Petaluma, Calif. - President Barack Obama's stimulus bill offers $499 billion in new government spending. The bill contains no specific provisions to direct even one dollar of those funds to America's 26 million small businesses. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, firms with less than 20 employees account for over 90 percent of all American businesses and are responsible for more than 97 percent of all new jobs. These small businesses also employ over 50 percent of all private sector workers.
The UN and the World Bank are lobbying for a portion of the billions of dollars allocated to bailing out the West's banking systems to be diverted to prevent 400 million people sinking into poverty across Asia in the wake of the global economic crisis. UN officials say that such a plan is necessary to prevent severe social unrest in poor countries, especially among the tens of millions of migrant workers who are being forced back to their villages as jobs dry up in the cities of Asia.
There's no question the American consumer is hurting in the face of a burst housing bubble, financial market meltdown and rising unemployment. But "the worst is yet to come," according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, who believes American's standard of living is undergoing a "permanent change" - and not for the better as a result of: * An $8 trillion negative wealth effect from declining home values. * A $10 trillion negative wealth effect from weakened capital markets. * A $14 trillion consumer debt load amid "exploding unemployment", leading to "exploding bankruptcies."
Why Every American Should Be Concerned About US Bond Rating Thirteen months ago a report issued by Moody's raised concern among treasury department officials and financial analysts on Wall Street. Since US debt was first assessed in 1917, the United States has enjoyed a AAA rating by Moody's and an unique position as the strongest bond issuer in the world. However, in January of 2008, A Moody's report warned that if the United States failed to take corrective action concerning it's fiscal policies the country would face a ratings downgrade.
Then if you aren't just totally thrilled with what's going on, try these:
February 17, 2009
The Trumpet
Could the global food crisis hasten civilization’s collapse?
The world could be just months away from global famine. Six of the past eight years have produced grain harvests that have fallen short of global consumption. As world population rises and environmental trends deteriorate, global food shortage is fast becoming a reality.
Photo: The largest dam on the River Murray, the Hume Weir, sinks to its lowest level ever. Drought in Australia is one of a number of factors contributing to global food shortages. (Getty Images)
“World carryover stocks of grain (the amount remaining from the previous harvest when the new harvest begins) have dropped to only 60 days of consumption, a near record low,” says Spiegel Online (February 11).
Grain production is at record lows as prices skyrocket. Demand for grain is especially high not only because of the accelerating world population growth (at the rate of 70 million people a year), but also with the emergence of more grain-intensive products and ethanol-fuel distilleries. The use of grain for ethanol production in America alone has nearly doubled the annual growth in world grain consumption.
Lack of available farmland also poses a major obstacle to expanding food production. The amount of available land is actually continually shrinking. As the world’s population grows, some of the best farmland is being lost to construction of housing developments, factories and highways.
Water shortages are another rising concern. Droughts of historic proportions are currently scorching vast areas of the United States, Australia, China, India, Central Asia, the Middle East and South America.
Signs of food stress are widespread as the number of chronically hungry and malnourished people on Earth topped 980 million in 2007. “For the first time in several decades this basic social indicator is moving in the wrong direction, and it is doing so at a record rate and with disturbing social consequences,” says Spiegel Online.
The article warns, “There is a real risk that we could soon face civilization-threatening food shortages.” It predicts that countries will increasingly strike private trade deals with each other—to the detriment of other nations, ultimately leading to social unrest and disorder. In many countries, the social order has already begun to break down as a result of food shortages last year.
The world stands on the cusp of global famine if agricultural trends do not turn around fast. Herbert W. Armstrong forecasted such conditions decades ago. Over 50 years ago, he wrote,
Yes, time is running out on us, fast, and we’re too sound asleep in deception to realize it!
Our peoples will continue only a few more years in comparative economic prosperity. This very prosperity is our fatal curse! Because our people are setting their hearts on it, seeking ease and leisure, becoming soft and decadent and weak! …
Then, suddenly, before we realize it, we’ll find ourselves in the throes of famine, and uncontrollable epidemics of disease. Already we’re in the beginning of a terrible famine and we don’t know it—a famine of needed minerals and vitamins in our foods. Our peoples have ignored God’s agricultural laws. Not all the land has been permitted to rest every seventh year. The land has been overworked. Today, the soil is worn out. And food factories, in the interest of larger profits, are removing much of what minerals and vitamins remain—while a new profit-making vitamin industry deludes the people into believing they can obtain these precious elements from pills and capsules purchased in drug stores and “health food” stores!
And all this state of affairs because man is in defiance of his Maker!
Only when humanity realizes that God’s way of life is the only way to true joy will these terrible droughts and famines cease to exist. Until this happens, the global food crisis will continue to intensify. For more information, read “Sleepwalking Into a Food Nightmare” and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=5952.4324.0.0
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California Drought is a National Crisis
Response to Drought is Dry Run for a Response to Climate Change
February 11, 2009
Richard Rominger, Michael Dimock
San Francisco Chronicle
California's unfolding drought - now three years running - may prove to be the worst in recorded history. Farms have begun to fail, communities to crumble, food prices to rise and more people are going hungry. How we respond to the drought will offer us a template of how to respond to global climate change.
The drought is a national crisis because California produces 50 percent of the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables, and a majority of the nation's salad, strawberries and premium wine grapes. State and federal agencies that deliver water to farms up and down the Great Central Valley are preparing to cut deliveries by 85 percent to 100 percent. Coastal communities may begin rationing programs within weeks. Even with 50 percent increases in ground-water pumping, which is clearly not sustainable, the Central Valley alone will lose up to 40,000 jobs and $1.5 billion in income, according to a UC Davis agricultural economist Richard Howitt.
Even more disturbing is that rising emotion over water is sparking hostility. Last Thursday in Fresno, a representative of the California Water Impact Network told a television reporter during a debate that saving farmworkers' jobs is a mistake because they are the "least educated people in America ... they turn to lives of crime, they go on welfare, go into drug trafficking ...." This is this blatantly racist, and evokes images of Europe in the 1930s and '40s.
Drought or hurricanes are beyond human ability to stop. Thus, the human challenge is to offer effective response. Neither the federal nor state government can mitigate the impacts of this drought without cooperation and balanced consideration of human health, ecological and economic consequences. All levels of government, business and community must engage the challenge and leave behind 30 years of unresolved water wars.
So, we ask: Will our leaders maintain a long-term vision as they communicate tough decisions? Will government provide a flexible framework for competing interests to resolve conflict? Despite the pressures, will agricultural, environmental and urban interests think beyond the immediate to arrive at agreements that lead to sustainable supply management?
Our answers to these questions lead us to recommend four actions:
First, President Obama and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should form a federal-state drought response team that includes new leadership not tied to inflexible organizations and tired thinking about water supply, and that embraces the fact that climate change will set the limits of any future water allocation formulas.
Second, the president and governor should direct that team to reframe the discussion:
a) Food production in California is a national security priority and simply outsourcing our food supply is not in our national interest.
b) Responses must emerge from a primary respect for ecological systems and those who steward the resources within those systems to water and feed us.
c) Immediate and long-term responses are required to deal with the impacts and root causes of climate change and drought.
d) Urban and rural communities and people of different means must share the burdens that will be required.
Third, the secretaries of the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Interior, Tom Vilsack and Ken Salazar, should ensure that their top deputies are tied directly to California's farmers and environmental organizations, because without trusted Californians at the top in Washington, drought response will be much less effective.
By taking these suggestions, the state, nation and communities could minimize the pain caused by this drought and evolve methods for responding to climate change.
Richard Rominger is the former secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Michael R. Dimock is president of Roots of Change, a collaborative supporting development of a sustainable food system in California.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/10/EDKB15RJ1M.DTL
----------------------------- 0bama running around saying 'It will get lots worse before it gets better!' Now talk about encouraging....