If you are a big fan of The Office on NBC, then you probably know that Michael Scott considers autumn to be “the most contemplative of seasons”. Well, while that may or may not be true, what I do believe is that Friday is one of “the most contemplative” days of the week. Here in the great Pacific northwest there is still a couple of hours of daylight left before the sun goes down, and as the sun relentlessly continues its trajectory towards the horizon it makes me stop and reflect on how rapidly the world is changing. In just about any field that you want to name – technology, politics, economics, education, entertainment and even religion – the pace of change these days is absolutely astounding. We live at a time when we get to watch the world literally change right in front of our eyes. In the age of the Internet our attention spans have been reduced to approximately that of a squirrel, but sometimes it is good to sit back and think about the bigger picture. What does all of this change mean? Is it good? Is it bad? What kind of a future are we headed for? (Read More...)
The ABC’s Of The Great American Housing Crisis
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a horrific housing crisis in unfolding right in front of our eyes. Yesterday it was announced that existing home sales plummeted 27 percent in the month of July. Today it was announced that new homes sales dropped to the lowest level ever recorded in July. But why is this happening? Why is the American Dream still dying for millions of American families? Wasn’t the recession supposed to be over by now? Weren’t home prices supposed to be moving back up by this time? Well, in this article we will attempt to succinctly break down the ABC’s of the Great American Housing Crisis. Hopefully this will help people understand why all of this is happening. (Read More...)
20 Signs That America Is No Longer The Land Of The Free
The United States was able to defeat Nazi Germany and helped bring down the USSR, but is the U.S. government now quickly becoming just like them? Once upon a time, America was the land of the free and the home of the brave, but today the government has become an oppressive monster that is intrusively embedding itself in our lives in thousands of different ways. Today we are all viewed as potential threats to the “system” that the government has imposed, and therefore everything that we do must be watched, tracked, traced, recorded and controlled. Lip service is still given to ideals such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and freedom of movement, but all of those freedoms are rapidly dying a brutal death. To our forefathers, living the American Dream meant living as free men and women, but today it means living under deep socialist tyranny where the government takes care of us from the cradle to the grave and uses an increasingly oppressive Big Brother police state control system to guarantee our safety. (Read More...)
Will A Decline In The Credit Rating Of U.S. Government Debt Lead To A Complete Financial Disaster?
Most Americans know that individuals have credit ratings, but many of them don’t realize that countries have credit ratings too, and that even a small dip in the credit rating of a nation can have a huge economic impact. For decades, U.S. government debt has had a very, very high credit rating. U.S. Treasuries were generally considered among the safest, if not the safest, investments in the world. But that is starting to change. Just this past week, Moody’s Investors Service said that the U.S. government has been running up so much debt that there is actually a danger that the credit rating of U.S. government debt could be downgraded at some point in the future. That would make it significantly more expensive for the U.S. government to borrow more money, and it would cause interest on the U.S. national debt to skyrocket even further. (Read More...)
15 Signs That The U.S. Housing Market Is Headed For Complete And Total Collapse
The U.S. housing market is dying. You will only hear hints of this on the mainstream news and from the politicians in Washington D.C., but as statistic after statistic continues to roll in, the reality of what is happening is becoming very difficult to deny. Up until the end of April, the giant tax credit that the U.S. government was bribing home buyers with helped stabilize the real estate market, but now that the tax credit has expired the decline of the U.S. housing market has resumed. Mortgage defaults continue to set new records. Foreclosures continue to set new records. Home repossessions by banks continue to set new records. The number of homes being constructed and the number of Americans applying for home loans is at stunningly low levels. For decades, owning a home has been touted as the very heart of “the American Dream”, but today that dream is out of reach for an increasing number of Americans. Why? It is because there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. Without a jobs recovery, there simply is not going to be a housing recovery. Unfortunately, as the U.S. economy continues to come apart like a 20 dollar suit, even more Americans are going to lose their jobs and the U.S. housing industry will continue to experience a very painful decline. (Read More...)
The Shockingly High Cost Of Free Trade: 10 Reasons Why Globalism Is Bad For Middle Class Americans
Today, there are very few national figures that are dissenting from the politically-correct viewpoint that free trade is a good thing. The vast majority of Republican politicians believe in free trade. The vast majority of Democrats believe in free trade. Barack Obama believes in free trade. Nancy Pelosi believes in free trade. Rush Limbaugh believes in free trade. Glenn Beck believes in free trade. In fact, just about anyone who goes on mainstream media and starts speaking out against free trade is immediately branded an idiot who does not understand the first thing about economics. So considering the fact that leaders on both sides of the “political spectrum” fully embrace free trade, shouldn’t we just go with the consensus and consider the debate about trade to be over? Well, there is just one problem. All of this globalism and free trade is killing the American Dream and is destroying the American middle class. (Read More...)
Will The Bizarre Weather Of 2010 Set The Stage For A Major Global Food Shortage In 2011?
Record-shattering heatwaves all over the world, massive wildfires in Russia, truly historic flooding in Pakistan and China and devastating droughts in many other areas are playing havoc with harvests all over the globe. This is leading many analysts to predict a sharp rise in food prices for the rest of 2010, and there are even whispers that 2011 could see the outbreak of global food riots that are even worse than what we witnessed back in 2008. The truth is that things are starting to get more than a bit frightening out there. One quarter of Russia’s grain crops have already been wiped out by the unprecedented heatwave and the massive wildfires that have been ravaging that nation. In fact, the Russian government has announced that they have banned all grain exports for the rest of this year. This has caused a dramatic surge in the price of wheat on world markets. Unfortunately, Russia is far from alone in dealing with bad harvests this year. So what happens when global food prices go so high that the hundreds of millions of people existing on the edge of poverty around the world can’t afford to buy food any longer? (Read More...)
No More Debt!
As we approach election season here in 2010, American voters are seemingly more angry than at any other time in recent memory. More than at any other time in modern American history, Americans are seeking out alternatives outside the “two party system” (such as the Tea Party movement) through which to express their anger. So why are the American people so angry? Well, the truth is that there are a whole lot of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is the horrific mismanagement of our national finances that has been going on in Washington. The “Congress critters” have been piling up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and millions of Americans are now waking up and are now realizing that our financial future has been absolutely obliterated. We have accumulated a debt that is impossible to repay. In fact, it is rapidly getting to the point where it will become impossible even to service the debt. All of this debt is literally killing the American Dream. An increasing number of Americans now realize the horror of what we have done, but the reality is that it may be far too late to reverse the damage that has taken place. (Read More...)