Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is determined to push mortgage rates to record low levels and he is encouraging the banks that the Fed regulates to make home loans more freely. Wait a second – isn’t that exactly what caused the last housing bubble? After 9/11, the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates and this caused mortgage rates to steadily fall. Financial institutions were urged to help “expand home ownership” in America, and many of them started making home loans to people who never, ever should have gotten home loans. When mortgage rates started to go back up, millions of families with adjustable rate mortgages discovered that they could not make their monthly payments. Mortgage delinquencies absolutely soared and large numbers of mortgage-backed securities suddenly turned into garbage. So what is the Fed doing about it? The Fed recently announced another round of quantitative easing in which it will buy 40 billion dollars worth of these mortgage-backed securities a month. Essentially the Fed is clearing the bad financial paper out of the system and is creating the conditions for another housing bubble. But will we really fix our problems by going back and doing the same things that got us into trouble in the first place? (Read More...)
19 Signs That America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Giant Surveillance Grid
You are being watched. The control freaks that hold power in the United States have become absolutely obsessed with surveillance. They are constantly attempting to convince the American people that we are all “safer” when virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and recorded. Our country is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid far more comprehensive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of. If you still believe that there is such a thing as “privacy” in this day and age, you are being delusional. Every single piece of electronic communication is monitored and stored. In fact, they know that you are reading this article right now. But even if you got rid of all of your electronic devices, you would still be constantly monitored. As you will read about below, a rapidly growing nationwide network of facial recognition cameras, “pre-crime” surveillance devices, voice recorders, mobile backscatter vans, aerial drones and automated license plate readers are constantly feeding data about us back to the government. In addition, private companies involved in “data mining” are gathering literally trillions upon trillions of data points about individual Americans each year. So there is no escape from this surveillance grid. In fact, it has become just about impossible to keep it from growing. The surveillance grid is expanding in thousands of different ways, so even if you stopped one form of surveillance you would hardly make a dent in the astounding growth of this system. What we desperately need is a fundamental cultural awakening to the importance of liberty, freedom and privacy. Without such an awakening, the United States (along with the rest of the planet) is going to head into a world that will make “1984” by George Orwell look like a cheery story about a Sunday picnic. (Read More...)
10 Quotes From Financial Experts About The Effect That QE3 Will Have On Gold And Silver
Do you want to know what QE3 is going to do to the price of gold and the price of silver? Well, you can read what the financial experts are saying below, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is likely to happen. During QE3, the Federal Reserve will be introducing 40 billion new dollars that have been created out of nothing into the financial system each month. So there will be more dollars chasing roughly the same number of goods and services, and that means that more inflation is on the way. In an inflationary environment, investors tend to flock to hard assets such as gold and silver. And it is important to remember that a lot of the money from QE1 and QE2 ended up pumping up the prices of various financial assets. This included commodities such as gold and silver. The same thing is likely to happen again with QE3. In addition, investors now have an expectation that the Fed will continue printing money for the foreseeable future and that the U.S. dollar is going to steadily decline, and that expectation will also likely give further momentum to the upward movement of gold and silver. Of course when it comes to investing, there is never a “sure thing” and as the global financial system falls apart in the coming years we are likely to see wild swings in the financial markets. So there is definitely an opportunity when it comes to gold and silver, but anyone that wants to invest in gold and silver needs to be ready for a wild ride. (Read More...)
10 Shocking Quotes About What QE3 Is Going To Do To America
Ready or not, QE3 is here, and the long-term effects of this reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve are going to be absolutely nightmarish. The Federal Reserve is hoping that buying $40 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities per month will spur more lending and more economic activity. But that didn’t happen with either QE1 or QE2. Both times the banks just sat on most of the extra money. As I pointed out the other day, U.S. banks are already sitting on $1.6 trillion in excess reserves. So will pumping them up with more cash suddenly make them decide to start lending? Of course not. In addition, QE3 is not likely to produce many additional jobs. As I showed in a previous article, the employment level did not jump up as a result of either QE1 or QE2. So why will this time be different? But what did happen under both QE1 and QE2 is that a lot of the money ended up pumping up the financial markets. So once again we should see stock prices go up (at least in the short-term) and commodities such as gold, silver, food and oil should also rise. But that also means that average American families will be paying more for the basic necessities that they buy on a regular basis. The most dangerous aspect of QE3, however, is what it is going to do to the U.S. dollar. Most of the rest of the world uses the U.S. dollar to conduct international trade, and by choosing to recklessly print money Ben Bernanke is severely damaging international confidence in our currency. If at some point the rest of the world rejects the dollar and no longer wants to use it as a reserve currency we are going to be facing a crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before. The real debate about QE3 should not be about whether or not it will help the economy a little bit in the short-term. Rather, everyone should be talking about the long-term implications and about how QE3 is going to accelerate the destruction of the dollar. (Read More...)
Thanks Obama – The Terrorists You Used To Topple Regimes In Egypt And Libya Are Now Attacking Our Embassies
Many of us tried to warn Barack Obama that using militants from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to overthrow governments in the Middle East would not end well. The Obama administration has been so determined to get rid of some of these dictators in the Middle East that they have not even really stopped to think about who would be replacing them. Our leaders assured us that those opposed to Mubarak and Gaddafi were “freedom fighters” that just wanted “liberty” and “democracy” in those countries. Well, of course it turns out that the folks that took control of both Egypt and Libya bear no resemblance to George Washington whatsoever. They have simply replaced one form of tyranny with an even worse form of tyranny. Sadly, the last couple of days have been a huge wake up call for all of us. Radical Islamic militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt and replaced the American flag with the al-Qaeda flag. In Benghazi, Libya the U.S. consulate was attacked by a crowd equipped with guns, homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. They torched the consulate, looted it, and killed the U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. officials. Apparently they are not as grateful for our help in “liberating” their homelands as the Obama administration thought they would be. Unfortunately, our politicians fundamentally misunderstand what is going on in the Middle East, and this is going to continue to lead to more policy errors. (Read More...)
Did Obama Just Make A Deal With Israel To Delay The War With Iran Until After The Election?
Barack Obama cares about Barack Obama far more than he does about either Israel or Iran. And as far as Barack Obama is concerned, delaying the coming war between Israel and Iran until after the election is what is best for Barack Obama. Just think about it. If Israel attacked Iran right now, who would that please? It would mostly please hardcore Republicans, and they are not going to vote for Obama anyway. To independents and liberals, Obama would look like a guy that couldn’t stop war from happening in the Middle East. If the U.S. showed support for the Israeli attack, that would greatly discourage his anti-war supporters from going to the polls. If the U.S. did not show support for the Israeli attack, Obama would potentially lose many of the Jewish voters that he desperately needs in swing states such as Florida. A war between Israel and Iran is a no-win situation for Obama right now, and as I wrote about yesterday, the Obama administration has been trying to discourage Israel from attacking Iran for weeks. Well, now it is being reported in major international news sources that a deal has been reached between Obama and Israel. Obama is going to publicly declare what the “red lines” are that will cause the U.S. to strike Iran’s nuclear program, and the U.S. military is going to send some of their most advanced bunker busting bombs to Israel. Those bombs will come in very handy in getting at the Iranian nuclear facilities that are hidden underground. In return, Israel has apparently agreed to delay the attack on Iran until after the election. So would Barack Obama really play politics with war in the Middle East? Of course he would. Barack Obama is obsessed with winning a second term and he would make a deal with just about anyone if it will get him closer to his goal. (Read More...)
19 Signs That Israel And Iran Are On The Verge Of War
There is going to be war in the Middle East. It is just a matter of time until it happens. Israel has decided that there is no way that it can ever allow Iran to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons. Iran has gone “all-in” on developing a nuclear program and it has become a matter of national pride at this point. Iran does not fear an Israeli attack against its nuclear program. In fact, Iran anticipates that an Israeli attack would cause the Islamic nations of the Middle East to come together and declare war against Israel. Sadly, there is a very strong chance that an Israeli attack on Iran would actually spark a larger regional war. But there is no way that Israel is going to allow Iran to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons, and time for a strike may be running out. It has become quite clear that the Obama administration does not want to strike Iran. So if Israel wants to do something about Iran, Israel is going to have to be the one to do it. But if Obama wins the U.S. election in November, he might work to actively block Israel from attacking Iran for his entire second term, and the Israelis believe that by 2016 it will be way too late to do anything about Iran’s nuclear program. If Israel attacks before the election, Obama would be in danger of appearing to be “anti-Israel” if he came out against the attack. And considering the fact that Jewish voters are a key voting block in swing states such as Florida that is not something he would want to do. But after the election Obama would not have to worry about what Jewish voters think. After the election Obama could move to block an attack on Iran indefinitely. (Read More...)
Why Does The U.S. Government Treat Military Veterans Like Human Garbage?
The way that the U.S. government treats military veterans is absolutely disgraceful. Men and women that have given everything for this nation are literally being treated like human garbage by their own government. After watching how vets are treated, it is absolutely amazing that anyone is still volunteering to be a part of the military. We pay those in the military like crap, we keep sending our best soldiers back to Afghanistan and Iraq again and again, we don’t equip them properly, military suicides are at a record pace, hundreds of thousands of applications for veteran benefits are hopelessly backlogged, homelessness and unemployment among vets is much higher than for the general population, the condition of most VA hospitals is an absolute disgrace, and to top everything off now the Obama administration has started labeling military veterans as “potential terrorists”. What you are about to read should make you very angry. The abuse, neglect and outright disrespect that military vets receive from their own government is absolutely shocking. We owe these men and women a great debt for the service that they have performed for our nation, but instead the federal government kicks them to the curb and treats them with no honor whatsoever. The way a nation treats military vets says a lot about the character of that nation, and right now the way that America treats veterans says that we have the character of a steaming pile of manure. (Read More...)