Top forecasters’ predictions for 2010

2) We will see a major decline in the Dow/Gold ratio. The Dow/Gold ratio is currently 9.3, having bounced from the low of 7 it saw in early 2009. We are likely to see a decline in the Dow/Gold ratio to below 7 in 2010. Many people who have bought U.S. stocks on the bet of an economic recovery, will soon realize the economy is NOT recovering and stocks have been rallying only due to inflation. Although some people selling stocks may once again mistakenly move to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven, we believe an increasing number of people will avoid the U.S. dollar and buy gold and silver as a safe haven.

3) We will see a sharp decline in the Gold/Silver ratio. The Gold/Silver ratio is currently 64, above the average of the past 100 years of 50. Between the years 1000 and 1873, when silver was used as real money, the Gold/Silver ratio traded between 10 and 16. In recent history, the Gold/Silver ratio dipped below 20 on two occasions, once in 1968 and once again in 1980. NIA believes silver prices will continue to outperform gold in 2010, as the world once again begins looking at silver as money, instead of just an industrial metal. The Gold/Silver ratio could decline to below 50 in 2010.

4) The U.S. Dollar Index will see short-term bounce, then huge crash. We are at a point where there are more people who are bearish on the U.S. dollar than ever before, which means from a technical standpoint it is overdue for a short-term bounce. However, we would not consider going long on the dollar even as a trade. A huge crash in the U.S. dollar could occur at any time.

The world has become flooded with U.S. dollars. Foreigners currently hold over $10 trillion in dollar-denominated assets that can be dumped at any time. With the Federal Reserve continuing to expand its monetary base to record highs, as soon as banks begin lending their excess reserves we could see a spike in consumer prices and a rush to get out of U.S. dollars.

5) Oil will rise back above $100 per barrel. We expect oil's next rise above $100 per barrel to be fueled almost entirely by inflation. This time around, it won't matter if there's another substantial decline in oil demand from the U.S. We expect oil prices to rise regardless of whether Americans can afford it or not.

6) Large 'End the Fed' Protests. In 2009, hundreds of people gathered for several 'End the Fed' protests in front of Federal Reserve buildings nationwide. However, the turnout for these events paled in comparison to the millions of Americans who participated in health care protests and town hall meetings. In 2010, more Americans will realize that it is the Federal Reserve that is the cause of most of our nation's economic problems. While the health care debate divided our nation 50/50, we believe 100% of all Americans will want to end the Federal Reserve as prices, of food and other goods that they need just to live, start rising through the roof.

7) Major Food Shortages. For the past several decades, most Americans went to college to get a non-productive job on Wall Street and nobody went to school to become a farmer. There is currently a major lack of farmers in the U.S. To make matters worse, the real estate bubble destroyed immeasurable amounts of farmland to build houses we didn't need and couldn't afford.

Inventories of agricultural products are the lowest they have been in decades yet the prices of many agricultural commodities are down 70% to 80% from their all time highs, adjusted for real inflation. Catastrophic food shortages are possible in 2010, not just in the U.S. but all around the world.

James Kunstler’s forecast for 2010: 1. Rising Treasury interest rates resulting from, in part, forced government bailouts of bankrupt states like California and New York Dismal Q4 2009 retail sales will force many businesses into bankruptcy, including national chains. As a result, vacancies will increase and this leads to a final push off the cliff for commercial real estate. The above will lead to regional bank closures, leading to a bankrupt FDIC having to request direct bailouts from Congress, leading to even higher Treasury interest rates and higher mortgage rates. All of this leading to the recognition that we have entered a serious depression, which is only a facet of the greater period of hardship we have also entered, which I call The Long Emergency. Outbreak of civil disturbances on many levels. 　 Roger Wiegand, from Kitco, on his predictions for 2010: The blow-off top for primary stock markets could be later May through July, 2010. On this cycle, five extremely negative events hit world economies and markets simultaneously. (1) $40-$50 billion in U.S. credit card failures are reported; (2) Housing sales, both new and used for the first half of 2010, fail so badly that this market is literally in free-fall. There will be 7-10 million new mortgage defaults with most of those in the prime-paying (not sub-prime) category caused by job losses; (3) First-half auto sales are reported. They will be so poor more car-makers file bankruptcy; (4) Commercial real estate loans bankrupt many developers and their projects among those existing, under construction, and planned. 　(5) Insurance companies are holding so much failing commercial real estate paper, they are in danger of defaulting with some running for government bailouts in TARP II. At one time years ago, the 20 top insurance companies could literally control the United States economy. They are huge asset holders of property and cash investments. (6) Housing valuations will fall on the average, nationwide in the U.S., another -30%. We figured about one year ago that 1980s prices would be the bottom. Now we potentially see a bottom at 1970s prices. (More homes were foreclosed in the last 12 months than in an entire decade in the first Great Depression of the 1930s.) On the Monday morning of 11-23-09, news reported used housing sales were up 10.1%. This is nothing but giveaways prodded by seller financing, government freebie down payment credits and crash-and-burn pricing taken by bottom feeders. Housing remains in international collapse. The last great creditor, FHA, is hurting badly. Inflation is now at an unreported 7% and rising. By May, 2010, it begins to bite very hard first on the lower 1/3rd of U.S. wage earners and the jobless. Most of their income is spent on food and energy. They top the inflation pain lists. (In 2010, inflation will hit 20%) Consumers with newer bought or leased autos will do 'jingle mail.' They will return newer unexpired leased cars and trucks back to dealers’ lots, give them the keys, and quit paying. We saw this with houses over the past 1-2 years. Auto lots will overflow with new & used cars and trucks. Values will plummet. Many of these returns will be from the Cash for Clunkers program by those who got stuck with unaffordable car and truck payments. Auto layoffs will escalate and unions will scream for help to president Obama. He will financially band-aid a dying industry. Consumers have no buying power, credit or cash to make any difference. Those with cash will buy gold and silver coins and hunker down and wait out the troubles. Auto union membership will decline rapidly. Most vehicle lending dries-up to a trickle.　 (If you know someone who works for a dealership, tell them the news) (11) The crude oil and energy sector has fundamentals pulling in both directions. Today we see oil price resistance at $80 per barrel with a trading range slightly lower in the $70s. Fundamentals show an over-supply on recession-depression lower demands. On the other hand, inflation of prices is rising on a weaker dollar and will escalate. Look for crude oil to visit the $50s and then turn-around on inflation, rising to $100. Gasoline will follow as some refineries are closing, on operating losses, and no new ones are being built. Inflation ultimately wins on price escalation. Eventually, scarcity of product returns. (Oil closed Wednesday at $79.95 a barrel) Credit and banks go through the wringer again. There are few bank ideas left to earn lender income except for trading. Junk bonds could lose 1/3rd of today’s value in 2010. Treasury bond and note buying continues until "full faith and credit" is repudiated on distrust. Eventually they crash, but in slow-motion, over the next couple of years due to the magnitude of these markets. We think no bond is a safe bond. Municipal bonds are viewed as some of the safest. What happens when cities, towns, counties and states are so broke they cannot pay the interest? Their tax revenue is going off a cliff. Some are safer than others for awhile but for how long? Various states within the United States have, or will, fail financially.　1/3rd of the TARP money spent so far was used to bail-out bankrupt states. This will escalate as federal TARP money cannot help them fast enough and in large enough amounts to keep it all glued together. Watch for fire and police employment to get as thin as to be very dangerous in various communities. Ten states are going financially critical and 47 are on the watch lists. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California are among the financially worst hit. They are hurting because of falling tax revenue from broken businesses and consumers. Watch California, as they could go out of control first within this group. They continue to contrive new taxes and not work on reducing spending. When some states face total collapse, it will get very ugly very quickly. Michigan is among the worst of the worst. Most all of the states are spending themselves into the ground. They refuse to cut back as it is political suicide. They will spend until there is nothing left to spend and then scream for help from the Federal Government. There are hundreds of idle Chinese factories and millions of laid-off workers with no new factory employment and not much work of any kind. Further, millions sold subsistence farms to work in the city. Now, that city work is gone and so are the farms that would have fed them. Watch for a slow motion, or faster, collapse of China with a descent into riots and other social problems in 2010. China needs 24 million new jobs each year just to stay even and are far behind that job generation power curve; never mind new job growth gains.  If the worry of China not buying our treasury paper suddenly became real, the U.S. government could stop most all Chinese exports into the U.S with crushing tariffs. China would then have skyrocketing joblessness, goods piled-up with no sales and be stuck with a trillion dollars in crappy U. S. bond and currency paper having little or no value and no way to sell it. They would take a $1 U.S. Trillion paper hit and be stuck with mountains of un-saleable merchandise. The social fallout would be catastrophic. China shall continue to buy U.S. Bonds to keep exports moving; albeit at a reduced level. (But for how long? Would war and invasion of the U.S. and Canada follow? China may demand assets instead of worthless paper. Land, buildings, ports, factories ,oil fields, refineries, mines, forests, highways, bridges, etc. And they have a huge imbalance of men over women, due to their one-child policy. That makes for a huge army of men who have no wives and no prospect of finding one. Invasion and conquest may seem their only chance. - GVH) Education, particularly among colleges and universities, has hit the money wall. Students now debate if a $40,000 to $80,000 expenditure is worth it in this economy. Newly graduated kids with good degrees but no experience go to the end of the line for jobs. Experienced people get what few jobs remain as employers have a wider range of choices and can be super picky. Further, employers have no time or money for training. Many kids are schooling on the internet and with on-the-job training while taking menial work for any kind of a pay check. Public school teachers with longer years of experience, working in grades K-12 are being thinned out for some cheaper new graduates. Foreign language teachers along with those in math and science are still preferred over the others. Watch for an increase in home schooling as laid-off teachers with their own children work at home and take in other peoples’ kids for instruction & pay. The big public school systems are in trouble. They can no longer be afforded. Since the U.S. Government layered on piles of bureaucratic red tape some years ago, fully 1/3rd of public school budgets must be devoted to stupid, expensive, politically-correct type of work. It’s all a big waste as students and teachers must suffer for it. Watch for more traffic accidents due to postponed road work and repairs. Bridges can fall and broken paving causes more wrecks. Higher-tax communities will be abandoned, especially by seniors with educated kids out of the house. New York City has lost over $6 Billion in income taxes from those fleeing the city and the state. This trend goes even faster. We see retired folks selling out as local real estate taxes are unaffordable. They are migrating to lower tax states and smaller communities offering fewer services. Much of the big city service stuff is not required and consumers cannot pay for it. Think of Detroit’s city wasteland on steroids. 　　Clif High from Half Past Human: 　The predictions noted here are based on analysis by Half Past Human’s WebBot analysis tools. The information is acquired from across the internet, parsed, analyzed, and interpreted. More whistleblowers; information will be released about global warming fraud, putting the entire global warming power structure at risk. The dollar will continue to die. Data sets are pointing to a very visible impact on the planetary populace as the financial system goes into lockdown crisis that will apparently peak sometime before the March equinox. After November 2010, the US Dollar and the Federal Reserve will lose influence in the world at a shockingly fast rate. Social order will begin to crumble in a rapid manner once a threshold of suffering is breached. The issue seems to be large-scale failure of the distribution system, which results in shortages of food across wide regions of the USA and other countries. Disruptions of social infrastructure over 2010 and 2011 in the continental USA include, among other things, medical systems, financial system, local government, national energy supplies, law enforcement, food and energy production, international communications, and transportation. All of these are indicated to be collapsing or imploding under the pressures of corruption and twisted, hidden agendas. 　 Sharon Astyk, author of Practice Losing Farther, Losing Faster predicts: 1. 2010 will mark a (probably dramatic) resumption of the economic crisis, which will not be short or pleasant. We will face deflation, probably simultaneously with fluctuating and sometimes extremely high prices for food and energy. (At least in relationship to peoples’ ability to pay) 3. The trend towards growing your own food, small home livestock, and home food preservation will continue to grow and expand.　 (Time to buy seeds) There will be a fragmentation of mostly fairly unified fronts among climate change activists and scientists as we are forced to deal with the revelations of last year Most people won’t look at 2010 as the year it all went to Hell. But looking back from 2015 to 2005, they will know that somewhere in there, it all went to Hell, and well, this was right there in the middle.

The common thread running through all of these predictions is disaster. They all agree the economy cannot survive. Another crisis looming is the food crisis. The following is a report and warning about coming food shortages and high prices. You may already have noticed the beginning of this one. 　 Spring Food Crisis May Trigger Economic Collapse http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2010/01 ... -collapse/" \t"_blank"

Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen – largely due to extended bouts of bad weather

You have maybe two months to stock up on the necessities of life before food prices rise dramatically, potentially prompting a food panic, widespread famine, and quite possibly the long-expected collapse of the U.S. economy.

Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen in their lives, owing largely to extended bouts of bad weather. At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture is officially forecasting bumper crops, while grain elevators stand nearly empty and close to three-fourths of the country’s farmland is in areas declared eligible for federal disaster assistance due to failed crops.

A popular farmers’ Web site is chock full of stories of entire crops of soybeans rejected for moisture damage, long delays in harvesting corn only to find out the corn is moldy, damaged or too light to be used as animal feed or even ethanol, and farmers unsure if they’ll even have a farm for another year due to the losses they’ve taken.

Most agricultural products are purchased in futures, which are promises to deliver a quantity of a commodity at a future date. Futures carry many risks, prominent among them the possibility that the commodity simply won’t be available at the promised delivery date. While futures prices are set by the market, some of the information used to set the prices comes from the USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates reports. The unrealistic 2009 bumper crop predictions in its recent reports drove futures prices artificially low. They may have seemed reasonable months ago before 2009’s long string of bad weather, but USDA has failed to revise them.

But grain futures prices have already risen well above the USDA’s latest projections as the corn harvest threatens to drag on into March in some areas of the country, thanks to an unusually wet 2009 and unprecedented fall flooding in the Midwest.

The good news is that even with 2009 being the worst harvest in human memory, there will still be plenty of food in the U.S. to feed everyone in the U.S. The bad news — if you’re in the U.S. — is that the food won’t be used to feed everyone in the U.S.

It seems China has finally figured out what to do with all the U.S. dollars it’s holding. You’ll recall that the Federal Reserve took some pretty extreme measures over the last two years, ostensibly to save the U.S. economy. In fact, those measures have set us up for the bomb. For decades China has been buying U.S. debt and financing Americans’ credit addiction as well as the government’s massive spending on millions of projects in which it has no business being involved. But, it seems, they’ve had enough of the dollar and are about to pull the plug.

In the meantime, China has been using those dollars to buy every morsel of American food it can get its hands on. Combined with 2009’s bad weather and the USDA’s ridiculous numbers, this prompted a late August soybean shortage that is expected to continue through 2010.

The U.S. has a very good reason to fudge the numbers on crop estimates. If it published realistic numbers, and crop futures prices rose sharply, three things would likely happen: Wall Street would take massive losses, inflation fears would cause investors to dump bonds, frustrating the government’s attempts to finance its incredible expanding debt, and most importantly, China, whose currency is tied closely to the U.S. dollar, would allow it to appreciate. That alone would likely send the U.S. dollar into free-fall; all three would mean utter economic collapse.

Of course, you can’t fool the market for long; as noted above, futures prices are already well above the USDA’s numbers. All they really managed to do with their numbers game was buy the U.S. dollar another year of life.

One market analyst believes that the 2010 food shortage will be the catalyst which not only brings about the collapse of the U.S. economy, but takes down Great Britain and Japan with it.

While a food crisis was unavoidable to some extent because of the abnormal weather and financial crisis, the total panic which will soon grip world agricultural markets is a creation of the USDA and its fictitious production estimates. If not for the USDA’s interference, food prices would have risen in the first half of 2009 in anticipation of the 2009/10 shortage. The United States Department of Agriculture has caused incalculable damage to the world economy by encouraging over consumption of rapidly diminishing food supplies.

Once the 2010 Food Crisis starts, confidence in the US government will be shattered as a result of the USDA’s faulty estimates. The starvation and misery caused by higher food prices will also create a lot of anger . . . — Market Skeptics

In this scenario, rural banks will begin failing rapidly, especially in the Midwest, and the inevitable bailouts will drive up U.S. debt further. These bailouts, combined with the Chinese allowing the Yuan to appreciate, will erode confidence in the U.S. dollar to the point that foreign banks and investors begin dumping U.S. debt at fire sale prices. At that point the Federal Reserve will have no choice but to print money, leading directly to hyperinflation.

I shouldn’t have to tell you what hyperinflation will look like, but in case you need a reminder, it will likely make the Great Depression look like a minor recession. Tens of millions of people who have never known want in their entire lives are going to be shocked to wake up broke and hungry, with no idea what happened or why it happened to them. The government will almost certainly be unable to fulfill its promises of food stamps, social security and other such welfare programs. Food riots are likely and people will almost certainly die when the government attempts to put them down. Worst of all, almost nobody will assign blame where it truly belongs: central banks and fiat currency.

Market Skeptics and many other foreign investors I’ve seen quoted widely in foreign media but virtually never in the U.S., recommend investing in agriculture, except derivatives, and in precious metals. I also recommend you invest in as much non-perishable food as you can lay hands on in the next two months, at least a year’s supply if you can manage it. If there’s no collapse, you can eat it, and if there is, you’ll at least have something to eat. And when you read a headline such as "Yuan allowed to rise versus dollar," it’s time to head for the hills. This is a pretty glum picture for the nation and world. It all portends TEOTWAWKI, The End Of The World As We KnowIt. This should be no surprise to those who know and understand prophecy. The prudent and faithful are already prepared with their food, water, and other supplies. Those who hope to survive but have not prepared have little time left to do so.

Following are some of the top forecasters’ predictions for 2010.

They were very accurate in their predictions for 2009. Are they correct for 2010 ?

Gerald Celente, one of the top 5 trend forecasters, predicts the following for 2010: 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

1. The Crash of 2010

Today, even as government spokesmen and the major media proclaim that the world is emerging from its near-cataclysmic recession, we predict the Crash of 2010.

The rising equity markets, on which claims of recovery are based, are worlds away from the hard reality of the streets.

Unemployment statistics tell the real story of real money that millions of real people no longer have and can’t get, regardless of rising equity markets.

2. Depression Uplift As times get tougher and money gets scarcer, one of the hottest new money-making, mood-changing, influence-shaping trends of the century will soon be born.

Those that see it first and follow it through will profit the most.　 (If you find out what this is before me, please let me know!)

3. Neo-Survivalism

The realities of failing financial institutions, degrading infrastructure, manipulated marketplaces, soaring energy costs, widening wars, and terror consequences have created a new breed of survivalist.

Motivated not by worst-case scenario fears but by do-or-die necessity, the new non-believers, unwilling to go under or live on the streets, will devise ingenious stratagems to beat the system, get off the grid (as much as possible), and stay under the radar.

4. Not Welcome Here

In 2010, the anti-immigration movement, long building, will arrive and stay in the US and abroad. In the US, with mid-term elections coming up, what to do about the illegals will be a hot- button issue that will top the political agenda and serve as a galvanizing force for a new party.

5. TB or Not TB

About two-thirds of Americans are Too Big (TB) for their own good and everyone else’s.　 In the wake of the national debate on health care, which has failed to focus on the enormous financial costs of obesity and overweight, 2010 will mark the outbreak of a concentrated War on Fat.

Houses, cars, debt loads, deficits, state budgets, the states themselves, foreign aid, military budgets, bureaucracies (local, state, and federal) and too-big-to fail businesses (¨They’re all Too Big.")

6. Mothers of Invention

The need to overcome the effects of reduced individual buying power will lead to the invention of a new class of product which will be a major trend of 2010 and into the future: Technology for The Poor.

Growing with the same speed as the Internet Revolution, the trend will be recognized, explored and exploited by legions of skilled but jobless geeks, innovators and inventors.　

7. Not Made In China

A "Buy Local/My Country First" backlash will be the first sign of what we forecast will become a massive, circle-the-wagons movement.

As economies continue to decline and even more jobs are lost and/or sent abroad, it will be seen as politically incorrect and financially self-defeating to plunk down money to enrich mult-inationals at the expense of local and domestic producers.

8. The Next Big Thing

The next colossal casualty of the Internet Revolution will be TV/cable networks.　 Technological innovations already in place will enable enterprising upstarts to gouge out large chunks of market share from daytime, primetime, news and opinion-based programming.

In the top 5, forecaster Karl Denninger says:

The stock market will end lower on December 31, 2010 than where it is on January 1, 2010. Housing prices will fall another 20%.

Banks will begin dumping their foreclosure inventories.

A massive wave of small business bankruptcies will occur.

Unemployment will appear to improve, but it will be an illusion and we’ll end 2010 above 10% on the U-3 unemployment rate.

From the website of National Inflation Association:

1) We will learn that the 2009 holiday shopping season was a bust. The Commerce Department reported seasonally-adjusted November retail sales up 1.3% from October.

However, if you apply the average seasonal adjustments that were used during the years 2006 and 2007, which account for a normal spike in November sales due to the holiday shopping season, retail sales were actually down 1.3% in November.

2) We will see a major decline in the Dow/Gold ratio. The Dow/Gold ratio is currently 9.3, having bounced from the low of 7 it saw in early 2009. We are likely to see a decline in the Dow/Gold ratio to below 7 in 2010. Many people who have bought U.S. stocks on the bet of an economic recovery, will soon realize the economy is NOT recovering and stocks have been rallying only due to inflation.

Although some people selling stocks may once again mistakenly move to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven, we believe an increasing number of people will avoid the U.S. dollar and buy gold and silver as a safe haven.

3) We will see a sharp decline in the Gold/Silver ratio. The Gold/Silver ratio is currently 64, above the average of the past 100 years of 50. Between the years 1000 and 1873, when silver was used as real money, the Gold/Silver ratio traded between 10 and 16.

In recent history, the Gold/Silver ratio dipped below 20 on two occasions, once in 1968 and once again in 1980.

NIA believes silver prices will continue to outperform gold in 2010, as the world once again begins looking at silver as money, instead of just an industrial metal. The Gold/Silver ratio could decline to below 50 in 2010.

4) The U.S. Dollar Index will see short-term bounce, then huge crash. We are at a point where there are more people who are bearish on the U.S. dollar than ever before, which means from a technical standpoint it is overdue for a short-term bounce.

However, we would not consider going long on the dollar even as a trade. A huge crash in the U.S. dollar could occur at any time.

The world has become flooded with U.S. dollars. Foreigners currently hold over $10 trillion in dollar-denominated assets that can be dumped at any time.

With the Federal Reserve continuing to expand its monetary base to record highs, as soon as banks begin lending their excess reserves we could see a spike in consumer prices and a rush to get out of U.S. dollars.

5) Oil will rise back above $100 per barrel. We expect oil's next rise above $100 per barrel to be fueled almost entirely by inflation. This time around, it won't matter if there's another substantial decline in oil demand from the U.S. We expect oil prices to rise regardless of whether Americans can afford it or not.

6) Large 'End the Fed' Protests.
In 2009, hundreds of people gathered for several 'End the Fed' protests in front of Federal Reserve buildings nationwide. However, the turnout for these events paled in comparison to the millions of Americans who participated in health care protests and town hall meetings. In 2010, more Americans will realize that it is the Federal Reserve that is the cause of most of our nation's economic problems. While the health care debate divided our nation 50/50, we believe 100% of all Americans will want to end the Federal Reserve as prices, of food and other goods that they need just to live, start rising through the roof.

7) Major Food Shortages.

For the past several decades, most Americans went to college to get a non-productive job on Wall Street and nobody went to school to become a farmer. There is currently a major lack of farmers in the U.S. To make matters worse, the real estate bubble destroyed immeasurable amounts of farmland to build houses we didn't need and couldn't afford.

Inventories of agricultural products are the lowest they have been in decades yet the prices of many agricultural commodities are down 70% to 80% from their all time highs, adjusted for real inflation. Catastrophic food shortages are possible in 2010, not just in the U.S. but all around the world.

James Kunstler’s forecast for 2010:

1. Rising Treasury interest rates resulting from, in part, forced government bailouts of bankrupt states like California and New York

Dismal Q4 2009 retail sales will force many businesses into bankruptcy, including national chains. As a result, vacancies will increase and this leads to a final push off the cliff for commercial real estate.

The above will lead to regional bank closures, leading to a bankrupt FDIC having to request direct bailouts from Congress, leading to even higher Treasury interest rates and higher mortgage rates. All of this leading to the recognition that we have entered a serious depression, which is only a facet of the greater period of hardship we have also entered, which I call The Long Emergency.

Outbreak of civil disturbances on many levels.

Roger Wiegand, from Kitco, on his predictions for 2010:

The blow-off top for primary stock markets could be later May through July, 2010. On this cycle, five extremely negative events hit world economies and markets simultaneously.

(1) $40-$50 billion in U.S. credit card failures are reported;

(2) Housing sales, both new and used for the first half of 2010, fail so badly that this market is literally in free-fall. There will be 7-10 million new mortgage defaults with most of those in the prime-paying (not sub-prime) category caused by job losses;

(3) First-half auto sales are reported. They will be so poor more car-makers file bankruptcy;

(4) Commercial real estate loans bankrupt many developers and their projects among those existing, under construction, and planned.

(5) Insurance companies are holding so much failing commercial real estate paper, they are in danger of defaulting with some running for government bailouts in TARP II.

At one time years ago, the 20 top insurance companies could literally control the United States economy. They are huge asset holders of property and cash investments.

(6) Housing valuations will fall on the average, nationwide in the U.S., another -30%. We figured about one year ago that 1980s prices would be the bottom. Now we potentially see a bottom at 1970s prices. (More homes were foreclosed in the last 12 months than in an entire decade in the first Great Depression of the 1930s.)

On the Monday morning of 11-23-09, news reported used housing sales were up 10.1%. This is nothing but giveaways prodded by seller financing, government freebie down payment credits and crash-and-burn pricing taken by bottom feeders. Housing remains in international collapse. The last great creditor, FHA, is hurting badly. 

Inflation is now at an unreported 7% and rising. By May, 2010, it begins to bite very hard first on the lower 1/3rd of U.S. wage earners and the jobless. Most of their income is spent on food and energy. They top the inflation pain lists. (In 2010, inflation will hit 20%)

Consumers with newer bought or leased autos will do 'jingle mail.' They will return newer unexpired leased cars and trucks back to dealers’ lots, give them the keys, and quit paying. We saw this with houses over the past 1-2 years.

Auto lots will overflow with new & used cars and trucks. Values will plummet. Many of these returns will be from the Cash for Clunkers program by those who got stuck with unaffordable car and truck payments. 

Auto layoffs will escalate and unions will scream for help to president Obama. He will financially band-aid a dying industry. Consumers have no buying power, credit or cash to make any difference.

Those with cash will buy gold and silver coins and hunker down and wait out the troubles. Auto union membership will decline rapidly. Most vehicle lending dries-up to a trickle.　 (If you know someone who works for a dealership, tell them the news)

(11) The crude oil and energy sector has fundamentals pulling in both directions. Today we see oil price resistance at $80 per barrel with a trading range slightly lower in the $70s. Fundamentals show an over-supply on recession-depression lower demands. On the other hand, inflation of prices is rising on a weaker dollar and will escalate.

Look for crude oil to visit the $50s and then turn-around on inflation, rising to $100. Gasoline will follow as some refineries are closing, on operating losses, and no new ones are being built. Inflation ultimately wins on price escalation. Eventually, scarcity of product returns. (Oil closed Wednesday at $79.95 a barrel)

Credit and banks go through the wringer again. There are few bank ideas left to earn lender income except for trading.

Junk bonds could lose 1/3rd of today’s value in 2010. Treasury bond and note buying continues until "full faith and credit" is repudiated on distrust. Eventually they crash, but in slow-motion, over the next couple of years due to the magnitude of these markets. We think no bond is a safe bond. Municipal bonds are viewed as some of the safest.

What happens when cities, towns, counties and states are so broke they cannot pay the interest? Their tax revenue is going off a cliff. Some are safer than others for awhile but for how long? 

Various states within the United States have, or will, fail financially.　1/3rd of the TARP money spent so far was used to bail-out bankrupt states. This will escalate as federal TARP money cannot help them fast enough and in large enough amounts to keep it all glued together. Watch for fire and police employment to get as thin as to be very dangerous in various communities.

Ten states are going financially critical and 47 are on the watch lists. 

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California are among the financially worst hit. They are hurting because of falling tax revenue from broken businesses and consumers. Watch California, as they could go out of control first within this group. They continue to contrive new taxes and not work on reducing spending. When some states face total collapse, it will get very ugly very quickly. Michigan is among the worst of the worst. Most all of the states are spending themselves into the ground. They refuse to cut back as it is political suicide. They will spend until there is nothing left to spend and then scream for help from the Federal Government.

There are hundreds of idle Chinese factories and millions of laid-off workers with no new factory employment and not much work of any kind. Further, millions sold subsistence farms to work in the city.

Now, that city work is gone and so are the farms that would have fed them. Watch for a slow motion, or faster, collapse of China with a descent into riots and other social problems in 2010. China needs 24 million new jobs each year just to stay even and are far behind that job generation power curve; never mind new job growth gains.

If the worry of China not buying our treasury paper suddenly became real, the U.S. government could stop most all Chinese exports into the U.S with crushing tariffs. China would then have skyrocketing joblessness, goods piled-up with no sales and be stuck with a trillion dollars in crappy U. S. bond and currency paper having little or no value and no way to sell it.

They would take a $1 U.S. Trillion paper hit and be stuck with mountains of un-saleable merchandise. The social fallout would be catastrophic. China shall continue to buy U.S. Bonds to keep exports moving; albeit at a reduced level. (But for how long? Would war and invasion of the U.S. and Canada follow?

China may demand assets instead of worthless paper. Land, buildings, ports, factories ,oil fields, refineries, mines, forests, highways, bridges, etc. And they have a huge imbalance of men over women, due to their one-child policy. That makes for a huge army of men who have no wives and no prospect of finding one. Invasion and conquest may seem their only chance. - GVH)

Education, particularly among colleges and universities, has hit the money wall. Students now debate if a $40,000 to $80,000 expenditure is worth it in this economy. Newly graduated kids with good degrees but no experience go to the end of the line for jobs.

Experienced people get what few jobs remain as employers have a wider range of choices and can be super picky.

Further, employers have no time or money for training. Many kids are schooling on the internet and with on-the-job training while taking menial work for any kind of a pay check.

Public school teachers with longer years of experience, working in grades K-12 are being thinned out for some cheaper new graduates.

Foreign language teachers along with those in math and science are still preferred over the others. Watch for an increase in home schooling as laid-off teachers with their own children work at home and take in other peoples’ kids for instruction & pay. The big public school systems are in trouble. They can no longer be afforded. Since the U.S. Government layered on piles of bureaucratic red tape some years ago, fully 1/3rd of public school budgets must be devoted to stupid, expensive, politically-correct type of work. It’s all a big waste as students and teachers must suffer for it.

Watch for more traffic accidents due to postponed road work and repairs. Bridges can fall and broken paving causes more wrecks. Higher-tax communities will be abandoned, especially by seniors with educated kids out of the house. New York City has lost over $6 Billion in income taxes from those fleeing the city and the state.

This trend goes even faster. We see retired folks selling out as local real estate taxes are unaffordable. They are migrating to lower tax states and smaller communities offering fewer services. Much of the big city service stuff is not required and consumers cannot pay for it. Think of Detroit’s city wasteland on steroids.

Clif High from Half Past Human: 　The predictions noted here are based on analysis by Half Past Human’s WebBot analysis tools.
The information is acquired from across the internet, parsed, analyzed, and interpreted.

More whistleblowers; information will be released about global warming fraud, putting the entire global warming power structure at risk.

The dollar will continue to die. Data sets are pointing to a very visible impact on the planetary populace as the financial system goes into lockdown crisis that will apparently peak sometime before the March equinox.

After November 2010, the US Dollar and the Federal Reserve will lose influence in the world at a shockingly fast rate.

Social order will begin to crumble in a rapid manner once a threshold of suffering is breached. The issue seems to be large-scale failure of the distribution system, which results in shortages of food across wide regions of the USA and other countries.

Disruptions of social infrastructure over 2010 and 2011 in the continental USA include, among other things, medical systems, financial system, local government, national energy supplies, law enforcement, food and energy production, international communications, and transportation.

All of these are indicated to be collapsing or imploding under the pressures of corruption and twisted, hidden agendas.

Sharon Astyk, author of Practice Losing Farther, Losing Faster predicts:

1. 2010 will mark a (probably dramatic) resumption of the economic crisis, which will not be short or pleasant. We will face deflation, probably simultaneously with fluctuating and sometimes extremely high prices for food and energy. (At least in relationship to peoples’ ability to pay)

3. The trend towards growing your own food, small home livestock, and home food preservation will continue to grow and expand.　 (Time to buy seeds)
There will be a fragmentation of mostly fairly unified fronts among climate change activists and scientists as we are forced to deal with the revelations of last year
Most people won’t look at 2010 as the year it all went to Hell. But looking back from 2015 to 2005, they will know that somewhere in there, it all went to Hell, and well, this was right there in the middle.

The common thread running through all of these predictions is disaster. They all agree the economy cannot survive. Another crisis looming is the food crisis. The following is a report and warning about coming food shortages and high prices. You may already have noticed the beginning of this one.

Spring Food Crisis May Trigger Economic Collapse

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2010/01 ... -collapse/" \t"_blank"

Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen – largely due to extended bouts of bad weather

By Michael Hampton - January 7, 2010

You have maybe two months to stock up on the necessities of life before food prices rise dramatically, potentially prompting a food panic, widespread famine, and quite possibly the long-expected collapse of the U.S. economy.

Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen in their lives, owing largely to extended bouts of bad weather.

At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture is officially forecasting bumper crops, while grain elevators stand nearly empty and close to three-fourths of the country’s farmland is in areas declared eligible for federal disaster assistance due to failed crops.

A popular farmers’ Web site is chock full of stories of entire crops of soybeans rejected for moisture damage, long delays in harvesting corn only to find out the corn is moldy, damaged or too light to be used as animal feed or even ethanol, and farmers unsure if they’ll even have a farm for another year due to the losses they’ve taken.

Most agricultural products are purchased in futures, which are promises to deliver a quantity of a commodity at a future date. Futures carry many risks, prominent among them the possibility that the commodity simply won’t be available at the promised delivery date.

While futures prices are set by the market, some of the information used to set the prices comes from the USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates reports.

The unrealistic 2009 bumper crop predictions in its recent reports drove futures prices artificially low. They may have seemed reasonable months ago before 2009’s long string of bad weather, but USDA has failed to revise them.

But grain futures prices have already risen well above the USDA’s latest projections as the corn harvest threatens to drag on into March in some areas of the country, thanks to an unusually wet 2009 and unprecedented fall flooding in the Midwest.

The good news is that even with 2009 being the worst harvest in human memory, there will still be plenty of food in the U.S. to feed everyone in the U.S.

The bad news — if you’re in the U.S. — is that the food won’t be used to feed everyone in the U.S.

It seems China has finally figured out what to do with all the U.S. dollars it’s holding. You’ll recall that the Federal Reserve took some pretty extreme measures over the last two years, ostensibly to save the U.S. economy.

In fact, those measures have set us up for the bomb. For decades China has been buying U.S. debt and financing Americans’ credit addiction as well as the government’s massive spending on millions of projects in which it has no business being involved. But, it seems, they’ve had enough of the dollar and are about to pull the plug.

In the meantime, China has been using those dollars to buy every morsel of American food it can get its hands on. Combined with 2009’s bad weather and the USDA’s ridiculous numbers, this prompted a late August soybean shortage that is expected to continue through 2010.

The U.S. has a very good reason to fudge the numbers on crop estimates. If it published realistic numbers, and crop futures prices rose sharply, three things would likely happen: Wall Street would take massive losses, inflation fears would cause investors to dump bonds, frustrating the government’s attempts to finance its incredible expanding debt, and most importantly, China, whose currency is tied closely to the U.S. dollar, would allow it to appreciate.

That alone would likely send the U.S. dollar into free-fall; all three would mean utter economic collapse.

Of course, you can’t fool the market for long; as noted above, futures prices are already well above the USDA’s numbers. All they really managed to do with their numbers game was buy the U.S. dollar another year of life.

One market analyst believes that the 2010 food shortage will be the catalyst which not only brings about the collapse of the U.S. economy, but takes down Great Britain and Japan with it.

While a food crisis was unavoidable to some extent because of the abnormal weather and financial crisis, the total panic which will soon grip world agricultural markets is a creation of the USDA and its fictitious production estimates.

If not for the USDA’s interference, food prices would have risen in the first half of 2009 in anticipation of the 2009/10 shortage. The United States Department of Agriculture has caused incalculable damage to the world economy by encouraging over consumption of rapidly diminishing food supplies.

Once the 2010 Food Crisis starts, confidence in the US government will be shattered as a result of the USDA’s faulty estimates. The starvation and misery caused by higher food prices will also create a lot of anger . . . — Market Skeptics

In this scenario, rural banks will begin failing rapidly, especially in the Midwest, and the inevitable bailouts will drive up U.S. debt further. These bailouts, combined with the Chinese allowing the Yuan to appreciate, will erode confidence in the U.S. dollar to the point that foreign banks and investors begin dumping U.S. debt at fire sale prices. At that point the Federal Reserve will have no choice but to print money, leading directly to hyperinflation.

I shouldn’t have to tell you what hyperinflation will look like, but in case you need a reminder, it will likely make the Great Depression look like a minor recession. Tens of millions of people who have never known want in their entire lives are going to be shocked to wake up broke and hungry, with no idea what happened or why it happened to them.

The government will almost certainly be unable to fulfill its promises of food stamps, social security and other such welfare programs. Food riots are likely and people will almost certainly die when the government attempts to put them down. Worst of all, almost nobody will assign blame where it truly belongs: central banks and fiat currency.

Market Skeptics and many other foreign investors I’ve seen quoted widely in foreign media but virtually never in the U.S., recommend investing in agriculture, except derivatives, and in precious metals. I also recommend you invest in as much non-perishable food as you can lay hands on in the next two months, at least a year’s supply if you can manage it.

If there’s no collapse, you can eat it, and if there is, you’ll at least have something to eat. And when you read a headline such as "Yuan allowed to rise versus dollar," it’s time to head for the hills. This is a pretty glum picture for the nation and world. It all portends TEOTWAWKI, The End Of The World As We KnowIt. This should be no surprise to those who know and understand prophecy. The prudent and faithful are already prepared with their food, water, and other supplies. Those who hope to survive but have not prepared have little time left to do so.

"Whew" ... Patton-at-Bastogne

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