American Dream – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

The American Dream Is Dead (And Now Even The Mainstream Media Is Starting To Admit It)

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Are you living “the American Dream”? If so, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate, because most Americans are not.

In fact, as you will see below, a new survey has found that there is nowhere on the entire planet where the average wage earner is making enough money to live “the American Dream”. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now the middle class makes up a minority of the population, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year, and poverty is growing rapidly. The American Dream is essentially dead, and even the mainstream media is starting to figure this out.

Just this week, someone sent me a U.S. News & World Report article entitled “Even Americans Can’t Afford the American Dream”. The following is an excerpt from that article…

native advertising

The study goes country by country, factoring in average local wages and prices to calculate the regional costs of luxuries such as midsize homes (by U.S. standards, 1,480 square feet); electricity and high-speed Internet; cars and enough money for gasoline; food for a family of four; and enough disposable income to periodically dine out and attend movies or other events.

Researchers ultimately found there isn’t a country on the map whose average wage earner could afford all of these expenses together. What’s more, average consumers in Saudi Arabia and Oman are actually closer to financing these socioeconomic goals than the average American. The average Saudi household would only need to see monthly salaries climb by about $74 to realize the American dream in their own country, while U.S. workers would need hundreds of dollars in additional income.

Isn’t that alarming?

The American Dream is out of the grasp of most people living in America, and there isn’t anywhere else on the globe where a majority of the workers are experiencing it either.

Continue reading “The American Dream Is Dead (And Now Even The Mainstream Media Is Starting To Admit It)”

White people have least confidence in the American Dream

Guest Post by Catey Hill

‘How are you feeling about the American Dream, dear?’

Americans say the American Dream is suffering — and that our laziness and low morals may be partially to blame.

Searches for “American Dream” have fallen 24% since Google began tracking this data in 2004 — and when you type “American Dream” into Google, three of the four top autofills are “dead,” “a lie” and “leaving America,” according to an analysis of Google Trends data released Friday in a report by brokerage firm Convergex.

Furthermore, three in four Americans now say that the “American Dream” — broadly, the notion that through hard work and determination every American can have a successful life — is suffering, according to the 7th Annual American Values Survey unveiled last year at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

What’s more, 69% say the obstacles to realizing the dream are “more severe today than ever” — and note that a decline in work ethic is the primary hurdle to Dream achievement. The poll of more than 2,300 Americans was conducted by Burson-Marsteller and market research firm Penn Schoen Berland.

Top 10 barriers to achieving the American Dream
Percent of Americans who say this is a top barrier to more people achieving the American Dream

Decline in work ethic	22%
Decline in values/moral standards	20%
Personal debt	20%
Rules favoring the wealthy	19%
Lack of economic opportunity	18%
Economic inequality	17%
Big government	17%
Decline of the middle class	17%
Cost of healthcare	15%
High government spending	14%

Source: 7th Annual American Values Survey

Continue reading “White people have least confidence in the American Dream”

DO YOU REALLY THINK YOUR VOTE COUNTS?

It Doesn’t

Hat tip Boston Bob

It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.

Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

Continue reading “DO YOU REALLY THINK YOUR VOTE COUNTS?”

The American Dream “Exposed” In 22 Depressing Datapoints

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Once upon a time, middle class households took home 62 percent of all income in America. Today, that number has dropped to just 43 percent. This is just one of the absolutely astounding statistics that you will read about in this article. Over the years, the middle class in America has been in steady decline. Our incomes have been going down, our net worth has been going down, the quality of our jobs has been going down, and yet the cost of living just keeps going up. As a result of all of these factors, more Americans are living in poverty today than ever before, and dependence on the government has exploded to unprecedented levels.

But of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure any of this out. In fact, politicians of all stripes are saying the exact same thing during this election season…

Bernie Sanders says it is in the midst of “a 40-year decline.” Jeb Bush says it is “shrinking.” Ted Cruz says it is “headed in the wrong direction.” And Hillary Clinton says the “basic bargain” that hard work could move families into the middle class “has eroded.”

Sadly, when we send these politicians to Washington D.C. they just continue on with business as usual. No matter who resides in the White House and no matter who controls Congress, the game remains the same and the middle class just continues to suffer. The following are 22 cold, hard pieces of evidence that show that the middle class in America is dying…

#1 This week we learned that for the first time ever recorded, middle class Americans make up a minority of the population. But back in 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle class households.

#2 According to the Pew Research Center, the median income of middle class households declined by 4 percent from 2000 to 2014.

Continue reading “The American Dream “Exposed” In 22 Depressing Datapoints”

The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation

FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST – PART 2

In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I will ponder possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy.

The nearly seven year reign of Barack Obama has resulted in furthering wealth inequality, in spite of his socialistic rhetoric. Notwithstanding his Nobel Peace Prize, military spending is at all-time highs and we are engaged in actual and proxy wars across the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Race relations have never been worse. Poverty levels have never been worse. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1989. Real hourly wages are at 50 year lows. Home ownership has plunged to 50 year lows, as middle class workers have been kicked out of their homes and young people are saddled with so much student loan debt and bleak job opportunities they will never have an opportunity to own. The ownership society pushed by Clinton and Bush, with the proliferation of Wall Street created “exotic” subprime mortgages, peddled to people incapable of paying their mortgages, blew up the world in 2008, and the fall out will last for decades.

Meanwhile, Wall Street banks have reaped $700 billion of ill-gotten profits since 2010 as the Federal Reserve has handed them trillions of interest free funds to gamble with, while rigging the financial markets, and paying their executives obscene bonuses. The hubris and arrogance of the Wall Street titans is appalling, as they buy politicians, write toothless financial regulations (Dodd Frank) for their bought off politicians to pass, report fraudulent financial results with the stamp of approval from the FASB, blatantly rig interest rate, currency, stock and commodities markets, and use deception and propaganda to distract and mislead the public through their corporate media mouthpieces – dependent upon Wall Street advertising revenue to thrive.

Continue reading “FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST – PART 2”

THE REAL REASON THE AMERICAN DREAM IS UNRAVELING

Marketwatch posted an article this week titled Why the American Dream is Unraveling, in 4 charts. As usual, the MSM journalist and the liberal Harvard academic can create charts that reveal a huge problem, but they completely misdiagnose the causes and offer the typical wrong solution of taking more money from producers and handing it to the poor, with no strings attached. This has been the standard operating procedure since LBJ began his War on Poverty 50 years ago. Do these control freaks ever step back and assess how that war is going?

The poverty rate had plunged from 34% in 1950 to below 20% before LBJ ever declared war. It continued down to 15% just as the welfare programs began to be implemented. The percentage of people living in poverty hasn’t budged from the 15% range since the war began. This war has been just as successful as the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Any time a politician declares war on something, expect a huge price tag and more of the “problem” they are declaring war upon.

The Federal government runs over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Over 100 million Americans received benefits from at least one of these programs. Federal and state governments spent $943 billion in 2013 on these programs at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient (not including Social Security & Medicare). That is 27% of the total Federal budget. Welfare spending as a percentage of the Federal budget was less than 2% prior to the launch of the War on Poverty.

In the 50 years since this war started, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. In terms of LBJ’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has utterly failed. In fact, a large proportion of the population is now completely dependent upon government handouts, incapable of self-sufficiency, and enslaved in a welfare mentality that has destroyed their communities.

Continue reading “THE REAL REASON THE AMERICAN DREAM IS UNRAVELING”

21st CENTURY REALITY vs. STORYLINE

I’m baffled by the storyline portrayed by the dying legacy media, sponsored by Wall Street and the CEO executive suites of mega-corps, and supported by the propaganda data agencies of the U.S. government. The BLS, BEA, CBO, CNBC, CNN, and a myriad of other government sponsored letters present supposedly accurate data that is designed to convince the ignorant masses everything is fine and their lives are improving.

For anyone willing to uncover the facts and think critically about the storyline being presented, an entirely different reality is revealed. The simple chart below obliterates the “official” storyline. Do you have the uncomfortable feeling that your financial situation has been declining for the first 13 years of the 21st Century?

Your beloved government puppets and their Wall Street puppeteers have used their control of the mainstream media to fully utilize Edward Bernays’ propaganda techniques to convince you that your household income has actually risen by 28% since 2000. There is a reason the government run public schools don’t teach children about inflation. They might figure out how badly they are getting screwed by their owners.

In reality, even using the heavily manipulated CPI numbers issued by the BLS, REAL median household income in the United States has FALLEN by 7% since 2000. Most households in the U.S. have less annual income than they did 13 years ago.

But it gets better. Median REAL household income is down 8% since the peak in 2008. Now for the government statistic reality check. According to the government and their media mouthpieces, the economy bottomed in 2009, with 10.3% unemployment and GDP bottoming at $14.34 trillion. Since the “official” end of the recession in 2009, the unemployment rate has plummeted to 7.0% and GDP has surged to $16.9 trillion.

If this government reported data is true, how could REAL median household income still be 4% lower than at the END of the recession in 2009? If all these jobs were created and the economy has truly grown by 18%, REAL median household income must be higher than it was in 2009. But it’s not.

Do you still believe the storyline? Do you still believe in the American Dream of a better tomorrow? If you do, you’d have to be asleep.

Luckily for the ruling class, they have successfully “educated” the masses to not understand inflation or revolution would be on the horizon.

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

THE SUBPRIME FINAL SOLUTION

The MSM did their usual spin job on the consumer credit data released earlier this week. They reported a 5.4% increase in consumer debt outstanding to an ALL-TIME high of $3.051 trillion. In the Orwellian doublethink world we currently inhabit, the consumer taking on more debt is seen as a constructive sign. Consumer debt has grown by 5.8% over the first nine months of 2013, after growing by 6.1% in 2012 and 4.1% in 2011. The storyline being sold by the corporate MSM propaganda machine, serving the establishment, is that consumers’ taking on debt is a sure sign of economic recovery. They must be confident about the future and rolling in dough from their new part-time jobs as Pizza Hut delivery men. Plus, they are now eligible for free healthcare, compliments of Obama, once they can log-on.

Of course, buried at the bottom of the Federal Reserve press release and never mentioned on CNBC or the other dying legacy media outlets is the facts and details behind the all-time high in consumer credit. They count on the high probability the average math challenged American has no clue regarding the distinction between revolving and non-revolving credit or who controls the distribution of such credit. It is fascinating examining the historical data on the Federal Reserve website and realizing how far we’ve fallen as a society in the last 45 years.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/HIST/cc_hist_sa_levels.html

Revolving credit is a fancy term for credit card debt. Imagine our society today without credit cards. That sounds outrageous to the debt addicted populace inhabiting our suburban wasteland and urban badlands. What is truly outrageous is the fact we have allowed ourselves to be duped into $846 billion of revolving credit card debt charging an average interest rate of 13% by Wall Street bankers who have used the American Dream of a better life as the bait to lure a dumbed down easily manipulated populace into believing that material possessions purchased with high interest debt represented advancement rather than servitude. Debt accumulation is seen as a badge of honor. Keeping up with the Joneses is all that matters. Our shallow culture has no notion about the concept of deferred gratification or saving to pay for your wants.

A shocking fact (to historically challenged government educated drones) revealed by the Federal Reserve data is that credit card debt did not exist prior to 1968. How could people live their lives without credit cards? It must have been a nightmare. You mean to tell me when people wanted new clothes, jewelry, a TV, or to eat out at a restaurant, they actually had to save up the cash to do so? What kind of barbaric system would make you live within your means? The Depression era adults had somehow survived for over two decades after WWII without buying cheap foreign crap they didn’t need with money they didn’t have using a piece of plastic with a Wall Street bank logo emblazoned on the front.

1968 marked a turning point for America. LBJ’s welfare/warfare state had begun the downward spiral of a once rational country. We chose guns and butter, with the bill being charged to the national credit card. It was fitting that Wall Street introduced the credit card in 1968.

There were 200 million Americans in 1968 and $2 billion of credit card debt outstanding, or $10 per person.
By 1980 there were 227 million Americans and $54 billion of credit card debt outstanding, or $238 per person.
By 1990 there were 249 million Americans and $230 billion of credit card debt outstanding, or $924 per person.
By 2000 there were 281 million Americans and $650 billion of credit card debt outstanding, $2,313 per person.
By July of 2008 credit card debt outstanding peaked at $1.022 trillion and the population was 304 million, with credit card debt per person topping out at $3,361 per person.

Over the course of 40 years, the population of this country grew by 52%. Credit card debt grew by 51,000%. Credit card debt per person grew by 33,600%. This was a case of credit induced mass hysteria and it continues today. Have the American people benefitted from this enslavement in chains of debt? I’d venture to answer no. Who benefitted? The corporate fascist oligarchy of Wall Street banks, mega-corporations sourcing their crap from Chinese slave labor factories, and politicians in the back pockets of the bankers and corporate CEOs benefitted.

The evil oligarch scum grew too greedy and blew up the worldwide financial system in 2008. Since July 2008 credit card debt has declined by $175 billion, with the majority of the decrease from banks writing off bad debt and passing it along to the American taxpayer through their TARP bailout and 0% money from their puppet Bernanke. It bottomed out at $834 billion in April 2011 and has only grown by a miniscule $13 billion in the last 29 months, and only $1.7 billion in the last twelve months. The muppets have refused to cooperate by running up those credit cards. Not having jobs, paying 40% more for health insurance due to Obamacare, and real inflation exceeding 5% on the things they need to live, have caused some hesitation among the delusional masses. Even a government educated, math challenged, iGadget addicted moron realizes their credit card is the only thing standing between them and living in a cardboard box on a street corner.

Your owners have been forced to implement Plan B. The monster they have created is like a shark. The debt must keep growing or the monster will die. In 2008, the oligarchs were staring into the abyss. Their wealth, power and control were in grave jeopardy. Rather than accept the consequences of their actions like men and allowing the economy to return to normalcy, these weasels have doubled down by accelerating the debt production and dropping it from helicopters to subprime borrowers across the land, like unemployed construction workers named Gus getting a degree in liberal arts from the University of Phoenix while sitting in their basement in boxer shorts. The Federal Reserve Black Hawks are hovering over the inner cities dropping Bennie Bucks on the very same people they put in McMansions with no doc negative amortization subprime mortgages in 2005, so they can occupy Cadillac Escalades for a couple years before defaulting again. The appearance of normalcy is crucial to the evil oligarchs as they attempt to pillage the remaining loot in this country.

Before the credit card was rolled out in 1968, there was non-revolving debt strictly related to auto loans made by banks and credit unions. The Federal government was nowhere to be found in the mix as banks and consumers made economic decisions based upon risk and reward. There were $110 billion of loans outstanding to a population of 200 million, or $550 per person. The Federal government stuck their nose into the free market with the creation of Sallie Mae in the 1970’s. But they were still a miniscule portion of total consumer debt at $115 billion in 2008, or only 11% of total consumer debt outstanding. The chart below from Zero Hedge reveals what has happened since the oligarchs crashed the financial system with their vampire squid blood sucking tentacles syphoning the lifeblood from the American middle class. Non-revolving debt has increased from $1.65 trillion in July 2008 to $2.2 trillion today, solely due to Obama and his minions doling out subprime auto and student loan debt to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document.

If middle class consumers were unwilling to borrow and spend, the oligarchs were going to use their control over the government to dole out billions to subprime borrowers in a final, ultimately futile, attempt to keep this Ponzi scheme going for a while longer. The subprime game worked wonders in the final phase of the housing bubble. And now the losses will fall solely on the 50% of Americans who actually pay taxes. It wasn’t a mistake the Federal government took complete control of the student loan market in 2009. It isn’t a mistake the only TARP recipient the Feds have not attempted to disengage from happens to be the largest issuer of subprime auto loans in the world – Ally Financial (aka GMAC, Ditech, ResCap).

In 2008 there was $730 billion of student loan debt outstanding, of which the Federal government was responsible for $120 billion. Five short years later there is $1.2 trillion of student loan debt outstanding and the Federal government (aka YOU the taxpayer) is responsible for $716 billion. Using my top notch math skills, I’ve determined that student loan debt has risen by $470 billion, while Federal government issuance of student loan debt has expanded by $600 billion. The rational risk adverse lenders have reduced their exposure to the most subprime borrowers on earth, undergrads at the University of Phoenix and thousands of other “for profit” educational black holes across the country. Only an organization who didn’t care about getting repaid would lend billions to borrowers without a job, hope of a job, or intellectual ability to hold a job. A critical thinking person might wonder why student loan debt would rise by almost $500 billion in 5 years when college enrollment has grown by only 2 million. That comes to $250,000 per additional student.

The Federal government couldn’t possibly have distributed $500 billion to anyone with a pulse as a way to manipulate the national unemployment rate lower, because anyone in school is not considered unemployed. Do you think the $500 billion was spent on tuition and books? Or do you think those “students” used it to buy iGadgets, HDTVs, weed and Twitter stock? With default rates already at all-time highs and accelerating skyward and $146 billion of loans already in default, you don’t need a PhD from the University of Phoenix (where default rates exceed 30%) like Shaq to realize the American taxpayer is going to get it good and hard once again.

My personal observations during my daily trek through the slums of West Philly would befuddle someone who didn’t understand the oligarch scheme to create an artificial auto recovery by distributing auto loans to deadbeats, the SNAP army, and hip hop nitwits. As I maneuver quickly through the West Philly badlands in my four year old paid off compact car praying I don’t get caught in gang crossfire, I see an inordinate number of brand new BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus, Cadillacs, and Jaguars parked in front of $20,000 dilapidated fleapits that tend to collapse during heavy rain storms. The real unemployment rate in these garbage strewn, disintegrating neighborhoods exceeds 50%. The median household income is less than $20,000. Over 40% of the adult population hasn’t graduated high school and 63% of the population lives below the poverty level. These people put the “sub” in subprime. How can anyone in this American version of third world Baghdad afford to drive a $40,000 vehicle? The answer is they can’t. But you the taxpayer, out of the goodness of your heart and without your knowledge, have loaned them the money so they can cruise around West Philly in Jay Z or Kanye style.

Bernanke’s ZIRP creates the environment for mal-investment and reckless lending. With the Federal government owned Ally Financial leading the charge, the miraculous auto sales recovery is nothing but a bad loan driven illusion. With the Federal government pushing subprime loans like a West Philly drug dealer, the Too Big To Trust Wall Street cabal have followed suit providing financing to deadbeats with FICO scores of 500, no job, but a nice smile. When you can borrow from the Fed at 0% and loan money to SNAP nation at 18%, with a Bernanke unspoken promise to bail them out when the inevitable defaults come as a complete shock, this is why you see thousands of luxury automobiles parked in the urban kill zones across America.

Zero Hedge documented the new subprime bubble in a story earlier this week. As auto dealers allow losers with sub-500 FICO scores to drive off their lots with new cars, ZH summarized the next taxpayer bailout:

“No Car, no FICO score, no problem. The NINJAs have once again taken over the subprime asylum.”

Someone with a 500 FICO score has defaulted on multiple debt obligations in the recent past. The issuance of hundreds of billions of subprime debt can give the appearance of economic growth for a short period of time, just like it did from 2004 through 2007. Then it all collapsed in a heap because the debt eventually must be repaid. Cash flow is required to service debt. Maybe the West Philly subprime Mercedes drivers can trade their SNAP cards for cash to make their car loan payments, since they don’t have jobs. Even the captured MSM is being forced to admit the truth.

While surging light-vehicle sales have been one of the bright spots in the U.S. economy, it’s increasingly being fueled by borrowers with imperfect credit. Such car buyers account for more than 27 percent of loans for new vehicles, the highest proportion since Experian Automotive started tracking the data in 2007. That compares with 25 percent last year and 18 percent in 2009, as lenders pulled back during the recession. Issuance of bonds linked to subprime auto loans soared to $17.2 billion this year, more than double the amount sold during the same period in 2010, according to Harris Trifon, a debt analyst at Deutsche Bank AG. The market for such debt, which peaked at about $20 billion in 2005, was dwarfed by the record $1.2 trillion in mortgage bonds sold that year.

When has packaging subprime loans, getting them rated AAA by a trustworthy ratings agency, and selling them to little old ladies and pension funds, ever caused a problem before? With subprime auto loan issuance accounting for 50% of all car loans and an average loan to value ratio of 114.5%, what could possibly go wrong? Think about that for one minute. The government and Wall Street banks are loaning deadbeats $33,000 of your money to buy a $30,000 car, despite the fact the high school dropout borrower doesn’t have a job and has a history of defaulting on their obligations.

Can you really blame the borrowers? For the second time in the last decade the rich folk have generously offered to let them experience the good life, with debt that is never expected to be repaid. The people in West Philly live in rat infested, rundown, leaky shacks waiting for the 1st of the month to get their EBT card recharged. They have nothing, so they have nothing to lose. When the MAN offered to loan them $300,000 in 2005 so they could buy their very own McMansion, what did they have to lose? They got to live in a fancy house for a few years until they were booted out by the bank and left in exactly the same spot they were before the MAN came along. These people don’t even know what a FICO score means.

Now the MAN has knocked on their hovel door again and offered to put them in a brand spanking new Cadillac Escalade with no money down, requiring no proof of employment, and no prospects of repaying the loan. Hallelujah, there is a God!!! They get to tool around West Philly for a year or two impressing their fellow SNAP recipients until the repo man shows up and absconds with their wheels. They will be left right where they were, hoofing it with their $200 Air Jordans. Anyone with an ounce of brains (eliminates Cramer & Bartiromo) can see this will end exactly as all easy money, Federal Reserve propagated, and government sanctioned scams end.

“Perhaps more than any other factor, easing credit has been the key to the U.S. auto recovery,” Adam Jonas, a New York-based analyst with Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to investors last month. The rise of subprime lending back to record levels, the lengthening of loan terms and increasing credit losses are some of factors that lead Jonas to say there are “serious warning signs” for automaker’s ability to maintain pricing discipline.

In the last year 99% of all consumer debt issued was doled out by government drones, with no interest in getting repaid, to subprime deadbeats, with no interest in repaying. It’s a match made in subprime heaven with your tax dollars. As an Ivy League educated Wall Street banker CEO once said:

“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”

Chuck “Doing the Boogie Woogie” Prince – FORMER CEO of Citicorp – July 2007

You see it is always about liquidity, also known as Bernanke Bucks or QEternity. Without Bernanke and his Federal Reserve sycophants printing $2.8 billion of new money every single day, shoveling it into the grubby hands of his Wall Street bank bosses and a corrupt fetid festering pustule of a government running trillion dollar deficits and showering your money on loafers and welfare queens, this subprime final solution would not be possible. This is an exact replay of the subprime mortgage debacle, except the oligarchs have cut out the middleman. Holding the American people hostage for the $700 billion TARP bailout proved to be messy, with 90% of Americans against the “Save a Corrupt Criminal Banker” scheme. This time, there will not be a vote in Congress when the hundreds of billions in subprime student loans and subprime auto loans go bad and become the responsibility of the few remaining American taxpayers. What’s another few hundred billion among friends when our annual deficits soar past $1 trillion, our national debt approaches $20 trillion, and our unfunded entitlement liabilities exceed $200 trillion?

When the music stopped in 2008, Chuck Prince bopped away with a $40 million severance package and you were left to sweep the confetti off the floors, pick up the empty champagne bottles and caviar plates, scrub the vomitorium, and pay for all the damages that occurred during the sordid subprime orgy of greed, lust, gluttony, envy and sloth. Somehow the distracted, techno-narcissistic, easily duped zombies have been lured into the subprime web of deceit again. We have only ourselves to blame as the corporate fascist oligarchs implement their final solution for the American middle class and our once proud nation – a bullet to the back of the head.

EPIC FAIL – PART ONE

“Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.” – Edmund Burke

No wonder one third of Americans are obese. The crap we are shoveling into our bodies is on par with the misinformation, propaganda and lies that are being programmed into our minds by government bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, corporate media gurus, and central banker puppets. Chief Clinton propaganda mouthpiece, James Carville, famously remarked during the 1992 presidential campaign that, “It’s the economy, stupid”. Clinton was able to successfully convince the American voters that George Bush’s handling of the economy caused the 1991 recession. In retrospect, it was revealed the economy had been recovering for months prior to the election. No one could ever accuse the American people of being perceptive, realistic or critical thinking when it comes to economics, math, history or distinguishing between truth or lies. Our government controlled public school system has successfully dumbed down the populace to a level where they enjoy their slavery and prefer conscious ignorance to critical thought.

The next six months leading up to the November elections will surely provide a shining example of the degraded society we’ve become. Both parties and their propaganda machines, SuperPacs, and corporate media sponsors will treat the igadget distracted masses to hundreds of hours of lies, spin, and vitriol, designed to divert the public from the fact that both parties act on behalf of the same masters and have no intention of changing course of the U.S. Titanic to avert the iceberg dead ahead. We will be treated to storylines about race, gun control, the war on women, energy independence, global warming, the war on terror, the imminent threat of Iran and North Korea, Obamacare, Romneycare, and of course the economy, stupid.

There are 240 million voting age Americans. About 130 million will likely vote in the 2012 election based upon recent voter participation results. This means that 110 million Americans don’t give a crap about who runs this country or they’ve come to their senses and realize our votes don’t matter. Between 1840 and 1900 voter participation ranged between 70% and 82% as Americans took their civic duty seriously and believed their vote counted. Since 1913, when the politicians relinquished control of our currency to a private bank controlled by a small group of powerful men, voter participation for President has ranged between 49% and 62%. It hasn’t surpassed 57% since 1968. Now that corporations are people and our candidates are selected by a few rich men, the transformation from a republic to a corporate fascist state is almost complete. During the coming interminable political campaign you will hear about jobs until your ears bleed. I can guarantee that 98% of the rhetoric will be false. Neither party wants the American people to understand the truth about what happened to our economy and jobs over the last 100 years. It has been a bipartisan screw job and ignoring the facts doesn’t change them.

The first fact that can’t be ignored is how many Americans are actually unemployed today. Here is some truth you won’t get from a politician or media talking head:

There are 243 million working age Americans.
There are 142 million employed Americans.
Only 101 million of the employed Americans are working more than 35 hours per week. This means that only 41.6% of all working age Americans have a full-time job.
According to the government drones at the BLS, 88 million Americans have “chosen” to not be in the labor force – the highest level in U.S. history.
The percentage of Americans in the workforce at 63.8% is the lowest since 1980 and down from a peak of 67.1% in 2000. The difference between these two percentages is 8 million Americans.
The BLS reports there are only 12.7 million unemployed Americans in the country, down from 15.3 million in 2009.
The BLS reports the unemployment rate has dropped from 10% in late 2009 to 8.3% today. Over this time frame the working age population grew by 5.7 million, while the number of employed Americans grew by 3.6 million. Only a government drone could interpret this data and report a dramatic decline in the unemployment rate.

Any critical thinking human being would examine the data being reported as fact by our government and regurgitated without question by the corporate mainstream media and conclude it is false, misleading and manipulated. The economy was booming in 2000 and 67.1% of the working age population were in the labor force. Today the economy is in much worse shape. More people NEED to work in order to just make ends meet, but according to the government, 8 million Americans have chosen to not work. Only an Ivy League economist or CNBC bimbo pundit would believe such a blatant distortion of reality. A comparison to prior decades provides all the evidence you need:

In 1980 the working age population was 168 million and the labor force totaled 107 million.
By 1990 the working age population grew by 21 million and the labor force grew by 19 million.
By 2000 the working age population grew by another 23 million and the labor force advanced by 17 million.
Since 2000 the working age population has grown by 30 million, but shockingly the labor force has supposedly grown by only 12 million.

This data is so twisted that there is absolutely no doubt the Federal Government is purposely manipulating the numbers to make the economic situation appear better than the reality. During the Great Depression propaganda and spin had not been perfected. There weren’t multiple definitions of unemployment designed to confuse and mislead the public. The peak level of unemployment in the 1930s was 25%. The current reported level is 8.3%. On a comparable basis to the 1930s, including short-term discouraged workers, those forced to work part-time, and the long-term discouraged workers which were defined out of existence in 1994 by the BLS, the real unemployment rate is 22% today. It feels like a depression for millions of Americans because it is a depression.

The rhetoric from the Obama administration about a jobs recovery is laughable. Full time employment peaked in July 2007 at 122.4 million. Today there are 113.9 million people classified as full-time, with only 101.3 million working more than 35 hours. There are 8.5 million fewer people with full time jobs today than there were in 2007. That fact is even more disheartening considering the working age population has grown by 10.5 million over the same time span. Taking an even longer term view provides the perspective needed to assess our true economic state. Total nonfarm employment hasn’t grown in twelve years, while the working age population has grown by 30 million people.

Obama will tout the fact that we’ve added 3.6 million jobs since the bottom of this recession. What he won’t tout is that hiring of temporary workers surged by 37% and accounted for 25% of all the jobs added since 2009. I’m sure these temporary workers, with no health or retirement benefits, are confident about their future. The facts about jobs and employment are consistent with the 47 million Americans on food stamps (up from 35 million when the recession supposedly ended). It’s a sure sign of recovery when spending on food stamps doubles in the last two years. No depression here, just move along.

Record numbers of Americans being added to the SSDI rolls for depression and other illusory disabilities is surely a positive development pointing to a strong economic recovery. In just the first four months of this year, 539,000 joined the disability rolls and more than 725,000 put in applications. “We see a lot of people applying for disability once their unemployment insurance expires,” said Matthew Rutledge, a research economist at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research. The number of applications last year was up 24% compared with 2008, Social Security Administration data show. Why participate in the labor market when you can collect a government check for life because you are obese or depressed. These are the people no longer in the labor force. Once they go on SSDI, they rarely go back to work again.

The government reported figure of 12.7 million unemployed Americans is an utter falsehood. There are in excess of 30 million Americans that are either unemployed or working part-time that want full-time jobs. Government propaganda doesn’t change the facts.

“Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley

Would You Like a Side Order of Facts with That Propaganda?

When you watch the Wall Street scam artists paraded on CNBC declaring the number of people not in the labor force is going up due to Baby Boomers retiring, you should understand they are propagating a falsehood. They are either intellectually dishonest or too lazy to do the most basic of research. They are paid millions to impart false storylines to anyone dumb enough to watch CNBC expecting facts or a smattering of truth. If you want some truth, turn to John Mauldin and John Hussman. CNBC doesn’t invite these outstanding honest analysts on their station when they can roll out a shill like Abbey Joseph Cohen or James Paulson. They wouldn’t want some factual analysis when they can have Becky Quick do one of her frequent handjob interviews with that doddering old status quo fool Warren Buffet.

A critical thinker might wonder how could real disposable income be dropping over the last three months and only have risen by 0.3% in the last year if we’ve had the strong job growth touted by Obama. Could it be the jobs being created are extraordinarily low-paying? There are signs of desperation everywhere you look. The two charts below, from one of John Mauldin’s recent articles, reveal the truth about the Baby Boomers retiring storyline. The first chart shows the employment level for those over the age of 55 since 2007. There were 25.3 million people over the age of 55 working in 2007 and there are 30.1 million working today. People over 55 have seen their total employment level rise by 4.8 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, and over 3 million jobs since the 3^rd quarter of 2009. Total employment is down by 4 million since 2007, while employment among those over 55 is up 19%. John Hussman described the reality about employment in his recent weekly article:

“If you dig into the payroll data, the picture that emerges is breathtaking. Since the recession “ended” in June 2009, total non-farm payrolls in the U.S. have grown by 2.32 million jobs. However, if we look at workers 55 years of age and over, we find that employment in that group has increased by 3.04 million jobs. In contrast, employment among workers under age 55 has actually contracted by nearly one million jobs, regardless of which survey you use. Even over the past year, the vast majority of job creation has been in the 55-and-over group, while employment has been sluggish for all other workers, and has already turned down.”

I wonder how Larry Kudlow will spin this.

Now for the really eye opening facts. While the labor participation rate has been plunging, the Boomer participation rate has been skyrocketing. The participation rate for the over 65 age group is now at an all-time high. Do you think this has anything to do with home values dropping 36% since 2005, gasoline prices doubling since early 2009, food prices surging by 25%, the 1.4% annual return of stocks since 1999, or the .15% senior citizens can earn on their money today versus the 5% they could earn in 2007?

Intellectually dishonest ultra-liberal Ivy League defender of the Federal Reserve – Paul Krugman had this to say about Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy on senior citizens:

“Finally, how is expansionary monetary policy supposed to hurt the 99 percent? Think of all the people living on fixed incomes, we’re told. But who are these people? I know the picture: retirees living on the interest on their bank account and their fixed pension check — and there are no doubt some people fitting that description. But there aren’t many of them.”

It must be comforting living in an ivory tower or penthouse suite and looking down upon the ignorant masses while caressing your Nobel Prize. The millions of senior citizens with $100,000 of savings could earn $5,000 of interest income in 2007 to supplement their $18,000 of Social Security income. Today, they can earn $150 while the Wall Street banks receive the benefits of ZIRP by borrowing for free from the Federal Reserve and earning billions risk free. Paulie doesn’t think the $4,850 reduction in income and the 15% increase in inflation since 2007 had a negative impact on senior citizens. They must be pouring into the work force because they are just bored, after working for the last 45 years. John Hussman has a slightly different viewpoint, based upon facts rather than a false disproven ideology:

“Beginning first with Alan Greenspan, and then with Ben Bernanke, the Fed has increasingly pursued policies of suppressing interest rates, even driving real interest rates to negative levels after inflation. Combine this with the bursting of two Fed-enabled (if not Fed-induced) bubbles – one in stocks and one in housing, and the over-55 cohort has suffered an assault on its financial security: a difficult trifecta that includes the loss of interest income, the loss of portfolio value, and the loss of home equity. All of these have combined to provoke a delay in retirement plans and a need for these individuals to re-enter the labor force.

In short, what we’ve observed in the employment figures is not recovery, but desperation. Having starved savers of interest income, and having repeatedly subjected investors to Fed-induced financial bubbles that create volatility without durable returns, the Fed has successfully provoked job growth of the obligatory, low-wage variety. Over the past year, the majority of this growth has been in the 55-and-over cohort, while growth has turned down among other workers. Meanwhile, broad labor force participation continues to fall as discouraged workers leave the labor force entirely, which is the primary reason the unemployment rate has declined. All of this reflects not health, but despair, and helps to explain why real disposable income has grown by only 0.3% over the past year.”

Do you believe Krugman or Hussman? The key takeaway from the data is the desperation exhibited by average Americans, while the political governing elite and Wall Street pigs continue to gorge themselves at the trough of free money provided by the Federal Reserve, while paying themselves obscene bonuses for a job well done buying the corrupt Washington politicians.

Over the next six months we will hear unceasing rhetoric from Obama and Romney about how they are going to create jobs. Neither of these government apparatchiks have a clue about jobs or desire to change the course that was set one hundred years ago with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Obama never worked at a real job in his entire life, while Romney has spent his life firing people and spinning off heavily indebted companies to unsuspecting investors. The current deteriorating jobs picture has been decades in the making and a truly bipartisan effort. The rhetoric about America being an engine of growth and the world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship is laughable when examined with a critical eye. We are an aging empire living in the past as the facts portray an entirely different reality. Our fastest growing industries include:

Solar panel manufacturing (subsidized by your tax dollars)
For-profit universities (diploma mills subsidized by your tax dollars)
Pilates and yoga studios
Self-tanning product manufacturing
Social network game development
Hot sauce production

The “surge” in jobs in the last three months is being driven by these industries:

Food services and drinking places
Administrative and support services
Ambulatory health care services
Credit intermediation
Hospitals

Is this the picture of a world leading jobs machine or a delusional, paper pushing, self-involved, obese, sickly, overly indebted crumbling empire? The job openings in industries that actually produce something are barely identifiable on the chart below. Maybe the University of Phoenix can successfully retrain construction and manufacturing workers to be waiters, waitresses, and Wal-Mart greeters if the Federal government can funnel more of our tax dollars into student loans.

If you thought low wage work was only for Chinese, Indians, and Vietnamese, you haven’t been paying attention. The United States is a world leader. We are by far the world leader among developed countries in percentage of low wage workers at 24.8%. I find it hysterical that the dysfunctional insolvent countries of Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy have a much smaller percentage of low wage workers than the great American empire. We have 142 million employed Americans and 35 million are slaving away in low paying thankless jobs. This explains why the half the workers in the country make less than $25,000 per year.

The top three employment occupations in the country are:

Office and administrative support work
Sales & Related
Food preparation and serving related

There are high paying good jobs in America, but there aren’t many and on-line college graduates from the University of Phoenix aren’t going to get them. The highest paying jobs today require a high level of specialization and education, especially in the healthcare and technology industries. This disqualifies the vast majority of government run public school graduates. High paying manufacturing jobs which were the backbone of the country during the 1950s and 1960s are gone forever. The reasons for this transformation are multifaceted and will be addressed in Part Two of this article. It didn’t happen by accident and there are culprits to blame. The conversion of our country from making high quality things other countries needed to a debt driven service economy of paper pushers, hash slingers, and retail “specialists” has slowly but surely destroyed the middle class. The masses are distracted by the latest technological marvel that allows them to waste another two hours per day posting how they feel about the latest episode of America’s Got Something or America’s Top Whatever. We have become a country that glories in our materialism and shallow culture while acting like a thug around the world with our unparalleled military machine.

This result is not an accident. It was set in motion by the actions of a handful of rapacious, wealthy powerful men that have been calling the shots in this country for the last hundred years. It wasn’t a planned conspiracy but the logical result of man-made inflation, a fiat currency not backed by gold, the craving of rich men to become richer, a willfully ignorant populace, and a slow devolution of our society into a corporate fascist state. We praise and honor psychopathic criminals while scorning and ridiculing the middle class workers that built this country. The American dream has become a nightmare for the millions of unemployed and underemployed. The acceleration of debt accumulation and money printing guarantees this rotting carcass of a country will go belly up in the foreseeable future.

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.” – Kurt Vonnegut

In Part Two of this article I will examine how we got to this point and what is likely to happen next.

Your Ad Here

AMERICAN EULOGY (Featured Article)

The Founding Fathers described the kind of country they were shaping on July 4, 1776 with the most well known sentence in the English language:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – Declaration of Independence

In 1776, America was an idea born of noble intentions. An idea that every citizen had the opportunity to succeed, prosper and achieve based upon their hard work and abilities. The government did not provide advantages or a safety net for its citizens. People were free to succeed or fail based upon their own merits. America had a frontier spirit because it was still a frontier. Individual effort, intellect and willingness to sweat allowed you to move up the socio-economic ladder. The government provided a National Defense, and very little else. In 1794, the country had a population of 4.4 million and a GDP of $310 million. Government spending totaled $7.1 million, or 2.3% of GDP, and was split between Defense and interest on the Revolutionary War debt. Today, Federal Government spending totals $3.7 trillion, or 25% of GDP.

James Truslow Adams in his 1931 Epic of America described the America that once existed in reality, but only exists as a phantom today:

“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, also too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

“The American Dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.” – James Truslow Adams – Epic of America

His assessment of the American Dream was made in 1931. He saw signs that the American Dream had begun to die. He was right. The American Dream began to develop a terminal illness in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve and the passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, creating a permanent income tax.

Song of the Century

Sing us a song of the century
It sings like American Eulogy
The dawn of my love and conspiracy
Forgotten hope and the class of 13
Tell me a story into that goodnight
Sing us a song for me – American Eulogy – Green Day

At the outset of the last century America was still a vital, free, growing country on the rise. The song of the century began as a joyous ballad and ended as a funeral dirge. The creation of a Central Bank, which could create inflation on demand, and allowing politicians the ability to buy votes through pork spending, paid for with ever increasing taxation, have sucked the life out of the American Dream. According to the Federal Reserve’s own website, their mandates were clear. Below are those mandates and an assessment of their success.

Conducting the nation’s monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

Due to loose monetary policy in the 1920’s, the Federal Reserve created a stock bubble, a stock market crash of 89%, a decade long Great Depression, and unemployment of 25% in the 1930’s.
Due to loose monetary policies in the 1970’s, the Federal Reserve created raging inflation that reached 14% in the early 1980’s and needed to raise interest rates to 18% in order to break the back of inflation, resulting in unemployment surging to 9.7% in 1982.
Due to loose monetary policies in the early 2000’s, the Federal Reserve created the largest housing bubble in history, with the subsequent collapse bringing the financial system to within hours of collapse, and driving unemployment to 9.9% in 2009.
Due to the loosest monetary policy in history, today, inflation has begun to rage across the globe, leading to riots, protests and bloody revolutions, with more on the way.
The Federal Reserve has achieved their stable prices mandate by inflating away 96% of the purchasing power of the US dollar in less than 100 years. The price of gold continues to soar, as faith in the US dollar diminishes by the minute. I guess stability is in the eye of the beholder.

Supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation’s banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers.

The Federal Reserve’s supervisory and regulatory expertise can be observed in the graph above. This graph doesn’t do the Fed justice, as it begins in 1934. Sixteen years after its origination, the Fed managed to let 10,000 out of 25,000 banks in the country fail between 1929 and 1932.
Their glorious history also includes residing over the failure of 2,800 banks during the 1980’s S&L crisis.
While protecting their mega-bank Wall Street masters, the Fed has allowed over 300 small banks to go under so far. There are 900 banks on the troubled list that will eventually meet their maker.

Maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets.

Generally, maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systematic risk doesn’t include allowing the worldwide financial system to come within hours of collapse as described by Rep. Paul Kanjorski:

“On Thursday [the 18th], at about 11 o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks.

They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic and there. And that’s what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

Now we talked at that time about what would have happened if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.”

Providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation’s payments system.

It seems this is the only mandate the Federal Reserve has taken seriously is providing services to its owners, the banks. Did the bankers and politicians that met on Jekyll Island to mastermind this Central Bank envision that those services would include: buying $1.5 trillion of toxic mortgages from the banks; allowing the mega-banks to borrow from the Fed at 0% and reinvest those funds at 2.5% risk free; pumping $600 billion directly into the stock market through their QE2 scam; allowing banks to falsely overstate the value of their mortgage and commercial loans; and never ever enforcing basic risk management regulations.
While providing Wall Street banks with billions of unearned risk free profits, 0% interest rates further impoverish the savers and senior citizens of the country. The Federal Reserve has fulfilled their unstated mandate of enriching bankers at the expense of middle class Americans.

To strengthen U.S. standing in the world economy.

The Federal Reserve’s affect on the world economy is best revealed in a pictorial tribute to their policies:

TUNISIA

ALGERIA

EGYPT

The Federal Reserve has not been alone in killing the American Dream. Politicians since 1913 have done their part in suffocating the dream. The tax code consisted of 400 pages in 1913 and tax rates ranged from 1% to 7%. In less than a century politicians of both parties have carved out 70,000 pages of payoffs, entitlements, and bribes for their contributors and constituents. Tax rates now range from 10% to 35%. Those 70,000 pages of rules, regulations and tax breaks do not benefit the average middle class American. They benefit those who had the money and power to buy off a Congressman.

The Federal Reserve and the US Tax Code bastardized the American Dream, created barriers to economic advancement, and supported the accumulation of wealth and power by a select few. The ruling elite have used their power and control over the media to convince the majority of Americans that the American Dream is about accumulating material possessions with debt. The American Dream no longer meant attaining the fullest measure of your capabilities, but living in the biggest McMansion, driving the nicest BMW, watching the biggest TV and wearing the latest fashions, all acquired with debt. America is dying.

Mass Hysteria

Red alert is the color of panic
Elevated to the point of static
Beating into the hearts of the fanatics
And the neighborhood’s a loaded gun
Idle thought lead to full-throttle screaming
And the welfare is asphyxiating
Mass confusion is all the new age and it’s creating a feeding ground for the bottom feeders of hysteria

Hysteria, mass hysteria!
Mass hysteria!
Mass hysteria!
Mass hysteria! – American Eulogy – Green Day

Green Day captures the essence of America since the turn of the century. The country has been in the throes of mass hysteria since 9/11. The once independent, self sufficient individualists that populated this country have become dependent, government reliant, quivering shadows of the frontiersmen that created this country. In the name of safety and security, the American people have allowed their government to accumulate complete control over every aspect of our lives. Only a country in the grip of mass hysteria would allow their leaders to run the National Debt from $5.8 trillion to $14.1 trillion in less than 10 years. Only a country in the clutches of mass hysteria could believe they could get rich by trading internet stocks and houses to a greater fool. Only a country seized by mass hysteria would allow its leaders to promote democracy at the point of a cruise missile as we continue to fight $3 trillion wars in the Middle East, while nearly tripling the amount spent on Defense to more than $1 trillion per year.

Defense Budget Breakdown for 2011

Defense-related expenditure	2011 Budget request & Mandatory spending	Calculation
DOD spending	$721.3 billion	Base budget + “Overseas Contingency Operations”
FBI counter-terrorism	$2.7 billion	At least one-third FBI budget.
International Affairs	$10.1–$54.2 billion	At minimum, foreign arms sales. At most, entire State budget
Energy Department, defense-related	$20.9 billion
Veterans Affairs	$66.2 billion
Homeland Security	$54.7 billion
NASA, satellites	$3.4–$8.5 billion	Between 20% and 50% of NASA’s total budget
Veterans pensions	$58.4 billion
Other defense-related mandatory spending	$7.5 billion
Interest on debt incurred in past wars	$114.8–$454.2 billion	Between 23% and 91% of total interest
Total Spending	$1.060–$1.449 trillion

If you had told someone on September 10, 2001 that ten years later America would be running $1.5 trillion annual deficits, fighting two wars of choice in countries that despise our presence, and had not only not addressed the $100 billion of unfunded welfare liabilities but added billions more with Medicare D and Obamacare, they would have thought you were a crazy doomster predicting the end of the world. They would have put you away in a padded cell if you had further predicted that politicians would cut taxes three separate times, that the Wall Street banks that leveraged themselves 40 to 1 and destroyed the financial system were handed $2 trillion of taxpayer funds so they could pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses, and that the Federal Reserve would triple its balance sheet to $2.45 trillion by running its printing presses at hyper-speed and handing the money to those same Wall Street Mega-Banks.

What caused the mass hysteria that has destroyed the soul of America? Was it just the madness of crowds? Or was it something more sinister?

True sounds of maniacal laughter
And the deaf-mute is misleading the choir
The punch-line is a natural disaster
And it’s sung by the unemployed
Fight fire with a riot
The class war is hanging on a wire because the martyr is a compulsive liar
When he said “it’s just a bunch of niggers throwing gas into the ….” – American Eulogy – Green Day

Whenever an act doesn’t make sense and seems irrational, you need to ask yourself, “who benefits?” Who has benefitted from the hysteria? The answer is in plain sight. The moneyed interests benefitted. The military industrial complex benefitted. The Federal Government bureaucracy benefitted. Wall Street bankers benefitted. Mega-corporations and their CEOs benefitted. The top 1% ruling elite gained more wealth and more power. They created the mass hysteria with the assistance of their corporate owned mainstream media and completed their pillaging of the middle class with the cooperation of regulators, rating agencies and their ultimate weapon, the privately owned Federal Reserve bank, that has enriched its owners while impoverishing those whose only aspiration was to do an honest day’s work, raise their families, and live in relative comfort, safety, and happiness.

I Don’t Wanna Live In The Modern World

I don’t wanna live in the modern world!
I don’t wanna live in the modern world!
I don’t wanna live in the modern world!
I don’t wanna live in the modern world!

I am a nation without bureaucratic lies
Deny the allegation as it’s written (fucking lies!)

I want to take a ride to the great divide
Beyond the “up to date” and the neo-gentrified
The high definition for the low resident
Where the value of your mind is not held in contempt
I can hear the sound of a beating heart
That bleeds beyond a system that’s falling apart
With money to burn on a minimum wage
I don’t give a shit about the modern age – American Eulogy – Green Day

The modern world in no way resembles the world James Truslow Adams wrote so passionately about in 1931. Green Day’s version of bureaucratic lies, high definition TVs for the poor, contempt for those who use their minds, and a debt flooded system that is falling apart is an accurate assessment of America today. The modern world is ruled by the few with wealth and power, sustained by government. The misinformation and propaganda dished out by the mainstream media creates a smokescreen that obscures who wields the true power in this country. The corporate mainstream media has done such a good job spreading the Big Lie that a vast number of Americans actually admire and worship the ultra-rich.

Most Americans still believe the fairy tale of the American Dream, that no matter how humble your beginnings, everyone has a fair chance to become rich in America. The truth is that the wealthy ruling class owns the country. The top 1% control 43% of the financial wealth of the nation. The top 10% control 83% of the financial wealth of the nation. There is a misperception that the ultra-rich earn their wealth. The facts show otherwise. In 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. Remember the financial crisis of 2008-2009 that wiped out 7 million jobs, cut the value of many homes in half, and required a taxpayer bailout of Wall Street? According to research done by economist Edward Wolff, “there has been an “astounding” 36.1% drop in the wealth (marketable assets) of the median household since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. By contrast, the wealth of the top 1% of households dropped by far less: just 11.1%. So as of April 2010, it looks like the wealth distribution is even more unequal than it was in 2007.”

Source: William Domhoff

The bottom 90% own less than 19% of stocks and mutual funds in the country. Reality is that the 10% richest Americans own the country. The top 1% control 50% of the investment assets and only 5% of the total debt in the country. The bottom 90% control 12% of the investment assets and are burdened with 73% of the total debt. You can clearly see that the Wall Street bailout and the current Federal Reserve QE2 plan to boost stock prices have only benefitted the top 10% richest Americans. What is good for Wall Street is not good for Main Street. The American middle class has been lured into debt by the purveyors of debt, the ultra-rich elite who control the financial industry. The further into debt the bottom 90% descend, the greater the enrichment of the ruling class. This is why Wall Street shysters, political hacks and the corporate mainstream media have urged Americans to whip out those credit cards and “Save America” by spending money they don’t have, again. It is reminiscent of President Bush’s heartfelt plea to the American public to defeat terrorism by buying a GM car with 0% down.

The propaganda that is constantly pounded into the brains of Americans about “death taxes” and the rich paying more than their fair share of taxes is part of the Big Lie perpetrated by the powerful ruling class. The “huge” issue of estate tax impacts only the few thousand richest Americans. According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000). The richest families in the country provide the funding for the mainstream media propaganda needed to eliminate estate taxes.

The lies about the ultra-rich paying more than their fair share of taxes are refuted in the graph above. The top 1% actually pays a lower percentage of their income than the next 9%. The tax code isn’t 70,000 pages for nothing. The ultra-rich have used their wealth to great advantage by having loopholes and tax dodges inserted into the tax code by their bought off congressmen. The average American can’t afford high powered tax specialists and lawyers to help them stash their wealth in off-shore tax havens in the Caribbean and Switzerland. The consistent theme in America today is that the middle class gets screwed and the ultra-rich ruling class accumulates more wealth and power.

The Death of America

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams

Two hundred and thirty five years ago, our Founding Fathers declared that we all had the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights have been restricted and bastardized over two centuries. Liberties have been severely restricted as your government tracks you through your social security number, is able to monitor your phone and internet communications, and regulates your education, healthcare, business, and a thousand other daily activities. The right to happiness was based upon James Treslow Adams’ view that we were free to attain “the fullest stature of which they are innately capable”. The happiness of becoming a success through your individual exertion, intelligence and efforts has been subverted by the happiness of material goods acquired through the use of debt, peddled by the ruling class.

The American Dream where every person had the opportunity to live a richer and fuller life began to die in 1913. Every generation born in this country had an excellent chance to live a better life than their parents. Relentless progress was the American way. I have three teenage sons. Based on the actions of this country’s ruling oligarchy, I doubt that my sons will live a richer and fuller life than myself. The debts are too extreme, the military overreach too excessive, the looting by the financial class too great, the political corruption too extensive, and the opportunities too few. The dream of a social order where everyone could rise to the highest level of their capabilities regardless of their birth has been systematically squashed. With 66% of households making less than $65,000 and college costs out of reach for 80% of Americans without incurring crushing levels of debt, the chances for most Americans to climb the social ladder through educational advancement are nil. Even if they do graduate from college, the CEOs in corporate America, who “earn” 300 times the average worker, have outsourced their jobs to China and India.

The ruling class provides their children with private schooling and necessary preparation to keep their place in the social order. Wealth begets wealth. The elite send their kids to the elite Ivy League schools and use their connections with their fellow ruling elite to get them jobs on Wall Street, the prestigious connected corporations or government jobs in Washington DC. The wealth of the few has erected barriers to advancement of the many. America has progressively become a stratified class oriented society that has begun to spiral downward as the ruling class has gone too far. The revolutions flaring across the globe are occurring because the ruling class went too far and took too much. The ruling class in America should take note. They have shattered the American Dream and the retribution from those who have been swindled will be unexpected and violent.