As the U.S. economy implodes, a lot of American families are being faced with some incredibly heartbreaking choices. Many of them piled up massive amounts of debt during the good times as they chased the American Dream, but now that hard times have arrived they find that they just can’t handle the huge mountain of debt that they have accumulated. Other Americans are looking at the crumbling economy and are trying to prioritize where to spend their money. They wonder whether they should pay off their debts or whether that money would be better spent on stocking up on necessities for the incredibly hard times that are ahead. The truth is that this article is going to raise a lot of questions but not provide a lot of answers. In the end, each person has to make their own choices. In addition, some of the viewpoints in this article are going to be controversial to many of you. It is okay if you disagree. In fact, if you find something that you disagree with, please leave a comment. This is a topic that hits home with a lot of Americans, and a lot of people have some incredibly strong opinions about paying off debt. (Read More...)
10 Incredible Statistics About America’s Coming Retirement Crisis That Will Blow Your Mind
America is facing a retirement crisis that is so colossal that it threatens to collapse the entire financial system. Millions upon millions of Baby Boomers are preparing to retire, but when you take a close look at the numbers it quickly becomes clear that it is mathematically impossible for us to keep the financial promises that we have made to them. The truth is that the days when tens of millions of elderly Americans could enjoy a very comfortable retirement are rapidly drawing to a close. Why? Well, because there is no money. The U.S. government is supposed to have 2.5 trillion dollars in the Social Security trust fund for all of these retiring Baby Boomers, but they “borrowed” all of that money over the past 30 years to pay other bills. Hundreds of other government and corporate pension programs across the United States are either severely underfunded or are not funded at all. Meanwhile, American workers have been contributing pitifully small amounts to their own retirement funds. Americans have been too busy drowning in debt as the pursue the American Dream to worry about putting away anything for the future. So where does all of that leave us? It leaves us with a complete and total financial nightmare on our hands. (Read More...)
Only 23 Percent Of Americans Believe That The Federal Government Has The Consent Of The Governed
Have you ever noticed that no matter what political party is in power in America nothing really seems to change that much? Sure, a lot of the faces change and there are some small shifts in ideology here and there, but more or less the policies of the U.S. government have been remarkably consistent over the last 40 years. Have you ever wondered why that is? Well, the truth is that America’s “ruling class” has an absolute stranglehold on both political parties. You see, the little lie that we were told that “anyone can grow up and be president” simply is not true. Living the American Dream takes connections. Without the backing of the “establishment”, you simply are not going to go very far in politics. In fact, without the “establishment” you aren’t going to go very far in law, the corporate world, the media or in the highest levels of education either. Sure you might experience some success on the lower levels, but without fully becoming “connected” to the establishment to at least some degree you just are not going to advance to become one of the elite in any of those fields. (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...)
Governments Around The World Are Eagerly Adopting The Strict Population Control Agenda Of The United Nations
Did you know that July 11th was “World Population Day”? Unfortunately, it is not a celebration of the world population. Rather, it is a day that the United Nations uses to “raise awareness of global population issues”. Yes, population control now has its very own holiday, and an increasing number of nations are jumping on board and are adopting strict population control measures at the urging of the UN. In fact, many world leaders used the occasion of World Population Day 2010 to highlight just how well they are doing in reducing their populations. To many Americans, this kind of thing is absolutely sickening. Population control by the government is directly opposed to the American Dream and to everything that our founding fathers fought so hard to establish. But today, even most U.S. politicians have bought into the radical population control agenda and are helping to export it across the face of the earth. The truth is that now it is very hard to find a major world leader that does not agree with this radical population control agenda to at least some degree. (Read More...)
Will The Tea Party Movement Succeed Or Will Ideological Divisions Doom It To Failure?
The Tea Party movement has been one of the most exhilarating things to happen to American politics in decades. Millions of Americans who have become increasingly frustrated with government and who feel that they are not being represented have banded together to take collective action in what is truly one of the greatest grass roots movements in U.S. political history. Some have even suggested that the Tea Party movement should become a new political party. Every single day now, the Tea Party movement makes headlines all over the globe and it has had some tremendous success in getting some candidates elected recently. But are there problems on the horizon? The truth is that there are only a few things that almost everyone in the Tea Party movement agrees on. But there are a whole bunch of issues that are creating major ideological divisions among Tea Party activists. In fact, most of the issues listed below will create huge arguments at any Tea Party gathering. The reality is that the Tea Party movement has attracted a very diverse group of people, and there are only a few points that they all agree on. So can such a fractured movement survive in the long-term? (Read More...)
22 Statistics That Prove That The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America
The 22 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace. So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough. The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker ten times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new “global” labor pool. (Read More...)
Money Crunch! How Can An Economy Built On Debt Function If Nobody Can Get Loans?
Over the past several decades, the U.S. economy has become increasingly reliant on debt. The vast majority of people take out a mortgage when they purchase a home, the vast majority of people require a big loan in order to buy a vehicle, and the number of Americans who use credit cards to make purchases at retail stores has skyrocketed over the years. It has gotten to the point where credit is the life blood of the U.S. economic system. Unless your business is a convenience store or a fast food joint, being able to accept credit cards or arrange credit for your customers is absolutely crucial. In fact, the economic boom that the United States has experienced over the last 30 years has been largely due to a rapidly expanding pool of credit. Americans have gone deeper and deeper in debt with each passing year as they pursue the American Dream. But now that so many lending institutions have substantially tightened their lending standards and now that so many Americans have such low credit scores, how is the U.S. economy going to function? (Read More...)