PIIGS, Presstitutes and the Global Meltdown
“Read All About It!” You couldn’t not read all about it! The media was full of reports about how happy stock market days were here again. After a stormy start, June closed and July began with US benchmark indexes racking up their biggest weekly gains in two years on good news: the US manufacturing index had unexpectedly risen, and the beleaguered debt-burdened Greeks were bailed out yet again – piling un-payable new debt on top of un-payable old debt.
Yes, there was some concern, but, as The New York Times reported on June 25th, “Two years into the official recovery, the economy is still behaving like a plane taxiing indefinitely on the runway. Few economists are predicting an out-and-out return to recession … analysts generally expect the economy to pick up in the second half.”
The economists were forecasting strong job growth for June. But two weeks later, when the numbers came in, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 18,000 jobs had been created – not the 125,000 jobs projected … by those same economists who were also not “predicting an out-and-out return to recession.”
Accordingly, without missing a beat, the Times changed its tune – writing new words to replace the old words they would never be forced to eat:
Feeble Job Numbers Show
Recovery Starting to StallDefying Economists Forecast for Hiring,
Unemployment Creeps Up to 9.2%
For the second consecutive month, employers added scarcely any jobs in June, startling evidence that the economic recovery is stumbling … The government also revised downward the small gain for the previous month to 25,000 new jobs, less than half the original estimate. (The New York Times, 9 July 2011)
“Dismal Jobs Data Rock US Recovery” and “Worries Grow Over Jobs,” read the respective headlines in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal on July 9th, dissipating the air of optimism that had recently rallied equity markets.
“Employment!” More than factory orders, GDP, corporate profits, retail sales, durable goods … employment was the one big number that counted. There was no way to spin the consequences of 18,000 mostly low paying health care and hospitality jobs into the hopeful message implied by the 125,000 jobs forecast by most economists.
The equation was simple; the more people out of work, the less they consume. And in the United States, where consumer spending accounts for an estimated 70 percent of the GDP, without increased consumer spending, the economy was again recession bound.
Virtually overnight, one dire employment report unraveled two years’ worth of government spin and media complicity. In April 2010, Vice President Joseph Biden promised, “we’re going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month.” And in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared that the “actions we took at its height [of the crisis] to stimulate the economy helped arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on the road to recovery.”
But almost a year later, talking on “Meet the Press,” two days after the devastating employment data was released, the new, revised Geithner forecast was, “Oh, I think it’s [the recovery] going to take a long time still. This is a very tough economy. And I think for a lot of people it’s going to be – it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for some time to come.”
Like the Biden boast long-buried and un-exhumed, the Geithner statement, a direct contradiction of his former projection went unchallenged, given the usual free pass by the “Meet the Press” Presstitutes.
There was, and is, no “return to recession.” As The Trends Research Institute had been forecasting since the onset of the Great Recession and the “Panic of ’08,” all those “bold actions” proudly cited by Geithner were no more than financial Prozac–multi-trillion-dollar band aids, palliatives, placebos and cover-ups packaged as TARP, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, QE2, and so on. At best, the “bold actions” merely guided the Great Recession into a brief remission, and that is all.
Global Ponzi
It was a cover-up, not a recovery. And while the US may have been the first, it was not the only nation to try to fraudulently finagle its way out of a crisis and into prosperity. Like the US bailouts, the Greek survival package – praised as an important stopgap success only last week – has neither guaranteed keeping the Greek banking system afloat nor guaranteed it won’t default.
Now Italy has caught the contagion. Fattest of the PIIGS (acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) – the eurozone’s third largest economy – with its 120 percent public debt to GDP ratio, Italy is bleeding red ink all over its balance sheet. Borrowing more to service its debt load and imposing draconian austerity measures to reign in government spending will, at best, provide a respite from the financial crisis … or, at worst, foment a revolution.
Then there’s China, who panicked when the “Panic of 08” blew out their export driven economy, and, like the West, used cheap credit and huge stimulus packages to prevent a major economic contraction. While China’s crisis differs from the West’s in that it has large currency reserves and its debt is homegrown and home-loaned, it’s still debt and has to be repaid.
And unlike the West, which pumped trillions into just keeping its economies afloat, the Chinese multi-trillion yuan infusions have created an immense, ready-to-pop property bubble. But this time, like the West, there will be no available fiscal or monetary government policies to re-inflate their faltering economy.
And as goes the US, Europe and China – so goes the rest of the world. From India to Israel, Brazil to Bangladesh, Chile to Russia, no nation will escape the economic fallout and few will escape the political consequences.
Yet, despite the widely available economic facts and the ample evidence of faulty forecasts and failed government policies, the mainstream media continues to sell the public the big lie. By providing cover for the politicians and financiers, the Presstitutes of the world – with their stable of “well respected” pundits – are accomplices in promoting the egregiously transparent cover-up as a “recovery.”
Trendpost: After descending to $1,480 less than two weeks ago, as this is written, gold is flirting with $1,600. We see this surge as a recognition of the greater financial and socioeconomic collapse we have been forecasting since the onset of the “Panic of ’08.” We hold to our forecast of “Gold $2,000,” and depending on how the coming crisis unfolds and the responses to it made by governments and central banks, $2,000 may prove but a temporary ceiling before climbing higher.
The Dollar Collapse Will be the Single Largest Event in Human History
Every major civilization in history has collapsed. In almost all recorded cases the collapse has occurred as a result of infinite expansion in a finite environment. We are, no doubt, approaching a similar fate.
The dollar collapse will be the single largest event in human history.
This will be the first event that will touch every single living person in the world. All human activity is controlled by money. Our wealth, our work, our food, our government, even our relationships are affected by money. No money in human history has had as much reach in both breadth and depth as the dollar. It is the de facto world currency. All other currency collapses will pale in comparison to this big one. All other currency crises have been regional and there were other currencies for people to grasp on to. This collapse will be global and it will bring down not only the dollar but all other fiat currencies, as they are fundamentally no different. The collapse of currencies will lead to the collapse of ALL paper assets. The repercussions to this will have incredible results worldwide.
This time around,it is a national and global problem. The global Ponzi scheme has run out of gas as the demographics decline, as cheap abundant oil declines, as hegemonic power declines. This comes at a time when we reach the exponential or collapse phase of our money. The Irresistible Force Paradox says, “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” We are about to find out, when infinite money hits a very finite world.
What is to come is a mathematical certainty. It cannot be otherwise. The only question is one of timing.
Perhaps the final breaking point will come in a few months and the system will crumble before the end of the year. Or, maybe we experience a slow and drawn out depression over the course of a decade. Whatever the case, we’re not going to pretend like we know exactly how and when it will come to pass.
What we can surmise, however, are the effects if and when the unstoppable force hits an immovable object. Keep in mind that what we are talking about the largest financial, economic and governmental debt bubble in the history of the world – and it’s about to pop.
When this happens we can expect nothing short of unmitigated global pandemonium – on a scale never before seen.
Take nothing for granted and expect the unexpected.
Food shortages, violence, governmental tyranny, and especially wide-scale regional or global military conflict. This is the reality of collapse.
Author: Mac Slavo
Date: July 7th, 2011
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
Mad as Hell
“If you run naked, around a tree, at the speed of 185,999 miles/second, there is a distinct possibility of fucking yourself. Or, you can vote for Obama to obtain the exact same effect”.
Albert Einstein
Gunwalker: Laying it all out.
Two big developments have emerged in Gunwalker. First, as I “tweeted” on June 24th, ATF Director Kenneth Melson has indeed spilled his guts and testified on July 4th before Congressional investigators. Gunwalker goes all the way to Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and that walking manifestation of Incubus and Succubus, Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett. Further, Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea over at Sipsey Street Irregulars have broken news this morning that Holder/Clinton/Obama-Jarrett also were walking guns out of Florida into Honduras. Here’s the money quote:
“There are emails in existence where (Special Agent in Charge Virginia) O’Brien has advised those involved that Tampa does not have to report their walked guns because Tampa FD is not a part of Southwest Border or Project Gunrunner.”
Click Here for the full citation.
Whoopsie. I guess the “home office” did know all about Gunwalker, told other offices about it, and set up similar schemes with other ATF offices.
Multiple points:
1. Don’t kid yourselves. This Obama regime gunwalking business is obviously going on all over the country. Don’t think for a second that it was “just Tampa” in addition to the Mexican border. I would look for more ATF field offices to be revealed as virtual weaponry depots for enemies of the United States.
2. Now we know why Hillary Clinton and Obama were falling all over themselves to support and prop-up the Honduran Marxist dictator-wannabe, Manuel Zelaya back in 2009. I never could figure out why they would create such blatantly unflattering, pro-Marxist optics for the Obama regime for a small country like Honduras. Now it all makes perfect sense. Zelaya attempted to overthrow the Honduran constitution and install himself as dictator for life, a la Hugo Chavez. The Honduran Congress AND Supreme Court followed their Constitutional Rule of Law to the letter and removed Zelaya. Within hours Obama and Clinton were threatening Honduras and demanding that the Marxist dictator Zelaya be re-installed. Now we know why. Obama and Clinton were arming Zelaya and were coordinating with Zelaya to run arms through Honduras. Presumably the deal was that some of the arms would stay with Zelaya and most would move into Mexico from the South. Then, Obama and Clinton could “find” U.S. guns in Southern Mexico and Central America, and thus use these optics to bolster their false contention that “90%” of Mexican guns were sourced directly from the U.S. “See? U.S. guns are all the way down in Chiapas State and Guatemala. U.S. guns are everywhere! The Second Amendment simply is not feasible any longer!”
3. Mexican president Felipe Calderon has also parroted the Obama/Clinton fake statistics claiming that “90%” of the guns in Mexico came from the U.S. This strongly implies that the Obama regime colluded with Mexico City on this Gunwalker action with the objective of using the resulting bloodshed to suspend the Second Amendment and disarm the people of the United States.
THIS IS TREASON. This is the epitome of treason. The Obama/Clinton machine has directly coordinated with outside governments to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, and has facilitated the invasion of the United States by a de facto non-uniformed Mexican military in the form of narco-gangs, who, it is argued, are the real power in Mexico City already.
4. This is also textbook SEDITION. In attempting to create optics that implicated the Second Amendment to the Constitution as being responsible for arming narco-terrorists and the resulting mass murder, the Obama/Clinton machine has engaged in attempted insurrection against the established lawful order, namely the Constitution. They have subversively attempted to stir up rebellion against the Constitution by fraudulently stirring up commotion against the Constitution. This “commotion” took the form of the calculated murder of hundreds of Mexican civilians, law enforcement officers and regular military and the murder of at least two U.S. law enforcement officers.
5. Obama personally acknowledged these acts of treason and sedition when he told Sarah Brady on March 30, 2011 that gun control in the U.S. was coming, but that “we have to go through a few processes. Under the radar.”
Nothing short of criminal arrest and trial is morally acceptable for Obama, Jarrett, Hillary Clinton and Holder. Every one of these people should spend the rest of their lives in Florence, Colorado. Since Obama appears to not be a citizen of the U.S., but rather a dual citizen of the U.K. and Indonesia, he should be tried as a non-state, non-uniformed enemy combatant. The rest should be tried for treason, sedition and murder.
by Ann Barnhardt – July 7, AD 2011 10:34 AM MST
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