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The Pope has offered a harrowing vision of the future, saying he has seen signs of an even darker time ahead for humanity. At a Mass at the Vatican, the Pope, 85, said on Sunday that he has a dire vision for the world with 'omens of even greater destruction and desolation'. The Mass was commemorating the feast of Our Lady Guadalupe, which fell on Monday. It commemorates the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a young man, Saint Juan Diego, in 1531 in Mexico City. The day is a national holiday in Mexico. But despite the current difficult times...

In early November, gale-force winds whipped a brush fire into an inferno that nearly consumed the town of Paradise, California, and killed at least 86 people. By the second morning, I could smell the fire from one foot outside my door in Berkeley, some 130 miles from the flames. Within a week, my eyes and throat stung even when I was indoors. Air quality maps warned that the soot-filled air blanketing the Bay Area had reached “very unhealthy” levels. For days, nearly everyone wore masks as they walked their dogs, rode the train, and carried out errands. Most of those...

The bleak presidential portrait painted by the media keeps getting darker: Donald Trump is spinning out of control, calling the Mueller probe unconstitutional, claiming he can pardon himself, embracing a lawyer who says he could shoot Jim Comey and not be indicted. He is slapping tariffs on allies and launching a global trade war. He couldn't welcome the Super Bowl champs to the White House without being divisive. He is at war with a porn star. He is accusing the press of a disinformation campaign. He insulted Canada without even knowing the details of the War of 1812. And Time's...

A Market Forecast That Says ‘Take Cover’ WITH the stock market lurching again, plenty of investors are nervous, and some are downright bearish. Then there’s Robert Prechter, the market forecaster and social theorist, who is in another league entirely. Prechter is convinced that we have entered a market decline of staggering proportions — perhaps the biggest of the last 300 years. ...... Originating in the writings of Ralph Nelson Elliott, an obscure accountant who found repetitive patterns, or “fractals,” in the stock market of the 1930s and ’40s, the theory suggests that an epic downswing is under way, Mr. Prechter...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - - FBI agents from the Washington, D.C. field office have raided a building in downtown Orlando. The building raided is the Colonial Bank building on Pine Street. The FBI is working with the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program which was established by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. FOX 35 has a crew at the scene. Check back for updates.

Many comparisons have been made between today’s financial and economic crisis and the Great Depression, none more than the specter of deflation. Well, contrary to what happened during the Great Depression and contrary to the deflationary forecasts of government leaders, central bankers and economists, deflation, while always possible, is, in this man’s opinion, highly unlikely. Why’s that? Because the monetary and political framework of today is nothing like that of the early 1930’s. In fact, it’s nothing like anything seen, ever. Quite simply, today’s monetary and political framework is built for inflation, as much inflation as the government, the Federal...

Strike up the band, boys, happy days are here again! Recently released short-term economic data, including unemployment claims, non-farm payrolls, home sales, and business spending, which had been so unambiguously horrific in February and March, are now just garden-variety awful. With the Wicked Witch of Depression now apparently crushed under the house of Obamanomics, the Munchkins of Wall Street have sounded the all clear, pushing the Dow Jones up 25% from its lows. But the premature conclusion of their Lollipop Guild economists, that the crash of 2008/2009 is now a fading memory, is just as delusional as their failure to...

Contrary to the claims of current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and so many economists, the fundamental reason that our economy is falling apart is NOT subprime mortgages, or insolvent banks. The problems are far deeper than that, because such things are only symptoms of the underlying disease. History teaches us that economic depression and/or hyperinflations are NOT caused by banks or the money supply. Such events, whether they occured in ancient Rome, or the modern United States of America, are caused by a perception, by the People, that their leaders...

The U.S. economy contracted at a steeper-than-expected pace in the first quarter, weighed down by sharp declines in exports and business inventories, according government data on Wednesday that showed the economy was still deep in recession. Gross domestic product, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, dropped at a 6.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said, after shrinking 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter.

Below is a blurb from the recent weekly newsletter put out by David Galand at Casey Research. It explains very simply why all of Obama's plans will fail. It explains why our country is failing. It is so simple, yet extremely smart people refuse to see the facts. An economics professor said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, okay, we will have an experiment...

Ellen Brown writes: In an April 7 article in The London Telegraph titled “The G20 Moves the World a Step Closer to a Global Currency,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote:“A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order. “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity,’ it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century. “In effect, the G20...

Developing story out of the NYT. The Treasury Department is preparing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing for Chrysler that could come as soon as next week, people with direct knowledge of the action said Thursday. The Treasury has an agreement in principle with the United Automobile Workers union, whose members’ pensions and retiree health care benefits would be protected as a condition of the bankruptcy filing, said these people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case. The only major question that remains unresolved is what happens to Chrysler’s lenders, who hold $6.9 billion in...

This article addresses Washington's financial coup d'etat in the context of discussing Michael Hudson's important, very lengthy and detailed one titled: "The Financial War Against Iceland - Being defeated by debt is as deadly as outright military warfare." It reviews its key information in advance of Hudson's April 15 scheduled appearance on The Global Research News Hour to discuss. What's true for Iceland holds everywhere, including the developed world, the idea being to enrich finance capitalism through state-sponsored debt bondage and neo-feudal impoverishment. The global economic crisis was no accident. It was long ago hatched, and has been brewing for...

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It's been 21 months since two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted setting off a series of events which have led to the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression. No one expected the financial meltdown to hit this hard or spread this fast. The failure at Bear triggered a freeze in the secondary market where mortgage loans are repackaged into securities and sold to investors. That market is now completely paralyzed cutting off 40 percent of funding for consumer and business loans and thrusting the broader economy into a deep recession. . . . . C L I P ....

The NYT is reporting that Treasury Department officials have directed General Motors (GM) to begin laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy proceeding by June 1. According to the Times, they want to be prepared to go through a “surgical” bankruptcy. One plan under consideration would create a new company that would buy the “good” assets of G.M. almost immediately after the carmaker files for bankruptcy. Less desirable assets, including unwanted brands, factories and health care obligations, would be left in the old company, which could be liquidated over several years. Treasury officials are examining one potential outcome in which the...

If you've wondered why I advocate prosecuting homeowners who have lied on their mortgage applications along with the banksters who fraudulently "packaged and sold" non-underwritten loans as "AAA" securities, implying actual underwriting and defined risks, here's the reason: Sillman says he's seeing “a ton of fraud,” especially as it applies to fake “short sales,” which is the industry term used to describe the sale of a property for less than what is owed on it. And how are they cheating?  Take your pick: Fortace also has uncovered many instances where solvent owners are imploring employers to tell lenders they...

I am changing my tune. Geithner's plan can succeed. Before anyone collapses on the floor or starts screaming that I have lost my mind, it's important to define what success means and what the plan is. What Success Is Not Getting banks to lend. Having a fair bidding process. Arriving at a fair market value of bank assets. The first is not going to happen and it would be a bad thing if it did, even though Geithner is foolish enough to actually want that. Rather the idea is to make it appear as if there is a fair bidding...

Boston's John Hancock Tower, New England's tallest building, was sold Tuesday in a foreclosure auction held by an investor group for $660.6 million, half the price paid by real-estate private-equity firm Broadway Partners three years ago. The winning bidder was a partnership between Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile Capital Partners, which holds the senior portion of $700 million in so-called mezzanine debt, or the part that fills the gap between the first mortgage and a borrower's equity. The partnership agreed to pay $20.1 million for the mezzanine debt and assume the first mortgage of $640.5 million. The Normandy-Five...

This is the point at which the global economy falls the rest of the way off of the cliff. The false hope raised by the illusion of decisive action on the part of the Obama administration is giving way to Democratic party in-fighting and an increasing public perception that Obama and Geithner are out of their league. A number of events on the macro economic and political fronts threaten to converge simultaneously to force another major contraction in global markets. They are: * Auto industry’s impending contraction as a result of imminent bankruptcies and mergers; * Hold-up of stimulus money...