Economic Health

"You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." --Ayn Rand

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered." --Thomas Jefferson

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." -- Winston Churchill

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them; and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

I can hear the question already... "What did you do during the Great Economic Shakeout Grandpa?"

"Oh gosh, grandchild, I helped major corporations shove senseless debt loads onto people and outsourced everything I could to India and the Philippines to increase corporate profits so boards of directors could get paid huge blocks of options offshore to avoid their honest share of taxes... and in return, I got dog biscuits and screwed like every other minion... which is why we're having dumpster for dinner again tonight..."

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution ... taking from the federal government their power of borrowing." --Thomas Jefferson 11-26-1798

"It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." --Henry Ford

When evaluating the health of the American economy, the key is not to focus on the short-term economic numbers. Sometimes they go up and sometimes they do down. Instead, the key is to look at the long-term balance sheet numbers. When you do that, it quickly becomes apparent how appalling our economic decline has been. The size of federal government debt is exploding, state and local governments all over the country are drowning in debt, our collective national wealth is decreasing and our ability to produce new wealth is also being reduced as our economic infrastructure is systematically gutted.

Of course all of the blame should not go to Obama. The truth is that the Federal Reserve has much more power over the economy than Obama does. But the American people are constantly told that the Federal Reserve is "not political" and that we should not criticize the Fed. So it is kind of ridiculous that presidents are judged by the performance of the economy. Yes, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama have all greatly contributed to the mess that we are in, but they are not solely responsible for it. In the end, however, the outcome of the next presidential election will probably be very heavily influenced by how the U.S. economy performs during the rest of 2012. Sadly, as our economy declines it is bringing out the worst in many Americans.

As the economy gets even worse, millions upon millions of Americans are going to become extremely desperate and will do things for money that they never dreamed that they would do. That is a very frightening thing. America is changing, and not for the better. You better get ready for what is ahead, because Barack Obama is not going to save you.

The new Obama budget projects a $1.33 trillion federal budget deficit for the 2012 fiscal year. That is significantly higher than the $1.15 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office was projecting because it includes a whole bunch of stimulus spending that the Obama administration plans to do. So let's do a little math. When you divide $1.33 trillion by 365 days, you get 3.6438356 billion dollars. So on average, the United States will be adding more than 3.6 billion dollars to the national debt every single day during fiscal 2012. And when you divide $3.6438356 billion by 24 hours, you get 151.8 million dollars. So on average, the U.S. national debt will be going up by more than 151 million dollars every single hour during fiscal 2012 if Obama has his way. This is a theft from our children and our grandchildren that is so vast that it is almost unimaginable.

The 2012 budget deficit that the Obama administration is projecting would be equivalent to approximately 8.5 percent of GDP. At the moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of $15,355,838,921,022.16. That is an amount that is so large that it is hard to even put into words. At this point our national debt is greater than 100% of our national GDP. We are on the road to national financial disaster and yet our politicians keep piling up debt at a rate that is absolutely mind blowing. The Obama administration is projecting that budget deficits will go down "in the future," but that is what our politicians always do. They always promise that the budget picture will improve "down the road," but that never actually happens. According to the Bush administration, we were supposed to be swimming in huge budget surpluses by now.

Today our world is changing at a pace that is faster than ever before, and the decisions that we all make right now are going to have a dramatic affect on the years ahead. In many ways, 2012 represents a huge turning point for America. There will be a presidential election, 33 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested and every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for grabs. But the changes that are happening in America go much deeper than politics. Anger and frustration are growing to frightening levels, and we have become a deeply divided nation. Our affluence is rapidly crumbling and our national values are being transformed at a staggering pace. America is drowning in debt, addicted to entertainment and full of people that think they know it all. America is arrogant, cocky, smug, brash and full of pride. But if we continue down the road that we are currently on, we will be greatly humbled someday. It is just a matter of time.

Many of you will not believe some of the things Americans are doing just to survive. Some families are living in sewers and drain tunnels, some families are living in tents, some families are living in their cars, some families will make ketchup soup for dinner tonight and some families are even eating rats. Some homeless shelters in America are so overloaded that they are actually sending people out to live in the woods. As you read this, there are close to 50 million Americans that are living below the poverty line, and that number rises a little bit more every single day. America was once known as the greatest nation on earth, but now there is decay and economic despair almost everywhere you look. Yes, money certainly cannot buy happiness, but the lack of it sure can bring a lot of pain. As the economy continues to decline, the suffering that we see all around us is going to get a lot worse, and that is a very frightening thing to think about.

Those of us that still live comfortably are often completely unaware of what life is like out on the streets of America at this point. There are millions upon millions of Americans that have lost all hope and that are living on the very edge of life and death. And more join the ranks of the hopeless with each passing day. This upcoming weekend approximately 80,000 people in the state of Michigan will lose their unemployment benefits. So what are those people going to do after that? They have already been unable to find work month after month. Their savings are most certainly gone. Now the only money they had coming in is going to be eliminated.

The pool of Americans relying on government benefits rose to record highs in 2011 as an increasing share of families tapped aid in a weak economy. Some 48.6% of the population lived in a household receiving some type of government benefit in the second quarter, up a notch from 48.5% in the first quarter, according to Census data. Only a small share of the population accessed cash welfare benefits as the 1990s overhaul made it more onerous in many cases to receive and maintain those payments. Some 1.9% of the population lived in a household that received welfare in the second quarter.

Expanding government programs combined with the worst downturn since the Great Depression have led to an explosion in the share of Americans relying on outside help. To combat prolonged economic weakness, Congress extended unemployment benefits to a record 99 weeks (up from the normal 26-weeks offered in most states). The food stamp program was tweaked so it was more generous. Americans flocked to Social Security disability, a last bastion of support for some of the long-term unemployed. . . . That number is up from 32.8% a year ago (when a total of 46.8% of the population lived in a home receiving benefits). The biggest increases came from an uptick in those turning to food stamps and Medicaid. Nearly 15% of Americans lived in a household receiving food stamps in mid-2010; Almost 26% had access to Medicaid.

The global economy is more interconnected today than ever. Back in 2008 the financial crisis that started on Wall Street ended up devastating economies all over the planet. The same thing will happen during this next great financial crisis. Only this time the U.S. is in a much weaker position. The U.S. debt problem has gotten much worse since the last crisis. During 2008, our national debt crossed the 10 trillion dollar mark. Less than 4 years later, we have crossed the 15 trillion dollar mark.

So what are we going to do the next time large numbers of banks fail and unemployment skyrockets? Where are we going to get the money to bail out all of those banks and to take care of all of those newly unemployed people? Some people say that socialism is the answer, but the truth is that we are already a socialist welfare state. If you can believe it, nearly half of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of financial benefits from the U.S. government. During the next great crisis, the number of people that are dependent on the government will go even higher.

If you don’t want to end up dependent on the government, you should heed the warning signs and you should use this time to prepare for the hard times that are coming. When even the World Bank tells us to hope for the best but to prepare for the worst, you know that it is late in the game. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people out there only believe what they want to believe. They don’t want to believe that a great economic crisis is coming, and so when it does happen they are going to be absolutely blindsided by it. If the sovereign debt crisis gets even worse we could be looking at an economic crisis that could be even worse than the last one: “An escalation of the crisis would spare no-one. Developed- and developing-country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008/09.

The President has asked that the debt ceiling be raised another trillion or so and Congress will comply. Following World War Two, the recovering nations of Europe were rescued from Communism by the Marshall Plan, but adopted Communism-Light in the form of Socialism. The U.S. was already headed in that direction, creating programs that we now call “entitlements.” For most of the nation’s history, such “entitlements” did not exist. What binds together the financial problems of the West is the common thread of infantile behavior and thought. One might call it wishful thinking. Instead of encouraging people to provide for old age and possible illness, politicians decided to turn government into Big Daddy, the eternal source of money for everything. Need to go to college, start a business, or plan for retirement? Government would be there to help. All this ignored the need to actually pay for these programs. In the case of Social Security Congress began to dip into its funding to pay for other programs! This is what children do.

At the very beginning of our nation, Thomas Jefferson said it best. “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” How many commissions and special committees have earnestly produced reports intended to deal with a government grown too large? At the federal level, some two million or more Americans are employed promulgating a deluge of regulations and pushing paper. The federal government is running on “continuing resolutions.” It has not had a formal budget since Obama arrived. This is no way to run the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. America is on a suicide watch and we are just an election away from saving it. America’s economic problems will not go away until Americans insist that the shackles of Big Government be cut loose to enable the growth of an energy industry that can not only make the nation energy independent, but produce billions in revenue as far as the eye can see into the future.

The United States of America, the greatest engine of wealth the world has ever seen, is bankrupt. The national debt exceeds the Gross Domestic Product, the sum total of all revenue generated by goods and services. There is a discomfort in the air that is palapable. People sense that we are not in a good place and that we are moving further away from such a place. Our political system is seen to have failed and our economic future appears even worse. The US is headed inexorably toward a systemic failure, a complete and utter collapse of the financial system. TARP and all the other machinations have not improved the underlying insolvency of the banking system. They have, however, deferred a collapse and ensured that it will ultimately be worse. Our collapse will likely be preceded and triggered by a collapse in the financial and economic systems of several European countries. The US collapse will create economic paralysis, marked by lack of liquidity or an unwillingness to accept paper dollars. The Ponzi scheme that has been the Federal government will also collapse.

The simple fact is that the US was never as rich as it thought. The standard of living from 1990 forward was artificially inflated. Apparent prosperity was not achieved via rising incomes and wealth but through borrowing. Few lived within their means; most lived at levels that could not be sustained from current income. Eventually the debt levels became so extreme that new debt was not forthcoming. That was when the music stopped. Now the standard of living is falling. Capital and jobs are leaving the US. Consumption is shrinking as de-leveraging is required to make up for the madness of the past two decades:

For a time many must live below their long-term living standard. When you have been getting by as a result of credit cards, major adjustments are required. No one is a bigger violator of living beyond their means than government. Despite the obvious, they continue to spend rather than cut. The Obama Administration has taken spending to obscene levels. The Republicans are not much better. Bush ran deficits consistently, the largest of any President in history until Obama. The last deficit under George Bush was $160 Billion. Under Obama deficits average close to $1,500 Billion or $1.5 Trillion per year. Government spending is greater than what can be sustained via tax revenues. Politicians ask others to sacrifice but never themselves. They still try to live the myth that you can forever spend more than you make. The rules of arithmetic and economics are applicable to government as well as individuals. Regardless of what government believes, its ability to sustain itself via continued borrowing is near an end. Credit markets are unwilling to fund ongoing US debt. The US government is becoming a pariah in the world because of its excesses.

Those who understand American exceptionalism understand that our people are exceptional in many things, including rioting. Newark, Detroit, Watts and dozens of other areas are evidence of such abilities. These were pretty dramatic but they were over nothing compared to what is coming. What do you suppose will happen when the means of survival for generations of dependents suddenly dries up? Desperation is expanding. Anger is brewing even among the productive class. People looking out for their families are without jobs and angry. We are a spark away from massive protests and riots.

Those who believe they will be unaffected by what is coming are fools. Every sector of society and community will be affected. Those who believe they are well-off will learn otherwise. The inevitability of the collapse of the welfare state scares both the beneficiaries and the contributors. Everyone understands that the cessation of the goodies from Santa will mean unrest in the streets. That is the fear that drives the “extend and pretend” political behavior. For years welfare was little more than buying votes. Then it became protection money to keep the unruly in line. Now this “right” is going away and so is the peace and tranquility it purchased. Washington has put us in a death spiral from which there is no exit. Before this ends, much of the population will be broke. Folks who believed they were well off may end up living in their BMWs.

In the US, the situation appears to be very grim, with Obama signing into law the right to arrest and detain US citizens on US soil without trial. The Pentagon has refused to step in and restore constitutional rule. The corporate media, for its part, continues to spout dumbed-down lies and garbage. Countries around the world, particularly in the West, are hopelessly in the red, with debt rising every day. Even worse, politicians seem paralyzed, unable -- or unwilling -- to do anything about it. It is a global disaster that threatens the immediate future.

Have you ever wondered why top officials in the government get away with so much? Right now, 36 top officials in the Obama administration owe a combined $833,000 in back taxes. How in the world can they get away with that? And why don't they pay their "fair share" before trying to convince the rest of us that we need to pay more taxes?

If you are an American under the age of 30, you have probably figured out by now that the entire economic system is stacked against you. Approximately one out of every five Americans under the age of 30 is currently living in poverty. The way that our economy is structured today is ridiculously unfair to younger Americans. First, we endlessly push our young people to go to our ridiculously expensive colleges and universities where the pile up enormous amounts of debt. Then they get out into the real world where they find that only a handful of really good jobs are available for the vast army of college graduates entering the workforce. Sadly, most of the jobs that our young people are working these days do not pay enough to be able to support a family or buy a decent home. Meanwhile, our politicians are busy mortgaging their future. Today, only about 55 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have a job. Back in the year 2000, more than 50 percent of all Americans teens had a job. During the summer of 2011, only 29.6% of all American teens had a job. Our young people are expected to support a Social Security system that will not be there when they get older, and every single day more than 2 billion dollars is added to a debt that will hang around the necks of younger Americans and their children for the rest of their lives. If you stop and think about all of this for too long, your head might just explode with anger. This is going to be the first generation in U.S. history that is going to do significantly worse than their parents, and that is a terrible shame.

Right now, there are 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 that are living with their parents. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are now borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago. Average yearly tuition at private colleges and universities in the United States is now up to $27,293. That figure has increased by 29% in just the past five years. Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is $35,568. The cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade. In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day. At some point in 2012, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever. The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States. One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don't even require college degrees. There are more than 3.5 million Americans that are behind on their mortgage payments. Young people that were offered "teaser rates" on their first homes before the housing collapse represent a large proportion of these mortgages. Young Americans get arrested at a far higher rate than older Americans do. Amazingly, 30% of all Americans get arrested by the time they reach the age of 23. Once you spend time in prison, getting a good job becomes much tougher. The U.S. government is stealing about 150 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour. Younger Americans will have to bear the burden of this debt far longer than older Americans will.

Why can't people make the leap to real awareness of what's going on? Why do so few people seem to care about the dangers of the unreported radiation levels and toxic debris washing across the pacific? How is it no one but local residents raise the alarm about the horrific effects of the Gulf oil spill and the poisonous seafood landing on American dinner tables? As the Orwellian American police state sweeps into place, the economy crumbles, and their faultless leader languishes on a Hawaiian beach, Americans are entering into a brave new 2012 with minimal awareness of the true dangers already dissolving their health, wealth and chances for survival in an engineered conflagration of mythic proportions that is already descending on their heads. As the gap between reality and manipulated public perception grows, it may just be too big a leap for many at this point. Having been dumbed-down and unresponsive for so long, it's too much for them to take in.

Peruse 2011's government figures for the average American family's spending and debt. The conclusion is dumbfounding: it's official, 2011 was the year the middle class died. To Americans, being middle class means two things: more or less average wages that paid for life's necessities with cash leftover for discretionary spending. In a country where those from the marginally poor to the marginally rich claim to be in the middle, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) set a factual standard: the Average American Consumer Unit. The BLS's statistically computed family, with 2.5 humans and 1.3 workers, is a fictional construct. But, it is also the one true benchmark that pinpoints the dead center of the American worker's economic situation.

Beginning last year the average American family: could not afford the average single family house... depended on their employer for health care insurance or went without... were in debt with no way out... didn't pursuing further education... saved nothing... slashed their food budget to the bone... and paid at least 30% of their gross wages in taxes. Gender, age, religion, sexual preference and marital status are of no consequence to this financial analysis. If you're human you can relate to these budget numbers. Any family earning today's average wage of $62,857 is very carefully spending every cent of their $49,067 take home pay and the details are disturbing. Much of the spending verified here is so deficient it will leave you baffled as to how today's average American family is getting by. Remember, the option of taking on more debt, not calculated here, or declaring bankruptcy, may be the last resort.

Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen. The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden. Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades. The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States. Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families. Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace.

Housing: Goodbye house. Hello walk-up flat or double wide trailer. The new middle class housing is a two bedroom walk-up without the washer, dryer or dishwasher, or a double-wide trailer. The average single family home is now beyond the $1,400 monthly budget of today's average American family. The fourteen hundred dollar number must include everything that goes with a place to live: rent or mortgage payment, taxes, insurance, utilities, telephone, public services, cable/dish, equipment, supplies and furnishings. Fourteen hundred dollars will get you a two bedroom, average (not luxury) apartment, and leave enough for all your other average shelter costs, but only in smaller cities and towns where the Cost of Living Index (CLI) is at the national average: 100.

The Five Worst of The One Percent

These are just five of the people using money and powerful connections to benefit themselves while the rest of the country continues to suffer. The series could contain more than 100 installments:

18 Statistics That Prove the Economy Has Not Improved Since Barack Obama Occupied the White House

#1 Today there are 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.

#2 When Barack Obama was elected, the percentage of unemployed Americans that had been out of work for more than 52 weeks was less than 15%. Today, it is above 30%.

#3 There are 1.2 million fewer jobs in America today than there were when Barack Obama was inaugurated.

#4 When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

#6 During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent.

#7 Since Barack Obama has been president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased by 90 percent.

#8 Since Barack Obama has been president, home values in the United States have declined by another 13 percent.

#9 Under Barack Obama, new home sales in the U.S. set a brand new all-time record low in 2009, they set a brand new all-time record low again in 2010, and they set a brand new all-time record low once again during 2011.

#10 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by more than 6 million.

#11 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

#12 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#13 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" is now sitting at an all-time high.

#14 When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

#15 Since Barack Obama became president, the size of the U.S. national debt has increased by 44 percent.

#17 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

Barack Obama is promising that things will be much better very soon. Congress has reduced the maximum amount of time that the unemployed can receive unemployment benefits to 73 weeks. That change will go into effect later this year. But there are still millions of very talented Americans that cannot find work after years of looking.

America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America. In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined. When the cost of the basic things that we need – housing, food, gas, electricity – go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer. In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are working. Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs. According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it.” According to that same article, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or “near poverty”, and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or “near poverty.”

The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today. Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class. Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns. Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent. In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty. Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%. Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week. Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point. Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million. In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps. Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace. The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row. The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.

The world has become essentially schizophrenic in its outlook. Being told one thing while the exact opposite is happening before their eyes for so long, the "dissonance" created by this conflict is causing humanity to shut down. America is the perfect example. Ostensibly fighting for "freedom and liberty" we commit genocide and destroy nation after nation. To protect our liberties the government has overturned the Bill of Rights and made the Constitution a mockery. Yet the populace sits and takes it.

UPDATE: The Weather Channel says the east coast earthquake was caused by an unknown fault line running under D.C. and through Virginia. It is now being called Obama's Fault, though Obama says it's really Bush's Fault. Other theories are that it was the founding fathers rolling over in their graves or that what we all believed to be an earthquake was actually the effects of a 14.6 trillion dollar check bouncing in Washington.

The road that we are taking as a nation in America and as a human race on the planet Earth is being paved for us in advance and sold to us for a profit. As information comes down the pipeline it becomes distorted and confused because most of the people passing along the information do not know the entire story, they have not researched much information themselves, and they tend to be biased as well. They tend to have an angle in the information they put out, usually because they have an ulterior motive.

The western world is drowning in an ocean of debt unlike anything the world has ever seen before, and our financial markets are gigantic casinos that are dependent on huge mountains of risk and leverage remaining very stable. In the end, this house of cards that has been built on a foundation of sand is going to come crashing down in a horrifying manner. Most people out there have no idea what is about to happen. Most people out there are working hard and are busy preparing for the holidays and they are hopeful that the economy will turn around soon. But that is not going to happen. We are heading for another major global financial collapse, and when it happens the U.S. economy is going to get even worse.

$11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments. $22 Billion a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. $2.5 Billion a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. $12 Billion a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English! $17 Billion a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. $3 Million a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. $90 Billion a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens. In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin. The total cost is a whopping $338.3 BILLION A YEAR. THIS AMOUNT OF MONEY IS $338,300,000,000.00, IT IS ENOUGH TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY FOR THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY.

When Carlo Ponzi, a dishwasher from Parma, Italy, immigrated to the United States in 1903, he had $2.50 in his pocket and a million-dollar dream in his head. He was able to fulfill that dream, at least temporarily. Ponzi promised people that he would multiply their money in a miraculous way: by 50 percent in six weeks. With his carefully parted hair and charming accent, Ponzi beguiled investors and fueled their avarice. The first investors raked in fantastic returns. What they didn't know was that Ponzi was simply using the next investors' money to pay them their profits. The scheme continued. Ten investors turned into 100, and 100 investors turned into 1,000, until the scam was discovered. Ponzi spent many years in prison, and he died a pauper in 1949. But his name remains important to every criminologist today -- and every economist.

Economists use the term "Ponzi scheme" to describe a disastrous mechanism in which someone pays off old debt by constantly taking on new debt. The repayment of the debt -- the most recent loans, plus interest -- is deferred into the distant future, fueling an eternal process of debt refinancing. It's the classic pyramid, or snowball scheme, practiced by thousands of con artists after Ponzi. The most spectacular case was that of New York financier Bernard Madoff, who was responsible for losses of about $20 billion by 2008. Snowballs are set into motion, becoming bigger and bigger as they roll along. In the worst case, they end in an avalanche that takes everything else with it. Western economies have not acted much differently than the fraudster Madoff. The Federal Reserve is the most brazen of all ponzi schemes.

The reality is that the Federal Reserve has more control over the performance of the U.S. economy than the president even does, and yet most Americans never spend much time thinking about the Fed at all. It is almost as if someone has instructed us to "ignore the man behind the curtain" and most of us just blindly obey. With the economy in such a mess and with the national debt exploding so dramatically, isn't it about time that we had a national conversation about the performance of the Federal Reserve? Isn't it about time that we evaluated whether the Federal Reserve is doing a good job or not?

Right now, about the only things that the American people can agree on is that they are angry and that they do not like the direction that this country is headed. Of course a lot of this is being caused by the economy. Unemployment is rampant, millions of families have been kicked out of their homes and our country is drowning in debt. But the economy is not the only cause of what is happening. There is a growing restlessness in America today. An increasing number of people feel very empty and very frustrated. We still have a very high standard of living compared to the rest of the world, and yet there is this growing sense that our country is right on the verge of something really bad. The very fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is beginning to disappear. You can almost feel the fear in the air.

The markets are telling us that a major crisis is now brewing. So be prepared for another Lehman type of collapse which will bring the financial structure to its knees. The media has been portraying these problems as a crisis of capitalism, but they have it completely wrong. What we’re witnessing is a crisis of socialism. Governments have been making far too many promises which have been based on borrowed money coming mainly from the banks. Gold is the real safe haven where individuals should store their savings if they want to keep their purchasing power.

It is not a king this time who is exerting ownership over the land and its people, but it is a similar top-down tyrannical system that employs police-state enforcers in much the same manner. In America, this tyranny has remained largely disguised behind pleasantries and a growing bureaucracy centered around Orwellian safety measures, but those days are over; the king (the tyranny) has returned to make its move from the shadows out into the open square for public view. Its kid gloves have transformed to an iron fist, which always seems to herald the final phase.

Transnational giants are the dominant institution of our time - especially financial ones with money power control of everything. 147 powerful transnational corporations control an inordinate amount of economic activity - about 40%. Among the top 50, 45 are financial firms. They include Barclays PLC (called most influential), JPMorgan Chase, UBS, and other familiar and less known names. Twenty-four companies are US-based, followed by eight in Britain, five in France, four in Japan, and Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands with two each. Canada has one. Moreover, "top ranked" companies "hold a control ten times bigger than what could be expected based on their wealth." As a result, they have enormous influence over political, financial, and economic activity. They're able to transfer enormous amounts of power, wealth and resources from public to private hands with government complicity.

These forces have transformed" financial institutions and other corporate predators "into instruments of a market tyranny that is extending its reach across the planet like a cancer, colonizing ever more of the planet's living spaces, destroying livelihoods, displacing people, rendering democratic institutions impotent, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money" and profits as a be and end all. Only bottom line priorities and market dominance matter, not human welfare, environmental sanity, peace, equity and justice. They decide who governs and how, who serves on courts, what laws are enacted, and whether or not wars are waged. Corporate dominance, especially financial power, and democratic values are incompatible. They operate ruthlessly as private tyrannies. They're predators. We're prey, and every day we're eaten alive. They do it because they can, and in America by mandate.

Publicly owned US corporations, including financial ones, must serve shareholders by maximizing equity value through higher profits. They do it by exploiting nations, people and resources ruthlessly. Social responsibility doesn't matter. Neither does being worker-friendly, a good citizen, or friend of the earth. Bottom line priorities alone matter. Failure to pursue fiduciary responsibilities means possible dismissal or shareholder lawsuits. Yet nothing in America's Constitution or statute laws endow corporations with their rights. They usurped them by co-opting Washington, the nation's courts, state capitals, and city halls. As a result, over half the world's largest economies are corporations. Financial ones controlling the power of money are most dominant.

Although corporations aren't human, they can live forever, change their identity, reside in many places globally, can't be imprisoned for wrongdoing, and can transform themselves into new entities for any reason. They have the same rights and protections as people without the responsibilities. As a result, they operate freely unrestrained, especially financial giants controlling the power of money at the public's expense. Corporations are now seen as bundles of assets, the more liquid the better. A new monopoly finance capitalism developed to exploit it. A burgeoning financial superstructure gained a life of its own. Today it's omnipotent, especially in America and Europe. Their business model involves grabbing everything that smells money, no matter what harm is caused. Money doesn't buy everything, but it buys enough influence to matter.

The central banks of the world are acting as if it is 2008 all over again. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and right now the central bankers are pulling out all the stops. The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank have announced a coordinated plan to provide liquidity support to the global financial system. According to the plan, the Federal Reserve is going to substantially reduce the interest rate that it charges the European Central Bank to borrow dollars. In turn, that will enable the ECB to lend dollars to European banks at a much cheaper rate. The hope is that this will alleviate the credit crunch which has gripped the European financial system by the throat. So where is the Federal Reserve going to get all of these dollars that it will be loaning out at very low interest rates? You guessed it - the Fed is just going to create them out of thin air. Our currency is being debased so that Europe can be helped out. Unfortunately, the impact of this move will be mostly "psychological" because it really does nothing to address the fundamental problems that Europe is facing. It is up to Europe to solve those problems, and so far Europe has shown no signs of being able to do that.

The Federal Reserve system has now been in place for about 100 years. That is certainly long enough to evaluate how well it has performed. So has the Federal Reserve done a good job? Well, one of the things that the Federal Reserve is charged with doing is to protect the value of our currency. In other words, they are supposed to keep inflation under control. In that regard, the Federal Reserve has failed miserably. The U.S. dollar has lost 96.2 percent of its value since 1900, and almost 100 percent of that decline has come during the Federal Reserve era.

The other half of the Federal Reserve's "dual mandate" is to keep unemployment low. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Fed has failed there too. In the United States today, there are less jobs than there were a decade ago even though we have added more than 30 million more people to the population since then. The average duration of unemployment in the U.S. is about 40 weeks, and if you gathered together all of the unemployed people in America in one place, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the world. So, no, the Federal Reserve is not doing a good job of keeping us all employed.

We are also told that the era before the Federal Reserve was created was a time when great "financial panics" happened on a regular basis and that the Federal Reserve was created to stop them from happening. So has the Federal Reserve been effective at preventing financial panics? Well, current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has openly admitted that the Federal Reserve helped cause the Great Depression of the 1930s. And there have been 10 separate economic recessions since 1950. So that is not a really great track record. In addition, it seems very clear that the foolish low interest rate policies of the Fed fueled the massive housing bubble that plunged the U.S. economy into the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression when it finally crashed. Shouldn't the Federal Reserve receive some criticism for that?

Of course one of the biggest problems with the Federal Reserve is that it is a perpetual debt machine. The Federal Reserve system was designed to perpetually expand the money supply and to perpetually expand U.S. government debt. On both counts, it has performed brilliantly. When the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. national debt was less than 3 billion dollars. Today, it is more than 5000 times larger.

When you simply look at performance, the truth is that it is really hard to deny that the Federal Reserve has been a complete and total nightmare for the United States. But instead of shutting it down, Congress has been giving the Federal Reserve even more power. The Dodd-Frank bill gave the Fed significant new powers and substantial new responsibilities, and the Fed has been exercising those new powers in almost complete secrecy.

Central banking is one of the few things that almost every nation on earth can agree on. All 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank. Sadly, the vast majority of the people out there have no idea that central banking is just a giant money making scam.

Central banks are allowed to create money out of thin air which is then lent to national governments. In turn, the citizens of those nations have to pay higher taxes in order to pay the interest on those debts. Central banking is a way to systematically take wealth from the citizens of a nation and transfer it into the pockets of those that enjoy getting rich by lending money to governments. When it comes to taking money out of the pockets of the American people, the Federal Reserve is definitely doing a good job.

Our entire economic system is based on debt, and such a system is inevitably going to fail eventually. We need to shut down the Federal Reserve and quit using debt-based currency. We need to educate the American people about where money comes from and about why central banking is so destructive.

The major central banks of the world say that they want to "enhance their capacity to provide liquidity support to the global financial system." But essentially what is happening is that the Federal Reserve is going to be zapping large amounts of dollars into existence and loaning them out to the ECB very, very cheaply. Think of it as a type of "quantitative easing" on a global scale. The decision to do this was reportedly made by the Federal Reserve on November 28, 2011. This intervention by the central banks is merely just a speed bump on the road to financial oblivion. Most Americans are not going to understand what the central banks of the world just did, but it really is not that complicated.

In an attempt to stave off the consequences of a global credit freeze, the Federal Reserve, in coordination with major central banks, has created a credit line available to those central banks, whereby they can borrow dollars at reduced interest rates for periods of three months. The central banks, in turn, can lend to commercial banks in their respective countries. This is meant to reduce the cost of short-term borrowing for troubled European banks and to give them immediate access to dollars. This was done immediately after the collapse of Lehman Brothers as well, to alleviate the consequences of banks being largely unwilling to lend to other banks, even for short periods, for fear that the borrowing banks could fail.

So the Federal Reserve is loaning giant piles of cheap money to the European Central Bank. Where in the world does all of that money come from? All of this money is created right out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.... Neither the dollars nor the Euros come from anywhere. They aren’t moved or debited from anywhere. They are invented right on the spot with a few taps on the key pad. And that’s all. There’s no printing press fired up to make new dollars or euros. This is called “fiat money.” But that makes it sound as if some command from a sovereign created the money. It’s really closer to “keyboard money,” since it is created by data entry in a computer. Just think of it as "comfort food" for the financial markets.

The reality is that the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank would have never taken coordinated action like this if they did not believe that there was some sort of imminent threat to the global financial system. This "liquidity" is going to dramatically increase the size of the U.S. monetary base.... Any use of the Fed’s swap facility expands the Fed’s monetary base: all dollars, no matter where they are deposited, whether it be Kazakhstan, Japan, or Mexico, wind up back in an American bank. This means that any time a foreign central bank engages in a swap with the Federal Reserve, the Fed will create new money in order to make the swap. Use of the Fed’s liquidity swap line in late 2008 was the main cause of a surge in the Fed’s monetary base at that time. The peak for the swap line was about $600 billion in December 2008. Some observers will therefore say that the swap line is a backdoor way to engage in more quantitative easing.

When there is more money floating around out there but the same amount of goods and services, prices go up. So we will eventually see more inflation in the United States because of all this. Meanwhile, politicians in Europe have failed to come up with a plan to address the European financial crisis once again. They are calling it a "delay," but the truth is that it should be called a "failure." The reality is that this latest move by the major central banks of the world does not change the fact that Europe is in a huge amount of trouble and is most likely headed for a very painful financial collapse.

All of these central banks are run by unelected bureaucrats that answer to nobody. The decisions that these central bankers make affect all of our lives in a very significant way, and yet we have zero input into these decisions. Most of the decisions that these central bankers make seem to benefit big banks and big financial institutions. They always claim that the benefits will "filter down" to the rest of us. But most of the time what ends up filtering down to us is the economic pain that comes from their bad decisions.

The large investment and commercial banks saw an opportunity and concocted securities backed by dicey "sub-prime" loans, in which borrowers paid higher interest based on questionable credit. These mortgage-backed instruments were a hot item, yet when the banks learned that the underlying values had vanished, they lent money to mortgage origination firms to gin up even more bad loans at higher and higher interest rates to shape into even more mortgage-backed securities to sell to their customers--and each other. The banks, knowing that the instruments were worthless when they sold them to their own clients, purposefully bought "insurance" (credit default swaps) against their own products, thus doubly swindling their customers. And they made millions doing it--first on the commissions from the sale, and then from their short position as the securities tanked. In 2008, the house of cards came tumbling down, taking with it the American economy.

Then enters Treasury Secretary and former chief of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson, who insisted that we must save the hides of the big banks (his compatriots) with the stimulus bailout to "rescue the financial system."Originally stated to be $787 billion, the total reached $11.6 trillion--all secured by American taxpayers. The result was the near-destruction of the consumer sector, which represents 80% of the economy, all to save the criminals who committed the illegal acts that brought down the economy. But worse, commercial and community banks are still burdened with bad real estate loans and investments. Consequently, they are under orders from banking regulators not to lend, which further exacerbates the decimation of the middle class and small business owners who cannot find loans to recover and grow. The stimulus should have been distributed--via tax breaks and rebates--to households to stimulate consumer spending, which in turn would have stabilized the small business sector that could have kept workers and hired for new positions.

Obama and his cohorts--like Paulson, now replaced at Treasury by Timothy Geithner, another investment-bank rent boy--have not only failed in their approach to the recession, but they may be the architects of an economic calamity more painful than the Great Depression when all is said and done. Nothing is being done to expose and prosecute these criminals who caused the economic collapse. The Securities and Exchange Commission has tried to wipe the shame from its face by investigating some of the sleazy practices, but this comes well after the fox has left the coop with all the eggs. And indeed, fines have been levied against some of the best-known bank brands in the world: JP Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and others to come. But the fines are paltry, the banks are not required to admit guilt, and the individual culprits are not identified. It turns out that the SEC cannot bring criminal charges under its charter, and Congress has refused to haul the perpetrators in front of an investigative committee.

The top donor to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs, received over $10 billion in emergency lending and bailouts from the Federal Reserve after the 2008 financial meltdown, according to public sources and published reports. Goldman backed Obama for election in 2008, and the firm, like many Wall Street institutions, is now backing Mitt Romney for president. Romney has long had a close relationship with Goldman Sachs. In 1999 Romney purchased initial IPO shares in Goldman that netted him $1.1 million in profits when he sold them in 2010. Today, Goldman is Romney's largest donor. And nine of Romney's top 20 campaign contributors are big Wall Street Banks like Goldman.

The Three Who Brought Down Wall Street

Here's a quick look into the three former Fannie Mae executives who brought down Wall Street. Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear. Tim Howard - was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004. Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million! Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when in fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae. Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.

Where Are They Now?

FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as his Chief Economic Advisor.

TIM HOWARD? Howard is a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama under Franklin Raines.

JIM JOHNSON? Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee.

Obama refuses to go after the bad guys, to stand up for the people against the crooks on Wall Street, who walked away with all our money derived from a gigantic criminal conspiracy. The criminals who brought down the American economy have not been identified personally and brought before the bar of justice. These central banks need to be abolished. The American people need to tell Congress to shut down the Federal Reserve and to start issuing debt-free United States currency. We do not want a bunch of unelected central bankers to "centrally plan" the U.S. economy or to "centrally plan" the global economy.

Americans have been snookered into renouncing their citizenship and converting to being mindless consumers. Citizenship requires a person to be actively engaged in the community with obligations to fellow citizens and future generations. Consumerism requires people to love things, embrace debt, worry about what others have, and become driven by the accumulation of possessions and the appearance of wealth. The disgusting exhibition that Madison Avenue maggots have coined Black Friday is the ultimate display of consumerism. In a nauseating display of senseless spending driven by retail conglomerates, Americans act like Pavlov’s salivating dogs by lining up for hours to stampede over and pepper spray other consumers to get the ultimate deal on that Chinese made toaster oven, Vietnamese made laptop, Korean made HDTV, or Mexican made tortilla maker. They don’t seem to grasp the irony of going deeper into debt buying cheap crap made in foreign countries by the workers who took their jobs. The mainstream media proclaims a hugely successful Black Friday as millions bought crap they didn’t need with money they don’t have, while millions more ate their Thanksgiving meals in food shelters – unreported by the media. This repulsive manifestation of consumerism is applauded and encouraged by our government. The masses have been brainwashed by those in power into thinking consumer spending, utilizing debt, is essential for a strong economy, when the exact opposite is the truth. Saving and investment are the essential ingredients to a strong economy. Debt-based spending only benefits bankers, mega-corporations, and politicians.

A highly-educated engaged citizenry would be a danger to the existing social order. The 1%, educated at our finest universities, does not want average Americans to obtain a great education for a reasonable price. They want them to get a worthless diploma at an excessively high price tag and become debt slaves to the Wall Street 1%. They want uneducated, indebted consumers, not educated productive citizens. Our republic has been slowly perverted since the time of its inception. The insidious process had been slow and methodical until 1913. The establishment of the Federal Reserve, by an elite group of bankers and their politician friends and the establishment of a personal income tax, created the conditions that has allowed a small cabal of powerful men to dictate the course of our economic, political, social, and military policies for the last 98 years. Anyone that chooses to open their eyes and awake from the propaganda-induced stupor can see the result of allowing a small group of corrupt authoritarian men using their power to pervert our government into tyranny. The majority remains oppressed, buried under trillions of debt, while the shysters reap obscene profits, poison the worldwide economic system, and walk away unscathed in the aftermath of their crimes.

The ruling oligarchy has become so brazen in the last few years that it has attracted the attention of the critical thinking minority. The advent of the internet has allowed these critical thinking few to analyze the un-sanitized facts, discuss the issues, and provide truth amidst a blizzard of lies. The proliferation of truth-telling websites has allowed truth-seekers to bypass the government sanctioned corporate media. The pillaging of society by the politically powerful, corrupt 1% is plain to see. But, most Americans, on this catastrophic economic highway to collapse, are passively accepting the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police. The majority of Americans are responding with silent acquiescence to the transfer of trillions in taxpayer dollars to the criminal bankers that have destroyed the worldwide financial system. Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and the overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering.

There is confusion and misunderstanding regarding the culprits in this drama. The divergence in household income was the result of the 1% capturing the economic and political system of the United States and using it to ransack the wealth of the formerly working middle class. They are psychopaths, unable to feel empathy for their fellow man. Enough is never enough. They always want more. Life is a game to them. They truly believe they can pull the right strings and continue to accumulate more riches. The world is crumbling under the weight of crippling debt created by these Wall Street psychopaths, while the corrupted bought off politicians try to shift the losses from the bankers who incurred them to the citizens who have already been fleeced.

In addition to controlling the monetary system and brainwashing the inhabitants with relentless propaganda, the ruling class has used their control of the political process to impose thousands of laws, statutes, rules, and regulations upon the citizens. An apathetic, distracted, trusting populace has been easily convinced that more laws will make them safe and secure. They have willingly sacrificed liberty, freedom and self reliance for the façade of safety, security and protection. The overwhelming number of government rules and regulations are designed to control you and insure your compliance and obedience to those in power. In a non-corrupt society inhabited by citizens willing to honor their obligations, government’s function is to insure property rights and defend the country from foreign invaders. Citizens don’t need to be herded like sheep with threats of imprisonment to do what is right. We don’t need 90,000 pages of regulations telling us the difference between right and wrong.

There were 400 pages of Federal Tax rules when the 1% personal income tax was implemented in 1913. Since then, there has been an 18,000% increase in tax rules bringing the number to 72,536 pages. Do you ever wonder why you pay more taxes than a billionaire Wall Street hedge fund manager? Do you think our tax system is designed to benefit billionaires and mega-corporations when corporations with billions of income pay little or no taxes? Complexity and confusion benefits those who can create and take advantage of the complexity and confusion. Corporations and special interests have used their wealth to bribe politicians to design loopholes, credits, and exemptions that benefit their interests. The corruption of the system is terminal.

The American people are paying the price for allowing a few evil men to gain control of our government. The American people cowered in fear as the 342 page Patriot Act was somehow written in a few weeks after 9/11, introduced in Congress on October 23, passed the House on October 24 with no debate, passed the Senate on October 25 with no debate, and signed into law on October 26 by George Bush. A law passed by the ruling elite that stripped Americans of their freedoms and liberties was passed using fear mongering false patriotism propaganda to squelch dissent and the American people had no say in the matter. The government has used fear to keep the American people under control. We now unquestioningly accept being molested in airports. We shrug as our intelligence agencies eavesdrop on our telephone conversations and emails without the need for a court order. It is now taken for granted that we imprison people without charging them with a crime and assassinate suspected terrorists in foreign countries with predator drones. Invading countries and going to war no longer requires a declaration of war by Congress as required by the Constitution. The State grows ever more powerful.

Therefore, it is no surprise that Americans sit idly by, watching their 52 inch HDTVs, as young people across the country are beaten, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets and tear gas, and scorned and ridiculed by corporate media pundits for exercising their free speech rights to peacefully protest our corrupt system. The American tradition of civil disobedience is considered domestic terrorism by those in authority. Our beloved protectors in the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security write reports classifying Ron Paul supporters and returning Iraq veterans as potential terrorists. If the powers that be get their way, the internet will be locked down and controlled, as it poses a huge threat to their thought control endeavors. Freedom to think, learn, question and organize resistance is unacceptable in the eyes of the elite.

It is almost always the working class poor in any society that first sees the effects of a corrupt government and a faulty economic system. Those who legitimately hold to the principles of self sufficiency, and fair play, are usually the first to be stabbed in the back by the establishment and, so, they are the first to become politically active against it. Sometimes we have to lose almost everything before we are able to see the bigger picture.

Occupy Our Homes

After being treated like animals by militarized police for exercising their right to free speech, many of the protesters are learning that begging and pleading with this kind of corrupt organization is not going to get them anywhere. playing nice and “working within the system” all comes to an end when the politicians are just laughing while they send in their goons to violently attack you. Playing nice and “working within the system” all comes to an end when the politicians are just laughing while they send in their goons to violently attack you. The only way that “we the people” will truly win this revolution is if we take matters into our own hands in a series of small battles where we call the enemies bluff every time they attempt to assert their illegitimate authority.

Occupy our homes has become the next step for this movement because people are simply taking back the homes that were fraudulently ripped from under their feet, instead of getting distracted with political demands that won’t do the downtrodden any good when all is said and done anyway. Getting everyone back into their vacant homes on the other hand, is beneficial for everyone and hurts no one else in the process. Victims of foreclosure and community activists in dozens of cities across the country are beginning to team up to “re-occupy” foreclosed homes. Yet, it doesn't really hurt the banks though as they got the homes for nothing in the first place because they made loans out of thin air, collected all sorts of fees and payments, sold the note a thousand times, and then ultimately got the asset. What a racket!

This kind of direct action is the only approach that will bring us progress, the political system isn’t going to work because one of its main objectives is keep us in our place. The courts, the government, the politicians and the media have all been put here as a means to uphold the status quo and prevent any kind of change from actually taking place, so naturally we aren’t going to have any luck creating social change using these platforms.

The country has reached a tipping point. Will enough right thinking Americans stand up and fight to bring down this corrupt system, or will we be herded silently to slaughter. The truth is there is something terribly wrong in this country. We are facing a myriad of problems that will require courage and common sense to overcome. We need only look in the mirror to find the guilty party. It is time to stop letting fear dictate our actions. Conflict is coming to this country due to the evil sanctioned by our corrupt leaders and the upright men and women who will bear the burden of destroying that evil. Our civilization has adopted the worst aspects of the two most famous dystopian novels in history – Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. The question is whether the population of this country is too far gone to recover. The answer to that question will determine whether the country chooses authoritarian dictatorship or a renewal of our founding principles. Aldous Huxley understood the three pillars of Western civilization fifty years ago and that their destruction would result in a collapse of our economic system.

Those in power are beginning to lose control. You can sense their desperation. Their propaganda is losing its impact as the pain for millions of Americans has become acute. The young people leading the protests across this land are showing tremendous courage and a tenacity of spirit that has been dormant for decades among the lethargic, distracted, over-medicated public. Despite being subjected to government education conditioning, these young people have zeroed in on the enemy. They may not have all the solutions, but they have correctly identified the corrupt banking system as the central nervous system of this vampire squid sucking the life out of our nation. The outrage and anger flaring across the country on a daily basis, reflected in the OWS movement, is just the beginning of a revolutionary period descending upon this nation. The existing social order will be swept away, but they will not go without a fight. They will use their control of the police, military and media to try and crush the coming rebellion. The three pillars sustaining the American empire edifice of never ending war, ever accumulating debt and excessive consumerism are crumbling. The growing corruption and weight of un-payable debt have weakened the very foundation of our grand experiment. The existing structure will surely collapse.

The average American has become apathetic, willfully ignorant of facts and reality, distracted by the techno-gadgets that run their lives, uninterested in anything beyond next week’s episode of Dancing with the Stars or Jersey Shore, and willing to let the corporate media moguls form their opinions for them through relentless propaganda, the only thing that will get their attention is an absolute collapse of our economic scheme. Uninformed, unconcerned, intellectually-vacant Americans will get exactly that in the not too distant future. The oligarchy of moneyed interests have done a spectacular job convincing the working middle class they should be angry at 20 year old OWS protestors, illegal immigrants and the inner city welfare class, rather than the true culprits – the Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks and mega-corporations. This is a testament to the power of propaganda and the intellectual slothfulness of the average American.

The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk." In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalized police force, and forbids federal or militarized involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

Why this massive mobilization against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? Protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security's coordinated a violent crackdown is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president. In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorize mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.

No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally-organized Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance. This is a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized suppression against the people they are supposed to represent.

In recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profits is less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

In 2009, Congress was only scheduled to be in session for 137 days out of the 365 days of the year. In 2010, Congress was also only scheduled to be in session for 137 days out of the entire year.

The anger directed at OWS protestors by middle class Americans is a misdirected reaction to a quandary they can’t quite comprehend. Their lives are getting more difficult but they aren’t sure why. They are paying more for energy, food, tuition, and real estate taxes, while the price of their houses decline and their wages stagnate. More than a quarter of all homeowners are underwater on their mortgage and many are drowning in credit card and student loan debt. At the same time, government drones tell them the economy is in its second year of recovery and corporate profits are at all-time highs. Government statistics, false storylines, and entitlement programs are designed to confuse the public and obscure the fact we are in the midst of another Depression. The economic conditions today are as bad as or worse than the Great Depression. This Depression is hidden from plain view because there are no unemployment lines, bread lines, or soup lines. We are experiencing an electronic Great Depression, as food stamps, unemployment compensation, Social security payments and welfare benefits are electronically delivered to millions of recipients.

In reality, the 1929 Depression was likely caused by the New York Fed over-printing dollars – a policy that created first the Roaring ’20s and then the Depressed ’30s. FDR first shut down banks and then confiscated gold to ensure that US citizens wouldn’t find out there was not enough gold to redeem their over-printed dollars. Now, in our view, the power elite is replaying this tactic. In order to create world government, it helps if governance in general is strengthened. This is taking place around the world even now via austerity measures and a campaign through the West to “punish corruption.” The same patterns that made the 1930s such a tragic decade are being repeated as the 21st century faces its second decade. When government has too much power, things can go wrong very quickly. And then the temptation is to point fingers at the private sector to find a scapegoat.

Today, the Global Power Elite are wrapping up globalization and ushering in World Government. The Private Global Power Elite embedded in major governments is dead set on imposing World Government on us sooner rather than later. Macro-managing planet Earth is no easy matter. It requires strategic and tactical planning by a vast think-tank network allied to major elite universities whereby armies of academics, operators, lobbyists, media players and government officers interface, all abundantly financed by the global corporate and banking superstructure. They do this holistically, knowing that they operate on different stages moving at very different speeds:

Risk-managing this whole process takes into account the many pitfalls and surprises in store. So each plan in every field counts, with “Plan B’s” – even Plans “C” and “D” – which can be implemented if needed. Those in power can only impose tyranny over us as long as they have men who will obey those orders. So, the danger is not in the chain of command, but the chain of obedience.

The Food Stamp program has been a smashing success as we’ve added 13.8 million Americans to this fine program since Obama’s inauguration, a mere 43% increase in less than three years. There are now 45.8 million Americans dependent upon food stamps for survival, 14.7% of the U.S. population. The number of Americans on food stamps has risen by 6.8 million during this government sponsored “recovery.” Obama’s good buddy – Jamie Dimon – and his well run machine at JP Morgan earns hundreds of millions administering the SNAP (food stamp) program.

Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy has stolen $400 billion per year from senior citizens and savers and handed it to the very bankers who caused the pain and suffering of millions. The game plan of the oligarchy has been to transfer hundreds of billions from taxpayers to bankers, report profits through accounting entries reducing loan loss reserves, pump up their stock prices and convince clueless investors to buy newly-issued shares at inflated valuations. The plan has failed. The zero interest rate policy’s unintended consequences have caused revolutions throughout the Middle East and massive food inflation across the developing world.

The single biggest reason the middle class feel frustrated, angry and like they are falling behind is due to the Federal Reserve and the relentless never ending inflation they produce in order to support their masters on Wall Street and provide cover for the trillions in debt spending by politicians in Washington DC. It is no surprise that beginning in 1980 when government spending began to accelerate much more rapidly than government revenues, the government decided to “tweak” how it measured inflation. The government reports inflation at 3.5% today. The truth is inflation is running in excess of 10% if measured exactly as it was in 1980. That’s right, we have a recession and we have inflation in double digits. No wonder the masses are restless.

The reason middle class Americans are being methodically exterminated and driven into poverty is the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. Since 1971, when Nixon extinguished the last vestiges of the gold standard and unleashed politicians to spend borrowed money without immediate consequence, the U.S. dollar has lost 82% of its purchasing power using the government manipulated CPI. In reality, it has lost over 90% of its purchasing power. The average American, after decades of being dumbed down by government sanctioned education, is incapable of understanding the impact of inflation on their lives. As their wages rise 2% to 3% per year and inflation rises 5% to 10% per year, they get poorer day by day. The Wall Street banks, who own the Federal Reserve, step in and convince the average American to substitute debt for real wealth in order to keep living the modern techno-lifestyle sold to them by mainstream corporate media.

Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda to control the masses, would be so proud of his disciples running our country today. He clearly believed only an elite few were intellectually capable of running the show. Essentially, he hit upon the concept of the 1% telling the 99% what they should think and believe over eighty years ago. The mechanisms for controlling the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the population are so much more efficient today. The conditioning begins when we are children, as every child will be bombarded with at least 30,000 hours of propaganda broadcast by media corporations by the time they reach adulthood. Their minds are molded and they are instructed what to believe and what to value. Those in control of society want to keep the masses entertained at an infantile level, with instant gratification and satisfying desires as their only considerations. The elite have achieved their Alpha status through intellectual superiority, control of the money system, and control of the political process. Their power emanates from eliminating choices, while giving the illusion of choice to the masses. People think they are free, when in reality they are slaves to a two party political system, a few Wall Street banks, and whatever our TVs tell us to buy.

Our entire system is designed to control the thoughts and actions of the masses. In many ways it is done subtly, while recently it has become more bold and blatant. It is essential for the ruling elite to keep control of our minds through media messages and the educational system. It is not a surprise that our public education system has methodically deteriorated over the last four decades. The government gained control over education and purposely teaches our children selected historical myths, social engineering gibberish and only the bare essentials of math and science. The government creates the standardized tests and approves the textbooks. We are left with millions of functionally illiterate children that grow into non-critical thinking adults. This is the exact result desired by the 1%. If too many of the 99% were able to ignore the media propaganda and think for themselves, revolution would result. This is why the moneyed interests have circled the wagons, invoked police state thug tactics, and used all the powers of their media machine to squash the OWS movement. It threatens their power and control.

U.S.-based mega-corporations fired 864,000 higher wage American workers between 2000 and 2010, while hiring almost 3 million workers in low wage foreign countries, using their billions in cash to buy back their own stocks, and paying corporate executives shamefully excessive compensation. The corporate mainstream media treats corporate CEO’s like rock stars as if they deserve to be compensated at a level 185 times the average worker. The S&P 500 consists of the 500 biggest companies in America and while the executives of these companies have reaped millions in compensation, the stock index for these companies is at the exact level it was on July 9, 1998. Over the last thirteen years workers were fired by the thousands, shareholders earned 0% (negative 39% on an inflation adjusted basis), and executives got fabulously rich.

Man-made inflation has stealthily devastated millions of lives over the last four decades. When the weekly wages of the average worker are adjusted for inflation, they are making 12% less than they did in 1971. Using a real, non-manipulated measure of inflation, the average worker is making 30% less than they did in 1971. Sadly, our math-challenged populace only comprehend that their wages have doubled in the last forty years, without understanding the true impact of inflation. Thankfully, the Wall Street debt dealers with a helping hand from Madison Avenue propaganda peddlers stepped up to the plate and imprisoned the middle class with the shackles of $2.5 trillion in consumer debt. So, while real wages have fallen 30% since 1971, consumer debt has increased by 1,700%.

There have been over 12 million foreclosure actions since 2007, with millions of Americans losing their homes. Another 16 million homeowners are underwater on their mortgages as home prices continue to fall and the economy sinks further by the day. The value of household real estate has fallen from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today, a loss of $6.5 trillion concentrated among the middle class. In contrast, mortgage debt has only decreased by $600 billion mostly due to write-offs by the banks that created fraudulent mortgage products to lure Americans into debt. The unemployment rate in the United States reached 25% during the Great Depression. The government manipulated fictional unemployment rate reported to the public is currently 9.0%. Today, the true number of unemployed/underemployed is 23%.

Today, the average American is working harder than ever, for less and less. And the comfortable retirement that we all hope for will not be possible for most people. According to research by Wells Fargo, 75% of the American middle class expects to work through their retirement. In fact, the middle class itself is on the verge of extinction. This is the single greatest economic threat facing the United States today — and yet, hardly anyone is talking about it. The epicenter for the coming global financial collapse is almost certainly going to be in Europe. Financial professionals all over the world are sounding the alarm about Europe. It is a disaster that everyone can see coming but that nobody seems to be able to prevent. There is already talk that we may soon see another downgrade for U.S. debt. It is hard to even describe how incompetent the U.S. Congress is. There is a tremendous lack of leadership both in the United States and in Europe right now. The financial world is more interconnected than ever before, and when the financial dominoes start to fall it is going to take a miracle to keep a complete and total disaster from unfolding. The whole system is going down. Pull your money out your Fidelity account, your Scwhab accout, and your ETFs.

A devastating financial collapse really is coming. It will severely damage our financial system and our economy. According to Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup: “Time is running out fast. I think we have maybe a few months—it could be weeks, it could be days—before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it.” Credit Suisse’s Fixed Income Research unit: “We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it. That doesn’t make a break-up very likely, but it does mean some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen – probably by mid-January – to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks.” Right now, panic and fear are spreading like wildfire in the financial world and nobody knows for sure what is going to happen next. But one thing is for certain. Pessimism is growing stronger by the day. Are you starting to get the picture?

You could see it coming. An average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States in 2010. According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years. Sadly, it looks like this trend is picking up momentum. During 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States. Since 2001, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities. America’s industrial might is being gutted like a fish and both political parties seem totally unconcerned. Since 2001, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every $1 billion of goods that are imported from overseas. The United States has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976, and since that time the United States has run a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.

Back in 1979, there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. Today, there are 11.6 million. That represents a decline of 40 percent during a time period when our overall population experienced tremendous growth. Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost. Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of all jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs. The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The Economic Policy Institute says that since 2001 America has lost approximately 2.8 million jobs due to our trade deficit with China alone.

All over the United States, road and bridge projects are being outsourced to Chinese firms. The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States. The U.S. trade deficit with China rose to an all-time record of 273.1 billion dollars in 2010. This is the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world. The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990. The new MLK memorial on the National Mall was made in China. The new World Trade Center tower is going to be made with imported glass from China and imported steel from Germany.

The United States was always the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe. In 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion. In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them. Even in high technology products we are being destroyed. In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion. China has now become the world’s largest exporter of high technology products. Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero. The United States now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago. Today, American workers are bringing home a much smaller share of economic pie. Over the past decade, the ratio of wages to GDP has been declining very steadily. Now that millions of our jobs have been exported, there aren’t nearly enough jobs left for all of us. Right now, the average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is approximately 39 weeks. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then. If you gathered together all of the workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States today, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the world.

According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation. As the number of good paying jobs declines, America’s middle class is rapidly shrinking. In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods.” By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods.” In the United States today, corporate profits are at a record high, and yet employment numbers have still not rebounded. Obviously something is structurally wrong. The Obama administration says that there are certain things that “we don’t want to make in America” anymore.

Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama’s highly touted “Jobs Council,” has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States. According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades. One recent poll found that 41 percent of all Americans believe that “the American Dream has been lost.” Our addiction to cheap foreign products is incredibly self-destructive. If we stay on this current path, even more of our formerly great manufacturing cities will turn into post-industrial hellholes. This nation is losing jobs, factories and wealth at a pace that is almost unbelievable.

We are witnessing a WAR AGAINST HUMANITY on every front – waged by the global Elites who have hijacked the government of almost every country.

These Bills, that are being drafted in secret and passed with barely a nod to, or from, the public, enact conditions that were thoroughly condemned by the Nuremberg trial after WWII, and for which capital punishment was dealt out. Never again were such conditions to be tolerated on the face of the planet.

Now the Trojan Horse government of the same country that headed the Nuremberg Trials is racing down the very same footsteps as Hitler, only worse given today’s technologies! It is waging a war against all of humanity on every front. American citizens should have researched and immediately rejected the Patriot Act in 2001. They would have discovered in 2001 that they had permitted the passing of an Act that essentially dissolves the functionality of their “democratic institutions and erases all Constitutional Rights.”

The P.A and Homeland Security was literally a translated duplicate copy of the legislation that Hitler wrote for himself and implemented to dissolve Democratic institutions of governance in Germany. American citizens were not told either that the two people hired to organize Homeland Security were drawn from the top echelons of the former KGB and the East German Secret Service. Even the mention of such a law should have caused every American Citizen to stand up with an unequivocal “NO WAY! Over My Dead Body!”

If Canadians think that they are safe and that this does not apply to them, they had better give their heads a shake -- they need to be reminded that Harper has integrated the military of the two countries so that the American military is now free to operate on Canadian soil.

Hitler is beginning to look more and more like a “trial run” for the New World Order (Disorder), with our hijacked governments racing down the same expressway to Hell. Very rapidly, governmental lawlessness and criminality is enveloping the planet as these Global Elites “Decriminalize Criminality” and Write Themselves Empowerment Laws that permit them to commit the most outrageous Crimes against humanity, laws under which NO human being is safe, anywhere.

Thousands of young men and women were sacrificed in WWII to defeat Hitler’s Goal for “a New WORLD Order.” Did they all die in vain? If ever there was a time to make a definitive stand, it is NOW - or else it will soon be too late.

What Happened?

On April 3, 1024, the imperial Sung Dynasty began to print and circulate chiao-tzu notes [paper money] in the province of Szechwan. In China, paper money was a monetary form of ‘Hamburger Helper’, an addition to the royal treasury that allowed Chinese dynasties to stretch their budgets by allowing them to spend what they didn’t have. In the West, paper money had a different purpose. There, the invention of paper money would also allow governments to spend more than they possessed; but, in the West, governments would have to borrow their own money from bankers. When money is issued as debt, everyone becomes a debtor.

Paper money and fractional monetary reserves appeared first in China in 1024 and, although China’s monetary advances were noted by Jewish traders, it would be the Scots who 600 years later would transform China’s paper money into a credit-based conveyer of debt in the West. Note: It’s no coincidence that today’s largest bank in terms of market value and profits is HSBC, incorporated by Sir Thomas Sutherland in 1865. Sutherland was a Scot. In 1694, a Scottish banker, William Patterson, convinced England’s King William III to establish a central bank that would issue debt-based paper money alongside gold and silver coins. The king agreed to do so in return for loans to pay his war debts and more loans to fight more wars. The Scots’ bogus paper banknotes - marginally backed by gold - would eventually replace gold as money throughout the world, proving again the ancient dictum, bad money drives out good.

Invented in China and transformed by the Scots, it would be the Jews, however, who would leverage paper money and credit and debt into untold wealth and power. William Patterson’s combination of paper money and money lending would catapult the Jews from societal outcasts to rulers of the financial world; but because of deeply ingrained anti-Semitic attitudes in the West, it would take almost a century for this to occur. After Patterson’s invention of debt-based money, the highly profitable world of banking remained off-limits to Jews during the 1700s; but as the century ended, banking’s doors opened to the Jews because of the West’s need for money to fight their wars.

…prior to the beginning of the revolutionary wars in France, in the mid-1790s, European merchant banking was dominated by non-Jews, including the “Barings of London, the Hopes of Amsterdam and the Gebrüder Bethmann of Frankfurt”. The financial demands of war opened room for newcomers, including a German-Jewish group with the Oppenheims, Rothschilds, Heines, and Mendelssohns among them.-- Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, pp. 314-315

The West’s costly wars gave Jewish bankers entry into the exclusive and waspish world of banking; and one family in particular, the Rothschilds, would leverage this opportunity into the financial equivalent of world dominion. The Rothschild’s ascent would be fueled by their highly profitable trade in sovereign debt, i.e. government bonds, whereby governments could spend whatever they wanted by indebting their citizens ad infinitum - an indebtedness limited only by government’s ability to borrow.

ROTHSCHILD & SONS: BANKERS PAR EXCELLENCE AND INDEBTORS OF NATIONS

The way to a man’s purse is through his ambitions and the most costly of these is war. Wars are expensive and the Rothschilds discovered a highly lucrative way to profit by loaning money to nations preparing for war. The Rothschilds allowed nations to fight wars on credit by their underwriting and sale of government bonds.… the Rothschilds created the world of banking as we know it today. Nathan Rothschild operated principally as an underwriter and speculator in the early 19th-century bond market. He and his brothers invented, or at any rate popularised, the government bond, which allowed investors, big and small, to buy bits of the debts of sovereign states by purchasing fixed-interest bearer bonds. Governments liked this because they could use them to raise colossal sums of money. Investors liked them because they could be traded - at prices that fluctuated in relation to the performance of the issuing government - and shrewd investors could make big sums... The Rothschilds got a cut of everything. Through the sale of British bonds, the Rothschilds profitably underwrote England’s wars and the spread of its empire. Later, England would return the favor by sponsoring a Jewish state in Palestine, much to the dismay of the Arab world.

BANKING, WAR AND BANKRUPTCY

It was the cost of war whereby William Patterson was able to convince King William III to issue debt-based paper banknotes; just as it was the cost of war that gave Jews access to the bankers’ trough of greed. But, in the end, it would be war that would take away everything the bankers’ paper money built. The costs of war would end up costing bankers the gold their paper banknotes required.

At the end of WWII, the world monetary system was backed by 21,775 tons of US gold. But two decades later, most of that gold was gone, spent to maintain America’s vast overseas military presence; and, in 1971, the US was forced to end the convertibility of US dollars to gold. The removal of gold-backing from the US dollar would eventually undermine the world monetary system; leading to unrestrained global credit creation, runaway borrowing and dangerous destabilizing levels of debt - and the transformation of America from a creditor state into the world’s largest debtor.

US MILITARY SPENDING, DEBT AND FISCAL INSOLVENCY

In the 1980s, no longer needing to exchange gold for US dollars, President Reagan used debt instead of taxes to pay for America’s military buildup. In only two terms, President Reagan tripled the US deficit. Two decades later, debt was again used by President Bush to fund America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although central banking and the debt-based warfare state had its genesis in England, it would reach fruition in America. There, the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, a carbon copy of England’s central bank, allowed America to follow in England’s debt-based imperial footsteps. America’s vast post-WWII military machine fueled by central bank credit and unprecedented borrowing propelled America, like England, to world dominion. That dominion, however, would cost America its gold reserves, its savings and its future.

CENTRAL BANKERS AND THE DEATH RATTLE OF DEBT

We are living in extraordinary times. An economic paradigm is being swept away and another paradigm is about to take its place. Change always takes time and paradigm changes are deeper and more significant than others; and while it will be some time before the changes are over, they will happen with a rapidity and swiftness for which most are unprepared. Very few people understand that if you start off with $1 million and loan it from one institution to another to another to another, you may have a net of $1 million. But if somebody defaults and that $1 million asset disappears, you get cascading defaults of every institution that had that $1 million asset. It's really simple. The Greek default-and Greece has defaulted even though they won't admit it-will cause a default in Spain and Italy, and that's going to cause a default in France and that's going to cause a default in the U.S. When they default, the banks close.

We have more debt in the world than assets, so we have to write off the bad debt. Unfortunately, no government in the world is talking about that. If and when that happens here, people with three to six months in liquid assets would be the best off. The top three liquid assets of choice are gold, silver, and cash. They will be the most valuable in the midst of a banking system meltdown. It is wiser to have cash money as opposed to money in T-bonds with a negative interest rate. Fiat currencies will crash and burn as the U.S. returns to a gold standard. Our current financial system simply isn't working anymore. On the other hand, gold and silver have worked for 5,000 years. Governments have been spending money they don't have since 1944 and "it's time to pay the piper."

Today’s European debt crisis can be traced to toxic levels of government debt, a toxicity encouraged, aided and abetted by bankers. The desire of governments to spend what they don’t have has been more than equaled by bankers loaning money ad infinitum to governments irrespective of the ability to repay, e.g. Greece, Italy, etc. The government bonds popularized by the Rothshilds are now the undoing of the world financial system. Bankers profit by the indebting of others and the Rothschild’s strategy of indebting governments was so successful that, today, both governments and banks are in serious trouble.

Central bankers are desperately searching for answers that do not exist. They caused the problem with excess credit and their role in doing so has blinded them to what’s obvious to others. Central bank credit caused the problem. Central banking is the problem. Today US debt, not gold, is the foundation of the world’s financial system. US treasuries are thought by most to be a safe haven. In the short term, they are. In the long term, they’re not. In the long term, there is no short term.

In truth, America’s US treasuries are no safer than Europe’s troubled sovereign debt. The daisy chain of sovereign debt is now unraveling and although who’s next is of paramount importance to those betting on the declining value of government IOUs; almost all -- creditors and debtors alike -- will disappear into the gaping maw of the Rothschild’s now defaulting bonds. The last journey of paper money is a funeral procession.

TODAY, TOMORROW AND THE DAY AFTER

The Chinese experiment with paper money began almost 1,000 years ago. Today, paper money in the East and West is no longer is backed by gold and there’s nothing to prevent the economic chaos that ended the five Chinese dynasties that used paper money from ending the current Chinese regime as well. Paper money is no respecter of ideology. State-sponsored capitalism will be no more effective than banking-sponsored capitalism in preventing the economic chaos inevitably spawned by fiat paper money.

Today’s economic crisis wasn’t happenstance. It was well planned, willful policy to transfer unprecedented wealth to private hands. Super-rich crooks got richer. Social inequalities deepened. Unmanageable debt levels skyrocketed. “Bailouts” metaphorically mean grand theft. Unknown trillions of dollars, euros and pounds vanished to secret accounts and offshore tax havens. Currencies are being debased. Crisis conditions worsen. At issue is subverting democracy, ending social justice, and consolidating global power in private hands. It is a well orchestrated master plan to swindle trillions of taxpayer dollars from so many countries.

On September 11, 1990, preparing America for Operation Desert Storm, GHW Bush told a joint session of Congress that war on Iraq presented “a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times….a New World Order can emerge.” New world order strategy dictates major global economic, political, and military policies. Nothing happens accidentally. Events are manipulated. At issue is world dominance. America, Israel, and key NATO nations are partnered to achieve it. Wars, economic disruption, financial terrorism, and other upheavals play out in real time.

General Smedley Butler’s 1935 book titled, War is a Racket followed his 1933 speech on the same theme. America’s global empire stretches everywhere. Super-weapons Butler couldn’t have imagined enforce it. By going public, he was an American hero. On September 21, 1992, GHW Bush told the UN General Assembly that multinational troops would become a New World Order army, saying: “Nations should develop and train military units for possible UN peacekeeping operations.” America’s permanent war agenda wasn’t explained. Neither was using “peacekeepers” as imperial occupiers. Post-9/11, Dick Cheney warned of wars that won’t end in our lifetime. Former CIA Director James Woolsey said America “is engaged in World War IV, and it could continue for years….This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us.” In its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), Pentagon commanders called it the “long war.” In fact, throughout US history, America has waged continual wars at home and abroad.

Credit Boom

A bank draws its income from three main sources: shareholders, depositors and lenders. The shareholders provide the risk capital, as in any capitalist business. Depositors seeking a safe and convenient place to store their money traditionally provide the bulk of the funds which the bank then lends to its clients, while holding a modest proportion in reserve to meet any possible withdrawals by depositors. And lenders provide additional funds by buying marketable securities issued by the bank in the form of bonds. In the run-up to the 2007-08 banking crisis, banks expanded their activities very rapidly by increasing their income especially from the last of these three. The higher risk attached to equity means that it is an expensive source of funds, ruled out except when absolutely necessary or required by state regulators. Growth in deposits is broadly limited by the rate of growth of economic activity, since winning a higher share of total deposits from one's competitors involves costly investments in marketing or service quality. But in the conditions of feverish growth at the height of the boom, borrowing is easy and cheap, so banks like Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lehman Brothers threw caution to the winds. Not only did they increase their debt levels massively in relation to their equity capital and reserves, but they also kept down the cost by borrowing for relatively short periods of 1 to 5 years. They believed that they would have no difficulty in ‘rolling over’ these debts when they fell due – or even that they could redeem them with cash, either from the vast profits they expected to make, or from new equity issues.

But like all credit booms, this one ended in a massive crash. Beginning in the sub-prime household mortgage sector in the USA, rising default rates on loans opened up the fantasy world of no-risk finance. The widespread use of derivatives, developed on the basis of models that bore little or no relation to the actual functioning of financial markets, had meanwhile created chains of potential contagion that reached to the furthest corners of global finance. As investors began to appreciate the real risk to the market value of their financial assets, there ensued a classic flight to cash; as a consequence the wholesale money markets, in which banks borrow from each other and from other investors, began to freeze up. Bank debts falling due could not, in this situation, be rolled over; the main source of discretionary funding for banks disappeared. As so often Britain led the way, with the collapse of Northern Rock in September 2007, and the slide into the global banking crisis began.

"It is a matter of simple mathematics to realize the Western banking system is doomed. Even if you take the latest BIS statistics on outstanding derivatives contracts of $707 trillion as of June 2011 at face value (the true numbers are in the quadrillions or more according to some sources) you can see the system is doomed. With world GDP at around $65 trillion, you have banks betting over ten times that amount against each other. Each derivative is a bet against a counterparty. That means for every winner there is an equal loser. Some very big banks have certainly lost more money than exists in the real world. Every year January is a month for settlements of accounts among major banking players. January of 2012 is going to be a very interesting month. The talk is that Citibank, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America are among the doomed entities. Then of course there is the universal disgust at Goldman Sachs that is not going to go away quietly," according to Benjamin Fulford.

Obama is Washington’s latest warrior president. Earlier ones included Washington, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush. America glorifies wars in the name of peace. The business of America is war and grand theft. One nation after another is pillaged. Libya was the latest. Are Syria and Iran next? It’s part of the imperial “New World Order/New Middle East” project to control North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia to Russia’s borders. For over a decade, planned regime changes targeted Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and other global countries. Iran threatens no one. Its nuclear program is peaceful and nonmilitary. No evidence disproves it. Clinton, Obama and other top US officials are inveterate liars and war criminals. America thrives on “deception and denial,” raging lawlessly on a global scale.

The New World Order is a supranational authority to regulate world commerce and industry; an international organization that will control the production and consumption of oil; an international currency that will replace the dollar and other major currencies; a world development fund that will make funds available to free and communist nations alike; and an international police force to enforce the edicts of the New World Order. It is tyrannical money power in private hands. Dictating global policies, what it says goes. Major banks and financial institutions call the shots. Political leaders genuflect and obey, including when to wage wars against what enemies.

The elite ‘New World Order’ (rulers) got into bed with the banking and financial sectors, who then got into bed with the governments of the world, who then got into bed with senior political figures, who then told us, the taxpayers, that all your money will now have to be used to bail them out or face economic collapse.” It’s a con, a scam to loot wealth from nations and households. Anyone facing default gets in trouble. Individual borrowers have their assets seized by creditors.

Governments have to deal with the loan shark of last resort – the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Its terms require privatizing public enterprises, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, unrestricted access for Western corporations, corporate-friendly tax cuts, increases for working people, undermining trade unionism, and enforcing harsh repression against those who balk. In sum, its financial terrorism, New World Order tyranny, waging war on nations and humanity for profit and power. Since the 19th century, it was engineered by Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and other visible ones in league with complicit politicians to the highest levels.

Here are the Top 10 Richest People of All-Time

1. John D. Rockefeller Fortune: $336 billion--Source of wealth: He founded Standard Oil in 1870, at the age of 31, and bought up most of the oil refineries in the United States, eventually controlling about 90% of the American oil business.

2. Andrew Carnegie Fortune: $309 billion--Source of wealth: Carnegie invested in the steel business when the market was booming, eventually ending up at the head of the U.S. Steel empire.

3. William the Conquer Peak fortune: $209 billion--Source of wealth: Was called William the Bastard until he led the last successful foreign invasion of England in 1066. Although he became a monarch, we’re counting the spoils of war before he took the throne, based on what he gave out to his sons Odo and Robert.

4. Cornelius Vanderbilt Fortune: $185 billion--Source of wealth: In 1862, he began to buy railroad lines. Although already 70 years old, his wealth mostly comes from this business of the 19th century. Prior to that, he was known as a cold-blooded steam-boat entrepreneur.

5. Alan Rufus Fortune: $149 billion--Source of wealth: A Norman who joined William The Conqueror in the invasion of Britain in the 11th century, Alan “The Red” had 250,000 acres of land from Yorkshire to London. He also owned Richmond Castle in North Yorkshire, which, for the time, was considered very comfortable.

6. Bill Gates Peak fortune: $136 billion--Source of wealth: Founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975. He held onto shares as Microsoft dominated the age of computers, peaking in personal wealth at the top of the Dot Com Bubble.

7. William de Warenne Peak fortune: $134 billion--Source of wealth: Originally from Normandy, William I de Warenne participated in the battle of Hastings and was rewarded with properties in Sussex, Northfolk and Yorkshire. He became the first Earl of Surrey.

8. John Jacob Aster Peak fortune: $121 billion--Source of wealth: A successful fur trader, he established a near monopoly within the U.S. by around 1800. He subsequently switched trades and went on to investing in real estate, focusing on New York City.

9. Richard Fitzalan 10th Earl of ArundelPeak fortune: $108 billion--Source of wealth: The Earl of Arundel and quite the military leader. He fought in the Scottish Independence wars and in the Hundred Years’ War.Subsequent Earls of Arundel — his sons — would make this list, but we’re only counting that money once.

10. Stephen Girard Peak fortune: $105 billion--Source of wealth: Successful in the shipping trade, he was a French-born American merchant who went into the banking business later in his life, owning a bank that was called “Girard’s Bank”.

Deep-Pocket Diplopia

Some people suffer from Motivated Blindness; they don’t see what is not in their interest to see. Some people don’t look at the things that make them uncomfortable. Most people in America are in total denial. But the dollar is done. Most probably don't think it's done, because we all still use dollars to buy things. But, as you notice, prices are going up. That's the key sign that the dollar is done. The dollar is abandoning you, the dollar does not care about you, and you have to deal with it. People in denial will repeat the many lies taught to us all by the media and schools.

Banks acquired the power to create money by default, when Congress declined to claim it at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Constitution says only that “Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the power thereof.” The Founders left out not just paper money but checkbook money, credit card money, money market funds, and other forms of exchange that make up the money supply today. All of them are created by private financial institutions, and they all come into the economy as loans with interest attached.

Our money is created, not by the government, but by banks. The only money the government creates today are coins, which compose less than one ten-thousandth of the money supply. Federal Reserve Notes, or dollar bills, are issued by private Federal Reserve Banks, all twelve of which are owned by private banks in their district. Most of our money comes into circulation as bank loans, and it comes with an interest charge attached. Interest now composes 40% of the cost of everything we buy. We don’t see it on the sales slips, but interest is exacted at every stage of production. Suppliers need to take out loans to pay for labor and materials, before they have a product to sell. For government projects, the average cost of interest is 50%.

If the government owned the banks, it could keep the interest and get these projects at half price. That means governments—state and federal—could double the number of projects they could afford, without costing the taxpayers a single penny more than we are paying now. The Fed’s own figures show that the money supply has shrunk by $3 trillion since 2008. That sum could be spent into the economy without inflating prices. Three trillion dollars could go a long way toward providing the jobs and social services necessary, and guaranteeing employment to anyone willing and able to work would increase GDP, allowing the money supply to expand even further without inflating prices, since supply and demand would increase together.

College loans collectively now exceed a trillion dollars, more even than credit card debt. Students are coming out of universities not just without jobs but carrying a debt of $80,000 or so on their backs. For medical students and other post-graduate students, it can be $200,000 or more. Again, that’s as much as a mortgage, with no house to show for it. The justification for incurring these debts was supposed to be that the students would get better jobs when they graduated, but now jobs are scarce.

After World War II, the G.I. Bill provided returning servicemen with free college tuition, as well as cheap home loans and business loans. It was called “the G.I. Bill of Rights.” Studies have shown that the G.I. Bill paid for itself seven times over and is one of the most lucrative investments the government ever made. The government could do that again—without increasing taxes or the federal debt. It could do it by recovering the power to create money from Wall Street and the financial services industry, which now claim a whopping 40% of everything we buy.

When the country was founded, people could stake out some land, build a house on it, farm it, and be self-sufficient. The Great Depression saw people turned out of their homes and living in the streets—a phenomenon we are seeing again today. Few people now own their own homes. Even if you have signed a mortgage, you will be in debt peonage to the bank for 30 years or so before you can claim the home as your own. Health needs have changed too. In 1791, foods were natural and nutrient-rich, and outdoor exercise was built into the lifestyle. Degenerative diseases such as cancer and heart disease were rare. Today, health insurance for some people can cost as much as rent.

Current information now shows the ranks of those with negative equity have grown once again. The latest Census data shows 50,339,500 homes with a mortgage. If 28.6 percent of these are underwater you have 14.3 million homeowners in a negative equity position. Low interest rates or other enticements like tax breaks can only go so far when the economy is getting worse or muddling along on the employment front. The approach to solving this crisis was wrong from the beginning because it was banking-centric instead of focusing on shoring up households and looking at the job market. So entering the half decade mark since the crisis hit little has really been done to help middle class American families. The large shadow inventory will keep pressure on pushing home prices lower. That is why year over year home prices are still falling. Bubble regions like Los Angeles are seeing more severe contractions in price compared to national trends.

There are tens of millions of Americans that are deeply frustrated about losing their homes, losing their jobs or barely being able to survive in this economy. People are sick and tired of the status quo and they want something to be done about our broken system. Unemployment is rampant, millions of families are being kicked out of their homes and more than 45 million Americans are on food stamps. There is more economic frustration in this country today than there has been at any other time since the Great Depression. We are watching pressure build to very dangerous levels.

Today, many among the elite are savagely mocking the poor. You shouldn’t kick people when they are down. There are huge numbers of families out there right now that have just about reached the end of their ropes. Wall Street executives have been spotted sipping champagne while watching the Occupy Wall Street protests from their balconies. Many columnists for major financial publications have had no fear of mocking the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Barack Obama continues to mock the poor by telling them to cut back on vacations and little luxuries like going out to eat while at the same time sending his own family out on incredibly expensive vacations. Unfortunately, most of the protesters do not understand how we have gotten to this point or what it is going to take to fix things. We desperately need to educate America.

According to a brand new Fox News poll, 76 percent of all Americans are “dissatisfied with how things are going in the country.” As the economy crumbles, thieves are becoming bolder and more desperate. Nothing is too big for thieves to steal these days. Some thieves have become so bold that they will literally steal thousands of animals at a time from ranchers. All over the United States, livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. Instead of becoming incredibly angry and frustrated, some Americans are simply giving in to depression. We still have one of the highest standards of living in the entire world, and yet a staggering number of Americans are incredibly depressed. More than one out of every ten Americans is currently on antidepressants. Other Americans are freely giving in to all of the anger that is building up inside of them. The reality is that a lot of Americans are so frustrated right now that even the silliest things will set them off.

One of the clearest signs of rising anger and frustration in America is the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Wall Street elite should be taking these protests as a signal that they need to get their house in order. The status quo just is not going to cut it. But instead of taking leadership and calling for significant change, many among the elite are openly mocking the protesters. The incredible arrogance displayed by so many on Wall Street and by so many in Washington D.C. is absolutely appalling. The protesters are being told that nothing that they can do will change anything and that they should be grateful for what Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy have done for them. They are essentially being told that they should just shut up and go home. These protests are a precursor to the mass economic riots that are coming to this nation. All of this is just a preview of coming attractions. The economy is going to get a lot worse in the years ahead and all of the craziness and all of the violence is just going to intensify. It is not going to be a great time to be living in highly congested urban areas.

'Mortgage giant Fannie Mae is asking the federal government for $7.8 billion in aid to cover its losses in the July-September quarter. The government-controlled company said November 8, that it lost $7.6 billion in the third quarter. Low mortgage rates reduced profits and declining home prices caused more defaults on loans it had guaranteed.'

So why doesn’t the government just step in and fix things? It is because we are drowning in debt. Collectively, the 50 U.S. states are trillions of dollars in debt at this point. The U.S. government is so far in debt that it is hard to even put it into perspective. It is hard for the human mind to even conceive of how much money 15 trillion dollars is. We basically used up all of our financial ammunition creating a false level of prosperity over the last 30 years. Now we are too broke to fix our problems. Decades of really, really bad decisions are starting to catch up with us, and things are going to get progressively worse from here on out. If you and your family do not have a plan for the tumultuous years ahead, you might want to start coming up with one.

Are the outages the first warning shots in a move to “devalue the dollar,” just days after Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke sparked an international currency war by announcing that the Fed will buy $600 billion of U.S. government bonds over the next eight months? Any perceived inability of banks to deal with a sudden demand for cash would undoubtedly place in peril the United States’ triple A credit rating and spark a fresh dollar crisis.

All those who can get their money out of their banks should do so, even if you have to pay your upcoming bills manually. It would be foolish not to keep at least a small amount of your savings in physical cash. The “bank holiday” rumor reared its ugly head once again, after a story emerged that a pastor was told by one of the managers of a prominent east coast bank that banks would close for an undetermined amount of time, and that when they reopened, “all withdrawals by checks would be limited to $500 per week – no matter what the balance in the account is.” Though the story is still an unconfirmed rumor, banks have been preparing for limiting withdrawals. In February, Citigroup sent an advisory to its customers at the start of the year which stated that the bank reserved “the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts.” The advisory stoked fears that financial institutions are preparing for bank runs. The current financial turmoil has been likened with the post 1929 period, during which newly elected Franklin Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday” that lasted four days, therefore such a scenario is not without historical precedent.

Italy needs a bail out too. Italy has two trillion euros of debt. That’s greater than the total amount of debt owned by Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain combined. It’s the fourth largest amount of debt in the world. It’s estimated that over half of this is owned by banks around the world. Four hundred billion euros of it is owned by the French banks alone. They can no longer kick the can down the road because it’s become a two ton boulder. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) doesn't have the financial resources to rescue a country the size of Italy. The clearly dysfunctional behavior of the Italian and Greek governments has made it all but impossible to erect a firewall around the crisis at this point. The credibility of the Eurozone decision making process, allready severly weakened by the endless inconclusive summits, is now completely non-existent.

With all of the problems in Europe, protests on Wall Street, and middle east conflicts over the last year, something that has escaped scrutiny by prime time media stars and the general population is the consistent rise in prices across all consumer goods and services. While the Federal Reserve says they have inflation under control, their continued intervention into the financial and monetary systems of the global economy is leading us down a road that may very well lead to high inflation rates similar to those we saw in the 1980's, or perhaps something much, much worse.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than they have ever measured before. In 2010, we were told that the economy was recovering, but the truth is that the number of the “very poor” soared to heights never seen previously. One out of every 15 Americans is now considered to be “very poor.” The plight of the poorest of the poor continues to deteriorate all across the United States. Tonight, there are more than 20 million Americans that are living in extreme poverty. This number increases a little bit more every single day. About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 per cent or less of the official poverty level. Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four. That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records.

The less poor people and the less unemployed people we have, the better it is for our economy. When as many people as possible in a nation are working and doing something economically productive, that maximizes the level of true wealth that a nation is creating. But today we are losing out on a massive amount of wealth. We have tens of millions of people that are sitting at home on their couches. Instead of creating something of economic value, the rest of us have to support them financially. That is not what any of us should want. The more people that are doing something economically productive, the more wealth there will be for all of us. That is why it is so alarming that the ranks of the “very poor” are increasing so dramatically. When the number of poor people goes up, the entire society suffers.

When you look into the eyes of many Americans these days, it almost seems as if all the hope has been sucked right out of their hearts. Economic despair is at epidemic levels, and unfortunately the economy is about to get a whole lot worse. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010. Last year, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959. There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity. More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry. One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line. Today, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps (the modern day food lines). The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007. We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year. Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

There are millions upon millions of empty homes right now in the United States. Millions of American families have been foreclosed upon in recent years and home prices keep falling with no end in sight. In fact, today, home prices are now the lowest that they have been in eight years. So why aren’t people renting or buying more homes? Well, the truth is that you can’t afford a mortgage payment or a rent payment if you don’t have a decent job. When someone can’t find a good job, then none of the other economic statistics that many of us love to talk about so much really matter. Today, big corporations are shipping as many jobs as they can out of the country.

More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid. One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program. The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006. It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States. All over the United States (and all around the world), there are orphans that are desperately hurting. As you celebrate the good things that you have during this time of the year, don’t forget to remember them. The reality is that millions of people fall through the “safety net.” We should be more generous and more compassionate than we have ever been before.

According to Shadowstats, we are now seeing price inflation rates of over 11% – almost three times higher than the official numbers.

When evaluating the health of America’s economy, it is important not to look at the short-term numbers. Rather, the key is to look at the long-term trends and the balance sheet numbers. For example, if a mother and a father gave their teenage kids a bunch of credit cards and told them to go out and buy whatever they wanted, that would create a lot of “economic activity,” but it would also send that family to the poorhouse really quickly. Well, we have basically done the same thing as a nation. We are drowning in debt, and all of this debt is going to destroy us financially. Unfortunately, the federal government continues to spend money as if there was no tomorrow. Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. When you are running up a credit card, it can be a lot of fun and it can seem like there aren’t any consequences. Obviously, the course that we are on is not anywhere close to sustainable. Even now, a lot of state and local governments all over the country are flat broke and they are cutting back on assistance for the poor.

Tens of millions of American families are living on the edge of desperation. The more money we seem to spend on social programs, the more that poverty seems to grow. 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty last year. That was a new all-time record. Right now, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps. One out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one our of every four U.S. children is on food stamps. The economy is supposed to be “recovering,” but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by over 8 percent in just the past year. Food stamps are the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned bread lines. The federal government is now feeding an almost unbelievable number of Americans. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps. That means that approximately one out of every seven Americans is dependent on the federal government for food. That is not just a crisis – that is a total nightmare. What these people really need are good jobs. Unfortunately, our “leaders” have created a business environment in this country that is incredibly toxic, and they have stood by as millions upon millions of good jobs have been shipped out of the country.

Only 30 of 50 states currently offer any form of general assistance – down from 38 in 1989. And recently, Washington State formally ended its “Disability Lifeline” program for an estimated 18,000 to 22,000 economically desperate residents. Sadly, even more of us may be joining the ranks of the poor soon. The layoffs just keep on coming. So many jobs are being lost all around the nation. These days, there is massive competition for just about any job that is available. People are getting desperate. They just want to be able to pay the bills and take care of their families. Obama is not putting people back to work. He has been helping big corporations ship jobs out of the country at a record pace.

Both major political parties promised us that globalization would be wonderful for the U.S. economy. Well, in the first decade of this century less net jobs were created than in any other decade since the Great Depression. The “free trade” polices of the globalists have been an abysmal failure. Tens of thousands of factories, millions of jobs, and hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth have gone to countries that engage in predatory trade practices and that exploit slave labor pools. In this one world economic system, American workers will increasingly be forced to compete for jobs with the cheapest labor on the planet. This will continue to force the standard of living of American workers way, way down and it will continue to absolutely destroy the middle class.

In the United States, we love to have the government spend money on all sorts of things, but we never want to pay for it. So the debt just keeps piling up higher and higher. A lot of Republicans say that spending on social programs has gotten out of control. A lot of Democrats say that spending on the military has gotten out of control. They are both right. Tens of millions of Americans have become absolutely addicted to government money. Nobody ever wants “their government benefits” to be cut, but nobody ever seems to want to have their taxes raised to pay for them. The U.S. military accounts for close to half of all the military spending in the world. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of the next 15 countries combined. We will always need a very powerful military, but we can have one without going broke in the process.

Things simply do not look very promising for the economy right now. There are a lot of signs that the American people are already extremely angry and frustrated by what is happening to the economy. So what is going to happen if things get significantly worse? Unfortunately, there simply are not any “quick fixes” which are going to put us back “on course.” The consequences that we are experiencing now are the result of decades of bad decisions. The American people kept sending incompetents, con-men and charlatans back to Washington D.C. over and over and over and now we are going to pay the price. You might as well call Barack Obama “Captain Clueless” when it comes to the economy. Obama keeps giving great speeches about jobs while at the same time signing more “free trade” agreements that will send thousands more businesses and millions more jobs out of the country. Even the CEOs on Obama’s jobs creation panel are shipping huge numbers of jobs out of the United States.

Shame on the politicians that have rolled up so much debt in our name and shame on us for continuing to send those same politicians back to Washington D.C. time after time after time. Both political parties are responsible for us being 15 trillion dollars in debt. Both political parties are responsible for 45 million Americans being on food stamps. Both political parties are responsible for the fact that there are not nearly enough good jobs. If Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or Rick Perry is elected in 2012, we are just going to have more of the same. America is running out of time. If we are going to change course, we need to do it immediately.The borrower is the servant of the lender. We are enslaving ourselves and we are enslaving future American generations by going into so much debt.

A new law (S. 1867) is being pushed through the U.S. Senate that is extremely frightening. If this bill becomes a law, the United States of America would officially become part of the “battlefield” in the war on terror, and any American citizen could easily be flagged as a “potential terrorist.” Once identified as a “potential terrorist”, the U.S. military would be able to arrest you, take you to a foreign prison and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything. What in the world is happening to America? Unfortunately, as the economy gets even worse civil unrest in this country is going to intensify and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is going to start to disappear. In response to the coming civil unrest, the U.S. Congress will try to pass laws that will be even more repressive than S. 1867. Our nation has entered a downward spiral and things are going to become very frightening if this thing is not turned around.

Ron Paul is Our Only Hope.

Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, a return to sound monetary policies, and a sensible foreign policy that puts America first. At 76, this former obstetrician has seven years on the oldest man ever to take office as president, Ronald Reagan. But where Reagan was the genial conservative, Paul is an evangelical libertarian – a prophet who preaches that the United States is flat broke, foundering under the too-great weight of a bloated bureaucracy and its imperial foreign interventionism. This is a man who would eliminate five of the 15 cabinet-level departments (Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior – he has no problem reciting them all); recall American troops from all foreign lands, not just war zones; repeal the 16th Amendment, which created the federal income tax; reduce his own presidential salary from $400,000 to $39,336 – the median salary of an American worker. The date when he decided to enter politics was Aug. 15, 1971, the day President Richard Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar from the nation’s gold reserves. “After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value,” he told a writer from Texas Monthly. “I was astounded.”

He refused to vote for any tax increase or any budget that was not balanced, and eschewed most “pork barrel” projects for his district. He has refused to enroll in the House pension program, saying it would be “hypocritical and immoral” to accept a benefit unavailable to the taxpayers who fund it. He also discouraged his five children – including the future Kentucky U.S. senator and tea party darling Rand Paul – from applying for government-backed student loans. In 1981, Dr. No teamed up with “Senator No” (North Carolina’s Jesse Helms) to pass legislation that formed the 17-member Gold Commission, which was to study “the role of gold in the monetary system.” Appointed by Reagan, Paul argued for a gold coin – “without a dollar denomination” – as legal tender. “I wanted people to think of money as weight,” he wrote. In 1984, Paul ran for the U.S. Senate. When that bid failed, he returned full time to his medical practice. Four years later, Paul won the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. He placed third in the election, with less than 1 percent of the popular vote, but he now had a national base. In 1997, Paul retired from medicine and returned to Congress; he’s been there ever since. In 2008, he made his second run for president, this time as a Republican. He raised almost $35 million, including more than $6 million on Dec. 16, 2007, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

He speaks repeatedly of our “recession/depression” and says the No. 1 cause of the current financial crisis was the Federal Reserve. “THEY are the ones who are responsible for so much suffering,” he says, his already high-pitched voice rising to a near squeak. The Fed, he declares, is a “counterfeiter.” He's attracting a hard-core following and collecting millions in contributions. He applies the lessons learned in a life that stretches back to the Depression. Paul served two years in the Air Force as a flight surgeon and three more in the Air National Guard. He says he’s seen enough of war’s aftermath to convince him that the way we go to war so often is the reason that we have difficulty getting out of war. His firm belief is that the founders were absolutely correct in going to war very, very cautiously, very, very rarely, and NOT by one individual deciding.

It’s impossible to understand politics unless you understand liberty – that we should all be free, and that all of our inalienable rights come from our creator and not government. Once you understand this, it is easy to differentiate good government from bad. We’ve all heard that inalienable rights are granted by our creator and that government exits to protect them. But do we live it, breath it, and really believe it? Many of us take this for granted, and many more of us, simply do not care. There is one candidate who shares our feeling of dread for this country, one candidate who understands the vision of a free nation and one candidate who, time and again, over the course of several election bids, has been scorned by the media...and this same candidate has answers the others don't! With clear insight into the problems facing our nation, only Ron Paul has been able to identify the problems and failures of past administrations, offer sound suggestions for moving forward and has never wavered in the consistency of his ideals. Ron Paul is willing to stand firm on the principles that created this country, in the first place. Ron Paul says his rivals’ militant stances on “the defense of liberty” would make it difficult for him to support any of them for president should he not get the Republican nomination, because their positions would lead to bigger government. The loyalty to the party should be secondary to loyalty to your oath of office. "The Republican Party is supposed to be a party, you know, of defining small government — but when it came to the civil liberties, and the Patriot Act, and the invasion of privacy, and the Fourth Amendment — all these things — they wanted more government."

Dr. Ron Paul believes in a ‘non-interventionist’ foreign policy as did our founding fathers. Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none." George Washington similarly urged that the US must "Act for ourselves and not for others," by forming an "American character wholly free of foreign attachments.” Ron Paul is in favor of a strong national defense, but we will not be in any position to help anyone, if we cannot first help ourselves. Our government is fallible when it comes to foreign policy. Our annual national security budget is now $1.2 trillion dollars and growing. Our young men and women need not be risking their lives to protect foreign empires. Our government lies and exaggerates issues that happen in the home front, so it is conceivable that they are also lying about their reasons for foreign intervention in the middle east. The globalist and the elitists do have a foreign policy agenda, and it is not to spread democracy around the world.

These are the themes he has been addressing, consistently, since he entered politics in 1974, over the course of 12 terms in Congress, through his third bid for the White House: Free markets are good. The Federal Reserve is evil. The gold standard should be restored. Government is the cause, not the cure, of the nation’s troubles. “If it tries to make us virtuous and it tries to make us better people and fairer people and make us more generous and make sure that nobody’s richer than the other person, redistribute your wealth, the ONLY way they can do that is the undermining of our personal liberties, Paul said. “And that isn’t the purpose of government. The purpose of government is exactly the opposite. The purpose of government is to protect our liberties.”

We need to question our leader’s motives and, we need to rethink some of our positions that are based on what neocon and progressive war mongers in our government spread for their own reasons. Ron Paul supports the true position of freedom and conservatism which is nonintervention and peace, without nation building. He does not accept, irrefutably, what our government peddles, and this is how it should be. We need to move away from the foreign policy disasters we’ve had under Clinton, The Bushes, and the Obama administrations, otherwise, the world will detonate from war because that is where they are taking this. The current actions by our government will never solve the hostilities that are taking place in this region because they hate our interference, and because we are inflaming an already dangerous situation with our interventionist foreign policy. It’s time to try something different, because nothing else has worked. We need to remember that America is broke, we do not have the funding to engage in any more wars. Dr. Paul is a true constitutionalist that follows the Constitution to the letter. Dr. Paul will diligently, and unfalteringly respond to any form of attack against the U.S.

Dr. Paul is the most searched candidate on Youtube, Facebook and Google.He is authentic, what you see is what you get. He is principled, trustworthy, consistent, honorable, noble, truthful, sincere, plainspoken, wise, ethical, honest, educated and smart. In all the years of public office, he has never voted to raise taxes, or voted for an unbalanced budget, or voted for any kind of federal restriction on gun ownership, or voted to raise congressional pay. He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch or has taken a government-paid junket. He voted against the Patriot Act, voted against the Sarbanes-Oxley which was created as a result of the Enron scandal and it’s costing taxpayers millions; he voted against regulating the Internet, voted against the Iraq war, does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program, returns portions of his annual congressional office budget back to the U.S. Treasury every year. Dr. Paul is also against a National ID, and he is against all bailouts. Lobbyists avoid knocking on his door. It has been said that even under great pressure from the Texas branch of the American Medical Association and the Texas Medical board, Dr. Paul refused to accept Medicare and Medicaid payments even as he served many of the poorest residents in his county. Unquestionably, he has set the bar for standards for politicians higher than anyone else. He is the only veteran running for office. He has received more donations from active military than all candidates combined. The overwhelming majority of donations come from folks like you and me. He is a man of consistent principled integrity and a Christian leader who does not use religion for political gains.

Ron Paul is called the Champion of the Constitution. He tried to warn legislators about the housing bubble with Fanny and Freddie a decade before it occurred, but no one listened. He also has been warning about the Student Loan bubble, and the possible collapse of the U.S. dollar, and the dealings in Wall Street, and many are still not listening. Because of his persistance, for the first time in 100 years the Federal Reserve was audited, and it was not even a complete audit by any means. It was discovered that they gave themselves, their crony bankers in the US and abroad, and their favorite corporations, $16 trillion dollars over three years without congressional approval! Why wasn't more made of this raid on our Treasury by the media and on Capitol Hill? Because they are all somehow benefiting from this theft. Dr. Paul’s forecasts so accurate, and powerful because he understands the monetary cycles and is a disciple of the Austrian school of economics. He knows what the problems are, and he has the solutions to fix them. He also believes that we must return to the gold standard, stop the Federal Reserve from raiding our treasury of trillions of taxpayers dollars, and stop them from printing fiat currency before we reach the point of no return. One of the reasons is that it will prevent overall inflation as it did for over 100 years before the Federal Reserve was established, because gold cannot be created like paper money or computer generated money. The cruelest tax of all is inflation caused by the Federal Reserve printing and borrowing that lowers the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, and that it is at the root of why the U.S. dollar is now at the point of collapsing.

The policy of limiting air time to certain candidates is once again being applied to Congressman Ron Paul, despite the fact that he has consistently won straw polls and proven himself as a top tier candidate in national polls. Despite his popularity the establishment media has deliberately downplayed and sidelined Paul’s campaign. A scientific study undertaken by the University of Minnesota in October, 2011 confirmed that Ron Paul had been given the least speaking time out of all the Republican candidates during the debates. During the GOP debate, CBS twice removed a candidate poll because the support for Ron Paul showed that he was far and away the leading choice for Republican voters and that was not supposed to happen! Why wouldn’t the Republican party run what is clearly a winning candidate? Because Ron Paul would put an end to much of the power Republicans and Democrats enjoy as a result of their own self-pandering, power grabbing and unconstitutional activity. Instead they are offering the sorriest collection of non-starters most likely ever assembled for a presidential race and are actively blacking out and refusing to acknowledge the popularity of Paul with the voters and what would be a sure-fire land-slide election.

Why would the Republican party shun a candidate who can obviously win against all comers, and instead support candidates they know have no chance of winning anything unless the electronic voting machines are rigged yet again? Obama is their candidate also. As president he has been far more effective at dismantling the Constitution, passing oppressive legislation, issuing unlawful and unconstitutional Executive Orders, and expanding the death grip of the federal government on the states than Baby Bush and his neo-conservative collection of psychopaths, ideologues, new world order, corporate pandering and UN suck-ups than any of these supposed candidates now offered for consideration. Make no mistake, the Republicans want Obama re-elected just as much as the Democrats do, after all there really is only one party in the District of Criminals and all concerned are quite happy with Obama. There is no way the Republican party is going to run a sure fire winner whose intentions are to reign in the federal corporation when they already have the perfect man in office who has done more to deconstruct the US than even “W” did.'...

Congressman Ron Paul was a victim of what later transpired to be a deliberate policy on behalf of CBS News to restrict the air time of certain candidates during the November 12th Republican debate, after he was afforded just 90 seconds of speaking time in what was a 90 minute-long debate in South Carolina. The mainstream media once again silenced the one sane voice in this election. The one dissenter to a decade of unchecked war. The one candidate who stands for true defense and actual constitutional government. Ron Paul was silenced, in perhaps the most important debate of the cycle.”

In a Republican debate on Fox network 5 December, 2011, Ron Paul was asked "What book would you most recommend?" His answer? The Law, by Frederic Bastiat. It is a 44 page pamphlet written in 1850. Though Bastiat gives examples from the political issues of France, "The Law" could have been written yesterday about America. We strongly recommend getting and reading this book--a great way to understand where Ron Paul is coming from, and why RON PAUL is the best answer for anyone who truly wants liberty!

We need a president who will follow the Constitution and inspire other politicians to do the same. Dr. Paul is the only politician who has reliably shown unwavering adherence to the Constitution. The rest of the candidates will continue to drift away from our founding principles, perhaps even more. And, very little will change. Under Ron Paul’s plan he will create jobs and turn our economy around. Ron Paul supporters are growing by the minute, a fact that many politicos and elitists are afraid of. Ron Paul has a brilliant mind, read his books and see for yourself. He is the only constitutional candidate running that will return our country to the founding principles of liberty and freedom.

Fast and Furious

Congress is currently investigating Fast & Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder has already been caught making at least one false statement under oath. Gun rights advocates have been asking why Republicans aren’t calling for criminal charges against Eric Holder. Many have criticized FOX News for giving the story little coverage. CBS national news has been breaking most of the new details related to Fast & Furious.

Presidential candidate Ron Paul said Attorney General Eric Holder should be fired immediately and Congress should investigate his role in the Fast and Furious operation run by the ATF and the Justice Department. The covert operation provided a large number of firearms to Mexican drug cartels waging war with one another and the Mexican government. “He should be immediately fired,” Paul told Alex Jones, “and then there should be an investigation and find out if charges should be made.” He specifically criticized the government for continuously engaging in politically motivated and criminal behavior he characterized as false flag operations. Documents released by CBS News reveal Fast and Furious was exploited to demonize the Second Amendment. Paul said the government “constantly” engages in such criminal behavior. He cited the example of an allegation made in October by the United States that Iran was involved in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. Paul characterized the incident as a “propaganda stunt.” Following the arrest of a suspect it was discovered the plot was concocted by the FBI.

How does a country end up 15 trillion dollars in debt? 30 years ago, we were just a little over a trillion dollars in debt. It really takes something special to be able to roll up 15 trillion dollars of debt. To get to this level, we really had to indulge in some wild spending. How in the world do supposedly rational people living in “the greatest nation on earth” allow themselves to commit national financial suicide by allowing government debt to explode like that? The U.S. national debt grows by more than 2 million dollars every single minute. All of this debt has fueled an unprecedented boom of prosperity for the last 30 years, but now that prosperity is drying up. The prosperity of the last 30 years was a false prosperity. We squandered our national inheritance and we lived the “high life” by piling up mountains of debt unlike anything that the world has ever seen before. In the end, there is always a very high price for “living for today” at the expense of the future. Tomorrow always ends up arriving way too soon, and future generations will curse us for being so foolish. The party was great while it lasted, but it is coming to an end. A whole lot of economic trouble is on the horizon, and it is going to be very, very painful.

Today, there are over 45 million Americans that are on food stamps. America is being deindustrialized at a blinding pace and there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. Poverty is exploding all over the nation, and millions of families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Unfortunately, there are zero solutions on the horizon. The leaders of both major political parties seem even more clueless right now than in past years.

Today there is a horrific derivatives bubble that threatens to destroy not only the U.S. economy but the entire world financial system as well, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do not understand it. Most Americans have no idea what it means. In fact, even most members of the U.S. Congress don't really seem to understand them. Basically, derivatives are financial instruments whose value depends upon or is derived from the price of something else. A derivative has no underlying value of its own. It is essentially a side bet. Most Americans don't realize it, but derivatives played a major role in the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. Financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives.

The sheer size of over-the-counter derivative markets is staggering. According to the Bank for International Settlements, OTC derivatives stood at $707 trillion at the end of June, nearly fourteen times global GDP and forty seven times that of the United States. The derivatives market has become so monolithic that even a relatively minor imbalance in the global economy could set off a chain reaction that would have devastating consequences. Today, the worldwide derivatives market is approximately 20 times the size of the entire global economy. Because derivatives are so unregulated, nobody knows for certain exactly what the total value of all the derivatives worldwide is, but low estimates put it around 600 trillion dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion dollars.

Counting at one dollar per second, it would take 32 million years to count to one quadrillion. To put that in perspective, the gross domestic product of the United States is only about 14 trillion dollars. In fact, the total market cap of all major global stock markets is only about 30 trillion dollars. So when you are talking about 1.5 quadrillion dollars, you are talking about an amount of money that is almost inconceivable. The danger that we face from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet has called them "financial weapons of mass destruction." It would be hard to understate the financial devastation that we could potentially be facing. When this bubble pops there won't be enough money in the entire world to fix it. So what is going to happen when this insanely large derivatives bubble pops?

More than five million US homeowners and counting have had their homes foreclosed upon by banks since the “economic crisis” first began several years ago. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court recently ruled that the vast majority of the foreclosures that took place in the Commonwealth (and likely in most other states) within the past five years are illegitimate because the banks did not, and do not, actually hold the promissory notes for the properties. This means that all mortgage payments made to banks for illegitimately foreclosed upon properties are fraudulent since such banks do not technically own the properties in question. It also means that anyone who purchased a foreclosed property, or who is threatened currently with potential foreclosure, does not necessarily have a legal obligation to continue paying their mortgage.

Even homeowners who do not face foreclosure are not necessarily required to continue paying their mortgages — if their lenders are unable to produce valid promissory notes showing true ownership of the property. Then those who follow through with mortgage payments to such lenders are technically participating in fraud because there is no way to verify whether or not mortgage payments are going to the true note holders, or even who the true note holders are in the first place. “In essence, the ruling upholds that those who had purchased a foreclosure property that had been illegally foreclosed upon (which is virtually all foreclosure sales in the last five years), did not in fact have title to the property,” writesThe Daily Bail. “Given the fact that more than two-thirds of all real estate transactions in the last five years have also been foreclosed properties, this creates a small problem.”

Recognizing that the federal government’s bailout plan was beneficial only to banks and not homeowners, Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio told those facing foreclosure back in 2009 to “be squatters in their own home.” Now that these foreclosures have been exposed as largely fraudulent, it turns out that her advice was sound. “Radical though it may seem, we believe the only way to stop the chaos of fraud and the breakdown of the rule of law in our courts, and most importantly to ensure that we ourselves are not participants in the fraud, is for homeowners who can afford their mortgage to stop paying it,” saysThe Daily Bail.

As the housing market began its collapse, Wall Street firms and sophisticated investors searched for ways to profit. Some of them found an easy method: Stuff a portfolio with risky mortgage-related investments, sell it to unsuspecting customers and bet against it. The entire world financial system is a house of cards sitting on a foundation of sand. When you go play penny slots, it's called gambling. When financial advisors with initials after their name make larger bets, it's called investing. And when countries do the same, but with still more and bigger piles of paper, it's called economic policy. Almost everyone in the financial world has gotten so used to making wild bets that they couldn’t even imagine a world without futures, options and swaps. Today, Wall Street has become one giant financial casino. More money is made on Wall Street by making side bets (commonly referred to as derivatives) than on the investments themselves. If the bets pay off for the big financial institutions, mind blowing profits can be made. But if the bets go against the big financial institutions (as we saw in 2008), firms can collapse almost overnight. In fact, it was derivatives that almost brought down AIG. The biggest insurance company in the world almost folded in 2008 because of a whole bunch of really bad bets.

Citigroup has settled one case stemming from the crisis. In 2010, it agreed to pay $75 million to settle federal claims that it hid from investors vast holdings of subprime mortgage investments that were losing value during the crisis and that ultimately prompted the federal government to rescue the bank. Citigroup on October 19, 2011 agreed to pay $285 million to settle a civil complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had defrauded investors who bought just such a deal. The transaction involved a $1 billion portfolio of mortgage-related investments, many of which were handpicked for the portfolio by Citigroup without telling investors of its role or that it had made bets that the investments would fall in value. In the four years since the housing market began its steady descent, securities regulators have settled only two cases related to the financial crisis for a larger sum of money. This is also the third case brought by the S.E.C. accusing a major Wall Street institution of misleading customers about who was putting together a security and about their motive.

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase & Company both settled similar cases in 2010. The settlement will refund investors with interest and include a $95 million fine — a relative pittance for a giant like Citigroup. On October 17, the company reported that in the third quarter alone it earned profits of $3.8 billion on revenue of $20.8 billion. The case highlights a growing frustration felt by foreclosed homeowners, investors, and Wall Street protesters alike, that few, if any, senior banking executives have faced criminal charges for losses growing out of the financial crisis. A prosecution of two former executives of Bear Stearns, the failed investment bank, ended in acquittals.

The danger from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them “financial weapons of mass destruction.” It has been estimated that the notional value of the worldwide derivatives market is somewhere in the neighborhood of a quadrillion dollars. The largest banks have tens of trillions of dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the next great financial collapse happens, derivatives will almost certainly be at the center of it once again. These side bets do not create anything real for the economy–they just make and lose huge amounts of money. We never know when the next great derivatives crisis will strike. The dream of financial sanity and government responsibility is as remote as integrity from the political class.

A University of Zurich study 'proves' that a small group of companies - mainly banks - wields huge power over the global economy. The study is the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership between them - and created a 'map' of 1,318 companies at the heart of the global economy. The study found that 147 companies formed a 'super entity' within this, controlling 40 per cent of its wealth. All own part or all of one another. Most are banks - the top 20 includes Barclays and Goldman Sachs. But the close connections mean that the network could be vulnerable to collapse. In effect, less than one per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network.

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch. According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.

One important repository for the wealth of the global oligarchy that owns these bank holding companies is US Trust Corporation – founded in 1853 and now owned by Bank of America. A recent US Trust Corporate Director and Honorary Trustee was Walter Rothschild. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley. The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy. Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory.” Yet the facts remain. They may be too big to fail, but they aren't too big for jail.

One day soon, an event will happen which will cause a sudden shift in world financial markets and trillions of dollars of losses in derivatives will create a tsunami that will bring the entire house of cards down. All of the money in the world will not be enough to bail out the financial system when that day arrives. The truth is that we should have never allowed world financial markets to become a giant casino. We will all pay the price, and when that disastrous day comes, most Americans will still not understand what is happening. Financial experts have predicted that the failure of 300-500 U.S. banks would absorb all of the FDIC’s insurance funds. This is why there is a genuine fear that the FDIC is completely incapable of containing a run on the banks.

If Europe implodes - and there's little chance it will not - then Bank of America's derivative position will go to sub-zero and if the FDIC is insuring their losses, that will be the end of the FDIC which means every bank deposit in the US will be uninsured overnight after 70 plus years or so of "nothing can ever go wrong" protection. In the real world, when banks fail and they are not backed up by deposit insurance, depositors lose their deposits. The entire PLANET's GDP: ~$65T; BofA derivatives total $75T; Wells-Fargo derivatives $73T. And they have moved those phony dollars to their commercial side, making them FDIC insured. We are now on the hook for their crimes, for more money than the entire world produces over several years. This is the result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Additionally, the UN estimates that the total cost to END WORLD HUNGER would be just under $200 BILLION per year. JP Morgan could feed the world for more than a decade with the money they currently sit on.

A bank revolt appears to be underway, people withdrawing money from big banks and, in some cases, getting arrested. There are several videos on the movement. It’s interesting that, if you try to view these videos or any others on the same topic from Youtube, most of them will not play due to “invalid parameters.” There are too many for which this happens to think it could be an accident. The only question that remains now is when the collapse will take place and how bad it will be.

Bad corporate governance — and not fundamental weaknesses of capitalism — is at the heart of why so many people distrust banks. Big banks that haven’t been performing should be broken up before they become a threat to the entire financial system; shareholders should be able to step in and remove ineffective executives. Let’s go bank by bank, company by company, CEO by CEO, chairman by chairman, let’s just go down the list…and start cleaning house. If you have a company like Citigroup — maybe one or two others out there — that haven't performed over more than a decade, then I say let's break them into more manageable pieces. Citi's bad bets on subprime mortgage served as one of the first warning signs of the credit crisis. The company faced up to $11 billion in mortgage writeoffs and survived primarily thanks to a government bailout.

Bank of America is going down. Bank of America’s holding company is moving troubled assets held by an entity not insured by the public (Merrill Lynch) to the Bank of America, which is insured by the public. Bank of America’s holding company — the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit —held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades. JP Morgan’s deposit-taking entity, JP Morgan Chase Bank NA, contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives. If you’re a Bank of America customer and continue to be one you deserve whatever you get down the line, whether it comes in the form of higher fees and costs assessed upon you or something worse.

Bloomberg reports that Bank of America has shifted about $22 trillion worth of derivative obligations from Merrill Lynch and the BAC holding company to the FDIC insured retail deposit division. Along with this information came the revelation that the FDIC insured unit was already stuffed with $53 trillion worth of these potentially toxic obligations, making a total of $75 trillion.Derivatives are highly volatile financial instruments that are occasionally used to hedge risk, but mostly used for speculation. They are bets upon the value of stocks, bonds, mortgages, other loans, currencies, commodities, volatility of financial indexes, and even weather changes. Many big banks, including Bank of America, issue derivatives because, if they are not triggered, they are highly profitable to the issuer, and result in big bonus payments to the executives who administer them. If they are triggered, of course, the obligations fall upon the corporate entity, not the executives involved. Ultimately, by allowing existing gambling bets to remain in insured retail banks, and endorsing the shift of additional bets into the insured retail division, the obligation falls upon the U.S. taxpayers and dollar-denominated savers.

Even if we net out the notional value of the derivatives involved, down to the net potential obligation, the amount is so large that the United States could not hope to pay it off without a major dollar devaluation, if a major contingency actually occurred and a large part of the derivatives were triggered. But, if such an event ever occurs, Bank of America's derivatives counter-parties will, as usual, be made whole, while the American people suffer. This all has the blessing of the Federal Reserve, which approved the transfer of derivatives from Merrill Lynch to the insured retail unit of BAC before it was done. Contrary to popular belief, which blames the global financial crisis on subprime borrowers, it was the derivatives, based upon the likelihood that those borrowers would pay their debts, that were the primary catalyst triggering the global economic crisis of 2008. Back then, the derivative obligations of AIG imploded the insurer. Under the pressure of fear-mongering from the Federal Reserve and the financial industry, the U.S. government committed hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out AIG's counter-parties, including the biggest banks of Europe and America. Had the government not stepped in, virtually all the banks on Wall Street would have gone bankrupt. A host of European and Asian banks would have followed.

AIG was not FDIC insured. It could have been allowed to fail, and should have been allowed to fail. All the banks on Wall Street that would have failed should have failed. Their speculator counter-parties should have been bankrupted, and their retail depositors should have been made whole. The retail divisions could have been temporarily nationalized and sold off as soon as possible to more prudent management. Had this occurred, America would have experienced a deep but very temporary economic downturn, and, by now, the downturn would be over. But, with derivatives obligations tied intimately with FDIC insured depositary units, the debt will need to be paid by the government, as a matter of law. We will have no legal choice except to default, or pay them off.

In 2008, politicians in Washington D.C., and Trojan horse operatives within the financial organs of our government, bailed out imprudent managements of big casino-banks. Bank executives not only didn't go bankrupt, as they should have, but collected huge bonuses. Later, in response to the abuse, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank legislation and the Volcker rule. These were supposed to insure that such bailouts were not needed in the future. Supposedly, this would prevent further abuse of the American taxpayer. The most recent abuse-event, involving BAC, illustrates the uselessness of such laws. Bank of America NA is FDIC insured, and has the blessing of the Federal Reserve, in spite of such a transaction being prohibited by Section 23A of the Federal Reserve Act.

The Federal Reserve is an institution largely controlled by those who are probably the counter-parties to the Merrill Lynch derivatives. No doubt, its approval of the transaction, in spite of the prohibitions of section 23A arise out of a claim that Merrill is not a "bank" as defined under the Act, and, therefore, not an affiliate. Merrill Lynch is clearly an affiliate of Bank of America, and the Federal Reserve is clearly violating the law by approving this particular transaction. But, here is the kicker. Congress has given ultimate power to the Federal Reserve to ignore its own enabling Act legislation. The FDIC opposed the move, but there is nothing the FDIC can do, except file a petition for a writ of mandamus in court, against the Federal Reserve, seeking a declaration that the approval was illegal. But, the FDIC would lose, because Congress has given the Federal Reserve Board ultimate power to do whatever it wishes.

When something bad happens, and the derivative obligations are triggered, the FDIC will be on the hook, thanks to the Federal Reserve. The counter-parties of Bank of America, both inside America and elsewhere around the world, will be safely bailed out by the full faith and credit of the USA. Meanwhile, the taxpayers and dollar denominated savers will be fleeced again. This latest example of misconduct illustrates the error of allowing a bank-controlled entity, like the Federal Reserve, complete power over the nation's monetary system. The so-called "reforms" enacted by Congress, in the wake of the 2008 crash, have vested more, and not less, power in the Federal Reserve, and supplied us with more, rather than less instability and problems.

This is not an isolated instance. JP Morgan Chase (JPM) is being allowed to house its unstable derivative obligations within its FDIC insured retail banking unit. Other big banks do the same. So long as the Federal Reserve exists and/or other financial regulatory agencies continue to be run by a revolving door staff that moves in and out of industry and government, crony capitalism will be alive and well in America. No amount of Dodd-Frank or Volcker rule legislation will ever protect savers, taxpayers or the American people. Profits will continue to be privatized and losses socialized.

There are some “derivatives” that should be eliminated, period, like credit default swaps, which have virtually no legitimate economic uses. They are an inherently defective product, since there is no way to margin adequately for “jump to default” risk and have the product be viable economically. CDS are systematically underpriced insurance, with insurers guaranteed to go bust periodically, as AIG and the monolines demonstrated.

The financial markets across the globe are facing one of the most massive sell-offs in recent history. The Europeans have been pulling their money out of banks for weeks and so have many of the world’s most important corporations.Things look a little bit more like 2008 every single day. None of the problems that caused the financial crisis of 2008 have been fixed, and the world financial system is more vulnerable today than it ever has been since the end of World War II. The U.S. economy has never really recovered from the last financial crisis.

Investors all over the world are realizing that absolutely nothing has been solved in Europe. The solutions being proposed by the politicians in Europe are just going to make things worse. You don’t solve a sovereign debt crisis by shredding confidence in sovereign debt. But that is exactly what the “voluntary 50% haircut” has done. You don’t solve a sovereign debt crisis by pumping up your “bailout fund” with borrowed money from China, Russia and Brazil. More debt is just going to make things even worse down the road. You don’t solve a sovereign debt crisis by causing a massive credit crunch. By giving European banks only until June 2012 to dramatically improve their credit ratios, it is going to force many of them to seriously cut back on lending. A massive credit crunch would significantly slow down economic activity in Europe and that is about the last thing that the Europeans need right now. If the deal that was reached in late October was the “best shot” that Europe has got, then we are all in for a world of hurt.

If we see another major financial crash in the coming months, the consequences would be absolutely devastating. According to a study that was recently released by Merrill Lynch, the U.S. economy has an 80% chance of going into another recession. When financial markets get really jumpy like this, all it takes is one really big spark to set the dominoes in motion. Israel has dumped 46 percent of its U.S. Treasuries and Russia has dumped 95 percent of its U.S. Treasuries. According to CNN, the number of bets against the S&P 500 rose to the highest level in a year in August 2011. But that was nothing compared to what they are seeing for October. The number of bets against the S&P 500 for the month of October is absolutely astounding. Somebody is going to make a monstrous amount of money if there is a stock market crash in October.

One place where nominal and real income data can absolutely not be fudged is the Social Security Average Wage Index, based on withholding data reported by employers, particularly the median wage, whose nominal change can then be extrapolated in real terms using CPI to create a chained series. And here is where things get messy: real income based on median wages, dropped (in real terms) by 1.2% – the biggest year over year slide in over 20 years of data… What we are seeing is a perfect storm of horrendous economic data on almost all fronts. Manufacturing costs are up, essential basic goods have skyrocketed in price over the last three years, and more people are left unemployed every single month than the month before.

The paradigm is shifting, and there is no turning back. The jobs bill won’t save us. More stimulus won’t save us. The worthless, counterproductive actions of our elected representatives have failed miserably – likely even made things worse. The economic situation of this nation is dire. This is not a recession. We’re talking deep depression levels of economic inactivity that may potentially span decades. It is time now to make the psychological, intellectual, spiritual, occupational and physical adjustments that will prepare you to live in a paradigm where the world as we know it today does not exist. There are people who are still connected to the old one and can’t conceive of life without that old paradigm. We saw that in the Great Depression. A lot of people never recovered from it because once that hit it was the end of their lives.

You can embrace the changes and accept them as the new paradigm – or, you can bury your head in the sand and pretend you live in a magical utopia, the consequences of which will severely impact your quality of life for years to come – so choose wisely.

In the less-than-three-years Obama has been in office, the federal debt has increased by $4.212 trillion–more than the total national debt of about $4.1672 trillion accumulated by all 41 U.S. presidents from George Washington through George H.W. Bush combined. This $4.212-trillion increase in the national debt means that during Obama’s term the federal government has already borrowed about an additional $35,835 for every American household–or $44,980 for every full-time private-sector worker.

The Fed doled out $16 trillion in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008. Domestic banks and companies got the money, right along with foreign banks and companies. In effect, the Federal Reserve bailed out the world financial system. Now, we are right back to square one facing another financial meltdown with European banks and sovereign debt. If the Fed spent $16 trillion, why in the heck is this problem not fixed and why isn’t the world economy taking off like a rocket?” The simple answer is it wasn’t enough money.

The Bank of International Settlements pegs the total world over-the-counter (OTC) derivative exposure at around $600 trillion, but many experts say the real figure is more than twice that amount. No matter which figure you use, it is a gargantuan sum. OTC derivatives are an unregulated dark pool of money with no public market. These are basically debt bets between two entities on things such as credit risk, currencies, interest rates and commodities. According to the latest report from the Comptroller of the Currency, just four U.S. banks have an eye popping $235 trillion of OTC derivative leverage. As a nation, U.S. banks have a total OTC derivative exposure of $250 trillion. So, the fact that just four U.S. banks have this much leverage and risk is astounding!

Considering that the total assets of these four banks are a little more than $5 trillion, there is a frightening amount of risk with a total derivative exposure of $235 trillion! This is nearly 50 to 1 leverage. On top of that, assets such as real estate or mortgage-backed securities can be held on the books at whatever value the banks think they can sell them for in the future. This is government sanctioned accounting fraud. Who knows what the true value of the banks “assets” really are.

It is not the color of your skin that matters - it is the nature of your soul.

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.

It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin. Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin is affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama.

Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people--conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth--it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly? In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

The following are 12 reasons to be extremely pessimistic about the direction that the economy is headed right now….

#1 A big chunk of the American people are flat broke. According to one recent survey, one-third of all Americans say that they have absolutely no spare cash.

#2 The budgets of American families are being stretched incredibly thin and the savings rate is going down again. In fact, the savings rate in September was the lowest that it has been since December 2007.

#3 Back in 2001, Gallup began asking Americans about how they feel about the state of their own personal finances. In October, Gallup once again asked this question, and 22 percent of the respondents rated their personal financial situations as “poor.” That is the highest number that Gallup has ever seen. In addition, the gap between the number of Americans that said that their finances were “getting worse” and the number of Americans that said their finances were “getting better” was also the largest that Gallup has ever seen.

#4 Overall, Americans are very depressed about the state of the U.S. economy. According to a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, 43 percent of all Americans believe that the economy is in “very poor” shape.

#5 Big corporations continue to lay off more American workers. For example, Whirlpool has just announced that it will be slashing 5,000 more jobs in the United States and Europe.

#6 Americans seem to have an incredibly dim view of the job market. One recent survey discovered the following….

In October, 2011, just 9% of Americans would rate the job market of their region of the nation as good while 67% would rate it as bad and one-quarter (24%) say it is neither good nor bad.

#7 If nearly all Americans believe that something bad is going to happen, does that make it more likely that it actually will happen? A recent IBOPE Zogby Interactive Poll found that 95 percent of all Americans are “somewhat concerned” or “very concerned” that we are headed for a double-dip recession.

#8 The American people are also overwhelmingly pessimistic about the housing market. In fact, the same IBOPE Zogby Interactive Poll referenced above found that 89 percent of all Americans are “somewhat concerned” or “very concerned” that there will be an increase in foreclosures over the next two years.

#9 Older Americans tend to be cranky in general, but the amount of pessimism that they are exhibiting about the economy right now is absolutely stunning. The following comes from a recent article in the Huffington Post…. Older workers are gloomier about the economy now than they were last year. Nearly two thirds of workers older than 50 first surveyed by AARP’s Public Policy Institute in 2010 said things had gotten worse by the time the senior lobbying powerhouse followed up in August. Fewer than one in 10 said their view of the economy had improved. The rest said things had stayed the same.

#10 The consensus among the American people seems to be that the economy will get even worse leading up to the election in 2012. The following is what one recent telephone survey discovered…. By a 49%-35% margin, Americans say they expect the U.S. economy to worsen between now and the November 2012 presidential election.

#11 The U.S. national debt is an anchor around our necks that just gets heavier and heavier as time goes by. The U.S. government is now about 15 trillion dollars in debt, and a recent Allstate-National Journal poll discovered that 79 percent of all Americans “believe the federal debt and deficit have a meaningful impact on their personal finances.”

#12 The financial crisis in Europe just seems to get worse by the day. The United States is already teetering on the edge of an economic disaster, and if Europe experiences a big time financial crash it seems extremely unlikely that we would be able to avoid another major recession.

The five largest banks in the U.S. (JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and HSBC) are carrying $238 TRILLION dollars in derivative exposure. JP Morgan alone is carrying $78 TRILLION in derivative exposure BY ITSELF. The total GDP of the United States is $14.5 Trillion. The total GDP of China is $6 Trillion. The total land mass on earth is 36.8 billion acres. If every acre of land on earth was “sold” for $6467 per acre, that would total $238 Trillion. JP Morgan BY ITSELF has derivative exposure equal to over FIVE TIMES the value of the entire US GDP. These banks are carrying these OTC futures contracts with NO exchange to guarantee anything. And they are carrying these contracts largely WITH EACH OTHER. So JP Morgan might be the long and Goldman Sachs, or some insolvent bank in Europe is the short on the other side. If these banks default, which is now a mathematical certainty because they are not only insolvent, but insolvent multiple times over and there isn’t enough money in the world to bail them out, there is going to be a cascading default on all of these OTC contracts.

A shocking new Bloomberg survey has found that approximately one out of every three international investors expects a “global economic meltdown” within the next 12 months, and 70 percent of them believe that the global economy is “deteriorating.” On both sides of the Atlantic, the big banks are highly leveraged, they have taken on a ton of risk and they are very deeply exposed to derivatives. It is as if virtually nobody learned any lessons during the financial crisis of 2008. Once again we are facing a situation where if a couple of financial dominoes fall it could send dozens of others tumbling to the ground. Martha Stewart has been the only high profile individual arrested for insider trading and bankers who committed the same crime have been protected.

By the end of 2007, all the Too-Big-to-Fail (TBTF) banks were writing these things hand-over-fist because they already knew they were in doo-doo. All this did was put massive leverage into the system…..debt, leveraged upon debt, with no asset value behind much of it. THEY DID THIS KNOWING FULL WELL THE MAJORITY OF THE DERIVATIVES THEY WERE CREATING WERE FRAUDULENT AND BACKED BY NOTHING. The TBTFs have lobbied against any whiff of the idea of forcing these things onto an exchange where they would be made transparent. That’s pretty much a tipoff that they’re hiding something very bad. If the used car salesman won’t let you look under the hood, you can be pretty sure there’s something there you won’t like much.

The idea Wall Street had here with creating these fraudulent pieces of toxic waste was that if even a fraction of these ‘paid out’ for them, they could ‘save themselves.’ Unfortunately this doesn’t work when Wall Street runs out of suckers; you know, pension plans, insurance companies, retail investors and other places they could sell these things to without anyone understanding what they were buying. Most importantly, when they ran out of suckers they could put into home loans they couldn’t afford, this was the beginning of the end and the whole scheme began to unravel.

President Obama has proposed the first step in stealth nationalization and forced investment of our retirement benefits. Obama’s stealth proposal is billed by him as an "effort to increase retirement savings by requiring all businesses to offer automatic IRA accounts.” There is an estimated $15 trillion worth of private retirement plans in the United States; $4 trillion in IRAs alone; this constitutes 35 percent of all private assets in America. That is what the Obama government is eyeing to help plug the multi-trillion dollar deficit in his big spending budget. You could call this move Obama’s attempt to "pull an Argentina." In October 2008, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner—a peronista—confiscated US$30 billion worth in that country’s 10 privately managed pension funds. This was presented as an emergency measure to meet her faltering government’s financing costs. The Argentine congress went along with this radical property grab of individual retirement accounts, 401Ks and the like.

The Too-Big-To-Fails are chasing corruption. They’re chasing legalized theft sanctioned by our government and you can watch it in real-time every day….just pull up a stock chart. Any stock chart. Our government not only looked the other way when they were made aware of what was going on, they began to aid and abet the criminal activity….because the TBTFs convinced the government that ‘economic meltdown could be avoided’ if they were just given time for the ‘asset values to come back.’ This whole game was facilitated by none-other than Hank Paulson.

These entities will tear each other apart in a mad dogfight and this dogfight will take the entire world down with it. TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS. And THAT IS JUST FIVE BANKS. And THE MASSIVELY CORRUPT AND INCOMPETENT SECURITIES REGULATORS, BOTH GOVERNMENTAL AND PRIVATE, SAT BY AND WATCHED THIS HAPPEN. That is what happens when you let a group of criminals run a bureaucracy of affirmative action hires to “audit” the financial industry.

It’s over. There is no coming back from this. The only thing that can happen is a total and complete collapse of EVERYTHING we now know, and humanity starts from scratch.

If Europe should fail this is what we can expect to happen – European banks will crash and burn and take down major US banks, which are already in trouble anyway. We are likely to see a lengthy unscheduled "bank holiday" – banks will slam their doors and if your money is still inside their vaults then you are out of luck. Major disruptions in supply and distribution of food and fuel in particular will trigger general panic, and riots and mob violence will spread rapidly – what we have seen on TV happening in Greece will suddenly happen on the streets of the US and many other countries. Stockmarkets will crash in a manner that will make 2008 seem like a "walk in the park." Virtually every asset class and investment will crater – especially commodities, stocks and Real Estate. The euro will be vaporized. The tidal wave of funds liberated by this mass panic are going to have to go somewhere and normally we would expect them to go into the US dollar and Treasuries, but with US banks failing even this cannot be relied upon. The one surefire investment category that will shine – provided that is that the markets or brokerage houses etc involved with these transactions don't themselves fail – is "misfortune securities", meaning bear ETFs and Puts.

We are not simply talking about protecting investments and making opportunistic gains out of the mayhem that will ensue, if Europe should fail, we are talking survival issues as well, due to the interconnected nature of the global economy things could become very ugly, very fast across a broad front. If you want to learn what life is like when banks suddenly slam their doors, then you should read up on the Argentinian crisis of the early nineties. The middle class suddenly found themselves disconnected from their savings, and as many of them lost their jobs at about the same time, they became instantly destitute, and forced to swap their possessions for food. Crime soared and people who had been used to living relatively cushy lives suddenly found themselves living on the edge in a law-of-the jungle nightmare. If Europe should fail this is what may quickly become reality not just in Europe but in the acutely fragile and vulnerable US, and many other other countries as well. Other undesirable consequences will be unemployment rising to incredible unprecedented levels, so that students leaving college will have almost ZERO chance of finding work. The travel industry, much of which is non-essential, will be devastated with airlines slashing flights and going bust and hotels suffering extremely low occupancy rates.

With things rapidly coming to a head in Europe, this catastrophic chain of events could be set in motion as early as next week. So stop and think about this for a moment – What will you do, and what situation will you find yourself in, if banks slam their doors within the next couple of weeks?

Move Your Money

The nation's largest banks have certainly made a lot of mistakes in the past few years and consumers are angry about it -- for good reason. As major banks move to stick consumers with a widening range of new fees, a revolt is underway.

With November 5 being hailed as Bank Transfer Day, the final day in a month-long demonstration to move money from out of the big banks and into smaller, localized credit unions, the tally of those that took up the cause has come through and it shows that the movement was more than just a fluke. Bank Transfer Day is about the power of individuals to take their money out of institutions whose profits go almost entirely to Wall Street and keep that money in our community, where we can control it. Leading up to November 5, $4.5 billion was taken out of major financial institutions. That number comes from a just released report from ABC News that reveals that credit unions across the country accumulated around 650,000 new customers in the month of October. Bank Transfer Day began out of the Occupy Wall Street movement as thousands of Americans took to rallying in Lower Manhattan against, among other things, the bailout of the institutions that have made many homeless and broke.The campaign -- Bank Transfer Day, launched on Facebook -- signed up nearly 70,000 consumers to take action (with more than 30,000 likes on the page).

In the weeks leading up to Bank Transfer Day, around 80 percent of the credit unions in the country saw an increase in membership, with nearly half of the states in the US experiencing membership increases of more than 10,000 among their credit unions. Credit unions in California alone saw an increase in membership by around 90,000 customers, who added $624 million into new accounts. Banks have apparently woken up and smelled the coffee. JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM), for example, which operates the Chase network of banks, has quietly pulled the plug on plans to charge a $3 monthly fee for debit card users.

U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), Citigroup (NYSE: C), KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY) and others have also announced that they will cancel plans to start charging for debit card usage. Yet consumers shouldn't be fooled. With or without these debit cards, these banks still offer a bum deal. By virtually every measure, they offer consumers the toxic combination of low interest rates on their savings and obnoxious penalties for a range of infractions.

With the exception of mortgages, credit unions offer a better deal -- across the board. Purchasing a $30,000 new car? The credit union will charge you $423 less in interest each year, or more than $2,000 less over the course of a five year loan. What's more, many credit unions won't charge to use out-of-network ATMs (though the bank-owned ATM fee where you withdraw still applies). Bounce a check? The credit union is likely to ding you about $15, roughly half of what most banks charge.

Major banks like Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup and others are hurting right now, posting profits that are far weaker than a few years ago. That's not the consumers' fault. Banks face tough times because of their own poor decisions, using their capital on risky investments that turned sour. Member-owned credit unions offer more attractive interest rates on loans and checking accounts, have fewer and less penalizing fees and aim to serve the needs of their account holders, rather than a select group of shareholders. If you're interested in transferring your money, you can research your area's local credit unions by visiting the Find A Credit Union website.

1. Open Your New Account In most cases, you should be able to open a checking account with an initial deposit of $35 to $100. At a credit union, you'll also become a member and co-owner at the same time.

2. Order New Checks and an ATM/Debit Card These typically arrive within 1 to 2 weeks. You should also consider applying for a credit card from your new local bank or credit union at the same time.

3. Ask Your Employer to Reroute Your Direct Deposit When you open your new account, ask the bank or credit union for a direct deposit authorization form that includes your new account information. Give this form to your employer and anyone else who makes direct deposits to your account. It may take one or more pay cycles for the change to be made, so keep your old checking account open and watch for the swith.

4. Contact Companies that Direct-Debit Your Account Using your last bank statement, make a list of any businesses that you've authorized to directly debit your account. Ask your new bank or credit union for an automatic payments authorization form that includes your new account information. Send this to the businesses on your list.

5. Set-up Online Bill Paying for Your New Account If you like to pay bills online, set up bill payment information for your new accoutn. Also, top automatic, recurring payments you have established through your old account.

6. Close Your Old Account Once you have started receiving direct deposit into your new account and are sure that there are no outstanding checks or automatic debits that need to clear, close your account. Warning: do not just withdraw the last dollar and assume the account will fade away on is own. Your old big bank may start chargin you fees for having an empty or inactive checking account. Instead, follow the bank's procedure for closing out the account.

MoveYourMoneyProject.org

The time has come when citizens and companies aren’t the only ones being forced to file for bankruptcy… Major cities are among the ranks of those in dire straits. Is your city or town next to fall onto the sword and file for Chapter 9? Washington, D.C.; Detroit, Michigan; Honolulu, Hawaii; New York City, New York; Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Ohio; Camden, New Jersey; San Diego; San Jose; San Francisco; and Los Angeles.

I.O.U.S.A.

Sept. 14, 2011, the World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the world had entered a new economic danger zone and Europe, Japan and the United States all needed to make hard decisions to avoid dragging down the global economy. His bluntly-worded speech highlighted mounting fears among global policymakers about an escalating sovereign debt crisis in Europe, which has for now overshadowed investor concerns about public finances and reforms in the United States and Japan. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao weighed in earlier and called on developed countries to take responsibility for fiscal and monetary policies to avoid the European crisis from spreading.

Yes, our system is a joke, but the joke is on us. Our entire global economy is a giant Ponzi Scheme. Makes Social Security look like a rounding error. This also gives one a better perspective on the stock market movements. Fiat money is entering its death spiral. Banks use crooked accounting methods to hide losses and enrich employees with bonuses. It's another form of looting... At least 46 out of 50 US states are insolvent. What the market is now is merely the TBTF banks chasing government cheese. Where is the next bailout coming from? Who is going to get the next exemption from the law?

Wake up and smell the tyranny, and stop defending the criminals with your cries of ‘it’s anti-capitalist to protest against Wall Street.’ It’s not about your neighbor getting a free house, it’s about massive, global, legalized financial rape. Wall Street a/k/a the Too-Big-To-Fails are chasing corruption. They’re chasing legalized theft sanctioned by our government and you can watch it in real-time every day…. just pull up a stock chart. Wave after wave of bad economic news has come out of the United States recently, and Europe is embroiled in an absolutely unprecedented debt crisis.

The first major European bank bailout of 2011 has now happened. French/Belgian banking giant Dexia has failed and both governments have pledged to participate in a rescue plan. But Dexia will not be the last major European bank to fail. Even now, governments all over Europe are feverishly developing plans to bail out major national banks in the event that the current financial crisis goes from bad to worse. Instead of learning the lessons of 2008, most major European banks have continued to pile up huge mountains of debt, leverage and risk. Now the bill for that stupidity is about to be passed on to the taxpayers of those nations.

French banks are down to 1% capital, institutional panic is underway. We are looking at the collapse of the very foundation of the entire European banking system which in turn means the collapse of an essential pillar of the entire global banking banking system. The Europeans have been pulling their money out of banks for weeks and so have many of the world’s most important corporations. Don’t be a fool and wait until the last minute to do the same. Major stock market indexes, commodities, currencies and everything in between is being dumped by investors across the globe in the midst of a global financial meltdown.

The run on the banks and the collapse it will cause is already underway and “If it persists” the French Banks will have “no choice but to de-lever their balance sheets in a very drastic and disorderly fashion” which means forget about the plans of propping up or bailing out Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain. In fact, such an event is happening in a “very drastic and disorderly fashion” it will trigger a Lehman style collapse wiping out any hope of those nations being able to pay off their debt. The resulting financial turmoil will drag down Germany and the entire Euro-zone resulting in sovereign debt defaults in many of those nations as well. From there the counter-party risk turns to contagion and drags down banks in Great Britain, China and even the U.S., resulting in the greatest economic crash in the history of man kind.

The last week of September was the 3rd worse week on Wall Street ever. Most of the worst financial panics in history have happened in the fall. Just recall what happened in 1929, 1987 and 2008. September 2011 has begun and there are all kinds of signs that the financial world is about to hit the big red panic button.

The Wealth In Congress and Insider Trading

In a shocking article published in Reuters, Felix Salmon confirmed what the so-called conspiracy theorists have said all along: former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Hank Paulson was giving insider tips to roughly a dozen hedge-fund managers and Wall Street executives, including no less than five former colleagues of Paulson’s from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street titans which directly benefited them. The article is entitled, “Hank Paulson’s inside jobs,” emphasizing the fact that this wasn’t some one-off lapse of ethics on Paulson’s part, but instead a disturbingly regular practice. Paulson was the CEO and chairman at Goldman Sachs from 1999-2006 and he clearly provided them with actionable information that epitomizes the plague upon our economy, and the greater global economic system, that is crony capitalism. During the meeting Paulson, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into 'conservatorship' — a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.

In October of 2009 Andrew Ross Sorkin exposed that Paulson met with the entire Goldman Sachs board in a hotel suite in Moscow at the end of June 2008. Salmon covered this at the time, after Sorkin’s book was released, which detailed the meeting held after the Goldman Sachs boys had dinner with Mikhail Gorbachev. At the time the Treasury chief of staff Jim Wilkinson told Goldman Sachs chief of staff John Rogers, “Let’s keep this quiet,” indicating that despite the fact that the Treasury’s general counsel Bob Hoyt claimed “it wouldn’t run afoul of the ethics guidelines,” they were well aware that wasn’t the case. Hoyt said that it was acceptable so long as it was solely a “social event”, but unsurprisingly, Paulson didn’t record the so-called “social event” in his official calendar. It is undeniable that these individuals knew very well what they were doing, and clearly they had no misgivings whatsoever. Just a few weeks later on July 28th, 2008, Paulson met with a who’s-who of the hedge-fund world in the Eton Park Capital Management headquarters. Unsurprisingly, Eton Park Capital Management was created by Eric Mindich, formerly of Goldman Sachs as well.

Everyone knows the words of the Treasury Secretary heavily affect global markets almost instantly, just like speeches by the likes of Ben Shalom Bernanke, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the private Federal Reserve. Getting this kind of information ahead of time is critical, and through Sorkin’s writing it is clear that Paulson enlightened them as to the situation with Lehman Brothers, giving Goldman Sachs an unfair advantage over those who didn’t happen to have someone on the inside. Paulson spoke of the possibility that Lehman Brothers very well might collapse, along with giving the Goldman Sachs board other insights into how he was viewing the economic climate and what was to come. Maybe it’s not so surprising that Goldman Sachs turned out to be so well positioned when Lehman did indeed blow up a few months later. This egregious breach of ethics is a perfect example of the corporatism that pervades Wall Street and has brought us to the brink of collapse where we are precariously perched today.

The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are absolutely packed with wealthy people that are very rapidly becoming even wealthier. The collective net worth of the members of Congress is now measured in the billions of dollars. The people that we have elected to the House and Senate are absolutely swimming in money. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get elected to Congress. In this day and age you generally have to be heavily connected to those that are very wealthy to get into Congress because it takes gigantic amounts of cash to win campaigns. But if you can get in to the club, you pretty much have it made. Congress has become all about money. Congressional races are mostly financed by wealthy people, most of the people that we elect to Congress are very wealthy, and they rapidly get wealthier after they are elected. All of this money has turned our republic into something far different than our founding fathers intended.

The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress increased by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010. The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress is now slightly over 2 billion dollars. This happened during a time when the net worth of most American households was declining rapidly. According to the Federal Reserve, the collective net worth of all American households decreased by 23 percent between 2007 and 2009. One study from 2004 found that members of Congress do even better in the stock market than corporate insiders do.

The average net worth for a member of Congress is now approximately 3.8 million dollars. Former Speaker of the House–and current Minority Leader–Nancy Pelosi apparently bought $1 million to $5 million of Visa stock in one of the most sought-after and profitable initial public offerings (IPO) in American history, thwarted serious credit card reform for two years, and then watched her investment skyrocket 203%. The investment came at the same time a piece of legislation that was opposed by credit-card companies was making its way through the House. It should be illegal for lawmakers to buy stocks in companies directly affected by their legislative efforts. The net worth of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi increased by 62 percent from 2009 to 2010. In 2009 it was reported that she had a net worth of 21.7 million dollars, and in 2010 it was reported that she had a net worth of 35.2 million dollars.

But what is even worse is what many members of Congress did with secret information that they were told by U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at the start of the financial crisis of 2008. On September 16, 2008 Paulson and Bernanke held “closed door meetings” with members of Congress and warned them that the financial system was about to totally collapse. But instead of racing out to save the financial system, author Peter Schweizer says that many of our representatives in Congress raced out to save their stock portfolios.

*U.S. Senator Dick Durbin sold $74,715 worth of stock on September 17th and $42,000 worth of stock on September 18th.

*U.S. Representative Jim Moran sold off shares in 90 different corporations on September 17th.

*U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sold off at least $250,000 worth of stock between September 18th and September 24th.

*U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus bet very heavily against the stock market in the days following the September 16th meeting and made tens of thousands of dollars doing so.

*U.S. Senator John Kerry bought up approximately $350,000 of Bank of America stock and approximately $550,000 of Citigroup stock during October 2008 and November of 2008. It was during this time period that the bailout programs for the big banks were being developed and debated.

Are you feeling sick to your stomach yet? But it isn’t just members of Congress that are using secrets to make money in the stock market. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, quite a few Congressional staffers have also been making questionable trades….

So why doesn’t Congress just pass a law to make it illegal for members of Congress to make trades based on insider information? Well, a few members of Congress have actually tried to introduce such legislation, but it has never gone anywhere. It turns out that members of Congress like things just the way that they are. Being a member of Congress is one of the best jobs in the country. It is a great way to become famous, get rich and live the high life. Only 11 percent of the American people think that Congress is doing a good job, and yet we keep sending the same people back to Congress time after time.

The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, saw his wealth grow by 29 percent from 2009 to 2010. He is now worth approximately 9.8 million dollars.

More than 50 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are millionaires. In 2008, the average cost of winning a seat in the House of Representatives was $1.1 million and the average cost of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate was $6.5 million. Spending on political campaigns has gotten way out of control. Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of the U.S. Congress – and they refuse to pass a law that would change that. The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.

U.S. Representative Darrell Issa is worth approximately 220 million dollars. His wealth grew by approximately 37 percent from 2009 to 2010. The wealthiest member of Congress, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, is worth approximately 294 million dollars.

So how are members of Congress becoming so wealthy? Well, there are lots of ways they are raking in the cash, but one especially alarming thing that goes on is that members of Congress often make investments in companies that will go up significantly if legislation that is being considered by Congress “goes the right way.” This is called a “conflict of interest”, but it happens constantly in Congress and nobody seems to get into any trouble for it.

A law that would ban insider trading by members of Congress has been stalled for years on Capitol Hill. So has this been a significant benefit to members of Congress? Well, there has been at least one study that appears to indicate that members of Congress have been much more successful in the stock market than members of the general public have…. A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to – and were using – material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade. Meanwhile, members of Congress keep telling the rest of us that we are just going to have to cut back because times are tough. During an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Nancy Pelosi actually claimed that we should try to encourage poor people to have less children because it costs the government so much money to take care of them.

This elitist attitude extends all the way into the White House as well. Earlier this year, Barack Obama made the following statement: “If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, or you might put off a vacation.” Meanwhile, the Obamas are living the high life at taxpayer expense. How about the outrageously expensive vacation taken by the Obamas that was paid for by our taxes. Back in August, Michelle Obama took her daughter Sasha and 40 of her friends for a vacation in Spain. So what was the bill to the taxpayers for that little jaunt across the pond? It is estimated that vacation alone cost U.S. Taxpayers $375,000.

There is a massive disconnect between what our politicians say and what our politicians do. The high life is good enough for them, but the rest of us have got to “cut back” and suffer becomes times are hard. But when it comes to money and Congress, the most corrupting influence of all is probably all of the campaign money that gets thrown around. In America today, it takes gigantic mountains of money to run a successful campaign. Sadly, the candidate that raises the most money almost always wins. In federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time. More than 5 billion dollars were spent on political campaigns back in 2008. That represents a huge number of favors that need to be paid back.

In 2012, it is being projected that 8 billion dollars could be spent on political campaigns. When big corporations and wealthy individuals shovel huge piles of money into political campaigns, it is generally because they expect something in return. Most of those that get sent to Congress realize that they never would have won if wealthy donors had not showered cash on them. Most of them understand that they should not bite the hands that feed them if they want the cash to keep rolling in.

Politics in America has become a game that is played by the elite for the benefit of the elite. Average Americans have the perception that they are involved in the process and that their opinions really matter, but mostly it is just an illusion. It is so sad. Meanwhile, members of Congress rapidly get wealthier and average American families continue to suffer. In fact, the standard of living in the United States has fallen farther over the past three years than at any other time that has ever been recorded in U.S. History.

But for members of Congress the good times just keep on rolling. Just as it has been for most of human history, the rich rule over the poor.

Mortgage-Backed Securities Fraud

Congress members, except Ron Paul, were invested in the Wall Street Firms behind the Mortgage-Backed Securities Fraud; the biggest financial swindle since the Great South Seas Bubble of 1721. Congress passed an $8000 first-time home-buyer credit to lure more suckers into the scam, to front-load the fraud with fresh mortgages of questionable worth, and raked in huge profits from the "tulip mania" sales of the MBS.

Then the scam fell apart. Foreign banks and investment companies (and indeed entire nations) were brought to the edge of ruin by the fraud and demanded that Wall Street refund their money.

Wall Street does not like to surrender profits, even ill-gotten ones, and neither does the Congress. So Congress voted for the "bailouts," which are actually buy-backs, to use public money (and more funds borrowed from the Federal Reserve) to purchase back the bad paper and cover the credit swaps, dropping the costs of the scam onto the American people. This was done despite 90% of the American people opposing the use of tax money to save the bankers from their own reckless behaviors (Taxation without representation).

At the same time, in 2008, the White House set a policy that nobody on Wall Street was going to be investigated or charged for this fraud, because inevitably the scandal would envelope all the members of the Congress who had their personal fortunes tied up in the swindle. Obama had Tim Geithner go up to New York to intercede with NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to make certain no Wall Street CEOs were investigated in connection with the mortgage-backed Securities scam (obstruction of justice—a felony in itself).

During the Bush administration, and accelerating under Obama, tax incentives were created for corporations that encouraged the off-shoring of high-paying jobs to other countries.

Americans, stripped of their ability to pay their mortgages, became easy prey for banks, who needed the entire value of the foreclosed homes on their balance sheets to stay solvent as the cash flowed out the door to buy back all the fraudulent investment bundles. In other words, the government took your jobs—so the banks could take your homes—to save themselves from going to prison for the crimes that made themselves—and Congress—incredibly rich.

US home prices fell 6.3% in May 2011, from a year earlier as foreclosures weighed down values and purchases slumped. The decline was led by a 9.9% decrease in the region that includes California, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said in a report from Washington. The second-largest drop was 9.2% in the area that includes Nevada and Arizona.

Roughly 10.4 million mortgages, or one in five outstanding home loans in the U.S., will likely default if Congress refuses to implement new policy changes to prevent and sell more foreclosures. At the end of the second quarter, more than 2.7 million long-delinquent loans, others in foreclosure and REO properties sat in the shadow inventory, more than double what it was in the first quarter of 2010. With the market averaging roughly 90,000 loan liquidations per month, it would take 32 months, nearly three years, to move through the overhang. And that number is contingent on no other loans going into default.

Many analysts looking at the housing problem mistakenly assume it is limited to loans that are currently non-performing (or 60-plus days past due). Such borrowers have a high probability of eventually losing their homes. However, the problem also includes loans with a compromised pay history; these are re-defaulting at a rapid rate.

This puts today's US government debt mountain startingly into context. By removing several zeros, one can place the debt situation in terms we all can understand--that of a family's income and expenses.

A family who takes in an annual income of $21,700 but spends $38,200 will soon be in dire straights. The large outstanding balance on the credit card only exacerbates the situation. Clearly, spending cuts need to be made, but eliminating only $385 fromthe family's budget would be a drop in the bucket. Either a substantially higher amount of income needs to be made, or the family will have to learn to live with less.

Of course, thefiscal situation is more complicated when it comes to a "family" of 311 million. It is only one part of a large conundrum for the global economy.

The Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve is not a legitimate government institution. It is a private banking cartel and a criminal organization that is acting against the interests of the American people and the American economy. Since its founding in 1913, the Federal Reserve has been a blood-sucking leech on the American economy, the American nation and the American people. The Federal Reserve must be abolished, and its directors must be brought to justice for their crimes against America and humanity. People can't back down in the face of this aggression by the treasonous banksters and their treasonous agents. They are the enemies of the American people, freedom, and mankind.

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill (HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage.

Sixteen trillion dollars ($16,000,000,000,000.00) were secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious--the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that the GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is "only" $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is "only" $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

The Federal Reserve is an entity unto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability. Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows..

History

The Federal Reserve Bank was born in 1913, the same year US banking scion J. Pierpont Morgan died and the Rockefeller Foundation was formed. The House of Morgan presided over American finance from the corner of Wall Street and Broad, acting as quasi-US central bank since 1838, when George Peabody founded it in London. Peabody was a business associate of the Rothschilds. In 1952 Fed researcher Eustace Mullins put forth the supposition that the Morgans were nothing more than Rothschild agents. Mullins wrote that the Rothschilds, “…preferred to operate anonymously in the US behind the facade of J.P. Morgan & Company.” Morgan’s activities in 1895-1896 in selling US gold bonds in Europe were based on an alliance with the House of Rothschild.

The Morgan financial octopus wrapped its tentacles quickly around the globe. Morgan Grenfell operated in London. Morgan et Ce ruled Paris. The Rothschild’s Lambert cousins set up Drexel & Company in Philadelphia. The House of Morgan catered to the Astors, DuPonts, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. It financed the launch of AT&T, General Motors, General Electric and DuPont. Like the London-based Rothschild and Barings banks, Morgan became part of the power structure in many countries. By 1890 the House of Morgan was lending to Egypt’s central bank, financing Russian railroads, floating Brazilian provincial government bonds and funding Argentine public works projects. A recession in 1893 enhanced Morgan’s power. That year Morgan saved the US government from a bank panic, forming a syndicate to prop up government reserves with a shipment of $62 million worth of Rothschild gold.

Morgan was the driving force behind Western expansion in the US, financing and controlling West-bound railroads through voting trusts. In 1879 Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Morgan-financed New York Central Railroad gave preferential shipping rates to John D. Rockefeller’s budding Standard Oil monopoly, cementing the Rockefeller/Morgan relationship. The House of Morgan now fell under Rothschild and Rockefeller family control. Morgan and Edward Harriman’s banker Kuhn Loeb held a monopoly over the railroads, while banking dynasties Lehman, Goldman Sachs and Lazard joined the Rockefellers in controlling the US industrial base.

In 1903 Banker’s Trust was set up by the Eight Families. Benjamin Strong of Banker’s Trust was the first Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The 1913 creation of the Fed fused the power of the Eight Families to the military and diplomatic might of the US government. If their overseas loans went unpaid, the oligarchs could now deploy US Marines to collect the debts. Morgan, Chase and Citibank formed an international lending syndicate. The House of Morgan was cozy with the British House of Windsor and the Italian House of Savoy. The Kuhn Loebs, Warburgs, Lehmans, Lazards, Israel Moses Seifs and Goldman Sachs also had close ties to European royalty. By 1895 Morgan controlled the flow of gold in and out of the US. The first American wave of mergers was in its infancy and was being promoted by the bankers. In 1897 there were sixty-nine industrial mergers. By 1899 there were twelve-hundred. In 1904 John Moody – founder of Moody’s Investor Services – said it was impossible to talk of Rockefeller and Morgan interests as separate.

The Federal Reserve is the most brazen of all ponzi schemes. A one-time limited GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has uncovered some eye-popping corruption at the Fed and the mainstream media is barely even covering it. It turns out that the Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their bankster friends during the financial crisis, between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010. Last year, the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy was $14.5 trillion. Many Americans have a hard time grasping just how large 16.1 trillion dollars is. It is an amount of money that is almost inconceivable. It is more than the GDP of the United States for an entire year. It is more than the U.S. government has spent over the last four years combined. The Federal Reserve was just creating gigantic piles of cash out of thin air and throwing them around with wild abandon.

But it just wasn't U.S. banksters that were showered with nearly interest-free loans. It turns out that approximately $3.08 trillion went to foreign financial institutions all over Europe and Asia. In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. Of the $16.1 trillion loaned out, $3.08 trillion went to financial institutions in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium, the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) analysis shows. Additionally, asset swap arrangements were opened with banks in the U.K., Canada, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Mexico, Singapore and Switzerland. Twelve of those arrangements are still ongoing, having been extended through August 2012. Out of all borrowers, Citigroup received the most financial assistance from the Fed, at $2.5 trillion. Morgan Stanley came in second with $2.04 trillion, followed by Merill Lynch at $1.9 trillion and Bank of America at $1.3 trillion. The GAO investigation revealed some absolutely stunning conflicts of interest, and yet the mainstream media does not even seem interested. Solid evidence of the looting of America has been put right in front of us, and yet hardly anyone wants to talk about it.

So who in the world gave the Federal Reserve permission to bail out financial institutions all over the world? Nobody did. But under our current system the Federal Reserve doesn't have to get permission. They literally get to do whatever they want. The Federal Reserve is run like a dictatorship. They get to do what they want and nobody can stop them. Not only did the Fed dish out over $16 trillion in secret loans to their friends, but they also paid their bankster friends over 600 million dollars to help them do it. According to the GAO, the Federal Reserve paid $659.4 million to the very financial institutions which caused the financial crisis to help the Fed manage all of these emergency loans, they delegated contracts largely on a no-bid basis. Not only were the banksters raking in trillions in secret loans, they were also paid to help run the lending process.

Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious, the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs. But wait, there is more. It turns out that many Fed officials had very large investments in the financial institutions that were receiving these secret loans. The Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans. It was the banksters that caused the financial crisis. They were the only ones that the Federal Reserve helped. In fact, the Federal Reserve ended up having the banksters basically run the entire emergency lending program.

Most Americans do not realize that the Federal Reserve is not actually part of the federal government. It is a privately-owned central bank that is not accountable to anyone. But most Americans still believe that the Fed is a government agency. The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as Federal Express is. Basically, an unaccountable private monopoly creates our money, sets our interest rates, regulates our banking system and makes secret loans to whoever they want. The Federal Reserve has more power over our economy than any other institution and nobody can overrule any decisions that they make. So why isn't the mainstream media talking about this?

The GAO report recommends new policies that would eliminate such conflicts of interest, and suggests that in the future the Fed should keep better records of their emergency decision-making process. The Fed agreed to "strongly consider" the recommendations, but as it is not a government-run institution it cannot be forced to do so by lawmakers. The seven-member board of governors and the Fed chairman are, however, appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.

The CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs. In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. The way theses banks have paid back the 'right pocket' is by borrowing from the left! Take the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money, they borrow more money from the Fed, then pay back TARP and while the public attention is distracted, they borrow from the Fed and pretend the situation is fixed.

What’s happening right now is not just a market crash, bear market, deflation, or any other item related to just one asset class. Instead, this is a collapse of the entire US monetary and political system and the mentality of spending one’s way to wealth. For 80+ years, the US has operated under a crony capitalist system in which politicians dole out political and economic favors to the chosen few whose bribes/donations funded their campaigns. This system was aided and abetted by the US Federal Reserve, which dealt with any and all economic issues by printing more money. Whether it was the Asian Crisis, Long Term Capital Management, or the 2008 Crash, the Fed dealt with the issue by opening the floodgates and flooding the financial system with liquidity.

The Fed also blew a credit bubble which in-turn funded bubbles in virtually every asset class: bonds, stocks, real estate, emerging markets, even some commodities. Indeed, the vast majority of US economic growth over the last 40 years has been fueled by the Fed’s loose money policies. When we account for inflation, the US economic “miracle” of the last 30 years is in fact not all that miraculous. Take away easy credit and Fed funny money and the US GDP has barely grown at all since the ‘70s. When your entire financial system is built on debt eventually you hit a brick wall. We did this in 2008. The Fed barely held the system together by going “all in” and funneling over $11 trillion in bailouts, backstopping the major US banks, and transferring north of $2 trillion in garbage debt to the public’s balance sheet.

This effort has now failed as the world collectively realizes that the Fed cannot hold the system together. In simple terms, we’ve now entered the Real Crisis, the END GAME, for our current monetary system. Before the dust settles on this mess, the US and its political, economic, monetary structure will look very very different. However, before we get there, we will see riots, civil unrest, possibly martial law, for certain a Government shutdown, bank holidays, a debt default/ restructuring, the re-instatement of the Gold standard or something like it (possibly a basket of commodities), food shortages, and more. We’re entering a period in history that will rival the Revolutionary war. This country will be very very different by the time it has ended. Many people will lose everything in this mess. Yes, everything. So if you have yet to take steps to prepare for this, you need to get moving NOW!

Ron Paul Leads Hearing On First Ever Audit Of Fed

If you consider yourself a true American, then it is important to learn about Dr. Ron Paul and then educate others. Some people are just now wising up to how great this country could be if only a few of Ron Paul's amazing ideas were implemented. It is important to remember that Dr. Paul's message is not entirely his own. The true source of knowledge & information behind everything he says and does starts with the the United States Constitution. The Constitution is the source behind ALL of his words. That is why Ron Paul is known as the "Champion of the Constitution."

It is not too late to fix America, we just need to listen to this true American patriot and then act upon those ideas. Be a part of the Ron Paul revolution and visit his newest website located at campaignforliberty.com. True change in America is possible, it's not too late. Ron Paul has started this avalanche of knowledge & freedom, it's now time for you to learn it and then pass it on.

One thing that has made Ron Paul stand apart from not just the present set of Presidential contenders, but from any contender in recent history, has been his unfailing stance on principles. He stands for freedom as vouchsafed in the Constitution of the United States, and he doesn't waver. He has been rightfully compared to a modern Thomas Jefferson. Even people who disagree with some of his positions still admire him because he stands with principle. It has been his unfaltering stance on eternal principles that makes him so popular. It isn't his charisma that people are drawn to, though he does have some of that. It is the magnetism of the message. It resonates deep in their soul. Freedom is eternal, and is perhaps the most fundamental principle embedded in our eternal make-up.

"Obama has violated the Constitution by issuing executive orders that bypass Congress and the American people. The idea they can just do this and take over the legislative function and brag about it – and Congress does nothing and the courts do nothing about it, it’s very, very bad,” Ron Paul told Fox News. In October, Obama said “we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will.” Obama said that he has looked at ways to violate the Constitution “every single day” and promised to issue “executive actions on a regular basis.” Both Democrats and Republicans love to violate the Constitution. Bush ruled by executive fiat too, but Obama has taken the practice to a new level.

Serious constitutional violations through executive orders began in earnest when FDR was in office. Obama said that “the normal balance of Executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us” and called for a “temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.” FDR asked Congress to approve of his violation of the Constitution. “I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis – broad Executive power,” FDR said. Obama has not asked for permission from a usually compliant Congress. He has dismissed Congress and the American people as “dysfunctional” and has promised to act like a dictator.

Texas Congressman and 2012 presidential candidate Ron Paul held hearings October 4, 2011 into a recent and rare one off audit of the Federal Reserve’s crisis-response emergency lending programs of 2008. In his role as chairman of the Domestic Monetary Policy subcommittee, Paul relished the glimmer of transparency that was afforded as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, signed into law last year. “More people now are starting to realize that the Fed isn’t independent of political independence because indirectly and some times more directly it is involved in political decisions or at least private decisions to serve some political interest.” Paul told those gathered at the hearing. Along with Paul, Republicans in attendance argued that the audit should pave the way for regular reviews of the Fed’s policies, as well as more complete disclosure of exactly who has received upwards of $27 trillion in bail-out funds since 2008.

The Fed’s mythical flag of independence from politics, a favorite Fed mantra to avoid individual responsibility, is merely a shield intended to protect the institution from being forced to act in a more transparent fashion. Some banks and firms that “borrowed” from the Fed, and by extension the American taxpaying public, as part of the Bear Sterns and AIG relief packages, have yet to pay back the funds. The GAO’s report found several instances of conflicts of interest and questionable practices involving Fed officials. It was also revealed that the Fed made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to Wall Street firms at the height of the crisis.

“We have too much spending and too much debt, so they’re trying to solve the problem with more debt. There’s not a chance that we can get out of the recession this way.” Ron Paul told host Judge Andrew Napolitano. “The people here don’t want to change because they have been conditioned by Keynesian economics. Where I’m encouraged is that people outside this place are getting the message. The answers are well known but how do you translate this new message that we have of free markets and the constitution, and get the people that are managing the affairs now out of office?” the Congressman stated.

Paul added that as president he would implement some immediate measures that would cut the deficit and reduce spending in a meaningful way. “Immediately you could bring all our troops home and have them spend money here at home, that would give us some reprieve. We could change our foreign policy and indicate to the world that we are going to get our budget under control.” Paul said.

“We could remove taxation on all the money that is held overseas by our corporations and not double-tax them. We could remove the interest paid by the Federal Reserve to the banks. The banks won’t invest their money because it’s too risky, but the Federal Reserve gives them their money, essentially, for free, and then they invest it back into Treasury bills, so they help monetize the debt too.” “Those are a few things, but sending a signal will be most important, ‘we’re going to quit this spending’. Right now I’m working on a plan where in one year I want to cut a trillion dollars.” Paul revealed.

“The appetite for big government is the problem. The taxes and the Federal Reserve inflating, that is the symptom, and the budget problem is a symptom of the appetite for big government.” Paul continued. “Too often the leadership is only in the business of preserving power… It’s a shame that despite all this arguing and bickering going on between the two parties, there is no difference. Regardless of which party it is they still don’t change the definition of entitlements, they don’t change the foreign policy and they don’t go after the Fed.”

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In a forthcoming event dubbed Ron Paul Is The Choice Of The Troops, thousands of veterans and active duty military personnel are expected to march on the White House in support of the Texas Congressman’s presidential bid. The event, to be held on President’s Day, February 20th, is being organized by activist group Veterans for Ron Paul 2012, co-founded by Adam Kokesh, Iraq war veteran turned activist and talk show host. In a press release, Kokesh announced that the march will progress from the Washington Monument to the White House, where those taking part will salute a “folded American flag... for as many seconds as troops have died under the Presidency of Barrack Obama.”

“The purpose of this event is to make it clear to the American people that Ron Paul is the choice of the troops and the candidate who will have the greatest support from those he would lead as commander-in-chief.” writes Kokesh. “This is already evidence by the fact that Ron Paul has received more campaign contributions from active duty service members than all other presidential candidates combined, INCLUDING Barrack Obama.”

This statistic was once again confirmed last week with figures showing Paul has collected $95,567 from individuals who listed their occupation as one of the branches of the US military or US Department of Defense.

Wall Street Protestors

Donor	Obama	Romney	Gingrich	Paul	Santorum
National Guard	$1,262	$0	$0	$4,068	$0
US Air Force	$9,785	$4,400	$4,400	$23,736	$0
US Army	$15,600	$3,500	$250	$24,503	$250
US Coast Guard	$6,002	$0	$0	$3,716	$0
US Dept of Defense	$27,613	$2,150	$0	$9,527	$0
US Marine Corps	$1,700	$250	$0	$7,662	$0
US Military	$200	$0	$0	$2,083	$0
US Navy	$10,454	$3,000	$250	$20,272	$500
TOTAL	$72,616	$13,300	$4,900	$95,567	$750

The protesters have the right to be there! They are US citizens, unhappy of how the government is managing THEIR tax-money. The increasingly out of control debt, irrational money spending and big corporation & bank bailouts will collapse the floor from under our feet and we will end up jobless, homeless and starving to death - like it happened before. Not only that, but nobody will be blamed for this!

The president and government members are not our bosses - in fact, we are their bosses. They offered their services in leading positions, to manage our money & the economy and we are the ones who chose them by vote (at least, this is the official version). Their duty is to take care of our well-being. They clearly are incapable of taking care of the country and its inhabitants, and now they must answer for their crimes! While thousands of peaceful US citizens are unjustly imprisoned, no banker or politician is even blamed - not to mention tried or convicted. What the police must understand, is that the Occupy protesters are their friends, not their enemies. They are representing their interests as well, by pointing out the flows of our current society, in a peaceful manner.

The Federal Reserve bankers have offered billions of dollars to the CIA mercenaries in Libya to come to the United States and start a bloody rebellion. The Federal Reserve bankers sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make their offer and terms. According to high ranking U.S. military officials the plot by the Federal Reserve bankers calls for Libyan mercenaries to enter the United States as guest of the Federal Reserve banks. Once on U.S. soil they are to hook up with CIA and DHS contacts and immediately prepare and execute their mission to start shooting New York City cops who are assigned to police the Occupy Wall Street protests. The Occupy Wall Street Protests were actually planned for by the Federal Reserve bankers. They financed it – by financing the Vancouver-based advocacy magazine, Adbusters who planned for and organized the Occupy Wall Street Protests. On September 14, 2011 they officially kicked off their campaign for Occupy Wall Street.

Why would the Federal Reserve bankers finance protests that call for their being abolished? The European controlled Federal Reserve bankers have been trying to destroy the United States as we know it. First by financing the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. That assassination started WWI. Then they orchestrated the Great Depression. Then they financed a little known Austrian named Adolf Hitler who they ordered to start WWII. Then the Korean War and the Vietnam War. When all those attempts failed to destroy the United States – through war, they tried through debt. They illegally took the gold and silver backed U.S. dollar out of circulation and began issuing their own worthless interest bearing counterfeit Federal Reserve Notes. Their intent was to cause the United States to be destroyed through debt.

Now that the United States is bankrupt the Federal Reserve bankers want another major war – WWIII. They need a war in order to bring about the Vatican’s Fourth Reich – aka New World Order. They tried to start a major war by using false flag attacks against the United States on the anniversary of 9/11 but the United States Air Force thwarted those attacks. On August 23, 2011 the CIA tried to transport improvised nuclear bombs into Washington DC and New York City via the underground tunnel systems that links the United States Deep Underground Military Bases. The U.S. Air Force intercepted these CIA nuclear warheads and they were prematurely detonated during a battle underground. The World inadvertently became aware of this major incident when 2 large earthquakes were felt by the American people on August 23, 2011.

The peaceful movement 'Occupy Wall Street' started in New York, USA. Even though the protesters are not receiving any help from the main stream media, the police are brutalizing and arresting thousands and the government doesn't seem to mind them, this movement is gaining momentum and is about to become a worldwide peaceful revolution. After years of economic distress and huge financial problems, the world is about to fall into an even deeper, global financial crisis - specialists say.

Bought-and-paid-for Obama--the man who has done everything Wall Street wanted from day one--continues to claim common cause with Wall Street Protests. Our governments are corrupt and obsolete. Our world is led by the bankers and the big corporations. 35,000 children die of hunger each day, while our governments allocate billions of dollars each year for building more weapons. The big pharmaceutical companies are making profits of $ billions/year for keeping us ill & addicted to their drugs, without healing us. The police are gaining more and more power each day, while our constitutional rights are broken. Each day our liberty is restrained.

Anti-corruption protests in the US, which started from the Wall Street in New York, have now spread to 847 cities across the country. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement started its demonstrations about four weeks ago and it has continued gatherings until now, October 7, 2011. Demonstrators protest against corporatism, unemployment, poverty and social inequality among other things. They blame Wall Street practices and corporate influence on White House policies for the deepening US economic crisis. The members of the Occupy Wall Street movement have vowed to stay out through winter. Protesters use the slogan “We are the 99 percent” to call attention to the fact that they are not part of the one percent of Americans in possession of the nation’s wealth.

One of the financial institutions being targeted by protesters is foreclosure mill and government bailout recipient Bank of America (BOA). In Boston, thousands of people marched against BOA’s greed and in Los Angeles, numerous people were arrested while staging a sit-in at a local branch. While many Americans may feel powerless against this banking behemoth, the truth is that Americans have a simple way to protest its greed and corporate malfeasance: simply move your money out of the bank to one of its competitors, such as a local credit union.

Bank of America just unveiled a shocking new debit card fee. Late last month, BOA announced that it would start charging a $5-a-month fee simply for consumers to use their debit cards for purchases. Bank of America has spent millions lobbying to gut reforms with your tax dollars. Despite being bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars by the federal government, Bank of America has still had the gumption to spend millions of dollars in Washington battling new reforms meant to re-regulate the financial sector. It spent nearly $4 million hiring a double-digit number of lobbyists in 2010, mostly aimed at gutting legislation related to banking regulations. Meanwhile, it spent a million dollars on campaign contributions in the 2010 electoral cycle.

Bank of America’s practices are at the nexus of the foreclosure crisis. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan raised eyebrows recently when he excitedly cheered for faster foreclosures of Americans’ homes. Despite being found to be a major user of error-ridden “robo-signing” foreclosure practices last year, the mega-bank only briefly halted its foreclosure proceedings nationwide. It is also facing lawsuits by multiple states over its mortgage practices.

Bank of America just announced that it was laying off 30,000 people. The “firm’s 30,000 job cuts are more than double what any other U.S.-based employer has announced so far this year. Despite the poor economy, Bank Of America continues to reward its executives with multi-million dollar salaries. Despite blaming economic woes for layoffs of employees and its new debit card fee, the mega-bank continues to deliver huge paydays to its executives. The bank just announced that two of its former executives, Sallie Krawcheck and Joe Price, will receive a salary of $850,000 and a payment of $5.15 million and a salary of $850,000 and a payment of $4.15 million respectively. Meanwhile, BOA maintained its CEO’s salary of $950,000 plus $9.05 million in performance-based stock awards this year.

Americans do not have to stand by and allow a mega-bank to continue to rip off its consumers, to develop and foster abusive mortgage practices, reward its executives lavishly, and shortchange own workforce. They can strike a blow against this institution by simply moving their money away from it, either to its major competitors or into the country’s large network of community banks and credit unions. Organizers are putting together a “Bank Transfer Day” on November 5th and are encouraging Americans to pull their money out of big banks and put their savings instead into credit unions.

There are still some within these movements who believe the answer to fighting back against the corruption of banking cartels and puppet politicians is to hand even MORE power over to the state, and to collectivize our culture still further. The ignorance of this mentality is no less than astonishing. The only practical strategy for combating the tyranny of centralized systems has been and always will be decentralization. Individuals must stop relying on the rules of a rigged game to see them through to the truth. This means that while mass protests are certainly a powerful tactic for voicing concerns on an international stage, they accomplish little to nothing in the way of meaningful change in the long run unless they are backed by individual actions to break away from dependency upon a poisoned political and economic framework.

The common assumption amongst Americans is that nothing can be done without mass action resulting in “compromise” from leadership. That the healing of our cultural dynamic is a “top down” process. That one person alone has little at his disposal for bettering the world. In fact, it is always self aware and self sustaining individuals who build better societies, not angry mobs without understanding or direction. Individuals blaze the path that the rest of the world eventually follows, and they do this through one very simple and effective act; walking away. By walking away from the corrupt system, and building our own, we make the establishment obsolete.

David Icke's List of Requirements

Any ‘protest’, any ‘change’ or ‘revolution’ not founded on the list below – at the very least the list below – has got no chance of changing anything. These very pillars of the system must fall or they will block any transformation of the human condition. The system does not need to be tinkered with or even fundamentally changed (on the surface). The whole bloody lot must go … starting with:

1. An end to creating money out of thin air on computer screens and charging interest on it (fractional reserve lending).

2. An end to governments borrowing fresh-air money called ‘credit’ from private banks and the people paying interest on this ‘money’ that has never, does not and will never exist. Governments (and that concept must change radically) can create their own currency – interest free.

3. An end to private banks issuing non-existent money called ‘credit’ at all and thus creating ‘money’ as a debt from the very start.

4. An end to casinos like Wall Street and the City of London betting mercilessly on the financial and commodity markets with the lives of billions around the world.

5. An end to all professional lobby groups that earn their living and their clients’ living from corrupting the professionally corruptible – vast numbers of world politicians and the overwhelming majority on Capitol Hill.

6. An end to no-contract government in which mendacious politicians can promise the people they will do this and that to win their support and then do the very opposite after they have lied themselves into office (see Obama).

7. An end to the centralisation of power in all areas of our lives and a start to diversifying power to communities to decide their own lives and thus ensure there are too many points of decision making for any cabal to centrally control.

That is just for starters. There is so much more where that came from. What good will come from rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic? NONE. The banking system as we know it does not need to be changed - it needs to be gone. It is a criminal activity based on fraud, extortion and, through its effect, on worldwide mass murder. Its replacement needs to be decided by the population - not the very people who created it in the first place and are covertly manipulating a new global structure of financial control based on a world central bank.

In a police state like modern America, even peaceful resistance is considered violence and cause for even more brutality. Passive resistance is considered “violence” and aggression in today’s militarized police state. For example, protesters peacefully linking arms is considered “violence” by the UC Berkeley police. And failing to get on the ground is grounds to beat a peaceful war hero so bad that his spleen is ruptured (and then denying him medical treatment for 18 hours). Of course pregnant women, old ladies, judges, legal observers, reporters , veterans and skinny students are all scary and violent enemies who need to be beaten into submission. So in today’s “standard” police state procedure, curling into a ball to avoid violence from police is considered “active resistance” which warrants more force, including baton strikes? The real problem, of course, is that the criminal class that defrauded our country out of prosperity is now sending in the mercenaries to keep the peasants in line.

But these are people who are so committed to the ideals of the Occupy movement that they abandoned the soft conveniences of modern existence - walls, a roof, a bed, plumbing, locks on the doors and the soothing babble of cable TV - to sleep in a park surrounded by strangers for almost two months. Have you ever gone camping for two full months, anywhere? It has been hot, it has been cold, it has rained, it has snowed, and, oh yeah, there was the ever-present threat of catching a billy club over the head or a face full of NYPD mace for their trouble. You think they're going away after enduring all that? They are the message, that things have gone badly wrong in these United States, that the American Dream of even minimal upward mobility and the promise of a better future for our children were sold for pennies on the dollar to the bastards and whores who have perverted this democracy past the point of recognition. It's a fantastic bit of irony, a towering example of cognitive dissonance, that the same people who attack the Occupy movement are also the ones packing guns to Tea Party protests because they think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

C'mon police. Get with it. The revolution is here. Keep up the pepper spraying and you may show up for work to find a thousand people with pepper-spray ready to hose YOUR face down with! That is just human nature. It's time to grow up, wake up and face reality--you are in it with the rest of us!

As more people became dissatisfied with federal government controls and land grabs, it was inevitable that local law enforcement would eventually see the bigger picture. At the northern California fairgrounds of Yreka last month, seven California sheriffs and another from Oregon gathered with a large group of citizens to say that they are finally going to do something about it.

Here is an example of an outstanding sheriff setting the example for police everywhere: Outstanding public servants like the sheriff in the video below show that

20% of the people do 80% of the work--and we can never ever forget that brave 20%.

Attention Law Enforcement: The Feds are selling guns to gangsters to kill your brothers! And all you have time to do is beat up and pepper-spray peaceful protesters, women, and ....what? Where is YOUR SELF-RESPECT? Or is that the problem--you have none--and therefore none for the citizens paying your way?

Law enforcement: Are you Brave? PROVE IT! Stand up for what is GOOD AND RIGHT and lose the "cop-out" bullshit "following orders" excuse.

YOUR OWN FATE AND THAT OF YOUR OWN FAMILIES REST ON A VERY THIN BLUE LINE INDEED.

Pick a side. Just remember - you and your family will live with your decision for a very long time.

The Sheriff

Some weighty titles have been attached to the stars Sheriffs wear on their chests. "Ultimate enforcers of the Constitution." "Protectors against government tyranny." "America's last hope." "Brave oath keepers." Sheriffs, need to protect their citizenry from much more than local lawbreakers. In today's world, public enemy No. 1 just might be the federal government — or the out-of-control federal bureaucracy. The person who will "stand tall against federal tyranny," even if it means armed resistance, is the county sheriff. Sheriffs have the supreme law enforcement power in their counties under the Constitution and the 10th Amendment. Much of what federal agents are doing in counties is unconstitutional. Federal agents have no authority beyond policing treason, piracy, treaty violations and counterfeiting. Thus, the scofflaws that sheriffs might encounter today — and who should be run out of town by a SWAT team, if that's what it takes — include agents for the U.S. Forest Service; the Bureau of Land Management; the IRS; the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Environmental Protection Agency; and even the Food and Drug Administration.

The sheriff's position overrides any federal agents or even the arrogant FBI agents who attempt to assume jurisdiction in our cases.

Occupy Wallstreet is Being Hijacked by " Move On" and Michael Moore

We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens. The "1033 Program" gave more than $500 million of military gear to US police in 2011 alone. 1033 was passed by Congress in 1997 to help law-enforcement fight terrorism and drugs, but despite a 40 year low in violent crime, police are snapping up hardware like never before. While this years staggering take topped the charts, next years orders are up 400 percent over the same period. This upswing coincides with an increasingly military-like style of law-enforcement most recently seen in the Occupy Wall Street crackdowns. The trend toward militarization was well under way before 9/11, but it’s the federal policy of making surplus military equipment available almost for free that has poured fuel on this fire. It’s kind of had a corrupting influence on the culture of policing in America.

The momentum for a second American revolution is stirring, but the establishment is working overtime to steer the public’s anger into easy controlled avenues and big government solutions. Instead, by striking at the root of the true problems, we can attempt to reign in the predatory banking powers that plague our nation and begin to restore the Republic. The Federal Reserve banking system is at the root of that problem and a perpetual impediment towards ending the global economic crisis that continues to grow. Without the Fed the bad boys of Wall Street could not do so much damage to our country.

A Baltimore police union and two firefighters unions have written to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (who wants to shut down Occupy Baltimore) asking that the protests be allowed to continue. And city employees from Irvine, California to Providence, Rhode Island have correctly said that – whether or not they agree with the protesters’ views – the protesters’ have the right of free speech and free assembly under the Constitution. Perhaps this is the start of justice for 99% … instead of just the top 1%.

People are continuing to learn more about Wall Street and New York City and the nature of the people in the upper echelons. Not only have Americans watched the players on Wall Street shove the nation’s future into their wallets, but there are more specific reasons that the police are behaving in a corrupt manner, they’re being paid off. The Occupy Wall Street movement took a lot of unnecessary heat from, "The Heat" on the first weekend of October. First, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna maced women in an act of clear, unwarranted police brutality, and then there were mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge for absolutely no good reason. So, as if the NYPD didn't already look like total jerks, there's more disturbing news coming out about who's backing their movement to break up the peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstration. JPMorgan Chase -- one of the biggest banksters that Occupy Wall Street is standing up to -- made the largest donation in the history of the New York City Police Foundation to the NYPD's nonprofit organization ... just in the nick of time! They donated $4.6 million, supposedly to fund new laptops in patrol cars and security monitoring software.

This kind of shady corruption and government in bed with greedy corporations is so outrageous, it's an insult to New Yorkers and the American people. Regardless of when the donation took place, You'd be hard-pressed to think of any other reason that JPMorgan would have given such a "generous" chunk of change other than to influence the city-run institution. It's indicative of the very disease that pervades all levels of government. We can't even vote in politicians who haven't been bought in some way, shape, or form by these white-collar criminals anymore. That's why there has never been a better time for the "99 percent" to stand up and call for an end to corporate corruption.

Who/what are the police pepper-spraying and beating the Wall Street protesters for? Do they know? Do they care? Time to put on your thinking caps "public servant" friends.

First: Their soon-to-disappear paycheck - as funds dry up for their swollen ranks. Yes - that fat blue line will become a thin blue line shortly - why? The money is drying up! We don't have anymore money for cops fighting a fake "war on drugs" - a fake "war on horror" or any other idiot undefinable charade. No more money for these public "servants."

Second: Following orders. What are the orders and who is giving them? Are the orders to pepper-spray women you have penned in with a plastic "police line" fence that the dumbass lot of you can't erect with the words right-side-up? Anyone following orders that are unethical and immoral will find that the "wheels of justice grind slowly" - whether you wear a blue suit or blue hair. It doesn't matter.'

Third: Donations from the political action committees and executives of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo - banks that received $95 billion in federal bailout funds - account for one-fifth of the $4.3 million in campaign cash donated by commercial banking interests to the 12 supercommittee members. Supercommittee co-chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) received the most from the big banks. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo have given Hensarling a total of $188,962 during his Congressional career. Hensarling also serves as the vice chair of the House Financial Services Committee and has received a total of $3.9 million from financial interests.

Illustrating the fact that the Democratic Party establishment has hijacked and is now steering the ‘Occupy’ movement, an aide to Deputy Mayor Esther Sanchez was caught organizing and leading the ‘Occupy Oceanside’ event which took place October 28, in San Diego County, California.

Most Americans are being kept in the dark about the US Day of Rage on September 17, by the corporate cable news giants at CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC who have imposed a de-facto blackout on the protest. Even though an estimated 50,000 protesters have flooded into Manhattan to, “nonviolently disrupt the disloyal, incompetent, and corrupt special interests which have usurped our nation’s civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to our liberty, lives and national security,” the three cable news networks have devoted no airtime to the story. This is becoming an all too familiar scene. In Wisconsin hundreds of thousands of regular people took to the streets each weekend to protest the theft of their rights, and were completely ignored by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Sarah Palin’s Iowa tea party speech was 1/50 as big as the Wisconsin protests, yet she was deemed worthy of national media coverage.

As the demonstration began, as many as 1,000 people congregated in the Chase Manhattan Plaza area and, after speakers with a bullhorn rallied the crowd, broke into groups to discuss the event’s goals. Protesters waved red flags and toted cardboard signs with statements such as “represent the 99%.” Others donned white, mustachioed masks of the anti-authoritarian protagonist from the graphic novel and film “V for Vendetta.” A few people played instruments, including guitars, ukuleles and maracas. Chants and applause periodically erupted around the plaza. Police encircled the plaza and partitioned Wall Street’s pedestrian walkway.

As the day continued and turned to night, the crowds grew with protestors on the ground saying a crowd of 50,000 had gathered in Wall Street. A little after 9:00 PM, police began ordering protestors they had to leave by 10:00 PM or face arrest. The protestors began speaking in union, describe by some as “chanting” in solidarity they would not disperse and would remain in solidarity in the spirit of the protestors at Egypt’s Tahrir square. The 10:00 PM deadline passed and protestors report remained on scene via various social networking sites, even as police begin to gather en-mass, surrounding the site of the protests. NYC police reportedly cut internet service to the area were 50,000 protestors have gathered to participate in the Occupy Wall Street Protests, apparently in an attempt to stop the live video stream and other live reports of the event from making it online.

According to a Washington Post poll released on August 10, 2011, just 21 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way the country’s political system is working, down 17 points from November 2009. Forty-five percent of Americans now consider themselves “very dissatisfied” and 33 percent consider themselves “mostly dissatisfied. Just 26 percent of Americans believe that the federal government can actually solve the country’s economic problems, down 21 points from October 2010 and down 37 points from February 2002.

The dollar has fallen in value by more than 80 percent from the day when Richard Nixon took the world off the tattered remnants of the gold standard. August 15 marks the 40th anniversary of the avowedly "temporary" abandonment of the gold standard by President Richard Nixon. "Closing the gold window" was part of a series of dramatic but shocking and destructive tactics by Washington, including wage-price controls, a tariff barrier, and other measures, all leading to economic and financial-market hell. There is ample evidence that restoring gold convertibility would put the world back on the path to jobs, growth, and a balanced federal budget.

Bloomberg has been engaged in a long, frustrating FOIA litigation battle with the Federal Reserve over that entity’s reluctance publicly to reveal what it has been doing with our money. Slowly, the stone wall has been coming down. And looking at what’s behind it, it’s pretty obvious why the Fed would have preferred to keep its deeds locked away from all prying eyes. On August 22 Bloomberg reported: Wall Street Aristocracy received $1.2 Trillion from Fed. This money is not a part of the $16.1 trillion in emergency loans the Fed handed to US and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the first-ever, one-time-only GAO audit of the central bank ordered by Dodd-Frank. Nor is it part of the $2 trillion quantitative easing program. Nor is TARP’s $700 billion in there, either. Read that again. This $1.2 trillion — and that’s a lot of money — is separate from all that other stuff. It’s another hitherto secret funding program that we never would have heard of if Bloomberg hadn’t torn it from the Fed’s mouth like a rotten tooth.

The list of who got the bucks is a basic guide to the American banking industry. $107 billion to Morgan Stanley. $99 billion to Citigroup. $91 billion to Bank of America. Over $75 billion to State Street and just under that to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. And the list goes on. And on. And on. Even the disgraced Countrywide Financial got in on the act, claiming about $12.5 billion. Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers were European firms. They included the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was propped up to the tune of $84.5 billion, the most of any non-US lender, and Zurich-based UBS, which got $77.2 billion. The big foreign borrowers also included Dexia, Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, the French Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Crédit Suisse.

Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), on September 3, 2011, filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions, certain of their officers and various unaffiliated lead underwriters. The suits allege violations of federal securities laws and common law in the sale of residential private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) to the Enterprises.

Complaints have been filed against the following lead defendants, in alphabetical order:

1. Ally Financial Inc. f/k/a GMAC, LLC - $6 billion
2. Bank of America Corporation - $6 billion
3. Barclays Bank PLC - $4.9 billion
4. Citigroup, Inc. - $3.5 billion
5. Countrywide Financial Corporation -$26.6 billion
6. Credit Suisse Holdings (USA), Inc. - $14.1 billion
7. Deutsche Bank AG - $14.2 billion
8. First Horizon National Corporation - $883 million
9. General Electric Company - $549 million
10. Goldman Sachs & Co. - $11.1 billion
11. HSBC North America Holdings, Inc. - $6.2 billion
12. JPMorgan Chase & Co. - $33 billion
13. Merrill Lynch & Co. / First Franklin Financial Corp. - $24.8 billion
14. Morgan Stanley - $10.6 billion
15. Nomura Holding America Inc. - $2 billion
16. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC - $30.4 billion
17. Société Générale - $1.3 billion

These complaints were filed in federal or state court in New York or the federal court in Connecticut. The complaints seek damages and civil penalties under the Securities Act of 1933, similar in content to the complaint FHFA filed against UBS Americas, Inc. on July 27, 2011. In addition, each complaint seeks compensatory damages for negligent misrepresentation. Certain complaints also allege state securities law violations or common law fraud. [read full FHFA release] Noticeably absent from the list of companies being sued is Wells Fargo.

S&P’s downgrade of the US Treasury’s credit rating reflects a loss of confidence in the political system was confirmed by the rating agency itself. S&P explained the downgrade as the result of heightened political risks, not economic ones. The game of chicken over the debt ceiling increase and the GOP’s ability to block tax increases indicate that “America’s governance and policymaking is becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable.” The reduction in the government’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA is a cosmetic change. It remains a very high investment grade rating and is unlikely to have any effect on interest rates. It is revealing that despite the downgrade, US bond prices rose. It was stocks that fell. The financial press is blaming the stock market decline on the bond downgrade. However, stocks are falling because the economy is falling. Too many jobs have been moved offshore.

The beltway-bottom-feeders know just how to scare their fluoride-head constituents. With the complicity of the corporate controlled media, the task of getting away with murder has been elevated to a supreme political art form. We just witnessed another piece of legislation to destroy Social Security, Medicare and to usurp the US Constitution's power to govern America via a "star chamber" group of 12, bought and paid for political operatives. Their style of government is very reminiscent of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Historically borrowers have been going bankrupt for centuries, thus, the conditions in the six European countries in trouble, England and the US, are not at all unusual. The key to preventing insolvency is in the hands of the lenders, the banks. Why do banks make the same mistakes over and over again? Often it is for political expediency but, in today’s cases, it is to break down the financial system as much as possible to force the inhabitants of the US, UK, Europe and the remainder of the world to accept World government. S&P announced August 5, that they have downgraded the U.S. debt rating from AAA to AA+ with a negative outlook.

All major currencies are falling vs. gold and silver, particularly the US dollar and that doesn’t say much for fiat currencies. These weaknesses affect the cost of goods sold in these currencies. Commodities are generally sold in US dollars. If the dollar is falling in terms of gold and silver the price of commodities will rise. As central banks and governments struggle to keep their economies afloat they smother any chance of deflation at least until they have created hyperinflation. The implementation of QE3 and its ultimate cost, probably $2.3 trillion, means that 2 to 2-1/2 years from now we will probably be entering hyperinflation. In the meantime the results of QE1 and stimulus 1 is hitting the economy with 10.6% inflation and 14% by the end of the year. As a result of QE2 and stimulus 2 we see 25% to 30% and when QE3 hits the economy we should approach 50% and hyperinflation. Like the secret issuance by the Fed of $16 trillion, the introduction of QE3 will be by stealth and secret.

The corporate cable news media ignored Wisconsin, and now they are ignoring the protests of regular Americans who want their democracy placed back into their hands. The corporate media have proven time and time again that they are an obstacle to, not a provider of truth. Unlike the bogus tea party movement, the Occupy Wall Street protest features people of all ages, colors, shapes, sizes, and political affiliations. These people are protesting a broken system. They are protesting a loss of freedom. They are protesting inequality, and they are fighting for our rights.

Whether or not the corporate media cameras are in attendance, the protests will go on. Americans will continue to march, and those who love their country will continue to battle to make it better. The conservative media bias of the cable news industry can and will be overcome. We don’t need video to feel the heart of America beat strong.

Free Insider Newsletter

The Golden Years

Instead of valuing the experience and wisdom of our elders, our society openly makes fun of them and treats them as undesirables. If you are afraid of getting old, you are not being irrational. Getting old is indeed something to fear in this society. The truth is that there is simply no way that we can keep all of the financial promises that we have made to elderly Americans even if the most optimistic projections for our economy play out. If the worst happens, we are going to see a lot more elderly Americans eating out of trash cans and freezing to death in their own homes. The United States is facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. A comfortable, happy retirement is rapidly going to become a luxury that only the wealthy will enjoy. For most of the rest of us, our golden years are going to mean a whole lot of pain and suffering.

All over America, millions of elderly Americans are wondering if their money is going to run out before it is time for them to die. Those that are now past retirement age are not going to be rioting in the streets, but that doesn’t mean that large numbers of them are not deeply suffering. Approximately 3 out of every 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62. Most are doing this out of necessity. Even though prices for necessities such as food and gas have been exploding, those receiving Social Security benefits have not received a cost of living increase for two years in a row. Many elderly Americans that are living on fixed incomes are being squeezed like they have never been squeezed before. There are millions of Americans out there that have done everything “right” all of their lives, but that now find the system letting them down in their golden years.

Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500. If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd have $892,919.98. If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month. The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madhoff ever had. Entitlement my ass, we paid cash for our social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make our benefits some kind of charity or handout!! Congressional benefits--free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call our social security retirement entitlements? We're "broke" and can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless.

In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile, and Turkey. And now Pakistan ......home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!! Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries! They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when it’s time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT* gave 'US' the same support they give to other countries.

We tend to treat elderly Americans like garbage. There are millions of elderly Americans that are leading lives of “quiet desperation” as they try to get by on meager fixed incomes. Many are surviving on Ramen noodles, oatmeal, peanut butter or whatever other cheap food they can find in the stores. There are some that are so short on cash that they will not turn on the heat in their homes until things get really desperate. As health care costs soar, millions of elderly Americans find themselves deep in debt and facing huge medical bills that they cannot possibly pay. A lot of older Americans would go back to work if they could, but jobs are scarce and very few companies seem to even want to consider hiring them.

On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turned 65. From then on, every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers reach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years. A massive tsunami of retirees is coming, and America is not ready for it. Sadly, most retirees have not adequately prepared for retirement. For many, the recent economic downturn absolutely devastated their retirement plans. Many were counting on the equity in their homes, but the recent housing crash crushed those dreams. All over the United States predatory lenders are coldly and cruelly foreclosing on elderly homeowners. Others had their 401ks shredded by the stock market. Over 30 percent of all U.S. investors currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k retirement plans invested in equities. Meanwhile, corporate pension plans all across America are vastly underfunded. Many state and local government pension programs are absolute disasters. The federal government has already begun to pay out significantly more in Social Security benefits than they are taking in, and the years ahead are projected to be downright apocalyptic for the Social Security program.

Today you will find a disturbingly large number of elderly Americans flipping burgers or welcoming people to Wal-Mart. But most of them are not doing it because they are bored with retirement. Rather, most of them are working as wage slaves because that is what they have to do in order to survive. Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Most of the bankruptcies among the elderly are caused by our deeply corrupt health care system. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually already have health insurance. The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run dry five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

Social Security

Why did Bernie Madoff go to prison? To make it simple, he talked people into investing with him. Trouble was, he didn't invest their money. As time rolled on he simply took the money from the new investors to pay off the old investors. Finally there were too many old investors and not enough money from new investors coming in to keep the payments going. Next thing you know Madoff is one of the most hated men in America and he is off to jail. Some of you know this. But not enough of you. Madoff did to his investors what the government has been doing to us for over 70 years with Social Security. There is no meaningful difference between the two schemes, except that one was operated by a private individual who is now in jail, and the other is operated by politicians who enjoy perks, privileges and status in spite of their actions.

BERNIE MADOFF	SOCIAL SECURITY
Takes money from investors with the promise that the money will be invested and made available to them later.	Takes money from wage earners with the promise that the money will be invested in a "Trust Fund" (Lock Box) and made available later.
Instead of investing the money Madoff spends it on nice homes in the Hamptons and yachts.	Instead of depositing money in a Trust Fund the politicians transfer it to the General Revenue Fund and use it for general spending and vote buying.
When the time comes to pay the investors back Madoff simply uses some of the new funds from newer investors to pay back the older investors.	When benefits for older investors become due the politicians pay them with money taken from younger and newer wage earners to pay the older geezers.
When Madoff's scheme is discovered all hell breaks loose. New investors w on't give him any more cash.	When Social Security runs out of money the politicians try to force the taxpayers to send them some more; or they cancel S/S to all those who paid into it.
Bernie Madoff is in jail.	Politicians remain in Washington .. With fat medical and retirement benefits.

'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.'

Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500. If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working (that was me) you'd have $892,919.98.

If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month. The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madhoff ever had.

They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when its time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? Entitlement??? We paid cash for our social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!! Congressional benefits, aka, free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call social security retirement entitlements?

We're "broke" and can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.! In the Last months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile, and Turkey. And now Pakistan......home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!! Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries!

Imagine if the "GOVERNMENT" gave 'US' the same support they give to other countries.

F.U.B.A.R.

The power of life and death over what’s left of the American economy and the millions of people who depend on Social Security checks now rests in the hands of twelve bought off officials who will make up the new Super Congress. According to NPR, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell could be tapped to serve as the top destroyers of America, taking direct orders from the criminal bankers on Wall Street. The Super Congress will use dictatorial powers to bypass constitutional checks and balances and ram a fascist agenda through the Congress under the flawed premise that they are bringing the fiscal house in order. What is not mentioned is that America’s fiscal house was destroyed when Congress was bullied into handing over trillions of dollars to banks that committed fraud in September 2008. That act of high treason was preceded by another act of high treason seven years earlier, when the Bush administration staged the false flag 9/11 attacks. The attacks were used to justify a manufactured war on terrorism that has channeled trillions of dollars from the American people into a tiny oligarchy that controls the financial-military-industrial complex. But that history is missing in the corporate media. Instead of informing the American people about the robbery and treason that has taken place, news anchors and reporters are spreading lies and disinformation that Social Security is an unfunded liability and needs to be cut in order for America to have a sound economic future.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is behind a billion dollar propaganda campaign that is injecting these lies into the media to control the political discourse and help the financial parasites and oligarchs to loot Social Security and Medicare. Peterson is a connected insider and a surrogate for the financial parasites that have occupied and looted America since the creation of the private Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. Peterson served as the Chairman of the corrupt Council on Foreign Relations from 1985 to 2007, following the chairmanship of David Rockefeller. He was also Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2000 to 2004, the most important of the Federal Reserve banks. Peterson’s aims are the aims of the global private banking cartel that wants to get rid of the social safety net, destroy the American middle class, abolish nation states, and establish a new world authoritarian government that they will control.

If Pete Peterson, David Rockefeller, and other criminal financiers have their way, the American people’s pensions will be looted along with America’s national infrastructure as soon as they are privatized and handed over to politically connected banks and corporations. The crooks in the Super Congress will try to sell the massive rip-off to the American people as “fiscal sanity.” Once the riots begin and martial law is declared, the Super Congress will take over and run Washington while the rest of the Congress will be told to go home for their own safety. The media propaganda machine might say something like: “Congressmen and Senators are being threatened with assassination as protests increase in Washington, so for their own safety they have been sent back to their districts with security guards assigned to them. Meanwhile, the Super Congress that was created back in August will stay behind to carry out their congressional duties.” Can you see the bigger picture? It may not be evident now, but in six months or a year from now we will see the real reasons why the Super Congress was created.

Can you see the death and destruction that awaits America because of the treason that has been committed against the American people and U.S. Constitution? The reason this new power grab by the Super Congress is so dangerous is because it represents the official end of constitutional government in the United States. Combine the power of the Super Congress with the power of dictatorial executive orders that have been used by Bush and Obama, and what you get is the absolute destruction of freedom, the American Constitution, and the rule of law.

The Super overlords in the new imperial Congress and President Obama will force austerity cuts on the American people, just like the paid-off politicians are doing in Greece. America will go through what Greece is going through right now, and what Argentina went through in the beginning of the last decade except it will be ten times worse in America. The traitorous and criminal parasites who control the private Federal Reserve Bank, IMF, WTO, and World Bank are responsible for the collapse of nations and the destruction of national economies. They are not capitalists and representatives of the free-market, they are corporate fascists and oligarchical monopolists. So don’t blame capitalism for America’s destruction. Blame plutocracy. Blame stupidity. Blame media brainwashing. Blame treason.

August 15 marks the 40th anniversary of the United States' abandonment of the last vestiges of the gold standard (actually a gold-exchange standard under the Bretton Woods system ratified by Congress in 1945. In President Richard Nixon's address to the nation on that fateful day in 1971, where he compounded his economic error by imposing wage and price controls and a 10% tariff on imported goods, he announced: "I have directed the Secretary of the Treasury to take the action necessary to defend the dollar against the speculators. I have directed Secretary [John] Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets, except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interests of monetary stability and in the best interests of the United States."

The "speculators" were blamed for the nation's economic ills—just as they were during the financial and housing crisis of 2008 and the European debt crisis now—rather than unsustainable central bank credit expansions and government spending. Note also that this government directive was purportedly a temporary measure.

The dollar has lost 82% of its purchasing power since the government abandoned the Bretton Woods system. The Bretton Woods system was not a classical gold standard, so it ultimately proved to be unsustainable, but the fiat (paper) money system that replaced it was destined to be even worse. Freed of any constraints on printing ever more money out of thin air, the United States, through the Federal Reserve, has run the printing presses with impunity (as has the rest of the world), resulting in higher inflation and an even more rapid devaluation of the currency. Gold climbed to about $800 an ounce within a decade.

Politicians hate the gold standard because it prevents them from supporting unsustainable spending habits by printing money to pay off ever-expanding debts and passing off the costs to unsuspecting taxpayers through the hidden tax of inflation. A true free market in money would also negate the need for a central bank monopoly and all the machinations it uses to expand credit and create volatile asset bubbles and excessively painful corrections. This is why the gold standard is said to be critical to preserving freedom, and why the Fed's expansion of its balance sheet by trillions of dollars in recent years is so alarming. The surest way to put an end to government manipulations of the monetary system and get the economy on a healthy growth path once again is to return to a classical gold standard because the only money "as good as gold" is gold.

The 400 richest Americans used to pay 30% of their income on the average to Uncle Sam. Today, they pay 18% on the average. The main reason for the drop in their tax rate of some 40% is the tax cuts by George Bush in 2003, taking the rate paid on dividends and capital gains down to 15%. This reduction in the investment class’s taxes powered the bull market in stocks from the fall of 2003 until the fall of 2007. Shockingly, the plan to raise the debt ceiling collects nothing from the wealthiest Americans to reduce our budget deficit.

Obama is saying that if a solution is not found by August 2nd, that he will let US bonds fall into default and terminate government’s Social Security obligations. To loot Social Security is absurd, because there is nothing to loot. The bonds held in behalf of the Social Security Trust are valueless. They cannot be traded on the open market and must be redeemed by the US government, which is broke. All the President has to do is issue new bonds, sell them to the Fed, and fund SS and Medicare for that matter. The extension of the short-term debt solves nothing and only throws problems into the future. Like so many things the elitists do, the debt extension is a distraction. The congressional game is being played to keep people’s attention away from the very real economic and financial problems. How can anyone believe that creating more debt will solve the debt problem?

For 25 years the war on terror has been the excuse to move forward most any agenda. The latest is that is why we need the debt extension. That is totally ludicrous foolishness some actually believe. There is little talk of making real budget cuts or raising taxes. Almost the entire House is interested in maintaining the status quo. Congress is a sad lot. They are happy to receive the benefits of deficit spending without additional taxation. They know very well the way to reducing the budget deficit is to cut military spending. Because the military and industrial machine has paid these so-called public servants too much money in campaign contributions to say no. Deficit spending is never going to end until the rules are changed or there is revolution. 95% of both parties have sold out, so how can anyone expect change.

The debt limit negotiations are not what they appear to be. The negotiations are being used as a diversion to cover up a devious plan to push the USA into a default. Americans are being 'played like a fiddle,' all the theater is a smokescreen for what is taking place behind the scenes. A select number of US Senators are in collusion with Barack Obama to bring about an intentional economic default, declare Martial Law, and then bring about a dissolution of the Senate and the House of Representatives. This plan has been engineered and ordered by the New World Order Financial Elite who put Obama into power.

In the days immediately following the hard-fought agreement to raise the country's debt ceiling, Americans voice an historic level of criticism of Congress, and disillusionment with leaders in Washington. According to a CBS News/New York Times Poll released Thursday August 4, 2011, Just 14% now approve of Congress, and disapproval is at an all-time high. Majorities disapprove of how both parties have handled the debt ceiling negotiations, and 84% are dissatisfied or angry with the government in Washington. Americans are split on how President Barack Obama handled the negotiations, and on his approval rating overall. Americans are also divided on the agreement reached to raise the debt ceiling itself: 46% approve and 45% disapprove. Just under half think the spending cuts mandated in the agreement did not go far enough; Republicans and Tea Party supporters are especially likely to feel that way. 86% say the economy is in bad shape, the highest percentage in two years, and most don't think the debt ceiling deal will make it better.

The U.S. debt is totally out of control—now sitting at $14.3 Trillion, raising the debt ceiling will only buy a little more time until a massive crash takes place and total chaos ensues—both economic and physical; a total fall of the republic. The so-called debt ceiling crisis has nothing to do with the government running out of money. It is about the creation of a super-committee, a council of thirteen, designed to circumvent Congress and ignore the will of the American people. The ruling elite have a plan to take America down. The handpicked "super Congress"—six members from the Senate, six from the House, and the president forming a committee or gang of 13—will now push through the elite's agenda behind closed doors in direct violation of the Constitution. This plan would essentially create a national high council of liberal and conservative elites who could completely circumvent Congress. If the American people do not immediately start a large scale protest movement against this Super Congress our country is dead as we know it. Regardless of campaign rhetoric, 99% of politicians from both parties have long ago sold out to gigantic multinational corporations. No transparency, no accountability, unconstitutional, and outright illegal. How much more will you take America?

Like the Supreme Soviet, the Council of 13 will take on the trappings of democracy—because the committee was proposed by elected officials, namely Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid with the consent House Speaker John Boehner—but will act as dictatorship by committee. If allowed to stand, the United States will have its own Central Committee, just like the former Soviet Union. The Constitution allows each house of Congress to set its own rules. Early on, debate and filibuster were added to the rules. The Committee of 13, however, will strip Congress of its power to filibuster. It will prevent the Speaker from stopping a vote in the House. It will fast-track the entire globalist agenda—from carbon taxes to the total destruction of the Second Amendment. It will end amendments to laws and only allow an up or down vote on legislation. It will turn Congress into a rubber stamp even more than it is already.

In their wisdom, the framers envisioned the House as a place of heated debate and the Senate as more staid place where rhetoric would cool down. It has its origins in the concept integral to our political system that the rights of the minority must be protected from the force of the majority. The idea and practice of a super Congress, a Committee of 13, puts an end to this tradition. It is a totalitarian steamroller. By voting for the so-called debt ceiling bill, both houses of Congress are voting to legitimize the Soviet-style super committee of 13 globalist grocery clerks. It is another step by the elite to throw the Constitution under the bus.

As a first step, the Gang of 13 will impose taxation as a solution to the astronomical debt placed on the American people by the international bankers who own the private Federal Reserve. A super committee will be required to keep the debt and debt slavery scam going now that an increasing number of Americans understand that the Fed is nothing but a money printing machine designed to devalue the worth of our currency under the guise of stimulating the economy and the perpetually unfulfilled promise to create jobs and prosperity. It is contempt for the Constitution and the intellectual and spiritual laziness of our so-called representatives that has allowed this atrocious state of affairs to exist under the excuse of confronting a debt the American people do not owe.

Now that the Super Congress drops any vestige of equal representation within the House or the Senate, many people ask what is next? The concept of a republic form of government is a core element that separates the American experience from that of most “so called” democratic countries. Direct political action will be required to put and end to this monstrosity. Short of that, we can expect another dagger to be stuck in the heart of our liberty as the global elite continue step by step to build their authoritarian control structure designed to turn the earth into a sprawling slave labor gulag and plantation. Most oblivious taxpayers do not even know that the death of the constitution occurred well before any of us were born. Yet, the country carries along with the myth that out vote counts in elections and that we have representation in the halls and corridors of government.

Former head of the Government Accountability Office and Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker has issued a stark warning following the compromise deal to raise the debt ceiling. “We are less than three years away from where Greece had its debt crisis as to where they were from debt to GDP,” Walker highlighted in an interview with CNBC August 3. Greece’s ratio of debt to GDP has surpassed 100% and is heading towards 150%, a factor that has meant without bailouts from the EU and the IMF, the country would have defaulted. The US is now nearing the same 100% margin with GDP growth floundering below 1%. “We should recognize that this could be a leading indicator for us,” Walker said, adding that something must be done now to significantly restructure government spending if a major collapse is to be avoided in the future. “We are not exempt from a debt crisis,” he said. “We’re never going to default, because we can print money. At the same point in time, we have serious interest rate risk, we have serious currency risk, we have serious inflation risk over time. If it happens, it will be sudden and it will be very painful.”

The 14th Amendment states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” This is the new tactic that the powers that be plan on using to obtain their goal (create more debt). Obama can also use PDD51 or other Executive Orders provided to him under Pandemic Level 6 (which was extended by Obama until March of 2012) to raise the debt ceiling. Pandemic Level 6 gives them all they need to do what ever they want, we are technically in a silent martial law. Obama stated that “Any solution to avoid the default must be bipartisan, supported by both parties and the American people, not just one faction.” But yet, one faction (Obama and the powers that be) will use Executive Orders to get this passed.

What would extending the debt really do, but bring us more into debt, more into trouble as stocks and paper money dwindle to nothing. The DOW fell as the August 2 deadline approaches. Investors are worried about the country's AAA credit rating. Expect to see even more of a staged circus sideshow in the coming days and possibly some type of major staged event.

We have reached fiscal insanity. According to a brand new ABC News/Washington Post poll, 80 percent of Americans say that they are either dissatisfied or angry with the government. Americans are deeply divided about what the solutions to our problems are, but what almost everyone can agree on is that our problems are getting worse. The United States is a declining power. Every month our nation is bleeding more jobs, more factories and more wealth. Every month our debt problems on the federal, state and local levels get even worse. We have been living far beyond our means for decades, and we are rapidly getting to the point where that simply will not be possible anymore. We are now starting to pay the price for decades of bad decisions. As the consequences of our decisions become more apparent, the American people are going to get angrier and angrier.

Can the next major crisis come from the student loan market? There is currently close to $1 trillion in student loan debt outstanding. College costs are soaring while incomes are stagnant or falling. So you have graduates coming out with heavier debt burdens and their incomes are much lower. It is a mathematical problem that was destined to cause issues. It is an odd sort of American situation where the economy contracts but the student loan market is exploding. No other country faces this kind of issue. Yet this is symptomatic of our current perpetual bubble banking system that is designed to increase liquidity in all sorts of markets so Wall Street traders can make a buck on suckering the public into more debt from previously secure sectors like housing or even education. The fact that more debt is being taken on is troubling for a variety of reasons but one of the most insidious is the fact that many recent graduates are starting to pay on loans with no jobs or jobs that pay just enough to get by. This is the issue of a low wage capitalism system that has a financial system designed to filter money back to the top one percent through crony politics and protection. No other sector in our economy has seen costs rise so quickly like those of colleges. Tuition and fees have far outpaced every other sector in our economy even surpassing items like healthcare and housing which is hard to believe. But just like housing, since incomes have gone nowhere for decades people are simply financing the pursuit without looking at the real long-term costs of what they are diving into. Being educated is incredibly important. That goes without saying. But how much is too much when it comes to tuition?

We are closing in on an event that will “set fire to the heart of the global financial system. There is a shock coming soon, probably in the autumn of 2011 where the collective experience will literally be the ground giving way beneath our feet as the underpinnings of our global financial system come apart. Every tick upward of interest rates will ring the bells of doom since servicing trillions upon trillions of debt becomes that much more impossible. Consumers are increasingly “using credit cards to pay for basic necessities as income gains fail to keep pace with rising food and fuel prices. Consumers, particularly in the lower-income end, are being forced to use their credit cards for everyday spending because there’s been no other positive catalyst, like an increase in wages, to offset higher prices. It’s a cash-flow problem. It is not only governments that are in serious trouble but an entire generation or even two generations that are drowning in debt and fiscal insanity. There are perhaps a billion debt slaves in the world and we can count most countries within those numbers.

We The Sheeple

What you could buy for $1.00 in 1965 will cost you $7.17 today. Sadly, the devaluation of our money is actually accelerating. That is one reason why we are seeing precious metals soar right now. Not only that, but the Federal Reserve was also designed to be a perpetual government debt creation machine. We’re on a collision course with the Euro Currency with the finish line at the bottom of the barrel. First, the credit card companies reduce everyone’s credit limits, even if they’ve never been late, and claim it’s important we all reduce our debt. Yet, this is not what the central banks do to cure their own malfeasance, they print and lie about it, then print more, and no one goes to jail. The Federal Reserve gave Libya $2 billion and no one is questioning Geithner or Bernanke, WTF is going on here? These guys should be in jail.

The American government cannot pay its bills, not with real money at least, only with the fabricated stuff, the kind of money that can be created out of thin air. Its funny money and it is taking the whole world down to a place where it will probably take many decades from which to recover. Congressman Ron Paul said, “It isn’t too late to return to fiscal sanity. We could start by canceling out the debt held by the Federal Reserve, which would clear $1.6 trillion under the debt ceiling. Or we could cut trillions of dollars in spending by bringing our troops home from overseas, making gradual reforms to Social Security and Medicare, and bringing the federal government back within the limits envisioned by the Constitution. Yet no one is willing to step up to the plate and make the hard decisions that are necessary. Everyone wants to kick the can down the road and believe that deficit spending can continue unabated.”

Contemporary civilization has already committed financial suicide and we are now just waiting for the poison to take full effect, but many millions are already feeling the poison flooding through their veins. The only answer the governments have been able to come up with to resolve the situation is to drink much more poison (debt) and ram it down the throats of their citizens. The future of the world is at stake and we have mad politicians at the helm so we do indeed have much to be concerned about.

Eventually the dumbed-down, medicated American taxpayer will get so fed up with this bunch of spineless morons in Washington—Republican and Democrat—they are going to demand we take real action with real numbers; cut through the crap and start dealing with this debt and we CAN do it. President Obama and his allies in Congress believe they know better than you do what is in your own best interest. There is little desire or regard for the middle class from the people at the top of the human heap because a big portion of their wealth is derived from robbing the lower classes. The Federal Reserve acts at the top of the line as the greatest robber of them all, raping the entire system to serve the people at the top.

The United States currently has more than $14 trillion in official National Debt. There is another $50 trillion in unofficial debt to deal with the promised benefits of Medicare, Social Security and government pensions, not to mention Medicaid and ObamaCare, which will add even more. Forget about the National Debt Ceiling. In fact, it would probably good if the US Credit Rating is downgraded by the rating agencies because just maybe it will shake our elected representatives into doing what is necessary to prevent the bankruptcy of the United States. Right now, there is no viable plan in place to begin paying off the $14.3 trillion debt on the books let alone dealing with Social Security, Medicare and federal pensions. Our current National Debt is fast approaching 100% of annual US Gross Domestic Product. In other words, the Debt is equivalent to all the good and services produced and sold in the United states each year. Though a downgrade of the US credit rating would be very painful, causing higher interest rates and a likely stock market crash in the short term, in the long run it might be just the medicine needed to force Washington politicians, including Socialist Obama, to face reality.

The real story relates to the National Debt itself and unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and federal pensions. This is the time bomb that will explode on the American people in the years ahead. Unfortunately, it is likely to take a complete financial collapse before our elected Representatives and particularly Socialists will do what is necessary to preserve and protect our nation. Like junkies on a crack habit, Obama and his Socialist pals in Congress will be forced to go cold turkey because at some point the capital markets won't be there to bail them out with more borrowing. It is time for our country to take control of our destiny because if we don't, foreign countries will dictate our fate as is happening in Greece and Ireland. If that were to occur, there would be civil strife on our streets. We can do it. We must do it to preserve our freedom, our nation and way of life for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

In the end, the story is not about the National Debt Ceiling; but rather the National Debt. Our nation is drowning in an ocean of debt, jobs are being shipped overseas at an alarming rate, thousands of stores are closing, poverty is exploding, greed has become a national pastime and corruption is seemingly everywhere. The American people are incredibly frustrated because the vast majority of our “leaders” appear to be too incompetent or too corrupt to deal with our problems. The health insurance companies keep jacking up rates on all of us, and yet they also continue to report record breaking profits. The amount of wealth leaving our country and being transferred to the rest of the world is absolutely mind blowing.

The United States has wasted some $34 billion on service contracts with the private sector in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a study being finalized for Congress. The analysis by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, details of which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, offers the most complete look so far at the misuse of U.S. contracting funds in Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than $200 billion has been doled out in the contracts and grants over nearly a decade. More than 200,000 contractors have been on the U.S. payroll at times in Iraq and Afghanistan--outstripping the number of U.S. troops currently on the ground in those countries. The United States has fewer than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and some 46,000 forces in Iraq.

The private Federal Reserve gives out tens of billions of dollars of nearly interest-free loans to their bankster friends while tens of millions of American families desperately try to survive an economic downturn that was caused by those same banksters. Thanks to insane tax loopholes, a substantial percentage of the billions of dollars of income that hedge fund managers make is only taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent. Meanwhile, middle class American families are being absolutely hammered with taxes. Our tax system is fundamentally unjust. An example: General Electric is a favorite of the Obama administration and somehow they get away with not paying taxes year after year. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill was zero. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

Americans have always complained about the government, but the madness that we are seeing today is really unprecedented in modern U.S. history. Something has fundamentally changed. The U.S. government and most of our other major societal institutions are rapidly losing the faith of the American people. According to Newsweek, close to one out of every five American men between the ages of 25 and 54 does not have a job at the moment. So why is the “greatest economy on earth” unable to provide jobs for nearly 20 percent of the men that are in their prime working years?

6 Monolithic Corporations Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read

The U.S. media landscape is dominated by massive corporations that, through a history of mergers and acquisitions, have concentrated their control over what we see, hear and read. In many cases, these giant companies are vertically integrated, controlling everything from initial production to final distribution. They don't call it "programming" for nothing.

Back in 1983, approximately 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States. Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest. Most Americans don't really seem to care about who owns the media. But they should. The truth is that each of us is deeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month. In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something. Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year.

The six corporations that collectively control U.S. media today are Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., CBS Corporation and NBC Universal. Together, the "big six" absolutely dominate news and entertainment in the United States. But even those areas of the media that the "big six" do not completely control are becoming increasingly concentrated. For example, Clear Channel now owns over 1000 radio stations across the United States. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are increasingly dominating the Internet. But it is the "big six" that are the biggest concerns. When you control what Americans watch, hear and read you gain a great deal of control over what they think. Back in 1983 it was bad enough that about 50 corporations dominated U.S. media. But since that time, power over the media has rapidly become concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people....

These gigantic media corporations do not exist to objectively tell the truth to the American people. Rather, the primary purpose of their existence is to make money. These gigantic media corporations are not going to do anything to threaten their relationships with their biggest advertisers (such as the largest pharmaceutical companies and junk food corporations, that literally spend billions on advertising), and one way or another these gigantic media corporations are always going to express the ideological viewpoints of their owners.

The American corporate-controlled establishment media presents a picture of the world that is meant to placate and pacify the people of the United States in favor of presenting reality as it is. While much of the economies of the world are in shambles, uprisings both real and manufactured are occurring around the globe, brutal police crackdowns are taking place in the United States and the federal governmentis attempting to legalize indefinite military detention of civilians, even American citizens, without trial or charge, they opt for fluff stories with little-to-no meaning whatsoever. The “infotainment” industry appeals to the lowest common denominator instead of attempting to inform and educate their audience. A recent study found that viewers of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News are actually less informed about current events than people who watched no news at all. While this probably seems like a somewhat obvious conclusion to anyone who has sat down and watched Fox News, the fact that it was actually shown in a study is quite surprising.

How can this happen? Is it just that they are seeking to entertain and not really inform? Or are news outlets like Murdoch’s Fox News actually there to make the American people perpetually ignorant? The mainstream media presents such a limited spectrum of the information out there, especially when it comes to broadcast television, that it is hard to believe that it could simply be a natural result of the push for ratings over all else. The world view presented by the establishment media is so consistent and carefully crafted. Thankfully, there is the alternative media which is growing independent of traditional news organizations and funding sources thanks to readers and business owners who are willing to support the new wave in journalism.

Do you think that anyone in the mainstream news would actually tell you that the Federal Reserve is bad for America or that we are facing a horrific derivatives bubble that could destroy the entire world financial system? Do you think that anyone in the mainstream media would actually tell you the truth about the deindustrialization of America or the truth about the voracious greed of Goldman Sachs? Sure there are a few courageous reporters in the mainstream media that manage to slip a few stories past their corporate bosses from time to time, but in general there is a very clear understanding that there are simply certain things that you just do not say in the mainstream news. But Americans are becoming increasingly hungry for the truth, and they are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the dumbed-down pablum that is passing as "hard hitting news" these days. Fortunately, an increasing number of Americans are starting to wake up and are realizing that the mainstream media should not be trusted.

A number of student organizers in the US have unveiled what they call an 'Occupy Student Debt' campaign, urging borrowers across the country to default on their college loans. The student movement has four major objectives, apart from convincing all students to default on their loans, a move for which they have collected one million signatures in a petition. They want student loans to be interest-free, tuitions at public institutions to be federally funded, students' debt to be written off and financial records of for-profit and private institutions to be made public. For students faced with debt, this campaign is important because it will help provide them with a collective organizing vehicle. The campaign emerged as an offshoot of the OWS, which has now spread across major US cities as well as many capitalist countries in the world. Members of the OWS movement have for months been protesting against corporate greed, unemployment, corruption and poverty in the United States.

The Department of Education shows two-year default rates at for-profit colleges up to 15 percent. Student loan debt is increasing at a rate of $170,000 per minute. We seem to have entered an era of perpetual and unshakeable financial bubbles and the next ripe bubble to burst is in the student loan market. Student loan debt has become the fastest growing debt sector throughout the economic recession. Growth at for-profit colleges has been incredible and tactics used at these institutions reflects patterns seen with the subprime mortgage operators. They target low income markets and exploit government backed loans and pump them through local area lenders. It is a bubble of mammoth proportions and it is no surprise that data released by the Department of Education only a few days ago reflects a default pattern reminiscent of the subprime crisis. Default rates on student loans at for-profit institutions are absolutely abysmal.

The U.S. Department of Education released the official FY 2009 national student loan cohort default rate, which has risen to 8.8 percent, up from 7.0 percent in FY 2008. The co

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I can hear the question already... "What did you do during the Great Economic Shakeout Grandpa?"