Home » Posts tagged 'DEBT SLAVERY'

Tag Archives: DEBT SLAVERY

Wolf Richter with Jim Goddard on This Week in Money:

The Price of Easy Money, Low Interest Rates, and Debt Bubbles:

After the party, the hangover. Read… The State of the American Debt Slaves, Q1 2018.

The State of the American Debt Slaves, Q1 2018

May 9, 2018

The State of the American Debt Slaves, Q1 2018

After the party, the hangover.

Total consumer credit rose 5.1% in the first quarter, compared to a year earlier, or by $184 billion, to $3.824 trillion (not seasonally adjusted), according to the Federal Reserve. This includes credit-card debt, auto loans, and student loans, but not mortgage-related debt. That 5.1% year-over-year increase isn’t setting any records – in 2011, year-over-year increases ran over 11%. But it does show that Americans are dealing with the economy and their joys and woes the American way: by piling on debt faster than the overall economy is growing.

The chart below shows the progression of consumer debt since 2006. In line with seasonal patterns for first quarters, consumer credit (not seasonally adjusted) edged down from Q4, as the spending binge of the holiday shopping season turned into hangover, an annual American ritual:

Note how the dip after the Financial Crisis – when consumers deleveraged mostly by defaulting on those debts – didn’t last long. Over the 10 years since Q1 2008, consumer debt has now surged 47%. Over the same period, the consumer price index has increased 16.9%:

Auto loans and leases for new and used vehicles rose by 3.8% from a year ago, or by $41 billion, to $1.118 trillion.

It was one of the smaller increases since the Great Recession: The peak year-over-year jumps occurred at the peak of the new vehicle sales boom in the US in Q3 2015 ($87 billion or 9%). However, the still standing records were set in Q1 and Q2 2001 near the end of the recession, with each quarter adding around $93 billion, or 16%, year-over-year.

Loan balances are impacted by prices of vehicles, number of vehicles financed, the average loan-to-value ratio, duration of prior loans (when they’re paid off), and other factors. So this chart is not necessarily a reflection of how many new and used vehicles were sold.

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

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 1: Debt As A Tool Of Enslavement

October 16, 2017

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 1: Debt As A Tool Of Enslavement

Throughout human history, those in the ruling class have found various ways to force those under them to work for their economic benefit. But in our day and age, we are willingly enslaving ourselves. The borrower is the servant of the lender, and there has never been more debt in our world than there is right now. According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt has hit the 217 trillion dollar mark, although other estimates would put this number far higher. Of course everyone knows that our planet is drowning in debt, but most people never stop to consider who owns all of this debt. This unprecedented debt bubble represents that greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and those that are being enriched are the extremely wealthy elitists at the very, very top of the food chain.

Did you know that 8 men now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people living on the planet combined?

Every year, the gap between the planet’s ultra-wealthy and the poor just becomes greater and greater. This is something that I have written about frequently, and the “financialization” of the global economy is playing a major role in this trend.

The entire global financial system is based on debt, and this debt-based system endlessly funnels the wealth of the world to the very, very top of the pyramid.

It has been said that Albert Einstein once made the following statement…

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”

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

Yanis Varoufakis Reveals – Berlin Blocked Greece From Chinese Funding During Crisis

January 21, 2016

Yanis Varoufakis Reveals – Berlin Blocked Greece From Chinese Funding During Crisis

Hundreds of millions of people throughout the Western world are being forced to admit an obvious, yet uncomfortable reality. Democracy is dead. Your vote and your voice doesn’t matter. Not at all.

No group of people understand this as intimately as the Greeks. They voted for one thing, got something else, and in the process were unceremoniously reminded of their political irrelevance.

– From the post: Greeks Flock to Grassroots Alternative Currencies in Affront to Euro Debt Slavery

Just in case you still had any doubts as relates to how slimy, nefarious and undemocratic the EU is, check out the following from Ekathimerini:

Yanis Varoufakis was instructed last year by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to put together a small team of people to draw up a plan for introducing a parallel currency if Greece was unable to reach an agreement with its lenders on a new bailout, the ex-finance minister said in a TV interview late Tuesday.

Speaking on Skai TV’s “Istories” (Stories) program, Varoufakis outlined what was known as Plan X. He said that a small team of about six people examined the various parameters surrounding a potential standoff that would lead to Greece being unable to meet its obligations. Among the issues examined by Varoufakis and his advisers were how the country would continue to have access to medicines, fuel and food under such circumstances.

Varoufakis said that he advised Tsipras to put the plan, which would see Greece defaulting on 27 billion euros in Greek government bonds held by the European Central Bank, into action as soon as he called a referendum at the end of June.

Varoufakis added that he was against efforts to secure funding from Russia but that there had been an agreement with China regarding investment in Greece, including in Greek bonds.

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

‘Developed’ nations now $50 TRILLION in debt; literally, figuratively bankrupt for infrastructure, public services

October 22, 2015

‘Developed’ nations now $50 TRILLION in debt; literally, figuratively bankrupt for infrastructure, public services

4-minute video: Ready to rise from your economic slavery?

I continue to factually assert that Benjamin Franklin already “discovered” government can operate without taxes, these superior mechanics were considered so important by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford that they dedicated their 1921 summer vacation as a media tour to communicate directly to the public, and Yale economist Irving Fisher found 86% of economics professors across the US in agreement that creating debt-free money for direct payment for public goods and services is superior to our system of creating what we use for money as debt owed to private banks.

I also factually assert that the US $18 trillion debt, and the so-called “developed” and “leading” nations have total central government debt pushing $50 trillion ($50,000,000,000,000; the linked graphic updated with 2015 data). This accelerating debt is directly connected to these “former” colonial nations creating what is used for money as debt through bank oligarchies. These mechanics are like adding negative numbers forever; causing ever-increasing and unpayable aggregate debt.

Two minute video for you to visualize the US national debt:

This system we have is literally and figuratively bankrupt.

It’s also literally irresponsible (unable to respond) in face of deaths from preventable poverty since 1995 being greater than all wars and violence in recorded human history.

Better read the above sentence twice.

Now, please experience the feeling of what kind of leadership would allow ongoing and staggering numbers of children to suffer slow and gruesomely painful deaths when solutions are known, easy to apply, and all for less than 1% of the so-called “developed” nations’ income.

Maybe that kind of “leadership” is expressed by three former US Treasury Secretaries interviewed by Sheryl Sandberg, a former Chief of Staff for a fourth former US Treasury Secretary in this one-minute exchange with grandiose laughter about their euphemism for poverty, “income inequality”:

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

Greece Didn’t Refuse Austerity: They Refused Further Debt Slavery to the EU

July 7, 2015

Greece Didn’t Refuse Austerity: They Refused Further Debt Slavery to the EU

Did you hear the news? “Greece Says No to Further Austerity Measures!” Did you shake your head and say, “Wow, the nerve of those people refusing to cut their expenses in the face of all that debt”?

I’m no financial expert, but I don’t think that tightening up the budget was really what they were turning down.

I think that they were turning down the opportunity to continue under the tyrannical rule of the EU. They were breaking free.

What they were actually turning down was another series of huge loans that would put them further in debt and further under the oppression of the European Union loan sharks. They said no to another entity controlling their finances and destiny. Collapse or survive, the voters loudly stated that the Greek people want their country back.

This weekend I wrote about independence: it comes from not requiring anything that another person has to provide for you. And I believe that is exactly what the Greeks decided this weekend when they voted to discontinue allowing foreign entities to control their financial affairs, regardless of the cost.

So here’s the big question:

Is this the collapse of Greece, or is it a new beginning for the place where civilization actually began?

It will get worse before it gets better

The banks aren’t going to take this lying down. Already, the access of banking customers to their money has been strictly limited. The banks have been running on electronic funds for more than a week now, only allowing small withdrawals and online banking to take place.

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

Debt, War and Empire By Other Means

June 20, 2015

Debt, War and Empire By Other Means

This video below may help one to understand some of the seemingly obtuse demands from the Troika with regard to Greece.

The video is a bit dated, but the debt scheme it describes remains largely unchanged. The primary development has been the creation of an experiment called the European Union and the character of the targets. One might also look to the wars of ‘preventative intervention’ and ‘colour revolutions’ that raise up puppet regimes for examples of more contemporary economic spoliation.

From largely small and Third World countries, the candidates for debt peonage have become the smaller amongst the developed Western countries, the most vulnerable on the periphery.

And even the domestic populations of the monetary powers, the US, Germany, and the UK, are now feeling the sting of financialisation, debt imposition through crises, and austerity. What used to only take place in South America and Africa has now taken place in Jefferson County Alabama. Corrupt officials burden taxpayers with unsustainable amounts of debt for unproductive, grossly overpriced projects.

It would be wrong in these instances to blame the whole country, the whole government, or all corporations, except perhaps for sleepwalking, and sometimes willfully, towards the abyss. For the most part a relatively small band of scheming and devious fellows abuse and corrupt every form of government and organization and law in order to achieve their private ambitions, often using various forms of intimidation and reward. It is an old, old story.

And then there is the mass looting enabled by the most recent financial crisis and Bank bailouts. If the people will not take on the chains of debt willingly, you impose them indirectly, while giving the funds to your cronies who use them against the very people who are bearing the burdens, while lecturing them on moral values and thrift. It is an exceptionally diabolical con game.

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

Tag Archives: DEBT SLAVERY

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

It will get worse before it gets better

Latest Posts