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6 Reasons Bernanke Is Wrong, And The Future Is Going To Be Bleak Rob Wile May 20, 2013, 10:10 AM Saturday morning, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told graduating Bard College students why he believes the future will be better. In theory, this is a pretty banal argument, especially in a graduation speech. But it looks a little different coming from an conscientious academic. Halfway through the speech, Bernanke presents the evidence of those who argue against this view — that actually, our best, most innovative days are way behind us. In a footnote, Bernanke discusses the folks he's really...

The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation. Here is what happened: Following World War II in 1946, violence erupted when returning American soldiers discovered their Tennessee county had been taken over by political corruption. Their plan to take it back involved bullets—lots of bullets—and dynamite. Why Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee became a battleground was due to Paul Cantrell,...

According to Diane Abbott, Britain is facing a crisis of masculinity. In a speech made on Thursday under the auspices of the thinktank Demos, the shadow health minister warned of a generation of angry, inarticulate young men who had no idea of their role in society. Raised on a diet of pornography and consumerism, they were "caught between the stiff-upper-lip approach of previous generations" and the "pornified ideals" of a youth culture that featured Viagra as a party drug and promoted sexism and homophobia.More prone to depression and less well educated than young women, and perhaps jobless despite a degree,...

Certain types of antidepressants may put people at an increased risk for developing a deadly superbug infection, a new study suggested. Researchers from the University of Michigan revealed that individuals who suffer from depression and those taking antidepressants such as mirtazapine and fluoxetine had a much higher chance of contracting Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) – a life threatening infection that can cause severe diarrhea and inflammation of the colon. One of the most common infections acquired by patients at hospitals, C. difficile has been occurring with more and more frequency, resulting in the deaths of 14,000 individuals in the United...

The past 2 decades have witnessed an alarming increase in the number of Americans diagnosed with mental illness. Is modern psychiatry reaping an immense profit by impulsively—perhaps even deliberately–conflating mental illness with a growing, public aversion to the demands of personal responsibility? In the summer of 2011, The New York Review of Books published two lengthy articles by Marcia Angell, MD—Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. In these articles, Angell reviewed three books which take a critical look at psychiatry and its relationship with the...

Abstract: Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, is the most popular herbicide used worldwide. The industry asserts it is minimally toxic to humans, but here we argue otherwise. Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat. Glyphosate's inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and...

One of the darkest risks facing America is that so few of us are prepared for retirement.It's shocking, really. According to ConvergEx Group, "Only 58% of us are even saving for retirement in the first place. Of that group, 60% have less than $25,000 put away ... a full 30% have less than $1,000." According to Nielsen Claritas, Americans age 55 to 64 have a median net worth of $180,000 -- less than they'll likely need for health care spending alone during retirement.I recently asked Joseph Dear, chief investment officer of CalPERS, one of the world's largest pension funds, whether...

Nigel Farage, well known for his anti-centralized government diatribes in which he has repeatedly targeted European leadership and finance ministers for the destruction of the Eurozone economy, warns yet again that the consequences for the actions of elite politicians and bankers will soon pour into the streets. You won’t see straight forward candidness like this from mainstream politicians, because most are terrified of speaking the truth and accepting blame. They know it’s coming and the fallout won’t be limited to just Europe. My fear is that, in the end, what will break up the Euro isn’t the economics of it....

The next Great Depression is already happening - it just hasn't reached the United States yet. Things in Europe just continue to get worse and worse, and yet most people in the United States still don't get it. All the time I have people ask me when the "economic collapse" is going to happen. Well, for ages I have been warning that the next major wave of the ongoing economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening. In fact, both Greece and Spain already have levels of unemployment that are greater than anything the U.S....

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...

The Economic Depression Is Deepening Economics / Great Depression IIApril 23, 2013 - 05:47 PM GMT By: Bill Bonner Gold seemed to be stabilizing at the end of last week. Commodities remained weak. Steel has fallen 31% this year. Brent crude is off 17% since early February. And copper is down 15%. Copper is the metal you need to make almost anything – houses, cars, electronics. When it goes down, it generally means the world economy is getting soft.At the start of last week, the conventional analysis of the gold sell-off was that the central banks' efforts to revive global...

Gold seemed to be stabilizing at the end of last week. Commodities remained weak. Steel has fallen 31% this year. Brent crude is off 17% since early February. And copper is down 15%. Copper is the metal you need to make almost anything - houses, cars, electronics. When it goes down, it generally means the world economy is getting soft. At the start of last week, the conventional analysis of the gold sell-off was that the central banks' efforts to revive global growth were working. The feds had the situation under control. So who needed gold? By the end of...

Terrorism. Chaos. Fear of the future. In the age of Obama, America is undergoing a “fundamental transformation” – that much everyone knows. But what few seem to realize about this transformation is that the sheer stress of living in today’s America is driving tens of millions to the point of illness, depression and self-destruction. Consider the following trends: Suicide has surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of injury death for Americans. Even more disturbing, in the world’s greatest military, more U.S. soldiers died last year by suicide than in combat; Fully one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating...

History Tells Us That A Gold Crash + An Oil Crash = Guaranteed Recession By Michael Snyder April 17th, 2013 Is the United States about to experience another major economic downturn? Unfortunately, the pattern that is emerging right now is exactly the kind of pattern that you would expect to see just before a major stock market crash and a deep recession. History tells us that when the price of gold crashes, a recession almost always follows. History also tells us that when the price of oil crashes, a recession almost always follows. When both of those things happen, a...

Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Email Comments More . Susan Stewart collects fresh human placentas, takes them home and steams them with lemon, ginger and cayenne pepper. Once cooked, she puts the organs in a dehydrator overnight then grinds them and measures the powder out into gel capsules. The service – the Calgary single mother makes a living at this – costs about $200. Within a day, she presents new moms with their placentas in pill form – an average human placenta yields about 150 capsules – with promises of renewed energy, better lactation and no post-partum depression. They keep indefinitely. Placenta-eating...

Mental health advocates yesterday blasted a McDonald’s ad on the MBTA that appears at first to be a public service announcement targeting people suffering from depression. “It’s really too bad because it trivializes the whole issue of depression,” said Julie Totten, executive director of Waltham-based Families for Depression Awareness, which has been running an ad of its own on the T for its Strides Against Stigma Walk on April 27 at Boston University. “We’re trying to say when you need help, it’s not a laughing matter. We don’t want people to feel stigmatized or made fun of.”

Remember all those who denied that firearms confiscation as a result of New York’s new gun laws was too “insane” to even consider? That it was strictly in the realm of paranoid conspiracy theorists and the “it cant happen here crowd”? Those were and remain some of the standard replies to anyone who even thought about the possibility, let alone gave voice to it, despite the fact that Gov Cuomo and numerous other officials made public comments about such a plan, as I discussed in my article “Feinstein & Cuomo Admit Planning Australian Style Government Gun Buy Back” . Elected...

Drugs made from magic mushrooms could help treat people with severe depression, a new study suggests. Scientists believe that the chemical psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, can turn down parts of the brain that are overactive in severely depressive patients, the Guardian reported. The drug appears to stop patients dwelling on themselves and their own perceived inadequacies. However, a bid by British scientists to carry out trials of psilocybin on patients in order to assess its full medical potential has been blocked by red tape relating to Britain’s strict drugs laws. Professor David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at...

Edward C. Prescott, the 2004 Nobel Laureate in economics, says the U.S. economy is “slowly becoming more depressed” and that the spending being pursued by politicians in Washington will “create more poverty.”

Let It Bleed?J. Bradford DeLongMarch 29-2013 BERKELEY – In the 12 years of the Great Depression – between the stock-market crash of 1929 and America’s mobilization for World War II – production in the United States averaged roughly 15% below the pre-depression trend, implying a total output shortfall equal to 1.8 years of GDP. Today, even if US production returns to its stable-inflation output potential by 2017 – a huge “if” – the US will have incurred an output shortfall equivalent to 60% of a year’s GDP. In fact, the losses from what I have been calling the “Lesser Depression”...

Entrenched Deflation Threatens Economic Recovery Economics / DeflationMarch 26, 2013 - 10:30 AM GMT By: Andrew McKillop TWO VIEWS ONLY There are basically only two possible views. One is that entrenched deflation happens when there is persistent falling demand for credit and declining rates of money ciculation in the economy, driving down prices for goods, services and credit. This is confronted and made worse by increasing physical supply (and supply capacity) of goods and services. Due to generalized over-borrowing in the recent "economic cycle", QE Everywhere cannot fill the gap caused by secular deleveraging. All developed economies are "pushing on...

The papal conclave is a gripping political story, and not just because reform-minded cardinals are pitted against old-guard “Romans.” The white-smoke watch resonates beyond the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics because the Vatican is emblematic of a 21st-century ill: the failure of social institutions to adapt to the times, and the public’s loss of faith in them. The parallels leaped to mind while I read this sentence in TheNew York Times’soutstanding analysis of papal politics: “The next pontiff must unite an increasingly globalized church paralyzed by scandal and mismanagement under the spotlight in a fast-moving media age.” Let’s play Mad Libs...

Is the U.S. Becoming a Banana Republic Politics / US PoliticsMarch 05, 2013 - 02:40 PM GMT By: Michael Pento It is sad to say there are just two reasons why the U.S. is not yet a banana republic. The first reason is that the US dollar has not yet lost its world’s reserve currency status, which is helping to keep interest rates at record low levels. If the dollar, yen and euro were not involved in a currency war, the dollar’s intrinsic decline would become much more evident, causing domestic inflation to soar, and our bond market to immediately...

We think of the iconic images of the Great Depression as representative of a uniquely miserable period, long vanished from American history. The bread lines and soup kitchens of those abnormal times have gone. So, too, has the sight of thousands of men (there were very few women among them then) waiting all day outside a factory in a forlorn quest for work. But they're there still, in the many millions across the country—little changed in their total since the 1930s: 12.3 million today are fully unemployed, compared to 12.8 million in 1933 at the depth of the depression. The...

Five disorders from depression to autism share a genetic link, which could pave the way for new treatments Autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia overlap at a genetic level Two gene markers common to all of the disorders govern the balance of calcium in brain cells New understanding could help develop treatments The five most common mental health and developmental disorders share a common genetic root, a study has found. Scientists found a link between autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia. The findings, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, could revolutionise how doctors think...

The President has excoriated the Republicans for not bailing us out of the sequestration which is going to end life as we know it. He says the only way out is to keep borrowing more money – the sequestration was his idea on how to insure that we did some spending cuts when we raised the debt ceiling, but he has forgotten that I guess. Now the only hope for the nation is to raise taxes. Supposedly on the rich because there are plenty of tax rises that will affect us all coming inevitably. The notion is to blame the...

THE grieving process is in danger of being branded a medical condition if a mourner feels sad for more than two weeks and consults a GP, according to an international authority on death and dying. At present, mourners can feel sad for two months before being told they have a mental disorder, says Professor Dale Larson. Decades ago, a diagnosis could be made after a year.In a keynote address at an Australian Psychological Society conference in Melbourne on Saturday, Prof Larson will express his anger about the American Psychiatric Association's new diagnostic manual, DSM 5, which is used in many...

A television movie like An American Story couldn't get greenlit today. In fact, it's still surprising the Hallmark Hall of Fame and CBS joint production actually got broadcast back in 1992.  Yet this fictionalization of the Battle of Athens, the last and best modern example of American citizens forcefully asserting their Second Amendment rights, was actually shown only 21 years ago. The telepicture earned two Primetime Emmy nominations, one for music and another for cinematography.This well made TV movie, starring Brad Johnson and directed by John Gray, depicted the last time in modern American history when a large group of...

Recessions are deepening across the globe. Futures sagged today after GDP numbers for several countries fell. Japan's economy continued to shrink in the fourth quarter by 0.1%, a narrower dive from a 1.0% fall in the third quarter. Economists expected Japan to show a small amount of growth. Germany's contraction helped deepen the recession in the eurozone. German GDP dropped 0.6%, mostly on weak export demand. The eurozone economy as a whole shrank 0.6%, the fastest rate since 2009. For the full year, the eurozone showed sub-zero growth. The French economy fared worse than expected as well, contracting by 0.3%...

In February, 2009, I wrote for the Wall Street Journal an article entitled Reaganomics versus Obamanomics. The article explained that the emerging Obamanomics was pursuing exactly the opposite of every policy of the enormously successful Reaganomics, and predicted that it would produce exactly the opposite results. Well, the results are in, and under President Obama the American people have now suffered the worst 5 years since the Great Depression, as first explained by Steve McCann of the American Thinker on January 25. McCann writes, “From 2009 through 2012, the Obama cabal, and their allegiance to statist policies, has been in...

I had my first panic attack somewhere around the age of 12... I thought...I would grow out of such episodes over time...As I got older, the attacks and periods of depression only grew more frequent and intense... For those inexperienced with depression, it’s not simply a few bad days or fleeting moments of unhappiness, but a constant, oppressive feeling of hopelessness. It interferes with your day-to-day life. It was difficult to focus or do anything. Some days it would take me hours to get out of the house simply because I couldn’t summon the will to do anything. Several times...

...LDS women in Utah are at risk for depression due to "toxic perfectionism" and a host of other cultural factors, according to a recent study presented at Utah Valley University... UVU professor Kris Doty..conducted a "qualitative exploratory study" by repeatedly interviewing 20 women over a one-year period. The women were diagnosed as depressed, signed up for the study and identified themselves as active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In her findings, Doty identified five major factors that she said led to depression among the study's participants — genetics, history of abuse, family relationships, feeling judged...

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...

Washington, D.C. – It is possible, possible, that the massive shuffling of Cabinet positions for president Obama will have a positive effect on his next four years in office. With so many people leaving the make-up of the team that led to a lot of mediocrity and divisiveness will be fundamentally altered.timothy geithner leaving obama administration Some of those changes, say Secretary of State, clearly trade one strong player for another but in other places the changeover will not be as smooth or as clearly good. There is, perhaps, no position more important in all of this than the change...

Bears beware. A monetary revolution is underway. The US, Japan, Britain, as well as the Swiss, Scandies, and a string of states around the world, are actively driving down their currencies or imposing caps. They are tearing up the script, embracing the new creed of nominal GDP targeting (NGDP), a licence for yet more radical action. The side-effects of this currency warfare -- or "beggar-thy-neighbour’ policy as it was known in the 1930s -- is an escalating leakage of monetary stimulus into the global system. So don’t fight the Fed, and never fight the world’s central banks on multiple fronts....

Everywhere from FoxNews.com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pending doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Welcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years. More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic...

From childhood it has been my nature to find that double rainbow in even the worst adversity I've experienced throughout my life, and like so many of you I've had my share. As an adult I am now well conditioned to find it immediately -- as I've learned that to do so I'm able to overcome a setback much quicker, press forward -- come what may. (Of note, this usually accompanies a very fast turn to Christ as part of the process.) But on occasion, life's disappointments refuse to allow such expediency and we are compelled to pause briefly...

As our futures bleed this morning on the hangover from yesterday's rumor dujour on the "fiscal cliff" buried below the fold and therefore invisible to Americanus Stupidus is the news that both Bankia and Valencia, along with a handful of other Spanish banking names, are collapsing. Bankia was formed from a merger of provincial savings banks, drawing in over a quarter of a million small investors with extremely aggressive marketing. Unfortunately it appears that they were also hiding losses and it was recently revealed that the firm had negative equity (that is, its assets are worth less than its deposits.)...

Not sure about the posting rules for this one, so just click the link.

GERALD CELENTE: The Financial Collapse Of 2013 Will Be Worse Than The Great Depression Sam RoDec. 23, 2012, 5:07 AM Forget the Mayan Apocalypse. Gerald Celente, the popular trends forecaster of Trends Research, cites the work of a former Treasury official and warns that the bonds are in a massive bubble that will burst in 2013 in what will be a financial collapse like nothing we've seen before. He recently spoke about it in an interview with King World News: This piece is being penned by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, the former Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan. And he...

The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets Stock-Markets / Financial CrashDec 05, 2012 - 04:24 AM By: John Rolls John Rolls Submits, Michael Snyder writes: When financial markets in the United States crash, so does the U.S. economy. Just remember what happened back in 2008. The financial markets crashed, the credit markets froze up, and suddenly the economy went into cardiac arrest. Well, there are very few things that could cause the financial markets to crash harder or farther than a derivatives panic. Sadly, most Americans don't even understand what derivatives are. Unlike stocks and bonds, a...

Many times numbers and statistics are simply thrown at us. It is almost a mind blurring information overload. If we take the time to look inside the numbers, what the numbers show is frightening for America. How bad is the Great Obama Depression and what is it doing to America?

A currency war in the simplest form is basically when there is too much debt and not enough growth. - James Rickards, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis Currency wars are real wars. But they are waged with currencies, stocks, bonds, derivatives, commodities, rather than guns and other kinetic weapons. In a currency war, countries try to manipulate their own currency to gain an unfair trade advantage. There is a currency war when one country tries to devalue its currency relative to others in order to promote exports and create jobs. Let's take an example. Some...

Finger Prints of Recession 2013, Recipe for Economic Disaster and Investor Opportunity Economics / Recession 2013Dec 06, 2012 - 03:04 AM By: Ty Andros The verdict is in and the man-made disaster that is creeping socialism just got a green light in the world’s largest economy! The SOMETHING for Nothing society known formally as the United States of America and controlled by what Vladimir Lenin called USEFUL IDIOTS (products of centrally controlled public schools taught the VIRTUES of socialism as beneficial) have now elevated their chosen REPRESENTATIVES as slave masters (at the point of a government GUN) to the last...

Investors should get used to one to two percent economic growth for the foreseeable future, Pimco's Bill Gross told CNBC's "Street Signs" on Tuesday. "We think that the United States is in a one to two percent growth environment going forward and investors should get used to it" as structural challenges keep growth in check, the Pimco co-founder and co-chief investment officer said. Earlier Tuesday, Gross released his final investment letter for 2012, where he continued to warn about slower economic growth due to ongoing structural challenges such as high debt levels, a slower growing China and an aging workforce.

Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year? All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting...

The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969. According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole. According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars)...

Hoping to encourage other Americans to participate in "Small Business Saturday" as an alternative to big chain-friendly Black Friday, President Obama today visited an Arlington, Va., bookstore to cross some items off his family's Christmas list. Accompanied by his daughters Sasha and Malia, the president journeyed across the river to One More Page Books, which the White House described as an "independent, neighborhood bookstore." After consulting his Blackberry for an apparent holiday wish list, he purchased 15 children's books before even browsing the store.

The Federal Reserve is asking 30 big banks to make sure their capital can withstand a deep recession in which the unemployment rate rises to 12%. The Fed, which first required big banks to conduct “stress tests” in 2009, laid out three scenarios lenders have to test against. The goal is to ensure that the firms have enough capital to continue operations during stressful economic times.