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Canada needs to look beyond its southern neighbour for markets because the United States economy is unlikely to ever fully recover, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said Sunday. In an interview with CTV's Question Period, Carney said that it is vital for Canada to look for new trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere to prevent the economy from being dragged down by the U.S. "It's going to take a number of years before they get back to the U.S. that we used to know - in fact, they are not, in our opinion, ultimately going to get...

22 Signs That We Are On The Verge Of A Devastating Global RecessionJanuary 12, 2012Michael Snyder 2012 is shaping up to be a very tough year for the global economy. All over the world there are signs that economic activity is significantly slowing down. Many of these signs are detailed later on in this article. But most people don't understand what is happening because they don't put all of the pieces together. If you just look at one or two pieces of data, it may not seem that impressive. But when you examine all of the pieces of evidence that...

How To Prepare For The Difficult Years AheadMichael SnyderJanuary10, 2012 How should people prepare for the difficult years that are coming? I get asked about that a lot. Once people really examine the facts, it is not too hard to convince them that an economic collapse is coming. But once they accept that reality, most of them want to know what they can do to prepare themselves and their families for the hard times that are ahead. Well, the truth is that it does not have to be complicated. Many of the things discussed throughout this article are things that...

.....[Economists] predict that the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.7 percent from 8.6 percent, which was the lowest rate since March 2009.

Growing numbers of New Yorkers seeking food stamps have created an unwelcome spillover effect at some of New York City's job centers: overcrowding that in some cases has grown so severe, benefits were jeopardized. The crush of people grew so large at one Brooklyn center in November that the Fire Department intervened and prevented anyone from entering the building.

The markets were on a roll. New companies were being listed every few days. Germany had a new currency, and its mighty exporters were doing business around the world. Greece had merged its currency with that of France and Italy in a bold experiment in monetary union. A massive new continental economy was flooding the world with cheap goods, disrupting old industries. And new technologies were creating global markets, where money and information zipped from bourse to bank virtually instantaneously. Until the crash came, it seemed as if everyone would keep on getting richer and richer forever. You could be...

Meanwhile, as the eurozone slides towards disaster, the prospects for Europe have rarely been bleaker. Already the European elite have installed compliant technocratic governments in Greece and Italy, and with the markets now putting pressure on France, few observers can be optimistic that the Continent can avoid a total meltdown.... For the most chilling parallel, though, we should look back exactly 80 years, to the cold wintry days when 1931 gave way to 1932. Then as now, few people saw much to mourn in the passing of the old year. It was in 1931 that the Great Depression really took...

The dawn of a new year is usually a time of hope and ambition, of dreams for the future and thoughts of a better life. But it is a long time since many of us looked forward to the new year with such anxiety, even dread.

The Obama Nation: Even More Debt And Even More Store ClosingsDecember 28, 2011 Well, it is time to raise the debt ceiling again. Right now we are about to hit the current limit of $15.194 trillion and the Obama administration is going to ask that it be raised by another 1.2 trillion dollars. Unfortunately, Congress has already promised not to stand in the way, and so soon the debt limit will be raised to a staggering $16.394 trillion. Considering how much debt we have already placed on the backs of future generations, what is another 1.2 trillion dollars? After all,...

For years, the food pantry in Crystal Lake, Ill., a bedroom community 50 miles west of Chicago, has catered to the suburban areas’ poor, homeless and unemployed. But Cate Williams, the head of the pantry, has noticed a striking change in the makeup of the needy in the past year or two. Some families that once pulled down six-figure incomes and drove flashy cars are now turning to the pantry for help. A few of them donated food and money to the pantry before their luck soured, according to Williams. “People will shyly say to me, ‘You know, I used...

As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts: 1. Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has. 2. The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent. 3. Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work. 4. College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush. 5....

An unpatched critical flaw in 64-bit Windows 7 leaves computers vulnerable to a full 'blue screen of death' system crash. The memory corruption bug in x64 Win 7 could also allow malicious kernel-level code to be injected into machines, security alert biz Secunia warns. Fortunately the 32-bit version of Windows 7 is immune to the flaw, which has been pinned down to the win32k.sys operating system file - which contains the kernel portion of the Windows user interface and related infrastructure.Proof-of-concept code showing how to crash vulnerable Win 7 boxes has been leaked: the simple HTML script, when opened in...

Essay: Are we witnessing the U.S. empire head into its final decline? Obama is drifting. Republican candidates inspire little confidence. But viewed from Europe, which is more skeptical than ever, it’s worth taking a closer look at a nation with the Peter Pan gift of never growing up. ******** BERLIN -- When it’s not busy with its own problems, Europe looks across the Atlantic and shakes its head. America would appear to be on an unstoppable downward spiral. While neo-conservative dreams of the “unipolar moment” disperse, troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, the ups and the downs of the...

Financial Panic Sweeps Europe As The Head Of The IMF Warns Of A “1930s Depression”December 17, 2011 Are we on the verge of another Great Depression? Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said this week that if dramatic action is not taken immediately we could actually see conditions "reminiscent of the 1930s depression" and that no country on earth "will be immune to the crisis". Right now, financial panic is sweeping across Europe, but most Americans are not too concerned about it because they simply don't understand how important the EU is. The truth is that the EU has...

More Upside For Gold As Government Spending Continues Unabated By Bill Bonner 12/16/11 Baltimore, Maryland – Have yourself a merry little depression. Dow up 45 points. Gold down $9. We’re still waiting for a major correction in the gold market. Each time one begins, it seems to run out of steam before doing any real damage. At yesterday’s closing price, $1,577, gold is still solidly ahead for the year. So, where’s the soft spot? Where’s the test? Where will it come from? When? Don’t worry, dear reader, Mr. Market will test us. He’ll throw his curve ball. We have to...

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde has warned the Great Depression of the 1930s may repeat itself unless the EU pulls together and gets foreign help. Fresh unemployment statistics added to the gloom by highlighting the social cost of austerity. “If the international community does not work together, the risk from an economic point of view is that of retraction, rising protectionism, isolation. This is exactly the description of what happened in the Thirties and what followed is not something we are looking forward to," Lagarde said in a speech delivered to the US State Department on Thursday (15...

Are We At The Beginning Of A 25-Year Recession?The world economy faced a similar slump in the 19th Century. And it wasn't pretty posted on December 15, 2011, at 10:39 AM Our currency economic crisis has some troubling historic parallels with the "Long Depression" that began afflicting America in the 1870s. The current economic slump won't end any time soon, says Matthew Lynn in MarketWatch. The current crisis eerily resembles one that brought the financial world to its knees in the 1870s. A new industrial power — back then it was Germany, now it's China — had rocketed to the...

WASHINGTON - Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

Unpopular Cures For Unemployment And Economic Depression By Bill Bonner 12/14/11 Baltimore, Maryland – So far, so good. Things keep happening, more or less as they should. That is, the US and European economies keep falling apart. And the fixers keep failing to put them back together again. Just as we expected. Trying to fix a depression it is not only expensive…. The US government spends $1.60 for every $1 it receives in taxes. This is a recipe for a disaster, not for a recovery. Worse. It actually prevents a real recovery from happening, by blocking the market’s natural self-healing...

(Kitco News) - Comex February gold futures prices careened lower and hit a fresh nearly three-month low on follow-through selling pressure from the strong losses posted in afternoon trading Tuesday. It was a “risk-off” trading day in the market place Wednesday, and that was very bearish for the precious metals. A stronger U.S. dollar and sharply lower crude oil prices were also major bearish factors for gold Wednesday. Fresh, serious near-term technical damage has been inflicted in gold this week. February gold last traded down $76.80 at $1,586.60 an ounce. Spot gold last traded down $47.00 an ounce at $1,584.50....