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Those that run food banks all over America say that demand for their services just continues to explode. It always amazes me that there are still people out there that insist that an “economic collapse” is not happening. From their air-conditioned homes in their cushy suburban neighborhoods they mock the idea that the U.S. economy is crumbling. But if they would just go down and visit the local food banks in their areas, they would see how much people are hurting. According to Feeding America spokesman Ross Fraser, 46 million Americans got food from a food bank at least one time during 2014. Because the demand has become so overwhelming, some food banks are cutting back on the number of days they operate and the amount of food that is given to each family. As you will see below, many impoverished Americans are lining up at food banks as early as 6:30 in the morning just so that they can be sure to get something before the food runs out. And yet there are still many people out there that have the audacity to say that everything is just fine in America. Shame on them for ignoring the pain of millions upon millions of their fellow citizens.

Poverty in America is getting worse, not better. And no amount of spin from Barack Obama or his apologists can change that fact.

This year, it is being projected that food banks in the United States will give away an all-time record 4 billion pounds of food.

Over the past decade, that number has more than doubled.

And that number would be even higher if food banks had more food to give away. The demand has become so crushing that some food banks have actually reduced the amount of food each family gets…

Food banks across the country are seeing a rising demand for free groceries despite the growing economy, leading some charities to reduce the amount of food they offer each family.

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

An economic earthquake is rumbling

August 11, 2015

An economic earthquake is rumbling

While the people sleep, an economic earthquake rumbles underneath. The day that they begin to feel the quake draws near.

History will record that in this decade more people will lose more money (forget about the trillions of dollars already lost) than at any time in our history, including during the Great Depression.

At the same time, a very small group has made and will make huge sums of money.

During the Y2K scare (a real hoax) many people stored food. Then, after Y2K, many people wanted to dump their cache; and some did.

We advised readers of my Bob Livingston Letter at the time to store food simply because of the crisis world we live in, but to store those foods that you could rotate and consume. Stored food is a hedge against inflation. It’s a hedge against natural disaster. It’s a hedge against economic collapse. It was our advice before, and it has been our advice since.

This advice is still valid. People who don’t have some stored food don’t realize how dependent they are on the system and government. Of course, the system was designed and created to make the people dependent on government. That makes them easier to control.

Many people have been in hard times since 2008, thanks to bursting housing and derivatives bubbles — both fueled by the Federal Reserve’s money printing and both predicted by me in my Letter and by many other writers. For those of us who are not well-connected (those of us who are not in the 1 percent), there has been no relief. While the banksters got bailouts and Wall Street and the banksters benefited from the money printers, the middle class was impoverished. Savings were wiped out.

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

How Economic Growth Fails

August 11, 2015

How Economic Growth Fails

We all know generally how today’s economy works:

Our economy is a networked system. I have illustrated it as being similar to a child’s building toy. Ever-larger structures can be built by adding more businesses and consumers, and by using resources of various kinds to produce an increasing quantity of goods and services.

There is no overall direction to the system, so the system is said to be “self-organizing.”

The economy operates within a finite world, so at some point, a problem ofdiminishing returns develops. In other words, it takes more and more effort (human labor and use of resources) to produce a given quantity of oil or food, or fresh water, or other desirable products. The problem of slowing economic growth is very closely related to the question: How can the limits we are reaching be expected to play out in a finite world? Many people imagine that we will “run out” of some necessary resource, such as oil, but I see the situation differently. Let me explain a few issues that may not be obvious.

1. Our economy is like a pump that works increasingly slowly over time, as diminishing returns and other adverse influences affect its operation. Eventually, it is likely to stop.

As nearly as I can tell, the way economic growth occurs (and stops taking place) is as summarized in Figure 3.

As long as (a) energy and other resources are cheap, (2) debt is readily available, and (3) “overhead” in the form of payments for government services, business overhead, and interest payments on debt are low, the pump can continue working as normal. As various parts of the pump “gum up,” the economic growth pump slows down. It is likely to eventually stop, once it becomes too difficult to repay debt with interest with the meager level of economic growth achieved.

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

The US Economy Continues Its Collapse

August 11, 2015

The US Economy Continues Its Collapse

Do you remember when real reporters existed? Those were the days before the Clinton regime concentrated the media into a few hands and turned the media into a Ministry of Propaganda, a tool of Big Brother. The false reality in which Americans live extends into economic life. Last Friday’s employment report was a continuation of a long string of bad news spun into good news. The media repeats two numbers as if they mean something—the monthly payroll jobs gains and the unemployment rate—and ignores the numbers that show the continuing multi-year decline in employment opportunities while the economy is allegedly recovering.

The so-called recovery is based on the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate. This measure does not include any unemployed person who has become discouraged from the inability to find a job and has not looked for a job in four weeks. The U.3 measure of unemployment only includes the still hopeful who think they will find a job.

The government has a second official measure of unemployment, U.6. This measure, seldom reported, includes among the unemployed those who have been discouraged for less than one year. This official measure is double the 5.3% U.3 measure. What does it mean that the unemployment rate is over 10% after six years of alleged economic recovery?

In 1994 the Clinton regime stopped counting long-term discouraged workers as unemployed. Clinton wanted his economy to look better than Reagan’s, so he ceased counting the long-term discouraged workers that were part of Reagan’s unemployment rate. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to measure the long-term discouraged with the official methodology of that time, and when these unemployed are included, the US rate of unemployment as of July 2015 is 23%, several times higher than during the recession with which Fed chairman Paul Volcker greeted the Reagan presidency.

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

You Can Add Iraq And Ukraine To The List Of Economies That Are Collapsing

August 6, 2015

You Can Add Iraq And Ukraine To The List Of Economies That Are Collapsing

The list of nations around the globe that have collapsing economies just continues to grow. In recent weeks I have written about the ongoing saga in Greece, the stock market crash in China, the debt crisis in Puerto Rico and the economic meltdown in South America. But there are more economic flashpoints that I have not even addressed yet. For example, did you know that a full-blown economic collapse is happening in Iraq right now? And did you know that the economy of Ukraine is contracting rapidly and that it cannot pay its debts? Back in 2008, the financial crisis was primarily centered on the United States, but this time around it is turning out to be a truly global phenomenon.

When the U.S. “liberated” Iraq, the future for that nation was supposed to be incredibly bright. But instead, things have just gone from bad to worse. This has especially been true since we pulled our troops out and allowed ISIS to run buck wild. At this point unemployment in Iraq is at Great Depression levels, the economy is steadily contracting and government debt is spiraling wildly out of control…

But Iraq’s oil industry, and the government’s budget, is beingsqueezed by low oil prices. As a result, the nation’s finances are being hit hard: the market price is now half that needed to break even, expanding the budget deficit, forecast to return to balance until the rise of IS, to a projected 9% of GDP.

In the past, Iraq’s leaders approved budgets without seriously taking into account a drop in the price of oil. Now the severe revenue shortfall is forcing leaders to cut back on new investments. Russia’s Lukoil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Italy’s ENI are also cutting back, eyeing neighbouring Iran’s pending economic opening as a safer investment.

Despite improving its finances after the US troop withdrawal, the drop in oil prices and the rising costs of battling IS have pushed Iraq’s economy into a state of near-crisis. According to the IMF, the nation’s GDP shrank by 2.7% in 2014 andunemployment is estimated to be over 25%.

Things are even worse in another nation that was recently “liberated”. The new U.S.-friendly government in Ukraine was supposed to make things much better for average Ukrainians, but instead the economy is absolutely imploding…

The country’s GDP contracted by 6.8 percent last year, and is forecast to shrink by another 9 percent this year — a total loss of roughly 16 percent over two years.

Just like in much of southern Europe, the banks are absolutely overloaded with bad loans and the entire banking system is on the verge of total collapse. The following comes from a CNN article that was posted earlier this year…

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

8 Financial Experts That Are Warning That A Great Financial Crisis Is Imminent

August 5, 2015

8 Financial Experts That Are Warning That A Great Financial Crisis Is Imminent

Will there be a financial collapse in the United States before the end of 2015? An increasing number of respected financial experts are now warning that we are right on the verge of another great economic crisis. Of course that doesn’t mean that it will happen. Experts have been wrong before. But without a doubt, red flags are popping up all over the place and things are lining up in textbook fashion for a new financial crisis. As I write this article, U.S. stocks have declined four days in a row, the Dow is down more than 750 points from the peak of the market in May, and one out of every five U.S. stocks is already in a bear market. I fully expect the next several months to be extremely chaotic, and I am far from alone. The following are 8 financial experts that are warning that a great financial crisis is imminent…

#1 During one recent interview, Doug Casey stated that we are heading for “a catastrophe of historic proportions”…

“With these stupid governments printing trillions and trillions of new currency units,” says investor Doug Casey, “it’s building up to a catastrophe of historic proportions.”

Doug Casey, a wildly successful investor who’s the head of the outfit Casey Research, is predicting doom and gloom for the global economy.

“I wouldn’t keep significant capital in banks,” he toldReason magazine Editor-in-Chief Matt Welch. “Most of the banks in the world are bankrupt.”

#2 Bill Fleckenstein is warning that U.S. markets could be headed for calamity in the coming months…

Noted short seller Bill Fleckenstein, who correctly predicted the financial crisis in 2007, says he is one step closer to opening up a short-focused fund for the first time since 2009. In the meantime, Fleckenstein says the entire market could be heading for calamity in the coming months.

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

Governments Worldwide Will Crash the First Week of October … According to 2 Financial Forecasters

July 20, 2015

Governments Worldwide Will Crash the First Week of October … According to 2 Financial Forecasters

Update: Please see correction at the end.

Two well-known financial forecasters claim that virtually all governments worldwide will be hit with a gigantic economic crisis in the first week of October 2015.

Martin Armstrong

Martin Armstrong is a controversial market analyst who correctly predicted the 1987 crash, the top of the Japanese market, and many other market events … more or less to the day. Many market timers think that Armstrong is one of the very best.

(On the other hand, he was jailed for 11 years on allegations of contempt, fraud and an alleged Ponzi scheme. Armstrong’s supporters say the government jailed him on trumped-up charges as a way to try to pressure him into handing over his forecasting program).

Armstrong has predicted for years that governments worldwide would melt down in a crisis of insolvency and lack of trust starting this October. Specifically, Armstrong predicts that a major cycle will turn on October 1, 2015, shifting investors’ trust from the public sector and governments to the private sector.

Unlike other bears who predict that the stock market is about to collapse, Armstrong predicts that huge sums of capital will flow from bonds and the Euro into American stocks. So he predicts a huge bull market in U.S. stocks.

Larry Edelson

Edelson is another long-time student of cycle theory. Edelson – a big fan Armstrong – has also studied decades of data from the Foundation for the Study of Cycles.

Edelson is predicting the biggest financial crisis in world history – including a collapse of government solvency – starting on October 7, 2015 – the same week as Armstrong’s prediction – when the European Union breaks up.

Edelson also thinks that huge sums of investment will flow from the Eurozone to America, driving up U.S. stocks (unlike Armstrong, Edelson thinks U.S. bonds will also benefit). He thinks that Japan will be the next domino to fall … and that Japan’s default will also drive investments into the U.S. as a safe haven.

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

URGENT WARNING: 6 Signs the Great Crash Is Upon Us!

July 17, 2015

URGENT WARNING: 6 Signs the Great Crash Is Upon Us!

The Greek default proves that all this endless quantitative easing idiocy couldn’t live up to the promises. It has proved unable to create sustainable long-term recoveries in highly indebted developed countries with poor demographic trends.

The Greek parliament caved into totally repulsive demands, as I said on Monday that it would. They did it out of stark fear of the chaos a Grexit would bring before free market forces resolved their trade and budget imbalances.

I don’t believe they did the right thing. From the looks of the discontent on the ground, many Greeks don’t either. Be that as it may, this can has been kicked just a little further down the road, yet again.

But the whole mess made investors nervous. As did the recent collapse of China’s stock market which just added to the growing concerns.

Investors are right to worry. I’ve been saying for years that the greatest trigger would be the bursting of the massive, unprecedented China bubble.

How can it not?!

Its stock market soared 159% in less than a year. It gained 30% in justtwo months!

Then its stocks took a nose dive, losing 35% in less than 30 days.

Understand that if China’s stock market had lost just 20%, it would have meant nothing. But, as I’ve always said, a drop of 30% to 40% in short order is a clear sign of a first wave down in a major bust. That’s why I’m always telling you to rather be safe than sorry. If you don’t follow a reliable, proven investment strategy – like any of our premium research services, from Boom & Bust, Cycle 9 Alert, Max Profit Alert, BioTech Intel Trader, Triple Play Strategy and Dent Digest Trader – waiting passively for that extra 1% or even 5% is like playing Russian Roulette.

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

Major Chain Stores Shutting Down as America Faces “Birth Pangs of Retail Apocalypse”

July 15, 2015

Major Chain Stores Shutting Down as America Faces “Birth Pangs of Retail Apocalypse”

Reduced consumer spending is heralding a looming economic downturn, if not collapse, with an unprecedented shutdown of major box stores, restaurants and grocers underway.

It doesn’t bode well for the millions of Americans who are already seriously struggling, and will only accelerate the death of the middle class.

Along with this massive shrinkage of the retail sectors will go thousands of jobs.Natural News reports:

There is chatter across the web about dozens of major retail chains that are expected to permanently shutter a large number of their store locations this year. Popular names like Abercrombie & Fitch, Barnes & Noble, Chico’s, Children’s Place, Coach, Fresh & Easy, Gymboree, JCPenney, Macy’s, Office Depot, Pier One, Pep Boys, and many others are named as soon-to-be casualties in what some news sources are now referring to as the coming “retail apocalypse.”

The Economic Collapse Blog pins 2015 as a significant “turning point” for the U.S. economy, ominously warning that at least 6,000 retail store locations are expected to close this year based on company announcements. Many American consumers are already witnessing the birth pangs of this retail apocalypse as brick-and-mortar department, specialty, and even food shops close their doors for good.

The list of store closures (see here) is truly massive, and in no way accounts for everything that’s coming.

But Americans are still buying one major retail category — technological gadgets like iPhones, wearables, smart devices and computers. As technology purchases soar, shopping malls that have long specialized in clothing and fashion retail are falling in on themselves.

Business Insider calls it a slow and painful death, noting the collapse not only of thousands of stores from dozens of chains, but even the fall of giants like Gap:

Gap once ruled the retail world. But today America’s largest apparel retailer is closing a quarter of its stores and laying off hundreds of workers after disappointing sales.

Gap’s closures are indicative of a larger trend in American retail.

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

The Last Days Of ‘Normal Life’ In America

July 14, 2015

The Last Days Of ‘Normal Life’ In America

If you have got family and friends that you would like to visit before things start getting really crazy, you should do so within the next couple of months, because these are the last days of “normal life” in America. The website where I have posted this article is called “End of the American Dream“, but perhaps I should have entitled it “The End of America” because that is essentially what we are heading for. The debt-fueled prosperity that so many of us take for granted is about to come to a screeching halt, and we are about to enter the hardest times that any of us have ever known. And I am not just talking about economics either. Based on all of the intel and information that I have gathered, we are about to enter a “perfect storm” that is going to shake this country in just about every possible way that it can be shaken. So I hope that you will truly savor this summer – days like this will not come around again any time soon.

Have you ever known someone that lived a seemingly charmed life even though that individual made foolish decision after foolish decision?

In the end, reality almost always catches up with people like that.

And in so many ways, we have been living a charmed life as a nation even though we have been making incredibly foolish decisions for decades. We have cursed ourselves over and over again, and just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is exploding all around us. As a nation, we now stand for just about everything that is foul, disgusting and wicked, and the rest of the world is absolutely horrified by what has happened to us.

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

It Starts: Greeks Rebel Against Bailout, Risk Collapse

July 14, 2015

It Starts: Greeks Rebel Against Bailout, Risk Collapse

Greece’s union of civil servants, Adedly, called for a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, and for a series of demonstrations, the first one tonight at Syntagma Square, just below the Parliament, and another one on Wednesday evening, when Parliament is expected to vote on the new, even tougher, and immensely hated bailout package.

The union for local government employees, Poe-Ota, also called for a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, the AFP reported. Two other demonstrations against austerity and the “euro” are planned for Monday night, one organized via social networks, the other by Antarsya, an anti-euro party that didn’t make it into Parliament.

It would be the first strike against the leftwing Syriza coalition since it came to power six months ago. An ironic plot twist in this tragedy.

Syriza was the big force in the demonstrations against the two prior bailout packages, totaling €240 billion from taxpayers in other countries, conditioned on economic reforms pushed through Parliament by the conservative governments at the time. Now Syriza is looking at having to pass even tougher measures, including an increase in the Value Added Tax and pension reform, in return for only €86 billion in new money from taxpayers in other countries.

Syriza’s junior coalition partner, the Independent Greeks, is already getting cold feet.

“The agreement speaks of €50 billion worth of guarantees concerning public property, of changes to the law including the confiscation of homes… We cannot agree to that,”explained Panos Kammenos, the party’s leader, adding that the party would nevertheless remain in the coalition. With “confiscation of homes” he probably meant foreclosing on homes with defaulted mortgages.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is already struggling with strong dissent within Syriza. But ironically, the pro-euro opposition parties, those maligned creatures that ran the show before, may support him in getting these despised measures passed.

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

Cashtration

July 13, 2015

Cashtration

Recently, we’ve witnessed the bank holiday in Greece, the limitation as to how much the Greek people can withdraw from their accounts each day.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream press have focused on images such as the one above – a queue at an ATM – and discussed the difficulty of the Greek people in trying to run their lives on the €50-€60 that they’re allowed to withdraw each day.

The press then comment poignantly that “Something needs to be done.” The implication is that “someone”, either the banks or the government, need to find a way to deliver these people more money, so that they can continue to function economically.

Of course, the problem, and the very reason for the bank holiday in the first place, is that the money simply doesn’t exist.

For many years, governments have been attempting to expand the economy by encouraging debt. Governments (most notably the EU and US) have borrowed far more than they ever have in history, to the point that they’re now facing insolvency.

Further, the average citizen has been programmed to think that he can get ahead through increased debt. As a result, personal debt has risen to an unprecedented level.

But in order for someone to borrow, someone must offer to lend, and, of course, the banks have been the lenders. Banks typically make their profits by taking in deposits, then loaning out that money to others, making their profits on the interest.

This is a system that began in Europe hundreds of years ago and, although it has repeatedly resulted in disaster, continues to be the standard by which banks operate.

Theoretically, it’s a workable idea.

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

Who Will Be the Last to Crash?

July 2, 2015

Who Will Be the Last to Crash?

This is the question that astute investors are forced to ask themselves these days. No reasonable person believes that a system of ever-expanding debt can resolve painlessly. It simply cannot happen… not, at least, until 2+2 stops equaling four.

But the international money system, while deeply interconnected, can implode in sections. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that it will crash as a single unit.

So, if you have significant moneys to invest, you end up coming back to our question: Who will be the last to crash? Once you decide that, you can concentrate your assets in that place, hoping to come through the crash with at least most of your value intact.

Let’s look at several aspects of this:

#1: Background statistics:

World debt is upwards of $200 trillion, and growing steadily. World GDP is $70-some trillion, only about a third of the debt. This debt will not be paid back. Massive amounts of debt will have to be written off in losses.
US debt is north of $18 trillion. (Amazingly, *cough*, it hasn’t changed in months *cough*.) Forward promises are north of $200 trillion, meaning that a child born today is responsible to repay $625,000. And since roughly half the US population pays no income tax… and presuming that this newborn will be a member of the productive half… he or she is born $1.25 million in debt. Such repayments will never happen. Most of those debts will not be repaid.
Japan is worse off than the US. The UK is bad. Many EU countries are worse.

These numbers, by the way, are ignoring more than a quadrillion dollars of derivatives and lots of other monkey business. (Rehypothecation, *cough*, *cough*.)

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

Spain in Transition?: Answers from the grassroots facing a collapsing country

July 1, 2015

Spain in Transition?: Answers from the grassroots facing a collapsing country

Introduction

Some months ago, I had a conversation with a friend which seemed meaningful to me as an anthropologist. My friend –an old-school activist with a lot of experience in social struggle- said: “Curiously, during these years of crisis I sometimes feel it’s the worst time of my life, but other times I feel it’s the best”. Since 2007, the Spanish economic collapse has thrown thousands of people into a spiral of massive deprivation, lost political rights, reduced standard of living and increased social suffering. At the same time, these are also days of connection with other people, and with possibilities of collective actions; days of riot and rebellion, a vital state that excites the heart; days of dignity and small victories; bad days, but also days of hope.

This article aims to describe the current crisis in Spain and some of the popular reactions that have arisen in response, a sort of cartography of the socio-economical hits that this country has taken. Above all, it is about how people are responding to the crisis from the grassroots—the struggle not only for lost rights but also for the construction of self-organized social alternatives. The idea is to give readers outside Spain a panoramic view of what’s been happening here—with one eye on the general reality of the country and the other on the reality I’m participating in as an activist.[1] I’ve also aimed to not give my personal opinions about this beautiful but difficult and complex process, and instead be objective and give real facts.

Spain against the wall: between economic cracking and social looting

“This isn’t a crisis, it’s a con!” This is one of the cries frequently heard in the massive demonstrations that have shaken Spain like an earthquake since 2011. There is an unquestionable truth in that rallying cry: crisis is not a natural disaster, but a reality influenced by political decisions serving specific interests.

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

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#1: Background statistics:

Introduction

Spain against the wall: between economic cracking and social looting

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