Another Example Of How We Have Went From Capitalism To Criminalism

CEO gets cool $44M severance package for one day of work

12 hrs ago

How much severance would you expect after one day on the job? Not a lot, right? Well, the now ex-CEO of Duke Energy Corp., Bill Johnson, is getting up to a cool $44.4 million for his one day at the helm. Johnson had previously been CEO of another energy company that merged with Duke and signed a contract to be Duke's chief officer when the merger took effect. That was July 2. Suddenly, on July 3, he resigned (though rumors speculate it was more of a firing). Either way, Johnson stands to collect $7.4 million in severance, a $1.4 million bonus and some hefty stock awards to round out the rest. A quick look at the calculator shows that's an hourly rate of $5.5 million. Not bad for a day's work.

Why There Will Never Be Enough Jobs In America Again

Michael Snyder The Economic Collapse Saturday, July 7, 2012 Well, we just had another bad jobs report. The U.S. economy created just 80,000 new jobs during the month of June. Normally, about 125,000 new jobs need to be created every month just to keep up with population growth. So it is a bit odd that the official unemployment rate did not rise above 8.2%. What is even more alarming is that the Social Security Administration is telling us that 85,000 U.S. workers “left the workforce” and enrolled in the Social Security Disability Insurance program during the month of June. That means that the number of Americans enrolling in Social Security Disability actually exceeded the number of new jobs that was created.

 That is definitely not a sign of recovery. Unfortunately, this is about as good as things are going to get. Right now corporate profits are at an all-time high and usually after a recession has ended the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs bounces back very strongly. But that has not happened this time, and when the next economic crisis hits things are going to get a lot worse. The headline to this article states that there will never be enough jobs in America again. How could that possibly be true? Well, the sad truth is that it is very hard to make a profit on an employee in the United States today. Every year, the control freaks that run things just keep dumping more taxes, more laws, more regulations and more demands on employers. Hiring even a low level employee today is very complicated and very expensive. These days a lot of small business owners have decided that it is simply not worth the hassle to hire more employees. If you can’t make a profit on them, what is the point? If there was going to be a major rebound in hiring, we would have seen it by now.

Corporate profits are at an all-time high as I mentioned earlier. How much more money do they need to make before they start hiring? But I don’t blame them. Our politicians have loaded the system with plenty of incentives NOT to hire workers. Yesterday, I wrote about how Barack Obama has been a one man wrecking crew when it comes to killing jobs. But he is not the only one to blame. The truth is that politicians from both political parties have been making things more difficult for employers for decades. Today, many employers are trying to replace as many employees as possible with computers, automation, robotics and other forms of technology. Those are jobs that are not ever going to come back. However, sometimes human labor is still actually needed. But instead of hiring American workers, many big corporations are taking advantage of the emerging “one world economy” and are setting up shop in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.

So how are American workers supposed to compete with that? The truth is that they can’t. Today, you aren’t just competing for jobs with your neighbors. Your competition also includes millions upon millions of hard working people on the other side of the globe that will gladly work 12 hour shifts in nightmarish conditions for a dollar an hour. The United States has been losing millions of jobs to lower wage countries, and the fierce competition for the jobs that remain is driving down wages in this country.

 As a result, many of our greatest cities that were once the envy of the entire world have become cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness. We are going to continue to bleed jobs because both major political parties are fully convinced that merging our labor pool with the labor pool of the rest of the world is a grand idea. Republicans have been brainwashed into believing that a one world economic system is actually “conservative”. They have been told that it is “conservative” to merge our economy with countries ruled by third world dictators and brutal communist regimes that have no respect for human rights at all. Democrats have been brainwashed into believing that merging our economy into a one world economic system is “good for American workers” and will bring more prosperity to this country. Barack Obama is even negotiating a treaty right now that would reportedly ban all “Buy American” laws. How stupid can we be? If we merge our labor pool with the labor pool of the rest of the world with no protection, guess where our wages and our standard of living is going to go? The answer is obvious. The “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about so many years ago has become a reality. It is just basic economics. If I go to the store and I see two similar products and one is priced at $10 and the other is priced at $100 I am going to go for the one priced $10.

Well, it is the same thing with employees. U.S. workers can’t compare with low wage workers on the other side of the world. It is simply no contest. Meanwhile, our control freak politicians continue to shove more jobs out the door by piling on even more taxes, rules and regulations. Unfortunately, these trends are not going to change. It doesn’t matter who gets elected. The bleeding of jobs is going to continue. In fact, we should probably be celebrating that things are still as good as they are. In the future they will be a whole lot worse.

The period we are in right now was supposed to be the recovery. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with jobs fell dramatically. Since the end of the recession, that number has stayed remarkably flat…. There Will Never Be Enough Jobs In America Again Employment Population Ratio June 2012 440x264 Now the next major downturn is rapidly approaching. When it hits, the unemployment rate is going to go well up into the double digits. At the moment, our failing economy is being propped up by unprecedented amounts of debt.

When our debt-fueled false prosperity ends, the true horror of the decay of our economic system will be revealed. If you think it is hard to find a job now, you just wait. What is coming is going to be a total nightmare. As I have written about before, many years of pain are ahead. But that doesn’t mean that you have to lose hope. On my website, people often share how their lives have been absolutely devastated by this economy.

Some of them are even so down that they are considering giving up completely. But that is the exact wrong response to all of this! The reason why I try so hard to explain what is coming is so that it will not be a surprise to people. If you make plans and preparations now, the times that are coming will not overwhelm you. I believe that there will be people that will be greatly blessed even in the midst of what is coming. However, millions of Americans that are not listening to the warnings now will have their lives totally destroyed by what is coming.




 The world is changing. Nothing is going to stop that. The unprecedented prosperity that we have been rolling in is going to shrivel up and go away. But that does not mean that your life is over. In fact, if you get yourself physically and mentally prepared for what is ahead the times that are coming can be the greatest times of your life. One of my goals is to give people hope. There is hope in understanding what is coming. There is hope in being prepared. There is hope in being a light in the middle of the darkness. There is hope in being willing to love people in the midst of a world that is going crazy. The following is from a comment that one reader left on a recent article…. I wanted to thank you, the author of this article, whoever you are. I haven’t completely ruled out killing myself but you’ve certainly given me something to think about. And thank you for trying to give people like me a little hope. A little kindness, even if only through words, is at a premium these days especially in my life. I will think carefully about what you’ve said. Best wishes to you and your efforts.

God bless. Everyone out there that is in a similar position – please do not ever, ever, ever give up. No matter how bad things look right now, there are people out there that care. One thing I have learned in life is this – there is always a way that things can be turned around. Sadly, in the future a lot of Americans are going to give in to despair and will completely give up on life. We saw it happen during the Great Depression of the 1930s and we are seeing this in Greece and other European countries right now. But the truth is that your life is not over no matter how bad things get out there. You can let the times that are coming destroy you, or you can make them the greatest adventure of your life. The choice is up to you. I urge you to get ready, to get more independent of the system and to start focusing on the things that really matter in life.

Is Wal-Mart Destroying America? 20 Facts About Wal-Mart That Will Absolutely Shock You

 


Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
America absolutely loves Wal-Mart.  100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every single week in this country.  But is Wal-Mart good for America?  That is a question that most people never stop and ask.  Most of us love shopping in big, clean stores that are packed with super cheap merchandise, but the truth is that Wal-Mart is destroying America in a lot of ways.  As you will see below, Wal-Mart has destroyed tens of thousands of small businesses and countless manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades.  Wal-Mart has become a gigantic retail behemoth that sells five times more stuff than any other retailer in the United States.  Unfortunately, about 85 percent of all the stuff sold at Wal-Mart is made overseas.  What that is costing the U.S. economy in terms of lost jobs and lost revenue is incalculable.  But Wal-Mart is a perfect example of where our economic system is headed.  Our economy is becoming completely and totally dominated by highly centralized monolithic predator corporations that ruthlessly crush all competition and that will stoop to just about anything in order to cut costs.  In the future, will we all be working for gigantic communal entities that funnel all of the wealth and economic rewards to a very tiny elite?  That sounds very much like how communist China works, and red-blooded Americans should want no part of that.  America is supposed to be about free enterprise and competition and working together to build up this country, and Wal-Mart is destroying all of that.
The following are 20 facts about Wal-Mart that will absolutely shock you….
#1 The average U.S. family now spends more than $4000 a year at Wal-Mart.
#2 In 2010, Wal-Mart had revenues of 421 billion dollars.  That amount was greater than the GDP of 170 different countries including Norway, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates.
#3 If Wal-Mart was a nation, it would have the 23rd largest GDP in the world.
#4 Wal-Mart now sells more groceries than anyone else in America does.  In the United States today, one out of every four grocery dollars is spent at Wal-Mart.
#5 Amazingly, 100 million customers shop at Wal-Mart every single week.
#6 Wal-Mart has opened more than 1,100 “supercenters” since 2005 alone.
#7 Today, Wal-Mart has more than 2 million employees.
#8 If Wal-Mart was an army, it would be the second largest military on the planet behind China.
#9 Wal-Mart is the largest employer in 25 different U.S. states.
#10 According to the Economic Policy Institute, trade between Wal-Mart and China resulted in the loss of 133,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2006.
#11 The CEO of Wal-Mart makes more in a single hour than a full-time Wal-Mart associate makes in an entire year.
#12 Tens of thousands of Wal-Mart employees and their children are enrolled in Medicaid and are dependent on the government for healthcare.
#13 Between 2001 and 2007, the value of products that Wal-Mart imported from China grew from $9 billion to $27 billion.
#14 Sadly, about 85 percent of all the products sold at Wal-Mart are made outside of the United States.
#15 It is being reported that about 80 percent of all Wal-Mart suppliers are in China at this point.
#16 Amazingly, 96 percent of all Americans now live within 20 miles of a Wal-Mart.
#17 The number of “independent retailers” in the United States declined by 60,000 between 1992 and 2007.
#18 According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wal-Mart spent 7.8 million dollars on political lobbying during 2011.  That number does not even include campaign contributions.
#19 Today, Wal-Mart has five times the sales of the second largest U.S. retailer (Costco).
#20 The combined net worth of six members of the Walton family is roughly equal to the combined net worth of the poorest 30 percent of all Americans.
All over the country, independent retailers are going out of business because they cannot compete with Wal-Mart and their super cheap Chinese products.  Often communities will give Wal-Mart huge tax breaks just to move in to their areas.  But what many communities don’t take into account is that the introduction of a Wal-Mart is often absolutely devastating to small businesses….

A study of small and rural towns in Iowa showed lost sales for local businesses ranging from -17.2% in small towns to -61.4% in rural areas, amounting to a total dollar loss of $2.46 BILLION over a 13-year period.

When we buy stuff made by people working for slave labor wages in China, we destroy good paying American jobs and we make America poorer.  This is a point that I have tried to make over and over.
Wal-Mart often tells one thing to the public and then does another thing in private.  Sadly, the truth is that Wal-Mart does not care about U.S. manufacturing jobs.  Wal-Mart just wants to get products as cheaply as they possibly can, and most of the time that means getting them from China.
Just check out this first-hand testimony from an 81-year-old retired apparel manufacturer….

I was president of the Southwestern Apparel Manufacturers Association. There was a meeting sometime between 1985 and 1990. Walmart had contacted our organization and asked if they could meet with us at our beautiful Apparel Mart we had here in Dallas, which has now been razed, because all the independent merchants don’t exist that used to come to it. Two people from Walmart came down and they said they were going to be sourcing goods from overseas and we would have to meet those prices for consumer products and to get ready for it—we are going to be sourcing the world. Walmart was the only company that came out and said this.
It was sort of shocking: I was selling them some merchandise at the time. On the back of their trucks it was saying “Bring it Back to America!” They had the big “keep it in America” program going at that time on the big signs in the stores. Meanwhile when I reminded the buyer of that, she told me, “that is just for domestic consumption, we’re going to buy at the cheapest we can anywhere on earth.”

As I have written about previously, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
We are losing millions of good jobs that cannot be replaced.  If you can believe it, the United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with China was the biggest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world, and Wal-Mart played a huge role in that.
In fact, Wal-Mart has actually been forcing some U.S. manufacturers to pack up and move overseas.  The following is from a recent article by Amy Traub….

Walmart’s market power is so immense that the even the largest suppliers must comply with its demands for lower and lower prices because they cannot afford to have their goods taken off its shelves. Companies that used to manufacture products in the United States, from Levi’s jeans to lock maker Master Lock, were pressured to shut their U.S. factories and moved manufacturing abroad to meet Walmart’s demand for low prices.

Unfortunately, the vast wealth that Wal-Mart is sucking out of our communities is not put back into our communities.  The profits are funneled out to Wal-Mart executives and shareholders.  We may enjoy the low prices, but very little of the money that we give to Wal-Mart gets recycled in our local areas.
In the old days, you could actually support a family selling electronics or running a general store.  But you can’t support a family working at Wal-Mart.  The vast majority of the jobs that Wal-Mart creates are very low paying.  Large numbers of Wal-Mart employees are actually on welfare, and this is part of the reason why we have seen such an explosion in the number of the working poor in America.
At this point, more than 40 percent of all jobs in America are low wage jobs and the middle class is rapidly disappearing.
If we do not support American jobs and American manufacturers they will continue to go away and the welfare rolls in this country will continue to explode.
There is not going to be any prosperity in this country without jobs.  Unfortunately, most Americans simply do not understand how good jobs are being systematically destroyed in America every single day.
The path that America is headed on today is only going to end in complete and total disaster.  We are being transformed from a wealthy nation into a poor nation.  In the end, we will be dominated by a very tiny elite and everyone else will either be among the working poor or will be totally dependent on the government.
Our system is supposed to be about open, honest competition.  But that is not what Wal-Mart is about.  Wal-Mart is about crushing small businesses and manufacturers here in America and getting us all to buy their super cheap Chinese-made goods.
Shame on Wal-Mart.  They are an un-American disgrace.
So what do all of you think about Wal-Mart?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

Complete Disaster Non-Preparedness: DC Grocery Stores Out of Food, Gas Unavailable, Grid-Down As Summer Heat Rages

Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
July 3, 2012
We’ve seen it time and again over the last decade. An emergency strikes and panic grips the city or region for days or weeks on end.
We saw a complete breakdown of emergency response and law & order during Hurricane Katrina. The 2011 Snowpocalypse on the east coast led to runs on grocery stores and empty shelves within a matter of hours. Widespread blackouts during Hurricane Ike left large sections of the Houston power grid down for up to four weeks. In all these cases gas was almost impossible to find, what was in your pantry was what you had until food distribution resumed, local water was not safe for consumption, and government response was limited to reinstating essential services first and foremost.
The bottom line, as Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project notes, is that after billions have been spent by Department of Homeland Security, FEMA and local law enforcement, we are no more prepared today than we were the day before September 11, 2011.

After a short but unusually severe thunderstorm that roared through the D.C. area on Friday night, the entire Washington Metropolitan Area was thrown into chaos.
Three days later, countless traffic lights are still out, hundreds of thousands of residents are without power, including myself, grocery stores and gas station are closed for lack of power, and the federal government is encouraging employees to telework.
[SHTFplan Editor's note: Brilliant recommendation from the best and brightest - to "telework" when the grid is down. ]
…
Is this the work of a terrible terrorist attack? No, it is the complete disaster non-preparedness a decade after 9/11. Despite the fact that billions if not trillions have been spent since 9/11 on counter-terrorism and so-called “homeland security” measures, one of the major terrorist targets, the nation’s capital, cannot cope with a severe thunderstorm.
…
I received a message from PEPCO that most D.C.-area residents may not have power until next Friday at 11:00 pm – a full week after the storm hit. With temperatures this week set for the mid to upper-90s, that is a long time for residents to be with air conditioning, or fans, or refrigerators.
Two years ago, the Washington Post’s comprehensive examination of the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on “homeland security,” “Top Secret America” reflected that the D.C. metropolitan area was burgeoning with infrastructure, though apparently none of it focused on keeping the D.C.-area up and running after a severe thunderstorm.
…
I am not the only D.C. taxpayer wondering, where are billions in “critical infrastructure” protection and “homeland security?” They are not going toward obvious solutions like putting power lines underground.
The D.C. area’s responsiveness to unexpected events has not improved, but taxpayers’ pockets have been drained to create an entire secret city of “national security” in northern Virginia. Making sure citizens have food and power in an emergency should be a top priority, not a distant second to security theater like taking our shoes off before getting on an airplane.

(Pictured: Run on grocery stores; Snowpocalypse 2010)
Once again we are provided with ample evidence that not only is the government ill-prepared to handle a large scale city-wide emergency, but the residents of this nation are completely oblivious to the fact that if the shit hits the fan, no one will be there to provide assistance.
When Houston was hit almost head on by Hurricane Ike in 2008 the residents of the entire metropolitan area were shocked. Never mind the mass chaos as millions tried to flee the region, with drives to neighboring cities taking upwards of ten times longer than they normally would. Power for 90% of the city went out, and for some areas, including where we lived, power was not restored for almost a month. Suffice it to say our community was anxiety ridden, frustrated and tempers were flaring. When gas became wholly unavailable and the generators stopped running and we were overtaken with near 100 degree heat during the day, the situation for many became untenable.
FEMA’s own web site calls on Americans to have a two week supply of emergency items, yet most citizens have only a three day supply of reserve food available – whatever’s in the kitchen when disaster strikes is what they’ve got until things get back to normal.
Even after these recommendations from the very people who are tasked with responding to emergency and disaster situations, not a single resident in our community that we were aware of had emergency supplies on hand when Ike hit – even though many had gone through countless hurricanes before and knew what to expect.
After Katrina, Ike, the various earthquakes, wildfires, snow storms, “Derechos,”  power outages, and tens of billions in taxpayer funds supposedly appropriated into infrastructure, security and emergency response, it’s simply incredible that we are so unprepared as a society.
Imagine, for a moment, what happens in a scenario that affects not a single city, but an entire multi-state region, or, perhaps the entire nation. And imagine that the event(s) is so widespread that government is totally overwhelmed – food transportation stops, refineries can’t get gas to local areas, water and power utility workers stay home to care for their families, law enforcement is faced with widespread looting, the internet becomes inaccessible as do all avenues of communication due to blackouts, and grocery store shelves remain out of stock for weeks or months.
Such a scenario may be unlikely, but certainly possible – and the resulting effects on the population and our way of life would be nothing short of complete and utter pandemonium, especially for those who have failed to prepare.

Totally Dependent On The Grid

If One Storm Can Turn D.C. Dark For Several Days, What Would A Massive EMP Burst Do?

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Sometimes we all get a little reminder of just how completely and totally dependent we are on the power grid.  Massive thunderstorms that ripped through Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia left millions without power over the weekend.  At this point it is being projected that some people may not get power back until the end of the week.  The “super derecho” storm that pounded the Washington D.C. area on Friday night with hurricane-force winds is being called unprecedented.  But the truth is that there are other events that could happen that would be far more damaging to our power grid.  For example, a substantial EMP burst over a major U.S. city would fry virtually all of the electronics in the city and take the power grid in the area down indefinitely.  A gigantic EMP burst over the entire country (caused by a massive solar storm or a very large nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere) could theoretically take down the entire national power grid.  Just try to imagine a world where nobody has any electricity, nobody can pump gas, nobody can use their credit cards or get any more money, where most vehicles won’t start, where nobody has the Internet, where all cell phones are dead and where nobody can heat or cool their homes.  That is how serious an EMP burst could potentially be.  We are talking about an event that could be millions of times worse than 9/11.
Hopefully this latest storm has reminded Americans about how vulnerable our power grid really is and about how close we really are to being knocked back to the late 1800s.
Let’s review some of the damage that this “super derecho” storm caused to the D.C. area….
-Thousands of businesses have been forced to close temporarily because they cannot operate without electricity
-Many federal agencies were closed on Monday because there was no power
-Many 911 call centers throughout Northern Virginia were down over the weekend and could not respond to emergencies
-Without electricity, many families have not been able to cook warm meals
-Without warm water, many families have not been able to take hot showers
-A “boil water advisory” was put into effect for several areas of northern Virginia
-Many families that still do not have power are in danger of losing much of the food in their refrigerators and freezers
-Many gas stations were not able to operate because of a lack of electricity and so this has made filling up the gas tank a major hassle for many families
-Hundreds of traffic lights are still out and this is making commuting a major problem in some areas
-Without air conditioning many families are absolutely sweltering as high temperatures remain well above 90 degrees
-During the power outage some people have been without cell phone service because many cell phone towers were inoperable
-Without electricity, thousands upon thousands of people have not been able to use their computers for several days and this is causing a lot of frustration
-Several major websites were totally knocked offline by the storms as Robert McMillan of Wired Magazine explained….

Hurricane-like storms knocked an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, offline last night, and a chunk of the internet felt it. The six-hour incident temporarily cut off a number of popular internet services, including Netflix, Pinterest, Heroku, and Instagram.

But to be honest this was not a major disaster.
After a few days the damage will be fixed and people will start to forget what just happened.
Well, what if the damage was permanent and the entire nation had to go without electricity for the foreseeable future?  The following is from a USA Today article by Dan Vergano….

The sky erupts. Cities darken, food spoils and homes fall silent. Civilization collapses.

End-of-the-world novel? A video game? Or could such a scenario loom in America’s future?
There is talk of catastrophe ahead, depending on whom you believe, because of the threat of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by either a supersized solar storm or terrorist A-bomb, both capable of disabling the electric grid that powers modern life.

As I have written about previously, an EMP attack could fundamentally change life in America in a single instant.
What would you do if such a scenario happened?
Would you try to go somewhere?  Even if the electronics in your car were not totally fried, you would not be able to pump more gas anywhere.
Would you try to call someone?  Most phones would be totally dead and all normal communications networks would be down.  So who would you call?
Would you bunker down and try to survive on what you have at home?  Most of the food in your refrigerator and freezer would rapidly go bad and most Americans only have enough food to last a few days or a few weeks.  In addition, most Americans would no longer be able to heat or cool their homes, so extreme cold and extreme heat would become huge problems very quickly.
How in the world would any of us survive in a world without electricity?
In past centuries our forefathers knew how to survive in such a world, but most of us do not have the same skills or resources that they had.
The following is how an article in the Wall Street Journal once described what a massive EMP burst would do to this nation….

No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn’t be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn’t be able to get food to supermarkets. Commissioner Lowell Wood calls EMP attack a “giant continental time machine” that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s.

What would you do if you were suddenly cut off from all electricity, all money, all modern forms of communication, all modern forms of transportation and all modern forms of shopping?
Don’t think that it can’t happen.
Scientists tell us that massive EMP bursts generated by gigantic solar storms have hit our planet in the past and that it is inevitable that it will happen again.
In addition, nations all over the planet are aware of what an EMP burst can do and have been developing “Super-EMP” weapons that can take power grids down in a single strike.
The following is a short excerpt from a statement by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on March 8th, 2005….

Russian and Chinese military scientists in open source writings describe the basic principles of nuclear weapons designed specifically to generate an enhanced-EMP effect, that they term “Super-EMP” weapons. “Super-EMP” weapons, according to these foreign open source writings, can destroy even the best protected U.S. military and civilian electronic systems.

That doesn’t sound good.
But perhaps even more troubling is that North Korea has been reportedly developing this type of weapon.  In fact, it has been reported that North Korea may have tested a “Super-EMP” weapon all the way back in 2009….

North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states

In time, these kinds of weapons will get into more and more hands.
Will someone try to use this kind of weapon at some point?
Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, believes that a single EMP burst could potentially end up killing the vast majority of the population of the United States….

“Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity”

Once you understand these kinds of threats, it makes it a lot easier to understand why preppers are so busy preparing for the future.
Our world is becoming incredibly unstable.  Another major economic crisis could hit us at any time, war in the Middle East could erupt without warning, earthquakes and other natural disasters are becoming more frequent and society seems to get a little crazier with each passing day.
The era of tremendous peace and prosperity that we have all been enjoying is rapidly coming to an end.  In a world filled with instability and chaos, it only seems prudent to take some precautions.
You might want to get prepared while you still have time.

10 Explosive Bubbles That Will Kill Capitalism

Paul B. Farrell Archives | Email alerts

July 3, 2012, 12:04 a.m. EDT

 

Commentary: Slow-motion train wreck in store for U.S.

 

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch



SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — In mid-2005, three years before Wall Street’s credit meltdown, he Economist warned of the “Biggest Bubble in History.” In five short years after the 2000 dot-com crash property prices across the world had risen an unprecedented 75%. Real estate had become the new dot-com.

In his April 2007 quarterly newsletter, Jeremy Grantham, founder of the $95 billion GMO firm, reinforced the warning: “First Truly Global Bubble, impacting all countries, all assets worldwide.”

By midyear 2007, a deeply concerned Grantham was “watching a very slow motion train wreck.” By October, the “train hits end of track at full speed.” A year later, on schedule, Wall Street’s credit train did crash.

Flash forward: in Grantham’s early 2012 newsletter he saw a bigger train accelerating: When he focused on the “common good, it became quickly apparent that capitalism in general has no sense of ethics or conscience. And probably its greatest weakness is its absolute inability to process the finiteness of resources and the mathematical impossibility of maintaining rapid growth in physical output.”

This we call the Myth of Perpetual Growth, the pseudo-scientific justification for modern capitalism.

Grantham concludes that capitalism’s flaws are so deadly that while it does “a thousand things better than other systems,” it fails in those three crucial areas. And “unfortunately for us all, even a single one of these failings may bring capitalism down and us with it.”

Get it? Capitalism is committing suicide and destroying America too. Here are 10 explosive bubbles that warn of this trend’s accelerating trajectory:
1. Health-care Bubble: Forget court, elections — health care will implode

Dr. Marcia Angell, of the Harvard Medical School, writes in HuffingtonPost: “Why the Court’s Ruling Is Bad for Obama and Bad for American Health Care.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare puts me in mind of the old proverb: Be careful what you wish for.” Why? Angell warns that “with or without Obamacare, the American health system will continue to unravel, quickly if Romney is elected, slowly if Obama is re-elected.”

At 15% of GDP, the highest of all developed nations and destined to go higher, heath-care costs will remain a drag on the economy, especially with 3,300 lobbyists fighting to keep the cost rising.
2. Government Bubble isolates Washington from real America

When will this bubble explode? In a Time feature the “Bubble on the Potomac,” Andrew Ferguson warns, America’s massive debt has created “new affluence flooding the nation’s capital” making Washington society “a world apart from the country it governs,” adding that “this insularity has consequences for the rest of the country.”

The average American may be struggling, but government is “for sale,” in this center of the trillion-dollar government-contracting business, where the federal budget is sold off to the highest bidders. Lobbying is the city’s “biggest business,” with more than 20 lobbyists for every elected official, all publicly advertising the huge benefits they generate, often hundreds of times over an “investment” in their lobbying fees.
3. CEO Pay Bubble up 20% while bank stocks sink as much as 61%

That same mind-set isolates Wall Street. While the average American flat-lines, bank CEOs are doing great. Bloomberg Markets reports that bank “CEO compensation jumped 20.4% in 2011” while “most bank stocks declined.”

Biggest loser? Citibank’s shareholders. Their stock has dropped 61% in three years while CEO Vikram Pandit was paid $14.9 million.

More evidence of America’s growing inequality gap: The Fed says that in the past three years the top 1% gained 2% while our vast middle class lost 39%. In fact, family net worth in 2010 was about the same as 1992.

4. Inequality Bubble now at 1929 level, warning of end of capitalism

Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz shines in his new book “The Price of Inequality:” “America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity,” he writes in Project Syndicate. But while we all have individual examples “what really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual’s life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents?”

And unfortunately, today the “numbers show that the American dream is a myth … the gap’s widening.” Since 2008 “the top 1% of U.S. income earners captured 93% of the income growth. … The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.”
5. Debt Bubble: Debt-ridden college grads selling burgers, lattes

For more evidence of the gap see the amazing cover on Utne, a cartoonish Albert Einstein serving a McDonald’s hamburger special: “Fries with that? What’s a college degree worth these days?” Not much.

And in Good magazine’s “Minimum Rage,” many stories about grads handicapped by college debt. We’re killing our competitive future: 27-year-old NYU grad “Emily Sanders has been a waitress or bartender, on and off, for almost a decade. … She has no health insurance, no 401(k), and a pathetic savings account. Most days, she gets to her first job at noon and leaves her second after midnight. If she’s sick but a little short on cash, she downs some DayQuil and goes into work anyway.”
6. Global Jobless Bubble: Governments warned, revolutions coming

In “The Fallen,” Rolling Stone’s Jeff Tietz gives us another snapshot of capitalism’s accelerating train wreck: A “sharp, sudden decline of America’s middle class … They had good stable jobs, until the recession hit. Now they’re living out of their cars in parking lots.”

Time used a wider-angle lens on the new global “Jobless Generation” where “tens of millions of young people are unemployed.” This is bigger than Arab Spring and OWS. Governments are warned: Figure out “how to get them jobs before they become unemployable — and erupt in fury.”

But if Grantham’s right, governments won’t act till it’s too late, and anticapitalism revolutions sweep the planet.
7. Oil Bubble: New oil crisis will trigger new Arab Springs

Financial advisers say invest in emerging markets, the “new normal” for U.S. stock returns is too low. Maybe not: Foreign Policy’s Steve Levine warns that petro-rulers worldwide are watching the price of oil “plunge at a rate they have not experienced since the dreaded year 2008. Industry analysts are using phrases such as ‘devastation’ and ‘severe strain’ to describe what’s next,” possibly a “fresh round of Arab Spring-like” revolutions, “the nightmare scenario” for oil dictators.
8. Risk Bubble: U.S. recovery threatened by global economic risks

Writing in Project Syndicate, Stephen Roach, former Morgan Stanley chairman, warns that since 2008 “the U.S. economy has been on a weak recovery trajectory.” Why? The American consumer went cold “in the aftermath of the biggest consumption binge in history.”

Since then “exports have accounted for 41%” of America’s rebound, with a whopping 83% of our export growth from Asia, Latin America and Europe. But since all three are now “in trouble, the U.S. could be quick to follow.”
9. Slow-Growth Bubble: New normal is anemic returns, austerity

Listen closely: Over 200,000 financial advisers across America already heard this report. Advisers have been warned to start “preparing clients for a low-return reality,” code for a new normal and austerity: “Slow economic growth, modest and selective improvements in equities, and interest rates remaining low.”

Get it? “Anemic growth in the second half,” with huge risks ahead. In fact, individual investors and American capitalism alike will face three doomsday scenarios in the near term: The Euroland crises, America’s post-election “fiscal cliff” and the risk of global recessions in emerging markets.
10. Capitalism Bubble: selfishness weakens our role as a leader

“The world is in a state of drift, transition or even increasing chaos,” writes Brent Scowcroft in the recent National Interest. Scowcroft’s a retired Air Force General and Bush-41 National Security Adviser.

In an update to his 1998 book, “A World Transformed,” Scowcroft says, “once we were viewed as trying to do our best for everyone: now we are seen a being preoccupied with our own special interests,” a myopic vision that reflects the trend among many politicians to govern using Ayn Rand’s extreme capitalism.

Now you know why Grantham warns of capitalism’s total lack of “ethics or conscience” and “its absolute inability to process the finiteness of resources and the mathematical impossibility of maintaining rapid growth in physical output.”

No moral compass. No vision of the future. No grasp of the consequences of their short-term thinking. These three threats are merging into a critical mass that will trigger a scenario that will “bring capitalism down and America with it.”

Bottom line: America’s new Ayn Rand style of extreme capitalism is self-destructive. 

1 Million Without Power

Storms Leave More Than a Million Without Power

July 2, 2012 | From theTrumpet.com

More than one million households in Washington d.c. and the state of Virginia are still without power after strong rainstorms swept the eastern United States this past weekend.

The rainstorms packed hurricane-force winds gusting at more than 60 miles per hour and knocked down numerous power lines. Last Friday, 1.4 million Virginians were without power. Since then, temperatures have risen into the high 90s.

Washington d.c. and four states all declared states of emergency after the storm. Meteorologists are forecasting that the sweltering temperatures will continue into the next few days. They also expect that the eastern seaboard may experience many more rainstorms this hurricane season.

The extreme weather conditions America experiences are not random or senseless. If you want to know the real reason for these constant weather disasters, read our article “Why All the Weird Weather?” •