Free Republic

*SNIP* The following is the global financial pyramid scheme by the numbers... -$9,283,000,000,000 - The total amount of all bank deposits in the United States. The FDIC has just 25 billion dollars in the deposit insurance fund that is supposed to "guarantee" those deposits. In other words, the ratio of total bank deposits to insurance fund money is more than 371 to 1. -$10,012,800,000,000 - The total amount of mortgage debt in the United States. As you can see, you could take every penny out of every bank account in America and it still would not cover it. -$10,409,500,000,000 -...

[Via Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog} Why is the global economy in so much trouble? How can so many people be so absolutely certain that the world financial system is going to crash? Well, the truth is that when you take a look at the cold, hard numbers it is not difficult to see why the global financial pyramid scheme is destined to fail. In the United States today, there is approximately 56 trillion dollars of total debt in our financial system, but there is only about 9 trillion dollars in our bank accounts. So you could take...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the chief culprits in the housing crisis because they encouraged people who could not afford payments to borrow money, according to a congressional report released Tuesday.

Prediction: The Social Security debate is going to turn pretty ugly pretty fast. It's quite civilized at the moment, with reporters and op-ed types jousting over economic assumptions and actuarial rates. But New Year's Day brought a Washington Post report that the coming campaign over Bush's privatization plan will take on the coloration of a full-fledged political war, complete with television ads. Such groups as Progress for America (which spent millions on Bush's reelection), the Club for Growth and the National Association of Manufacturers are planning big-budget campaigns, and the AARP is already spending 5 mil on full-page opposition ads...