As the U.S. economy falls apart and as the world becomes increasingly unstable, more Americans than ever are becoming "preppers".  It is estimated that there are at least two million preppers in the United States today, but nobody really knows.  The truth is that it is hard to take a poll because a lot of preppers simply do not talk about their preparations.  Your neighbor could be storing up food in the garage or in an extra bedroom and you might never even know it.  An increasing number of Americans are convinced that we are on the verge of some really bad things happening.  But will just storing up some extra food and supplies be enough?  What is going to happen if we see widespread rioting in major U.S. cities like George Soros is predicting?  What is going to happen if the economy totally falls to pieces and our city centers descend into anarchy like we saw in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?  In some major U.S. cities such as Detroit, looting is already rampant.  There are some sections of Detroit where entire blocks of houses are being slowly dismantled by thieves and stripped of anything valuable.  Sadly, the economy is going to get a lot worse than it is at the moment.  So is now the time to move away from major U.S. cities?  Should preppers be seeking safer locations for themselves and their families?  Those are legitimate questions. (Read More.....)

Do you want to feel optimistic about the U.S. economy?  If so, you might not want to read the rest of this article.  In many areas of the United States today, you can almost smell the fear and the anxiety in the air.  Survey after survey has found that the American people are extremely pessimistic about the direction the economy is headed.  In fact, many recent surveys have found that economic pessimism is at the highest levels ever recorded.  There has been an astonishing loss of faith in the system.  In general, people are extremely dissatisfied with how things are going right now, and they do not believe that things will get better any time soon.  When the majority of the population starts losing hope like that, it creates a very unstable economic environment.  Once people are gripped by desperation, they start behaving much differently.  Desperate people do desperate things, and we are already starting to see this in many parts of the country. (Read More.....)

There are a whole lot of things about the U.S. economy that don't make any sense whatsoever.  Sadly, most adults have been so programmed to accept the way that things are by years and years of relentless propaganda that they don't even bother to question the status quo any longer.  But little kids are different.  Many little kids are not afraid to say the darnedest things or ask really embarrassing questions.  Have you ever been in a situation where a child asks an obvious question that did not even occur to any of the adults?  That happens so often because the minds of little kids have not been completely warped by the world we live in yet.  They are able to see things with honesty and innocence and with fresh eyes.  Well, perhaps all of us should start looking at our economy and our financial system through the eyes of little children.  There are a lot of things that we have been programmed to accept that we really should be asking some hard questions about. (Read More.....)

For decades, the U.S. economy was so dominant compared to the rest of the world that nobody really even challenged the status of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world.  But now that U.S. government debt has been downgraded, the U.S. dollar is showing significant weakness and the U.S. economy continues to crumble, the rest of the world is questioning whether the U.S. dollar should be allowed to continue to have such a privileged position in the global marketplace.  Politicians all over the world are now openly calling for a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar in international trade.  In fact, we are already seeing a shift away from the dollar in many areas of the globe.  A decade ago, the U.S. dollar made up approximately 70% of all foreign exchange reserves around the world.  Today, that figure is down to about 60%, and it continues to fall.  As the debt problems of the U.S. government get even deeper, and as the U.S. dollar loses even more strength, the calls for a truly global currency are going to grow even louder. (Read More.....)

There is wild disagreement about what is causing it, but what most people can agree on is that there is something fundamentally wrong with America.  The fabric of American society just does not seem to be as strong as it used to.  In fact, many would argue that society is coming apart at the seams. Corruption and decay seem to be everywhere.  I spend a lot of time in my other articles blaming a lot of this corruption and decay on politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders, but the reality is that they are only part of the story.  The truth is that those who are leading us are a reflection of what we have become as a nation.  If you got rid of all of our corrupt leaders that would not suddenly "fix" this country.  Millions of ordinary Americans have become deeply corrupt as well.  The kinds of things that you are about to read about below were very rare in past generations.  Society is falling apart all around us and we haven't even seen the complete collapse of the U.S. economy yet. (Read More.....)

As most Americans stand around waiting for the U.S. economy to return to "normal", there is a never ending parade of jobs, businesses and wealth heading out of the United States.  The jobs and businesses that are leaving are gone for good and will not be coming back.  This is causing unemployment to soar and government debt to skyrocket but our politicians are doing nothing about it.  Instead, politicians from both parties keep insisting that they will solve all of our problems if we will just give them our votes.  Meanwhile, American families continue to fill up their shopping carts with cheap plastic crap made on the other side of the world.  Globalism is slowly destroying the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen and most Americans don't even realize it.  Today, the U.S. government has surrendered massive amounts of economic sovereignty to global organizations such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank.  The United States has also entered into a whole host of very damaging "free trade agreements" such as NAFTA that are costing our economy huge numbers of jobs.  Our politicians always promised us that globalism would bring us to a new level of prosperity, but instead that "giant sucking sound" that you hear is the sound of the U.S. economy being hollowed out. (Read More.....)

If you do not want to feel really depressed, you might not want to read this article.  The U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams, and there are a whole lot of indications that things are about to get even worse.  After a time of relative stability, the pace of job cuts is starting to pick up again, inflation is rising but paychecks are not, the U.S. housing crisis shows no signs of ending, millions of American families are drowning in debt and all of the recent polls show that the faith of the American people in our economy is eroding.  As you read the statistics in this article, try to keep in mind that there are scores of families from coast to coast that are barely surviving from month to month.  It can be a soul-crushing experience to work as hard as you can and yet just barely be able to pay the mortgage and put food into the mouths of your kids.  The reason why so many Americans believe that we are in a "recession" or a "depression" is because that is what they feel like they are living through every single day. (Read More.....)

By almost any measure that you can think of, the U.S. economy has gotten worse since Barack Obama became president.  Unemployment is higher, the cost of food and gas are skyrocketing, the number of Americans living in poverty has spiked dramatically, the housing market is in nightmarish shape and our national debt has absolutely exploded.  Meanwhile, Barack Obama continues to prance around the country declaring that "we can live out the American dream again" and that what we are experiencing right now are simply "bumps on the road to recovery".  But such mindless platitudes are of little comfort to the millions of American families that are slowly descending into poverty or the tens of millions of American families that are already there.  If this is the "change" that Barack Obama was promising then he can just keep the change. (Read More.....)

As the U.S. economy falls apart and millions of Americans descend into despair we are seeing some really shocking things start to happen all over America.  The mainstream media keeps telling us that crime is under control, but they are also the ones that keep telling us that we are in the midst of an "economic recovery".  Unfortunately, the truth is that the economy is slowly dying.  Today, an all-time record 44 million Americans are on food stamps.  That number is 18 million higher than it was just four years ago.  When people can't get jobs and when people feel deprived they get desperate.  The incidents that you are about to see and read about below are very disturbing.  Many American communities are rapidly turning into war zones.  Sadly, it is mostly young people that are involved in the crimes and the violence that are now sweeping America. (Read More.....)

2011 is shaping up to be a really bad year for the U.S. economy. There are all kinds of indications that big trouble is ahead. So far financial markets are weathering all of the chaos around the world fairly well, but just as there were huge flashing warning signs before the 2008 financial crisis there are also huge flashing warning signs now.  The price of oil is soaring, the U.S. housing market is experiencing huge problems, the cost of living in America recently hit a new record high and each week the globe seems to become even more unstable.  How much pounding can our fragile economic system take before it completely collapses?  As the price of oil goes even higher, it is going to cause economic growth to slow down and it is going to cause the prices of the things that we all buy at the stores to go up at the same time.  It is very likely that we are entering a period of "stagflation" similar to what we experienced in the 1970s.  This is going to cause a huge amount of money trouble for millions of American families.  Already there are vast numbers of American families that are barely making it every month.  Tens of millions of Americans are already receiving government assistance.  So what is going to happen when the next financial crash happens and we experience yet another major economic downturn? (Read More.....)