Since December of 2007, the government and mainstream media have pointed to runaway spending and predatory lending practices as the cause of the economic meltdown. The fairytale we’ve been spoon-fed is that borrowing, lending and the derivatives debacle was brought on with the fiscal abandon of a frat boy with a free brewery pass at spring break. There is no doubt that all three lead to foreclosures and financial ruin for far too many US citizens. But that’s only part of the story. The real instigator that has so many of us dodging pink slips, fighting to put food on the table and scrambling to stave off foreclosure began with the restructuring of NAFTA and GATT agreements.

When President George W Bush handed the baton over to President Clinton to sign the beefed-up North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992, it rang the death knell for America. At the time, concerned citizens were alarmed, for the agreement flew in the face of the constitution: article 1, section 8 that states tariffs are to be levied as a means to support the US government.

Many insiders warned NAFTA was less about improved investments and exchange of goods than it was a means for mega rich investors and multi-national corporations to grow richer and more powerful from the sweat of cheap labor. Others feared for US sovereignty and possible tariff deficits that would place greater burdens on US taxpayers. Simultaneously, warning cries were sounded over the safety of unregulated food imports from Mexican farmers whose growing practices include DDT and the use of human feces as fertilizer.

GATT was touted as the panacea that would promote US economic growth by breaking down barriers of trade and investment with other countries as well as dissolve “favored nation” status to steer trade that dissolve discriminatory practices against developing nations. The American public was promised job creation through the increased exports GATT would generate. However, not many in the public sector knew that GATT was negotiated by the United Nations, and through the consortium of nation member agreement, GATT was changed to the World Trade Organization in 1995.

Behind the Smoke and Mirrors

Before the restructuring of NAFTA, the US enjoyed a trade surplus with Mexico. A few short years later, the US economy was plunged into a $20 Billion trade deficit with Mexico and had suffered a 69% increase in trade deficits with Canada. Many growers, most notably California and North Dakota, lost their market share with grain, tomatoes and avocado distribution due to direct competition with Canada and Mexico. This was occurring simultaneously while the US bailed out the Mexico peso in 1994 during the Clinton Presidency.

NAFTA opened the floodgates for 4 billion of the world populace to join the world economy and stave off high unemployment for China, India, Vietman, Banglagesh. Today, we experience this shift, daily, with overseas call centers, outsourcing, and emerging financial mite as China gobbles up vast US holdings and real estate while our labor force suffers ever-growing unemployment.

GATT, however, was disaster on an even greater scale, for it threw aside the sovereignty of all nations in exchange for a global marketplace for cheap labor, capital, services and products. It served as master, turning into slaves those already living in squalor in third world countries through the use of sweatshops.

One example is Nike Corporation. When Nike moved offshore to Indonesia, they were able to reduce the cost of manufacturing a pair of tennis shoes to just $2.75, yet the price of their tennis shoes, after having moved offshore for cheap labor and lower taxes, remained at $70 to the public. Studies have shown that Nike’s Indonesian employees are not protected by their government, and due to the minimum wage of  $2.50 per day, many suffer malnutrition for lack of money to purchase nutritious food.

Nike is far from the only large manufacturer to jump ship for wage-friendly environs. Halliburton followed suit by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai, Accentuate, a subsidiary of Arthur Anderson, are now headquartered in Bermuda and Foster Wheeler likewise moved its headquarters to Bermuda. Ingersoll-Rand, once headquartered in New Jersey, is now based in Bermuda, Tyco International has pulled stakes from the US to Bermuda, Cooper Industries jumped ship from Houston to Bermuda, Noble Drilling left Sugar Land, Texas for the Cayman Islands, Global Crossing moved to Bermuda, Seagate Technology now calls the Cayman Islands home, and Neighbors Industries proved to be less neighborly with a move from Texas to Bermuda. Hewlett Packard and Advanced Micro likewise abandoned the US for underdeveloped countries for cheaper wages and lower taxes.

Demographics show that a staggering number of factories and large businesses have vacated US borders, or have gone bankrupt in the attempt to compete when exporting goods made by higher US wage earners. In fact, the greed practiced by corporations is overshadowed by the necessity of an offshore move for manufacturers to remain competitive. As reported by The Economic Policy Institute, NAFTA was the direct result of lost or displaced jobs for 682,900 workers, which additionally added to the US trade deficit.

As reported by CNBC June 14, 2011,US home foreclosures now stands at 33%, higher than that experienced at the height of the Great Depression, which climbed to 31%. In 2011 alone, food prices saw an increase of 37% and are slated to climb much higher due to extreme drought and weather-related extremes that destroyed vast swatches of cropland.

There exists other negative ramifications of global dependence on manufacturing that are rarely discussed. Namely, when Japan experienced the devastating 8.9 earthquake in April 2011 which resulted in tsunami and the meltdown of Fukushima, G.M., Toyota and Subaru production plants were crippled due to Japan’s inability to continue supplying these plants with auto parts routinely imported to them.

No Lessons Learned; AKA Pushing an Agenda

NAFTA and GATT were not the only free trade agreements that played a part in US insolvency. The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), was signed by President George W Bush after a tough congressional battle in 1995. This agreement was entered into with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic for cheap labor, free tarriffs and increased commerce.

The Republic of Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) is a free trade agreement between Korea and the US that was inacted in June of 2007 and renogotiated and signed by President Obamah in 2010.

Yet another free trade agreement called the Doha Development Agenda that stagnated under the tutalidge of President Bush was dusted off and promoted by The World Trade Organization at meetings held in its support in July of 2011. The Doha Development Agenda is esentially another free trade agreement between world leaders and developing countries, alowing poverty striken devoloping countries to get on the globalization bandwagon towards free trade and investment liberalisation.

The WTO is and always has been a bureaucracy that will remain borderless while they report to over 120 nations and answer to multi-national, powerful corporations.

Building Insolvency, One displaced Worker at a Time

As a result of NAFTA and GATT Michigan alone lost 315,200 manufacturing jobs by 2008, totaling a 35.5% reduction of manufacturing jobs, which lead the national decline as reported by the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition. The resulting job loss for Michigan was 489,900 due to the trickle-down effect.

Other huge hits resulting from the NAFTA agreement to the US economy are in computer and electronic parts, which accounts for 22% of job losses. Motor vehicle and parts workers have suffered a 15% job loss.

In the last decade, the United States lost some five million manufacturing jobs, a contraction of approximately one-third. In total, 42,000 US manufacturers have permanently closed their doors since 2001.

The public was not privy to the fact that unemployment rates had already begun to rise as 2.4 million jobs were lost between March 2001-October 2003 with the majority of displaced workers being in the manufacturing sector.

Today, the official unemployment rate stands at 9.10 percent. However, these rates are misleading. Those who have exhausted their unemployment entitlement are no longer counted as part of the US displaced work force. Neither do these reported numbers take into consideration that to stay employed, many workers have been forced to take steep pay cuts or accept the reduction of health benefits or both. Additionally, benefits such as retirement and profit sharing plans have been drastically reduced or curtailed. Many displaced workers seeking employment have had to settle for drastically reduced salaries and in some cases, have had to accept shorter hours just to re-join the ranks of the employed. Sadly, there facts are underreported to the general public. This underreporting makes it nearly impossible for the public to get a clear picture of the seriousness of the US economic condition, which is directly tied to employment.

The Solution

Recently M.I.T. did an investigation on the state of US manufacturing. Their consensus was the US must create17 to 20 million jobs over the next decade to see a full recovery of the current recession.

It’s difficult to fathom how as a nation we can expect to become fiscally sound when our leaders have proven time and time again their agenda does not always protect the interests of the nation’s infrastructure or its workforce. Evidenced with the continuing trend towards free trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT. This practice has brought the US work force and our economic solvency to its knees as manufacturers flee the nation and employment continues to plummet to disheartening levels. With the outrageous tariff deficits and alarming reduction of the workforce, the decision to continue on this path of destruction with CAFTA, KURUS, and most likely the Doha Development Agenda, it holds terrifying indicators for the failure.

But should The US abolish free trade agreements and swap globalism for the return of manufacturing on US soil, we have a chance to reclaim the solvency we have enjoyed since the industrial revolution and we can then offer a future to the generations to come.

*****

The preceding was a guest post for The Truth by author Barbara Fix.

Visit Survival Diva Blog http://www.survivaldiva.com/ for more information on rural living, gardening, home canning, food storage, and tips on combating skyrocketing food prices.

Survival Diva, Barbara’s preparedness book is available at http://www.survivaldiva.com/ Download for just $7.75

****Today we have a guest post by Barbara Fix.  She is an outstanding writer and I think that you are really going to enjoy what she has to share with us below.  We encourage everyone to visit Barbara at the Survival Diva Blog http://www.survivaldiva.com/.****

We’re entering into a phase of American society that is undoubtedly going to be rather tumultuous and interesting. There are big changes in the works that take years to materialize, but the impact of them will be nothing short of massive. I’m going to attempt to outline some of these major developments.

The area I’m discussing here is mostly financial but the ramifications spread outside the realm of finances. We’re going to start with demographics. In America and other developed countries, we have a bit of a conundrum as aged workers enter the latter years of their life where they have had embedded expectations for some time that they will enjoy a nice retirement full of golf and cruises. The problem, of course, is that almost all that are planning to retire are broke or near broke.

Further weakening the situation is the fact that many of these potential retirees were planning on using their homes as a means to retire. As a housing bubble materialized in the mid 2000’s, these same people doubled down on this idea, took on more debt, and tried to hit a home run in the wealth department by leveraging up on the skyrocketing home values. We all know how that ended, and many of these folks that participated are now worse off years later as a result of a housing bust.

While using your primary residence as a retirement funding vehicle is probably silly in the first place, it’s been completely shattered as a sound strategy due to the housing bust.

The result is millions of people who are struggling to keep their jobs amidst a tough economic climate and who have too much mortgage debt and not enough retirement savings. Where does this go? The answer is a lower standard of living. The baby boomers will be cutting back in every area you can think of: housing, day-to-day spending, vacations, etc.

Of course this same demographic has been responsible for the majority of the excess consumer spending that has fueled the American economy in recent decades, so as the massive group of people shifts from excess consumption to excess saving and cutting back, you can imagine the impact it will have on an economy that is approximately 70% consumption.

Switching gears momentarily, let’s also look at unemployment in this country which is a structural issue, not a cyclical one. The recent recession gave the corporations in this country a way out with regards to excess labor. It provided an opportunity to cut back on costs big time. The result was a spike in unemployment.

Even as revenues have come back for corporations, these same companies are still not hiring back. The companies have instead increased productivity via technology and other means and are able to operate their businesses with fewer bodies. Corporate profits are way up as a result.

Unfortunately, most Americans just assume they will have a job because companies need warm bodies to do various tasks. Rather than work hard to improve skill sets and/or start businesses, most Americans sit on their couches waiting for a job to come to them. This naturally leads to politicians who promise these same folks that they will provide jobs for them. The problem is that a politician can’t provide sustainable employment.

Moreover, jobs are the wrong focus anyway. The country could employ 10 million people to dig holes and fill them back in and we’d drop our unemployment, but it would be zero economic benefit (and in fact a negative economic benefit). Rather than promise jobs, politicians need to work towards an economic environment that leads to innovation and wealth creation. This is what leads to better jobs for masses.

As jobs continue to be unavailable for millions of Americans, there is a real problem coming our way. College graduates are idle because there are no jobs, and baby boomers are being forced to retire early with no retirement funds. The standard of living decline for the masses will likely lead to a reinforced cycle of further declines in the standard of living based on a deflationary economic cycle feedback loop.

So, what does this mean for you? The folks aware of this environment will be better off. There will always be opportunity for those of us willing to work hard and to think outside the box. Waiting around for the next Presidential candidate to “fix the economy” is a dead end, and those who don’t take action into their own hands will be worse off with each passing year.

I hope realizing the realities that I’ve discussed in this article will help you take your own action and you will work hard to make things happen for yourself rather than look to a politician for your assistance.

Kevin is a freelance writer who frequently writes on the topics of Financial Freedom and Dividend Stocks.

Mania and the Economic Meltdown of Society

by Barnabe Geisweiller

But this bubble—our mania—is truly one for the ages.

Free Money

by Tucker Scofield

An acquaintance of mine had an opportunity this week to make as much as $25,000.00…she turned it down.

She is a property owner on the Gulf and she received a phone call from a friend regarding BP. They are settling damage claims with anyone who may have been affected by last summer’s oil spill and the caller, who knew others affected by the spill, was passing along the fact that the money was available and ripe for the picking.

There it was…free money. Was BP really going to audit every claim before paying it out of their $20 billion slush fund? Not in a million years. All she would’ve had to do was exaggerate the facts, maybe tell a little white lie or two and POOF, the Oil Fairy would grant a wish that could make the struggles of the past two years disappear. One small bit of paperwork and it would be dead presidents raining down from Heaven! Get that money, dollar-dollar bill, y’all!  But she wouldn’t do it. For her, this was a matter of principle.

I asked why she turned it down. “It’s not right,” she said. She didn’t feel as though she’d been negatively affected by the spill at all, despite having received numerous phone calls from concerned renters regarding conditions on the beach. Her rental income was pretty much unchanged from the previous year and she felt as though filing a claim would have been fraudulent.

Not too many people could have turned down such a temptation. Right or wrong, money talks and everything else walks, at least for most. Obviously, our politicians are very aware of this and use their powers to pass various entitlement programs – “free money” – in return for votes. For the moment, put aside your opinions regarding the necessity of such programs and focus instead on this: A large percentage of our population now depends, to some degree, upon entitlement programs and the money to fund those programs is rapidly disappearing. The recipients of entitlement programs don’t want the free money to stop so they continue to vote for the whores – sorry, I meant to say politicians – who gave it to them in the first place. That is, of course, unless someone else promises them more free money.

Margaret Thatcher was right – eventually, you run out of other people’s money, and that is precisely the position in which we now find ourselves. So how do we escape this death spiral of ever-increasing entitlement programs?

Fiscal responsibility. Somebody – or more accurately, a group of somebodies – has to grab a clue, wake the hell up, and smell what the dog just plopped down...we are in trouble and our current path is unsustainable! Any other assessment is just pure and total nonsense. The electorate recognized this and made a statement, loud and clear, on November 2^nd; fiscal responsibility is the mandate given the 112^th Congress and I’m relieved to see them following through, at least for the moment.

In your personal household you have two options when faced with “deficit spending” (spending more than you make, as with running up your credit cards) and/or budget crunches (not having enough money to pay the bills): You either make radical adjustments to your lifestyle by curtailing most of your activities and watching every single penny, or you file bankruptcy. You cannot bring your budget under control by spending your way out of it, and borrowing only delays and exacerbates inevitable financial collapse.

Since filing bankruptcy is not a national option, our only recourse is to buckle down and make the hard choices necessary to save our country. That means cutting spending with a chain saw and ridding ourselves of many of these entitlements.  It won’t be fun and it’ll make a lot of people mad but that’s just the way it needs to be.

Oh sure, there will be those who blame conservatives for being a bunch of racist bigots who believe that entitlement recipients are lazy and they just need to get a job. Whatever. I hate entitlement programs, I really do. And frankly, I can’t stand the bleeding hearts that continually whine in their support. But it may shock you as to why I hate them.

Entitlement programs, in my opinion, reduce human beings to little more than government pets. Like a dog eagerly snatching up whatever crumbs may fall from the table, recipients of entitlements surrender control over their own destiny and become subservient to the system established to “help” them. The acceptance of entitlements robs the individual of a chance at exceptionalism and turns them into slaves of the system. Think I’m being unreasonable?

Riddle me this, Batman: Cite me just one success story out of the millions of success stories this country has incubated since our inception in which a person has succeeded without countless trials and tribulations. I’ll wait. Thought of any? You won’t, either. It is the trials that tempered the individual’s desire to succeed; without the trials, there IS NO SUCCESS STORY.

Entitlements blunt the pain of trials; recipients accept mediocrity and are never forced to find the best in themselves. Right now, the ghettos, the housing projects, and the trailer parks are filled with potential Oprah Winfrey’s and Warren Buffetts who will instead remain John and Jane Does because they are receiving just enough to prevent them from channeling their exceptional potential. And that’s a damned shame.

Turn off the free money. Obviously it can’t be done overnight but create a deadline and then stick to it. Let people feel the pain, let them discover their own potential, let them recover their dignity. It’ll be good for the country but it’ll be better for the individual.

And that “acquaintance” who chose not to file the claim with BP? That was my wife. I’m proud of her.

Tucker Scofield’s writing is shaped by his extensive business travels in the manufacturing sector. He is also a musician, a daddy, and a husband. His articles appear weekly at www.TheDCPost.com.
--
Tucker Scofield



How the US Government Manipulates Inflation Data

Reuters’ Emily Flitter asks in a recent column What is Plan B if China dumps its U.S. debt?

It is worth asking about U.S. officials’ Plan B just in case one day relations take a surprise turn for the worse and Beijing dumps its holdings of U.S. treasuries.

China is officially the United States’ biggest foreign creditor, with roughly $900 billion in Treasury holdings — or over $1 trillion with Hong Kong’s holdings included.

That means it could do severe damage to U.S. debt markets if it suddenly started selling large amounts.

This is not a “just in case” scenario. China has already been taking steps to curb their US Treasury purchases, lowering their U.S. debt holdings from $929 billion to $896 billion between November of 2009 and 2010 (Hong Kong’s year over year holdings are down as well). Chinese President Hu Jintao made it clear where the Chinese stand with regards to the US dollar of the future calling the current dollar-led global monetary system a “product of the past.” While this may not necessarily mean the Chinese will one day, all of a sudden, halt all purchases of US debt, it is certainly reason for concern to those hoping to maintain a strong and stable U.S. currency. Our major foreign creditor is reducing their exposure - that means something, or at least it should. The US dollar, as it has for the last 100 years, will continue to weaken over time compared to other major currencies, and our dollars will buy fewer and fewer goods as a result. The nation’s fiscal problems will see to it that the depreciation of the dollar accelerates over time.

The slow collapse of the dollar, in our view, would be the best-case scenario, but there is still the very real possibility that China completely pulls the plug and kills the patient. Ms. Flitter writes:

To be sure, the idea that China would suddenly sell its U.S. debt holdings is almost unimaginable to some.

After all, any weakening in the U.S. debt markets and the resulting global markets turmoil, including likely weakness in the dollar, would bounce back on China and could hurt its economy badly, especially as the United States is such a huge Chinese export market.

It is only unimaginable to some because they don’t believe it can happen here. But it can happen here - it must. The lead stories during this economic recession/depression have been about real estate, jobs, and GDP. The real story is none of those. Although it has yet to become the mainstream talking point , the real crisis facing America is a sovereign debt crisis. We have too much debt, and that’s going to get cleared out of the system one way or the other.

Any number of reasons, some of which Ms. Flitter mentions in her article, could be used as justification by China to stop the purchase of U.S. debt. Trade and resource disputes, Taiwan, or the final push to bring America to it’s knees. Sure, the Chinese economy and its people will hurt for a few years, but it would be a small price to pay by a communist Chinese government to see the world’s major super power be marginalized or perhaps even completely obliterated.

Make no mistake. The Chinese are at war. These events are not simple one or two dimensional short-term manipulations. The playing field is a grand chessboard and the Chinese have been positioning their pieces for decades. An attack on the King is imminent.

Ms. Flitter suggests several plans (packaging them into what she refers to as ‘Plan B’) to deal with the attack once it begins and be assured it will. You can be certain of it.

In an earlier report we detailed that the Pentagon and Military are Actively War Gaming ‘Large Scale Economic Breakdown’ and ‘Civil Unrest’ scenarios, going so far as to send military specialists to the floors of our stock exchanges to learn more about how a financial attack on our system would occur and to develop response plans if and when it does.

Plan B

Banks could be called on to increase their holdings of treasuries, and as a last resort, the Federal Reserve could also be called on to fill the gap, though this could risk turning any dollar weakness into a slump.

Plan B is already in effect, as evidenced by the monetization of US debt by the Federal Reserve. It started in 2008 and continues to this day, with the most recent round being some $600 billion dollars (officially). In case you haven’t heard, the privately held (by major banking institutions) Federal Reserve is the largest buyer of US debt, having surpassed China as of November 2010.

Given that we have been engaging in Quantitative Easing for quite some time, and the US dollar continues to lose strength and status, we suggest that Plan B has already failed.

Plan C

In 2009, economist Brad Setser suggested the United States could establish emergency currency swap lines with political allies if a country like China ever abandoned the U.S. debt market.

But the list of countries prepared to step in as buyers when U.S. Treasury officials try to hawk U.S. debt or seek foreign currency loans has probably changed somewhat since Europe became mired in a debt crisis.

To some extent, this plan is also already in effect. Japan and the UK have recently become aggressive buyers of US debt. The hope is, that along with Fed monetization, the dollar will be stabilized. However, as the US government continues to issue more debt, raises the debt ceiling and commits the American people to trillions more in liabilities, this strategy is doomed to fail, as well. How much debt can the UK, another nation in a sovereign debt crisis, continue to purchase? And if China pulls out, will Japan continue to throw good money after bad?

Plan D

“The U.S. government should have and maybe still could call on the people of the U.S. to invest in U.S. debt,” said David Walker, a former U.S. comptroller general who heads an advocacy group calling on the government to curb the U.S. budget deficit and borrowings.

…a confrontation (e.g. Taiwan, trade war, or resource dispute) would also make it easier for Washington to appeal to the American public to buy its debt for patriotic reasons.

If we do get to a point where the US dollar comes under attack from a Chinese sell-off, it may be hard to convince an already broke and hungry population to invest their last remaining financial life lines into a collapsing currency. This doesn’t mean that our government won’t try. They’ll appeal to our sense of patriotism and tell us that this is the only way to save our currency.

Remember, however, that if it gets to this point it means that all previous plans have failed - the Fed monetization will have done nothing and foreign buyers have dried up. Anyone getting in at this point will be setting themselves up for a total loss.

Not to worry, however, as there’s always…

Plan E

In the past, anytime a government has failed to save itself from excessive and out of control spending, it has turned on its own people. When Plan D proves to be a failure and those with money in their retirement and bank accounts refuse to buy in to the propaganda, the government will take drastic steps. Similar to Argentina and the push by some European countries as of late, the US government will set its cross hairs on your retirement and private pension accounts. We’ve written about it before, and for the time being it’s but a discussion in a Congressional committee.

But when the Federal government and US Treasury are backed into a corner, they will undoubtedly attempt a mandated appropriation of all retirement funds for the greater good. The people will be outraged, sending letters, emails and phone calls to their Congressional representatives, but as we saw with the bailout bill and nationalized health care, the people will be ignored. It will be your patriotic duty, just as it is, according to Vice President Joe Biden, your patriotic duty to pay more taxes.

Doomed

In the end, no amount of monetization or deal making with other countries, or forced appropriations of personal assets will be enough to save the dollar. Why?

Because no one in any position of influence has suggested and/or implemented a workable Plan A.

We are attempting to treat the symptoms of the disease, rather than the disease itself.

Spending is the elephant in the room that is single-handedly responsible for the sovereign debt crisis in which we find ourselves. If we continue to spend with reckless abandon as we have done for decades, then it is simply not possible to ever payoff the money we already owe. Estimates suggest we as a nation owe in excess of $200 trillion in current and future liabilities.

At what point will China and the rest of the world finally say enough is enough?

It won’t be long now.

This is a guest post from Hunter Richards of Software Advice, which provides reviews of project accounting systems and other software.

...and wealth has shifted toward the highest earners.

The less-educated workers who manage to keep their jobs are falling further
and further behind in the national income distribution as the relative value of their services declines.

Alas, high-tech industries are growing...

So how can you avoid being replaced by a machine? You’ll need to be one of the people who work in an advanced field that still requires highly-skilled human capital. Take the IT field, for example. The Tech Pulse Index tracks the growth of national economic activity in technology by combining data on employment, investment, production, shipments, and consumption. The Tech Pulse Index has risen sharply (with the exception of the dot-com bust around the year 2000), reflecting continued demand for high-tech workers. The same is true in other engineering disciplines, healthcare and finance.

...but an advanced education is required.

The U.S. economy is dead on its feet and the majority of the American people don't even know it.  Sure, most Americans understand that things are not going well right now, but the vast majority are still convinced that we will "fully recover" at some point.  After all, we have always fully recovered and gone on to bigger and better things in the past, haven't we?  Well, unfortunately this time it is different.  The very foundations of our economic system are rotting.  Yes, unemployment numbers will go up and down and housing numbers will go up and down and inflation will go up and down, but those are not the numbers you should be paying attention to.  Instead, if you want the real truth about the U.S. economy, focus on the long-term trends that are at the root of our problems.  Every single month, the United States loses jobs and economic assets.  Every single month, more wealth flows out of the United States than flows into it.  Every single month, the United States goes into a lot more debt.  Most other economic statistics are simply symptoms of those three big problems.  The truth is that the U.S. economy is bleeding, and the truth is that very few politicians in either party are doing a thing to stop it.

We were told that "globalism" and "free trade" would be so wonderful for America.  What we were not told was that U.S. workers would now be put in direct competition for jobs with the cheapest labor in the world.  We were not told that it was intended for the standard of living in the third world to go up while the standard of living in America was intended to go down.  We were not told that millions of jobs and lots of shiny new factories would go to China while many of our once great manufacturing cities (such as Detroit) become rotted-out war zones.

China has become the second largest economy in the world and a major global superpower at our expense.  If we had not agreed to "free trade" agreements with them they would still be struggling to escape third world status.

But now they own nearly a trillion dollars of our debt.

And the next time anyone tries to tell me that free trade with communist China is something that "conservatives" should support I may just barf all over my shoes.  Almost everything about communist China should be absolutely repulsive to true conservatives, and why any conservative would support making China wealthier is a complete and total mystery.

Anyway, the sad reality is that the United States is in horrible economic shape and it is getting worse every single month.  The following are 3 points that you can use to prove the truth about the U.S. economy to anyone....

#1) Every Single Month The United States Loses Jobs And Economic Assets

Many people try to convince us that trade with China and other foreign nations is so good because it fills up our stores with really cheap goods.  But there is a huge price for those cheap goods.  The United States is losing jobs, factories and even entire industries at a staggering pace.  Our lust for cheap goods is absolutely killing us.  It is kind of like tearing your house apart to get more firewood to keep your fire going.  Sure the fire is roaring quite nicely, but eventually you will not have a house anymore. 

According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies skyrocketed 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.

Are you starting to get the picture?

The United States is bleeding lots of jobs every single month.

But nobody seems to care until they lose their own job.

Unfortunately, things have now gotten so bad that unemployment is at epidemic levels.  According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one person that is looking for a full-time job.

So is there any chance that this is going to turn around?

No, the U.S. economy is going to continue to bleed jobs.

For example, Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a facility that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost.

So why did Ford close the plant?

Are they going to quit making Ford Rangers?

No.

Ford is going to keep producing Ford Rangers. 

They just aren't going to do it in Minnesota. 

The people of Minnesota really wanted the plant to stay open.  In fact, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty even offered Ford a multi-million dollar package of tax cuts and job creation incentives to keep the factory in Minnesota.

But Ford rejected it.

Why?

The following is an excerpt from the statement issued by Ford about the plant closing....

"Ford continues to concentrate on implementing the plan we initiated four years ago to streamline our plant operations and better leverage our global platforms. At this time, the Twin Cities Assembly Plant does not fit into our global manufacturing strategy."

Did you happen to take note of the fact that the world "global" was used twice there?

In other words, Ford plans to make Ford Rangers some place where labor is a lot cheaper.

But Ford is far from alone.  For a list of even more factories that are closing across the United States, please see the following article that we recently published on our sister site: "As Americans Celebrate Labor Day 2010, U.S. Factories Are Closing In Droves".

So why is all of this bad?

Well, these jobs, these factories and these industries are economic assets.  Once they are gone, there are less jobs, there are more Americans on welfare, there is less money being spent in our local communities and there are less taxes being paid.

A health economy has a healthy manufacturing base, but every single month the United States becomes deindustrialized just a little bit more.  An economy that is losing jobs, losing factories and losing countless other economic assets every single month is a dying economy.

#2) Every Single Month The United States Is Getting Poorer

Each and every month, tens of billions more dollars leaves the United States than comes into it.  The transfer of wealth that this represents is absolutely mind blowing.

The trade deficit normally comes in at around 40 or 50 billion dollars each month these days, and that means that by the end of the year a half trillion dollars (or more) will have left the United States.

That means that as a nation we will be a half trillion dollars poorer at the end of the year.

Our gigantic trade deficit is literally bleeding the U.S. economy dry.  In the early 1990s we were assured that the WTO and NAFTA would be so good for us.  But since then the U.S. trade deficit has absolutely skyrocketed and we are hemorrhaging wealth at an astounding pace each month.

What makes things even worse is how China is taking advantage of us.  They keep their currency pegged to the U.S. dollar at a price that is about 40 percent lower than what it should be.  This enables them to flood our shores with cheap goods and it has killed entire industries in the United States. 

Today, the United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.  They have their fangs in us and they are sucking out our wealth as hard as they can.

We end up "consuming" the massive amount of cheap goods we get from China and other nations and they end up with huge piles of our cash.  This is what has enabled China to accumulate nearly a trillion dollars of our debt.

But in the end, the borrower always ends up the servant of the lender.  We have made China rich and now they have been lending that money back to us at a dizzying pace.

How incredibly stupid can we get?

When wealth flows out of the United States, that means there is less of a pie for those of us who are Americans to divide up. 

Most Americans simply do not grasp this incredibly important concept.

At the end of this month, America will be poorer than when the month began.

At the end of the following month, America will be even poorer than that.

We are constantly getting poorer.  Imagine a giant wallet with 100 bucks in it.  If you keep taking 5 dollars more out of the wallet each month than you put into it, you are eventually going to have an empty wallet.

That is what is happening to America.  We are buying far, far more from the rest of the world than they are buying from us each month.  If we do not stop doing this, eventually we are going to be broke.

#3) Every Single Month The United States Goes Into Even More Debt

Americans like to think of themselves as "the richest nation in the world", but the truth is that we have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

Today, the U.S. government has piled up a national debt that is fast approaching 14 trillion dollars.  It is increasing by over 4 billion dollars per day.

Democrat Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Barack Obama's national debt commission, claims that the U.S. government will be spending 2 trillion dollars just on interest on the national debt by the year 2020 if nothing changes.

Can you imagine that?

A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times.  That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

Meanwhile, our state and local governments have accumulated absolutely staggering amounts of debt.

Illinois is bankrupt.  California is very close.  Hordes of city and local governments are on the verge of default. 

So what happens if the economy gets even worse?

But it is not just government debt that is the problem.  The total amount of consumer debt that American consumers now owe stands at a total of approximately 11 trillion dollars.

As a society, we have been absolutely addicted to debt.  It has fueled the greatest party that the world has ever seen, but now the party is ending and we are drowning in debt.

In fact, if you total up all government, business and consumer debt, it is approximately equivalent to 360 percent of GDP.  At no point during the Great Depression did we ever even come close to approaching such a level.

So what can we conclude from all this?

Well, on a personal level if your bank account got smaller every single month and you went into a lot more debt every single month you would soon find yourself in a complete and total mess.

On a national level, that is the situation that America is now in.  We are bleeding economic assets, we are bleeding wealth and we are getting into stunning amounts of new debt every single month.

If anyone can explain how this is a recipe for economic success, please leave a comment and explain that to all of us....

Many of the things that Americans have been able to take for granted for decades are rapidly coming to an end.  The truth is that a growing economy that produces an ever-increasing amount of good jobs for a thriving middle class is not guaranteed to last forever.  In fact, there are lots of signs that the middle class in America is already being ripped to shreds.  The number of Americans on long-term unemployment benefits is exploding, personal bankruptcies are setting new records, foreclosures are at an all-time high and one out of every eight Americans is now on food stamps.  Meanwhile, the U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt and America is facing a pension crisis that is so immense that it is almost indescribable.  Most Americans still assume that even if we do have hard times for a while things will always turn around and eventually get better than ever.  But sadly, that is just not the case.  The truth is that the United States is in the early stages of a devastating economic collapse, and the "new normal" is going to be incredibly difficult for a lot of Americans to adjust to. 

The New Normal: Millions Of Chronically Unemployed Americans And Not Nearly Enough Jobs For Everyone

*According to one recent survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.

*A recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 81 percent of American adults know someone who is looking for a job.

*Despite the fact that the U.S. population has exploded, less Americans are employed in manufacturing today than in 1950.

*Today it takes the average unemployed American over 8 months to find a job.

*The number of Americans receiving long-term unemployment benefits has risen over 60 percent in just the past year.

*Since 2007, unemployment has spread across American like a plague....

The New Normal: Americans Going Broke In Staggering Numbers

*Nationwide, bankruptcy filings rose 20 percent in the 12 month period ending June 30th.

*There were 422,061 bankruptcy filings between April and June of this year.  That was an increase of 9 percent from 388,148 in the prior three-month period, and was up 11 percent from 381,073 a year earlier.

The New Normal: A Dead Housing Market And Millions Of Americans Losing Their Homes

*During the month of May sales of new homes in the U.S. declined to the lowest level ever recorded.

*The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low.

*Construction of new homes in the U.S. and applications to build new homes in the U.S. both fell to their lowest levels in more than a year during the month of July.

*One out of every seven mortgages were either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.

*According to RealtyTrac, a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010.

*U.S. Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, which was a new all-time record.

The New Normal: Tens Of Millions Of Americans Living In Poverty And Dependent On The Government For Food

*The U.S. poverty rate is the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

*Approximately 50 million Americans could not afford to buy enough food to stay healthy at some point during the last year.

*The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a new all-time record of 40.8 million in May.

*The number of Americans on food stamps has set a new all-time record for 18 consecutive months.

The New Normal: A Pension Crisis And A Social Security Nightmare That Will Fundamentally Change What Retirement Means In America

*3 out of every 5 Baby Boomers do not have enough money saved for retirement.

*Unfunded pension benefit liabilities at the state government level - the amount state governments owe in promised retirement benefits beyond what they have collected - exceed $3 trillion.

*In 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers.  In 2010, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 U.S. workers.  By 2025, it is projected that there will be approximately two U.S. workers for each retiree.

*According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.

*The present value of projected scheduled benefits surpasses earmarked revenues for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare by approximately 46 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.

The New Normal: The U.S. Government Absolutely Drowning In Debt

*If you started spending one million dollars every single day when Jesus was born, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

*The U.S. government has accumulated a national debt that is rapidly approaching the 14 trillion dollar mark.

*The IMF says that in order to fix the U.S. government budget deficit, taxes need to be doubled on every single U.S. citizen.

*The U.S. government will spend an amount of money equivalent to approximately 25.4 percent of GDP this year.

*If the U.S. government does not change course, it will be paying 2 trillion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2020.

Most Americans still appear to be operating under the delusion that the "recession" will soon pass and that things will get back to "normal" very soon.  Unfortunately, that is not anywhere close to the truth.  What we are now witnessing are the early stages of the complete and total breakdown of the U.S. economic system.  The U.S. government, state governments, local governments, businesses and American consumers have collectively piled up debt that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP.  At no point during the Great Depression (or at any other time during our history) did we ever come close to such a figure.  We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt that the world has ever seen, and now that gigantic debt bubble is beginning to pop.  As this house of cards comes crashing down, the economic pain is going to become almost unimaginable. 

Already, things are really, really, really bad out there.  Unemployment is at shockingly high levels.  Foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continue to set new all-time records.  Businesses are being shut down at a staggering rate, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. government continues to pile up debt at blinding speed.

There is no use sugar-coating it.

The U.S. economy is collapsing.

The following are 40 bizarre statistics that reveal the truth about the collapse of the U.S. economy....

1 - According to one shocking new survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.

2 - A recent Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began.

3 - There are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but that are not receiving an unemployment insurance check.

4 - In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

5 - According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007.

6 - China's trade surplus (much of it with the United States) climbed 140 percent in June compared to a year earlier.

7 - This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

8 - According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck.  That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

9 - According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession.

10 - Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, which was a new all-time record.

11 - Banks repossessed an average of 4,000 South Florida properties a month in the first half of 2010, up 83 percent from the first half of 2009.

12 - According to RealtyTrac, a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010.

13 - The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low.

14 - Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

15 - 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008.

16 - Back in 1950 each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers.  Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.  By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.

17 - According to a new poll, six of 10 non-retirees believe that Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.

18 - 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.

19 - According to one survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

20 - According to one recent survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

21 - The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index declined sharply to 52.9 in June.  Most economists had expected that the figure for June would be somewhere around 62.

22 - Retail sales in the U.S. fell in June for a second month in a row.

23 - Vacancies and lease rates at U.S. shopping centers continued to get worse during the second quarter of 2010.

24 - Consumer credit in the United States has contracted during 15 of the past 16 months.

25 - During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.

26 - Things are now so bad in California that in the region around the state capital, Sacramento, there is now one closed business for every six that are still open.

27 - The state of Illinois now ranks eighth in the world in possible bond-holder default.  The state of California is ninth.

28 - More than 25 percent of Americans now have a credit score below 599, which means that they are a very bad credit risk.

29 - On Friday, U.S. regulators closed down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of U.S. banks to be shut down so far in 2010.

30 - The FDIC's deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.

31 - The U.S. federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.

32 - According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.

33 - The M3 money supply plunged at a 9.6 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2010.

34 - According to a new poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.

35 - One study found that as of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

36 - The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

37 - The number of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose by about 15% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were earning less than $10 per hour.

38 - According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

39 - For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

40 - A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey has found that just 23% of American voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.

America's national debt is exploding out of control, and still most politicians in Washington D.C. don't really seem that interested in doing anything about it.  Why?  Well, the truth is that if the U.S. government reduces government spending that will slow down the economy, and if the economy slows down then Americans will blame the politicians, and if Americans are angry at the politicians then they will be less likely to vote them back into office.  So we actually have a system where our politicians have an incentive not to do anything about the national debt.  Meanwhile, the exploding debt continues to become a colossal long-term problem that threatens to destroy not only our economy, but our entire way of life.  The federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.  It is projected that the final budget deficit for 2010 will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3 to 1.5 trillion dollars.  But can we really afford to keep having deficits that are over a trillion dollars every single year?

No, we can't.

In fact, Democrat Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Barack Obama's national debt commission, recently told the National Governors Association that the U.S. national debt "is like a cancer".

How much of a cancer?

Well, according to Bowles, if the U.S. government does not make any changes it will be spending $2 trillion just for interest on the national debt by 2020.

2 trillion dollars.

The entire U.S. government will only spend somewhere between 3 and 4 trillion dollars in all of 2010.

Yes, that is how desperate the situation is becoming.

If something is not done about this horrific debt it is going to swallow our nation alive financially.

The following are 11 facts about America's national debt in 2010 that should alarm us all....

*On June 1st, the U.S. National Debt was $13,050,826,460,886.

*From the founding of the United States until Ronald Reagan took office we accumulated a total of about 1 trillion dollars in debt.  Now the U.S. national debt is over 13 trillion dollars.

*It is projected that the U.S. government will issue nearly as much new debt in 2010 as the rest of the governments of the world combined.

*If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.  But somehow the U.S. government has accumulated a debt that is over 13 trillion dollars.

*If you do the math, the truth is that it is simply not possible to pay off the U.S. national debt.  In fact, if you took every single dollar out of every single bank and out of every single wallet there wouldn't be anywhere close to enough money to do it.

*According to an official U.S. government report, rapidly growing interest costs on the U.S. national debt together with spending on major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019.  That is before one penny is spent on anything else.

*Back in 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by approximately 16 workers.  Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.  By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.

*According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2010 the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.

*Over 40 million Americans are now on food stamps and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is projecting that more than 43 million Americans will be on food stamps by the end of 2011.

*Approximately 57 percent of Barack Obama's 3.8 trillion dollar budget for 2011 consists of direct payments to individual Americans or is money that is spent on their behalf.

*A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times.  That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

Please send this out to everyone that you can, and if you have an opinion about all this debt please feel free to leave a comment below....

Well, it is official.  40.2 million Americans received food stamps in March, which represented a 21 percent increase from a year earlier.  That means that more than one out of every eight Americans is now dependent on the federal government for their daily bread.  But the truth is that things are going to get even worse.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture is projecting that more than 43 million Americans will be on food stamps by the end of 2011. 

Ouch!

40 million Americans on food stamps?

The old timers used to tell us that one day we would all be standing in bread lines, but this is ridiculous.

The United States is rapidly becoming a socialized welfare state and nobody seems to be able to do anything to stop it.

You see, it is not only the food stamp program that is exploding.

Virtually all government handout programs are exploding.

For example, nearly 51 million Americans received $672 billion in Social Security benefits in 2009.

It seems like almost everyone is getting money from the government these days.

But of course all of these government handouts are also creating a huge problem.

It is called debt.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, on June 1st the U.S. National Debt was $13,050,826,460,886.97.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and there is no possible way that we are ever going to be able to pay it off.

In fact, this crushing debt load will almost certainly destroy the U.S. economy.

But the tens of millions of Americans that are getting handouts from the government each month do not want to give them up.

In fact, it is those handouts that are keeping many of them off the streets.

Millions of Americans are finding it really hard to make it these days - especially the millions of Americans that don't have jobs.

Long-term unemployment has never been this bad in the United States in the post-World War II era.

In fact, 45.9% of those currently unemployed in the United States have been out of work longer than six months.  That is the highest percentage since the Labor Department began keeping track in 1948.

And the truth is that there are fewer and fewer good jobs out there.

You see, we shipped millions and millions of good jobs to other countries after our politicians promised us that "free trade" and "globalism" would be so good for us.

Well, they were good for the greedy CEOs that raked in record profits by exploiting third world labor pools, but they were not so good for the millions of Americans that have now lost their jobs.

Increasingly, the U.S. is becoming a "two tier" society.

The very rich are thriving while tens of millions of other Americans have never had it harder.

So where will all of this end?

50 million Americans on food stamps?

60 million Americans on food stamps?

Will we all be on food stamps someday?

This is getting ridiculous and it has to stop.

The U.S. is on the path to economic and financial oblivion.

But the politicians in Washington D.C. seem content to continue business as usual.

As long as they keep getting elected they really don't seem to care much about what they are doing to the long-term future of this nation.

But of course ultimately it is our responsibility for electing such a bunch of absolute losers to represent us.

The truth is that the United States of America is falling apart and Obama, Pelosi and Reid are completely incapable of fixing things.

Not that the Republicans did much better when they controlled Congress and the White House.

The truth is that both parties are filled with corrupt career politicians that shouldn't be hired to run a Burger King much less make decisions for this entire nation.

But this is where we are at.  We have come to a time of great national crisis and the leadership in Washington D.C. is pretty much completely incompetent.

So is there a way out of this mess?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion....

The following is a piece entitled "I'm 63 and I'm Tired" by Robert A. Hall that has been floating around the Internet. It was recently forwarded to us in an email, and we thought that it expressed the emotions that so many Americans are feeling right now that we should post it here.

If you are touched by Mr. Hall's letter, please send it out to as many of your friends and family as you can....

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe , the freedom of the press of China , the crime and violence of Mexico , the tolerance for Christian people of Iran , and the freedom of speech of Venezuela .

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U . S . Senators from Illinois.

I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.

I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America , while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military.... Those are the citizens we need.

I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet.

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm damn tired . But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.

Most Americans believe that the U.S. economy will fully recover from this recent recession and will soon become stronger than ever.  But that is definitely not what is happening.  The truth is that the very foundations of the U.S. economy are coming apart and we are headed for a massive amount of financial trouble as a nation.  Collectively, the U.S. government, U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  This mountain of debt has enabled us to enjoy a spectacular standard of living for the past several decades, but now the bills are coming due and nobody seems to even realize how great of a financial disaster the U.S. now finds itself in the middle of.

The following are 10 huge flashing danger signs that show just how much of a mess the U.S. economy is in....

#1) The FDIC is opening a satellite office in the Chicago area that will accommodate up to 500 temporary staffers and contractors to manage receiverships and liquidate assets from what they are expecting will be a massive wave of failed Midwest banks.

#2) The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, which is the biggest one month decline in history.  China alone reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by $34.2 billion.  So if foreigners quite buying up all of our debt, what happens then?

#3) Mortgage defaults in the U.S. have continued to hit record highs and housing prices are continuing to fall.  Now, a massive "second wave" of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset beginning in 2010.  The first wave of adjustable rate mortgage resets absolutely devastated the U.S. housing market in 2007 and 2008.  So what is this second wave of mortgage resets going to do to the U.S. economy?

#4) In fact, one new study estimates that five million houses and condominiums will go through foreclosure over the next few years.  Needless to say, that would be absolutely catastrophic.

#5) The number of Americans who are declaring bankruptcy continues to skyrocket.  1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

#6) But how can Americans pay their bills without jobs?  In some areas of the United States it is now nearly impossible to get a really good job unless you have an inside connection.  In fact, the mayor of Detroit estimates that the real unemployment rate in his city is approximately 45 to 50 percent. 

#7) America needs jobs, but soaring unemployment insurance taxes are discouraging small and mid-size companies from bringing on more workers.  According to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over even more in unemployment insurance taxes in 2010.  Making it more costly to hire a new worker is not going to help put Americans back to work. 

#8) The U.S. economy is facing a pension crisis of unprecedented magnitude.  The truth is that the vast majority of all pension funds in the United States, both public and private, are extremely underfunded.  With millions upon millions of Baby Boomers now at retirement age, there is simply no way that all of these unfunded pension obligations can be met.  Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the collective unfunded pension liability for all 50 U.S. states for Forbes magazine.  So what was the total that they came up with?  3.2 trillion dollars.

#9) Not only that, but the Social Security system is also a silent monster that threatens to devastate U.S. government finances.  In fact, many analysts are now forecasting that the coming wave of Baby Boomers is going to bankrupt the entire Social Security system.

#10) All of these economic problems come at a time when the U.S. national debt is exploding into the stratosphere.  The national debt is now over 12 trillion dollars and it is rising at a rate of about 3.8 billion dollars per day.  So how much is one trillion dollars?  Well, if you spent one dollar every single second of every single day, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.  That is a lot of money.

The truth is that the U.S. is drowning in debt.  American consumers are broke.  American businesses are broke.  State governments are broke.  The U.S. federal government is broke.  The only way that we can keep things going is to borrow increasingly larger amounts of money.

But when we do borrow even more money we make our long-term problems even worse.

The day of reckoning for the U.S. economy is fast approaching and we are headed for some extremely difficult economic times.

Are you ready?

The majority of Republicans now believe that Barack Obama is a socialist. According to a new survey conducted for Daily Kos by polling firm Research 2000, 63 percent of those who identify themselves as Republicans say that they believe that Barack Obama is a socialist. Of course the liberal blogs are having a field day with this one. After all, it is ludicrous to think that any major U.S. politician is actually a socialist, right?

Well, where I come from if it walks like a duck and if it quacks like a duck then we call it a duck.

So is Barack Obama a socialist?

-Obama believes that the government should run the economy and he has already taken over some of America's biggest corporations and has given government bailouts to many of the biggest banks.

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-Obama believes in big government and he is expanding the number of people working for the U.S. government to over 2 million people this year.

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-Obama believe in raising taxes and in massively increasing government spending.

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-Obama has almost got his government takeover of the U.S. health care system pushed through Congress.

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-Obama is pushing a "cap and trade" carbon tax scheme on the American people that would give the U.S. government unprecedented control over U.S. businesses and over the intimate details of our personal lives.

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-Among Obama's mentors during his formative years were some of the most radical socialists and communists in recent U.S. history.

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-Obama is continuing to build the Big Brother police state infrastructure that other administrations started which is stripping away our civil liberties and turning us into whimpering servants of the almighty central government.  This is exactly what other major totalitarian socialist governments throughout history have done.

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If you study history, the parallels between what is going on right now in the United States and what happened during the rise of other socialist regimes throughout history is absolutely stunning.

The truth is that the America that we all grew up in is systematically being dismantled.  Once it is gone it will almost be impossible to get back.  We encourage you to visit our new blog entitled The End Of The American Dream where we will be exploring the destruction of the American ideal and how this is going to impact all of us in the years ahead.

On July 30th, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2749 - The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. This bill, the centerpiece of big agriculture's war on organic farming in the United States, gives the U.S. government such unprecedented control over independent and organic farmers that some are calling this proposed law "fascism on the farm".

H.R. 2749 has been given this very deceptive name: "The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009", but the reality is that it has very little to do with food safety. Instead, concerns about food safety are being manipulated by big agriculture to push through a law that will devastate their smaller competitors.

You see, every major case of food contamination in recent U.S. history has come from large-scale industrial agriculture - not from small farms.

But who will this new law hurt the most?

Small independent and organic farmers.

In fact, these proposed new regulations are so overwhelming and so draconian that they will even discourage people from growing family gardens in their own backyards.

The reality is that this bill is an effort by the big agricultural corporations who control 90% of the food production in the United States to crush their remaining competition. The losers in all of this will be the American consumers who will have fewer and less healthy food choices.

You can find the full text of the bill here:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-2749

The following are just a few of the ridiculous provisions in H.R. 2749.....

-H.R. 2749 mandates that an annual registration fee of 500 dollars be imposed on any "facility" that holds, processes, or manufactures food.  For the major corporations this is nothing, but on a smaller farmer this is a very substantial charge.

-H.R. 2749 gives the FDA absolute power to regulate how crops are raised and harvested.  In other words, even our small and organic farmers will now be forced to farm exactly how the federal government tells them to.  So under this bill many organic farming methods will be banned as "unsafe", farmers may be forced to use GMO animal feed, they may have to shoot their animals up with unsafe drugs and hormones, and they may be forced to use petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides.  It will all depend on what the federal government defines as "safe" farming. 

-H.R. 2749 will give FDA the power to impose a quarantine on a specific geographic area.  This would even include "prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area."  Stopping the movement of all food basically means imposing martial law.  Should the FDA have the power to impose martial law?

-H.R. 2749 would even give the FDA the power to conduct warrantless searches of the business records of small independent and organic farmers, even if there has been no evidence at all that a law has been broken.  Of course nobody in Congress even reads the bills they pass anymore, so they probably don't even know that this law violates the United States Constitution.

-H.R. 2749 also would impose draconian criminal and civil penalties.  How draconian?  Prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation.  So just one could destroy a small farmer and put him or her out of business forever.

In addition, this new bill would impose on small farmers massive amounts of paperwork and administrative burdens that the big corporations can handle but they can't.

You see, that is how you put a horde of small competitors out of business - you get the government to pile on the rules and burdens and regulations until they collapse.

That is why Monsanto desperately wants this bill to become law. They hate the small farms and they want to take them out of the picture.

Why in the world do you THINK Monsanto is so in favor of this bill?

Why would Monsanto WANT more regulations placed on them?

Why?

Because it would give them a radical competitive advantage.

This bill would be another huge step towards corporations such as Monsanto gaining a stranglehold on the food supply of the United States.

This bill is a direct assault on the independence and security of American family farms and small organic growers.

Any member of Congress that supports this bill should be voted out of office in the next election.

No exceptions.

Please contact your Senators and tell them that you DO NOT support this bill.  If this bill is not stopped it will change farming in America forever.

There has been one member of Congress that has been willing to stand up to the Federal Reserve more than any other, and now that it has been revealed that Barack Obama's "financial reform" plan would give the Federal Reserve almost dictatorial power over the U.S. economy, Ron Paul is hopping mad.

On MSNBC the other day, Ron Paul was not shy about telling the nation that the U.S. government should not be handing massive new powers to the institution most responsible for creating this current financial mess.  In fact, Ron Paul told MSNBC that he believes that the Federal Reserve is already more powerful than Congress.....

"The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress."

The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as Federal Express is.  The Federal Reserve is a private bank that is designed to maximize profits for the elite international central bankers that own it. 

The most frightening thing is that they are accountable to nobody.  Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke have reinforced this point repeatedly in media interviews and in front of Congress.

In fact, when Congress asked the Fed where all the bailout money went, the Fed told Congress that they did not have to answer.

And now Obama wants to give them massive new powers?

Obama's plan would give the Federal Reserve unprecedented regulatory power over virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, and would allow the U.S. government, in conjunction with the Fed, to take over any company they want if they feel that there is "a threat" to the financial system. 

Ron Paul understands that the Federal Reserve is at the very heart of America's financial problems.  During the same MSNBC interview, he diagnosed the current situation brilliantly.....

“Too much regulations to begin with, so they give it more. The Federal Reserve creates the problem, so we give them more power. It’s fiat money that’s the problem, so we allow them to double the money supply - you can’t solve the problems that way. That’s like saying you can take care of a drug addict by just giving them more drugs."

Below you can see the entire interview.  It is probably one of the best Ron Paul interviews that has appeared on the mainstream news.....

But now even other members of Congress are starting to speak out against the Federal Reserve.  Senator Chris Dodd recently said that giving the Federal Reserve more power is like rewarding a son with a "bigger, faster car right after he crashed the family station wagon".

But Timothy Geithner, who ran the New York Federal Reserve until he became Treasury Secretary, is vigorously defending the plan to give huge new power to the Fed, and is arguing that the Fed will not need any oversight as they exercise these new powers as it is "very important" that the Federal Reserve "preserve its independence".

In other words, the Federal Reserve wants almost total control over the entire U.S. economy, but wants to be accountable to absolutely nobody.

Does that sound like a good plan to you?

That is why it is so important to support Ron Paul's bill to audit the Federal Reserve (H.R. 1207).  The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, as it is called, now has over 200 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, and recently it was reported that it will move out of committee to be debated by the full House of Representatives.  However, a similar bill is reportedly being severely watered down in the U.S. Senate.

The fact is that the Federal Reserve needs to be audited.  If Ron Paul's bill passes, the private bank that creates and regulates all U.S. currency will be forced by law to open its books for the first time since 1950.

That is almost 60 years ago.

It is time for the American people to learn what is going on at the financial institution that controls all of our economic lives, and it is time for the American people to learn what happened to all of the trillions in bailout money.

But the Federal Reserve will not let this happen without a fight.  They have vast resources and tremendous power at their disposal, and they aren't going to let someone like Ron Paul upset their apple cart so easily.

Let us hope that Ron Paul is victorious in this fight so that the American people can finally get a true idea of what his really going on at the Federal Reserve.

Is the United States facing a total financial collapse in this generation? Is the mighty American dollar about to be crushed by cold economic reality?

The truth may just be a lot more frightening than you ever imagined.

The reality is that any major currency not backed by gold in the history of the world has eventually failed, and the actions currently being taken by the U.S government and the Federal Reserve are speeding up the day when the dollar will totally collapse as well.

Sometimes words are not enough to describe a really bad situation. Hopefully the chart at the top of this article will give you get an idea of what is happening to the dollar. This chart originally comes from the Federal Reserve itself. The chart shows the U.S. monetary base from 1960 until today. From 1960 until about 1980, the amount of currency in circulation was increasing, but it was fairly stable. From 1980 to the middle of this decade, the amount of currency in circulation just exploded, but the worst news is found at the end of the chart.

If you look at what is happening today, the amount of dollars in circulation is absolutely shooting through the roof.  At this point, much of the cash which the U.S. government and the Fed have injected into the economy has not yet gotten into the hands of the person on the street, so the U.S. is still experiencing the beginnings of a deflationary depression. But eventually all of the money they have injected will get out there into the general economy.

When that happens, there will be a whole lot more dollars in circulation than before but about the same number of goods and services. Do you know what happens when that situation exists?

Inflation.

The reality is that because of what the U.S. government and the Fed are doing to the dollar, we are going to be facing rip-roaring inflation of a kind that Americans have never known.

And it will effect everyone.

For example, maybe you make good money now, but how far will your paycheck stretch when a loaf of bread costs ten dollars?

Perhaps you have spent decades sticking money in a bank account for retirement. Well, the cold hard truth is that inflation acts like a massive tax. When you wake up and your bank account only buys half of what it could buy the year before, how will you feel?

There is no other way for this current economic situation to play out.

The U.S. government and the Fed decided to spend their way out of this current economic crisis by cranking up the debt spiral one more time and by devaluing the dollar.

So America will see massive inflation - it is just a matter of how soon it will hit and how bad it will be.

What should you do?

Buy what you are going to need (food and supplies) right now while your dollars still have some value. Your dollars are never going to be more valuable than they are right now.

If you are trusting in a big bank account to be your security blanket in the future then you are going to be very disappointed as the dollar crumbles and your riches quickly fade.

You see, the U.S. government has settled on a policy of massive government borrowing and spending to try to turn the economy around.

This policy will have two general effects.

#1) There will be a short-term boost to the U.S. economy.  Some analysts will call it a recovery.  But this will only last for a while.

#2) The long-term economic problems will be made much worse by all this borrowing.  It was all the debt that caused this mess in the first place and now the U.S. government has multiplied the eventual economic disaster that America will face.  The dollar is going to drop dramatically in value and inflation is going to fly through the roof.

It took the U.S. many years to get to this point, but instead of learning lessons from the past, the U.S. government has decided that the only economic solution is to press the debt pedal all the way to the floor.

Barack Obama recently had his first budget passed by the Senate, and it is a monster. Obama's budget was only trimmed down slightly to a whopping 3.5 trillion dollars, and it contains an astonishing $1.2 trillion dollar projected federal deficit that would be the largest in history by far.

The era of big government was definitely back under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Now we are entering the era of REALLY REALLY big government.

The following were some highlights from Obama's budget proposal.....

*A tax increase on Americans making more than $250,000 a year, but tax cuts for those making less than that.

*A 634 billion dollar first step toward a universal health care system.

*Despite America's deep economic crisis, Obama is seeking to double U.S. foreign aid to other countries.

*Obama's budget proposal also included a new "global warming" tax. It would be the biggest tax increase in American history, and it would hit consumers with considerably higher utility bills.

*The Pentagon budget would get a 4 percent boost - to $534 billion next year.

Will all of this massive government spending fix the economy?

Well, it will help in the short term - just like going out and spending a thousand dollars on your credit cards will help you feel better in the short term too.

But what would happen to you personally if you went out and ran all your credit cards up to their maximum?

Financial disaster.

And that is exactly what is happening to the United States government now.

The reality is that the United States is now well over 10 TRILLION dollars in debt.

10,000,000,000,000 dollars in debt!

Will the current generation of Americans ever repay that?

No, the current generation seems determined to go much deeper into debt.

So, that means that Americans are dumping this debt on to their children and their grandchildren and to generations beyond that.

How immoral is that?

What America has done is they have sold their children and grandchildren into economic slavery forever. How would you feel if you were a little child and you discovered that your parents had left you with a debt that you could never, ever repay and that you would be making interest payments on for the rest of your life?

America's children and grandchildren will ALL be working all of their lives to pay interest on this ridiculous debt. Their labor will go into serving the owners of this debt, and there is no escape.

The goal should be to pass on a better world to America's children. How immoral is it to pass on such a debt to future generations?

Imagine if your parents came up to you and handed you a million dollar credit card bill that they had racked up and that was now in your name and you had to make payments on for the rest of your life?

America has had the greatest party of all time and has fueled the party on massive amounts of debt, but there is bad news.....

The party is almost over.

The reserves of America's local banks are gone. The financial institutions have borrowed an insane amount of money from the Federal Reserve this year just to stay afloat. America's financial system has never experienced a crisis of this magnitude in modern times.

The biggest debt bubble in the history of the world is starting to burst.

For decades Americans have lived like kings and queens.....enjoying the biggest party the world has ever known.....but financed with ever increasing amounts of debt.

Once upon a time, the United States was the biggest creditor in the world. But those days are long gone. Now America is the biggest debtor nation to ever exist on the earth.

America was the richest nation in the world, but that was never enough. Americans always had to have a bigger car, a bigger house and an endless supply of "stuff". So the American government piled up debt, American companies gorged on debt, and Americans made using credit cards into a national pastime.

If you include the future liabilities that America's government has already committed to such as future Social Security and Medicare payments, then the total debt of the federal government is over 65 TRILLION dollars.

65 TRILLION dollars!

Now that many of America's jobs have gone overseas, the price of gasoline is shooting through the roof, and tons of people are losing their homes, do we find that Americans are learning their lesson?

No.

Instead Americans are squeezing everything they can out of their credit cards. Total credit card debt in America is now over 790 billion dollars, and it is increasing at a rate which is four times faster than earlier this decade.

Instead of showing restraint, Americans have jammed the accelerator to the floor.

And did you know that Americans actually have a NEGATIVE savings rate?

Do you know the last time when that happened?

The Great Depression.

Prices are increasing dramatically while wages are not. Jobs are being outsourced and factories are being closed. America's largest banks and financial institutions are teetering on the brink of failure. Homes are being foreclosed at record rates. Personal bankruptcies recently hit an all-time high. And what is the answer that the politicians give America? Wasting even more money and getting us into even more debt.

America is truly reaping what they have sowed.

The Scriptures talk about those who would hoard wealth in the last days. Instead of feeding the poor and taking care of those who couldn't take care of themselves, Americans spent their money on mini-mansions, luxury SUVs and as much entertainment as they could pack into our lives. Now Americans will suffer the consequences just as the Scriptures say in James 5:1-5.....

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter."