Free Republic

JOHN HUSSMAN: We Are Already In Recession, And The Economists Just Don't Know It Yet Joe WeisenthalOct. 1, 2012, 5:00 AM In his latest weekly letter, investor John Hussman reiterates his belief that we are already in recession. In regard to a U.S. recession, keep in mind that the consensus of economic forecasters – not to mention central bankers - has never recognized the start of a recession in real-time, largely because their assessments typically revolve around a “stream of anecdotes” approach that treats each new economic report with equal weight, without distinguishing leading/lagging and upstream/downstream structure. For example, we’ve...

You will never guess what the fifth and sixth best-selling prescription drugs are in the United States, so I’ll just tell you: Abilify and Seroquel, two powerful antipsychotics. In 2011 alone, they and other antipsychotic drugs were prescribed to 3.1 million Americans at a cost of $18.2 billion, a 13 percent increase over the previous year, according to the market research firm IMS Health. Those drugs are used to treat such serious psychiatric disorders as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe major depression. But the rates of these disorders have been stable in the adult population for years. So how did...

Americans are experiencing sticker shock and it is about to get a whole lot worse thanks to Obama. Between gas and groceries, our household is sinking fast. My husband works about 35 miles from here, so gas is an issue. For a household of three, where two drive for work, our gas bill this month will be close to $900. Groceries will come in at a modest $1000 since we have cut back. And folks, we live in a state that has reasonable pricing. Inflation is just clearing her throat and getting ready to sing, so this is going to...

$56 million suicide prevention programme launched as study reveals more Americans take their own lives than die in car crashes Suicide is a bigger killer than car crashes, according to an alarming new study. The number of people dying from suicide has drastically increased, while car accident deaths haven lessened, making suicide the leading cause of injury death. Suicides via falls or poisoning have risen significantly and experts fear there could be en more going unrecognised, specifically in cases of overdose. 'Suicides are terribly under-counted,' said Ian Rockett, author of the study, published on Thursday in the American Journal of...

In a worst case scenario, he painted a much darker picture. “When people get at each other’s throat, the rich and the poor and the left and the right and so on, and you have a basic breakdown, that becomes very threatening,” Dalio told CNBC in an exclusive interview on “Squawk Box.” “For example, Hitler came to power in 1933, which was the depth of the Great Depression, because of the social tension between the factions. So I think it very much is dependent on how the people work this through together and worry about the social elements.”

We Need to Recover from the Obama Economic Recovery How do you recover from a recovery? Just how bust the nation's "recovery" has been is painfully documented in the latest news, just two months before the election. The Census Bureau validated what middle-class Americans know all too well from their week to week, month to month struggle to make ends meet. The typical family is back to where it was in 1995. The analysis of annual data collected by the bureau indicates that median income in 2011 had fallen to $50,054, the fourth straight year of decline in well-being, and...

Full title: Ground Reports from the “Depression that Shall Not Be Named” — things we notice that the corrupt media won’t report that show this is indeed a Depression On my desk, just under the computer monitor, I have a little box full of slips of scrap paper. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid because the nuns who taught me in Catholic School refused to ever waste paper. Anything that comes into my home that’s blank on one side and has outlived its usefulness is drawn and quartered and spends some time as scrap paper in that...

The mainstream media in the United States is almost totally ignoring one of the most important trends in global economics. This trend is going to cause the value of the U.S. dollar to fall dramatically and it is going to cause the cost of living in the United States to go way up. Right now, the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world. Even though that status has been chipped away at in recent years, U.S. dollars still make up more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world. Most international trade (including the...

His Agenda: President Obama's convention speech got rough reviews, and rightly so. He offered little but tired bromides and recycled promises. But critics overlooked one promise that will guarantee an even bleaker future. There was plenty to dislike in Obama's speech. The language was flat, his delivery languid. The speech was stuffed with standard Obama chestnuts about the smallness of politics, the corrupting influence of money in politics, and how cynicism is our worst enemy. [snip] But while everyone was picking apart these and other flaws in Obama's speech, they overlooked the most frightening line of all.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — His re-election in doubt, President Barack Obama conceded only halting progress Thursday night toward solving the nation’s economic woes, but vowed in a Democratic National Convention finale, “Our problems can be solved, our challenges can be met.” “The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place,” Obama said in advance excerpts of a prime-time speech to delegates and the nation. The president’s speech was the final act of a pair of highly scripted national political conventions in as many weeks, and the opening salvo of a two-month drive toward Election Day that...

The Quadrillion Dollar Deflationary Debt Raft Interest-Rates / US DebtSep 05, 2012 - 02:03 AM By: Raul I Meijer Our Down Under roving reporter Skip came up with a few interesting questions when watching an interview that Russia Today recently ran with economist Richard Duncan. Where doth debt take us going forward, and, for that matter, where has it - really - taken us so far? If and when Japan implodes, does that force the US out of the possibility of moving - or already being - into the Japanese deflationary scenario and into something more sinister? Will it be...

Unhappy with his life as a Marine stationed in California, Terence Tyler posed a question three years ago on Twitter: "is it normal to want to kill ALL of ur coworkers?" Struggling with depression, he left the Marines and recently started working at a supermarket in New Jersey. On Friday morning, Tyler shot two co-workers and himself, police said. The 23-year-old, clad in desert camouflage gear, opened fire at a Pathmark store in Old Bridge Township, authorities said. Authorities are investigating his motive, but family members said Tyler was discharged from the Marines two years ago after suffering from depression...

U.S. On The Highway To Hell Politics / US Politics Aug 28, 2012 - 02:19 AM By: Chris Kitze (Monty Perlerin / EconomicNoise.com)The Role of The Government in The Economic Crisis At this point, everything the government is doing – and not just the US government but governments everywhere − is not only the wrong thing but exactly the opposite of the right thing. They’re passing more laws, raising taxes, creating more currency and incurring more debt. They should be doing the opposite. We’re currently still in the eye of the storm. Their actions guarantee that when we go back...

America is becoming a very cold place. If you don't have money, you don't really matter much in our society. The ads on television aren't for you - they are directed at people that actually have good jobs and that can afford to buy the nice little "extras" in life. The politicians aren't really interested in you either - they figure that they can buy your vote with all of the money that they are getting from the wealthy people. When you don't have money, even friends and relatives start to distance themselves from you. Perhaps they are afraid that...

Legendary market maven Bill Gross, the so-called "King of Bonds," said investors will flat-out lose money if they continue employing the "buy and hold" strategies of the past. In his August Investment Outlook, Gross told investors that "financial repression, QEs of all sorts and sizes" and low interest rates will "dominate the timescape" for decades, maybe longer. Investors must adjust to the new world order to avoid being the loser in this zero-growth environment, Gross warned. Ultimately, Gross said, the stock market's historical, inflation-adjusted 6.6% annual growth rate is unsustainable. Gross, of course, is a bond man. In March, he...

I’ve gotten a few requests for an embiggened version of the infamous jobs chart prepared by Obama administration economists Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer back in January 2009 (and updated by me). You know, the chart that predicted what the unemployment rate would be if Congress passed the Obama stimulus plan. Well, here you go. Click it once, let the next page load, and then click it again.

New Gallup unemployment data suggest an increase in the government's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for August when it is reported on Friday, Sept. 7. During recent months, Gallup's measurements have been more optimistic than those of the BLS. Barring a sharp reversal in this relationship, the government's unadjusted unemployment rate might be expected to stay the same or increase in August. Gallup's Daily tracking of the unemployment situation is based on interviews with more than 30,000 adults over the 30 days ending Aug. 15, and shows essentially no change in the unadjusted unemployment rate at 8.3% compared to 8.2% in...

CHICAGO (AP) — U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is in a "deep" depression and has "a lot of work" ahead of him on the road to recovery, former Rhode Island U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy said Thursday after visiting the hospitalized Chicago Democrat. Jackson has been on a secretive medical leave since June 10, when family members said he collapsed at their home in Washington. He is currently being treated for bipolar disorder at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. But neither his office nor family members have said much about his medical condition. The visit from Kennedy — who has...

Five years into the Long Slump it almost seems as if we are back to square one. China is sufficiently alarmed by the flint hardness of its "soft-landing" to talk up trillions of fresh stimulus. The European Central Bank is preparing to print “whatever it takes”to save Spain and Italy. Markets are pricing in an 80pc chance of yet more printing by the US Federal Reserve in September or soon after. There is no doubt that the three superpowers acting in concert can launch a mini-cycle of growth early next year - assuming they deliver on their rhetoric - but...

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is suffering from debilitating depression and even collapsed at his home in Washington two months ago, his wife said in an interview published Saturday that revealed new details about his secretive leave of absence. Sandi Jackson, who is a Chicago City Council member, told the Chicago Sun-Times that contrary to rumors, her husband did not try to kill himself and was not being treated for alcohol or drug addiction. "No, no, none of that is true," she said. The Chicago Democrat and son of civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson has been off the job...