Did you know that 2013 was the driest year ever recorded in the state of California? And did you know that so far this is the driest January that the state of California has ever experienced? The worst drought in the history of California is happening right now. Just check out the current conditions on the U.S. Drought Monitor. About two-thirds of the state is experiencing “extreme drought” at the moment, and Governor Jerry Brown says that it is “not likely to rain for several weeks“. Unfortunately for California, the truth is that the weather in the western half of the country is simply returning to historical norms. Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the United States in 1000 years, and that extremely dry conditions are normally what we should expect for most areas from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River. If long-term conditions truly are “returning to normal”, then the state of California could be heading for a water crisis of unprecedented magnitude. (Read More...)
Economic Crisis
25 Stats That Prove That The American Dream Is Being Systematically Destroyed
The 25 statistics that you are about to read are solid proof that the middle class in America is being systematically wiped out. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world. It seemed like almost everyone owned a home, had a couple of nice vehicles and could provide a very comfortable lifestyle for their families. Sadly, that has all changed. In America today, prices are rising at a very brisk pace but incomes are not. There aren’t nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore, and most of the jobs that are being “created” are jobs that pay very little. The largest employer in America is Wal-Mart, and the second largest employer is actually a temp agency (Kelly Services). In a desperate attempt to make ends meet, millions of American families endlessly pile up more debt, and millions of other American families find themselves forced to turn to the government for help. At this point, more than 49 percent of all Americans receive benefits from the federal government each month. The percentage of Americans that cannot financially take care of themselves is rising every single year, and our independence is being whittled away as we become increasingly dependent on the government. Unfortunately, our politicians continue to stand aside and do nothing as our jobs are shipped overseas, inflation steals our purchasing power and the middle class continues to shrink. The following are 25 stats that prove that the American Dream is being systematically destroyed… (Read More...)
Uh Oh: 47 Million Food Stamp Recipients Are Having Their Benefits Cut Back On November 1st
47.6 million Americans are about to have their food stamp benefits cut, and most of them have absolutely no idea that it is about to happen. Needless to say, a lot of them are going to be very angry when they discover that they cannot buy as much food for their families anymore. The reason that this is happening is because a temporary boost to food stamp benefits that was put in during the last recession is expiring. But most of the people that are having their benefits cut will not understand this. Most of them will just be very upset that the government is “taking money away” from them. And considering the “mini-riots” that we witnessed earlier this month when the system that processes food stamp payments went down for a few hours, it is obvious that a lot of food stamp recipients can very easily be pushed over the edge. So what would happen if we have another “debt ceiling crisis” in Washington D.C. early next year and food stamp benefits are temporarily cut off completely? (Read More...)
Why Are The Chinese Gobbling Up Real Estate And Businesses In Detroit?
Something very strange is happening to Detroit. Once upon a time, it was the center of American manufacturing and it had the highest per capita income in the United States. But now the city is dying and the Chinese are moving in to pick up the pieces. Lured by news stories that proclaim that you can buy homes in Detroit for as little as one dollar, Chinese investors are eagerly gobbling up properties. In some cases, this is happening dozens of properties at a time. Not only that, according to the New York Times “dozes of companies from China” are investing in businesses and establishing a presence in the Detroit area. If this continues, will Detroit eventually become a city that is heavily dominated by China? (Read More...)
The Coming Shortage Of Physical Gold That Will Change Everything
Is the paper gold scam about to be brutally crushed by a crippling shortage of physical gold? If so, what will that do to global financial markets? According to the Reserve Bank of India, “the traded amount of ‘paper linked to gold’ exceeds by far the actual supply of physical gold: the volume on the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) OTC market and the major Futures and Options Exchanges was OVER 92 TIMES that of the underlying Physical Market.” In other words, there is a massive amount of paper out there, but very little actual physical gold to back it up. And right now, we are witnessing voracious hoarding of physical gold all over the globe. This is especially true in Asia. Just see this article and this article. All of this hoarding is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on those that have made all of these “paper promises”, because the truth is that there really isn’t all that much physical gold on the planet. In fact, Warren Buffett once estimated that if all of the gold in the entire world was brought into one place, it could be formed into a cube that would only be 69 feet long by 69 feet high by 69 feet wide. (Read More...)
40 Ways That China Is Beating America
China is wiping the floor with the United States on the global economic stage, and most Americans are so clueless that they have absolutely no idea what is happening. The number one global economic superpower is in an advanced state of decline, and the number two global economic superpower is becoming stronger with each passing day. Unless something truly dramatic happens, it is only a matter of time before China overtakes America and become the dominant economic force on the planet. In fact, China is already exercising economic superiority over the United States in a whole host of ways. China produces more goods than we do, China does more total trade in goods with the rest of the world than we do, China produces more cars than we do, China produces more gold than we do, China consumes more energy than we do, China produces more coal than we do and China produces more steel than we do. Every single year, we buy far more from them than they buy from us, and this has made them exceedingly wealthy. Our politicians regularly make trips over to China to beg them to lend us back some of the money that they have taken from us. Today, we owe China more than a trillion dollars and the Chinese are sitting on the biggest pile of foreign currency reserves that the world has ever seen. All of this wealth has fundamentally transformed the nation of China over the past couple of decades. Just check out the startling photographs of China from space in this article that show how China dramatically changed between 1992 and 2010. As China continues to become stronger and as America continues to become weaker, will our children some day wake up in a world where the Chinese are telling them what to do? (Read More...)
We Are Witnessing The Slow, Tortuous Death Of The American Worker
Once upon a time, the U.S. economy produced a seemingly unending supply of good paying jobs that enabled American workers to buy homes, raise families and live the American Dream. But now all of that has changed. Over the past several decades, there have been some fundamental shifts in our economy that have steadily eroded the value of the American worker. Thanks to incredible advances in robotics, computers and other fields of technology, many economic activities that once required a tremendous amount of manpower now require very little. Nothing is going to reverse those technological advances, so the jobs that have been lost as a result are now gone forever. But there are millions of other good jobs that we have lost that we could have done something about. Over the past couple of decades, millions upon millions of American jobs have been shipped overseas. Thanks to a whole host of “free trade” agreements that our politicians promised would be very good for our economy, U.S. workers have now been merged into a global labor pool with hundreds of millions of workers on the other side of the globe that live in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. In such a situation, it is only natural for big corporations to shift production from high wage areas to low wage areas. Unemployment in America has skyrocketed and so have corporate profits. Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low. The lack of decent jobs in the United States is one of the primary reasons why we are in an economic crisis that never seems to end, and things are not going to turn around any time soon. We truly are witnessing the slow, tortuous death of the American worker, and politicians from both political parties are just standing aside and letting it happen. (Read More...)
The Inflation Rate Is A Lie Too
Can we believe any of the economic numbers that the government is feeding us these days? Most of the focus recently has been on the bizarre jobs report that the government released last Friday, but the truth is that the inflation rate is a lie too. In fact, the way that the government calculates inflation has changed more than 20 times since 1978. The government is constantly looking for ways that it can make inflation appear to be even lower. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if inflation was measured the same way that it was back in 1990, the inflation rate would be about 5 percent right now. If inflation was measured the same way that it was back in 1980, the inflation rate would be about 9 percent right now. But instead, we are expected to believe that the inflation rate is hovering around 2 percent. Well, anyone that goes to the supermarket or fills up their vehicle with gasoline knows that prices are going up a lot faster than that. Just about everything that we buy on a regular basis is steadily becoming more expensive, and so most Americans are not buying it when government officials tell us that there is barely any inflation right now. (Read More...)