20 Questions To Ask Anyone Foolish Enough To Believe The Economic Crisis Is Over

The Economic Collapse
May 26, 2011

If you listen to Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama and the mainstream media long enough, and if you didn’t know any better, you might be tempted to think that the economic crisis is long gone and that we are in the midst of a burgeoning economic recovery.  Unfortunately, the truth is that the economic crisis is far from over.  In 2010, more homes were repossessed than ever before, more Americans were on food stamps than ever before and a smaller percentage of American men had jobs than ever before.  The reality is that the United States is an economic basket case and all of these natural disasters certainly are not helping things.  The Federal Reserve has been printing gigantic piles of money and the U.S. government has been borrowing and spending cash at a dizzying pace in an all-out effort to stabilize things.  They have succeeded for the moment, but our long-term economic problems are worse then ever.  We are still in the middle of a full-blown economic crisis and things are about to get even worse.

If you know someone that is foolish enough to believe that the economic crisis is over and that our economic problems are behind us, just ask that person the following questions….

#1 During the 23 months of the “Obama recovery”, an average of about 23,000 jobs a month have been created.  It takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.  So shouldn’t we hold off a bit before we declare the economic crisis to be over?

#2 During the “recession”, somewhere between 6.3 million and 7.5 million jobs were lost.  During the “Obama recovery”, approximately 535,000 jobs have been added.  When will the rest of the jobs finally come back?

#3 Of the 535,000 jobs that have been created during the “Obama recovery”, only about 35,000 of them are permanent full-time jobs. Today, “low income jobs” account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States. If our economy is recovering, then why can’t it produce large numbers of good jobs that will enable people to provide for their families?

#4 Agricultural commodities have been absolutely soaring this decade.  The combined price of cotton, wheat, gasoline and hogs is now more than 3 times higher than it was back in 2002.  So how in the world can the Federal Reserve claim that inflation has been at minimal levels all this time?

#5 Back in 2008, banks had a total of 27 billion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed.  Today, banks have a total of approximately 1.5 trillion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed.  So what is going to happen when all of this money eventually hits the economy?….

#6 If the U.S. economy is recovering, then why are shipments by U.S. factories still substantially below 2008 levels?

#7 Why are imports of goods from overseas growing much more rapidly than shipments of goods from U.S. factories?

#8 According to Zillow, the average price of a home in the U.S. is about 8 percent lower than it was a year ago and that it continues to fall about 1 percent a month. During the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest rate since late 2008. So can we really talk about a “recovery” when the real estate crisis continues to get worse?

#9 According to a shocking new survey, 54 percent of Americans believe that a housing recovery is “unlikely” until at least 2014.  So how is the housing industry supposed to improve if so many people are convinced that it will not?

#10 The latest GDP numbers out of Japan are a complete and total disaster.  During the first quarter GDP declined by a stunning 3.7 percent.  Of course I have been saying for months that the Japanese economy is collapsing, but most mainstream economists were absolutely stunned by the latest figures.  So will the rest of the world be able to avoid slipping into a recession as well?

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#11 Next week, Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to allow a vote on raising the debt ceiling.  Everyone knows that this is an opportunity for Republican lawmakers to “look tough” to their constituents (the vast majority of which do not want the debt ceiling raised).  Everyone also knows that eventually the Republicans are almost certainly going to cave on the debt ceiling after minimal concessions by the Democrats.  The truth is that neither “establishment Republicans” nor “establishment Democrats” are actually serious about significantly cutting government debt.  So why do we need all of this political theater?

#12 Why are so many of our once great manufacturing cities being transformed into hellholes?  In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.

#13 According to one new survey, about half of all Baby Boomers fear that when they retire they are going to end up living in poverty.  So who is going to take care of them all when the money runs out?

#14 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006.  Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month.  So why are our politicians talking about “economic recovery” instead of “the collapse of the economy” when hiring remains about 50 percent below normal?

#15 Since August, 2 million more Americans have left the labor force.  But the entire period from August to today was supposed to have been a time of economic growth and recovery.  So why are so many Americans giving up on looking for a job?

#16 According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was “getting better” at this time last year.  Today, that number is at just 27 percent.  Are Americans losing faith in the U.S. economy?

#17 According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years, and one out of every four American children is currently on food stamps.  During this same time period, Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke have told us over and over that the U.S. economy has been getting better. So what is the truth?

#18 America has become absolutely addicted to government money. 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another. U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes. Americans hate having their taxes raised and they hate having their government benefits cut.  So is there any hope that this will ever be turned around before disaster strikes?

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#19 The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011.  How in the world is the U.S. government going to be able to afford to guarantee all of that debt on top of everything else?

#20 If the U.S. national debt (more than 14 trillion dollars) was reduced to a stack of 5 dollar bills, it would reach three quarters of the way to the moon.  The U.S. government borrows about 168 million dollars every single hour.  If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.  So how in the world can our politicians tell us that everything is going to be okay?

BookMooch

America 2011

The American Dream
May 23, 2011

What kind of place is America in 2011?  Sadly, it is one giant sea of conformity.  If you traveled across the United States 40 or 50 years ago, you would encounter a vast array of cultures and you would meet a wonderful mix of people.  But today America is slowly but surely becoming standardized.  It seems like wherever you go you will find a Wal-Mart and a McDonald’s.  Thanks to Hollywood and the mass media, people all over the country dress the same and look the same and talk the same.  Sure there are various subcultures out there, but even many of those subcultures are virtually the same on one coast as they are on the other.  The things that gave flavor to our local communities are dying off in favor of greater conformity and greater profit.  Today, most retail stores and most restaurants are corporate owned.  Most small businesses that attempt to go up against the Wal-Marts, the Targets, the Burger Kings or the Home Depots of the world have already been stomped out of existence or are in the process of being stomped out of existence.  Eventually, if we are not careful, corporate conformity is going to dominate everything from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Some may view this as “progress”, but is this really what the American Dream is supposed to be all about?  Is this really the “America” that we want to pass down to future generations?

Our society has become so homogenized that we don’t really question it anymore.  We all watch American Idol, we all buy the same boring looking cars we see advertised on television and we all buy the same mass-produced corporate products down at Costco.

For many Americans, doing something “exotic” means going out to Applebee’s on Friday night.

If you are under 40 years of age and you have never been out of the country you should really make it a point to do that. Today there are millions upon millions of young Americans that have no idea what “another culture” even looks like.  All they know is how America does things and they have been taught that the American way of doing things is always the best.

Sadly, sometimes we think our way is so superior that it should be forced upon the rest of the world.

When this nation was founded, our founding fathers were extremely suspicious of large concentrations of power.  Corporations did not dominate early America.  Instead, millions of individuals and small businesses worked together to make this country great.  Back in those days a “family store” could be started without fear that a corporate giant like Wal-Mart would come waltzing in to crush it.

When Wal-Marts started to spread across the United States, almost everyone loved them.  The prices were lower, the selection was much greater and Wal-Mart brought jobs to the community.

When I would visit family or friends they would always excitedly talk about the new Wal-Mart that was going up somewhere nearby.  They saw Wal-Mart as a sign of progress and something that would make their lives better.

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Unfortunately, we now know that all of that corporate conformity comes at a very high price.

When Wal-Mart moves into a community, often dozens of local businesses can’t compete and are forced to close.

Wal-Mart does bring jobs, but they are really crappy jobs.  A very, very small percentage of Wal-Mart jobs will even come close to enabling someone to support a family.

But Wal-Mart is making a ton of money.  So where does all of that money go?

It goes out of the local community and into the pockets of the Wal-Mart shareholders.

Wal-Mart is like a giant vacuum cleaner.  It sucks the wealth out of our local communities and it transfers it into the hands of the very wealthy.

But don’t all of the products sold at Wal-Mart support American businesses and American jobs?

No.

Just go into a Wal-Mart some time and start picking up products.  You will notice that the vast majority of them are made outside of the United States.

Americans love to buy stuff made in China.  And the big corporations love that because they are more than happy to pay slave labor wages to workers in places like China and India.

But I don’t want to just pick on Wal-Mart.  The vast majority of our retail establishments are now owned by huge corporations.  They all crush small businesses and they all suck wealth out of our local communities.

Most of us have enjoyed the “low, low prices” that the mega-corporations have brought in, but as inflation has gone up faster than our wages, large numbers of Americans have had to go into debt in order to enjoy all of these cheap products.

Today, what the average American family owes is equivalent to 136% of what an average American family makes each year.

We have a national addiction to debt.  To the corporations and the banks we are viewed as “consumers” and the goal is to drain as much money out of us as possible.  They want us to be completely dependent on them so that we will be snared in the trap of “consumerism” forever.

The fact that corporations have become so dominant in our society is a huge reason why wealth has become so concentrated at the top.  Today, the bottom 50 percent of all Americans own just 2.5% of the wealth.  In a true capitalist society this would not happen because individuals and small businesses would be able to compete fairly in the marketplace and would be thriving.

But unfortunately, our system greatly favors giant corporations today.  In fact, what we have in our country today is much more aptly called “corporatism” rather than “capitalism”.  The vast majority of Americans work for either a giant corporation or for the government.    We even teach our children that they should go to college and study hard so that they can “get a job” rather than telling them that they should endeavor to “start a business” someday.

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If nothing changes, wealth and power will continue to become even more concentrated in the hands of the few.  Meanwhile, America will just continue to become a giant sea of corporate conformity and a very boring place.

“America 2011″ is not nearly as interesting as America was 50 years ago.  We are becoming defined by our greedy corporate overlords.  We just blindly conform and we let others do our thinking for us.

If our founding fathers could see us today, they would be absolutely horrified.

VodPod

Reparations: Rahm Says Pay the Banksters First

Reparations: Rahm Says Pay the Banksters First

 

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 11, 2011

Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s recently departed chief of staff, is running for mayor in Chicago. It was originally determined that Emanuel was not eligible to run because he lived in Washington for two years, but this was turned aside by the Illinois Supreme Court in late January.

According to a recent poll conducted in the Windy City, Emanuel actually has a chance of winning the February 22 election. He is widely supported by white voters. Black and Latino voters have added the margin he needs to win the election. A Tribune/WGN poll puts him at 49% and small business owner, lawyer, and government bureaucrat Gery Chico trailing with a paltry 19%.

In order to woo black voters, Emanuel said during a debate sponsored by the Chicago Defender newspaper at the DuSable Museum of African American History on Wednesday that he supports reparations, the idea that Black Americans deserve to be compensated by the government because their ancestors were slaves.

Emanuel had a caveat, however – the banksters must get the money government claims they are owed by the American people and their children and grand children. In fact, it is mathematically impossible to pay off the debt, but that’s a subject for another article.

The question was about Chicago’s budget deficit, but as a Democrat who sat with Goldman Sachs operatives in Obama’s cabinet, he was also talking about the nation’s debt. Chicago, after all, is a microcosm of the nation at large, especially with Obama at the pulpit.

“I think we have to be honest and frank with ourselves, we have a budget deficit that also needs to be addressed,” Emanuel said after telling the crowd he supports reparations.

Rival candidate and community activist Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins didn’t seem to understand Rahm Emanuel’s point — the banksters will be paid into perpetuity and there will be nothing left to hand out to the ancestors of slaves or for that matter anybody else who believes the government owes them money.

“When I hear Rahm Emanuel talking about a budget deficit when we’re talking about reparations, to me that’s offensive,” Watkins said. “This country was built on our backs, the backs of our ancestors. They bled, they died, they came in chains and they died in pain. So don’t talk to me about budget deficits right now. Not on this subject.”

Rahm Emanuel – as former Obama chief of staff, a senior advisor to Clinton, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and chairman of the Democratic Caucus – understands how the game is played. He is experienced at paying lip-service in order to get elected by the sheeple.

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More importantly, he learned how the economic system operates while working as a banker for the investment firm of Wasserstein Perella. He also sat on the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, as known as Freddie Mac.

During his tenure, the government-created institution was plagued by scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities. Obama rejected a request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel’s time as director.

Emanuel is a favorred son. Earlier this week it was discovered that phone calls between Rahm and former governor Rod Blagojevich are mysteriously missing from evidence in the trial of Blagojevich. He is accused of conspiring to commit several “pay to play” schemes, including attempting to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat.

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Emanuel knows black Americans will never see a cent under the transfer of wealth scheme known as slave reparations. Instead, like all other Americans outside of Emanuel’s political class, they will be systematically and relentlessly fleeced, driven into poverty, and made homeless on the continent their ancestors conquered, as Thomas Jefferson warned.