Tag Archives: economy

Unemployment? Recession? Home Sales Down? No Problem.

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They Know That They Are Killing The Economy, But They Are Doing It Anyway…

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They know exactly what they are doing.  The “experts” that run the Federal Reserve know that if they dramatically hike interest rates it will cause countless American workers to lose their jobs and it will absolutely crush the housing market.  And even though those two things are already starting to happen, they just announced another massive rate hike.  If there was a school for central bankers, one of the very first things that they would teach you is that you should never, ever raise rates as an economy is plunging into a recession.  Every Fed official knows what has happened in the past when rates have been hiked at the beginning of an economic slowdown, but they are doing it anyway.  To call this “economic malpractice” would be a major understatement, and the American people should be deeply alarmed about what they are doing to us.

After everything that has already happened, it is hard to believe that Fed officials would continue to be so reckless.  On Wednesday, it was announced that rates would be raised by another 75 basis points…

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points for the third straight month as it struggles to bring scorching-hot inflation under control, a move that threatens to slow U.S. economic growth and exacerbate financial pain for millions of households and businesses.

The three-quarter percentage point hikes in June, July and September — the most aggressive series of increases since 1994 — underscore just how serious Fed officials are about tackling the inflation crisis after a string of alarming economic reports. Policymakers voted unanimously to approve the latest super-sized hike.

It was a unanimous vote.

There wasn’t even one dissenting voice.

Have they gone completely mad?

Wall Street certainly did not like this decision.  The Dow plunged hundreds of points immediately after it was announced…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 522.45 points, or 1.7%, to close at 30,183.78. The S&P 500 shed 1.71% to 3,789.93, and the Nasdaq Composite slumped 1.79% to 11,220.19.

The S&P ended Wednesday’s session down more than 10% in the past month and 21% off its 52-week high. Even before the rate decision, stocks were pricing in an aggressive tightening campaign by the Fed that could tip the economy into a recession.

For ages, the Fed coddled the financial markets, but now it is almost as if they don’t even care anymore.

Personally, I am far more concerned about what will happen to ordinary hard working Americans in the months ahead.  Even Jerome Powell is admitting that “an increase in unemployment” is likely because of what the Fed is doing…

“I think there’s a very high likelihood we will have a period of … much lower growth and it could give rise to an increase in unemployment,” he said.

Will that mean a recession?

“No one knows whether that process will lead to a recession or how significant a recession it will be,” Powell said. “I don’t know the odds.”

Actually, we are in a recession right now.

And Powell and his minions just made things a whole lot worse.

Even Democrats understand this.  After the rate hike was announced, Senator Elizabeth Warren went on Twitter and warned that “millions of Americans” could soon lose their jobs…

.@federalreserve’s Chair Powell just announced another extreme interest rate hike while forecasting higher unemployment. I’ve been warning that Chair Powell’s Fed would throw millions of Americans out of work — and I fear he’s already on the path to doing so.

This is one of the rare occasions when Elizabeth Warren is right on target.

As I have been documenting on my website for weeks, large numbers of Americans have already been getting laid off.

In fact, things are already so bad that even Facebook is trimming their numbers…

As growth stalls and competition intensifies, Facebook parent Meta has begun quietly cutting staff by reorganizing departments, while giving ‘reorganized’ employees a narrow window to apply for other roles within the company, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing current and former managers familiar with the matter.

By shuffling people around, the company achieves staffing cuts “while forestalling the mass issuance of pink slips.”

So why would the Fed choose to raise rates when layoffs are already beginning to spike?

Higher rates are also having a devastating impact on the housing market.

This week, we learned that sales of existing homes have now fallen for seven months in a row…

Home sales declined for the seventh month in a row in August as higher mortgage rates and stubbornly high prices pushed prospective buyers out of the market.

Sales of existing homes — which include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — were down 19.9% from a year ago and down 0.4% from July, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.

Someone should start putting “Jerome Powell did this” stickers on for sale signs all over the nation.

Because this didn’t have to happen.

Now the housing market is already in a “deep recession”, and the Fed just keeps making things even worse…

The prolonged downturn in confidence shows the housing market has been “in a tailspin for the whole of this year,” according to Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson.

“Activity tracks mortgage applications with a lag, and the early September numbers are grim, even before the full hit from the rebound in mortgage rates in recent weeks works through,” Shepherdson said in a note to clients on Monday.

“In short, the housing market is in a deep recession, which is already hammering homebuilders and will soon depress housing-related retail sales,” he added.

The Fed seems determined to kill the economy.

But why?

Why would they do this?

One analyst that was just quoted by Fox Business is warning that “times are going to get tougher from here”…

“With the new rate projections, the Fed is engineering a hard landing — a soft landing is almost out of the question,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist of Principal Global Investors. “Powell’s admission that there will be below-trend growth for a period should be translated as central bank speak for ‘recession.’ Times are going to get tougher from here.”

Yes, times are definitely going to get tougher from here.

In fact, we are eventually headed for a meltdown of epic proportions.

But instead of working to prevent a historic crisis, the Federal Reserve is actually encouraging one.

The American people deserve some answers, because there is something about all of this that really stinks.

They Know That They Are Killing The Economy, But They Are Doing It Anyway…

Following The Plan

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The “Scariest Paper Of 2022” Reveals The Terrifying Fate Of Biden’s Economy: Millions Are About To Lose Their Job

BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, SEP 10, 2022 – 12:11 PM

For much of the past year (and certainly at the time, more than a year ago, when the so-called experts, central bankers and macrotourists were still yapping about “transitory inflation” and other things they were wrong about and do not understand), we were warning that at some point the Fed will realize that it is simply impossible to contain supply-driven inflation through stubborn rate hikes which instead would lead to a dire alternative – millions in mass layoffs and newly unemployed workers …

… and will revise its 2% inflation target higher, a move which will send every risk asset – from high-beta trash and meme stonks, to blue-chip icons, to bitcoin and cryptos limit up.

To remind readers of this coming phase shift, we most recently warned in June that “at some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target“…

Well, it turns out that we were right, and not just about the coming mass layoffs, but also about the inflation target leaks. But first, lets back up a bit.

A little over one year after nobody expected the Fed would be hiking rates like a drunken sailor until some time in late 2023 or 2024, it has now become fashionable to not only predict that the Fed will keep hiking rates at every FOMC meeting and at the fastest pace since the near-hyperinflation of the 1980s, but that the central bank will somehow manage to avoid a hard landing (i.e., the hiking cycle won’t end in a recession or depression), even though every single Fed tightening cycle since 1913 has ended in disaster.

An example of this was the statement by former Fed vice chair (and PIMCO’s “twice-revolving door”) Rich Clarida, who told CNBC that “failure is not an option for Jay Powell,” adding that “I think they’re going to 4% hell or high water. Until inflation comes down a lot, the Fed is really a single mandate central bank.”

Of course, if one could hike rates in a vacuum that could work – after all, Clarida himself, who admits he got this year’s soaring inflation dead wrong when he was still a daytrading god and part oft he Fed in 2021, said that the Fed may as well have just one mandate, namely to tame inflation. But what so few seem to recall is that the Fed is “hiking to spark a recession“, or as CNBC’s Steve Liesman put it, there is no such thing as “immaculate rate hikes” meaning that rate hikes have dire tradeoffs in other sectors of the economy. In other words, if the Fed’s intention is to spark a recession, it will spark a recession… leading to millions of Americans losing their jobs, something which even Elizabeth Warren appears to have grasped.

Yet due to the recency bias of Biden’s trillions in stimmies, and a world where workers – whether working form home or the office – have virtually all the leverage, few today can conceive of a world where inflation is zero or negative and is instead replaced with millions in unemployed workers, an outcome which one could (or rather should) say is even worse for the ruling democrats than roaring inflation. At least, with runaway prices, most people have a job and their wages are rising (at least nominally, if not in real terms).

However, the higher rates rise, the closer we get to that inevitable moment when the BLS – unable to kick the can any longer – admits what has been obvious to so many for months: the US is facing a labor crisis of epic proportions with millions and millions of mass layoffs. And for those to whom it is not yet obvious, we urge to read a WSJ op-ed published by none other than Jason Furman, who is not some crackpot republican but Obama’s own top Economic Adviser from 2013-2017 and currently economic policy professor at Harvard.

In “Inflation and the Scariest Economics Paper of 2022“, Furman summarizes a paper written by Johns Hopkins macroeconomist Larry Ball with co-authors Daniel Leigh and Prachi Mishra of the International Monetary Fund released by the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, whose conclusion is as follows: “To bring price increases down to 2%, we may need to tolerate unemployment of 6.5% for two years.”

In other words, just as we said, inflation – much of which is supply-driven, which the Fed can do nothing about – will force the Fed to crush the economy by keeping rates for much longer, the result of which will be many millions in unemployed workers, or as Furman puts it, the paper “shows why the Federal Reserve will likely need to maintain its war on inflation, even if unemployment continues to rise.”

What is more remarkable about Furman’s read of the economist paper is that in addition to its primary theme (the lack of labor slack, or labor tightness, is responsible for some 3.4% of underlying inflation in July 2022), the paper admits precisely what we have been saying all along – that the Fed can’t control supply-side variables:

The paper also argues, convincingly in my view, for a different measure of underlying inflation. Fluctuations in energy and food prices are generally due to factors outside the control of macroeconomic policy makers. Geopolitics and weather have elevated the inflation rate in recent years. Plunging gasoline prices are temporarily lowering the inflation rate now. That’s why economists since the 1970s have focused on “core” inflation, which excludes food and energy.

But food and energy aren’t the only things people buy that are subject to supply-side volatility. Prices of new and used cars, for example, have gyrated over the past two years for reasons that are mostly unrelated to the strength of the overall economy. Both regular and core inflation are based on taking averages of price increases and can be distorted by large changes in outlier categories. The median inflation rate calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland drops outliers to remove these distortions.

According to Furman, median inflation – which is a statistically better measure of the underlying inflation that policy makers can actually control – is well above the Fed’s preferred headline inflation print (which fell to zero in July on a sequential basis and has stabilize) and shows no sign of moderating and has run at a 6.6% annual rate in the last three months.

But the “scariest” part of the new paper, Furman reveals, is when the authors use their model to forecast the unemployment rate that would be needed to bring inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target. He explains why this is so scary:

The authors present a range of scenarios, so I ran their model using my own assumptions…  Under these assumptions, which are more optimistic than the authors’ midpoint scenario, if the unemployment rate follows the Federal Open Market Committee’s median economic projection from June that the unemployment will rise to only 4.1%, then the inflation rate will still be about 4% at the end of 2025. To get the inflation rate to the Fed’s target of 2% by then would require an average unemployment rate of about 6.5% in 2023 and 2024.

Where is unemployment now: it’s 3.7% (6.014 million unemployed workers vs 164.746 million civilian labor force). This matters, because according to one of the most erudite economist Democrats, by the end of the Biden admin in 2024, the unemployment will have to soar to 6.5% for inflation to plunge to the Fed’s historical target of 2.0%

What does this mean in absolute numbers? Assuming a modest increase in the US labor force, a 6.5% unemployment rate in 2024 would translate into no less than 10.8 million unemployed workers, an 80% increase from the 6 million today!

Still think that politicians – and especially Democrats – will sit quietly and blindly ignore how high the Fed is hiking rates if it means that to normalize inflation back to 2% it means nearly doubling the number of unemployed Americans (and a crushing recession to boot). Spoiler alert: no, they won’t, and this may be one of the very rare occasions when Elizabeth Warren is actually right to worry about what the coming mass layoff wave means for Democrats… and the 2024 presidential election.

So what should the Fed do? Well, according to Furman, the Fed has four options:

  1. First, place more emphasis on the ratio of job openings to unemployment and median inflation as it assesses the tightness of labor markets and the underlying rate of inflation.
  2. Second, the new paper shows how much easier it will be to tackle inflation if expectations remain under control. The Fed should follow up on Chairman Jerome Powell’s tough talk at Jackson Hole with meaningful action such as a 75-basis-point increase at the next meeting.
  3. Third, be prepared to accept the unemployment rate rising above 5% if inflation is still out of control.

While we doubt #3 is actionable, what is more remarkable is Furman’s final proposal: it’s the one that, like the Dude’s proverbial rug, ties the room together and sets the stage for what is coming:

Finally, stabilizing at a 3% inflation rate is probably healthier for the economy than stabilizing at 2%—so while fighting inflation should be the central bank’s only focus today, at some point the Fed should reassess the meaning of victory in that struggle.

And just in case his WSJ proves too complicated for some mainstream experts and economists, here it is in truncated, twitter format:

And there you have it: remember what we said on June 21: “At some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target.” Well… there it is.

And while mainstream economists and the market may require quite a few months to grasp what is coming, it is the only way out of a crisis of commodities – as Zoltan has repeatedly and correctly put it – and which central banks have no control over, and thus will have to move not only the goalposts but the entire football field to avoid a social revolt or something even scarier.

While we wait, we can’t help but snicker at what the 79-year-old figurehead in the White House tweeted today…

… because what Biden calls “the strongest economic recovery in recent history” is – even according to Democrats – about to be the biggest economic disaster in modern history.

from:    https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/scariest-paper-2022-reveals-terrifying-fate-bidens-economy-millions-are-about-lose-their?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=914

This is Information Everyone Needs —Take Some Time to Listen

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This is really important information for EVERYONE to pay attention to. It is time for everyone to wake up because all of our lives are at stake, and it is not because of some virus .  It is because of the manipulators behind the curtain:

Welcome to The Outer Limits!

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Paul Krugman: An Alien Invasion Could Fix the Economy

By Aug. 16, 2011

According to the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize laureate, you know what would end the economic slump in 18 months? Aliens.

Paul Krugman probably feels like an alien himself these days, considering Washington is completely ignoring his unwavering arguments for more fiscal stimulus as President Obama and Congressional Republicans try to out-deficit-reduce each other. So maybe that’s why Krugman has aliens on the brain.

While talking off the cuff on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program (Zakaria is also a TIME Magazine contributor), Krugman conjectured about what would happen if aliens landed on earth and attacked us.

“If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack, and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months,” Krugman says, referencing an episode of The Twilight Show in which an alien threat was manufactured to bring about world peace.

While Krugman is obviously using the idea as a provocative thought experiment, there’s a serious argument behind it, which boils down to the government gaining the incentive to raise taxes so it could build war-fighting materials, much like the U.S. did during World War II when tax rates were astronomical. The war was the single biggest factor in finally helping the U.S. dig out of the Great Depression, largely because it generated jobs and exports.

But the way most people seem to feel these days, aliens have been in Washington for some time. They just don’t appear to be helping matters much.

from:   https//business.time.com/2011/08/16/paul-krugman-an-alien-invasion-could-fix-the-economy/

Got Something to Say? May 1 is the Day

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Protests nationwide scheduled for May 1

by Jon Rappoport

A growing number of groups in US states are preparing protests against the lockdowns on May 1.

I’ve found two sites that are publishing information on the protests.

American Revolution 2.0

Open The States

Check out your state and see what’s upcoming.

As far as I can tell, this is not a top-down single-leader movement. It’s a state by state proposition. That would be a good thing. Groups in each state should run their own operations.

Here is a quote from American Revolution 2.0:

“Governor Executive Orders violate the United States Constitution and negate the responsibility of individual citizens for their ‘Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness’. The precedent set by removing these Constitutional Rights is staggering and to date unheard of.”

Of course, agencies like the CDC and the World Health Organization appoint themselves the “new global governance.” Their job is painting as bleak a picture as possible, making it seem that, without their top-down control, the population of Earth would be decimated.

This is always the way of tyrants. How else can they justify their criminal actions?

The endless invention of enemies is a strategy as old as the hills.

Peace and prosperity are stakes through the hearts of vampires.

For the CDC and WHO and Bill Gates, the idea that someone somewhere might be living free and healthy on his own accord…THAT to them is the virus which must be conquered.

To accomplish this victory, they enlist the help of public and private meddlers and gossipers and snitches and censors, whose only thrill in life is finding “rule-breakers.” Therefore, the more rules the better.

The culture of society is becoming more infantile every day—wash your hands, wash them again, don’t touch your face, stay indoors, wear a mask, wear gloves, stand six feet apart, wait in line, don’t breathe on your neighbor, be polite, watch TV for marching orders—but those people who still understand what freedom means are under no obligation to cater to that “culture.”

Lowest common denominator is not a principle contained in the Constitution. In fact, wherever the principle is found, it’s a cover for dictatorship. For example, the ubiquitous “we’re all in this together” is a massage for the brainless.

Translation: “You’re all one giant cheese glob, and we, the World Health Organization, with Bill Gates money, are pressing the two pieces of toast together and making the sandwich.”

State by state, the protests against unconstitutional insanity are scheduled for May 1.

OPEN THE STATES. GO BACK TO WORK. TURN ON THE ECONOMY.

from:    https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/04/26/protests-nationwide-scheduled-for-may-1/

The Future of Banking?

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Major Bank Official: Banks Are “Preparing for an Economic Nuclear Winter”

Posted by August 30, 2016

nuclear winter-compressed

By Matt Agorist | Activist Post

After years of giveaways to megabanks, marketed to the taxpayers as ‘quantitative easing,’ the crutches shoved under the banker-controlled global stock trade are about to snap. Bankers now say they are preparing for the collapse.

In June of 2015, former Congressman Ron Paul predicted that these crutches would fail, and the financial bubbles created by them would send the stock market into a free-fall.

The consequences will not be minor. Surprises will be many, since we are in uncertain waters and the world has never faced the gross misallocation of capital that exists today. The process is self-limiting. It will come to an end, and it’s not going to be far into the future.

Now, as chaos in the EU and weak corporate earnings create a tornado of uncertainty, banks are preparing for the worst.

According to CNBC quoting a major lender, banks are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation.”

The chaos in the market has major bank officials running for the hills. According to CNBC, European banks, in particular, have had a very tough six months as the shock and volatility around Brexit sent banking stocks south. Major European banks like Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse saw their shares in free-fall after the referendum’s results were announced. In the U.K., RBS was the worst-hit, with its shares plunging by more than 30 percent since June 24.

On Sunday, a source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, due to the fact that revealing this information can get bankers killed, a source from a major investment bank told CNBC “that financial services firms have put together a strategy in place that takes into account the worst-case scenario that could happen by the end of this year.”

“This could mean triggering Article 50, referendum in other European nations leading to a break-up of the euro or sterling hitting below $1.20 or lower. The banks are ready for anything now,” the source said.

This grim warning comes after the Royal Bank of Scotland has warned its investors of a “cataclysmic year.” In an eerily ominous note to its clients early this year, the megabank predicted another worse case scenario.

Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small.

In the note, RBS’s credit chief Andrew Roberts told investors how Quantitative Easing has failed and was expected to fail.

We have been told for 7 years now since the credit crunch, under QE, to borrow money and invest it in one of 3 things: 1) EM 2) credit 3) global equities. This is a big picture, multi-year bet that has been taken, which has worked fine, and stopped working 10 months ago, (this is NOT NEW).

As the Guardian’s Larry Elliott points out:

Markets have been supported for some time by low-interest rates, stimulus measures from central banks including quantitative easing, and hopes of economic recovery. But with the Federal Reserve raising rates and the Bank of England expected to follow suit, that prop is being removed.

Those who pay attention to the effects of central bankers looting their respective countries have long pointed out the mathematical certainty that is an economic collapse.

The collapse of global markets is inevitable as it is a natural correction to the wholesale fleecing of the citizens through the unscrupulous actions of central banks.

Ron Paul sums up the situation perfectly:

The credit and new money, when created by a central bank, is delivered to the market in a political fashion for which the one percent receive special benefits. It allows the pyramiding of debt to fractional reserve banking, which compounds the long-term problems.

It may be fun while it lasts, but it always ends with a crash.

from:    http://consciouslifenews.com/major-bank-official-banks-preparing-economic-nuclear-winter/11125063/

Gold is on the Move

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ZERO HEDGE

Bonds & Bullion are manically bid overnight as the last 5 days of complacent risk-on exuberance has collapsed into a worst-case-scenario “Brexit” raising doubts about the EU’s sustability and dragging central bank experimental ideas into farce…

This is the biggest spike in gold in 7 years back to 27-month highs…

 

and bonds are screaming to record highs…

 

As 30Y yields near record lows…

from:

Economic Hit Man Redux

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More Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: This Time, They’re Coming for Your Democracy

Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.” Today, he says “things have just gotten so much worse.”
Perkins_650.jpg
Sarah van Gelder

Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and it rapidly rose up The New York Times’ best-seller list. In it, Perkins describes his career convincing heads of state to adopt economic policies that impoverished their countries and undermined democratic institutions. These policies helped to enrich tiny, local elite groups while padding the pockets of U.S.-based transnational corporations.

I couldn’t help but think about Flint, Michigan, under emergency management as I read The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Perkins was recruited, he says, by the National Security Agency (NSA), but he worked for a private consulting company. His job as an undertrained, overpaid economist was to generate reports that justified lucrative contracts for U.S. corporations, while plunging vulnerable nations into debt. Countries that didn’t cooperate saw the screws tightened on their economies. In Chile, for example, President Richard Nixon famously called on the CIA to “make the economy scream” to undermine the prospects of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.

If economic pressure and threats didn’t work, Perkins says, the jackals were called to either overthrow or assassinate the noncompliant heads of state. That is, indeed, what happened to Allende, with the backing of the CIA.

Perkins’ book has been controversial, and some have disputed some of his claims, including, for example, that the NSA was involved in activities beyond code making and breaking.

Perkins has just reissued his book with major updates. The basic premise of the book remains the same, but the update shows how the economic hit man approach has evolved in the last 12 years. Among other things, U.S. cities are now on the target list. The combination of debt, enforced austerity, underinvestment, privatization, and the undermining of democratically elected governments is now happening here.

I couldn’t help but think about Flint, Michigan, under emergency management as I read The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

I interviewed Perkins at his home in the Seattle area. In addition to being a recovering economic hit man, he is a grandfather and a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, organizations that work for “a world that future generations will want to inherit.”

FROM:    http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/more-confessions-of-an-economic-hit-man-this-time-theyre-coming-for-your-democracy-20160318

Economic Downturn

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Wal-Mart’s Worst Stock Crash In 27 Years Is Another Sign That The Economy Is Rapidly Falling Apart

October 15, 2015

walmartBy Michael Snyder

Now that a major global recession has begun, you would expect major retailers like Wal-Mart to run into trouble as consumer spending dries up, and that is precisely what is happening.  On Wednesday, shares of Wal-Mart experienced their largest single day decline in 27 years after an extremely disappointing earnings projection was released.  The stock was down about 10 percent, which represented the biggest plunge since January 1988.  Over 21 billion dollars in shareholder wealth was wiped out on Wednesday, and this was just the continuation of a very bad year for Wal-Mart stockholders.  Overall, shares had already declined by 22 percent so far in 2015 before we even got to Wednesday.  Here is more on this stunning turn of events from Bloomberg…

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. suffered its worst stock decline in more than 27 years after predicting a drop in annual profit, underscoring the giant retailer’s struggles to reignite growth.

Earnings will decrease 6 percent to 12 percent in fiscal 2017, which ends in January of that year, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company said at its investor day on Wednesday. Analysts had estimated a gain of 4 percent on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

If it was just Wal-Mart that was having trouble, that would be bad enough.  But the truth is that signs that the U.S. economy has entered another major downturn are popping up all around us.  Just consider the following list of economic indicators that Graham Summers recently put out…

The Fed has now kept interest rates at zero for 81 months.

This is the longest period in the history of the Fed’s existence, lasting longer than even the 1938-1942 period of ZIRP.

And the US economy is moving back into recession. Consider that…

1)   Industrial production fell five months straight in the first half of 2015. This has never happened outside of a recession.

2)   Merchant Wholesalers’ Sales are in recession territory.

3)   The Empire Manufacturing Survey is in recession territory.

4)   All four of the Fed’s September Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) readings (Philadelphia, New York, Richmond, and Kansas City) came in at readings of sub-zero. This usually happens when you are already 4-5 months into a recession. (H/T Bill Hester)

Another huge red flag is the fact that month after month fewer products are being shipped around the country compared to last year.

If less stuff is being shipped around by truck, rail and air, is it a sign that the economy is getting better or is it a sign that the economy is getting worse?

The answer, of course, is self-evident.  With that in mind, please read the following excerpt which comes from a recent article by Wolf Richter…

It has been crummy all year: With the exception of January and February, the shipping volume has been lower year-over-year every month!

The index is broad. It tracks data from shippers, no matter what carrier they choose, whether truck, rail, or air, and includes carriers like FedEx and UPS.

Evidence keeps piling up in the most unpleasant manner that something isn’t quite right in the real economy. The world is now in an inexplicable slowdown – “inexplicable” for central bankers who’ve cut interest rates to zero or below zero years ago, and who’re still dousing some economies with QE even as governments are running up big deficits. And yet, despite seven years of this huge monetary and fiscal stimulus, the global economy is deteriorating.

Okay, so is there anyone out there that still believes that the U.S. economy is in good shape?

The Obama administration will probably not admit it for a very long time, but the truth is that the numbers very clearly tell us that we are in a recession.

Anybody out there, whether an “expert” or just someone you happen to know, that tells you that everything is just fine is either completely ignorant or they are purposely lying to you.

And just like in 2008, state and local governments are starting to get into tremendous financial trouble as the real economy sputters.  For example, the governor of Illinois has told reporters that “we are out of money now” and that pension fund payments will be delayed as a result…

Illinois will delay payments to its pension fund as a prolonged budget impasse causes a cash shortage, Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger said.

The spending standoff between Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and Democratic legislative leaders has extended into its fourth month with no signs of ending. Munger said her office will postpone a $560 million retirement-fund payment next month, and may make the December contribution late.

“This decision is choosing the least of a number of bad options,” Munger told reporters in Chicago on Wednesday. “For all intents and purposes, we are out of money now.”

When these sorts of things started happening in 2008, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Bush administration went into full-blown denial mode.  They kept telling all of us not to worry and that everything would be okay, and that just made things worse in the end.

The same thing is happening now.  The Obama administration and the mainstream media keep talking about an “economic recovery” even in the face of numbers such as I have discussed in this article.

Perhaps things are going well for you personally at the moment, and that is great.  But now is not the time to buy lots of new toys.   Nor is it the time to accumulate more debt.

Instead, now is a time to position yourself for a period of difficulty that could stretch on for years.

The next recession is here, and it is going to grow progressively worse.

The wise will take heed and make preparations, but the foolish will just keep on doing what they have been doing until it is far too late.

Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.

from:    http://www.activistpost.com/2015/10/wal-marts-worst-stock-crash-in-27-years-is-another-sign-that-the-economy-is-rapidly-falling-apart.html

Reflections on the Monetary System

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Is it Time for a New Monetary System?

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No matter what problem we look at today, regardless of scope or gender, demographic statistic or geographic location we can provide a solution; if we throw enough money at it…

And therein lies the actual problem.

The fundamental problem the human species faces today is the current monetary system. I submit that only by completely revamping the monetary system will we be successful as a species.

Currently the monetary system is controlled by a “for profit” Central Banking system. The major problem with this system is the idea of profit itself. Profit means “to obtain a financial advantage or benefit”. Unlike barter, the concept of profit necessitates a winner and a loser in any transaction. Most people are not aware that the current monetary system is a for profit system designed to create wealth and power for those that control the system, just as one would profit from the oil or manufacturing industry. Central banking is the business of controlling the monetary system to enrich only those that wield control of the system.

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws” ~ Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

The business of banking rests on two pillars. One is foreclosure, the other is usury, or more commonly called interest.

When a man or company or Government takes a “loan” from a bank, the bank actually creates a new digital entry into the system under the borrower’s associated account. It is imperative to understand that this is a digital entry for new “never before been in existence” digital currency.

Regarding the business of foreclosure, if the “borrower” never pays the “loan” back, the bank can foreclose on an outstanding “loan” and then gains control of a tangible asset like a car or a property. Yet the fact is that the bank never risked anything to begin with. The digital currency created at the time of the “loan” is not a tangible thing. It doesn’t exist. It’s like getting the “blessing” of the Bank to go and purchase something. This is a simplification of the system but it is basically a correct understanding. This scheme has worked like a charm for them…

“They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be non the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability”. ~ Edward Mandell House

Regarding the business of usury, whenever a “loan” of non-existent currency is created there is also an interest charge built into the contract. When the borrower pays back the “loan” they are also required to pay back an interest charge that is over and above the newly created currency. The point to understand here is that the interest due was not created along with the new digital currency and thus a shortfall of currency is actually built into the system. Thus bankruptcy is a fundamental component of the current monetary system because there is always a shortage of currency. If every dollar of debt in existence today were to be paid back right now, all the interest would still be outstanding. This is the mathematical formula that has been used for centuries in order to steal tangible wealth from the actual creators of that wealth.

“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

Having said all that, you might be intrigued and start to gain the understanding that only the bankers can win, but you might also say “so what”? People should be able to profit, after all, profit is the motivating factor in our world.

I submit that the concept of profit is the fundamental core of what is destroying the human species. If a larger, stronger man takes control of another man and subjugates him simply because he can, that is tyranny, and we as a species have evolved to see that this ethically wrong. Now we as a species have to evolve our understanding of the current monetary system to see that we are being subjugated into continuing to propagate the greatest control mechanism ever developed on this planet.

Let’s play the “If” game for a second.

If profit was taken out of the equation; do you think that cancer would still be a major threat to our species?

If profit was not a requirement; do you think that we would be using oil as the fundamental energy source used throughout the world today?

If the concept of profit was not in the human consciousness; do you think that “health” centres would ever refuse to treat the ill? Or actual cures for diseases would be shelved by Big Pharma?

If profit was not the driving factor of agriculture; do you think that we could easily feed the population of the world?

If everyone on the planet never had to worry about shelter or having enough food to eat or clothes to wear, would having more than you need be a consideration?

The concept of “profit” is what is holding us back as a species. We have been indoctrinated into a short term “take what we can NOW” philosophy that is based on the fallacy of continuous growthand competition. I submit that we would be far better off if we forged our future by cultivating the creative use of our finite resources using a co-operative intellectual methodology.

Study after study has shown that the world’s hunger and housing problems could be solved very quickly if a certain amount of money where to be thrown at those two problems. Studies show ending world hunger would cost around 30 billion dollars per year (vs $684 billion for the 2010 U.S. military budget). The fact that we as a species have not eliminated hunger proves that this problem is actually being facilitated. Is that acceptable to you? If it is, then all of us (but the few of the elite at the top of the control pyramid) are doomed.

Profit stifles as much creativity as it generates. Just look at the alternate technologies that have been suppressed because they would have upset the current paradigm, technology such as almost free and truly sustainable energy and anti-gravity devices. If either of these technologies ever went main stream the oil economy would take a huge hit and there would be an immediate shift in the controlling power structure.

The concept of profit is the paradigm that must be shed in order for us to move forward as a compassionate, free and intelligent species. It is the concept of profit that is the shovel we use to dig our own graves.

“Problems are best solved not on the level where they appear to occur but on the next level above them….Problems are best solved by transcending them and looking at them from a higher viewpoint. At the higher level, the problems automatically resolve themselves because of that shift in point of view, or one might see there was no problem at all.” ~David R. Hawkins

Abandoning just one concept, the concept of profit and our species will thrive for centuries to come.

About the Author

Rod Morin operates Barrie Tai Chi & Qigong studio in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, focusing on Yang-style Tai Chi, Taiji Qigong and Ziran Qigong. Rod has taught hundreds of students basic tai chi and energy work while striving to incorporate the profound teachings of taiji philosophy into his daily life. Please visit his website at www.barrietaichi.com.

For more ideas and a potential solution to economic subjugation, please visit Secodnary Money System.

Sources:

 – David R. Hawkins. 2009. Healing and Recovery. Sedona, AZ; Veritas Publishing, p. 176.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

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