Posted on 02/21/2010 3:10:51 PM PST by Berlin_Freeper
Most Americans believe that the U.S. economy will fully recover from this recent recession and will soon become stronger than ever. But that is definitely not what is happening. The truth is that the very foundations of the U.S. economy are coming apart and we are headed for a massive amount of financial trouble as a nation.
Collectively, the U.S. government, U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. This mountain of debt has enabled us to enjoy a spectacular standard of living for the past several decades, but now the bills are coming due and nobody seems to even realize how great of a financial disaster the U.S. now finds itself in the middle of.
The following are 10 huge flashing danger signs that show just how much of a mess the U.S. economy is in....
#1) The FDIC is opening a satellite office in the Chicago area that will accommodate up to 500 temporary staffers and contractors to manage receiverships and liquidate assets from what they are expecting will be a massive wave of failed Midwest banks.
#2) The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, which is the biggest one month decline in history. China alone reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by $34.2 billion. So if foreigners quite buying up all of our debt, what happens then?
#3) Mortgage defaults in the U.S. have continued to hit record highs and housing prices are continuing to fall. Now, a massive "second wave" of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset beginning in 2010. The first wave of adjustable rate mortgage resets absolutely devastated the U.S. housing market in 2007 and 2008. So what is this second wave of mortgage resets going to do to the U.S. economy?
#4) In fact, one new study estimates that five million houses and condominiums will go through foreclosure over the next few years. Needless to say, that would be absolutely catastrophic.
#5) The number of Americans who are declaring bankruptcy continues to skyrocket. 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
#6) But how can Americans pay their bills without jobs? In some areas of the United States it is now nearly impossible to get a really good job unless you have an inside connection. In fact, the mayor of Detroit estimates that the real unemployment rate in his city is approximately 45 to 50 percent.
#7) America needs jobs, but soaring unemployment insurance taxes are discouraging small and mid-size companies from bringing on more workers. According to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over even more in unemployment insurance taxes in 2010. Making it more costly to hire a new worker is not going to help put Americans back to work.
#8) The U.S. economy is facing a pension crisis of unprecedented magnitude. The truth is that the vast majority of all pension funds in the United States, both public and private, are extremely underfunded. With millions upon millions of Baby Boomers now at retirement age, there is simply no way that all of these unfunded pension obligations can be met. Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the collective unfunded pension liability for all 50 U.S. states for Forbes magazine. So what was the total that they came up with? 3.2 trillion dollars.
#9) Not only that, but the Social Security system is also a silent monster that threatens to devastate U.S. government finances. In fact, many analysts are now forecasting that the coming wave of Baby Boomers is going to bankrupt the entire Social Security system.
#10) All of these economic problems come at a time when the U.S. national debt is exploding into the stratosphere. The national debt is now over 12 trillion dollars and it is rising at a rate of about 3.8 billion dollars per day. So how much is one trillion dollars? Well, if you spent one dollar every single second of every single day, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars. That is a lot of money.
The truth is that the U.S. is drowning in debt. American consumers are broke. American businesses are broke. State governments are broke. The U.S. federal government is broke. The only way that we can keep things going is to borrow increasingly larger amounts of money.
But when we do borrow even more money we make our long-term problems even worse.
The day of reckoning for the U.S. economy is fast approaching and we are headed for some extremely difficult economic times.
Are you ready?
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/
The disease, for which no effective treatment was ever developed, killed as many as 30% of those infected. Between 65–80% of survivors were marked with deep pitted scars (pockmarks), most prominent on the face.
Travis per the Market Ticker this seven day period applies to checking accounts. That is what makes this so ...strange.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox
In 1992 Soviet defector Ken Alibek confirmed that the Soviet bioweapons program at Zagorsk had produced a large stockpile—as much as twenty tons—of weaponized smallpox (possibly engineered to resist vaccines), along with refrigerated warheads to deliver it. It is not known whether these stockpiles still exist in Russia.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union and unemployment of many of the weapons program's scientists, there is concern that smallpox and the expertise to weaponize it may have become available to other governments or terrorist groups who might wish to use virus as means of biological warfare.
Bttt
marker
That workforce participation is an interesting graph. Down now from a high of around 65 percent to 58 percent. Interesting to see that the workforce as a percent of the population is still higher now than it was in the 60s.
It would seem that much of the gains of the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s were all built on the backs of eating seed corn.
I have a product I rep from a Chinese vendor... believe me... they want us to turn this around as much as we do. They are tied to us hip and anchor.
“Only Yesterday” was used as a Textbook in a classs I took in College. An excellent book!
He didn't say "10,000,000".
He said "integer multiple of 10,000,000".
That's 20 million ... 30 million ... 40 million ...
Many of them will not be "the elderly".
Yup...
And even these numbers may be a cheerful understatement
All those people who are trying to stay thin
may have to restate their survival strategy
Best place to store energy is within yourself...
Unless you have a cannibal next door
Good point, just what will happen when the welfare checks stop? I think this is part of the obama plan to use the dependants of Washington as a tool.
I wonder if anyone has a graph that has the debt plus capitalised obligations of the US govvt as a % of the GDP. I believe we would be well in excess of the WW II peak.
The welfare checks may not stop at all.
They will hyperinflate simply by keeping all of the entitlement slaves’ “welfare cards” topped off with fresh electronic digits.
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