CIVIL WAR II – FOURTH TURNING INTENSIFYING (PART 2)

In Part One of this article I laid out the case against the criminal establishment and how the regeneracy is being driven by the anti-establishment sentiment sweeping across the land. This atonement Fourth Turning will de-establish decade’s worth of delusional decisions. This election has destroyed the last vestiges of trust in this fraudulent system.

This dysfunctional rigged presidential election reflects the tearing of the civic fabric at points of maximum susceptibility. As a country we have neglected, denied, or delayed necessary action on a plethora of vital issues threatening our long term viability as a nation. The deferral of difficult painful decisions has been a ploy of the ruling class, allowing them to further siphon the wealth of a dying empire, while maintaining control over the masses through laws, regulations, taxes, surveillance, intimidation, technology bread and circuses, and mainstream media propaganda.

This is a country truly divided, much along the lines of the first Civil War. The divisions aren’t just along political party lines, but race, education, geography, gender, age, class, religion and ability to think critically. The presidential polls (IBD) reveal many of these divisions clearly:

Continue reading “CIVIL WAR II – FOURTH TURNING INTENSIFYING (PART 2)”

INFLATION ABOUT TO EXPLODE HIGHER

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” ― Lysander Spooner

http://www.gloucestercitynews.net/.a/6a00d8341bf7d953ef014e8ae500da970d-320wi

We all know the BLS artificially suppresses the CPI through bullshit substitution adjustments, quality adjustments, and various other incomprehensible hedonic adjustments made by government apparatchiks at the behest of their politician bosses. Some obscure theoretical academic  calculation called owners equivalent rent accounts for almost a quarter of the CPI weighting.

It has no relation to reality as it has increased by only 12% since 2012, while the Case Shiller Housing Price Index is up 52% over the same time frame. The median price of existing home sales is up 30% over the same time frame. It also has no relation to rent increases, as they have gone up 22% nationally since 2012. It’s essentially a made up number by goal seeking bureaucrats doing the bidding of their establishment masters.

Continue reading “INFLATION ABOUT TO EXPLODE HIGHER”

HARD TIMES & FALSE NARRATIVES

The mainstream media mouthpieces for the establishment peddle false narratives, disingenuous storylines, and outright propaganda to keep the ignorant masses confused, oblivious to reality, misinformed, and passively submissive to the opinions of highly paid “experts” and captured fiscal authorities. The existing social order likes things just as they are.

They reap ill-gotten riches, wield unchecked power, and control the minds of the masses. They are the invisible government consciously manipulating the minds, habits and opinions of the multitudes in order to dominate society, control the levers of government, and accumulate obscene levels of wealth through manipulation of the currency and domination of the banking and corporate interests.

One of the false narratives being flogged by the establishment propaganda peddlers is the mass retirement of Baby Boomers causing the plunge in the employment to population rate from 64.4% in 2000 to 59.7% today. They need to peddle this drivel, because the difference between these two rates amounts to 12 million missing jobs. The employment to population ratio is currently at 1984 levels. Any critical thinking person with basic math skills realizes the government reported unemployment rate of 5% is an Orwellian farce.

Continue reading “HARD TIMES & FALSE NARRATIVES”

YELLEN, DRAGHI, KURODA: DERANGED LAB RATS

The stock market has regained all of its loses year to date as economic indicators continue to flash red, corporate profits continue to plunge, consumers continue to spend less at retailers, real wages continue to fall, and housing sales continue to decline. The entire dead cat bounce has been generated through corporate stock buybacks, Wall Street lemmings trying to make up for their terrible year to date investing performance, and central bankers who will stop at nothing to verbally manipulate markets higher – since their monetary machinations over the last seven years have been a miserable failure in reviving the real economy.

As John Hussman points out, the market is poised to deliver nothing over the next decade, with a 40% to 55% “dip” in the foreseeable future. I wonder how many barely sentient, iGadget addicted, non-questioning, normalcy bias dependent zombies are prepared for a third Federal Reserve generated market collapse in the last 15 years?

From a long-term investment standpoint, the stock market remains obscenely overvalued, with the most historically-reliable measures we identify presently consistent with zero 10-12 year S&P 500 nominal total returns, and negative expected real returns on both horizons. From a cyclical standpoint, I continue to expect that the completion of the current market cycle will likely take the S&P 500 down by about 40-55% from present levels; an outcome that would not be an outlier or worst-case scenario, but instead a rather run-of-the-mill cycle completion from present valuations.

Continue reading “YELLEN, DRAGHI, KURODA: DERANGED LAB RATS”

VOTING TO DESTROY THE ESTABLISHMENT

“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don’t know what that event will be.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Taleb is a prickly arrogant SOB who doesn’t give a crap what intellectuals, academics, and other establishment elitists think about him. He has an Ivy league MBA, but despises everything about the curriculum of Ivy League MBA programs. He has a PhD, but scorns academics and their worship of theories and models. He enjoys poking holes in the storylines of the propaganda spewing corporate media. He glories in ridiculing the predictions of captured “experts” mouthing the talking points of whichever corporate interest is paying them blood money.

I read his brilliant Black Swan book back in 2008. It was a difficult read, but there were so many gems of wisdom throughout the book, it was a powerful tome predicting the financial collapse in real time. He wrote it in 2006. He understands the world doesn’t operate the way Ivy League models say it is supposed to operate. The world is propelled by black swans, not a normal distribution of the world. He was right in 2006 and he’s right now. The paragraph below has been making the rounds in the alternate media this past week. The establishment media would never publicize it, as their job is to protect the crumbling social order.

Continue reading “VOTING TO DESTROY THE ESTABLISHMENT”

DERANGED CENTRAL BANKERS BLOWING UP THE WORLD

It is now self-evident to any sentient being (excludes CNBC shills, Wall Street shyster economists, and Keynesian loving politicians) the mountainous level of unpayable global debt is about to crash down like an avalanche upon hundreds of millions of willfully ignorant citizens who trusted their politician leaders and the central bankers who created the debt out of thin air. McKinsey produced a report last year showing the world had added $57 trillion of debt between 2008 and the 2nd quarter of 2014, with global debt to GDP reaching 286%.

The global economy has only deteriorated since mid-2014, with politicians and central bankers accelerating the issuance of debt. These deranged psychopaths have added in excess of $70 trillion of debt in the last eight years, a 50% increase. With $142 trillion of global debt enough to collapse the global economy in 2008, only a lunatic would implement a “solution” that increased global debt to $212 trillion over the next seven years thinking that would solve a problem created by too much debt.

Continue reading “DERANGED CENTRAL BANKERS BLOWING UP THE WORLD”

Yellen Tells Congress Negative Interest Rates Are Possible

yellen-Janet

Reuters has reported that Yellen told a House of Representatives committee when testifying before Congress: “Potentially anything – including negative interest rates – would be on the table. But we would have to study carefully how they would work here in the U.S. context.”

Yellen may have been placating Congress for negative rates would wipe out the elderly entirely. They have failed to work in Europe in the slightest.

Swiss 1000-CHF

Negative interest rates are not working in Europe. Even in Switzerland, hoarding of cash is becoming a national pass-time. This entire idea demonstrates that those who would be king, do not understand even how the economy functions.

Paine-Common Sense

We are back to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense that inspired the American Revolution. He explained that government was evil because it operates from a NEGATIVE perspective to always PUNISH the people. This is the only way those in government ever perceive their power – it is always to demand and punish, never to work with society to comprehend what the problem might be.

Budget Crisis 2917

Taxes are too high and the standard of living has declined. Those in power will ONLY raise taxes because they are incapable of reform. The year 2017 will cross the Rubicon. The inflation they are desperately trying to create will arrive, but not in the form they desire.


 

SENIOR CITIZENS DOING BACK FLIPS OVER $22 MONTHLY SOCIAL SECURITY INCREASE

I’m sure my senior citizen mother is doing backflips today like the old guy in this video.

The government, out of the kindness of their hearts, and using the bastardized, manipulated and understated CPI, is giving all 64 million retired Americans a 1.7% raise in their Social Security checks in 2015. That amounts to about $22 per month for the average retiree. That’s $5 per week. I bet 64 million cranky old farts are headed out for the early bird special tonight to celebrate.

Think about the ridiculousness of the government telling a senior citizen their cost of living has only gone up 1.7% in the last year. Beef prices are up 20%. I do the grocery shopping and I can say for sure that my entire bill is up 20% over last year. Obamacare has pushed healthcare costs up by double digits in the last three years. Deductibles are twice as high and premiums are up 5% to 15%. Utility bills have been soaring by over 10% in the last year. Seniors are getting 0% on their savings due to the morally bankrupt Federal Reserve. That extra $22 per month will be gone in an instant.

Just when I think the MSM can’t sink any lower, the faux journalist mouthpieces for the oligarchs at Marketwatch put out the most outlandish piece of shit I’ve ever had to read without gagging.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/7-things-retirees-should-do-with-their-20-cost-of-living-increase-2014-10-22?link=MW_home_latest_news

These pitiful excuses for journalists actually had the balls to write an article recommending what seniors should do with this “extra” $20 per month. These blithering idiots actually are willing to perpetuate the lie that this miniscule pittance can be used for something other than keeping these seniors from freezing to death this winter because they can’t pay their heating bill.

Some of the brilliant ideas include:

  • Acting like a good muppet and investing it in the market. Brilliant. My mom can buy 1/20 of a share of Amazon per month with her windfall.
  • Buying a nice bottle of wine to go with their can of Friskies for dinner.
  • Paying down the debt they’ve accumulated over a lifetime. At $20 per month, they should have it paid off by the time they reach the age of 265.
  • Paying those utility bills so the big corporation doesn’t turn off their gas in January.
  • Hire an illegal alien housekeeper to clean up your cardboard box a couple times per month.
  • Treat yourself to a steak once per month as a change of pace from that Kibble and Ramen noodles.
  • Live it up and go to the movies once per month. You should go see Idiocracy so you will understand how the writers of this article got their University of Phoenix college degrees in journalism.

You think I’m joking, but these are the actual recommendations made by “journalists” working for Rupert Murdoch’s Marketwatch. There are just some things that push my buttons and make me lose my cool. This is one of them. Senior citizens have been thrown under the bus by Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, Obama, and the rest of this corrupt cabal of oligarchs. Let them eat cake has been replace by let them eat cat food.

 

Ben Bernanke now gets $250,000 for an hour long speech where he takes credit for keeping bankers from experiencing a 2nd Great Depression. Too bad tens of millions of non-bankers are experiencing a 2nd Great Depression. If there is justice in this world, Bennie will swing from a lamppost before this episode in history concludes.

Via Christian Science Monitor

Social Security payments will increase 1.7 percent for retirees in 2015

Social Security payments for 64 million retired American workers will increase 1.7 percent in 2015. That means the typical retiree will get an extra $22 per month, receiving a $1,328 average monthly Social Security payment and $15,936 annually.

By Schuyler Velasco, Staff writer

  • Elaine Thompson/AP/File

Social Security isn’t going anywhere. Not yet, anyway.

Monthly payments for 64 million retired American workers will increase 1.7 percent in 2015, the Social Security Administration announced Wednesday. That means the typical retiree will get an extra $22 per month, receiving a $1,328 average monthly payment and $15,936 annually.

“The 1.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will begin with benefits that more than 58 million Social Security beneficiaries receive in January 2015,” The Social Security Administration said in the announcement. “Increased payments to more than 8 million SSI [Supplemental Security Income] beneficiaries will begin on December 31, 2014. The Social Security Act ties the annual COLA to the increase in the Consumer Price Index as determined by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

Recommended: Retirement planning: Six myths, busted

The increase coincides with the Labor Department’s monthly Consumer Price Index release for September. Thanks largely to falling energy costs, CPI increased just 0.1 percent last month and (you guessed it) 1.7 percent from last year. Food costs, however, jumped 3 percent, meaning the overall increase may be more acutely felt by seniors who don’t commute to work every day (thus getting less relief from the drop in gas prices).

This is the third straight COLA increase for Social Security recipients. This year’s cost of living increase was 1.5 percent; in 2012, it was a comparatively giant 3.2 percent. There were no benefits increases during the two previous years because consumer prices fell during the recession.

The SSA announced other changes as well. Based on wage increases, the maximum amount of earnings subjected to the Social Security taxes will increase to $118,500 from $117,000. The SSA estimates that out of 168 million workers who pay Social Security taxes, around 10 million will pay higher taxes because of the hike in the taxable minimum.

As in other years, this year’s increase comes amid worries about the long-term future of Social Security and Americans’ financial readiness for their retirement years. The Social Security Trust fund is projected to run out by 2033, according to an SSA Trustee report released this year, and the oncoming rush of retiring and aging Baby Boomers are expected to create steep budgetary problems in the coming years. Some 80 percent of Millennials and Gen-Xers don’t expect to receive anything from Social Security after their working years, according to a study released by the TransAmerica Center for Retirement Studies over the summer.

There are concerns in the short term as well. By at least one measure, retirees in 49 of 50 states aren’t replacing enough of their pre-retirement income. Social Security makes up about 38 percent of total income for the elderly, according to the SSA, and 52 percent of married couples and 74 percent of unmarried persons receive over half their income from Social Security.

For 1 in 3 retirees, it is their only income source. Basic costs of living, especially food prices, continue to balloon, and nearly 10 percent of retirees live in poverty, according to the Census Bureau.

Still, there is some cause for optimism. Perhaps because of their doubts, younger workers (at least the ones with access to employee-sponsored accounts) are shaping up to be excellent savers, and not all is lost with Social Security in general. Despite the trust fund depletion and funding shortfalls,  the SSA still anticipates being able to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits between 2033 and 2088. 

NIRP AFTER ZIRP


The 99.9% have all come to love the Bernanke/Yellen Zero Interest Rate Policy, affectionately known as ZIRP. This is the policy where you provide Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks with hundreds of billions in newly created fiat currency for free and allow them to invest it in risk free Treasuries, while paying senior citizens and other responsible savers 0% on their savings. This allows the oligarchs to further enrich themselves by gorging on free money, while widows are forced to choose between dinner and medicine. ZIRP was designed by bankers to benefit bankers – NO BANKER LEFT BEHIND.

ZIRP is slowly but surely impoverishing the majority of people in the country. It deters saving and investment. It deters job growth. It creates inflation in food, energy, housing, and the other necessities of daily life. Well get ready for NIRP – Negative Interest Rate Policy. The bankers will offer you the privilege of charging you for letting them keep your money. This is what happened today in Europe.

The mainstream media, the government bureaucrats, and the central bankers have all touted the huge success story of government actions in Europe. Interest rates have been manipulated to record low levels. Spain and Italy are supposedly as safe as the U.S. now. It’s all a cruel fucking joke. And the joke is on the people. These lying scumbags actually believe confiscating depositor’s funds through negative interest rates will spur an economic recovery in Europe. They have the balls to make statements like this with a straight face:

“It’s completely wrong to suggest we want to expropriate savers”Mario Draghi

It seems he is following the advice of his predecessor:

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”Jean Claude Juncker

The central bankers and politicians of the world have solved absolutely nothing. They have shifted bank debt onto the backs of the people and issued more debt to pay off the old debt. They will continue to use convoluted asinine “solutions” and “programs” to keep the Ponzi scheme going as long as possible to allow their oligarch masters to siphon off  the remaining wealth of the people. In the final phase you will be Cyprused. They will seize your money if it is in their banks.

If you think NIRP is something that can only happen in Europe, think again. Read the words of your own esteemed Federal Reserve Goddess:

“Accommodative policy is appropriate, in my view, because the economy is operating well below its potential and inflation is undesirably low. If it were positive to take interest rates into negative territory I would be voting for that” – San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Louis Yellen – February 2010

Remember who Janet really works for. The Wall Street banks are her bosses. Janet and her banker buddies are already taking advantage of the math challenged American Sheeple. Savings accounts are already paying .15% interest, while inflation in the real world is 5% or higher. The dollars you keep in a Wall Street bank today are worth 4.85% less every year. The goal of Janet and the Wall Street scumbags is to force you to spend your dollars before they waste away to nothing. They have failed so far, as retail sales collapse and the middle class runs out of money.

The banking cabal has made holding money market funds so distasteful, they force investors into the stock market. Based on this chart, that part of their plan has worked. Stock prices have reached new all-time heights and the ratio of money invested in equities to the amount invested in money market funds is now 20% to 30% higher than the peaks previously reached in 2000 and 2007. When you see the actions of bankers and their puppets, you better understand Lord Acton’s thoughts in the 1800’s:

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”Lord Acton

The time for this fight is approaching rapidly. Get your money out of the banks before it is too late. You get a better return under your mattress.

NIRP Has Arrived: Europe Officially Enters The “Monetary Twilight Zone”

Tyler Durden's picture

Goodbye ZIRP, hello NIRP. Today’s decision by the ECB to officially lower the deposit facility rate to negative (as in you pay the bank to hold your deposits) is shocking, but not surprising: we previewed just this outcome precisely two years ago in “Europe’s “Monetary Twilight Zone” Neutron Bomb: NIRP

Here is what we wrote in June 2012 about Europe’s unprecedented NIRP monetary experiment.

Just because ZIRP is so 2009 (and will be until the end of central planning as the Fed can not afford to hike rates ever again), the ECB is now contemplating something far more drastic: charging depositors for the privilege of holding money. Enter NIRP, aka Negative Interest Rate Policy.

Bloomberg reports that “European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is contemplating taking interest rates into a twilight zone shunned by the Federal Reserve. while cutting ECB rates may boost confidence, stimulate lending and foster growth, it could also involve reducing the bank’s deposit rate to zero or even lower. Once an obstacle for policy makers because it risks hurting the money markets they’re trying to revive, cutting the deposit rate from 0.25 percent is no longer a taboo, two euro-area central bank officials said on June 15… “The European recession is worsening, the ECB has to do more,” said Julian Callow, chief European economist at Barclays Capital in London, who forecasts rates will be cut at the ECB’s next policy meeting on July 5. “A negative deposit rate is something they need to consider but taking it to zero as a first step is more likely.” Should Draghi elect to cut the deposit rate to zero or lower, he’ll be entering territory few policy makers have dared to venture. Sweden’s Riksbank in July 2009 became the world’s first central bank to charge financial institutions for the money they deposited with it overnight.

There is only one problem when comparing the Riksbank with the ECB: at €747 billion in deposits parked at the ECB as of yesterday, the ECB is currently paying out 0.25% on this balance, a move which may or may not be a reason for the depositor banks, primarily of North European extraction, to keep their money parked in Frankfurt. However, once this money has to pay to stay, it is certain that nearly $1 trillion in deposit cash, currently in electronic format, would flood the market. What happens next is unknown: the ECB hopes that this liquidity flood will be contained. The reality will be vastly different. One thing is certain: inflating the debt is the only way out for the status quo. The only question is what format it will take.

More from Bloomberg:

It won’t help the prospect of a functioning money market because banks won’t be compensated for the risk they’re taking,” said Orlando Green, a fixed-income strategist at Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank in London. It would make more sense to lower the benchmark rate, thus reducing the interest banks pay on ECB loans, and keep the deposit rate where it is, Green said.

 

The ECB has lent banks more than 1 trillion euros in three- year loans, with the interest determined by the average of the benchmark rate over that period. Societe Generale SA estimates that cutting the key rate by 50 basis points would save banks 5 billion euros a year.

 

The deposit rate traditionally moves in tandem with the benchmark, which policy makers kept at a record low of 1 percent on June 6. Draghi said “a few” officials called for a cut, fueling speculation the bank could act next month.

Sadly, because all this is merely operating in the confines of a broken system, just as the LTRO provides a brief respite only to commence crushing banks such as Monte Paschi, so any further intervention by the ECB will only lead to a faster unwind of an unstable system.

Other institutions have opted against such a move. The Fed started paying interest on deposits to help keep the federal funds rate near its target in October 2008 and has reimbursed banks with 0.25 percent on required and excess reserve balances since December that year.

 

Some Fed policy makers last August argued that reducing the rate could be helpful in easing financial conditions. While they discussed doing so in September, many expressed concern that such a move “risked costly disruptions to money markets and to the intermediation of credit,” the Fed said in minutes published on Oct. 12.

 

The Bank of Japan (8301) introduced a Complementary Deposit Facility in October 2008 to provide financial institutions with liquidity and stabilize markets, and has kept the interest it pays for the funds at 0.1 percent since then. Governor Masaaki Shirakawa told reporters on May 23 there would be “large demerits” to reducing the deposit rate because it could lead to a decline in money-market trading.

It gets worse: by trying to help banks, the ECB will actually be impairng them:

If the ECB cut the deposit rate, it would take an important profit opportunity away from banks,” said Tobias Blattner, an economist at Daiwa Capital Markets Europe in London. By doing so, the ECB would also be “encouraging banks to lend to the real economy” even though “there’s hardly any demand for credit,” he said. Blattner predicts the ECB will cut its benchmark and leave the deposit rate at 0.25 percent.

 

ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said on Feb. 19 that market interest rates of zero or lower “can result in a credit contraction.”

 

That’s because banks, trying to preserve their deposit bases by paying customers a reasonable interest rate, may reduce lending to companies and households because the return is too low and invest in higher-yielding assets instead.

Finally kiss money markets – which together with Repos are one of the core components of shadow banking – goodbye:

“A deposit rate at zero will be of particular support to banks in southern Europe because it could help encourage some flow of credit,” said Callow. “A negative deposit rate can be damaging for money markets.”

 

Negative rates would destroy the business model for money- market funds, which would face the prospect of paying to invest, said Societe Generale economist Klaus Baader.

 

“But the ECB doesn’t set policy to keep alive certain parts of the financial sector,” he said. “Policy makers want to show that they haven’t exhausted their options yet.”

THIS SHIT MAKES MY HEAD HURT

Below is an article about Americans not being able to feed themselves in 2011. According to the study 18.6% are struggling to put food on the table. The data on food stamp usage supports this contention. When the Wall Street created financial meltdown occurred in 2008 there were 30.8 million Americans on food stamps. When the government announced the recession was over in December 2009, there were 39 million Americans on food stamps. We are now supposedly over two years into an economic recovery (Obama & CNBC tell me so) and the number of Americans on food stamps is 46.3 million – and still rising. Anecdotal evidence is everywhere as the food bank near my house had to move to a building three times as large as their old facility. Senior citizens have barely gotten an increase in their Social Security payments for the last three years, while the price of food is up 20% to 30%. Anyone who shops at a grocery store knows this is true (except for Ben Bernanke).

But, the stock market is soaring. The MSM is proclaiming good times are back. Even though millions of Americans have given up looking for a job, the unemployment rate keeps falling. Bernanke and the BLS tells us there is no inflation. When I drive through West Philly I see brand new luxury automobiles surrounding low income housing and broken down hovels. The wheels on some of these luxury autos cost more than my Honda Insight. There is no one starving in West Philly. The inhabitants of this squalor are generally obese. Their hovels have Direct TV satellite dishes on their roofs. Every supposedly poor person I see has a cell phone to their ear. The average household income in this neighborhood is $16,000. The median home value is $25,000. The true unemployment rate exceeds 50%.

You can see why this shit makes my head hurt. Nothing makes sense anymore. My belief is that there are millions of good proud people who are having a very difficult time feeding themselves. They are the people in the formerly working middle class. They never took a handout from the government like the parasites living in West Philly. They worked blue collar jobs and lived within their means. Their jobs got shipped off to China by Harvard MBA efficiency experts. They are dying a slow painful death. The 99 weeks of unemployment has run out. Despite the government propaganda, there are no new jobs being created. The entitlement class knows how to play the system. They are not starving. Obama will keep them happy in order to get re-elected. It’s the once proud working middle class (the backbone of the country) that are suffering the most.

Even though I think I understand what is going on, this shit still makes my head hurt.

Growing Number Of Americans Can’t Afford Food, Study Finds

Afford Food

The Huffington Post     

Here in the United States, growing numbers of people can’t afford that most basic of necessities: food.

More Americans said they struggled to buy food in 2011 than in any year since the financial crisis, according to a recent report from the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit research group. About 18.6 percent of people — almost one out of every five — told Gallup pollsters that they couldn’t always afford to feed everyone in their family in 2011.

One might assume that number got smaller wrapped up with the national unemployment rate falling for several consecutive months. In actuality, the reverse proved true: the number of people who said they couldn’t afford food just kept rising and rising.

The findings from FRAC highlight what many people already know: The economic recovery, in theory now more than two years old, has done little to keep millions of Americans out of poverty and deprivation. Incomes for many haven’t kept pace with the cost of living, and for a large swath of the country, things today are as bad as ever, or worse.

Forty-six million people lived below the poverty line as of 2010, a record number, according to the Census Bureau, and one that’s not even as high as some other estimates would have it. Take a further step back and the situation appears even more dire. About 45 percent of people in the U.S. have reported not being able to cover their basic living expenses, including food, shelter and transportation, according to the group Wider Opportunities for Women.

The official poverty rate is about 15 percent, but over two-fifths of Americans have so little saved that one financial emergency is all it would take to put them in poverty, according to the Corporation for Enterprise Development.

These high rates of financial insecurity — a consequence of the weak job market, and the prevalence of jobs that don’t pay very well — are making themselves felt at the level of everyday spending.

Recently, for example, a Center for Housing Policy study found that a growing number of middle-income owners and renters are paying more than half their earnings just to keep a roof over their heads. And as of 2009, almost one in five Americans over 50 years old were skipping on doctor visits, switching to cheaper medications or forgoing some medicines entirely out of financial necessity, according to a recently published study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a think tank.

As for widespread hunger of the kind recorded by FRAC, research shows that the entire country ends up paying one way or another. While the people who can’t afford food are obviously suffering the worst, the social costs incurred — from the money spent to keep food pantries open to the lifelong diminished earning power of impoverished children — come to about $167 billion a year, or $542 for every man, woman and child in the country.



BERNANKE PLEDGES TO SCREW YOUR GRANDMOTHER FOR AT LEAST TWO MORE YEARS

“A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.” – Ron Paul

  

I wonder what goes through Ben Bernanke’s mind as he sits in his gold plated boardroom in the majestic Marriner Eccles building in Washington DC and decides to screw grandmothers in order to further enrich Wall Street bankers. He just pledged to keep interest rates at zero percent for two more years. Ben is a supposedly book smart man. Does he have no guilt or shame for what he has wrought? How does he sleep at night knowing he has created bloody revolutions around the globe due to his inflationary zero interest policy? People are dying because he has decided that an elite group of Wall Street bankers who recklessly brought down the worldwide financial system in 2008 deserve to be kept alive and enriched at the expense of the many.

He uses words like transitory to describe inflation. Even as the price of gold reveals his lies he continues to promote policies that will lead to the demise of the USD and our economic system. There is only one way to counter his lies – truth. With a corporate fascist government run by the few for the benefit of the few, telling the truth is treason as stated by Ron Paul:

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

The storyline being sold to you by Bernanke, his Wall Street masters, and their captured puppets in Washington DC is that deflation is the great bogeyman they must slay. They make these statements from their ivory jewel encrusted towers as the real people in the real world deal with reality. The reality since Ben Bernanke announced his QE2 policy in August 2010 is:

  • Unleaded gas prices are up 45%.
  • Heating oil prices are up 46%.
  • Corn prices are up 71%.
  • Soybean prices are up 26%.
  • Rice prices are up 13%.
  • Pork prices are up 31%.
  • Beef prices are up 25%.
  • Coffee prices are up 38%.
  • Sugar prices are up 48%.
  • Cotton prices are up 13%.
  • Gold prices are up 42%.
  • Silver prices are up 115%.
  • Copper prices are up 23%.

These are the facts and they fly in the face of the lies being spouted by Bernanke and his Federal Reserve cronies. Words like transitory, quantitative easing, extended period, and liquidity are used by Professor Bernanke to obscure what he is doing to the average American. He lives in a world of theories and models, while the rest of us live in the real world, where theories kill and impoverish millions. There are 40 million Americans over the age of 65 today. You might even know a few of them. There will be 10,000 people per day joining their ranks for the next nineteen years as the Baby Boomers retire en masse. The vast majority of these senior citizens are risk averse. Some disturbing facts reveal the true picture for seniors today:

  • Most senior citizens do not have a traditional pension plan because they have been going out of style over the past 30 years.  In 1980, some 39% of private-sector workers had a pension that guaranteed a steady payout during retirement. Today that number stands closer to 15%, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C. 
  • 35% of Americans already over the age of 65 rely almost entirely on Social Security payments alone. 
  • Approximately 3 out of 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62.  Most are doing this out of necessity. This probably has something to do with the fact that the median retirement savings of households over the age of 65 is less than $45,000.   
  • The median household net worth of all Americans fell from $97,000 in 2005 to $70,000 in 2009. The median household net worth of households over 65 years old fell from $200,000 in 2005 to approximately $150,000 in 2009. Two thirds of seniors’ net worth is the equity in their primary residence, meaning they have $50,000 or less of financial assets (cash, stocks, bonds). 
  • 20% of all the households in the United States have zero or negative net worth.  

This data sets the scene for the crime of the century committed by Ben Bernanke and his co-conspirators on the Federal Reserve Board. The easiest way to understand how Ben has screwed seniors and savers to pay off his Wall Street and K Street benefactors is to use a real life example.

A seventy five year old widow living in her paid off row home, bought in 1955, gets by on her annual social security income of $17,000 and the income generated from the $125,000 in retirement savings left from her husband’s forty years working as a truck driver. She is a child of the Depression, financially unsophisticated and risk averse. This describes most senior citizens. The widow and her late husband were only comfortable investing their money in CDs and money market funds. In 2007, before the Wall Street created financial collapse, savers and risk averse senior citizens could earn 5% in a money market fund, 5.5% in a 2 year CD and 6% in a 5 year CD. The widow could supplement her meager social security income with an additional $6,000 of interest income. This money was used to pay the ever increasing real estate taxes, medical insurance premiums, upkeep on the old house, and necessities like food, fuel, insurance and heating.

Fast forward four years to 2011. Savers and seniors are getting average interest rates on 6-month CDs this week of 0.58% nationwide, according to Bankrate.com. Rates on one-year CDs fell this week to 0.86%, while 5- year CDs fetched 2.04%. Money market funds are paying a pitiful 0.16% on average. The widow that was able to generate a risk free $6,000 only four years ago has only been able to generate less than $500 per year for the last three years. In addition, the government manipulated CPI, as calculated by the drones at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was used to deny senior citizens an increase in their Social Security payments for the last two years. Meanwhile, the prices of food, fuel, clothing, insurance, medical care, and local taxes have been skyrocketing due to Federal Reserve created inflation. Do you think the number of Americans on food stamps surging from 26.3 million in 2007 to 45.8 million today has anything to do with Bernanke’s zero interest rate, inflationary policies?

This is not a theoretical hypothesis. Ben Bernanke has purposely sacrificed the savers and seniors in this country at the satanic altar of his Wall Street high priests of debt. According to the BEA data on personal income, in the 3rd quarter of 2008 savers and seniors were able to earn $1.42 trillion of interest income. By the 3rd quarter of 2010 these same people were only able to earn $984 billion of interest income due to Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy. Make no mistake about it, the $436 billion difference was taken out of the pockets of senior citizens and Americans trying to save for their futures and deposited into the accounts of the mega-Wall Street banks that destroyed our financial system with their reckless greed induced debt toga party. The beneficiaries of zero interest rates, QE1, QE2, and all future QEs are Wall Street bankers and heavily indebted entities – namely our profligate Federal Government, who make drunken sailors, seem fiscally responsible. The victims of zero interest rates and quantitative easing are savers and risk averse senior citizens as their income has plummeted and inflation has ravaged their everyday existence. Meanwhile, the Wall Street fat cats have paid themselves over $70 billion in bonuses since 2008.

The fantasy world of moderate inflation is a myth created by the Federal Reserve in conjunction with the government bureaucrats in Washington DC. These people have tortured the CPI calculation worse than a Muslim being water boarded at Guantanamo Bay. Alan Greenspan, bubble blower extraordinaire, began the process of systematically screwing grandmothers in the 1980s. As a way to hide and obscure the true level of inflation caused by running endless deficits supporting a welfare/warfare empire, Greenspan and Clinton implemented devious adjustments to the CPI in order to screw senior citizens and allow Big Government to get bigger while stealthily impoverishing the middle class. One man has pulled back the curtain on the Wizards of Inflation to reveal the truth. John Williams at www.shadowstats.com publishes the true rate of inflation as measured in 1980, prior to the fraudulent manipulation of the CPI. The reality is that inflation has not dropped below 5% since 1987 and currently exceeds 10%.

  

John Williams described the Greenspan/Clinton conspiracy to defraud Americans:

“The Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak. Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce the inflation rate, but it represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of living was being replaced by the cost of survival. The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order to keep buying steak. The new system promised you hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that. Over a period of several years, straight arithmetic weighting of the CPI components was shifted to a geometric weighting. The Greenspan benefit of a geometric weighting was that it automatically gave a lower weighting to CPI components that were rising in price, and a higher weighting to those items dropping in price.” 

Now we hear the latest bipartisan plan to “save” Social Security is to alter the CPI again and further defraud Americans by pretending inflation does not exist. Why address a problem when you can obfuscate, misinform and lie? Anyone with critical thinking skills can clearly see that since 2007 real inflation for our widow has ranged between 5% and 10%, while her subsistence level income has been slashed by 26% due to Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy. The good news is our widow will have the peace of mind knowing the price of steak and hamburger hasn’t really risen as she decides on whether to dine on dog food or cat food tonight.

 

“Government spending is always a “tax” burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing.” – Ron Paul

 

The Road to Impoverishment & Authoritarianism

There is a direct connection between Federal Reserve policies and the impoverishment of the middle class and seniors. The average American does not appreciate the disastrous consequences of deficit spending and currency devaluation by the Federal Reserve. Ron Paul has been sounding the warning for over a decade, but no one has been listening:

“The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation. It is this one-two punch– Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow, and the Fed printing money to make up the difference– that threatens to impoverish us by further destroying the value of our dollars.”

It is no longer a threat. It is reality. The chart below tells the story.

The Federal Funds rate was 6.5% when George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2000. The economy was booming, unemployment was 4.2%, the country was running fiscal surpluses, and the National Debt stood at $5.7 trillion. Alan Greenspan was the Federal Reserve Chairman and had been in that position since 1987. The Federal Funds Rate averaged 5.25% from 1990 through 2000 as the country grew strongly and America came the closest to full employment in its history. In 2001 Greenspan set in motion the creation of a tsunami of debt that swept over the entire country in 2008. The short shallow 2001 recession convinced Greenspan to reduce rates to 1% and keep them below 3% until the middle of 2005. He did this with the full support of his right hand man at the Fed – Ben Bernanke.

“The failure of Chairman Greenspan and other FOMC members to address the fiscal and monetary problems of the United States during his almost two decades at the Fed has left the United States on a trajectory for economic stagnation, hyperinflation, and the attendant political and social costs of such policies.”Chris Whalen Inflated – How Money & Debt Built the American Dream 

Greenspan kept interest rates excessively low three years into an economic recovery, creating the largest bubble in world history. He handed the inflation baton to Bernanke in February 2006 and Ben has been sprinting at top speed for the last five years printing money faster than a Japanese bullet train. With a true rate of inflation running between 5% and 10% during the 2000 through 2011 time frame, market driven interest rates should have been in that same range. But Alan and Ben have kept the Federal Funds rate at an average level of 2.25% over this period. The result has been a consumer debt bubble, housing bubble and now a government debt bubble. Instead of accepting the consequences of excessive liquidity, excessive debt and mal-investment by the Wall Street banks and liquidating the toxic poison from our economic system with the resulting economic depression and losses borne by the stockholders and bondholders of the criminal Wall Street enterprises, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner chose to sacrifice the American taxpayer, savers, and seniors to keep their Wall Street masters in their NYC penthouses and Hamptons estates.

The shrieking liberal left blames capitalism and demands more social welfare benefits for their entitled constituents. The fact is we have not had true capitalism in this country since 1913.

“Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.” – Ron Paul

 

The Day the Dollar Died – August 15, 1971

“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” – F.A. von Hayak 

“The road paved with inflation and debt is also the road to authoritarianism.” – Chris Whalen Inflated – How Money & Debt Built the American Dream 

On August 15, 1971, exactly forty years ago this week, Richard Nixon closed the gold window and removed the last vestiges of restraint on politicians and central bankers. Politicians were free to make promises that couldn’t be kept to buy votes and central bankers were free to print fiat dollars and create inflation to support an ever growing warfare/welfare state. On that date the non-manipulated CPI was 40.8. Today, forty years later, the highly manipulated CPI is 225.7, a 553% increase. In reality, true inflation has risen more than 700% since August 1971. Some other facts put this relentless inflation into perspective:

  • GDP has ascended from $1.1 trillion to $15.0 trillion today, a 1,364% increase in forty years.
  • The National Debt has risen from $400 billion to $14.5 trillion, a 3,625% increase in forty years.
  • Total wage income has grown from $588 billion to $6.627 trillion today, a 1,127% increase in forty years.
  • Consumer credit outstanding has accumulated from $141 billion to $2.446 trillion today, a 1,735% increase in forty years.
  • War spending has increased from $95 billion to $966 billion today, a 1,017% increase in forty years. The U.S. was in the midst of the Vietnam War in 1971.
  • Social welfare transfers from the Federal government for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans, and Unemployment increased from $87 billion to $2.305 trillion today, a 2,649% increase in forty years.

These facts prove how twisted and warped our economic system and society have become. Real wages are lower than they were in 1971 as families were forced to put two parents into the workforce forcing children to be raised by strangers, with the resultant social consequences. The corporate media, financial industrial complex and housing industrial complex convinced Americans they had to keep up with the Joneses with new luxury automobiles, extravagant McMansions, and the expensive accoutrements that went along with these representations of fake wealth. The financial plundering of the country by the peddlers of debt on Wall Street could not have happened without the easy money, no regulation policies of the Federal Reserve for the last decade. The National Debt is increasing at a rate of 10% per year while GDP is increasing at a rate of less than 2% per year. Anyone with even the most basic math skills can see this train is going to go off the tracks. Our spending on social welfare benefits has grown at a rate twice as high as our GDP growth for the last forty years and the establishment in Washington has no resolve to address these un-payable promises. The liberals squealed like stuck pigs over the horrific non-cuts in the recent joke debt ceiling compromise. The neo-cons who control the Republican agenda think $1 trillion per year for their war machine is far too little and endangers our very existence. Consumers refuse to accept the reality of their precarious existence balanced on the edge of their 13 credit cards.

Americans of all parties, ages, races, persuasions, education and beliefs have shirked their civic and moral responsibility to future generations. The rampant greed on Wall Street, corruption in Washington DC, shallowness of the American people and cowardice of all in not accepting responsibility for their actions will lead to the end of this country as we know it. There is no courage among the political class in Washington DC to truly take the steps required to save this country from the most predictable cataclysm in history. The politicians and citizens they represent have decided to delegate their civic responsibility to Ben Bernanke. He has tripled the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet by acquiring the toxic mortgage “assets” of the Wall Street banks and buying $600 billion of U.S. Treasuries. The Federal Funds Rate is .07%. His announcement of zero interest rates for two more years proves he has run out of theories and ammo. Jim Rickards, in 2010, pointed out the danger in Bernanke’s reckless policies:

“Fed Chairman Bernanke wakes up every morning and tries to trash the dollar with quantitative easing, zero interest rates and swap lines with the central banks. But it has not been working. The Fed has never taken it to the next step and asked what happens when quantitative easing does not work.”

The utter failure of QE2, hollow Congressional spending “cuts” that will keep the National Debt on track towards $23 trillion by 2021, S&P downgrade and recent plunge in the stock market are the first cracks in the façade of the great American Empire. We have entered a period of institutional crisis and this fiscal spiral will lead us further into the clutches of a more centralized authoritarian form of government unless the people stand up to the junta of mercantilist oligarchs that control this country. Do we want to relinquish our remaining freedoms and liberties for the cloak of corporate fascist authoritarian central planning disguised as safety and security? The Romans chose security over freedom. The time has come to make a choice about what we will become. Ben Franklin stated the obvious two centuries ago:

 Those who would give up Essential Liberty
to purchase a little Temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

– Ben Franklin