Archive for the ‘financial crisis’ Category
December 21st, 2011 | 
Author: The Year in Government Waste: Bridges to Nowhere, Pancakes for …
reason.com12/21/11
A million dollars is nothing nowadays. Just ask the Pentagon, which spent $20 billion a year on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last.
Commonsense & Wonder: Government Waste
A highly incomplete, but still infuriating, list of government waste in 2011. Some examples: Republican and Democratic Party conventions: $17.7 million (each); A mango-production program for Pakistani farmers that was …
Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn released his annual “Wastebook” yesterday, December 20, 2011
Highlights In The Wastebook Include
$10 million for a remake of "Sesame Street" for Pakistan.
$764,825 to examine how college students use mobile devices for social networking.
$550,000 was spent for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
$400,000 for the state’s agriculture department to study how different colors on shade cloths affect vegetable growth.
$113,000 for a video game preservation center.
$765,000 to subsidize "pancakes for yuppies" in Washington.
$48,700 for a festival promoting Hawaii’s chocolate industry.
In his report, Coburn writes that while some of the items listed in the book may have merit, they are not national priorities, and shouldn’t be undertaken when the country can’t deal with a massive and growing deficit.
“Instead of cutting wasteful spending, nearly $2.5 billion was added each day in 2011 to our national debt, which now exceeds $15 trillion”.
And added that with a 9% approval rating,
“Perhaps there was no bigger waste of taxpayer’s money in 2011 than Congress itself”.
Dr. No
Coburn, a Republican who is known around Washington as “Dr. No” for his opposition to excess spending, said in a press release Tuesday that his “Wastebook 2011″ details,
“The most egregious ways your taxpayer dollars were wasted”
Items he claims total more than $6.5 billion in “unnecessary” spending.
Posted in 
Zakaria: The real burden on the U.S. economy – Global Public …
globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com12/11/11
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN President Obama gave an important speech in Kansas last week. Whether you agree with all of it or not, he has begun a national conversation about the economy and the role of government.
Global Economic Crisis: The U.S. An Insolvent and Ungovernable …
www.marketoracle.co.uk12/18/11
Global Economic Crisis: The U.S. An Insolvent and Ungovernable Country :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website.
Do you now how bad the US economy really is?
If you answered, "Yes" then read on because it’s almost certainly far worse than you thought.
And if you answered, "No" or "Maybe" then sit down before you read on!
The following data along with links appeared on a blog entitled The Economic Collapse and for those unfamiliar with the site, TEC (The Economic Collapse) is a blog that regularly compiles a comprehensive list of the most startling and unsettling facts about the U.S. economy.
Why Does TEC Do It?
A blurb on the site says:
“If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them. Just ‘tweaking’ things here and there is not going to fix this economy".
“America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding. If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up"
“If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that ‘business as usual’ will result in a national economic apocalypse".
So Without More Ado – Here Are The Fifty Figures
1. A staggering 48% of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
2. Approximately 57% of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.
3. If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11%.
4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.
5. One recent survey found that 77% of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.
6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.
7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.
10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20% of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.
11. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
12. Back in 1969, 95% of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2% of men in that age group had a job.
13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.
14. The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1% in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.
15. According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154%.
16. As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51% of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72% of all U.S. adults were married.
17. The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.
18. In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64% from where they were at when the housing market peaked.
19. Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.
20. If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18% of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63% larger than it was just ten years ago.
22. New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.
23. 19% of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.
24. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
25. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
26. One study found that approximately 41% of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
27. If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
28. The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
29. It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.
30. The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46% of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29% of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
31. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
32. According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.
33. Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39% between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.
34. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30% of all Americans combined.
35. According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.
36. If you can believe it, 37% of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.
37. A higher%age of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.
38. Child homelessness in the United States is now 33% higher than it was back in 2007.
39. Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30%.
40. Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
41. Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
42. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18% of all income.
43. A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30%.
44. Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24% of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18%.
45. For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.
46. If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.
47. Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.
48. If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
49. The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.
50. During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
So Who’s To Blame?
Take A Look At The Federal Reserve
Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has been a perpetual debt machine that has almost single-handedly destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar!
The Solution
From The TEC website:
"One of the most important steps that we could take to bring prosperity back to America would be to nationalize the Federal Reserve. Doing so would allow the federal government to quit borrowing money, dramatically reduce taxes and eventually pay off the entire U.S. national debt.
Instead of inheriting the largest debt in the history of the world, future generations would actually have a chance at economic prosperity because they would not be forced to pay off the horrific debt of previous generations.
There are no good reasons to keep the status quo. Our current debt-based monetary system will inevitably lead to a complete and total economic collapse. We desperately need to make a change while we still can. As you will see below, there are a ton of good reasons why we should nationalize the Federal Reserve.
Right now, most Americans believe that the Federal Reserve is actually an agency of the federal government. But that is simply not the case.
The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as Federal Express is, and the Federal Reserve openly admits as much.
For example, in defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve stated in court that it was "not an agency" of the U.S. government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act".
So Who Owns The Federal Reserve?
According to the Federal Reserve’s own website, it is the member banks that own it.
The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about "ownership." For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.
Will Obama Nationalize The Federal Reserve?
No chance!
So Who Might Do It?
Well Obama’s replacement might, but even that’s not for sure because we don’t know who it will be; or if it will be.
But we do know however that the 2012 election will be one of the most important in US history.
So if you care about the US then make sure you vote, and be sure to vote Republican because with a Republican in the White House there’s a chance of positive change, but with Obama there’s none!
And if you want to know what the interest on Amreica’s debt is doing to our economy then checkout:
