gas (10)

The was an article published that explained even 60% + of republicans wanted alternative energy and knew that the global warming was happening, etc.,.  I disagreed and this is my response and thoughts below:

 

I wonder how the questions were structured and where the survey was taken. There are several reports out that state the global temps are down for the last 10 years and a Russian report that states they expect global temps to be lower for 250 years at least.

 

I think the carbon trading scheme is more like a Ponzi scheme and will enrich the owners of the exchanges, which include Al Gore, Soros and others. I do agree that we should use our 200 to 300 hundred years supply of coal, natural gas, oil to be energy independent ASAP. The US is now the largest producer of oil, passing Russia and we could produce much more that current levels, as our increases have been from private lands and not federal lands. Obama essentially shut down our shale oil production sites, as he reduced them by 2/3tds. We should allow the market place to develop alternative sources without federal tax subsidies, which was NINE billion USD for ethanol alone in 2013. The EPA went around Congress declaring CO2 a pollutant so that they could regulate almost every aspect of our life. The new MACT, Utility Standards which included social costs for the first time and was based on 20 year old data have made new coal fired plants nearly impossible. Obama explained it as saying you can open a new coal fired plant but it will bankrupt you. The EPA is also working to fulfill Obama's promise that under his policies energy prices will necessarily sky rocket. High energy prices hit the poorest the hardest and also cost jobs.    Germany electric rates have gone from $.06 a kilowatt to over .20 a kilowatt as they went more green and into the carbon credit scheme. This has prompted the industry in Germany to warn that he rates are affecting businesses and future growth. Spain went broke going green and it makes no sense until it does make sense, which means we should let industry develop it as needed and allow research at universities with very limited Federal grants.

 

of course, there are economical green energy like hydro and other low emissions like natural gas and nuclear that we should use now. W should not shut down coal plants and allow incremental improvements vs. all or nothing EPA approach under Obama. 

 

I requested EPA information under  FOIA relating to the new Utility Standards, but the new standards are out there that include the new social costs. This new formula is like the old accountant joke, when asked what is the answer they shut the door and ask," What do you want it to be"?  This is how many of Obama's czars and agencies answer questions or make regulations. It is ideology not solid science , it is a religion of global climate change, not settled science as Ozone AL likes to often state. People that dissent should not be silenced or punished, as Al Gore has stated. All evidence should be reviewed and so should where the money flows. Investigate Al's and Soros ownership of exchanges, it is estimated as a trillion dollar business! The CO2, which until last year was a useful gas that plants must use to produce O2.

 

CO2 levels and temps were much higher millions of years ago and there was no man made pollution.

 

Sea levels have been 300 feet lower recently, geologically speaking during the last ice age where ice was 6 miles deep over much of the present day US land mass. 

 

Sea Ice is 60% larger this year, as temps drop globally.

 

Man does contribute .05% to 1 % of the total emissions and much of the pollution control efforts make tiny impacts, but can cost billions while re-distributing the wealth of the west. Obama favors this re-distribution.

 

Often, only the foreign press will report about this almost religious issue in the west , global climate cooling/warming/change. Those Crazy Russians also reported that they may can explain why so much natural gas is available and seems to continue to grow. They think it is given off by the Earth's mantel , which would mean an essentially endless supply until the Earth's mantel cools off when the planet dies in several billon years.

 

Maybe some, ( GORE,SOROS and OTHERS) do not want a cheap, clean source of energy? Before just attacking my position, investigate the issue yourself.

Read more…

Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?

There is a growing volume of new evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its sponsors and supporters — which makes a very strong case, based on solid circumstantial evidence, that the August 21, 2013, chemical strike in the Damascus suburbs was indeed a pre-meditated provocation by the Syrian opposition.

The extent of US foreknowledge of this provocation needs further investigation because available data puts the “horror” of the Barack Obama White House in a different and disturbing light.

On August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria.

The opposition forces had to quickly prepare their forces for exploiting the US-led bombing in order to march on Damascus and topple the Bashar al-Assad Government, the senior commanders explained. The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive.

Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on August 21-23, 2013. In the Reyhanli area alone, opposition forces received well in excess of 400 tons of weapons, mainly anti-aircraft weaponry from shoulder-fired missiles to ammunition for light-guns and machineguns. The weapons were distributed from store-houses controlled by Qatari and Turkish Intelligence under the tight supervision of US Intelligence.

These weapons were loaded on more than 20 trailer-trucks which crossed into northern Syria and distributed the weapons to several depots. Follow-up weapon shipments, also several hundred tons, took place over the weekend of August 24-25, 2013, and included mainly sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles and rockets. Opposition officials in Hatay said that these weapon shipments were “the biggest” they had received “since the beginning of the turmoil more than two years ago”. The deliveries from Hatay went to all the rebel forces operating in the Idlib-to-Aleppo area, including the al-Qaida affiliated jihadists (who constitute the largest rebel forces in the area).

Several senior officials from both the Syrian opposition and sponsoring Arab states stressed that these weapon deliveries were specifically in anticipation for exploiting the impact of imminent bombing of Syria by the US and the Western allies. The latest strategy formulation and coordination meetings took place on August 26, 2013. The political coordination meeting took place in Istanbul and was attended by US Amb. Robert Ford.

More important were the military and operational coordination meetings at the Antakya garrison. Senior Turkish, Qatari, and US Intelligence officials attended in addition to the Syrian senior (opposition) commanders. The Syrians were informed that bombing would start in a few days.

“The opposition was told in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days,” a Syrian participant in the meeting said. Another Syrian participant said that he was convinced US bombing was scheduled to begin on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Several participants — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that the assurances of forthcoming bombing were most explicit even as formally Obama is still undecided.

The descriptions of these meetings raise the question of the extent of foreknowledge of US Intelligence, and therefore, the Obama White House. All the sources consulted — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that officials of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” actively participated in the meetings and briefings in Turkey. Therefore, at the very least, they should have known that the opposition leaders were anticipating “a war-changing development”: that is, a dramatic event which would provoke a US-led military intervention.

The mere fact that weapon storage sites under the tight supervision of US Intelligence were opened up and about a thousand tons of high-quality weapons were distributed to the opposition indicates that US Intelligence anticipated such a provocation and the opportunity for the Syrian opposition to exploit the impact of the ensuing US and allied bombing. Hence, even if the Obama White House did not know in advance of the chemical provocation, they should have concluded, or at the very least suspected, that the chemical attack was most likely the “war-changing development” anticipated by the opposition leaders as provocation of US-led bombing. Under such circumstances, the Obama White House should have refrained from rushing head-on to accuse Assad’s Damascus and threaten retaliation, thus making the Obama White House at the very least complicit after the act.

Meanwhile, additional data from Damascus about the actual chemical attack increases the doubts about Washington’s version of events. Immediately after the attack, three hospitals of Doctors Without Borders (MSF: médecins sans frontières) in the greater Damascus area treated more than 3,600 Syrians affected by the chemical attack, and 355 of them died. MSF performed tests on the vast majority of those treated.

MSF director of operations Bart Janssens summed up the findings: “MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack. However, the reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events — characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers — strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.” Simply put, even after testing some 3,600 patients, MSF failed to confirm that sarin was the cause of the injuries. According to MSF, the cause could have been nerve agents like sarin, concentrated riot control gas, or even high-concentration pesticides. Moreover, opposition reports that there was distinct stench during the attack suggest that it could have come from the “kitchen sarin” used by jihadist groups (as distinct from the odorless military-type sarin) or improvised agents like pesticides.

Some of the evidence touted by the Obama White House is questionable at best.

A small incident in Beirut raises big questions. A day after the chemical attack, Lebanese fixers working for the “Mukhabarat Amriki” succeeded to convince a Syrian male who claimed to have been injured in the chemical attack to seek medical aid in Beirut in return for a hefty sum that would effectively settle him for life. The man was put into an ambulance and transferred overnight to the Farhat Hospital in Jib Janine, Beirut. The Obama White House immediately leaked friendly media that “the Lebanese Red Cross announced that test results found traces of sarin gas in his blood.” However, this was news to Lebanese intelligence and Red Cross officials. According to senior intelligence officials, “Red Cross Operations Director George Kettaneh told [them] that the injured Syrian fled the hospital before doctors were able to test for traces of toxic gas in his blood.” Apparently, the patient declared that he had recovered from his nausea and no longer needed medical treatment. The Lebanese security forces are still searching for the Syrian patient and his honorarium.

On August 24, 2013, Syrian Commando forces acted on intelligence about the possible perpetrators of the chemical attack and raided a cluster of rebel tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar. Canisters of toxic material were hit in the fierce fire-fight as several Syrian soldiers suffered from suffocation and “some of the injured are in a critical condition”.

The Commando eventually seized an opposition warehouse containing barrels full of chemicals required for mixing “kitchen sarin”, laboratory equipment, as well as a large number of protective masks. The Syrian Commando also captured several improvised explosive devices, RPG rounds, and mortar shells. The same day, at least four HizbAllah fighters operating in Damascus near Ghouta were hit by chemical agents at the very same time the Syrian Commando unit was hit while searching a group of rebel tunnels in Jobar. Both the Syrian and the HizbAllah forces were acting on intelligence information about the real perpetrators of the chemical attack. Damascus told Moscow the Syrian troops were hit by some form of a nerve agent and sent samples (blood, tissues, and soil) and captured equipment to Russia.

Several Syrian leaders, many of whom are not Bashar al-Assad supporters and are even his sworn enemies, are now convinced that the Syrian opposition is responsible for the August 21, 2013, chemical attack in the Damascus area in order to provoke the US and the allies into bombing Assad’s Syria. Most explicit and eloquent is Saleh Muslim, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) which has been fighting the Syrian Government. Muslim doubts Assad would have used chemical weapons when he was winning the civil war.

“The regime in Syria … has chemical weapons, but they wouldn’t use them around Damascus, five km from the [UN] committee which is investigating chemical weapons. Of course they are not so stupid as to do so,” Muslim told Reuters on August 27, 2013. He believes the attack was “aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction”. Muslim is convinced that “some other sides who want to blame the Syrian regime, who want to show them as guilty and then see action” is responsible for the chemical attack. The US was exploiting the attack to further its own anti-Assad policies and should the UN inspectors find evidence that the rebels were behind the attack, then “everybody would forget it”, Muslim shrugged. “Who is the side who would be punished? Are they are going to punish the Emir of Qatar or the King of Saudi Arabia, or Mr Erdo?an of Turkey?”

And there remain the questions: Given the extent of the involvement of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” in opposition activities, how is that US Intelligence did not know in advance about the opposition’s planned use of chemical weapons in Damascus?

It is a colossal failure.

And if they did know and warned the Obama White House, why then the sanctimonious rush to blame the Assad Administration?

Moreover, how can the Obama Administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians in order to provoke a US military intervention?

Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

Copyright Defense and Foreign Affairs and Oilprice.com 2013

Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?

Yossef Bodansky

Read more…

Foreign Deaths Syria, Egypt and Mexico?

Yes, it is terrible about all of the foreign violence and deaths. But, what about the 45,000 plus people murdered in MEXICO in the last few years. Yes, more than all of those other places far away and our troop losses in two wars! I care about all of them and especially Muslim terrorists killing everyone everywhere. What should we do about the country south of our border and the literal bleed over our border into various cities in America?

We should stop foreign aid, strengthen our military and put troops on our border helping to actually seal it ASAP. WE have bad guys coming over with criminals mixed in with people who just want to work.  Now, over 15% of Mexico's population is in the US illegally. Billions were given to illegals in just earned income credit, not to mention other benefits. I know our government tells people that, if you do not have a social security number you can still apply for food stamps and other assistance. I am sure there is no abuse of these programs, Yeah right. Regardless, we need to address the violence and illegals issue. How many illegals and related gang members are in our jails? Google it and you might be surprised. What does that cost? We are so PC that we will not place troops on the border like we did in the 1800's, but we should do so and reduce troops over seas. WE need a fence to keep people out not in the US. The border fence is not the Berlin wall , as we will let anyone leave that wants to leave.

Obama has stated he want to weaken the US military cutting 12 brigades and greatly reduce spending. If allowed he will gut the military to levels not seen since before WWII. As then, enemies will think we are so weak and unable to respond that  world wide violence and attacks will increase. We know Hitler thought it would take us 20 years to respond to him and that encouraged him to attack other countries. He was wrong then, as we had a great manufacturing base. Now, as we have allowed our manufacturing to exit, incurred high electricity costs and have one of the highest in the world corporate tax while we allow credits for foreign tax and business relocation we can not react as quickly.

We sit on more oil reserves than all of the rest known oil reserves in the world and yet we have no energy policy and import half of our oil. This money spent on oil imports empowers our enemies and fuels the world wide terrorists organizations.  WE do not use our tremendous natural gas and coal reserves. In fact drilling on federal land is down  and oil production is only up because of private land production. the EPA and other agencies. My point is that if we used our domestic energy resources, become energy independent ASAP in a Manhattan type effort, cut foreign oil imports to zero, maintained a strong military, bring down electricity costs and fuel costs, used energy to decrease unemployment it would be better for America. Peace through strength is better than Obama's weak, lead from behind and a watered down federally feed education system. Anything that weakens the US and weakens State control, is bad for America and in turn is bad for the world.  

Read more…

President Obama On High Gas Prices: 'Use Less Oil'

 

----------------------------
images+(6)+2+obama+visa.jpg----------------------------
 
President Obama talks SC topics with Live 5's Debi Chard
By Philip Weiss
-       GAS PRICES: "Gas prices continue to be an ongoing problem," said Obama. "I'm proud of the fact that under my administration, oil production is higher than it has been in a decade or more. We have seen a doubling of fuel
Read more…

White House to Blame for High Gas Prices

With Hurricane Isaac’s slamming the American gulf coast putting a temporary halt to oil production and refinery output, consumers can expect to see higher prices at the pump.4063570132?profile=original

Just in time for the Labor Day holiday.

Before Hurricane Isaac came along, gasoline costs were at an almost four month high.  The nationwide average rose to $3.75 a gallon on Aug. 26.  “We expect the national average price of gasoline for Labor Day this year to be the highest ever for the holiday,” said Michael Green, a spokesman for AAA.  Drivers could be paying $4 a gallon by the end of September.

 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/gasoline-rising-to-holiday-record-as-storm-surge-pressures-obama.html

Oct. 3 is the date of the first presidential debate.

The timing could not be better for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney or worse for the White House and its hopes for re-election.

By any measure, the administration should be on the defensive over escalating gasoline costs and the hardship higher pump prices will cause average American families.  The White House has been consistently hostile towards traditional fuel industries, and has persistently sought to curtail exploration, development and production capacity since 2009.

The current administration has actively sought to discourage drilling on federal land.  Since the 2010 BP gulf oil spill it has gone out of its way to stifle offshore exploration.  The EPA has made it a regular course of business to impose costly regulations on the development of oil, natural gas and coal.

4063570168?profile=originalThe White House has wasted hundreds and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing non-competitive technologies.  Solyndra, a solar-panel manufacturer, received a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, then filed bankruptcy and fired 1,100 workers.  There are many other such examples.

The predictable White House solution will be to release supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  This will be a typical response from the current administration:  Divest precious national resources in hopes of achieving the desired political result without solving the real problem or offering a viable solution.

Instead of effectively stimulating the American economy by assisting exploration, development and production of cheap, efficient energy, the White House is obsessed with squandering national treasure on inefficient, uncompetitive energy options that are incapable of surviving without a government backstop.

Odds are that the White House will blame it all on Hurricane Isaac…or on George W. Bush.

http://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/white-house-to-blame-for-high-gas-prices/

Read more…

And Then There were two!

By now you have heard...  Rick Santorum has dropped out of the race!  He ran a good race.  His daughter, Bella is sick, and in the hospital.  I am sure you will join with me to pray for Bella and the whole Santorum Family.  These have got to be tough times.

In the end, Rick's depth was unable to sustain him.  Santorum was a TV commentator before he threw his hat into the ring.  He was on from time to time, but really was not a regular on any show.  Having lost in Pennsylvania by 18 points, his impending loss there in two weeks would have destroyed any chance at getting better exposure.

Now it is just Newt and Mitt.  Newt has drawn the fire of the White House for $2.50 Gas, and Religious Freedom!  Mitt drew his first comments today, for running a negative campaign!  Do you know what Mitt's platform is?  Can you name a key issue Mitt has championed?

I can.  Mitt Romney advocated for RobamneyCare in 2009.  He was on several interviews touting his mandate.  Mitt was chipping away at the resolve and resistance to the government forcing citizens into commerce (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ5QHsmOAlE).  The conclusion that Romney would have cost the Republican Party their unanimous opposition, had he had a vote, is not beyond the pale.

Is that the kind of man that will ferret out the various tendrils of ObamaCare?  Without a detailed plan of action from day one, can we trust Mitt to stand up to the monstrosity our government has become?  Does anyone seriously think Mitt will be able to call out Obama on the lies and confusion we all know is coming?

Newt, on the other hand will turn our country back into the tradewinds.  Speaker Gingrich has shown the ability to pull details out the air that correllate with the public record, at the drop of a hat.  You know you want to see that!

But beyond the theatrics, Speaker Gingrich knows the government, and their games.  He knows the lay of the legislative land.  What's more, Newt will work with both sides, as he did with Clinton in passing entitlement reform!  The media won't tout that.  It will be just as it was with Reagan.  We will see our commander-in-chief bypassing the media often!

As President, Newt will actually propose a budget that will get a yes vote in congress!  He will institutionalize savings with the Chilean Plan, rather than leaving it to the general budget!  The Speaker will revamp the Fed.  And Newt will put the courts in their proper place with constitutional procedures and historical (and legal) precedents!  You can learn more at http://www.newt.org/contract/.

Newt is going to Tampa.  He has the depth of business to get there - as a candidate.  But wait, the state of Texas has issued a debate challenge to all of the candidates, and Texas could matter.  Articles are appearing claiming the Republicans have a problem motivating their base!  They are right!  Romney is driving them away!  With the bulk of "Not Romney" voters now hammering newt.org, the game has changed!

Unless you want a Massachusetts Moderate, and a repeat of 2008, Newt needs your help now.  Go to http://grassroots.newt.org to get involved!  Do it for Virginia. Do it for America.  Do it for yourself.

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/

Read more…

Quantitative Easing 101

Devaluing Our Currency: why you are paying $4.00 for a gallon of gas and $5.00 for a lb. of hamburger!

In trying to explain what the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke have been doing to our money I realized that 75% of the citizens of this Republic are uninformed to what Quantitative Easing is, well lets first look at the origins of the words they use to describe their actions. Quantitative: meaning the measuring of an amount, in this case the amount is money. Easing:Â to move, shift, or be moved or be shifted with great care or in this case to move money into the market with a specific goal.

The goal of this easing or shifting of a measured amount of dollars into the currency pool is to expand economic growth or in the case of our latest "financial crisis" to purchase the toxic Mortgage Backed Securities. The reasons for the toxic assets is a discussion for a later date but in 2008 when the market imploded because of the over-estimated values of these pieces of paper the banks that held them and the investors who owned them realized they were worthless because their collective value was based on the promise of the payer paying his debt. So the Federal Reserve in conjunction with the Treasury Dept. came up with a plan to rescue the economy by purchasing all of these worthless pieces of paper but there was one very significant problem with their plan they had to print the money to buy the assets.

Quantitative Easing:

Now why is this a problem?

Quantitative Easing involves the creation of a significant amount of new base money by a central bank for the buying of assets that it usually does not buy. Usually, a central bank will conduct open market operations by buying short-term government bonds or foreign currency. However, during a financial crisis, the central bank may buy other types of financial assets as well. The central bank may buy long-term government bonds, company bonds, asset backed securities, stocks, or even extend commercial loans. The intent is to stimulate the economy by increasing liquidity and promoting bank lending, even when interest rates cannot be pushed any lower.

Quantitative easing increases reserves in the banking system (i.e. deposits of commercial banks at the central bank), giving depository institutions the ability to make new loans. Quantitative easing is usually used when lowering the discount rate is no longer effective because interest rates are already close to or at zero. In such a case, normal monetary policy cannot further lower interest rates, and the economy is in a liquidity trap.

Asset based Currency:

For many years before most of us were born our dollars had a value, they were guaranteed to be worth something because they were backed (pegged) by a "hard asset" first silver and then gold. The US adopted a silver standard based on the Spanish milled dollar in 1785. This was codified in the 1792 Mint and Coinage Act, and by the Federal Government's use of the "Bank of the United States" to hold its reserves, as well as establishing a fixed ratio of gold to the US dollar. This was, in effect, a derivative silver standard, since the bank was not required to keep silver to back all of its currency.This began a long series of attempts for America to create a bi-metallic standard for the US Dollar, which would continue until the 1920s. Gold and silver coins were legal tender, including the Spanish real, a silver coin struck in the Western Hemisphere. Because of the huge debt taken on by the US Federal Government to finance the Revolutionary War, silver coins struck by the government left circulation, and in 1806 President Jefferson suspended the minting of silver coins.The US Treasury was put on a strict hard-money standard, doing business only in gold or silver coin as part of the Independent Treasury Act of 1848, which legally separated the accounts of the Federal Government from the banking system. However the fixed rate of gold to silver overvalued silver in relation to the demand for gold to trade or borrow from England. The drain of gold in favor of silver led to the search for gold, including the California Gold Rush of 1849. Following Gresham's law, silver poured into the US, which traded with other silver nations, and gold moved out. In 1853, the US reduced the silver weight of coins, to keep them in circulation, and in 1857 removed legal tender status from foreign coinage.In 1857 the final crisis of the free banking era of international finance began, as American banks suspended payment in silver, rippling through the very young international financial system of central banks. In 1861 the US government suspended payment in gold and silver, effectively ending the attempts to form a silver standard basis for the dollar.Towards the end of the 19th century, some of the remaining silver standard countries began to peg their silver coin units to the gold standards of the United Kingdom or the USA. For 86 years after this we used silver certificates as the backing asset for our legal tender. Silver Certificates are a type of representative money printed from 1878 to 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, which had effectively placed the United States on a gold standard. The certificates were initially redeemable in the same face value of silver dollar coins, and later in raw silver bullion. Since 1968 they have been redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes and are thus obsolete, but are still valid legal tender.

The whole time during this period and up until August 15, 1971 we used the "gold standard" to set the value of the dollar to other world currencies.

The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard. First, the gold specie standard is a system in which the monetary unit is associated with circulating gold coins, or with the unit of value defined in terms of one particular circulating gold coin in conjunction with subsidiary coinage made from a lesser valuable metal.

Gold certificates were used as paper currency in the United States from 1882 to 1933. These certificates were freely convertible into gold coins.

No country currently uses the gold standard as the basis of their monetary system, although several hold substantial gold reserves.

What makes this significant is all countries that used the gold standard were limited to the amount of money they could print to the amount of gold they owned. It limited what the Federal Reserve Bank could do in controlling the national economy and had been falsely blamed for several economic downturns and the "Great Depression", "in my opinion and research falsely".

So in 1971 we started basing the value of our money on the Gross Domestic Product of our country.

Gross domestic product:

(GDP) refers to the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. It determines the circulation of dollars and helps project the government revenue (taxes) that will be available each year to run the country. But it also lets the federal reserve monitor how money is being used to buy those goods and services and allows them to step in when the reserve liquidity tightens. Without getting too technical reserves are just that like the extra players on sports teams or the extra products you store at home when they run low or run out they need to be refilled, if a player gets hurt while playing another player needs to replace them. Same with the dollars if a bank or lending institution runs low on money part of the federal reserves job is to replace it by sending them dollars. So in 2008 when all of the banks started asking the Federal Reserve for extra dollars to pay for the bad debts they bought, the only way they could do this was to print it.

And there lies part of the reason you are now paying between 30%-100%Â more for everything in the past 3 years, the dollars being used to buy these assets are not related to the value of the goods and services they represent. The GDP has been stagnant with no real significant growth since 2008 with an annual average of 13 Trillion dollars.

usgs_line.php?title=US%20Real%20GDP%20Chart&year=2008_2014&sname=US&units=k&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&col=c&spending0=13100_12773.9_12615_12982_13351_13727

But the amount of money printed and circulated, saved and invested worldwide has grown and it is known as the "monetary supply" of the United States.

The Monetary Supply:

In 2008 the monetary supply which is all the money in our system in every bank, pocket, business etc. where ever there is a dollar it is part of the monetary supply was 8.448 trillion dollars or 64.9% of the GDP. That number includes the original TARP monies of 848 billion injected in the market that year.

The current monetary supply as of March 13, 2012 is 9.578 trillion or 73.6% of GDP. And what is worse is their latest round of cash infusion has not only deflated the value of yours and my dollars but raised the costs of everything we buy by not allowing the exchanges to reset themselves to reflect the actual economic climate. Since the start of Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve, everything has almost doubled in cost because of the doubling effect of both market and monetary policy manipulation.

So the Federal Reserve has been printing more dollars but the engine to make those dollars worth more is stalled so in car speak the Fed has flooded the engine. They have not only placed more dollars into the economy making the dollars that were already there worth less but by purchasing stocks, bonds and other hard assets and commodities they have raised the cost of everything related to their purchases. Yes you know about QE1 which bought 1.25 trillion dollars of debt, QE2 which purchased 900 billion dollars of long term Treasury notes. But since the end of QE2, QE3 where the Fed has been quietly injecting more money into the stock market to "prop it up" there latest balance sheet from March, 15, 2012 shows the new assets on their books.

And in the 3 plus years of this fiscal policy the effects are hurting everyone.

Gold in 12/2008 = $850.00 per once / 03/20/2012 $1640.00 per ounce

Oil in 12/2008 = $38.00 per barrel / 03/20/2012 %107.00 per barrel

Gas in 12/2008 = $1.05 per gallon futures exchange and $1.72 at the pump nationally / 03/20/2012 $ 3.09 per gallon on the futures exchange $3.89 a gallon at the pump.

Milk in 12/2008 = $2.79 per gallon / 03/20/2012 $3.89 per gallon.

Beef in 12/2008 = $ 2.89 per lb. 80/20 ground chuck / 03/20/2012 $4.59 per lb.

Not all of the current financial hardship's we face are due to Quantitative Easing but it has not been by any means the panacea it was touted to be for the economy and the other shoe is yet to drop. The Federal Reserve currently holds over 2.7 trillion dollars in debt obligations from lenders and banks. That is more than the GDP of 90% of the countries on this planet. When you falsely base the value of anything and then try to sell it, it will only be worth what the buyer is willing to pay for it. Now just as I am writing this the Fed just released their 2011 earnings stating they made 77 billion dollars but the data is not yet up on their website. We will wait to analyze the statements.

But their fiscal policy has us on the road that has been well traveled.

This has happened before:

After the end of WW1 the German Republic owed reparations to half of Europe for damages and penalties for their invasions of France, Poland and most of the Western European continent. You see Germany had gone off the gold standard in 1914, and could not effectively return to it as Germany had lost much of its remaining gold reserves in reparations. The German central bank issued un-backed marks virtually without limit to buy foreign currency for further reparations and to support workers during the Occupation of the Ruhr finally leading to hyperinflation in the 1920s.

The growing postwar economic crisis was a result of lost pre-war industrial exports, the loss of supplies in raw materials and foodstuffs from Alsace-Lorraine, Polish districts and the colonies, along with worsening debt balances, but above all, the result of an exorbitant issue of promissory notes raising money to pay for the war. Military-industrial activity had almost ceased, although controlled demobilization kept unemployment at around one million. The fact that the Allies continued to blockade Germany until after the Treaty of Versailles did not help matters, either. The allies permitted only low import levels of goods that most Germans could not afford. In its 14 years, the Weimar Republic was faced with numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremists on the left and the right and their paramilitaries, and hostility from the victors of World War I, who tried twice to restructure Germany's reparations payments through the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. However, it overcame many of the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles(Germany eventually repaid a reduced amount of the reparations required of the treaty with the last payment being made on 3 October 2010).

The 1920s German inflation started when Germany had no goods to trade. The government printed money to deal with the crisis; this meant payments within Germany were made with worthless paper money, and helped formerly great industrialists to pay back their own loans. This also led to pay raises for workers and for businessmen who wanted to profit from it. Circulation of money rocketed, and soon banknotes were being overprinted to a thousand times their nominal value and every town produced its own promissory notes.

The value of the Papiermark had declined from 4.2 per U.S. dollar at the outbreak of World War I to 1 million per dollar by August 1923. This led to further criticism of the Republic. On 15 November 1923, a new currency, the Rentenmark, was introduced at the rate of 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Papiermark for one Rentenmark, an action known as a monetary reset.

In Summary:

We have not yet had to go through that here in this country but it is not far off, under the current economic polices we have been down-graded for the first time in our history and we are facing the possibility that the dollar will stop being used as the "world currency" for trading on the exchanges. One of the benefits of being one of the last countries to come off the gold standard was that the U.S. dollar by default became the preferred currency when commodities such as gold, oil, silver, corn, wheat etc. are traded or sold their value is set in U.S. dollars. If you think it is bad now, what if the world stopped taking our money or stopped lending to us or devaluing our dollar to the levels that we devalued Germany's less than 100 years ago?

The methodology of Quantitative Easing or printing more money when you need it does not fix more than it delays the inevitable and increases the net effect when you add in the additional inflationary factors that it creates by the lessening of the current value of the purchasing power of our dollars. The inflationary costs by making the dollars in your pocket worth less because there are more of them with nothing to make them worth more and the fact that those extra dollars are not purchasing anything but time to delay what should have occurred already and allowed to reform based on real economic metrics.Â

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" Lord Campbell

We have to take responsibility for our elected officials fiscal malfeasance and dangerous policymaking if we are to recover from what has already been implemented. We must retract the dollar pool, require a full accounting of the Federal Reserve and then make them answerable to Congress. We must demand that laws and policies that have made for a devalued dollar be immediately rescinded and evaluation of a return to a base standard of currency backing be considered. We must demand a balanced budget both in our own homes and in Washington. We must allow market mechanics to dictate the survival of companies, not the political maneuverings of one party to use Federal dollars to purchase union votes. Â

There is only one thing that is too big to fail and it is this last bastion of freedom on Earth and her name is The United States of America!

But She is disappearing fast!

Dr. Keith C. Westbrook Ph.D.

Read more…
                “Think of it as ‘pathological science’ or ‘wishful-thinking energy.’ We’ve had ‘green energy’ for thousands of years in the form of water-wheels in some form or other and windmills have served for centuries to grind grain and other such tasks . . . the failing of green-technology isn’t that it doesn’t work. Much of it does work marvelously. The failing of green-tech is that RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW it can NOT be harnessed in such a fashion as to replace carbon-fuels. In fact after six decades of devotion to the ‘lovely idea and sweet promise of green energy evolution’ the largest and most reliable renewable energy source right here and right now in America is still the wood burning stove which generates 2.5%** of our nation’s energy. Today, 2011, coal still accounts for 48%.”
 
Solyndra, Bird-killing Windmills^^ or Cold Fusion:
Green-tech Still Leaves America ‘out in the Cold’
 
            The Solyndra stimulus money and its ensuing bankruptcy form a classic case-study highlighting crony-capitalism and the dangers of the federal government picking winners and losers in the not-so-free market.  Latest information reveals Solyndra was one of 18 companies receiving more than $10 billion in total backing from the Department of Energy several others are also reportedly in financial difficulty.  The $535 million given as part of President Obama's 2009 stimulus program and his campaign promise to “create five million green-tech jobs” was clearly an abuse of American taxpayers. Since even before the Solyndra bankruptcy each of the 3,500 green-tech jobs so far created within the Obama $787 BIllion stimulus cost an average of $10.88 million dollars or a total of over $38 BIllion; and since Solyndra got more money from the federal coffers in 2009 than 35 of our states did, it’s NOT surprising that some of the biggest names in liberalism are running for the hills to avoid questions about the controversy.  Some of the less well-known names as well, the leadership at Solyndra, are running for the hills.  While protesting their innocence mightily to the mainstream media (MSM) and saying they “did nothing wrong,” the Solyndra honchos have revealed that they will as a group “avail themselves of their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination” and remain silent when they get to Capitol Hill. Privately Solyndra execs tell the MSM that the “falling price of ordinary solar panels” doomed their company.   More on this in a few paragraphs.
UNmentioned, by the way, in the president’s latest waves of attack on the “tax loopholes for the rich” is the fact that General Electric paid $0 taxes on $14 Billion in profits largely because of the tax loopholes favoring businesses regarded as “green” by the Obama administration and progressive politicians. This is one reason that GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immeldt was named Obama Jobs Czar even though 80% of his firm’s jobs are located outside this country. 
Obama’s Energy Department meanwhile faces a September 30th deadline to give fourteen companies final loan guarantee approval totaling more than $9 billion. House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders Tuesday wrote Energy Secretary Steven Chu voicing concerns about rushing the approval process just to meet that deadline.  Back to Solyndra . . . Congressional subpoenas for Solyndra execs are likely to come to naught . . . the nothing we’ll learn from them is dwarfed, however, by the nothing the Obama administration understands about business or the free markets. 
Here’s a  fact for you: despite all the presidential and vice-presidential ballyhoo about its promise; and the White House creating a Solyndra propaganda video . . . Solyndra never once showed anything close to even ONE profitable quarter in its five years of existence and their so-called “advanced designs” offered little more than a 12-15% greater efficiency for double or triple the money. Two weeks ago the FBI and Energy Department officials raided the Solyndra headquarters in California after claims that as little as six weeks ago the top company officials had sworn to California Rep. Henry Waxman (former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) that things were “looking up” and that the company expected “to double revenues in 2012.” 
Rajjpuut takes that clever tongue-in-cheek “report” to mean that the Solyndra officials actually were telling the truth-expecting to lose twice as much money in 2012 . . . hence their September, 2011 bankruptcy filing. I remember a Lieutenant JG that once told our ET gang that we’d have “three times the liberty (time off)” we’d recently been given when the ship got to Hong Kong. Of course we all knew that since we’d been at sea for 46 straight days (a.k.a. recently), he wasn’t promising much since 3 X 0 = 0.
The Obama administration’s shocking lack of a clue when it comes to the verities of business came to light when the Energy Department official in charge of the loan program that subsidized Solyndra, Jonathon Silver, responded to a question about the Obama administration using stimulus money “to pick winners and losers” this way.
“The agency is not trying to pick winners or losers in the private sector” but merely “trying to assist companies that have already received substantial support from venture capitalists.”   Mr. Silver’s naïveté aside, he, of course sounds like he’s discussing a green-tech version of “too big to fail.” Mr. Silver, venture capitalism is very high risk investment. Typically 5/8 or over 62% of all venture capitalism endeavors lose money. The venture capitalist is looking for NOT the 38% of such efforts that make money, but for the 7% that make “a killing in the marketplace.” The federal government should not be gambling OR doing venture capitalism with taxpayer dollars . . . particularly after three straightforward warnings from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the White House warned that backing Solyndra was NOT a wise move. 
IF and WHEN a green-tech company run by a 21st Century version of Thomas Alva Edison actually produces viable mass-market green technology . . . the government won’t need to be involved at all.  Even the nutcases who “produced” muon-catalyzed fusion were offered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of start-up dough until their methodology was deemed fraudulent. Yet even today twenty-two years after that revelation, when Rajjpuut types in “cold fusion” in his web browser he gets 10,400,000 hits.  Green tech is a lot like high school in that being popular is no guarantee of lifelong success. The mere highly-attractive nature of an idea (like green energy or radical environmentalism) might be a selling point for science fiction writers but real science ain’t done that way. As Edison rued:  “science is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” . . . and the Obama administration has not done its homework on either green tech or global warming (radical environmentalism). 
They have also been utterly UNforthcoming when it comes to the reality of green-tech's effect on the environment.  For example we can't irrigate vegetables in California creating 40% UNemployment in some areas because tiny fish (the delta smelt) might get sucked into the piping; but the large electrical-generating windmills kill tens of thousands of birds and we hear not a peep (pun intended).  They don't dare tell us of the environmental cost of their ridiculous "Cash for Clunkers" program that drove the average cost of a used car today up by $1,900.  They don't tell us that hybrid "green" cars are about eight times more toxic in the manufacturing process than normal ICE (internal combustion engine) ones.
Think of Solyndra and other such frauds as ‘pathological science’ or ‘wishful-thinking energy.’ We’ve had real ‘green energy’ for thousands of years in the form of water-wheels in some form or other and windmills have served for centuries to grind grain and other such tasks . . . the failing of green-technology isn’t that it doesn’t work. Much of it does work marvelously. The failing of green-tech is that RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW it can NOT be harnessed in such a fashion as to replace carbon-fuels. In fact after six decades of devotion to the lovely idea and sweet promise of ‘a green energy evolution’ the largest and most reliable renewable energy source right here and right now in America is still the wood burning stove which generates 2.5%** of our nation’s energy. 
Coal meanwhile still accounts for 48%. However, some groups claim that coal today only accounts for 23% of all our energy. The same groups claim that hydroelectric energy generates 7.3% of our renewable CLEAN energy and is our largest source of renewable. Since coal-generated electrical power is often used at peak use times to pump water to produce hydro-electricity  . . . Rajjpuut will stand with the coal companies’ stats until some definitive study is done. 
You do recall that candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that his energy policies “would necessarily make the cost of electricity skyrocket” and that they’d “bankrupt the coal companies.” Where Rajjpuut comes from that’s called “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
Despite all the raps on America by environmental excessivists, the United States is only the 2nd largest consumer of energy in the world (China is #1); and ranks only #7 in the world in per capita energy use (Canada is the only large country ahead of the U.S. and Norway is the only medium-sized country where their individual citizens use more energy on average they we do here in America). Meanwhile the United States has discovered far and away the largest oil repository in the world (the Bakken Fields) but cannot use it because of environmental regulations so except for a few companies allowed to drill on North Dakota Indian reservations we get nothing. We also have the largest natural gas resources in the world but they’re being assailed by the environmental Nazis.   And in Western Colorado (where Rajjpuut once worked for a weekly newspaper lo’ so many years ago), Utah and Wyoming has enough keragen (a.k.a. marlstone or more incorrectly: “oil shale”) to provide energy for the entire planet at today’s consumption rates for the next seven and a half centuries . . . but Mr. Obama says, “NO! And his EPA is closing down coal plants; and his Interior Dept. is obstructing oil drilling offshore. But, by God, we can sure as hell put $535 million into Solyndra.
 
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
**            Because of smoke and emissions and spotted owls and snail darters and endangered ferrets the radical environmentalists running the Oval Office and our president do NOT consider wood either “renewable” or “green.” They hate logging operations almost as much as they do coal mining.
^^          Actually, we just heard that someplace around the San Joaquin Valley, CA that ELF (the Environmental Liberation Front) was squawking about bird deaths in a windmill valley claiming that endangered raptors were heavily victimized.  It's a shame that elves don't fly.
Read more…

4063377894?profile=originalOne of the most challenging duties I have as an American citizen is to sit through a Barak Obama speech. But do my duty, I will, and I did so last Thursday evening.  Sort of.  First of all, the conventional wisdom that Obama is eloquent is false. He is not eloquent, he is not a master of communication, he is not as intelligent as we are told to believe. But he is clever, and he has a snake-pit of clever advisors behind him.  Obama’s September 8 speech is simply a political set up for him to run against a “do-nothing” Congress in 2012. Clever, yes.  More clever than the American people? No.

The content of Thursday’s speech was a rehash of former “stimulus” speeches. His “American Jobs Bill” is just another infusion of tax-payer dollars into the ether of his command economy. If he has his way another $400 billion will waft into the netherworld of socialist failure, just like the previous $3.27 trillion from previous stimulus packages.  There is nothing in his AJB that would create a single lasting job.  It is an attempt to pander to large swaths of his supporters, like teachers unions, government sector unions, the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO, who would all benefit directly or indirectly from his plan. 

Obama pandered to small businesses as well with talk about a “payroll tax cut.” But  it is corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, and  personal income taxes on the small business owners who make over $200 K per year and declare their business income on their personal returns, that are killing jobs. Obama did not address those, but instead promised again to raise taxes on “those Americans who can afford to pay more.”  In his mind that includes all of those small businesses and their owners who we know are not “millionaires and billionaires” but are ordinary Americans, struggling, cutting corners, pinching pennies, and fighting the federal government at every turn just to save the jobs they have created for their employees.  As usual, Obama’s plan will kill more private sector jobs in exchange for a small rebate to households that will go to pay down debt and will have no lasting impact on the economy. He will fortify the unions, they will grow in power, and in the end, the government will be bigger, and the individual much smaller. Corporations will continue to outsource to other countries because the costs of production are impossibly large.  And small businesses will continue to shutter their doors as the specter of Obamacare looms ever closer.

One  of the most ironic aspects of Obama’s duplicity is his avoidance of the most obvious and immediate answers to our failing economy.  As a resident of Western Colorado I know that in my region of this vast country, there lies underground enough natural gas and oil resources to fuel our nation and our economy for decades, if not centuries.  Obama’s pet agencies like the EPA and DOE have essentially corked the potential for energy exploration and development in the West.  If he were to ease the regulations, tell Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to take a long vacation to Fiji, and simply open the door for Americans to take advantage of the vast energy resources underneath our feet, the economy would receive the defibrillation it needs to get pumping again.  Thousands of private sector jobs would be created, and dependence on foreign energy would be dramatically decreased.

The American people will not fall for the “run against a do-nothing congress” ploy. The president can’t stay disengaged and ineffective for another 15 months. The economy cannot bear the strain of further taxation, regulation, and statist manipulations of the free market.  If Obama was sincere he would do the following.

  • Open energy-rich regions of the United States to exploration and development
  • Slash corporate and capital gains taxes and close loop holes for his crony corporate buddies like GE
  • Cut taxes on the upper 8% of income earners, most of whom are small business owners
  • Ask congress to immediately repeal Obamacare
  • Offer  American corporations who are outsourcing or have moved overseas tax incentives to stay in country
  • Decrease the collective bargaining power of public sector unions at the federal level
  • Revisit the budget deal and adopt the Paul Ryan plan to address entitlement reform

But we know Obama is not serious about saving our economy or our standing of economic and military superiority.  He will continue to point the finger of blame, play the race card, and toy with the free markets of the greatest country the world has ever known, until he begins the longest vacation of his life in 2013.

Read more…

 

 
Only government can take a perfectly useful commodity such as paper, print a few numbers on it and make it worthless . . . 
 
 
American Economy Facing
Death by 100+ Trillion Cuts
 
 
Today as President Obama tried to shed his rightful nickname “The Spread-the-Poverty President” by blaming Japan, and the world economy and high oil prices for the recent uptick in the nation’s UNemployment . . . you don’t have to be a gypsy fortune-teller to read-between-the-lines well enough to see that the American economy is dying the death by ten thousand cuts (or perhaps we should say by 100 TRillion+ cuts). Of course, many (if not most) of our fearless leaders in Congress and the White House are proclaiming an ongoing recovery. We’re not talking the Mississippi here, but de-Nile, deep, deep denial. Until we’re willing to face up to the truth, no solutions are possible. The progressive leadership in this country over the last forty-eight years (only Ronald Reagan is exempt among presidents and both chambers of every single congress has been guilty with the verdict still out on our present House of Representatives) have destroyed the greatest economic machinery the world has ever known and substantially weakened and corrupted the greatest and freest society ever known. 
Except for producing reality TV series and useless TV networks, we almost don’t create or build anything anymore . . . we certainly don’t create jobs. The American Dollar whose original symbol was a capital “U” with a capital “S” atop it has been led to a slow death. Thanks to our leaders we are almost literally drowning in debt: $14.3 TRillion officially; plus $115 TRillion in UNfunded liabilities (Social Security; Medicare; the federal side of Medicaid) or a total of almost $130 TRillion we purposefully ignore discussing; plus, oh yes, that Welfare State that just got Obamacare added onto it . . . .
In a recent article the Prison Planet website told a sad story . . . when we’re through examining their cataloging of the situation . . . besides some parenthetical comments you’ll see immediately after each item, Rajjpuut has three shocking insights to add to the picture, Prison Planet said . . . .

The Economic Collapse: 24 signs of economic decline in America
 
#1 Standard & Poor’s just altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned the U.S. that it could very soon lose its AAA rating (the last time this happened was during the three months following the December 7, 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor).

#2 China has announced that they are going to reduce their holdings of U.S. dollars (China, Brazil, Russia, and several other countries have openly called for elimination of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and China, Russia, Brazil and India have been moving out of Greenbacks into gold and silver).

#3 Hedge fund manager Dennis Gartman says that “panic dollar selling is setting in” and that the U.S. dollar could be in for a huge decline (the dollar has lost 24% of its value this last decade).

#4 The biggest bond fund in the world, PIMCO, is now short-selling U.S. government bonds.

#5 This cruel economy is causing “ghost towns” and “ghost neighborhoods” to appear all across the United States. There are quite a few counties across the nation that now have home vacancy rates of over 50% (Las Vegas, Nevada has one of the highest home vacancy rates in the nation . . . it’s so bad there that there’s a mini-construction “boom” going on . . . what? why? because rather than clients moving into one of Las Vegas’ many ghost neighborhoods for a bargain price they prefer to get into whole new sub-divisions with other people nearby rather than a seedy area over-run by kangaroo rats).

#6 There are now about 13 million fewer full-time jobs in America than when the recession began back in October, 2007.

#7 The average American family is having a really tough time right now. Only 45.4% of Americans had a job during 2010. The last time the employment level was that low was back in 1983.

#8 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

#9 The average large company’s CEO made 343 times more money than the average American worker did last year.

#10 Gas prices reached five dollars per gallon at a gas station in Washington, DC on April 19th, 2011. Could we see $6 gas soon? The President continues to spit on the concept of American oil jobs and American oil while recently loaning Brazil $2 billion for deepwater drilling and claiming “We want to be your best customers1”

#11 Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.

#12 Due to rising fuel prices, American Airlines lost a staggering $436 million during the first quarter of 2011.

#13 U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

#14 Approximately one out of every four dollars that the U.S. government borrows goes to pay the interest on the national debt.

#15 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.

#16 Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

#17 Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income. In China, average household debt is only 17% of average household income (1/8 as high a percentage on a lot less earnings).

#18 The average American now spends approximately 23 percent of his or her income on food and gas (forty years ago that number was about 7%).

#19 In a recent survey conducted by Deloitte Consulting, 74 percent of Americans said that they planned to slow down their spending in coming months due to rising prices.


#20 Over 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.

#21 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of UNemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.

#22 As the economy continues to collapse, frustration among young people will continue to grow and we will see more seemingly “random acts of violence.” One shocking example of this happened on a Metropolitan Atlanta Mass Transit Area (MARTA) vehicle recently. The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the attack . . . .
 
Roughly two dozen teens, chanting the name of a well-known Atlanta gang, brought mob rule to MARTA early Sunday morning, overwhelming nervous passengers and assaulting two Delta flight attendants.
 
#23 Some Americans have become so desperate for cash that they are literally popping the gold teeth right out of their mouths and selling them to pawn shops.

#24 As the economy has declined; the American people have been gobbling up larger and larger amounts of antidepressants and other prescription drugs. In fact, the American people spent 60 billion dollars more on prescription drugs in 2010 than they did in 2005.

            To understand the full picture, consider this: Barack Obama’s puppet-master, George Soros (the “man who broke the Bank of England” and chief funder of some 52 progressive-foundations that have been working to undermine the U.S. economy for the last nine years as well as funding Barack Obama’s campaigns) is openly calling for the Chinese Yuan to replace the Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Soros, who has been called responsible for the destruction of at least six other currencies, is now heavily invested in the Dollar’s destruction. Every day that we refuse to emulate the British and adopt severe austerity measures, the closer Mr. Soros gets to adding another few hundred billion dollars worth of profit to his net worth. However, it’s not likely that Barack Obama will cut his own strings and act for the good of the American people over George Soros.
 
Real money, such as gold or silver, does not change in value over time although because of supply and demand considerations and new inventions, etc. it may be used to buy more or buy less of certain commodities. Paper money which is NOT backed by gold or silver (fiat money) always becomes worth less over time and eventually worthless. Right now Americans are shocked that the dollar has officially lost 24% of its value in a decade . . . but that’s only the official figure. The Federal Reserve Bankers under Fed Chief Ben Bernanke have not so much been “printing money” but merely creating it electronically. If the official figures took into account all Mr. Bernanke’s shenanigans and the world valued the Dollar accordingly then the 2011 dollar would be worth between 3-4 pennies from the 2001 DOLLAR.  Leave it to government to take a perfectly useful commodity such as paper, print a few numbers on it and make it absolutely worthless . . . by the way, gold prices have risen 45% in the last eighteen months; silver has risen 58% in the last four months as people and nations are abandoning paper currencies like the Dollar, Euro and Yen.
 
            The combined U.S. National Debt and UNfunded liabilities and Welfare responsibilities of the American government right now is equal to about three and one-half times the Gross Domestic Product ($57 TRillion) of the entire world . . . and yet the highly visible film-maker Michael Moore, all the unions, and the Progressives in congress from both parties claim there is “plenty of money” and refuse to cut spending and are debating when and how and how much to increase the debt ceiling right now. They’re counting on higher taxes upon “the rich” (those married couples earning a combined $250,000 or more who create all our small business jobs) to solve all our problems while continuing to create higher deficits, the one thing NOT on their agenda: spending cutbacks.
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
 
 
Read more…