We have often suggested that, if we wish to know what is coming politically, socially, and economically in jurisdictions such as the EU and US, we might have a look at countries like Argentina and Venezuela, as they are in a similar state of near-collapse (for the very same reasons as the EU and US) but are a bit further along in the historical pattern.
Such a bellwether was seen in Argentina recently. Although the event in question is a very minor one, it is an illustration of the social tipping point—the manner in which a government loses control over its people.
Briefly, the events were as follows: Two men on a motorbike cruised a posh neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, seeking opportunities for purse-snatching. The pillion rider dismounted and snatched a purse from a woman. Bystanders saw the act, ran down the thief before he could re-mount the motorbike, and knocked him to the ground. Other onlookers (very possibly fed up with street crime caused by economic hardships) joined in. In a fury, they beat the thief senseless.
A policewoman managed to calm the group and handcuff the thief. Twenty minutes later, police assistance and an ambulance arrived.
Furious neighbours complained bitterly that the police had protected the thief but are generally doing little to protect law-abiding citizens. Continue reading →
… Despite the Obama administration touting a budget deficit of “only” $680 billion in 2013, the GAO’s more accurate accounting shows a total government cost of $3.8 trillion on total revenue of $2.8 trillion.
In other words– the administration wasn’t exactly honest with the American people– the deficit was more like $1 trillion, not $680 billion.
But it gets worse.
The GAO added up ALL the US government’s assets in 2013. Aircraft carriers. The highway system. Land. Cash and financial assets. The total is $2.97 trillion. The liabilities, on the other hand, total $19.88 trillion. This includes the official public debt, plus all sorts of IOUs and loan guarantees.
This means the net EQUITY of the US government is -$16.9 trillion [poster note: yes negative folks. GE.]
Moreover, the US government’s cash position is a mere $206 billion… roughly 1.1% of its public debt. This isn’t enough to cover net interest payments for the next year.
Unlike a savvy investor who borrows cheap money to purchase productive assets, the US government borrows money to pay interest.
via Sovereign Man and H/T to ZeroHedge where we saw it first
Preparation for disaster, whether natural or man-made, should be as vital as any ideal found in the various practices of religion and spiritualism. Preparedness should be treated with reverence, discipline and duty. The drive for preparation should be seated in the very heart of humanity. As individuals and as a society, we should hold preparedness dear, for it is an expression of the desire for survival and the key to maintaining our inherent freedoms. Without self-sufficiency, we set ourselves up for endless failure and enslavement. Continue reading →
A business enterprise is solvent when its operations are supported by its after-tax cash flow. Should cash flow be temporarily insufficient, borrowing against accounts receivable is the classic remedy. With serial borrowing however, operations-plus-debt-service eventually becomes unsupportable by cash flow, real or anticipated. Creditors withdraw when they see this, it’s insolvency or near enough. The business closes, its assets are liquidated and the proceeds distributed among its creditors. This is what’s happening to the US, aside from the liquidation part. Debt repudiation by inflation—watering down the currency—holds such comeuppance at bay, at least for a while. Continue reading →
With Senate Majority Leader Reid’s (D-NV) decision on Tuesday to not pass a budget for the third straight fiscal year, the Washington game of fiscal chicken–this time over $19 billion–is in full swing once again. To provide perspective, this is less than one-half of one-percent of the 2012 budget and less than 1.5% of this year’s expected deficit. It’s also about one-eighth of one percent of our national debt.
While politicians bicker, Rome burns and the budget grows. While some pundits blame Obama, and others blame Bush, and still others blame everyone in the Beltway, the fact is neither president or party has instituted the wisest fiscal policy. Still, the increase in spending under both has not been driven principally by new spending initiatives. It has instead been driven by the increasing number of retirees and resulting growth of social spending and especially Social Security and Medicare. Continue reading →
It used to be that debts were enforced with the threat of imprisonment. If you took out a loan and you couldn’t afford to pay it back, then you would be arrested and thrown in jail. But now—in the United States, at least—debtors’ prisons are supposed to be a thing of the past, a relic from a more barbaric era.
“For the most part, the US outlawed debtors’ prisons before the Civil War,” said guest host Ezra Klein on Tuesday’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show. Continue reading →
An independent global think tank, LEAP/E2020, recently reported the opinion that “this second half of 2012 will really mark a major inflection point of the global systemic crisis;” “The shock of the autumn 2008 will seem like a small summer storm compared to what will affect the planet in several months.”
In fact LEAP/E2020 has never seen the chronological convergence of such a series of explosive and so fundamental factors (economy, finances, geopolitical…) since the start of its work on the global systemic crisis. Logically, in our modest attempt to regularly publish a “crisis weather forecast”, we must therefore give our readers a “Red Alert” because the upcoming events which are readying themselves to shake the world system next September/ October belong to this category. Continue reading →
Starting with some piecing insights into the state of the economy, “peak oil”, energy costs, social trends and money, Mr.Hagens concludes with some thought provoking observational predictions for where we are headed. Worth the 49 minutes. GE.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that in 2011, the Federal Reserve purchased a mind-blowing 61% of Treasury debt issuance… When the U.S. needs money to fund its ever-expanding foreign interests, social welfare programs, or its war against dried flowers, it can obtain that money through a few different means. The least effective and most politically dangerous way for it to obtain money is to threaten American citizens with imprisonment if they don’t fork over their dough. Historically, Americans have refused to hand over anything greater than 20% of GDP through taxes regardless of tax rates or the threats the state makes against their person.
Since the state has trouble getting Americans to hand over their money, it generally turns to the much easier second option to finance itself: printing money. In today’s economy, the state prints money by issuing treasury debt. Normally it sells this debt to foreign nations, since this exports the inflation created by the issuance of new debt. However, there are natural limits to the amount of debt foreign nations are willing to hold.
“Two years ago, when introducing then promptly enacting Obamacare, the president stated that healthcare law reform would not cost a penny over $1 trillion ($900 billion to be precise), and that it would not add ‘one dime’ to the debt. It appears that this estimate may have been slightly optimistic… by a factor of 1700%...” go here ZeroHedge
From the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee.Be sure to pay attention to the footnote which reads:“Under President Obama’s plan, gross federal debt alone would reach $75,000 per capita in 2022.”At the rate we are going, it will reach that point within the next few years. 2022 is overly optimistic in my opinion…via Libertarian News.
Government lies are legion.So many are its lies, that narrowing them down to three of the most important is a demanding task. But our current crisis has been chiefly enabled by monetary policy, fiscal policy, and the global military empire. So I have chosen to focus on lies about each: the Federal Reserve, the orchestrator of monetary policy; the U.S. budget, the accounting of government fiscal policy; and a few of the Empire’s war lies. I am sharing just a smattering of this astonishing record of duplicity in these areas, for life is short, or at least far too short to recount all of the state’s lies about each.
Lie #1: The Federal Reserve Is a Bank… A bank is a company in the free economy that competes with other banks offering willing customers a safe place to make deposits and earn an interest rate return, while also competing to offer loans from those deposits to willing borrowers…
Lie #2: War Lies … In the case of the Iraq war, not only did defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lie about knowing where the non-existent weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq (“We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”), in a later exchange with my friend former CIA senior analyst Ray McGovern, Rumsfeld even denied he had made such a claim..
Lie #3: The Real U.S. Debt …This may be the most brazen and transparent lie of all, the one about the U.S. national debt, now over $15 trillion dollars. It is a number that hides the severity of our situation… the real federal debt is much, much larger and like an iceberg below the water line, most of it is hidden out of sight… Each year the federal government makes new promises and takes on trillions in new financial obligations that do not show up in the visible, official national debt. The persistent growth of these hidden debts each year far outpaces the increases in the visible debt. In 2010 for example, the visible federal debt grew by an astonishing $1.5 trillion. But the hidden debt – out of sight and without debate – grew by more than $5 trillion!… go here to LewRockwell.com
Each generation hopes their children and grandchildren will achieve more economic potential and more individual freedom than prior generations. As a new grandfather I researched economic conditions and education quality facing the generation of my infant grandchildren and their parents, compared to that faced by my generation when their age. The results are available to you in a series of free mini-reports listed on thehome page – with explanatory pictures.
There are so many great & positive things about our beloved America to celebrate. But, there are also some negative trends. Perhaps if more are aware of the negatives even more solutions & positives will result. The objective of these reports is to increase awareness of certain disturbing items, using an easy-to-understand format with hard data presented in picture form.
Pension plans are based on 8% annual growth forever. What happens to these plans in a zero-interest rate world as the global economy and stock markets contract?
I’m afraid it’s time for an intervention.
I don’t enjoy being the bearer of difficult news, but now that Europe has stumbled drunkenly into the pool and been “rescued,” it’s once again tearfully blubbering that this time it’s all going to change, and a new prime minister in each dysfunctional, insolvent EU nation is going to make the pain and the addiction all go away.It’s time we face the reality that Europe and the U.S. are full-blown financial alcoholics, addicted to illusion and debt. And what do they turn to as “solutions”? The very sources of their pain: illusory “fixes” and more debt. Have you ever seen a global market as dependent on rumors of “magical fixes” for its “resilience” as this one?
“The fundamental problem here is not debt but a broken educational system that no longer insists on excellence,” Ms. Neal says. “College tuitions have risen more than 440% over the last 25 years—and for what? The students who say that college has not prepared them for the real world are largely right.”
We are being throttled by the Big Lie: we’re told that if the predatory financial system implodes, we’ll all be ruined. The opposite is true: the only way to save our economy is to let the corrupt, pathological and flawed financial system implode….
We have often suggested that, if we wish to know what is coming politically, socially, and economically in jurisdictions such as the EU and US, we might have a look at countries like Argentina and Venezuela, as they are in a similar state of near-collapse (for the very same reasons as the EU and US) but are a bit further along in the historical pattern.
Preparation for disaster, whether natural or man-made, should be as vital as any ideal found in the various practices of religion and spiritualism. Preparedness should be treated with reverence, discipline and duty. The drive for preparation should be seated in the very heart of humanity. As individuals and as a society, we should hold preparedness dear, for it is an expression of the desire for survival and the key to maintaining our inherent freedoms. Without self-sufficiency, we set ourselves up for endless failure and enslavement. Continue reading 
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that in 2011, the Federal Reserve purchased a mind-blowing 61% of Treasury debt issuance… When the U.S. needs money to fund its ever-expanding foreign interests, social welfare programs, or its war against dried flowers, it can obtain that money through a few different means. The least effective and most politically dangerous way for it to obtain money is to threaten American citizens with imprisonment if they don’t fork over their dough. Historically, Americans have refused to hand over anything greater than 20% of GDP through taxes regardless of tax rates or the threats the state makes against their person.
From the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee.Be sure to pay attention to the footnote which reads:“Under President Obama’s plan, gross federal debt alone would reach $75,000 per capita in 2022.”At the rate we are going, it will reach that point within the next few years. 2022 is overly optimistic in my opinion…via Libertarian News.
The Grey Enigma 