This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
12 Charts That Show The Permanent Damage That Has Been Done To The US Economy
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Most people that discuss the "economic collapse" focus on what is coming in the future. And without a doubt, we are on the verge of some incredibly hard times. But what often gets neglected is the immense permanent damage that has been done to the U.S. economy by the long-term economic collapse that we are already experiencing. In this article I am going to share with you 12 economic charts that show that we are in much, much worse shape than we were five or ten years ago. The long-term problems that are eating away at the foundations of our economy like cancer have not been fixed. In fact, many of them continue to get even worse year after year. But because unprecedented levels of government debt and reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve have bought us a very short window of relative stability, most Americans don't seem too concerned about our long-term problems.
They seem to have faith that our "leaders" will be able to find a way to muddle through whatever challenges are ahead. Hopefully this article will be a wake up call. The last major wave of the economic collapse did a colossal amount of damage to our economic foundations, and now the next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.
#1 Employment
The mainstream media is constantly telling us about the "employment recovery" that is happening in the United States, but the truth is that it is just an illusion. As the chart below demonstrates, just prior to the last recession about 63 percent of all working age Americans had a job. During the last wave of the economic collapse, that number dropped to below 59 percent and stayed there for a very long time. In the past few months we have finally seen the employment-population ratio tick back up to 59 percent, but we are still far, far below where we used to be. To call the tiny little bump at the end of this chart a "recovery" is really an insult to our intelligence...
#2 The Labor Force Participation Rate
The percentage of Americans that are either employed or currently looking for a job started to fall during the last recession and it has not stopped falling since then. The labor force participation rate has now fallen to a 36 year low, and this is a sign of a very, very sick economy...
#3 The Inactivity Rate For Men In Their Prime Years
Some blame the decline in the labor force participation rate on the aging of our population. But it isn't just elderly people that are dropping out of the labor force. In fact, the inactivity rate for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) continues to rise and is now at the highest level that has ever been recorded...
#4 Manufacturing Employees
Once upon a time in America, anyone that was reliable and willing to work hard could easily find a manufacturing job somewhere. But we have stood by and allowed millions upon millions of good paying manufacturing jobs to be shipped out of the country, and now many of our formerly great manufacturing cities have been transformed into ghost towns. Over the past few years, there has been a slight "recovery", but we are still well below where we were at just previous to the last recession...
#5 Our Current Account Balance
As a nation, we buy far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. In other words, we perpetually consume far more wealth than we produce. This is a recipe for national economic suicide. Our current account balance soared to obscene levels just prior to the last recession, and now we have almost gotten back to those levels...
#6 Existing Home Sales
Our economy has never fully recovered from the housing crash of 2007-2008. As you can see from the chart below, the number of existing home sales is still far below the level that we hit back in 2006. At this point we are just getting back to the level we were at in 2000, but our population today is far larger than it was back then...
#7 New Home Sales
Things are even more dramatic when you look at new home sales. This is an industry that have been absolutely emasculated. The number of new home sales in the United States is just a little more than half of what it was back in 2000, and it isn't even worth comparing to what we experienced during the peak of 2006.
#8 The Monetary Base
In a desperate attempt to get the economy going again, the Federal Reserve has been wildly printing money. It has been so reckless that it is hard to put it into words. When I look at this chart, the phrase "Weimar Republic" comes to mind...
#9 Food Inflation
Thankfully, much of the money that the Federal Reserve has been injecting into the system has not made it into the real economy. But enough of it has gotten into the system to force food prices significantly higher. For example, my wife went to the store today and paid just a shade under 10 bucks for just four pieces of chicken. And as you can see from the chart below, food prices have been steadily going up in America for a very long time...
#10 The Velocity Of Money
One of the reasons why we have not seen even more inflation is because the velocity of money is extraordinarily low. In general, when an economy is healthy money tends to flow through the system rapidly. People are buying and selling and money changes hands frequently. But when an economy is sick, money tends to stagnate. And that is exactly what is happening in the United States right now. In fact, at this point the velocity of the M2 money stock has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded...
#11 The National Debt
As our economic fundamentals have deteriorated, our politicians have attempted to prop up our standard of living by borrowing from the future. The U.S. national debt is on pace to approximately double during the Obama years, and it increased by more than a trillion dollars in fiscal year 2014 alone. Despite assurances that "the deficit is under control", the federal government borrows about a trillion dollars a year to fund new spending in addition to borrowing about 7 trillion dollars to pay off old debt that is coming due. What we are doing to future generations of Americans is absolutely criminal, and it is just a matter of time before this Ponzi scheme totally collapses...
#12 Total Debt
Of course it is not just the federal government that is gorging on debt. When you add up all forms of debt in our society (government, business, consumer, etc.) it comes to a grand total of more than 57 trillion dollars. This total has more than doubled since the year 2000...
If you know anyone that believes that we are in good economic shape, just show them these charts.
The numbers do not lie. Our economy is sick and it is getting sicker by the day.
And of course the next major financial crisis could strike at any time. U.S. stocks just experienced their worst week in three years, and if cases of Ebola start popping up around the country the fear that would cause could collapse our economy all by itself.
The debt-fueled prosperity that we are enjoying today is not real. We are living on the fumes of our past, and every single day our long-term problems get even worse.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to see what is coming.
Sadly, most Americans will continue to deny the truth until it is far too late.
- 29159 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -














Argentina wish they had a reserve currency...
Dismantle the Israeli owned and operated Federal Reserve
Is that you Francis Sawyer?
ps true words of wisdom regardless.
Their all going up.... So that's good right?
All looks good to me BTFD and Bring on QE4
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do...
www.job-reports.com
Gay male prostitute?
Another freaking list, how come i knew this was Synder before i even clicked on fhe article ...
"YOU JUST MADE THE LIST, BUDDY."
-Francis Sawyer
Researchers predict more cases in the United States based on flight patterns." i knew this was Synder before i even clicked on fhe article ..."
Me too. It's actually easy to make such lists and they can be very misleading. IMO he sets out to prove some point and then selects a 'List' of statistics to prove it while ignoring those that suggest an alternative outcome.
Another list! How come when I saw this I knew you crybabies would be on here sobbing about it! If you don't like it don't read it, go back to old Krugman columns.
It's not hard to avoid these "list" articles. He warns you what is coming in the headline. But you click here anyway. You've got the whole internet to look at, yet you are attracted to the one little part that annoys you.
Yeah, I got the same problem. Imagine how infinitely successful we would be if we were attracted to the parts of the internet that could help us.
Or perhaps the internet really is no better than a magazine stand or a library. The information you need is not there. All the good information is hidden.
And that means you Dick digger!!
'Leverage year': Monsanto executives on why the $156 million earnings loss doesn't matter http://wtfrly.com/2014/10/14/leverage-year-monsanto-executives-on-why-th...
I was promised a fucking unicorn, and by god, I want a fucking unicorn........
Does it have to shit skittles
Yes,and it better be a pair of lesbian unicorns with matching dwarf stable boys and a set of zebra striped chickens in every pot or this aint america.
a future collapse is a mathematical certainty, but when is very hard to predict.
However, Ebola, as a cause for an economic collapse, would make a great cover story for the true cuprits to avoid pitch forks by the sheeple.
Why was there a $518 million dollar grant to the Community group? Another welfare program funded under the most transparent administration ever.
Sheeple will never take a pitchfork to hand.
Argentina's black market is undoubtably more developed than ours here in USA. Commerce will take place, either on the books or off the books.
What’s ahead for the future of the average American, prepared in recent years by the banking Establishment: POVERTY. In an explosive, packed with facts assault on the system, Ted Rall delivers the squeeze play ahead now for Generation X and those to follow..
And never mind that the U.S. Census Bureau reports that Generation X statistically holds the highest education levels when looking at current age groups, according to Wikipedia, or that “Gen Xers are arguably the best educated generation with 29% obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher (6% higher than the previous cohort),” according to William J. Schroer.
Millions of Gen Xers Will Be Homeless Before You Know It | Ted Rall |October 13, 2014
Excerpt reposted):
We’re staring down the barrel of an epic old age crisis. For the average American, to be elderly will mean not mere belt-tightening, but real, grinding poverty: homelessness and hunger.
Throughout the last few decades, vulnerable people living from payday to payday have gotten battered by the shredding of the government safety net, a lack of accumulated savings caused by the boom-and-bust cycle...,and a lackluster real estate market.
Now members of the poor and lower middle class in their 50s and 60s are heading into a retirement crisis created by a perfect superstorm.
Traditional defined-benefit pension plans have been replaced by stingy 401(k)s and similar programs which employers no longer pay into, cap how much you can contribute (assuming you can afford it), take a beating during downturns in the stock market, and allow workers to tap when they’re laid off or run into financial trouble. After years of sketchy raids and outright theft, workers with old-fashioned corporate and government pensions can’t be sure their money will be there when they need it. The first Generation Xers — many of whom never had the opportunity to accumulate wealth due to several long recessions that impacted them particularly hard — will reach the traditional retirement age of 65 in the year 2024.
The facts are brutal:
No savings: The average Gen Xer only has a net worth of about $40,000 — enough to live on for a year. Maybe. In Akron. 36% of Americans don’t have a dime saved for retirement.
Later Social Security: Thanks to that lovable wacky Ronald Reagan, the Social Security retirement age was quietly raised to 67 for Gen Xers born after 1960. When you finally get Social Security, it doesn’t pay enough. The U.S. ranks third to last in social security benefits among developed nations.
Age discrimination: The continuing post-2008 recession hit those in their 50s especially hard; employers want cheaper, younger workers. 25% of Americans over age 55 now have no savings whatsoever.
About those pension plans: When journalists mention the retirement crisis, they focus on problems with the defined-benefit system. But that’s irrelevant to most Americans. 90% of private-sector workers don’t have one. Most government workers do — but 85% of Americans work in the private sector.
401ks suck (if you have one). Three out of four workers have no pension plan. What they might have is a 401k. The average Gen Xer who has a 401k — 69% don’t — has a $63,000 balance.
Financial experts say 92% of U.S. workers fall significantly short of what they’ll need to live decently after retirement. “In the decades to come,” Edward Siedle writes for Forbes, “we will witness millions of elderly Americans, the Baby Boomers and others, slipping into poverty. Too frail to work, too poor to retire will become the ‘new normal’ for many elderly Americans.”
This is about you — not some theoretical lazy Other….
We can hit the streets to demand action now — or we’ll be living on them later.
http://rall.com/2014/10/13/syndicated-column-millions-of-gen-xers-will-be-homeless-before-you-know-it
http://www.socialmarketing.org/newsletter/features/generation3.htm
NOTE: The Population Reference Bureau, a private demographic research organization based in Washington, D.C., cited Generation X birth years as falling between 1965 and 1982.
Who stole their future? The 60's hippies and their utopia agenda.
The "60's hippies" philosophy was completely dead by the 80s. Try again.
everybody is fucked by the same group that play the red vs blue card. don't fall for this crap. i'm 58 and see the same despair forcasted. until more people see it as truely class warfare-us vs warren buffet types, nobody gets whole again...
New Game - Well stated. A quote from Warren Buffett himself:
"There is class warfare and we are winning."
Others have seen him openly talking about his tax rate of 17% where his
secretary's is 30%. There are bigger powers than Warren Buffett. BIS and CFR along with other billionaires took it out on the little guy. They chose the path of least resistance which is what our species tends to do which forces pain and hence evolution on the subsequent generations which solve the problems. A guy like Buffett either plays along or get annihalated so he does what he can to work around the margins.
I am a Gen x'er. We must do what we can to defend ourselves against predation and as the first adopters of the Internet use instant information to our advantage to organize people on the net towards problem-solving. We are an imperfect species and the Internet is a giant mirror, we can no lo ger easily hide from our imperfections and lie about ourselves (we're all hypoctites it is just a matter of scale in each of us) while the rate of business/life is moving far faster. It is not easy to adapt but in evolution it never is.
Leadership had a lot of failings the last 100 years but there were successes too or the population couldnt have gone from 2B to 7B. There are very few places left on earth without running water, electricity or habe low literacy.
From here pimping confidence and building police states to attempt to maintain status quo when science tells us change is the only constant, is bankrupting the world and wasting time. The one thing governments can do is encourage the free flow of information so Gen X and younger can get busy. Free is some places and chains in others should not be acceptable to us as a species. Hopping to East to West with wealth is a half-assed solution when one or the other is completely ruined. In the end, we are our brothers keeper or we die as a species and as we have seen the effects will be seen in YOUR generation, not some nebulous time out there when your dead and buried. That means we are accountable for our behavior and also keeping some from harming others.
really? go look at Governor Moonbeam
+ 100 and spot on. And a fitting end is was for Allen Ginsberg’s legacy that eventually got to the point where free love turned into pedophilia, i.e., Allen Ginsberg and little boys. The free love turned into perversion. Other than that, I don't know what the Beat Generation produced.
Encyclopedia Britannica:
“The name derived from ‘hip,’ a term applied to the Beats of the 1950s, such as Allen Ginsberg (a pervert, pioneering the homosexual and pedophile man-boy love movement and support for child pornography and pedophilia) and Jack Kerouac (Ginsberg’s buddy who coined the term “beat generation” and died of alcoholism with much of his work designated pornography), who were generally considered to be the precursors of hippies.
“By the mid-1970s the movement had waned, and by the 1980s hippies had given way to a new generation of young people (Gen Xers)who were intent on making careers for themselves in business and who came to be known as yuppies (young urban professionals). Nonetheless, hippies continued to have an influence on the wider culture, seen, for example, in more relaxed attitudes toward sex, in the new concern for the environment, and in a widespread lessening of formality.”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/266600/hippie
Thank you for the Readers digest version of american history circa post world war II to 1990's.
That couldn't have been more propagandized if taken directly from a CIA workbook.
The bit of that history I lived was way more complicated than that trite diatribe you present.
Fact is it always been about us vs them. The people vs the man. The yuppies,the yippies, the hippies, the hipsters, the slackers, the stackers, the boomers,the doomers, its all labels to divide and conquer. Try not to get swallowed up in the petty bullshit and lose sight of the fact that the ultra rich are fucking the rest of us royally and have been pretty much carte blanche since the 60's.
It wasn't the Utopian agenda it was the scammers and the skimmers along with a license to print money backed by nothing. The hippies didn't thwart your Constitution and the rule of law.
yeah but they did point out that the system was a total lie and our rights were only words that dissolved if we tried to use them.
we are literally serfs with nice huts drunk on tv, sedated and worked until you aren't needed then abandoned like a toxic waste dump.
This is america in the 21st century, rampamant financial fraud, destruction of main street by wall street and the destruction of the workforce by destruction of labor laws, illegal immigration and h1b visas.
Corporations are people who don't give a fuck about people.
true enough
most hipsters were more like anti-establishment, libertarian-entrepreneurs
..sans AKs/ARs, Ronnie & Rand fetishes and gut-wrenching patriot-pretense
Who stole their future? It’s the people who now are showing extraordinary, obscene wealth beyond any measure. It was the princes of the financial institution, especially the Federal Reserve banksters that plundered Americans and their nation.
Through their power, the Congress systematically removed corporate pension contracts, eliminated job security, off-shored the manufacturing jobs of middle class management and skilled workmen, forced mothers into the work force by destroying the earning power of the male family wage earner , and, perhaps worst of all, supported the Clinton-Bushes-Obama administrations in overturning the traditional culture and replacing it with Marxist welfarism, feminism and its destruction of the family, anti-American media dominance, sovereign-breaking open borders and wealth transfer from Eurowhites to Third Worlders... and continuous war.
As most people realize it has made absolutely no difference which DC party wins the Congress or the presidency as, thanks to the Big Bankers and their power over the nation’s money, the Washington administration is a permanent government, its ruling tribe family lineage unchanged from decade to decade to decade, replacing the American Dream with its NWO Empire and its worldwide imperium to protect its global flow of debt collection.
“The only empire that exists is the one that keeps the NWO elites in control.” -- Sartre
When the history of this period is written it will be remarkable for it's size and impact but the cause will be the same as all other 'easy money' collapses. The government printed what it felt it neede to be elected. The cries of prudent people were ignored (Bush passed the Part D Medicare with an illegal Congressional vote and Obamacare was passed with no Republican support.)
It is not the Boomers are blameless but the pattern of reckless government spending is not new. Bismark the German boss had some early socialism going a hunder years ago.
Hard money does not help either. They just get killed and then 'we the people' go back to demanding that the government make our lives easier...it is human nature not a hippie dream that got us here.
It is an insult to Bismarck to suggest that his program would be in any way related to the American welfare state.
It was Bismarck who made Germany a powerhouse; quite a contrast with the progressives, socialists and communists attempting to defile America’s free-enterprise capitalist system and subject it to the barbarism of Bolshevism.
William Harbutt Dawson explains that “despite being labeled ‘socialist’ by his opponents, Otto von Bismarck’s social legislation sought to preserve the existing economic order and state in Germany. This was in stark contrast to socialists who sought to subvert the power of the existing state and eventually replace the capitalist order with a socialist economy.” (Wikipedia)
In short, Bismarck was no socialist and his object in the measures taken between 1884 and 1889 were meant to appease the working class and detract support for socialism and the Social Democratic Party of Germany following earlier attempts to achieve the same objective through Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws.
“My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare,” Bismarck explained.
"Millions of Gen Xers Will Be Homeless Before You Know It"
Well, they voted for Hope & Change. Then again, the choice really was between tweedledum and tweedledee, and that's the real message.
I didn't
Neither did most Gen Xers. According to Gallup...
Republicans do better among Generation X
by Frank Newport May 8, 2009
PRINCETON, NJ -- Although Democrats currently enjoy a party identification advantage over Republicans among Americans at every age between 18 to 85, the Democrats' greatest advantages come among those in their 20s and baby boomers in their late 40s and 50s. Republicans, on the other hand, come closest to parity with Democrats among Generation Xers in their late 30s and early 40s and among seniors in their late 60s…
Generation X follows the baby boom and is generally considered to be those born between 1965 and 1979…
http://www.gallup.com/poll/118285/democrats-best-among-generation-baby-boomers.aspx
By the way, Ted Rall is an idiot. Apparently, you are one too.
This conversation doesn't have much value unless you can come up with some logical criticisms of what Ted Rall is saying.
I think his points are profound and I would be interested why you think they are not -- in detail, please.
I guess you think armed socialist revolution is the way too... Figures
That is a foolish comment. Are you an adult? The only thing socialist in America is Obummer and his minions (aka The Free Shit Army).
What will happen is getting more clear by the week-- A breakdown in trust and rule of law that results in manydeaths.
In turn, that builds into chaos. We are on the verge.
Did you forget the /sarc tag -- or are you really that oblivious? Ted Rall is a socialist. How anyone can read his commentary and cartoons and not come away thinking he is anything but, is in denial.
Rall is an idiot..but he is more annoying. Can't stand his comics.
As for logical support...it is a fact...look it up on the internet.
Some of the naysayers crack me up. You don't even need to trot data and charts out to know that America is on its last leg. That realization hits home for MANY despite the smoke, mirrors and obfuscation permeating media these days. The way to mitigate a full blown comprehension of just how fucked we are is to present one distraction after another - Ukraine, ISIS and Ebola - trot them out sequentially or concurrently if need be so the masses are constantly in a crisis state of mind, unable to hone in on the REAL problems and enemy who concoct these scenarios by design, or permit catastrophe through indifference or incompetence because they are opposed to the freedom, liberties and future of the common man. The random stream of consciousness has become awakened, if not acutely aware, of the underlying dangers humanity faces that are thrust upon us by the powerful. The reckoning is imminent. If they want us to go down, let's drag them down with us.
I'm one of the early Gen-Xers, and I went through all those same recessions, and I'm no one special, but managed to have accumulated well beyond the average pot of money. I must be a genius.
Or a California school teacher with your pension of $107,000+ annually with yearly cost of living raises and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of health care insurance for you and yours plus a 101 other benefits...
I'm happy for you but that doesn't seem to apply to your fellow men.
He's Cali Guy.
ALL of the above AND entitled to 100% financing.
Cali Guy is entitled to three stated income/stated asset Cash Out loans.
In Cali your home is the income stream.
Cali Guy is entitled to live in the home three years while a downstream investor pays your taxes & insurance to keep the security & lien position In tact. Someday, the Home you'll walk from will be sold by FNMA for .42 cents on the $.
Hell yes you're entitled , Cali Guy.
You're a victim & entitled to every $ of DOJ / FHFA / CFPB / FDIC / HUD collected on vitims' behalf.
You go Cali Guy. The good news: You can rent the house across the street for 1/3 of that payment you haven't made & never change your kid's bus stop.
Well done Cali Guy.. In 24 mos , you're entitled to repeat the cycle all over again.
Millennials are learning that they have no chance.
They now are avoiding cars like the plague. Problem is that taxpayers will have to pay for mass transit. That might be a problem for the low tax set as they approach retirement...
Everything look fine!
BTFD!
smack the S&P another 100 and we'll talk....
Things are looking up. Finally.
Regardless of what every single ZHer believes, the Fed bankers, the oligarchs, and the government they own, are 110% absolutely certain that if the Fed had done nothing, we would be in the largest depression ever. By now, most of our cities would have been burned to the ground by angry mobs. Every major bank would have failed due to all the bad loans. Unemployment would be at 50%. Millions would be squatting in foreclosed, burned out houses, shooting at their neighbors. It would be like 'Escape From N.Y." The military would have revolted when their paychecks were cut by 75% and be shooting it out with DHS enforcement squads and the FBI. There would really be FEMA camps. CEOs and most all oligarchs would have fled the country and D.C. would be a gutted wasteland. The politicians would be long gone, some hanged, most living overseas on what they stole.
There is nothing left but Fed money creation and massive deficit spending. Get used to it; it is the New Normal. Any cutbacks or austerity at all, means overnight collapse. We are never going back to the good 'ol days, never.
The New Normal?!
Maybe for awhile, but insane Fed money creation and massive deficit spending is clearly unsustainable.
That is not an opinion, but instead a mathematical fact.
And you just described quite eloquently what will yet happen. Why?
Simple- No lunch is free and the sooner we face our demons the better.
I agree with what you said. Rings quite true. But what is next? The world is on to our printing game.
The only solution is a reversion to the Constitution. The story ends there.
If we continue the charade much longer then chaos takes over.
AMERICANS ARE BROKE, PISSED AND IRRITABLE. And, heavily armed.
It's the one big problem for the bankster elite in their plans to rule the planet.. the heavily armed Americans. As much as they try they can't get control over this pesky problem and it may prove to be the one thing that ultimately turns the fight against these evil globalist slime.
Thank goodness that most of the ZHers (according to you) believe the opposite of what you’ve just tried to proclaim. No matter how you dress it up, your line of thought is the Pravda of our time, i.e., the financial industry is the most important cog in our national society and if we don’t have the international bankers in control we will have disaster.
The truth is, the international bankers have almost destroyed the American Dream, and the greatest economic miracle in history has been systematically stolen by the private owners of the Fed and their friends.
And, contrary to almost every point you make, the private owners of the Fed Reserve bank can be removed and this train of American free enterprise put back on the tracks.
By the way, the one part of your scenario that I liked was the hangings. But along with the politicians I would include their masters, the bankers.
Did everyone replying miss or not read his first sentence? Temerity Trader didn't say this is his view, he said this is what the bankers and the elites in power believed...
And, so, as Temerity proclaims, I should "Get used to it; it is the New Normal. Any cutbacks or austerity at all, means overnight collapse. We are never going back to the good 'ol days, never"?
Never!
The concept of the deep state goes back to control of the currency. The international bankers in their determination to take over all world resources and humanity are ruthless with their control. JFK was a problem; it now is coming out why he was shot.
The market is off the track, off the fundamentals, its performance out of sync with the economy and reality. One week to the next week, the Fed remains clueless on how to resurrect the worldwide wreck it has wrought, it's only consistency is to continue the looting of Main Street to enrich Wall. And as America rapidly sinks into the economic abyss, all you hear are the Fed's paid economists, columnists and journalists repeating the mantra, We're in recovery, everything's improving, "Life is better, comrades, life is gayer..."
The lie is ludicrous in light of what's happening at home and in the rest of world; it would be comical if it weren't so deadly serious.
To put some perspective on the depths of our troubles, the likes of Janet Yellen and Barack Obama as our "leaders" with their ZIRPs and their assassinations shows just how leaderless America has become.
Well, I have news for Termerity. America cannot and will not continue like this. She has tasted freedom and prosperity and property rights and once tasted they cannot be forgotten. This thing is going to break... and soon. And then we'll see for whom the "overnight collapse" tolls. And who is going to take it on the chin.
doesnt really matter for the conversation. It just changes from him to the bankers.. same discussion essentially.
If everything does in fact work out it is my firm belief that we will end up in excatly the same place just further down the road. It will also take a lot longer to recover. I would much rather see this thing crash and burn so we could all carry on sooner. You have it all wrong my friend. Right now we are all waiting for the new normal.
This:
Regardless of what every single ZHer believes, the Fed bankers, the oligarchs, and the government they own, are 110% absolutely certain that if the Fed had done nothing, we would be in the largest depression ever.
You don't believe this bullshit, right?
The Feds could have let all of the banks go bankrupt and simply printed the "lost" funds and given it back to you. This would not have even been inflationary since you are just printing money that already went *poof* into thin air. Companies that were good and produced stuff would have survived, "paper fraud companies" would have dissappeared. New banks would have been formed overnight with glass-segal protection, and with a lot of debt "dissappeared" into the deflationary collapse hole along with the old dead banks, we would be fucking booming right now.
I am 110% absolutely certain that if the Fed had done nothing, a lot of rich criminal banksters would have gone bust and been jailed, that we would have had a severe recession or mild depression that would have lasted for a year to 18 months and then ended, that employment would be significantly higher, as would wages (rarther than importing ten million illegal serfs to serve the wealthy and stifle real job creation) that manufacturing jobs would have increased out of necessity rather than being diminished by another 30%) that housing would be 30% cheaper and affordable to millions of renters, that government jobs and wages would have been cut and reduced, with the money going to a more productive private sector, that inflation would be lower,and growth would be significantly higher, that the ruinous foreign wars would have ended as we would have had to raise taxes significantly to pay for them, , that the police state would never had grown toOrwellian proportitons, as more power would have been left with the people, rather than a Big Brother federal government -and on and on and on.
Bravo!
i agree.
its scary how close we were to that scenario and it's even more alarming realizing how close we are to it now.
long ammo, supplies and water!!
TT your vision is 3 months ahead of itself...we are going to get it but it has been delayed, that's all.
As for living overseas on 'what they stole...' that isn't going to happen. The crash will be universal (US has the WORLD"S reserve currency) and unless they converted to gold their ill gotten wealth will just vanish like the value of the underlying (dollar).
the Fed bankers, the oligarchs, and the government they own, are 110% absolutely certain that if the Fed had done nothing, we would be in the largest depression ever.
This is bullshit ! It's what they would like us to believe but the truth is they are the factions that would have experienced most of the pain and they weren't about to let that happen. There would have been greater short term loss/pain but it would have forced the structural changes necessary to allow a path of real, sustainable growth and we would all be in a much better position today. Instead, they did nothing but paper over the problem. They believe there tools helped us bridge a cyclical business cycle downturn and for the most part are still pretending escape velocity is right around the corner. But the problem (which they created in the first place) is structural and the actions they took only made matters worse while increasing the size of the angry mobs that will be buring down our cities in the future (once the EBT cards stop working)
But you're right about it being the new normal....so prepare for the shit storm!
#9-Food Inflation.. F/F ten maybe fifteen years .."A trip to the grocery store" will come
to mean dodging a hail of gunfire to cut a half-rotten piece of flesh from the corpse laying in
the street... Just to have something to eat.....But alas, being the prudent optimist I am,
anyone have any suggestions as to how to obtain crowd funding to build a SOYLENT
factory??
Unfortunately the corpses will need to be pumped full of strontium90 to kill the residual Ebola.
In the long run this will be seen as adventagious. Since it will kill off 90% of the 30% who survived the initial pandemic.
Its all good though, have no fear...
Man will adapt and in short order will be killing each other to set their place at the table of the New and improved TPTB.
This playbook has been used for untold thousand of years.
The only differance is the number of dead.
Peace out Brothers.
"You Can See This Collapse Coming A Mile Away"
http://usawatchdog.com/you-can-see-this-collapse-coming-a-mile-away-jame...
"Collapse Is Coming…What Will Take the Blame?"
http://blog.milesfranklin.com/collapse-is-comingwhat-will-take-the-blame
"The Stock Market Has Lost Confidence in Central Banks as Gods"
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/10/the-stock-market-has-lost-confiden...
Many people will be caught vapid and unawares when the inevitable happens. I'm actually surprised this charade has gone on as long as it has. Humanity has been off course for quite some time. Bring it.
"Let's turn these charts around men! Prosecute 9/11! Full speed ahead! Fuck the torpedoes!"
Vice-Admiral Admirable, West Point Junior College
"Sadly, most Americans will continue to deny the truth until it is far too late."
...and what would you have them do? VOTE? Really, seriously?
ABOLISH THE FERAL RESERVE SYSTEM!! Leaders? We have leaders in this banana republic? Well I'd say that those "leaders" are in sore need of adult supervision.
Alot of millenials are going to be homeless and unemployed too.
A very large portion of them have no skills, no work experience and are loaded up with debt.
Once they can no longer service these debts, off to war they go...or Ebola will come visit them.
Next up: a list of 75 lists by Michael Snyder
Pretty good summary... and explains why the 5-year explosion in stock prices is utterly unwarranted.
Nothing like the smell of a fresh Listicle in the morning!!
Takeaway:
Once you are in the boat, don't GET OUT of the F-in boat!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4dFDBYWuTc
...
But, but, but...the stock market is way up!!! Of course, these are the numbers that show how main street is doing, as opposed to the Northern Virginia area, Manhattan & LA. At some point it will sink in that we have been living way beyond our means for a very long time. And we will be forced to default on all the debt. The question that remains is will we be able to use that as a reset to a better, more competitive economy or will we just start the socialism over again like a banana republic?