 2009 Associated Press article noted that Missouri’s Central Bank, which won that state’s contract, could reap $6.3 million this year alone.
The banks profit from interest earned on the funds the states deposit with them until the money is posted onto the debit cards. Then there’s the money the banks get from retailers where the unemployed shop with their cards — from 2 percent to 3 percent per transaction.
But such sums are not large enough, it seems. So the banks have figured how to extract more money from the millions of unemployed now using the debit cards. The devil’s in the fees.
Nickel and Diming
The cards can be beneficial to some of the unemployed, like those who otherwise would pay whopping fees to cash checks because they don’t have bank accounts.
LINK HERE
Here’s how it works. In the past two years, states have been overwhelmed with unemployment claims. Always eager to serve, America’s banks offered a deal the states couldn’t refuse.
Sign a contract — which won’t cost you a dime — and send us your weekly unemployment funds, the banks said. In return, we’ll issue our VISA or MasterCard debit cards to your laid-off workers, on which we’ll post their benefits electronically.
Thirty states signed on with the usual suspects — Citi, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America — and some smaller ones, too. More states are lining up.
In a stroke, states dropped all their costs for printing and mailing checks. Andrew James, with North Carolina’s Employment Security Commission, told me that in the past year, his state saved a whopping $10 million. During the same time, Nevada saved $800,000, Maryland $400,000 and West Virginia $340,000.
But if the system is good for the states, it's great for the banks. A February 2009 Associated Press article noted that Missouri’s Central Bank, which won that state’s contract, could reap $6.3 million this year alone.
The banks profit from interest earned on the funds the states deposit with them until the money is posted onto the debit cards. Then there’s the money the banks get from retailers where the unemployed shop with their cards — from 2 percent to 3 percent per transaction.
But such sums are not large enough, it seems. So the banks have figured how to extract more money from the millions of unemployed now using the debit cards. The devil’s in the fees.
Nickel and Diming
The cards can be beneficial to some of the unemployed, like those who otherwise would pay whopping fees to cash checks because they don’t have bank accounts.
LINK HERE
The Commercial Real Estate Default Wave is Here
What has been lost in the housing talk recovery is the grim statistics that commercial real estate has fallen 37 percent in value in the last year. This wouldn’t be such a big problem aside from the tiny detail that some $3 trillion in commercial real estate loans are still outstanding. The commercial real estate debacle is already happening with defaults reaching 16 year highs. This is already occurring before many of the commercial real estate loans reach their refinance dates. In some instances banks are simply ignoring non-payment and giving borrowers a few more months or even years. Why? Because they can still claim the note is current and claim the asset at inflated values.
Yet this is a game we are all familiar with. Suspending mark to market has always been a method for the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve to skirt any real accounting from Wall Street. If we look at the current FDIC insured bank balance sheet, we can see that many more problems lie ahead for commercial real estate:
LINK HERE
As Of Jan 1 2010 State of Georgia Accepts GOLD and SILVER as Currency Payment and Deposit
LINK HERE
Climate plan a $3,000 Con Per Family For Canadians
Would you be upset if you knew your government was about to get duped in a con that would cost your family at least $3,000 a year in new taxes? That is exactly what is happening in Copenhagen right now.
The developing world has teamed up with global warming activists in Copenhagen at the world climate conference. Together they are planning the big con. Key to the con is to play on the eco-guilt of the developed world, using it to scam cash from "rich countries" and transferring it to the developing world, all in the name of "ending climate change." The Copenhagen grifters are hoping to cash the cheques before the developing world wakes up to the con.
A leaked draft version of the agreement on the table at the Copenhagen climate conference reveals plans for a massive transfer of wealth out of Canada. This transfer will come in the form of new taxes and the establishment of a new world government body for climate change housed in the World Bank.
Lord Christopher Monckton is reported to have obtained a working copy of the draft agreement. He warns that the secretive draft version of the Copen-hagen climate change treaty represents a global government power grab on an "unimaginable scale," and mandates the creation of 700 new bureaucracies as well as a colossal raft of new taxes including two per cent levies on GDP and a two per cent tax on every international financial transaction.
LINK HERE
Total of 10 Trillion Needed
LINK HERE
Heat Rises In Copenhagen As Cap & Trade Deemed Too Inconvenient
LINK HERE
The developing world has teamed up with global warming activists in Copenhagen at the world climate conference. Together they are planning the big con. Key to the con is to play on the eco-guilt of the developed world, using it to scam cash from "rich countries" and transferring it to the developing world, all in the name of "ending climate change." The Copenhagen grifters are hoping to cash the cheques before the developing world wakes up to the con.
A leaked draft version of the agreement on the table at the Copenhagen climate conference reveals plans for a massive transfer of wealth out of Canada. This transfer will come in the form of new taxes and the establishment of a new world government body for climate change housed in the World Bank.
Lord Christopher Monckton is reported to have obtained a working copy of the draft agreement. He warns that the secretive draft version of the Copen-hagen climate change treaty represents a global government power grab on an "unimaginable scale," and mandates the creation of 700 new bureaucracies as well as a colossal raft of new taxes including two per cent levies on GDP and a two per cent tax on every international financial transaction.
LINK HERE
Total of 10 Trillion Needed
LINK HERE
Heat Rises In Copenhagen As Cap & Trade Deemed Too Inconvenient
LINK HERE
Leap E20/20 Believes Spring 2010 is The Tipping Point
LEAP/E2020 believes that the global systemic crisis will experience a new tipping point from Spring 2010. Indeed, at that time, the public finances of the major Western countries are going to become unmanageable, as it will simultaneously become clear that new support measures for the economy are needed because of the failure of the various stimuli in 2009 (1), and that the size of budget deficits preclude any significant new expenditures.
If this public deficit « slip knot » which governments gladly placed around their necks in 2009, refusing to make the financial system pay for mistakes (2) is going to weigh heavily on all public expenditure, it is going to particularly affect the social security systems of the rich countries in always impoverishing the middle classes and the retired, and setting the poorest adrift (3).
At the same time, the general context of the bankruptcy of an increasing number of states and other authorities (regions, provinces, federal states) will entail a double paradoxical event of increasing interest rates and the flight out of currencies towards gold. In the absence of an organised alternative to a weakening US Dollar and in order to find an alternative to the loss in value of treasury bonds (in particular US ones) all central banks will have, in part, to « reconvert to gold », the old enemy of the US Federal Reserve, without being able to state the fact officially. The bet on recovery having been, at this point, totally lost by governments and central banks (4), this Spring 2010 tipping point is thus going to represent the beginning of the huge transfer of 20,000 billion USD of « ghost assets » (5) in the direction of the social security systems of the countries which have accumulated them.
LINK HERE
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
10 Industries That Will Lose The Most Jobs In Next Decade
In a long-term assessment of employment data released last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveyed the country's jobs landscape and developed a picture of how it's likely to evolve over the next ten years.
As the population ages and manufacturing jobs wane, much of the next decade's employment growth is expected to be in service industries -- such as health care services or business services -- which are projected to make up a whopping 96% of the increase in new employment.
But if some industries flourish in the new economy, others are likely to deteriorate -- and slash jobs. And in the report, the government pointed to ten struggling industries that it says are likely to hemorrhage the most jobs in the next decade.
Did your industry make the list? Check them out below:
LINK HERE
Detroit's Unemployment Rate Is Nearly 50%, According to the Detroit News
LINK HERE
Best Shanty-Based Service Businesses For A Great Depression
LINK HERE
As the population ages and manufacturing jobs wane, much of the next decade's employment growth is expected to be in service industries -- such as health care services or business services -- which are projected to make up a whopping 96% of the increase in new employment.
But if some industries flourish in the new economy, others are likely to deteriorate -- and slash jobs. And in the report, the government pointed to ten struggling industries that it says are likely to hemorrhage the most jobs in the next decade.
Did your industry make the list? Check them out below:
LINK HERE
Detroit's Unemployment Rate Is Nearly 50%, According to the Detroit News
LINK HERE
Best Shanty-Based Service Businesses For A Great Depression
LINK HERE
New Immigration Bill Is Introduced in House: Massive Unemployment If Passed
The on-again, off-again drive to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws moved back to Congress on Tuesday with the introduction of legislation that would open a path to legal status for millions of illegal immigrants.
The bill, introduced by Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, was seen as the opening volley in what Democrats and Republicans expect to be a hard-fought battle. President Obama has pledged to take up the issue early next year; efforts to overhaul the laws during George W. Bush’s presidency failed despite the backing of Mr. Bush and some Republicans.
Mr. Gutierrez, one of Mr. Obama’s earliest Latino supporters in Congress, said in an interview that the bill reflected a growing impatience with the pace of immigration change among a coalition of Democratic lawmakers, immigrant advocates and labor and religious groups.
(snippet)
Representative Brian Bilbray, a California Republican who heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus, said the bill would only generate a new wave of migrants to compete with Americans for jobs at a time of 10 percent unemployment.
LINK HERE
Prepare for the Great Depression.
Survival Seeds
Federal Government 'Will Go Bankrupt' if Health Care Not Passed
ABC's Karen Travers reports from Washington:
President Obama told ABC News’ Charles Gibson in an interview that if Congress does not pass health care legislation that will bring down costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”
The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.
“If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,” he said. “Potentially they're going to drop your coverage, because they just can't afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. “
The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an “unsustainable” trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, “the federal government will go bankrupt.”
LINK HERE
The Greatest Outpouring Of Money And Credit In History
LINK HERE
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