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Showing posts with label collapse of the economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collapse of the economy. Show all posts

Monday, February 10, 2014

Individuals Not Looking For Work Increase, Unemployment Down--Administration Cheers!

More Phoniness From The Phony Regime

February 10, 2014 by  
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More Phoniness From The Phony Regime
PHOTOS.COM

Supporters of the regime will crow over Friday’s lower unemployment number as a sign that the economy is recovering, even as signs abound that things are not at all rosy for the 99 percent.
The Bureau of Labor Statistic’s phony unemployment number has the unemployment rate dropping from 6.7 percent to 6.6 percent, even though hiring was weaker in January than expected and the month’s non-farm payroll numbers of 113,000 new jobs fell far short of the expected 180,000. The 6.6 percent number consists of the 10.2 million Americans actively seeking work. It ignores the 91.4 million working-age and work-capable Americans not working and not seeking work.
Despite an increase in U.S. population of almost 10 million people from January 2008 to today, there are 1,154,000 fewer Americans working now than six years ago. Those considered long-term unemployed (unemployed for 27 weeks or more) totaled 3.6 million.
Another 2.6 million were considered marginally attached the labor force. That means they were not working even though they were available for work and wanted and had been seeking jobs within the past 12 months (though not in the past four weeks), so they were not counted as unemployed. Another 837,000 were considered marginally attached discouraged workers because they were not currently looking for work in the belief that no jobs were available to them.
Regime supporters will probably also crow that, despite the “disappointing” job growth, the U.S. stock market continued to do what it’s been doing: acting irrationally. It is evidence that the stock market is supported by funny money and has no basis in reality. Or as CNNMoneywrote, “Bad news may be good news again.”
In other words, CNNMoney is saying that the bad news will cause the Fed to pull back on its taper of QE to infinity from $85 billion a month to $75 billion in December and then $65 billion in January. This is all the evidence needed to demonstrate the recent stock market highs are not reality-based but are based on the promise of more money printing.
Unfortunately, the bad news that is good news for the banksters is really bad news for the middle class. According to the Fed, half the U.S. population has seen a 40 percent decrease in wealth since 2007. That’s because the banksters get their hands on the newly printed money before inflation steals it away. But that’s not so for the rest of us.
The regime is currently pulling out all the stops in order to stave off collapse as long as possible. So far, it has been successful in keeping the masses happy and deceived, thanks to growing food stamp and disability rolls. But there is activity all over the world that signals the global financial collapse may be accelerating.
Mark Faber of the Boom, Gloom & Doom Report says that “company insiders are selling their shares like crazy.” He suggests to his clients to short the Russell 2000 index and says, “I own physical gold because the old system will implode. Those who own paper assets are doomed.”
On Jan. 29, investors pulled $6.3 billion from emerging market equity funds. That was the largest outflow on record. The sell-off actually began last month when Argentina gave up trying to defend the value of its currency. That forced central banks in India, Turkey and South Africa to raise interest rates to try to stop the outflow of their currencies.
Latin American currencies are collapsing. Year-over-year, they’ve dropped 15.75 percent. That’s the most since the Lehman Brothers collapse that set off the recession.
Peter Schiff, who predicted the 2007 collapse in August 2006 — way before almost everyone else saw it coming — says we’re headed for a worse economic crisis than we had in 2007.
“The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said. “I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”
“We’re broke, Schiff added. “We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”
Schiff points out that the market gains experienced recently, with the Dow first topping 17,000 on its way to setting record highs, are giving investors a false sense of security.
“It’s not that the stock market is gaining value… it’s that our money is losing value. And so if you have a debased currency… a devalued currency, the price of everything goes up. Stocks are no exception,” he said.
“The Fed knows that the U.S. economy is not recovering,” he noted. “It simply is being kept from collapse by artificially low interest rates and quantitative easing. As that support goes, the economy will implode.”
Meanwhile, life is growing tough for international banksters. In four days last week, three of them apparently committed suicide, writes Wall Street On Parade. All the dead were tied to banks and an investment firm currently involved in rigging scandals and under investigation by regulators.
While the regime has thus far kept inflation at bay because the printed money is currently being hoarded by the banksters, that money will inevitably hit the economy like a bursting dam.
Please remember that in the coming inflation, food stamps and all U.S. entitlement programs will come to a complete halt. For those millions of people on Social Security and/or other entitlements, I do not believe that these will be stopped or cut per se. But the same effect would come about through inflation of the currency. And there will be means testing for Social Security.
My friends, you will get your money; but it will be so worthless that it won’t buy anything. So what’s new? We have experienced this for years.
We have warned for years to buy silver and gold and store food and water. Ha, doesn’t sound so way out now, does it? Buying gold and silver and storing food and water is the only way Americans can survive the chaos that we are now in. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Be alert!
Buy and sell your gold and silver as it corrects down? Never!! If you do, you will be painfully sorry. You think that you are smart enough to sell and buy back in at a lower price? You’re not; you will lose your shirt. The manipulators use no rhyme or reason that you can discern.
What will happen at the top? Stay with us as we stay in tune with the markets.
Gold, silver and food will outrun the collapse of the dollar. If the U.S. dollar goes, as it surely will, you can begin bartering with your most valuable assets.
Some people suggest that a new dollar will appear, backed by silver or gold. I don’t know, but I expect either that or some quasi-gold monetary system.
Is the U.S. government and Federal Reserve system collapsing? I can easily answer that with this question: Is the U.S. dollar collapsing? A currency that is being depreciated or inflated is, by all definitions, collapsing. This fact has nothing to do with whether we believe it or not.
Can it be stopped short of collapse? If stopped now, it would cause a collapse even sooner. What do we mean? We mean that we have passed the point of no return. There is too much fraud and too much debt in the United States. That’s why you see the market pull back every time there is talk of taper and why you see it explode upward when the talk subsides.
How long do we have? It appears to me that we are very close to economic and social collapse. But times can yet wobble along for months or even a few years. It is a certainty that things will get visibly worse in many ways, especially now that the endgame is here.

Monday, September 9, 2013

Economy Continues To Lose Steam

Our, not so humble opinion, is that the economy is ready for another decline. As the following article clearly illustrates, the needed jobs have not come to fruition, unemployment stays at nearly double full employment and the jobs that seem to be added are low pay part-time jobs.  All of this is backed up by the fact that temp agencies are now one of the largest employers in the country.   This is not your father's recovery.


When you look at previous recoveries, there was the decline followed by a steep recovery that peaked out before the next decline. The problem this time is that there has not been the jump back to normal levels. We are still way below the trends that we should be seeing. So, when the next decline does come, we don't have the jobs or economic power to accept the fall.  We fear it will cause a major recession, if not a full, depression.

We are not trying to scare anyone, just alerting you to the possibility and suggesting that you prepare for it.   Of course, if you disagree, please give me your response.

Conservative Tom


ShadowStat's John Williams: 'Seriously Deteriorating Unemployment Trends Have Solidified'

Monday, 09 Sep 2013 08:53 AM
By Dan Weil
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The August jobs report pointed to weakness in the economy, even though payrolls rose 169,000 and the unemployment rate dipped to a 4 ½-year low of 7.3 percent, according to the "John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics" newsletter.

"Given recognized margins of error, ... neither [of those statistics] was meaningful by itself," he writes. "Yet, seriously deteriorating unemployment trends have solidified."

The drop in the unemployment rate didn't result from strong hiring, Williams notes. Rather it stems from job seekers giving up and leaving the work force.



"The broad economic outlook has not changed, although the economic downside may be picking up a little more credibility with consensus forecasters," he states.

The labor force participation rate slumped to a 35-year low of 63.2 percent last month.

"The nature of reported declines in the headline unemployment rate is symptomatic of an imploding economy," Williams proclaims.

As for payrolls, they are still 1.9 million jobs shy of the pre-recession high, he explains. And payroll gains were revised downward for June and July. "Net of prior-period revisions, the monthly [August] gain would have been 95,000," Williams claims.

"The story from the August labor data is that the economy has not recovered, that it is not about to recover and that it is turning down anew."

Another economist left unimpressed by the employment data is Peter Morici, professor of international business at the University of Maryland.

The 169,000 payroll gain is "about half of what we would need under normal circumstances, and we're not even normal in circumstances," he tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.

"A good deal of those jobs, about three-fourths, were part-time positions. Essentially employers are dividing up full-time jobs and creating multiple part-time jobs."

© 2013 Moneynews. All rights reserved.


Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Williams-employment-economy-payroll/2013/09/09/id/524516?s=al&promo_code=14CD9-1#ixzz2ePqSZdYQ
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Monday, April 22, 2013

Dollar and Economy Destruction

What will happen when money becomes worthless? It is not a question of when but how soon.  All of America, save those who have prepared, will be less penniless relying on charity and friends to make it through the day.  It will not be a pretty situation.

In the following article by Bob Livingston, we see the reasons for the future destruction of our economy and the dollar itself. 

Conservative Tom

Social And Moral Breakdown

April 22, 2013 by  
Social And Moral Breakdown
PHOTOS.COM
“When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.” – Frederic Bastiat
What would cause a nation or a people to arrive at such a state of decadence and amorality as America has today?
If we connect the dots, it is as clear as day. The above quote by Frederic Bastiat describes perfectly a society that has been undermined by the devaluation of its currency.
Yes, there is a direct connection between debauching of the currency and the moral and social breakdown of society. When people are forced into impoverishment by devaluation and depreciation of their money, not only they will be impoverished, but they are headed for social and moral breakdown and finally internal war and revolution.
The devaluation of the currency as in the United States today is nothing less than undeclared war between the government and the people. This is all under the umbrella of patriotism and benevolence.
What the American people don’t understand is that when the Federal Reserve creates trillions of dollars that it calls “quantitative easing,” it does two things. No. 1: It dilutes the currency, thereby reducing the value of all currency in circulation. No. 2: It is transferring wealth to the government away from all dollar holders.
This is stealth or silent warfare against the American people. This is serious because it leads to impoverishment of the middle class and finally to complete economic collapse. This is happening now!
President Ronald Reagan said, “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.” This puts the elected class all on the same side. They are all paid by the government, and they are all government employees.
The paper money that we use is fiction, created by the banksters. The banksters all destroy the paper money by printing too much of it. Too much paper money destroys savings and undermines morality as it becomes worthless.
The U.S. government is now creating and buying its own bonds. This is a hot air shenanigan that foretells that we are in the endgame. The whole U.S. government financial system is a charade.
The United States may look like the unsinkable Titanic, but the signs of collapse are already visible to all sober Americans and to the world. The icebergs of revolution are everywhere.
It is time and past time to prepare for survival. Nobody is going to hit you over the head to wake you up. Please look out and up and see the collapse coming.
Monetary Insanity!
The hard fact is that the central banks have concluded that to save the system it will be necessary to destroy it. This upside down statement makes all the sense in the world to a central banker.
The truth is any fiat money by nature self-destructs. When paper money is overprinted, it simply self-destructs. This is not hard to understand.
This further concludes that the final outcome of the expansion of the money supply is a lot of people with worthless paper money and suffering from general impoverishment. This is our near-term future.
The system must collapse. Then why don’t we all know it or see it happening? The answer is that it all happens gradually. The word “gradually” simply means that most people can’t see the collapse coming or see it going on now.
If the credit expansion is not stopped (and it won’t be), we will have a crack-up boom or a massive flight into real values. This means an increase in the velocity (speed) of money.
When this happens, it won’t be long until the end. People will be rushing to spend their paper money as prices skyrocket. The last thing that the government or the politicians will ever tell the people is that the system is now in a state of collapse. And they will not utter a squeak that government debt will never be paid.
Wealth Destruction — Special Appeal!
This is the time of the greatest transfer and destruction of wealth in the history of the world. This all swirls around the destruction of paper money and paper wealth.
Many will take the right action, but most of the middle class and all the poor are directly headed for hard and impossible times. Some few who invest in farm land, food, energy and hard assets (silver and gold), especially silver, will survive and grow rich.
None of this is new in history. All cultures and nations and people go through the same evolutionary process. Here is the pattern: They start with metal; and, as they prosper, they create paper money and debt. All collapse, and then there is a return to gold and silver or other metal.
Right now, we are in the midst of the collapse of paper and credit and notional “value.” Believe it or not, this destructive process will utterly destroy Warren Buffett’s paper empire. He knows it, and he buys companies as his hard assets.
Most people cannot see or understand this fiat paper world system that is now expiring with much anxiety.
We saw this same collapse of currency in the Weimar German Republic that culminated in 1923. Most Germans did not have a clue what was happening. Most could not believe that their own government was collapsing their currency by over printing. (The same is happening now in the United States.) They did not relate skyrocketing prices to German currency destruction.
Most were, therefore, impoverished. But those who had the perception to see the collapse eventually coming converted their paper money into gold and other hard assets. Believe it or not, some avoided the disastrous hardship by storing food and basic necessities.
The current wealth destruction process and transfer of wealth will continue until the collapse of the fiat paper money and credit system is finished. Afterward, there will be a great reset of values based on silver and gold money. The cost of a loaf of bread will go back to a dime, but a silver dime. What will you do if you don’t have a silver dime?
The manipulators have driven down the price of gold and silver by dumping gold and silver paper with naked short selling. The talking heads who spread the Fed’s propaganda message tell you that means the bull run in gold and silver is at an end. That is not supported by the evidence.
People are buying gold and silver at an unprecedented rate. Both will break out as the system collapses. Take some of your paper “money” and buy — if you can find it — silver that the money creators can’t print.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Social Security and Medicare On the Chopping Block

For those senior citizens who voted for Obama, here is what you can look forward to. It is not pretty but hey, you lived your life, raised your kids, paid into Social Security and Medicare for all of your working life and now powers to be want to drastically cut the program! What about all those young people who thought that their parents could retire on Social Security? Mom and Dad are coming to live with you. We all are suckers if that happens!  Read more in the attached article.

Conservative Tom

Did Social Security and Medicare Crash the Economy?

By Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
The talk in Washington these days might lead people to think that the main cause of the economic downturn is the Social Security and Medicare benefits being paid to retirees. After all, we have people from both parties giving us assurances that cuts to these programs are an essential part of any budget deal. This is the sort of topsy-turvy thinking that passes as conventional wisdom in Washington.
In case it's necessary to remind people, our economy plunged due to the collapse of a Wall Street fueled housing bubble. The loss of demand from the collapse of the housing bubble both led to a jump in the unemployment rate from which we have still not fully recovered and also the large deficits of the last five years.
Prior to collapse of the bubble, the budget deficits were quite modest. In 2007 the deficit was just 1.7 percent of GDP, a level that can be sustained indefinitely. Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficits would remain small for the near future, with the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2011 projected to push the budget into surplus.
The Deficit and the Downturn
The reason that we suddenly got large deficits was the economic downturn which caused tax revenue to plummet and increased spending on programs like unemployment insurance. We also had temporary measures that included tax cuts like the payroll tax holiday and various spending programs that further raised the deficit.
However these stimulus measures were temporary and were quite explicitly designed to boost the economy. Had it not been for the downturn, they would not have occurred. There is very little by way of permanent changes from the pre-recession tax and spending policy that would raise the budget deficits from the low levels that had been projected in 2008. This means that the story of current deficits is the story of the collapsed housing bubble.
We Need a Speculation Tax
In a sane world we might be looking to square the deck with the folks who brought us the bubble. One obvious way would be a modest financial speculation tax like the one that the UK has had in effect on stock transfers for centuries. A modest tax on trades of stock, options, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments could raise enormous amounts of money while barely affecting normal investors.
The Joint Tax Committee estimated that a 0.03 percent speculation tax proposed by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter Defazio would raise almost $40 billion a year. This bill would imply a tax of just $3 on $10,000 of trades. Since computerization has caused trading costs to plummet, this tax would just raise transaction costs back to where they were 10-15 years ago.
The big hit would be on the high speed traders and other fast turnover types who are flipping stock and other assets by the hour or even by the second. This trading is a drain on the economy and cutting it back would free up resources for productive activity.
But It Won't Happen
But in Washington policy circles, taxing Wall Street is off the agenda, cutting Social Security and Medicare is on the agenda. And, best of all, many of the people at the center of the housing crash are playing leading roles in this drive to cut retirees benefits.
Last week, many people might have seen Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, talking aboutthe need to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age. The last time that Mr. Blankfein was very visible in policy debates he was desperately seeking a bailout for Goldman Sachs which was facing a bank run that pushed the company to the edge of bankruptcy.
It was granted special protection from the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This protection, coupled with tens of billions of dollars in loans at below market interest rates allowed Goldman Sachs to regain its health. Now its CEO wants to cut our Social Security.
An even more amazing apparition in this story is former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. More than anyone in the whole country, Greenspan deserves blame for the economic downturn. As the bubble was growing to ever more dangerous levels, Greenspan was cheering it on, insisting that there was no bubble, and that even if there was a housing bubble its collapse would pose no special problem for the economy.
In a sane world, Greenspan would be hiding away somewhere enjoying his high six-figure pension. But this isn't a sane world, this is Washington. Therefore we could find Greenspan telling us that another recession would be a price worth paying, if it led to cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
So welcome to the Washington policy world. Cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the agenda and Wall Street speculation taxes are off the agenda. Don't we have much to be thankful for?
Dean Baker is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He has written extensively on a wide range of topics, including the housing bubble. His most recent book is The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive (free download available here).