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Debt Nightmare: Does Anyone Actually Care That Our Exploding National Debt Is Destroying Our Future?

Debt Nightmare: Does Anyone Actually Care That Our Exploding National Debt Is Destroying Our Future?

When will America finally wake up?  The borrower is the servant of the lender, and we now have a colossal 20 trillion dollar chain around our collective ankles.  We have willingly enslaved ourselves, our children and our grandchildren, and yet our addiction is so insatiable that we continue to add more than 100 million dollars to our debt load every single hour of every single day.  The national debt is sitting at a grand total of $20,162,176,797,904.13 at this moment, but now that the debt ceiling has been lifted that number is expected to shoot up very rapidly toward 21 trillion dollars by the end of the year.  The national debt had been held down by accounting tricks to keep it under the debt limit for many months, but every time this has happened before we have seen the national debt absolutely explode back to projected levels once the debt ceiling was raised.

But very few of our “leaders” in Washington seem to care that we are in the process of committing national suicide.  There is no possible way that we will be able to continue to be the most powerful economy on the planet if we continue down this road.  During Obama’s eight years in the White House, we added more than 9 trillion dollars to the national debt.  That certainly improved things in the short-term, because if we could go back and take 9 trillion dollars out of the economy over the past 8 years we would be in an absolutely nightmarish economic depression right now.

But even with all of this borrowing and spending, our economy has still only grown at an average rate of just 1.33 percent a year over the last 10 years.

And by going into so much debt, we are literally destroying the future for our children and our grandchildren.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Apocalyptic September? Here Is A List Of 27 Major Disasters That Have Already Happened So Far This Month

Apocalyptic September? Here Is A List Of 27 Major Disasters That Have Already Happened So Far This Month

Two major hurricanes, unprecedented earthquake swarms and wildfires roaring out of control all over the northwest United States – what else will go wrong next?  When I originally pointed to the month of September as a critical time, I had no idea that we would see so many catastrophic natural disasters during this time frame as well.  Hurricane Harvey just broke the all-time record for rainfall in the continental United States, Hurricane Irma is so immensely powerful that it has been called “a lawnmower from the sky”, vast stretches of our country out west are literally being consumed by fire, and the magnitude-8.2 earthquake that just hit Mexico was completely unexpected.  As I have stated so many times before, our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, but most people simply do not understand what is happening.

My good friend Zach Drew is getting married next month, and I would encourage everyone to go wish him well on Facebook.  On Friday, he posted the best summary of the major disasters that we have been experiencing so far this month that I have seen anywhere…

California is on fire.
Oregon is on fire.
Washington is on fire.
British Columbia is on fire.
Alberta is on fire
Montana is on fire.
Nova Scotia is on fire.
Greece is on fire.
Brazil is on fire.
Portugal is on fire.
Algeria is on fire.
Tunisia is on fire.
Greenland is on fire.
The Sakha Republic of Russia is on fire.
Siberia is on fire.

Texas is under water
India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, experience record monsoons and massive death toll.
Sierra Leone and Niger experience massive floods, mudslides, and deaths in the thousands.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hurricane Irma Is Being Called ‘A Lawnmower From The Sky’ And FEMA Warns It Will ‘Devastate’ The Southeast

Hurricane Irma Is Being Called ‘A Lawnmower From The Sky’ And FEMA Warns It Will ‘Devastate’ The Southeast

It looks like Hurricane Irma is going to make landfall in south Florida on Sunday morning.  Of course that could still change, but this is what the meteorologists are telling us at this point.  But of course the exact spot where Irma makes landfall is not so important because of the absolutely immense size of this storm.  Irma is going to cause chaos and devastation over a very large area, and just like Hurricane Harvey the recovery from this storm is literally going to be measured in years.

Down in the Caribbean, the destruction that Irma has caused has been absolutely unprecedented.  The president of the island of Saint Martin “estimated that 95 percent of his country had been obliterated”, and one resident of the island described the storm as “a lawnmower from the sky”

Witnesses described similar scenes on the island’s Dutch half. “It’s like someone with a lawnmower from the sky has gone over the island,” said Mairlou Rohan, a European tourist visiting Sint Maarten, part of the Netherlands.

That is not the sort of terminology that I would use, but without a doubt the devastation caused by this storm has been off the charts.

On Barbuda, at least 90 percent of the buildings have been destroyed

Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said Barbuda was “totally demolished,” with 90% of its buildings destroyed. Communication with the island was cut off because of the destruction. As Hurricane Jose approaches the island, Barbuda officials are trying to evacuate the entire population of 1,800.

Now the storm is heading straight for south Florida, and FEMA is using apocalyptic language to describe what might happen…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Irma Is Being Described As A ‘Nuclear Hurricane’ That Has Left One Island ‘Practically Uninhabitable’

Irma Is Being Described As A ‘Nuclear Hurricane’ That Has Left One Island ‘Practically Uninhabitable’ 

Irma is not just another hurricane – it is a history making storm that is going to cause up to a quarter of a trillion dollars in damage once it makes landfall in the United States.  In fact, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine used the term “nuclear hurricane” to describe this storm to the media.  I would never use that term personally, but I am in agreement that it would be exceedingly difficult to overstate the danger that this storm represents.  According to the National Hurricane Center, Irma has been a category 5 storm for more than 50 hours, and that is already one of the longest stretches on record.

Of course if you were to extrapolate the Saffir-Simpson scale, Irma would have been considered a category 6 storm when it had sustained winds of 185 miles per hour.  This is a point that I made in my article entitled “Hurricane Irma: If There Was Such A Thing As A Category 6 Hurricane, This Would Be It”.

And just a day later, MSNBC published an article with a suspiciously similar headline: “If there were a category 6 hurricane, Irma would be it”.

So will the rest of the mainstream media attack MSNBC for saying the exact same thing that I did?

Of course not.

And will the mainstream media attack Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine for calling Irma “a nuclear hurricane”?

“We have talked to people in your city who say, ‘We ain’t going,’” CBS4’s Hank Tester told Levine.

“I hate to hear that. I’ll do anything in my power to convince them this is a very serious storm. This is a nuclear hurricane. They should leave the beach, they must leave the beach,” he said.

Of course not.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hurricane Irma Projected To Reach Category 5 And Hit The East Coast – Panic Prepping Begins In Florida

Hurricane Irma Projected To Reach Category 5 And Hit The East Coast – Panic Prepping Begins In Florida

On Monday, Hurricane Irma strengthened into a category 4 hurricane, and some meteorologists are projecting that it will eventually become a category 5 storm before it eventually makes landfall in the United States.  And since a “category 6” has not been created yet, category 5 is as high as the scale goes at the moment.  Over the past couple of days, the track of the storm has shifted “a lot further to the west”, and at this point it appears that Miami is the most likely to take the full force of the hurricane.  But as we have seen, trying to forecast the behavior of hurricanes is not an exact science.  Irma may never become a category 5 storm, and it may never hit the U.S. at all.  Or it may zip past Florida to the south and end up making landfall in the Gulf of Mexico.  The truth is that we just don’t know.

But for the moment things are not looking good for Florida, and a state of emergency has already been declared for every single county in the state

On Monday afternoon, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for every county in Florida in anticipation of Irma. A state of emergency was also declared in Puerto Rico earlier in the day.

Another scenario still on the table is that Irma curve northward and miss the East Coast entirely. This would still generate large surf and rip currents along the East Coast. However, this scenario is the least likely to occur at this point.

And as I mentioned above, many are projecting that Irma will become a category 5 storm just a few days from now.  The following comes from the Express

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Category 6? If Hurricane Irma Becomes The Strongest Hurricane In History, It Could Wipe Entire Cities Off The Map

Category 6? If Hurricane Irma Becomes The Strongest Hurricane In History, It Could Wipe Entire Cities Off The Map

Meteorologists have been shocked at how rapidly Hurricane Irma has been strengthening, and they are already warning that if it hits the United States as a high level category 5 storm the devastation would be absolutely unprecedented.  Of course we are already dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and many experts are already telling us that the economic damage done by that storm will easily surpass any other disaster in all of U.S. history.  But there is a very real possibility that Hurricane Irma could be even worse.  According to the National Hurricane Center, at 5 PM on Friday Irma already had sustained winds of 130 miles per hour.  But it is still very early, and as you will see below, next week it is expected to potentially develop into a category 5 storm with winds of 180 miles per hour or more.

I suppose that it is appropriate that such a powerful storm has a very powerful name.  In old German, the name “Irma” actually means “war goddess”

The name Irma is a German baby name. In German the meaning of the name Irma is: Universal, from the Old German ‘irmin’. War goddess.

Irma began forming on Wednesday, and it intensified at a faster rate than any storm that we have seen in nearly 20 years

Hurricane Irma formed early Wednesday in the warm waters off the coast of West Africa — and took just 30 hours to strengthen to a Category 3. That’s the fastest intensification rate in almost two decades. By Friday afternoon, the storm had also grown noticeably larger in size with a well-defined eye, a classic sign of a strong hurricane.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hurricane Harvey Aftermath: 100,000 Homes Destroyed, A Million Vehicles Ruined And Bottled Water Being Sold For $99 A Case

Hurricane Harvey Aftermath: 100,000 Homes Destroyed, A Million Vehicles Ruined And Bottled Water Being Sold For $99 A Case

It is now being estimated that the total amount of economic damage caused by Hurricane Harvey will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 190 billion dollars.  It is a disaster unlike anything that we have ever seen before in all of U.S. history, and federal officials are already admitting that they are literally going to be dealing with the aftermath of this storm for “years”.  At this point, more than 100,000 homes have been destroyed, “up to one million vehicles” have been ruined, and many retailers have already been caught engaging in extreme price gouging.  But this could be just the beginning, because this storm has already rendered many areas along the Gulf coast “uninhabitable” for an extended period of time, and as you will see at the end of this article another hurricane may be arriving early next month.

What we just witnessed in Houston is being called “a 1,000-year-flood”, and many basic necessities are now in extremely short supply.  So of course it was inevitable that this would lead to price gouging, and this is reportedly even happening at some of the largest retail chains.  For example, at one Best Buy store cases of bottled water were being sold for 42 dollars

On Friday, a Twitter user shared a picture of cases of bottled water being sold at a Best Buy in Houston. One of the cases was being sold for $42 when it normally retailed for about $15.

A Best Buy spokesman later apologized, saying it was a ‘big mistake’.

But that water was quite cheap compared to prices in other parts of the city.  According to CNN, one convenience store in Houston was actually charging 20 dollars for a single gallon of gasoline and 99 dollars for a case of bottled water…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hurricane Harvey Will Render Some Parts Of Texas ‘Uninhabitable For An Extended Period Of Time’

Hurricane Harvey Will Render Some Parts Of Texas ‘Uninhabitable For An Extended Period Of Time’

Do you remember what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans?  Well, now we are watching the same thing happen to southeast Texas.  On Friday, Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a category 4 hurricane.  It is the first hurricane to make landfall in the United States in 12 years, and it is the most powerful storm to hit the state of Texas in at least 50 years.  One meteorologist is saying that what we are witnessing is “worse than the worst-case scenario for Houston”, and another stated that this storm “could easily be one of the worst flooding disasters in U.S. history”.

It would be difficult to overstate the devastation in the Houston area at this moment.  Hurricane Harvey has ripped roofs off of homes, turned vehicles over and snapped thousands of trees.  Thousands have been rescued from their homes and vehicles, and it is being reported that so far five people have died.  In fact, one woman’s dead body was actually spotted floating down the street.

According to the National Weather Service, over 24 inches of rain fell in Houston in just a 24 hour period.  More rain continues to fall in southeast Texas, and meteorologists are running out of adjectives to describe the nightmare that is currently unfolding…

“It’s catastrophic, unprecedented, epic — whatever adjective you want to use,” Patrick Blood, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Chronicle. “It’s pretty horrible right now.” The newspaper reported the weather service said five people have died in the Houston area in unconfirmed flood-related deaths.

The latest forecasts are telling us that we could see a total of 40 to 50 inches of rain in southeast Texas by Thursday, and so some areas will actually receive a “year’s worth of rain” in less than a week…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Mystery Investor Has Made A 262 Million Dollar Bet That The Stock Market Will Crash By October

A Mystery Investor Has Made A 262 Million Dollar Bet That The Stock Market Will Crash By October 

One mystery trader has made an extremely large bet that the stock market is going to crash by October, and if he is right he could potentially make up to 262 million dollars on the deal.  Fortunes were made and lost during the great financial crisis of 2008, and the same thing will happen again the next time we see a major stock market crash.  But will that stock market crash take place before 2017 is over?  Without a doubt, we are in the midst of one of the largest stock market bubbles in U.S. history, and many prominent investors are loudly warning of an imminent stock market collapse.  It doesn’t take a genius to see that this stock market bubble is going to end very badly just like all of the other stock market bubbles throughout history have, but if you could know the precise timing that it will end you could set yourself up financially for the rest of your life.

I want to be very clear about the fact that I do not know what will or will not happen by the end of October.  But one mystery investor is extremely convinced that market volatility is going to increase over the next few months, and if he is correct he will make an astounding amount of money.  According to Business Insider, the following is how the trade was set up…

  • To fund it, the investor sold 262,000 VIX puts expiring in October, with a strike price of 12.
  • The trader then used those proceeds to buy a VIX 1×2 call spread, which involves buying 262,000 October contracts with a strike price of 15 and selling 524,000 October contracts with a strike price of 25.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Environmental Nightmare! Dozens Of Highly Toxic Substances Have Been Found In Tap Water All Over America

Environmental Nightmare! Dozens Of Highly Toxic Substances Have Been Found In Tap Water All Over America

After reading this article, you will never look at tap water the same way again.  Most Americans have generally assumed that the water coming out of our taps is perfectly safe, but the Flint water crisis and other similar incidents are starting to help people to understand that there are some very dangerous substances in our water.  In particular, I am talking about things like arsenic, lead, atrazine, perchlorate and a whole host of pharmaceutical drugs.  According to an absolutely stunning NRDC report, close to 77 million Americans received their water from systems “that violated federal protections” in 2015.  And even if you get your water from a system that meets federal standards, that still does not mean that it is safe.

Let’s start by talking about arsenic.  Earlier today I came across an article that talked about how levels of arsenic in the water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley “exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times”

Reef-Sunset Unified School District Superintendent David East is worried about water. Not because of the drought—record rains this past winter ended five years of dry times. Rather, East, whose district encompasses the small towns of Avenal and Kettleman City on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side, is worried about the safety of the water that the 2,700 students in his school district are being given to drink.

That’s because arsenic levels in the drinking water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times. And arsenic is not the only threat to schoolchildren. High levels of pesticides, nitrate, bacteria, and naturally occurring uranium also contaminate groundwater in many rural parts of the state.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is This The Generation That Is Going To Financially Destroy America?

Is This The Generation That Is Going To Financially Destroy America?

Did you know that the federal government is going to spend more than 4 trillion dollars this year?  To put that into perspective, U.S. GDP for the entire year of 2017 is going to be somewhere between 18 and 19 trillion dollars.  So when you are talking about 4 trillion dollars you are talking about a huge chunk of our economy.  But of course the federal government doesn’t bring in 4 trillion dollars a year.  At the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term, we were 10.6 trillion dollars in debt, and now we are nearly 20 trillion dollars in debt.  That means that we have been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt.  When you break that down, that means that we have essentially been stealing more than a hundred million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day to pay for our debt-fueled lifestyle.  Even Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is warning that this is not sustainable, and yet we just keep on doing it.

Nobody can pretend that what we have today is the kind of limited federal government that our founders intended.  When federal spending accounts for more than 20 percent of GDP, it is hard to argue that we haven’t moved very far down the road toward socialism.  As I mentioned above, total federal spending will surpass 4 trillion dollars for the first time ever in 2017…

Both the Congressional Budget Office and the White House Office of Management and Budget project that federal spending will top $4 trillion for the first time in fiscal 2017, which began on Oct. 1, 2016 and will end on Sept. 30.

In its “Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027” published last week, CBO projected that total federal spending in fiscal 2017 will hit $4,008,000,000,000.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Federal Reserve Must Go

The Federal Reserve Must Go

If you want to permanently fix America’s economy, there really is no other choice.  Even before Ron Paul’s rallying cry of “End The Fed” shook America during the peak of the Tea Party movement, I was a huge advocate of shutting down the Federal Reserve.  Because no matter how hard we try to patch it up otherwise, the truth is that our debt-based financial system has been fundamentally flawed from the very beginning, and the Federal Reserve is the very heart of that system.  The following is a free preview of an upcoming book that I am working on about how to turn this country is a more positive direction…

*****

As the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, there have been times when I have been criticized for focusing too much on our economic problems and not enough on the solutions.  But I believe that in order to be willing to accept the solutions that are necessary, people need to have a full understanding of the true severity of our problems.  It isn’t by accident that we ended up 20 trillion dollars in debt.  In 1913, a bill was rushed through Congress right before Christmas that was based on a plan that had been secretly developed by very powerful Wall Street bankers.  G. Edward Griffin did an amazing job of documenting the development of this plan in his groundbreaking book “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve”.  At that time, most Americans had no idea what a central bank does or what one would mean for the U.S. economy.  Sadly, even though more than a century has passed since that time, most Americans still do not understand the Federal Reserve.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global Collapse: Children Are Literally Starving To Death In Venezuela And Yemen

Global Collapse: Children Are Literally Starving To Death In Venezuela And Yemen

Venezuela and Yemen were both once very prosperous nations, but now parents are literally watching their children starve to death as the economies of both nations continue to utterly collapse.  Just like so many here in the United States, most of those living in Venezuela and Yemen would have called you completely crazy if you would have warned them that this was going to happen five years ago.  In particular, Venezuela has more proven oil reserves than almost anyone else on the planet, and so to most of their citizens it was unimaginable that things could ever get this bad.  But it has happened, and the collapse that has already begun in parts of South America, Africa and the Middle East will soon spread elsewhere.

When I said that children are literally starving to death in Venezuela, I was not exaggerating one bit.  The following comes from the Wall Street Journal

Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds.

His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what she could find combing through the trash—scraps of chicken or potato. She finally took him to a hospital in Caracas, where she prays a rice-milk concoction keeps her son alive.

“I watched him sleep and sleep, getting weaker, all the time losing weight,” said Ms. Planchart, 34 years old. “I never thought I’d see Venezuela like this.”

What would you do if that was your child?

At one time Venezuela had the brightest outlook out of all the economies in South America, but now their economy has contracted by a total of 27 percent since 2013, imports of food have fallen 70 percent, and the IMF says that the inflation rate will hit a staggering 720 percent this year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

I Feel Sick, Because The U.S. Is On The Verge Of Making An Extremely Costly Mistake

I Feel Sick, Because The U.S. Is On The Verge Of Making An Extremely Costly Mistake

All day long I have just felt sick.  Right at this moment, we are closer to war with North Korea than we have been at any point since the Korean War ended in 1953.  If Donald Trump decides to launch a military strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities, the consequences could be absolutely catastrophic.  The North Koreans have already promised to launch nukes at South Korea and at U.S. military bases in the region in return, and they also have vast stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that they could use as well.  To get an idea of the chaos that just a handful of North Korean agents armed with biological weapons could unleash inside the United States, just see this article.  A military strike on North Korea could be the spark that sets off a global war in which millions of people die, and so we need to do all that we can to prevent this from happening.  My hope is that if people make enough noise that Trump will back down and decide not to attack.

Earlier today, I was sent the following piece of intel.  I was told that I could share it with all of my readers as long as I kept the name of the individual that sent it to me out of it.  According to this source, it certainly looks as though an attack is being prepared…

An O-5 silver maple leaf Air Force puke says the bomb buses in Guam are maximum loaded, fully fueled and reserves are topped off.  ‎ Reserves are only topped off just before the buses go airborne.

Kunsan has everything pointed north and ALL gates are closed…no traffic in or out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Price Of Gold Spikes As Investors Get Spooked By Talk Of World War III And Nuclear Conflict

The Price Of Gold Spikes As Investors Get Spooked By Talk Of World War III And Nuclear Conflict

Whenever the world starts going crazy, investors instinctively begin flocking to precious metals.  So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when gold and silver prices started to move upward aggressively as global leaders continued to talk about the possibility of World War III and nuclear conflict.  The price of gold spiked to a five month high on Tuesday, and as I write this article gold is currently sitting at $1277.10 an ounce.  Right now silver is at $18.35 an ounce, and many analysts believe that it is poised for a dramatic jump in the weeks and months to come as global tensions continue to rise.  Google searches for the phrase “going to war” are the highest that they have been at any point in recent years, and many people out there are starting to understand that the U.S. could soon be facing military conflicts in Syria and in North Korea simultaneously.

In response to persistent threats from the Trump administration, the North Koreans are promising that they will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they are attacked by the U.S. military.

In particular, an article that was just published in North Korea’s official state newspaper says that U.S bases in South Korea and the Pacific operation theater but also in the U.S. mainland would be targeted.

Most analysts do not believe that North Korea has any missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland, so that is probably an empty threat, but they can definitely hit Seoul, Tokyo and all U.S. military bases in South Korea and Japan.

And even if the U.S. was able to locate and take out all North Korean nukes in an overwhelming first strike, the North Koreans would still have thousands of artillery guns and rockets aimed at Seoul.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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