20 Signs That Europe Is Plunging Into A Full-Blown Economic Depression

An economic nightmare is descending on Europe.  With each passing month, the economic numbers across Europe get even worse.  At this point it is becoming extremely difficult for anyone to deny that Europe is plunging into a full-blown economic depression.  In fact, some parts of Europe are already there.  In Spain the overall unemployment rate is over 22 percent, and in Greece one out of every five retail establishments has already been closed down.  All over Europe, economic activity is rapidly slowing down, unemployment is skyrocketing and bad debts are unraveling.  It isn’t even going to take a default by a nation such as Greece or a collapse of the euro to push Europe into an economic depression.  All Europe has to do is to stay on the exact path that it is on right now and it will get there.  Normally, European governments would respond to an economic slowdown by increasing government spending.  But this time most of them are already drowning in debt.  Instead of increasing government spending, most governments in Europe are actually cutting back.  All over Europe, national governments are being encouraged to implement even more tax increases and even more budget cuts.  The hope is that all of this austerity will help solve the nightmarish sovereign debt crisis that Europe is facing.  But unfortunately, all of these tax increases and budget cuts are also going to involve a tremendous amount of economic pain. (Read More...)

Financial Panic Sweeps Europe As The Head Of The IMF Warns Of A “1930s Depression”

Are we on the verge of another Great Depression?  Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said this week that if dramatic action is not taken immediately we could actually see conditions “reminiscent of the 1930s depression” and that no country on earth “will be immune to the crisis”.  Right now, financial panic is sweeping across Europe, but most Americans are not too concerned about it because they simply don’t understand how important the EU is.  The truth is that the EU has a much larger population than the United States does.  The EU has an economy that is nearly as large as the economies of the United States and China combined.  The EU has more Fortune 500 companies that the United States does, and the banking system of Europe is substantially larger than the banking system of the United States.  Anyone out there that believes that a massive financial collapse in Europe would not dramatically affect the rest of the globe is being delusional.  The European debt crisis is one of the biggest stories that we have seen in a long, long time and the coming financial meltdown is going to permanently change the global economy. (Read More...)

16 Reasons To Feel Really Depressed About The Direction That The Economy Is Headed

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...)

The End Of An Empire And The Beginning Of A Depression

Since the end of World War 2, the United States has been the leading military power and the leading economic power on the entire globe.  The U.S. has had the largest economy in the history of the world, the U.S. dollar has been used by nearly all of the nations on earth as a reserve currency and the U.S. military has had a physical presence in most of the countries on the planet.  Today, the U.S. military is in approximately 130 different nations and it has a total of about 700 military bases around the world.  But just like the Roman Empire, the U.S. empire has become overextended and it is starting to decline.  Most of our politicians believe that we can continue to “police the world” and project our power to every corner of the globe, but the more we meddle the more the rest of the world hates us and the worse our financial problems get.  America is now swamped with debts and our influence is fading.  The truth is that what we are witnessing is the end of an empire and the beginning of a depression. (Read More...)

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like 1930

An increasing number of economists, world leaders and financial columnists are beginning to acknowledge that our current economic crisis bears a striking resemblance to what was going on about the time the Great Depression of the 1930s started.  Just like the “Roaring 20s”, the American people over the last couple of decades have been getting into massive amounts of debt in pursuit of the American Dream.  But just like the early 1930s, we are now experiencing a severe credit crunch and the process of deleveraging this gigantic mountain of debt promises to be at least as painful as the deleveraging that took place throughout the 1930s.  It seems like almost everyone is using words like “double dip” and “recession” now, and a lot of analysts are even starting to utter even more dreaded words like “deflation” and “depression”.  Even the Federal Reserve, usually one of the biggest cheerleaders for the economy, is now saying that the U.S. economic system may not recover for another five or six years.  If that is what the Federal Reserve is admitting to, then how bad are things really?  The truth is that it really is beginning to look a lot like 1930 out there. (Read More...)

11 Points Of Comparison Between Life In The United States And Life Under Hitler From A Woman Who Has Experienced Both

Have you ever heard of Kitty Werthmann?  She was a child when Adolf Hitler took control of her beloved country of Austria and stripped away their freedoms, and she is now speaking out about the chillingly similar loss of freedoms that we are currently experiencing in the United States.  It is often said that “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”.  So, perhaps we should listen very carefully to what Kitty Werthmann has to say.  She has been there.  She has lived through it.  The truth is that when you do sit down and compare what happened under the Nazi regime and what is happening in the United States today, the parallels are absolutely shocking.  The American Dream is not guaranteed for us or for our children.  Freedom must be guarded.  If not, it will be taken away.  In fact, our freedoms are already being stripped away at blinding speed, and once they are gone they are incredibly difficult to get back. (Read More...)