Archive
Visualizing The Shrinking Dollar
“The almighty dollar is looking less mighty these days. By almost every measure, the purchasing power of the US dollar is in precipitous decline.”
Via Zero Hedge
11 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Should Be Abolished
“If the American people truly understood how the Federal Reserve system works and what it has done to us, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately. It is a system that was designed by international bankers for the benefit of international bankers, and it is systematically impoverishing the American people. The Federal Reserve system is the primary reason why our currency has declined in value by well over 95 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger over the past 100 years. The Fed creates our “booms” and our “busts”, and they have done an absolutely miserable job of managing our economy. But why do we need a bunch of unelected private bankers to manage our economy and print our money for us in the first place? Wouldn’t our economy function much more efficiently if we allowed the free market to set interest rates? And according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. So why is the Federal Reserve doing it? Sadly, this is the way it works all over the globe today. In fact, all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank. But the truth is that there are much better alternatives. We just need to get people educated.”
This Is The S&P With And Without QE
“For a while there, it seemed that even the densest of career economists who try to pass for stock pundits on financial comedy TV, were starting to get that without the Fed’s (and the ECB’s, and the BOE’s, and the BOJ’s) QE, the market would be much, much lower (whether 500 points lower as Gundlach suggested or much more, remains unclear). After all: by now it should have been clear to most that QE is doing nothing for the economy, and everything for the stock and bond market (here we certainly agree: there is a bond bubble, which by implication there is an even more massive stock bubble too – anyone who says the two are unlinked can be immediately put on mute).”
Via Zero Hedge
How Your Purchasing Power Was And Is Destroyed
“Most people fail to understand basic mathematical concepts such as exponents and ratios as they apply to everyday life. We usually “get it” when it comes to the mathematical facts that are taught in school (if we passed through basic Algebra) but nobody in our government schools ever teaches how these functions apply to the real world.
The reason they don’t, I assert, is that the educational establishment from the government itself on down knows full well how these functions relate to everyday life, and they also know that if you understood these facts there would be a revolution the next morning as you would understand exactly how you have been systematically and intentionally robbed by the mavens of finance with not only the consent but the active participation of your government.
With that in mind I wish to present two pieces of data today. The first is “average hourly earnings”, which is from the St Louis Fed, and the second is the total systemic debt, public and private, taken from the Fed Z1.
Why the second as a point of comparison? Because as I have repeatedly pointed out “credit” (that is, debt on the other side of the balance sheet) spends exactly the same as does currency (emitted money.) Therefore, when one compares earnings power in real terms one must look at the denominator that is in actual use, which is that currency + credit.
Over the last 30 years, from 1980 to today, the average production and non-supervisory employee earnings have gone from $6.61 to $20.09 (not seasonally adjusted.) We will use the September 2012 cut-off for this because that’s where our Z1 data ends (for another few weeks), which is $19.83.
This is an almost-perfect triple, which sounds great at first — you’re making three times as much, per hour, today as you were in 1980.”
Via Market Ticker
22 Facts That Prove That The Bottom 90 Percent Of America Is Systematically Getting Poorer
“The mainstream media is not telling you this, but the truth is that most Americans are steadily getting poorer. The middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and poverty is soaring to unprecedented heights. The fact that 90 percent of the population is constantly sliding downhill is not good for our society. The United States is supposed to be a land of opportunity with a vibrant free market system that enables average people to make better lives for themselves. Unfortunately, free enterprise is being strangled to death in the United States today. Entrepreneurs and small business are being pounded into oblivion by rules, regulations, red tape and oppressive levels of taxation. At the same time, millions of jobs have been shipped out of the United States by corporate giants and sent to countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. All of this has happened under both Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile, wealth and power continue to become even more heavily concentrated in the hands of big government and big corporations. Our founding fathers warned that we should not allow such large concentrations of wealth and power, because they tend to funnel the rewards of society into the hands of a select few. We need to change the rules of the game so that entrepreneurs, small businesses and average workers can thrive in this country once again. If big government and big corporations continue to gobble up even more wealth and power, the wealth inequality that we see right now will only get even worse.”
The Crisis Is Imminent: “When The Real Crash Comes It Will Be Worse Than the Great Depression”
“In 2006, when he faced off with many well known Titans of investing and warned of an impending financial disaster and economic collapse, Peter Schiff was laughed at by his colleagues. He urged Americans to exit financial markets and take steps to protect themselves before the wealth held in their savings accounts, retirement investments and real estate was wiped out.
Few listened.
We know what happened next.
Now, those same financial experts who publicly vilified Schiff for his predictions six years ago are at it again. Many, including our politicians, central bankers and leading economists, have unequivocally stated that the worst is behind us, and that a global recovery is on the horizon.”
Via SHTF Plan
Will The New Housing Bubble That Bernanke Is Creating End As Badly As The Last One Did?
“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has done it. He has succeeded in creating a new housing bubble. By driving mortgage rates down to the lowest level in 100 years and recklessly printing money with wild abandon, Bernanke has been able to get housing prices to rebound a bit. In fact, in some of the more prosperous areas of the country you would be tempted to think that it is 2005 all over again. If you can believe it, in some areas of the country builders are actually holding lotteries to see who will get the chance to buy their homes. Wow – that sounds great, right? Unfortunately, this “housing recovery” is not based on solid economic fundamentals. As you will see below, this is a recovery that is being led by investors. They are paying cash for cheap properties that they believe will appreciate rapidly in the coming years. Meanwhile, the homeownership rate in the United States continues to decline. It is now the lowest that it has been since 1995. There are a couple of reasons for this. Number one, there has not been a jobs recovery in the United States. The percentage of working age Americans with a job has not rebounded at all and is still about the exact same place where it was at the end of the last recession. Secondly, crippling levels of student loan debt continue to drive down the percentage of young people that are buying homes. So no, this is not a real housing recovery. It is an investor-led recovery that is mostly limited to the more prosperous areas of the country. For example, the median sale price of a home in Washington D.C. just hit a new all-time record high. But this bubble will not last, and when this new housing bubble does burst, will it end as badly as the last one did?”
