Free Republic

The current economic crisis rivals the one of the 1930s.  Despite shameless propaganda by government and its cronies in the media, people understand that the situation is getting worse.  Consumer confidence continues to decline as does confidence in the future.We are headed for an event that history will record as worse than the Great Depression.  It is unavoidable.The Level of DebtThe principal reason for the dire prediction is the level of debt outstanding.  Current debt levels are simply not sustainable.  Assets and cash flows cannot support or service this debt.No economic recovery can occur without massive debt reduction.  As...

The USDA has released their projections for food price inflation in 2011/2012, showing troubling forecasts that may send you to the grocery store today, before paying higher prices tomorrow. The report shows that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all food increased 0.8 percent between 2009 and 2010, and is forecasted to increase 3.5 to 4.5 percent in 2011. Items that are expected to inflate the most include beef, cooking oils, and seafood. Processed vegetables and beverages were projected to to see smaller changes in the CPI. The Wall Street Journal notes that “the midpoint of the new USDA outlook...

In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Alfred Landon by an electoral vote of 523 to 8. This was the only contested election in which the major losing candidate received fewer than 10 votes (1788, 1792 and 1820 were uncontested). The landslide came on the heels of what appeared to be an economic recovery. Unemployment fell, productivity rose; people believed the New Deal really worked and they rewarded FDR accordingly. Shortly into the second term did the ugly truth reveal itself. The so-called recovery had been built entirely on government spending. Massive borrowing and government make-work projects put money in enough...

(Video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=exuGv3HsV-U These clips are not just of the Great Depression, but time frames surrounding that period. Do you have any doubts that the Communists and Progressives have been with us for 100 years or better? Well, they have been under many guises. Many times it is in the form of unions and organizers who claim they want to help the worker, when in reality, the ultimate goal is bringing ‘change’ to our form of government. When you were growing up, did you ever hear of these riots and this violence that eventually led up to WWII and afterwards? I...

All of Obama's efforts to turn America into a Nation of Zombies, (NOZ), have been wildly successful. Youths on the streets in over 140 cities in this country alone, proclaim that THEIR zombieness represents 99 % of America! Obama has kept 9.1 % of America's working population as the permanent zombie-unemployed class. Following the 2008 Federally-Regulated Bankruptcy of the Federal Housing Authority, (FHA), Obama has made sure that over a million home loan owners are still held in foreclosure-zombieland. Not satisfied with his obvious skill at turning voters into zombies, Obama has turned non-voting children and grandchildren into National-Debt-Zombies for...

Revisionist History And The Great Depression Economics / Economic Depression Oct 22, 2011 - 01:50 AM By: Andy Sutton Over the past several years, the term ‘Great Depression’ has made a grand re-entry into the American mainstream and has as a consequence become perhaps one of the most misunderstood terms. We are told it was everything that it wasn’t and that it wasn’t everything that it was. Like many important historical events, there is a good bit of revisionist history at work with regards to those dark 12 years in American history when it seemed as though there was nothing...

There is no such thing as a Unicorn that craps out pretty colored candies. In the case at hand in the United States we have a government on both sides of the aisle that has made promises that are mathematically impossible to keep. That same government conspired with The Fed and with Wall Street to blow a series of bubbles that led you to believe, over the space of 30 years, that you could have more than you can actually pay for with your work output. This claim was a lie and it infested virtually every area of our nation....

ROBERT REICH: The Republican Economic Plan Is An Austerity Death-Trap Robert Reich Oct. 19, 2011, 6:25 PM Ron Paul’s newly-unveiled economic plan – promising to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget in year one (presumably that means 2013) – is only slightly more ambitious than what we’re hearing from other Republican candidates. They’re all calling for major spending cuts starting fifteen months from now. What are they smoking? Can we just put ideology aside for a moment and be clear about the facts? Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping because consumers are losing their...

Not since at least 1960 has the US standard of living fallen so fast for so long. The average American has $1,315 less in annual disposable income now than at the onset of the Great Recession. Think life is not as good as it used to be, at least in terms of your wallet? You'd be right about that. The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago. Economic Issues Economic Crisis Financial Markets Cost of Living Recessions...

Chosen to serve power, not popular interests, Obama wrecked America's economy to save giant Wall Street banks. He's still doing it, despite claiming he's been out in front doing all he can. By bailing out too-big-to-fail banks and waging multiple imperial wars, he intensified social misery. As a result, Main Street is mired in protracted Depression. Economist David Rosenberg believes we're in the "third inning" of hard times malaise. Four occurred in the 19th century. Until now, the 1930s Great Depression was America's last severe downturn, lasting a decade, punctuated by failed bounces. America's Greatest Depression began in late 2007....

HOISINGTON: Forget All This Jubilation, The Recession Is Coming THIS Quarter Joe Weisenthal Oct. 12, 2011, 3:07 PM Image: NASA Forget all the market rallying, and the renewed talk about howe we'll avoid a double-dip recesion. The latest analysis from Hoisington Investment Management (.pdf) calls for a recession this quarter. The firm cites three big cyclical developments: Negative economic growth will probably be registered in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2011, and in subsequent quarters in 2012. Though partially caused by monetary and fiscal actions and excessive indebtedness, this contraction has been further aggravated by three current cyclical...

When a man like Steve Keen says the trillions spent on refinancing the banks has truly stuffed us, we really should listen I stumbled out into the autumn sunshine, figures ricocheting around my head, still trying to absorb what I had heard. I felt as if I had just attended a funeral: a funeral at which all of us got buried. I cannot claim to have understood everything in the lecture: Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theory and the 41-line differential equation were approximately 15.8 metres over my head. But the points I grasped were clear enough. We're stuffed: stuffed to a degree that...

Midnight on St Mary Street in Cardiff and everything is exactly as expected. Half a dozen young women slump in a gutter, men urinate outside a health-food shop and, as hordes stagger between nightclubs, someone lifts up a blow-up doll with a sex toy protruding out of it. The street smells of urine and lager, police struggle to break up a fight outside the Walkabout bar and a paramedic bundles a comatose girl on to a wheelchair. But it's a quiet night for 20-year-old Naomi Jenkins. She has 'only' drunk three shots of peach schnapps, cider and three shots of...

Warning U.S. HyperInflation Ahead Economics / HyperInflation Oct 09, 2011 - 06:20 AM By: Seth Barani Money Supply M2 has expanded at Warp-9 within the past few months, based on Federal Reserve Data released on Sep.30th. In fact, the ratio of M2 to M1 has set a World Record, exponentially growing to over 5:1 (M2 is near $9.6 Trillion, over 12% growth this year so far, projected to show 15% growth in one year, while M1 has remained constant near $2 Trillion.) Chart below shows the growth of M2 in 2011: The daily price chart of Gold is shown next....

ECRI Recession Watch: Growth Index Declines Further By Doug Short October 7, 2011 Last week, September 30th, the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) publicly announced that the U.S. is tipping into a recession, a call the Institute had announced to its private clients on September 21st. Early last week, ECRI notified clients that the U.S. economy is indeed tipping into a new recession. And there's nothing that policy makers can do to head it off. ECRI's recession call isn't based on just one or two leading indexes, but on dozens of specialized leading indexes, including the U.S. Long Leading Index,...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The percentage of Americans who owned their homes has seen its biggest decline since the Great Depression, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The rate of home ownership fell to 65.1% in April 2010, 1.1 percentage points lower than it was in 2000. The decline was the biggest drop since the 1930s, when home ownership plunged 4.2%. The most recent decade-over-decade drop, however, only tells half the story. Home ownership during the 2000s "was really high in the middle of the decade, up to almost 70% at one point around 2004," said Ellen Wilson, a survey...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The American dream of homeownership has felt its biggest drop since the Great Depression, according to new 2010 census figures released Thursday. The analysis by the Census Bureau found the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year. While that level remains the second highest decennial rate, analysts say the U.S. may never return to its mid-decade housing boom peak in which nearly 70 percent of occupied households were owned by their residents. The reason: a longer-term economic reality of tighter credit, prolonged job losses and reduced government involvement. Unemployed young adults are least likely to own,...

This Economist Is Forecasting A Recession, And He's Never Been Wrong Economics / Double Dip Recession Oct 04, 2011 - 07:03 AM By: Money Morning David Zeiler writes: The U.S. economy is "tipping into a new recession" and there's nothing President Barack Obama or the U.S. Federal Reserve can do to prevent it, according to Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI). Now, if you're wondering why you should believe this prediction ahead of others then there's something you should know: According to The Economist, Achuthan's predictions on the direction of economy - either toward recession or...

Why Government Spending Won’t Inspire Consumer Confidence By Bill Bonner 10/04/11 Paris, France – Blood ran in the streets again yesterday. The Dow fell another 258 points. A few more days like that and the index will be below 10,000. That ought to make an impression. Among other things, it should help people realize that there has been no recovery…not even a weak one. And there won’t be a recovery, ever. Not of this economy. Today, a chorus of indicators chants a warning. The copper market — down 23% in September — tells us recession is coming. Falling demand for...