Free Republic

#1 27 Percent Unemployment/60 Percent Youth Unemployment In Greece #2 Detroit, Michigan Is Insolvent And Is Rapidly Running Out Of Cash #3 Economic Despair In France #4 7,000 Abandoned Buildings In Dayton, Ohio #5 Overwhelmed By Squatters In Spain #6 The Collapse Of Chinese Power Consumption #7 Horrible Economic Data Coming Out Of The Second Largest Economy On The Planet #8 One Out Of Every Five U.S. Households On Food Stamps #9 Child Hunger In America #10 The Tremendous Suffering Of Hundreds Of Millions Of Desperately Poor People That We Never Hear About

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t. How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy. And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing. The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies: National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000...

ROSENBERG: The Fed Is Trying Like Crazy, But Nothing It's Doing Can Save The Economy Sam RoMay 5, 2013, 9:28 AMDavid Rosenberg, the veteran Wall Street economist and and bearish strategist at Gluskin Sheff, gave an intense presentation on Friday at John Mauldin's Strategic Investment Conference. Titled "Bernanke: The Wizard Of Potemkin," this presentation offers a sobering look at the anemic U.S. economy, the labor market mess, and the Federal Reserve's controversial efforts to get everything back on track. Before you can even think about getting bullish, you must consider the eye-opening charts from Rosenberg's presentation. Thanks to Gluskin Sheff...

Some philosophers have promoted the idea that it is impossible for human beings to invent new sins. Any "new" sin that may seem shocking to you, is a sin that was practiced in ancient civilizations that have gone before us. In order for a nation or civilization to be strong, families must be strong. When families die, civilizations die along with them. I refer you to this quote from this website http://constitutionschool.com/2012/09/27/first-time-ever-majority-of-american-households-unmarried/ "For the first time, households made up of married couples with and without children dropped below 50 percent of all households, Jacobsen noted. At the peak in 1960,...

1) Because Obama Is Half Black? 2) Because We Are Afraid Of An Economic Collapse That Will Never Come? 3) Because We Are Paranoid Over Unfounded Threats Of Martial Law? 4) Because We Refuse To Accept That The World Is Changing Without Us?

ALBERT EDWARDS: The Party Is Over, The US Is Just One Recession Away From Japan-Style Doom Joe WeisenthalMay 2, 2013 Here's your happy thought of the day from SocGen strategist Albert Edwards: Over the last 15 years most investors have refused to contemplate that events in the West are playing out in a similar fashion to Japan in the 1990s. But the latest inflation data out of both the US and eurozone should ram home the fact that we are now only one short recession away from Japanese-style outright deflation. Similarly, investors refuse to believe that equities can fall in...

Financial Collapse - Is Bernanke Preparing To Jump Ship? Interest-Rates / US Interest RatesMay 01, 2013 - 06:30 PM GMT By: Graham Summers The Fed meets today and tomorrow. The ECB meets on Thursday. Those will be the defining market forces for the next three trading sessions. There is little if any point in trying to trade this week (at least until Thursday). The Fed is notorious for leaking info to the well-connected. The most recent “accidental” sending of a report a day early is just the latest example. In simple terms, the market will be even more of an...

The Crisis Is Imminent: “When The Real Crash Comes It Will Be Worse Than the Great Depression” “The United States is like the Titanic, and I’m here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship… I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States.” Peter Schiff August 2006 In 2006, when he faced off with many well known Titans of investing and warned of an impending financial disaster and economic collapse, Peter Schiff was laughed at by his colleagues. He urged Americans to exit financial markets and take steps to protect themselves before the wealth...

Yesterday, my colleague, Marty Biancuzzo, explained why America is on a path to inevitable economic and government collapse. After reading Marty’s piece, another colleague asked me: What will America look like after a government collapse? It’s an important question, and I want to give a satisfactory answer. But I can’t do that in one short column, so I plan to return to this topic several times over the next few weeks. I hope that when I’m done, you will have a better understanding of where the country is headed. Now, consider our current situation… It’s clear that Barack Obama and...

look at this country's debt situation, especially relative to the United States, is truly amazing. This country is paying 21% of government revenue on interest payments to support a 236% debt-to-GDP ratio. With annual spending twice as high as its revenue, the government is running a deficit of $455 billion a year and adding to its $11.2 trillion debt. This is all before the monetary stimulus programs announced recently by its central bank. If you thought the United States government was a financial basket case, Japan is exponentially worse. A collapse in the yen and the stock market is all...

ALBERT EDWARDS: Stocks Will Crash, Hyperinflation Will Come, And Gold Will Go Above $10,000 Joe WeisenthalApril 25, 2013 This is always reassuring. SocGen strategist Albert Edwards remains an ultra-bear, and predicts everything will go to hell. In his new note he writes: We still forecast 450 S&P, sub-1% US 10y yields, and gold above $10,000 My working experience of the last 30 years has convinced me that policymakers’ efforts to manage the economic cycle have actually made things far more volatile. Their repeated interventions have, much to their surprise, blown up in their faces a few years later. The current...

SocGen: Everyone's Worried About The Economy Slowing Down Again — But This Time Will Be Differen Joe WeisenthalApril 21, 2013The weekend is over, and so analysts are coming out with their notes on what people will be talking about for the week ahead. In the US, the big question is whether the economy is flagging again (whether there's a 'spring swoon' to use the popular parlance). If the economy were to fade again, it would mean that this was just the latest in a series of false-dawns since the crisis, where we thought that we'd finally broken out of the...

Every discussion of gay marriage should begin with a recognition of its historical radicalness, its exceptionality. Heterosexual marriage has been the fundamental unit of human sociability for thousands of years, a common thread running through otherwise disjunctive cultures and wide-ranging ethnic diversity. Wherever one lands on the issue of same-sex marriage, there can be no gainsaying its extraordinariness. It’s also clear that same-sex marriage is a culmination of a long-brewing development, an unspooling of essential modern premises. The relentless logic of modernity is unrestrained individuality, the lonesome sovereignty of the singular person. The pith of matrimony is natural gregariousness, our...

“Watch The Metals, When They Dip. It Will Be A Good Indication That Things Are About To Happen.” Mac Slavo April 15th, 2013 As of this print the price of gold is reaching fresh two year lows, down nearly 25% from its all time high just six months ago. Though uninformed onlookers and financial pundits may see this as the popping of the proverbial gold bubble, the velocity and scale of the take-down in precious metals suggests that there is a massive assault in the works. According to former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts, last Friday’s price drop was...

Officials say the graffiti started with just a few markings, but quickly spread. They blame vandals who posted pictures of their handiwork on social media sites, which enticed others to the same spot and leave their own illicit marks.

  videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0TSQaKMK2w   Jim Rogers decries the growing uncertainty and recklessness of global central planners as the world enters unchartered financial markets: For the first time in recorded history, we have nearly every central bank printing money and trying to debase their currency. This has never happened before. How it’s going to work out, I don't know. It just depends on which one goes down the most and first, and they take turns. When one says a currency is going down, the question is against what? because they are all trying to debase themselves. It’s a peculiar time in world history.I own the...

This week, while economists should have been closely considering the implications of the actual bankruptcy of Stockton, California, they instead heaped scorn on the perceived ideological bankruptcy of David Stockman. In other words, Stockman trumped Stockton. Ronald Reagan's former Budget Director contributed "Sundown in America" a multi-page opinion piece to the Sunday New York Times which loudly and eloquently described the illusions of our current economic system. While I don't agree with everything Stockman believes, I think he is showing great wisdom and courage in making dire predictions and calling for extreme changes in our policy and politics. What was...

This Is What Societal Collapse Looks Like Politics / Eurozone Debt CrisisApril 04, 2013 - 05:54 AM GMT By: Graham Summers Add the total and complete hypocrisy of France to the list of reasons to avoid putting a cent in the EU. We already know about Spain where Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was “allegedly” receiving bribes from property developers throughout the housing bubble… while THREE different treasurers have been accused of everything from money laundering to fraud. Rajoy’s defense to the allegations? “I repeat what I said Saturday: everything that has been said about me and my colleagues in the...

Growing wealth inequality means that the wealthy have nowhere to hide and that events like those in Cyprus will happen in more countries around the world, including developed nations, said Marc Faber, the contrarian investor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. "It will happen everywhere in the world, in Western democracies," Faber said "Squawk on the Street" on Tuesday. "You have more people that vote for a living than work for a living. I think you have to be prepared to lose 20 to 30 percent. I think you're lucky if you don't lose your life." "If...

So… in the last few months we’ve discovered… EU political leaders were on the dole during the boom times often receiving bribes and then hiding the money via tax evasion schemes. EU political leaders feel it’s acceptable to throw out issues like personal property rights and Democracy during the bust times. EU political leaders are so corrupt they don’t even deny their crimes. When push comes to shove, EU leaders won’t hesitate to STEAL citizens’ money to bail out their banker friends.

Author John Lott talked about his book, At the Brink: Will Obama Push Us Over the Edge, in which he argues that, thanks to President Obama, we are on the verge of economic and social collapse. This talk was part of Loudoun County, Virginia’s Ronald Reagan Lecture Series.

Video at link claims to have information about scandal which could halt American way of life. Anyone seen it? " A wealthy Maryland journalist (who's neither a Democrat or Republican) has exposed a scandal brewing within the current Administration. He says it could ruin Obama's entire Presidency... and would also result in some of the most dramatic changes to ordinary American life in more than 50 years.

The EU/IMF precedent of raiding bank accounts in Cyprus to bail out the country's financial system sets a dangerous precedent and investors should "run for the hills" said investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, on "Squawk on the Street" Thursday. Rogers said that with Cyprus, politicians are saying that this is a special case and urging people not to worry, but that is exactly why investors should be concerned. "What more do you need to know? Please, you better hurry, you better run for the hills. I'm doing it anyway," Rogers said. "I want to make sure that I...

The Reality of Combat: “Everything That You Have Prepared and Stored for SHTF Will Be Pushed to the Limit” Mac Slavo March 27th, 2013 Editor’s Note: Do you want to know what it’s really like? If so, then the best place to acquire first hand information about what you’ll experience when the world as we know it collapses is from combat veterans and people who have been through the worst of what humanity has to offer. In 2011 Selco of SHTF School shared A Survival Q & A: Living Through SHTF In the Middle of A War Zone with our...

Here's his explanation: When you print money, the money does not flow evenly into the economic system. It stays essentially in the financial service industry and among people that have access to these funds, mostly well-to-do people. It does not go to the worker. I just mentioned that it doesn't flow evenly into the system. Now from time to time it will lift the NASDAQ like between 1997 and March 2000. Then it lifted home prices in the U.S. until 2007. Then it lifted the commodity prices in 2008 until July 2008 when the global economy was already in recession....

Chris Martenson is a world-renowned expert on identifying dangerous, yet hidden, exponential growth patterns in global economies, energy demand, and food consumption... And he is predicting a 60% stock market collapse will strike in the next three months. Martenson’s opinion isn’t to be taken lightly, as his research is highly regarded by the United Nations, UK Parliament, and Fortune 500 companies. His shocking forecast is based on a new alarming pattern he’s identified — he’s calling it “a dreaded triple top” (pictured below).

I am not an economist, but with all that is going on over there: high taxes, decrease in revenues, businesses leaving, low-skilled and poorly educated illegal immigrants sucking up the social services, etc...shouldn't we be seeing signs of collapse? I would have thought that something would have happened by now. I keep hearing all this talk about economic collapse not just for certain states, but for the entire country. Is that really going to happen with chaos reigning, or will it more likely be just be just a condition where everything is stagnant?

*SNIP* The following is the global financial pyramid scheme by the numbers... -$9,283,000,000,000 - The total amount of all bank deposits in the United States. The FDIC has just 25 billion dollars in the deposit insurance fund that is supposed to "guarantee" those deposits. In other words, the ratio of total bank deposits to insurance fund money is more than 371 to 1. -$10,012,800,000,000 - The total amount of mortgage debt in the United States. As you can see, you could take every penny out of every bank account in America and it still would not cover it. -$10,409,500,000,000 -...

[Via Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog} Why is the global economy in so much trouble? How can so many people be so absolutely certain that the world financial system is going to crash? Well, the truth is that when you take a look at the cold, hard numbers it is not difficult to see why the global financial pyramid scheme is destined to fail. In the United States today, there is approximately 56 trillion dollars of total debt in our financial system, but there is only about 9 trillion dollars in our bank accounts. So you could take...

The Domino’s Are Falling: Europe Announces Stunning Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors To Get Instant 10% Haircut Before Banks Reopen This Week! Biggest Bank Run In History Starts Monday!! Europe Does It Again: Cyprus Depositor Haircut “Bailout” Turns Into Saver “Panic”, Frozen Assets, Bank Runs, Broken ATMs http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-16/europe-does-it-again-cyprus-depositor-haircut-bailout-turns-saver-panic-bank-runs-br Cyprus bailout comes at a cost to bank depositors http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cyprus-bailout-comes-at-a-cost-to-bank-depositors-2013-03-16?link=MW_home_latest_news CYPRUS PRESIDENT: Nation Faces Total Financial Collapse And Euro Exit Without Bailout In the early hours of Saturday, Cyprus agreed to a “bailout” with the EU and IMF that is very controversial because it imposes an immediate one-time tax on everyone...

Why are so many people leaving the United States right now? Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of Americans have decided that moving to another country is the best way to prepare for the collapse of America. According to the U.S. State Department, an all-time record of more than 6 million Americans are now working or studying overseas. Of course many of those that have left the country do not believe that the U.S. economy is going to collapse, but without a doubt there are an increasing number of preppers that believe that now is the time...

12 Things That Just Happened That Show The Next Wave Of The Economic Collapse Is Almost Here By Michael Snyder March 3rd, 2013 Are we running out of time? For the last several years, we have been living in a false bubble of hope that has been fueled by massive amounts of debt and bailout money. This illusion of economic stability has convinced most people that the great economic crisis of 2008 was just an "aberration" and that now things are back to normal. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The truth is that the financial crash of...

Retail Apocalypse: Why Are Major Retail Chains All Over America Collapsing? By Michael Snyder February 17th, 2013 If the economy is improving, then why are many of the largest retail chains in America closing hundreds of stores? When I was growing up, Sears, J.C. Penney, Best Buy and RadioShack were all considered to be unstoppable retail powerhouses. But now it is being projected that all of them will close hundreds of stores before the end of 2013. Even Wal-Mart is running into problems. A recent internal Wal-Mart memo that was leaked to Bloomberg described February sales as a "total disaster"....

The Final Economic Countdown Politics / Global EconomyFebruart 18, 2013 - 12:11 PM GMT By: Alasdair Macleod Governments have refused to accept the necessity of a period of economic re-adjustment following the credit-bubble. The bubble burst about five years ago and economic progress has been effectively suspended ever since. The consequences of this refusal to accept reality are at a minimum to make this adjustment unnecessarily drawn out and needlessly painful, without offering a better eventual outcome. Reduced to its bare bones, the choice has been either to accept that unviable businesses and over-extended banks must go bust, or to...

On Friday’s night broadcast of his radio show, Mark Levin speculated that the federal government is stockpiling ammunition to ensure the rule of law in the event of a total societal and economic collapse.

What Happens To A Financial System When Its Two Biggest Pillars Collapse? Stock-Markets / Eurozone Debt CrisisFebruary 16, 2013 - 10:32 PM GMT By: Graham Summers Those EU leaders who have yet to be implicated in scandals are not faring much better than their more corrupt counterparts. In France, socialist Prime Minister Francois Hollande, has proven yet again that socialism doesn’t work by chasing after the wealthy and trying to grow France’s public sector… when the public sector already accounts for 56% of French employment. France was already suffering from a lack of competitiveness. Now that wealthy businesspeople are fleeing...

So, there you have it. Two gentlemen from the UK have a "News Program" where they discuss the state of affairs in Europe. 2 years old at least. Funny and true. Add your comments or your favorite meatloaf recipe.

The Real Reason the Economy Is Broken (And Will Stay That Way) More and more economic sinkholes by Chris Martenson Tuesday, February 12, 2013, 8:54 PM We are far enough and deep enough into the most heroic monetary and fiscal efforts ever undertaken to finally ask, why aren't these measures working? Or at least we should be. Oddly, many in DC, on Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve continue to steadfastly refuse to include anything in their approaches and frameworks other than "more of the same." So we are treated to an endless parade of news items that seek to...

The Number One Reason To Invest In Gold… Mac Slavo February 10th, 2013 With the the U.S. economy having once again dropped into negative recessionary growth, currency wars around the world heating up through direct and indirect devaluations, and trillion dollar fiscal deficits piling on, how is it possible that the stock market, a key measure of economic health for many Americans, is touching near all time highs? Marin Katusa, Chief Strategist at Casey Research, suggests that this effect can be traced to monetary machinations that are happening behind the scenes, where few people are willing to look. “Because they’re...

Are childrens’ car seats driving down the fertility rate in America?Jonathan V. Last sees car seats as part of a “huge constellation of factors in modern life” that “nudge” people toward having fewer children, he said during an interview about his book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster.Last said car seats effectively create a small “tax on people who want to have more than two kids” by making it harder to fit three kids into a normal sedan, which encourages parents to buy a larger car. This penalty may not dissuade people who already want...

Yes, the Dow and S&P500 hit new highs. But the rally’s hiding huge risks: “GDP turns negative as U.S. economic recovery stalls,” screams one headline. Another hears a “Ticking Time Bomb.” World’s central bankers at Davos warn cheap money’s blowing a new asset bubble. Dr. Doom, Marc Faber, “loves the high odds of a ‘big-time’ market crash.” Another, Nouriel Roubini, says “prepare for a perfect storm,” while Bond King Bill Gross sees a “credit supernova” dead ahead. Rally? Bubble? Crash? Global? Is the economy “peaking?” Are we on a long, slow-growth downhill slide to a 1% GDP? Is our banking...

Debt Delinquancy - Seamless Collapse Economics Economics / Global Debt Crisis 2013February 03, 2013 - 06:34 PM GMT By: Andrew McKillop MAYBE THE MAYANS WERE RIGHT The New Age mystics told us that the Mayans told them the world would end in Dec 2012, but in reality the world ran out of Mayans an awful long time ago: about 1550 AD. Nearer to us, the world has already run out of credit, more than 5 years ago, or 1800 days back in time from today. The US fiscal cliff, in December, morphed into the "debt ceiling" of a supposed theoretical...

BOND GOD: The World Is Changing, And Bonds Are The Most Overbought I've Seen In My 55 Year Career Joe WeisenthalFeb. 3, 2013, 12:05 PMFor years, investors have watched in disbelief as the 30-year bull market in fixed-income assets has raged on, leaving bears in the dust. The bond skeptics are having another moment, as talk grows of a "great rotation" from bonds into equities, as rates finally start to rise, and the economy turns back into the old normal. Dan Fuss of Loomis Sayles is the third bond fund manager to be called a "bond god" (the other two...

12 Charts That Will Make Gold Bulls Furious Joe WeisenthalFebruary 2, 2013, 10:48 AM The anti-gold bandwagon is getting more and more crowded. Analysts Tom Kendall and Ric Deverell of Credit Suisse is out with a bombshell report this morning titled: Gold: The Beginning Of The End Of An Era. The article argues that the 2011 peak of $1921 was the top, and that now the run of the cult metal is coming to an end. The argument essentially boils down to two arguments, which are related. The first is that we're seeing rate normalization. When real interest rates are...

The Bundesbank said the purpose of the move was to "build trust and confidence domestically, and the ability to exchange gold for foreign currencies at gold-trading centers abroad within a short space of time." It's just satisfying the worries of the commoners, in the mainstream view, as well as giving themselves the ability to complete transactions faster. As evidence that it's nothing more than this, Bundesbank points out that half of Germany's gold will remain in New York and London (the US portion of reserves will only be reduced from 45% to 37%). Sounds reasonable. But these economists remind me...

Video at the linkee: Ron Paul describes the upcoming bedlam and some things to possibly prevent it. It's The End Of The World As We Know It and I have gas!

Minutes after New England fishery managers took a vote that cast doubt on the historic industry’s future, the prospects most clear to Gloucester fishermen Paul Vitale were his own. “I’m bankrupt. That’s it,” said the 40-year-old father of three. “I’m all done. The boat’s going up for sale.” The New England Fishery Management Council on Wednesday approved a year-to-year cut of 77 percent on the Gulf of Maine cod limit and 61 percent for Georges Bank cod. The cuts come on top of a slew of other reductions, ranging from 10 to 71 percent, on the catch of other bottom-dwelling...

Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi warned Tuesday that Egypt could be facing collapse. Al-Sisi explained that military units have been stationed in cities next to the Suez Canal, where riots have broken out, in order to protect the canal. "The continuing conflict between political forces and their differences concerning the management of the country could lead to a collapse of the state and threaten future generations," Al-Sisi said in a speech to army cadets that was also quoted on the Egyptian military spokesman's Facebook page. Sisi said the country's economic, political and social challenges signify "a real threat...

Why Owning Gold Is Absolutely Essential – Charles Ponzi Meets Cassandra Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013Jan 21, 2013 - 05:12 PM By: DeviantInvestor One fine day on the streets of Washington D.C. the ghost of Charles Ponzi struck up a conversation with the ghost of Cassandra. He was a charming devil and assumed she would find him irresistible so he began with “It is ironic, I think, that I am a thief, while you see and speak the truth, but the people believe me and scorn you.” Cassandra was not impressed and replied, “It is true. Most people would...

Do We Love Kids? Five years ago, on a quiet, leisurely Thursday night, my husband and I sat at the dining room table with a yellow notepad, discussing when we should start having kids. "See, here's how it works," he said, drawing a graph. "With a dog, you put in a medium amount of work, and you get a medium amount of reward. If you were to, say, purchase a lion, you'd put in a lot of work, but you'd get pretty much no reward - and you might even get eaten. Horrible deal." He paused, drawing a straight...