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Why I'm afraid of the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare
By John Stossel
Published June 27, 2012http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/27/why-im-afraid-supreme-court-ruling-on-obamacare/
I’m scared.
I fear that even if the Supreme Court overrules most of ObamaCare, Republicans will join Democrats in restoring “good” parts of the law, like the requirement that insurance companies cover kids up to age 26 and every American with a pre-existing condition.
Those parts of ObamaCare are popular. People like getting what they think is free stuff. But requiring coverage to age 26 makes policies cost more.
Even "Factor" host Bill O’Reilly lectures me that government should ban discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions. Most Americans agree with him.
Who likes discrimination?
Racial discrimination was one of the ugliest parts of American history. None of us wants to be discriminated against. But discrimination is part of freedom. We discriminate when we choose our friends or our spouse, or when we choose what we do with our time.
Above all, discrimination is what makes insurance work. An insurance regime where everyone pays the same amount is called “community rating.” That sounds fair. No more cruel discrimination against the obese or people with cancer. But community rating is as destructive as ordering flood insurance companies to charge me nothing extra to insure my very vulnerable beach house, or ordering car insurance companies to charge Lindsay Lohan no more than they charge you. Such one-size-fits-all rules take away insurance companies’ best tool: risk-based pricing. Risk-based pricing encourages us to take better care of ourselves.
Car insurance works because companies reward good drivers and charge the Lindsay Lohans more. If the state forces insurance companies to stop discriminating, that kills the business model.
No-discrimination insurance isn’t insurance. It’s welfare. If the politicians’ plan was to create another government welfare program, they ought to own up to that instead of hiding the cost.
Obama -- and the Clintons before him -- expressed outrage that insurance companies charged people different rates based on their risk profiles. They want everyone covered for the same “fair” price.
As I write in “No, They Can’t: Why Government Fails -- but Individuals Succeed,” the health insurance industry was happy to play along. They even offered to give up on gender differences.
Women go to the doctor more often than men and spend more on medicines. Their lifetime medical costs are much higher, and so it makes all the sense in the world to charge women higher premiums. But Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry pandered, saying, “The disparity between women and men in the individual insurance market is just plain wrong, and it has to change!” The industry caved. The president of its trade group, Karen M. Ignagni, said that disparities “should be eliminated.”
Caving was safer than fighting the president and Congress, and caving seemed to provide the industry with benefits. Insurance companies wouldn’t have to work as hard. They wouldn’t have to carefully analyze risk. They’d be partners with government -- fat and lazy, another sleepy bureaucracy feeding off the welfare state. Alcoholics, drug addicts and the obese won’t have to pay any more than the rest of us.
But this just kills off a useful part of insurance: encouraging healthy behavior. Charging heavy drinkers more for insurance gives them one more incentive to quit. “No-discrimination” pricing makes health care costs rise even faster. Is it too much to expect our rulers to understand this?
Of course, the average citizen doesn’t understand either. When I argue that medical insurance makes people indifferent to costs, I get online comments like: “I guess the 47 million people who don’t have health care should just die, right, John?”
The truth is, almost all people do get health care, even if they don’t have health insurance. Hospitals rarely turn people away; Medicaid and charities pay for care; some individuals pay cash; some doctors forgive bills.
I wish people would stop conflating the terms “health care,” “health insurance” and “ObamaCare.” Reporters ask guests things like: “Should Congress repeal health care?” I sure don’t want anyone’s health care repealed.
Reporters also routinely called ObamaCare health “reform.” But the definition of reform is: making something better. More government control won’t do that. We should call politicians’ insurance demands “big intrusive complex government micromanagement.”
Let the private sector work. Let it discriminate.
To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2012 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS, INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM.
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "No, They Can't: Why Government Fails-But Individuals Succeed," "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his website at johnstossel.com.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/27/why-im-afraid-supreme-court-ruling-on-obamacare/#ixzz1zXEdvkCK
Another stark and brutally truthful posting. Keep up the thought provoking commentary!
Fabian Socialist Shaw put it right out there in the open:
"Death is the the final penalty of socialism"
May Day and the universal roots of Globalism & US Government Totalitarianism...
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=28118670
<<"The difference is that while the competitive market place tends to ring cost savings out of the producers over time making the goods and services more and more affordable to everyone (think all the electronic gadgets over the decades, computers, laptops, notebooks, tablets) . . . whereas a government mandated monopoly tends to ring cost savings out of the consumers, making goods/services less and less accessible: think the skyrocketing cost of medical tech compared to no-government-license required conventional high tech; even a simple surgical knife now costs $900! and its not even made of as good material as the $9 kitchen knife.">>
Another excellent post...keep up the great work!
Insurance is a racket. It looks like the form of health care evolving here in the USA will be the worst of all worlds in terms of care and affordability.
Good-Bye American Dream.
Maybe it's just been an illusion (?) for a very very long time.
Another great post!
Please listen to the Michael Herzog radio show on the "health care" atrocities to come...
http://www.oraclebroadcasting.com/archives.php?stream=/americanawakening/americanawakening.2012-06-30_16k.mp3
After last Thursday's Supreme Court decision, Michael spends the show primarily exposing the atrocities in the Obama Health Care bill and what we are to expect when it is fully implemented.
Michael Herzog "The American Awakening" Saturday June 12, 2012
http://www.oraclebroadcasting.com/archives.php?stream=/americanawakening/americanawakening.2012-06-30_16k.mp3
This is a GREAT LISTEN!
Great post!
I always thought the future was foretold in the 1973 classic film "Soylent Green"...
So this Death Panel crap has started. If we don't vote this guy and his criminal cronies out of office this November then we will all die younger than we should as broke paupers as the country goes bankrupt. Feel free to distribute my note to anyone and make it a mission to not only make your vote count but on behalf of all of us please make an effort to change the thinking of anyone remotely willingly to get intellectually engaged in this critical time in our country's history.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?
message_id=77091781
SOYLENT GREEN is people!!!
Death panels???
WHERE IS JOHN GALT?
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/2012/06/where-is-john-galt.html
One of my all time favorite novels is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Random House 1957). Not only is it a great work of fiction, it is quite thought provoking reading. In a nutshell it is the story of the demise of capitalism in America. Government intervention in business becomes so pervasive and destructive to creativity and independent thought that the best and brightest, led by John Galt, go on strike. They just walk away from their businesses and hang together in Colorado. Meanwhile the country crumbles from within because the only people left are the mediocre freeloaders.
John Galt is the hero of the book. Galt informs citizens that the men of intellect are on strike, that they require freedom of thought and action, and that they refuse to work under the dictatorship in power. The thinkers won't return, Galt says, until human society recognizes an individual's right to live his own life. Only when the moral code of self-sacrifice is rejected will the thinkers be free to create, and only then will they return.
Government involvement in our lives took another huge step yesterday with the Supreme Court ruling on Obama's mandatory healthcare edict. I guess if you are a health insurance company it's great news. I mean how can you miss if the government decrees everyone must buy your product?
At the same time our ever more fascist government is forcing people to use establishment medical practices it is waging war on anyone who tries to offer alternative methods or grow clean food. I'm not usually a conspiracy nut but this is all very fishy to me. It is documented fact that hundreds of thousands of people die each year from hospital errors, physician errors, and dangerous pharmaceuticals. So why are we now being forced to use this most flawed system?
Instead of approaching healthcare from a sensible angle, like prevention, the government is now actually dictating people line up and get into the system. IMO, this is completely and utterly insane. If this government wants to be a dictatorship why don't they make it law that people must exercise thirty minutes a day? That would probably result in an enormous reduction in healthcare costs and it wouldn't cost anyone a penny, either the individual or the collective taxpayers. Oh, silly me. That's no good. The new American way requires that special interests must be enriched at the expense of the people .... ALWAYS!
I heard Donald Trump interviewed after the ruling and he said that many of his friends who own businesses would most likely just fold, they could not remain profitable with the added burden. Another nail in the coffin of entrepreneurship. Another win for corporate dominance. It's what got me thinking about Atlas Shrugged.
Ayn Rand knew a thing or two about the brutality of Communist tyranny. She was born in Russia in 1905 and witnessed first hand the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist conquest of Russia, and the political oppression that followed. As I watch our liberties stripped from us one by one, day by day, I wonder where we are headed in this country. I wonder "Where is John Galt?"
If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged I recommend you read it. Even if the message doesn't resonate with you it is a highly entertaining novel.
©Kinsey Barnard
'Armageddon' to Happen Despite EU Deal: Rogers
Even as markets cheered the agreement by European leaders to allow the direct use of the bloc's bailout funds to recapitalize struggling banks, well-known investor Jim Rogers told CNBC the move does nothing to help solve the region's biggest problem, which is it's high debt levels.
"Just because now you have a way to get them (the banks) to borrow even more money, this is not solving the problem, this is making the problem worse," Rogers said on Friday.
"People need to stop spending money they don't have. The solution to too much debt is not more debt. All this little agreement does is give them (banks) a chance to have even more debt for a while longer," he added.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/financial-armageddon-happen-despite-eu-061542925.html
<<<in America you are suppose to be reponsible,
LOL; that ended long ago!
West>>>
Rewarding failure has become the American way. This model will soon be a failure as Nothing will work right anymore...
Great post and food for thought!!
--The US government should simply cancel the $230 trillion in derivative bets, declaring them null and void. As no real assets are involved, merely gambling on notional values, the only major effect of closing out or netting all the swaps (mostly over-the-counter contracts between counter-parties) would be to take $230 trillion of leveraged risk out of the financial system. The financial gangsters who want to continue enjoying betting gains while the public underwrites their losses would scream and yell about the sanctity of contracts. However, a government that can murder its own citizens or throw them into dungeons without due process can abolish all the contracts it wants in the name of national security. And most certainly, unlike the war on terror, purging the financial system of the gambling derivatives would vastly improve national security.--
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/06/the-economy-comes-unglued/
Very interesting and informative post westpacific. Thanks for sharing that and your thoughts!!
< Oh Crud! 19 Reasons Why It Is Time To Start Freaking Out About The Global Economy
Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
June 19, 2012
Yes, it is officially time to start freaking out about the global economy. The European financial system is falling apart and it is going to go down hard. If Europe was going to be saved it would have happened by now. The big money insiders have already pulled their funds from vulnerable positions and they are ready to ride the coming chaos out. Over the next few months the slow motion train wreck currently unfolding in Europe will continue to play out and things will likely really start really heating up in the fall once summer vacations are over. Most Americans greatly underestimate how much Europe can affect the global economy. Europe actually has a larger population than the United States does. Europe also has a significantly larger economy and a much larger banking system. The world is more interconnected today than ever before, and a collapse of the financial system in Europe will cause a massive global recession. Once the global economy slides into another major recession, it is going to take years to recover. The pain is going to be immense. Yes, that is going to include the United States. Sadly, we never recovered from the last recession, and it is frightening to think about how much farther this next recession is going to knock us down.
The big problem is that there is simply way, way, way too much debt in the United States and Europe. It has been a lot of fun spending all of this borrowed money, but now we get to pay the price.
The following are 19 reasons why it is time to start freaking out about the global economy….
#1 The yield on 10 year Italian bonds has now risen to more than 6 percent.
#2 The yield on 10 year Spanish bonds has now risen to more than 7 percent. This is considered to be an unsustainable level.
#3 Citigroup Chief Economist Willem Buiter says that both Italy and Spain are going to need major bailouts.
#4 The Spanish banking crisis continues to get worse. The following is from a CNN article that was posted on Monday….
But the depth of the nation’s crisis has raised doubts about whether €100 billion will be enough to recapitalize the banks. For example, the Bank of Spain, the nation’s central bank, released data Monday showing that “doubtful” loans — those that are more than 3 months overdue — rose to €152.7 billion in April, equal to 8.7% of all the loans held by the nation’s banks.
#5 Unemployment in Spain is sitting at a record high of over 24 percent with no hope in sight.
#6 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole has hit a brand new all-time record high.
#7 The socialists won an outright majority in the recent parliamentary elections in France. That means that France and Germany are now headed in completely different directions. The close cooperation that we have seen between France and Germany in recent years is now over.
#8 New French President Francois Hollande has promised to implement a top tax rate of 75 percent on those making over 1 million euros a year.
#9 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that Germany will not budge at all on the terms of the Greek bailout.
#10 Analysts at Citigroup Global Markets are projecting that the odds of Greece leaving the euro over the next 12 to 18 months are still between 50 and 75 percent.
#11 Money is being transferred from banks in southern Europe to banks in northern Europe at an astounding pace….
Financial advisers and private bankers whose clients have accounts too large to be covered by a Europe-wide guarantee on deposits up to 100,000 euros ($125,000), are reporting a “bank run by wire transfer” that has picked up during May.
Much of this money has headed north to banks in London, Frankfurt and Geneva, financial advisers say.
“It’s been an ongoing process but it certainly picked up pace a couple of weeks ago We believe there is a continuous 2-3 year bank run by wire transfer,” said Lorne Baring, managing director at B Capital, a Geneva-based pan European wealth management firm.
#12 As I wrote about recently, about 500 million euros a day has been pulled out of Greek banks so far this month.
#13 The Bank for International Settlements is warning that global lending is contracting at the fastest rate that we have seen since the end of the last financial crisis.
#14 Lloyd’s of London has publicly admitted that it is making preparations for a collapse of the eurozone.
#15 Government debt levels all over the industrialized world have exploded in recent years. The following is from a recent article by Stephen Lendman….
Five years ago, OECD countries sovereign debt/GDP ratios were 70%. Today it’s 106% and rising.
Anything over 100% is considered to be an extremely dangerous level.
#16 The economic problems in Europe are already taking a toll on the U.S. economy. At this point U.S. exports to Europe are way down.
#17 One recent poll found that 75 percent of Americans are either “ very or somewhat worried” that the U.S. economy is heading for another recession.
#18 Under Barack Obama, the United States has been indulging in a debt binge unlike anything ever seen in U.S. history. The following is from a recent Forbes article….
After just one year of the Obama spending binge, federal spending had already rocketed to 25.2% of GDP, the highest in American history except for World War II. That compares to 20.8% in 2008, and an average of 19.6% during Bush’s two terms. The average during President Clinton’s two terms was 19.8%, and during the 60-plus years from World War II until 2008 — 19.7%. Obama’s own fiscal 2013 budget released in February projects the average during the entire 4 years of the Obama Administration to come in at 24.4% in just a few months. That budget shows federal spending increasing from $2.983 trillion in 2008 to an all time record $3.796 trillion in 2012, an increase of 27.3%.
Moreover, before Obama there had never been a deficit anywhere near $1 trillion. The highest previously was $458 billion, or less than half a trillion, in 2008. The federal deficit for the last budget adopted by a Republican controlled Congress was $161 billion for fiscal year 2007. But the budget deficits for Obama’s four years were reported in Obama’s own 2013 budget as $1.413 trillion for 2009, $1.293 trillion for 2010, $1.3 trillion for 2011, and $1.327 trillion for 2012, four years in a row of deficits of $1.3 trillion or more, the highest in world history.
#19 Barack Obama almost seems more focused on his golf game than on the problems the global economy is having. He just finished up playing his 100th round of golf since he became president.
If you are looking for some kind of a global financial miracle you can stop watching.
If European leaders had a master plan to save Europe they would have shown it by now.
If Barack Obama had a master plan to fix things he would have implemented it by now.
If the Federal Reserve had a master plan to fix things we would have seen it by now.
The entire house of cards is starting to come down and things are going to get really messy.
A lot of people both in the United States and in Europe are going to lose their jobs and their homes over the next few years.
It is likely that the next recession will be even more painful than the last one was.
Now is not the time to panic. If you acknowledge what is coming and prepare accordingly then you will likely be in good shape.
But if you stick your head in the sand and pretend that everything is going to be okay then the next few years will likely be incredibly painful for you.>
http://www.prisonplanet.com/oh-crud-19-reasons-why-it-is-time-to-start-freaking-out-about-the-global-economy.html
Last Chance To Prepare For What Could Be The Most Dangerous Year in Human History
June 18th, 2012
That most dangerous year begins as soon as Spain and Greece default on their bonds if there is no systematic worldwide program of scientific and rational debt cancellation.
In France bank runs take the form of computers going down when too may customers demand their money. In Italy BNI shut down leaving customers with as little as ten or twenty euros to feed their families for a month. People with automatic paycheck deposit saw their wages deposited into a bank that legally did not have to give them any money to buy food and pay their bills.
Lessons Learned: Cash in hand is more valuable than credit at a bank. And automatic check deposit might not be such a good idea in times of bank runs and banking holidays.
On July 4, 2008 a bottle of beer in Zimbabwe cost 100 billion dollars at 5:00 PM but at 6:30 the price had soared to 150 billion dollars. Inflation was running about 11% in America until the euro crisis. It has cooled because the dollar has temporarily reversed its long downward trend. The USDX measures the dollar against the value of six currencies including the euro, pound and yen. The USDX had dropped 48 points from 120 to 72. But the USDX has risen to around 82. Expect steady inflation when the dollar returns to 72. When, not if. it drops down below 72 expect Hyperinflation.
Daniel Estulin tells us that devaluing the dollar is high on the Bilderberg 2012 agenda. If the dollar ceases to function as an international reserve currency, the prices Americans pay will double almost overnight and that is by anyone’s definition Hyperinflation.. Under these conditions it is far wiser to buy storable food or at least a food dehydrator to take advantage of seasonally low prices. Compare what happens to a family that buys a lot of food now and rotates their stock versus the person who keeps his money in the bank and takes out what he needs to buy one week at a time. In Argentina they closed the banks and allowed limited ATM withdrawals until at the end of a year their deposits had become absolutely worthless. In Argentina middle class families with money in the bank were reduced to going through garbage bins to find food to eat. Do not let this happen to you. The worldwide economic collapse will begin as soon as this summer if not before the end of 2013. Remember it is better to be a year early than a day late when it comes to preparing for a disaster.
Lesson Learned: Stocking up on food is a far better way to save than piling up credits in a bank.
I want to make it perfectly clear that there is not one euro but 17. Each euro note is issued with markings to reveal which nation originally printed it. When Greece, Italy and Spain drpp out of the Eurozone, people holding Spanish, Italian and Greek euros will turn them in for pesetas, lira and drachma. That is why we are hearing about bank runs and bank holidays in those countries. Frankly, I am amazed that they still have money in any of the banks in southern Europe. We need to reflect on the ramifications of southern Europeans dropping out of the Eurozone. The first thing to notice is that the value of the euro will soar if all that is left is Germany and the Netherlands. The second thing to note is that the dollar will drop in value.
But the the third and by far most serious problem the world faces will be Credit Default Swaps. A CDS is a combination derivative which is just a bet on the future value of a bond or a commodity like oil or gold and fake insurance. If you insure your car, a real insurance company has to set aside money for potential losses. But Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan can sell 92 trillion dollars in CDS insurance without setting aside one penny to pay losses. President Obama has said that American taxpayers are on the hook for any losses when Greek, Spanish and Italian bonds go into default. This would immediately bankrupt every large bank in Europe, England, America and Canada. Please be aware that smaller banks and credit unions rely upon those big banks to do daily business. And trillions of dollars in losses would be piled onto government debts to pay bailouts to the top donors of the Obama and Romney campaigns. These bailouts will continue until the Americans, the Brits and the Europeans learn to say No in some form their politicians will understand.
Over the past few weeks JP Morgan has paid out billions on trading losses. Morgan Stanley another one of the big six US banks has experienced a steep 40% declines in their share prices. This has drawn the interest of Hedge funds who have trillions of dollars in hot money that can move out of one nation and into another in seconds. Until now Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England and Mario Draghi of the European Central bank have kept the system afloat by creating tens of trillions of dollars and swamping them for pounds and euros.. In 2008 they even had drug cartel clients deposit their money into New York banks to keep them afloat. That won’t work this time. When people see the ship is sinking, they will abandon that ship to save themselves. The Hedge funds will flee from dollars, pounds and euros. The Bond market will collapse. Even Bill Gross of PIMCO (the world’s largest bond fund) has said that bond funds will soon have to liquidate their bond holdings and buy gold and silver. Hedge funds will also short sell JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citibank stock down to zero.
All of this can happen overnight. Consider this fact of modern investing. A majority of stock purchases on the NYSE are held for only 11 seconds. Also consider the speech by Nigel Farage about that recent 100 billion euro Spanish bailout. Italy’s share was 20 billion euros. Italy had to borrow it at 7% to loan it back to Spain at 3%. These skyrocketing national debts combined with mind soaring interest charges and plunging credit ratings will not last forever.
The Russian demographer Borisov told us that in the Great Depression between 3 and 7 million Americans died from starvation. MIT recently said between half a billion and a billion people will die after the world economy collapses. This is not the 19th century. You will not have days or weeks to prepare after you hear the bad news of a worldwide CDS crisis and the mass starvation and food riots begin.
There is something even far more sinister lurking in the shadows. That MIT study said billions of people will die from plagues after the first wave dies from the coming Great Depression II which I have elsewhere called the Greatest Starvation.
Lesson Learned: The bankers of London and New York want you dead so they do not have to make restitution for the money they stole from you.
Ask skeptics if they have good reason to believe that a committee of bankers somewhere thinks so highly of them and everyone in their family that they wrote their names down on the list of the 10% of us they deem servile and useful enough to be permitted to survive.
This is your absolutely last chance to prepare for the Most Dangerous Year in Human History.
http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/18/12285966-germanys-merkel-faces-growing-pressure-at-home-abroad?lite
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/10-things-that-will-happen-if-barack-obama-continues-to-systematically-legalize-illegal-immigration
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/forget-the-election-results-greece-is-still-doomed-and-so-is-the-rest-of-europe
http://www.rt.com/news/russia-ships-syria-089/
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4243969,00.html
U.S. Physician on Fukushima: Beware of all the lifeforms you take out of the Pacific (VIDEO)
http://enenews.com/physician-beware-of-all-the-lifeforms-you-take-out-of-the-pacific-video
Analyst: If truth admitted about Fukushima, it would have broken backbone of Japan’s economy (VIDEO)
http://enenews.com/analyst-if-truth-admitted-about-fukushima-it-would-have-broken-backbone-of-japans-economy-video
The End Game: The 2012-13 reset of the entire global financial system...
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=28183797
2 absolute gems, live from the pure America culture file:
http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/podcast/3834/tfmr-podcast-21-jim-willie-returns
It's been two weeks since we last visited with Jim Willie. In the time since, the JPM derivative fiasco has come into sharper focus and, of course, the global financial condition has continued to deteriorate. In this podcast, Jim has a forum to discuss these issues at length. Though it's about 55 minutes long, at least 50 minutes are of Jim talking in a stream of consciousness that will keep your attention. Please make time over this 3-day weekend to listen to the podcast in its entirety. You won't be disappointed.
2 absolute gems, live from the pure America culture file:
http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/podcast/3834/tfmr-podcast-21-jim-willie-returns
It's been two weeks since we last visited with Jim Willie. In the time since, the JPM derivative fiasco has come into sharper focus and, of course, the global financial condition has continued to deteriorate. In this podcast, Jim has a forum to discuss these issues at length. Though it's about 55 minutes long, at least 50 minutes are of Jim talking in a stream of consciousness that will keep your attention. Please make time over this 3-day weekend to listen to the podcast in its entirety. You won't be disappointed.
Fukushima, Washington Hides ‘Black Swan’ of Economic Collapse
Read more: http://www.beaconequity.com/fukushima-washington-hides-black-swan-of-economic-collapse-2012-05-25/#ixzz1wR7WA013
Fukushima, Washington Hides ‘Black Swan’ of Economic Collapse
Read more: http://www.beaconequity.com/fukushima-washington-hides-black-swan-of-economic-collapse-2012-05-25/#ixzz1wR7WA013
That post probably sounds "ridiculous" to the 99% out there westpacific but I guarantee you there is a huge grain of truth to it.
I hope we are wrong but I fear what may (?) be coming.
Paper gold & silver Ponzi exposed - Technical analysis
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page31?oid=151652&sn=Detail&pid=31
I totally agree the Japan is the "Elephant in the Room" that no one in the mainstream media wants to talk about.
This is game-changer for sure. THE BIG BLACK SWAN.
Do you own shares?
They are jacking the water...
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=28135414
http://www.nteu280.org/Issues/Fluoride/NTEU280-Fluoride.htm
They are jacking the food supply - that GMO is changing the colors of mammal reproduction organs, sterilizing more than half of the rats after the third generation and literally shrinking the offspring...
http://responsibletechnology.org/resources/state-of-the-science
Oh, don't worry little proles, Monsanto's former attorney, future Monsanto VP and Obama-wama's Food Safety Czar says this is not the pesticide food you are looking for.
CA has a ballot initiative to get this toxic pesticide facsimile "food" labeled - so talk to everyone you know in CA and tell them their vote can actually count... for once. -ng-
Sodas and vegetable oil just awful. 100% of beat sugar is pesticide GMO.
The flu shot is a hoax as well. Big Pharma refuses to due a randomized, double blind placebo study to show that it is even effective... can't let the TRUTH leak out without that marketing deception, now can they?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller27.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/029760_vitamin_D_influenza.html
BTW, have you seen this graph showing that exposes how the financial rentiers sit perched atop the national "roost" and force its subjects (we aren't citizens) to pay them rent to live in our "free" country?
Debt Money Tyranny
http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3325954/debt-dollar-tyranny-2-54k?tr=77
There is no way out - national bankruptcy is the end game and these crooks are planning to walk away with almost everything at the expense of everyone else. This is mathematical fact.
Looks like this could become an active shell company after the cash payout?
Economic Alert: If You’re Not Worried Yet…You Should Be
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 04:58 Brandon Smith
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/765-economic-alert-if-youre-not-worried-yetyou-should-be
For the past four years I have been covering the progression of the global economic crisis with an emphasis on the debilitating effects it has had on the American financial system. Only once before have I ever issued an economic alert, and this was at the onset of the very first credit downgrade in U.S. history by S&P. I do not take the word “alert” lightly. Since 2008 we have seen a cycle of events that have severely weakened our country’s foundation, but each event has then been followed by a lull, sometimes 4 to 6 months at a stretch, which seems to disarm the public, drawing them back into apathy and complacency. The calm moments before each passing storm give Americans a false sense of hope that our capsized fiscal vessel will somehow right itself if we just hold on a little longer...
I don’t have to tell most people within the Liberty Movement that this is not going to happen. Unfortunately, there are many out there who do not share our awareness of the situation. Debt implosions and currency devaluation NEVER simply “fade away”; they are always followed by extreme social and political strife that tends to sully the doorsteps of almost every individual and family. The notion that we can coast through such a tempest unscathed is an insane idea, filled with a dangerous potential for sour regrets.
There are some people who also believe that the private Federal Reserve with the Treasury in tow has the ability to prolong the worst symptoms of the collapse indefinitely, or at least, until they have long since kicked the bucket and don’t have to worry about it anymore (the ‘pay-it forward to our grandkids’ crowd) . I can say with 100% certainty that most of us will live to see the climax of the breakdown, and that this breakdown is about to enter a more precarious state before the end of this year. You can only stretch a sun-boiled rubber band so far before it snaps completely, and America’s financial elasticity has long been melted away.
A pummeling hailstorm of news items and international developments have made the first half of 2012 almost impossible to track and analyze. The frequency at which negative information has surfaced is almost dizzying. However, a pattern and a recognizable motion are beginning to take shape, and, I believe, a loose timeline is beginning to form.
At the end of January, I covered the incredible nosedive of the Baltic Dry Index (a measure of global shipping rates that signals a fall in global demand) to historic lows. I pointed out the tendency of stocks and the general economy to crash around 8 months (sometimes a little longer) after the BDI makes such a dramatic downturn. Mainstream analysts, of course, attributed the fall to an “overproduction of ships”, which is the same exact excuse they used when the BDI collapsed back in 2008 just before the derivatives bubble burst. It would seem that the cable TV talking heads were wrong yet again, as the international market facade quickly evaporates right in line with the BDI’s almost prophetic knack for calling an economic derailment in advance.
Here are some of the most important reasons why every American should be prepared for much harder days, especially before the end of 2012:
The European Union Is Officially Dead In The Water
Stick a fork in er’, the EU is done! We are talking about full scale dismantlement, likely followed by a reformation of core nations and multiple collapse scenarios of peripheral countries. The writing is all over the wall in the wake of the latest election results in Greece and France, where, as alternative researchers have been predicting for some time, the battle between the government spending crowd and proponents of austerity has reached a fever pitch.
The Greeks and the French are royally pissed over draconian cuts in public programs and the destruction of pensions which have been a mainstay of their economies for quite some time. They are also furious over being sold off like collateral to the IMF and World Bank. Rightly so. Like the American taxpayer, the taxpayers of floundering EU nations are wrongly being held responsible for the financial mismanagement and fraud of their governments and global banks which have remained untouched and unpunished for their trespasses. The problem is, the voters of both countries are signing on to the socialist/quasi-communist bandwagon in response. In Greece, the Left Coalition Party, a splinter group of the traditional communist party, has now taken a primary position of power:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/07/us-greece-idUSBRE8440DG20120507
In France, voters have elected socialist Francois Hollande (a Bilderberg attendee), whose latest promise is to spend France into recovery through his “pro-growth agenda”:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/french-president-elect-hollande-won-t-difficult-obama-195617064.html
I have no doubt that the elections of the EU are as manipulated by elitists as they are here in the U.S., and I’m sure false paradigms abound. Have Europeans forgotten that it was overt government spending that set them on the path to calamity in the first place? Or, are they like Americans; just desperate for any change in the ranks of leadership? One would think that they would take note of the problems here in our country and realize that electing a socialist to replace another socialist is no way out of economic hardship.
Former officials like Nicolas Sarkozy may have claimed to be distanced from the socialist ideal, but, as with all globalist puppets, their actions did not match their rhetoric, and they have always supported policies of centralization and big government. The French and the Greeks have essentially replaced closet collectivists with outspoken collectivists, and will see NO relief from the crisis in the Euro-zone as a result of the political reordering. In fact, the stage has now been set for a volatile chain of dominos. Germany, which is the only economy left holding the EU together, has been unyielding on austerity cuts. A conflict between France and Germany is now inevitable. Neither will compromise their position, and I can see no other eventual result than a reexamination and perhaps abandonment of the EU charter.
How does this affect America? Being that international banks and corporations have forced our countries into interdependency through the engineered chicanery of globalization, any collapse in Europe is going to strike hard around the world, but the worst will hit the U.S. and China. Which is probably why China is disengaging trade away from the U.S. and the EU and focusing on other developing nations:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/08/us-china-economy-trade-idUSBRE84702N20120508
If you thought the Greek rollercoaster was a pain in the neck for investment markets, just wait until the whole of the EU is in a shambles!
Spain is next in line, with a 25% official unemployment rate and a massive black market economy forming. As I have been saying for years now, when governments disrupt the financial survival of the people, they WILL form their own alternatives, including black markets and barter markets. It is about survival. The Spanish government does not care much for these alternatives, though, and has now banned cash transactions over 2500 euros in a futile attempt to squeeze taxes out of the populace through digitally tracked payment methods:
http://thedailybell.com/3814/Spain-Bans-Cash
Another major concern for Americans is the fact that Europeans are inching towards an abandonment of the dollar. Francois Hollande has openly called for an end to the dollar’s world reserve status, and with a majority backing of the French people, he could easily make this happen, at least where France is concerned. All it takes is for a few key countries to publically and completely drop the Greenback and the dollar’s reputation as a safe haven investment will be quashed. This could very well happen before 2012 is over.
QE3 Is The End
Here is the bottom line; U.S. growth is a theater of shadows. There has been no progress, no recovery, only the misrepresentation of statistics. Millions of Americans have fallen off unemployment rolls because they have been jobless for too long, which lowers the unemployment rate, but does not change the fact that they are still without work. Durable goods orders are dropping like an avalanche. U.S. credit has been lowered yet again by ratings agency Egan-Jones. With China making bilateral trade deals in numerous countries on the condition that the dollar be dropped as the primary purchasing mechanism, and with the EU turning to economic mulch, the currency’s safety is nonexistent. Traditional investors who cling to the idea that a falling Euro spells dollar strength will be sorely disappointed when the currency is suddenly being rejected in international currency markets.
The Federal Reserve has already stated that any signs of “relapse” into recession (the recession that we never left) will be met with all options on the table, including QE3:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/12/us-usa-fed-idUSBRE83B1KD20120412
I believe that QE3 will probably be announced this year (due in large part to trauma from Europe), and, that this will trigger a mass movement by foreign nations to drop the dollar as the world reserve. QE3 will be the straw that broke the camel. How exactly this will play out socially and politically, I do not know (I could take a good guess though). But, the technical results are predictable. The Fed will respond to the lack of treasury purchases by ramping up fiat printing in order to cover the ever increasing costs of the government machine. The Greenback will immediately lose a large portion of its value, at least in terms of imported goods, causing inflation in prices. Oil and energy prices will skyrocket if OPEC follows suit (which they will, though the Saudis may still honor dollars for a time). Doing any traditional business will become nearly impossible, and price inflation will dominate the lives and the minds of average unprepared citizens.
The amount of time that it will take for these difficulties to unfold is also not clear. We are operating in uncharted territory, and dealing with a collapse scenario on a truly planetary scale. My best advice is to assume that the avalanche will move fast.
While markets in our country have seen only mild disruptions so far this year, their solidity is predicated on a host of props and costume pieces, any one of which could pull the rug out from under America’s suspension of disbelief if it strays but a little from the illusion. As long as the dollar holds, stocks can be infused with bailout juice through major banks. So can major companies and even desperate state governments on the verge of bankruptcy. The Dow will remain relatively friendly, and day traders and the public will remain happy. As soon as the dollar comes into question, all bets are off…
Does This Mean Doom, Or Just Another Bad Day?
The real beginning of today’s collapse is tied to the events of 2008. The pace of it has been deceptive, but also, in a way, it is a gift. Over the past four years, I have personally seen the awakening of thousands of people that may have never had the chance if the system had gone into full spectrum breakdown right away. The question now is, how much longer can the U.S. wobble along on one wheel? In my view, and from the evidence I see in markets at the moment, not much longer.
It is hard to set aside any expectations that the next leg down will be easy to digest for the populace. The reality of our predicament is starting to hit home. All the tax return checks have been spent. The credit cards have been maxed. The new cars have been sold off and traded in for ghetto-mobiles. The good jobs have been replaced with Taco Bell slavery. A trip to see The Avengers is now the family vacation. And, the distractions of reality TV just aren’t buttering our bread anymore. It’s the little things at first that really signal the financial mood of a society, as well as reveal the more vital and looming issues just over the horizon.
All indicators suggest that this year will be unlike any other before. In 2008, we saw the first trigger events for the collapse. In 2008/2009, we saw the creation of the bailout culture, setting the stage for inflation and dollar disintegration. In 2010, we saw the first bilateral trade deal cutting out the dollar between China and Russia, which is now the template for trade deals all over the globe. In 2011, we saw the first downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and the crisis in the EU become epidemic. In 2012, I see not just another difficulty to add to the mountain, but a culmination of all these detriments to produce something entirely new; a vast and subversive realignment forcing many of us to take a more aggressive stance in the fight for an economically and socially free America.
Financial disasters have always been a convenient catalyst for a host of even more frightening obstacles, including civil unrest, and blatant totalitarianism. This is the cusp. It is one of those moments that people of later generations read about in awe, and sometimes horror. The “doom” is not in the event, but in the response. What we make of the days approaching determines the darkness that they cast upon the future. It is a test. It is not something to be dreaded. It is something to be seized upon, and dealt with, as great men and women before us have done. At the very least, we know that it is coming. That, in itself, could well seal our success…
You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com
Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better.
Whoever told you nuclear energy is cheap??
Go ask Japan how "cheap" nuclear power is??
Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
Important! <5/5/2012. SIGN THE WHITEHOUSE PETITION. Shut down nuclear reactors like Japan>
Look at it this way: How do we know it won't do any good if we don't try, folks? Click on the video, listen, and PLEASE sign.
http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/552012-sign-the-whitehouse-petition-shut-down-nuclear-reactors-like-japan/[/url]
GAME OVER...
"The question is: Will the central banks be able to do that now, given that they have already expanded their balance sheets? The Fed balance sheet was $900 billion (B) when Lehman crashed in September 2008. It took 93 years to build it to that level from when the Fed opened for business in November 1914. Bernanke then added another $900B in seven weeks and then he took it to $2.4 trillion in an orgy of money printing during the initial 13 weeks after Lehman. Today it is nearly $3 trillion. Can it triple again? I do not think so. Worldwide it's the same story: the top eight central banks had $5 trillion of footings shortly before the crisis; they have $15 trillion today. Overwhelmingly, this fantastic expansion of central bank footings has been used to buy or discount sovereign debt. This was the mother of all monetizations..."
<“We are Preparing for Massive Civil War,” Says DHS Informant
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=28124619
Posted by Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul on May 03, 2012 | 21 comments
In a riveting interview on TruNews Radio, Wednesday, private investigator Doug Hagmann said high-level, reliable sources told him the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing for “massive civil war” in America.
“Folks, we’re getting ready for one massive economic collapse,” Hagmann told TruNews host Rick
“We have problems . . . The federal government is preparing for civil uprising,” he added, “so every time you hear about troop movements, every time you hear about movements of military equipment, the militarization of the police, the buying of the ammunition, all of this is . . . they (DHS) are preparing for a massive uprising.”
Hagmann goes on to say that his sources tell him the concerns of the DHS stem from a collapse of the U.S. dollar and the hyperinflation a collapse in the value of the world’s primary reserve currency implies to a nation of 311 million Americans, who, for the significant portion of the population, is armed.
Uprisings in Greece is, indeed, a problem, but an uprising of armed Americans becomes a matter of serious national security, a point addressed in a recent report by the Pentagon and highlighted as a vulnerability and threat to the U.S. during war-game exercises at the Department of Defense last year, according to one of the DoD’s war-game participants, Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.
Through his sources, Hagmann confirmed Rickards’ ongoing thesis of a fear of a U.S. dollar collapse at the hands of the Chinese (U.S. treasury bond holders of approximately $1 trillion) and, possibly, the Russians (threatening to launch a gold-backed ruble as an attractive alternative to the U.S. dollar) in retaliation for aggressive U.S. foreign policy initiatives against China’s and Russia’s strategic allies Iran and Syria.
“The one source that we have I’ve known since 1979,” Hagmann continued. “He started out as a patrol officer and currently he is now working for a federal agency under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security; he’s in a position to know what policies are being initiated, what policies are being planned at this point, and he’s telling us right now—look, what you’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. We are preparing, we, meaning the government, we are preparing for a massive civil war in this country.”
“There’s no hyperbole here,” he added, echoing Trends Research Institute’s Founder Gerald Celente’s forecast of last year. Celente expects a collapse of the U.S. dollar and riots in America some time this year.
Since Celente’s ‘Civil War’ prediction of last year, executive orders NDAA and National Defense Resources Preparedness were signed into law by President Obama, which are both politically damaging actions taken by a sitting president.
And most recently, requests made by the DHS for the procurement of 450 million rounds of hollow-point ammunition only fuels speculation of an upcoming tragic event expected on American soil.
These major events, as shocking to the American people as they are, have taken place during an election year.
Escalating preparatory activities by the executive branch and DHS throughout the last decade—from the Patriot Act, to countless executive orders drafted to suspend (or strip) American civil liberties “are just the beginning” of the nightmare to come, Hagmann said.
He added, “It’s going to get so much worse toward the election, and I’m not even sure we’re going to have an election in this country. It’s going to be that bad, and this, as well, is coming from my sources. But one source in particular said, ‘look, you don’t understand how bad it is.’ This stuff is real; these people, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they are ready to fight the American people.”
TruNews‘ Wiles asked Hagmann: who does the DHS expect to fight, in particular? Another North versus South, the Yankees against the Confederates? Hagmann stated the situation is far worse than a struggle between any two factions within the U.S.; it’s an anticipated nationwide emergency event centered on the nation’s currency.
“What they [DHS] are expecting, and again, this is according to my sources, what they’re expecting is the un-sustainability of the American dollar,” Hagmann said. “And we know for a fact that we can no longer service our debt. There’s going to be a period of hyperinflation . . . the dollar will be worthless . . . The economic collapse will be so severe, people won’t be ready for this.”
Read more: http://www.beaconequity.com/we-are-preparing-for-massive-civil-war-says-dhs-informant-2012-05-03/#ixzz1tud03ID4
"They - the vampire squids - have manipulated virtually every single price and valuation in the capital markets. People ought to recognize when they invest that one of the unspoken risks is the risk that this hall of mirrors, this Barnum and Bailey world that the Fed has created for us is going to vanish one day because they will not be able to hold it any more... It's not as if there is nothing to do in investing, but one must always keep in mind that the valuations that we see, that the prices that we watch flicker across the tape are prices that are fundamentally manipulated by these well-intended, dangerous people in Washington called the Federal Reserve". And to think that 3 short years ago Grant would have been branded a loony, tin-foil hat wearing gold bug, while now it has become trendy for hedge fund managers to bash the Fed with impunity. It is all downhill from here..."
Jim Grant
(interview on link)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jim-grant-federal-reserve-vampire-squid-vampire-squids
"They - the vampire squids - have manipulated virtually every single price and valuation in the capital markets. People ought to recognize when they invest that one of the unspoken risks is the risk that this hall of mirrors, this Barnum and Bailey world that the Fed has created for us is going to vanish one day because they will not be able to hold it any more... It's not as if there is nothing to do in investing, but one must always keep in mind that the valuations that we see, that the prices that we watch flicker across the tape are prices that are fundamentally manipulated by these well-intended, dangerous people in Washington called the Federal Reserve". And to think that 3 short years ago Grant would have been branded a loony, tin-foil hat wearing gold bug, while now it has become trendy for hedge fund managers to bash the Fed with impunity. It is all downhill from here..."
Jim Grant
(interview on link)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jim-grant-federal-reserve-vampire-squid-vampire-squids