Why the U.S. economy CAN'T “recover”

09-24-2009 • Seeking Alpha

The U.S. propaganda-machine now reports on a daily basis that a “U.S. economic recovery” is underway – despite not one piece of evidence to support this “bold assertion” (shameless lie?).

Mexico is outraged over influx of its own citizens

09-24-2009 • The Spectrum

The shoe is on the other foot, and the Mexicans from Sonora don't like it one bit. Can you believe the nerve of these people? It's almost funny.

I will sell all my US Dollars Jim Rogers

09-23-2009 • Jim Rogers (HT Liberty Pulse)

Jim Rogers talked about US dollars while he was attending the China International Financial Services Conference (CIFSC) held in Guangzhou on September 10, 2009. Rogers believes that the last 50 years is U.S. government's journey into a huge debt a

Sixty Million Mortgages Kaput?

09-23-2009 • arclein

A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a no

Treasury Memo: Cap and Trade Would Devastate U.S. Industrial Base, Trigger Energy Rationing

9/22/09 • Newsmax

President Obama's cap-and-trade plan could deliver several blows to the U.S. economy, according to a Treasury Department memo that one observer described as "damning." The country could lose 1 percent of its gross domestic product, face accelerate

A New Bubble Of the Fed's Creation - by Steven Pearlstein

09-22-2009 • Washington Post

[passing for intellectual discourse] Yes, the financial crisis has passed and the economy is growing again, but there's a good chance that growth will be temporary -- the result of one-time events like "Cash for Clunkers," the tax credit for first-ti

F.D.I.C. May Borrow Funds From Banks

09-22-2009 • NY Times

[Collateral or is this a robbery?] Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government. Senior regulators say they are seriously considering a plan to have the nation’s healthy banks

AIG's Payback to Taxpayers in Doubt Government Watchdog Says Disgraced Insurance Giant AIG May

09-21-2009 • ABC

One year after the biggest corporate bailout in the country's history, a government watchdog office Monday warned that American taxpayers may not recoup the full $182 billion given to embattled insurance giant American International Group.

US credit shrinks at Great Depression rate prompting fears of double-dip recession Both bank credit

09-16-2009 • Telegraph

Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said US bank loans have fallen at an annual pace of almost 14pc in the three months to August (from $7,147bn to $6,886bn). "There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s," h

Hot Button

09-15-2009 • Washington Times

Energy office Officials at the Treasury Department think cap-and-trade legislation would cost taxpayers hundreds of billion in taxes, according to internal documents circulated within the agency and provided to The Washington Times.

U.S. retail sales jump 2.7 percent in August

09-15-2009 • Reuters

Sales at U.S. retailers rose at their fastest pace in three-and-half years in August as government-sponsored auto incentives buoyed demand for motor vehicles, according to data that also showed strong sales outside the auto sector.

Are We Still in a Gold Bull Market?

09-15-2009 • Bill Bonner via LewRockwell.com

Gold closed at $999 on Tuesday. Then, yesterday, it closed down $2. There’s a time to buy gold; and there’s a time to sell it. Which time is it? The question rose with the gold price itself. It needs an answer. The price of gold today, adju

Jim Rogers on Zombie Capitalism

09-15-2009 • Jim Rogers for LewRockwell.com

"The real problem over the past 10–15 years has been that regulators have not let people fail. Had they let people fail we would have solved this problem a long time ago. I don't know why they're not in jail," Rogers said.

Ron Paul: Federal government ‘one giant toxic asset’

09-14-2009 • Rawstory video

The US economy has not really recovered from last year’s financial crisis, and the policies of the Federal Reserve, the US’s central bank, are ensuring that the suffering will continue much longer than necessary, US House Rep. Ron Paul told CNN.

Risk of deflationary collapse greater now than in 2007

09-14-2009 • Max Keiser

Here is a summary she provided(that is a smart lady named Janet Tavakoli, who wrote a book titled, Dear Mr. Buffet) for MaxKesier.com on where she thinks we are today two years since the crisis began

Wall Street Taking Same Risks That Caused Crisis: Analysts

09-14-2009 • http://www.cnbc.com/id/32842099

(I would REMIND you when reading these the proposed obama regulations have no teeth no enforcement!) A year after the financial system nearly collapsed, the nation's biggest banks are bigger and regaining their appetite for risk. Goldman Sachs [GS

Minimum Wage Market

09-14-2009 • arclein

What I am about to propose is part of a general proposed reshaping of our economic system and must naturally be somewhat out of context. In short, there is a lot more than what I am now describing. Minimum wage must be properly backstopped and ope

Obama to discuss financial regulation on Lehman anniversary

09-13-2009 • AP

President Obama plans to use the first anniversary of Lehman Brothers' collapse to talk about plans to wind down the government role in a financial sector that needed a Washington bailout last year, an administration official said. Obama's speech

The Pictures Gerald Celente Doesn't Want you to See

09-12-2009 • I-Mockery

[Circuit City] had over 500 stores nationwide. That's a lot of empty retail space. Well, fortunately the Halloween season has come to revive these abandoned "superstores" and breathe new life into them.

The American Empire Is Bankrupt

09-12-2009 • Chris Hedges via truthdig.com

By Chris Hedges

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism

New America Foundation Urges US To Inflate Our Way Out Of Debt

09-12-2009 • The Business Insider

A new paper from the New America Foundation urges that US to adopt a policy of moderate inflation in order to allevieate the massive public and private debt burden. Authored by Chris Hayes, the Washington DC editor of the Nation, the paper argues that too much debt will have a deadening effect on the economy, as people are consigned to “debtor serfdom” and the government cannot afford to provide basic services because of the cost of making its debt payments. “The surest way to avoid such a fate is to jettison a central, indeed the central axiom of post-1970s neoliberal global capitalism, and that is to embrace a period of moderate, sustained inflation,” Hayes argues. He provides this chart showing that our debt has grown while inflation has stayed low.

Federal Budget Mystery Solved

09-12-2009 • Speak Truth 2 Power

I think I just figured out how Obama picked his crew to determine our national budget. VIDEO

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

09-11-2009 • NY Times

It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession.

Insiders sell like there's no tomorrow Corporate officers and directors were buying stock when

09-11-2009 • CNN

Can hundreds of stock-selling insiders be wrong? The stock market has mounted an historic rally since it hit a low in March. The S&P 500 is up 55%, as U.S. job losses have slowed and credit markets have stabilized. But against that improving backdrop, one indicator has turned distinctly bearish: Corporate officers and directors have been selling shares at a pace last seen just before the onset of the subprime malaise two years ago.

Jobless in America: Is Double-Digit Unemployment Here to Stay?

09-11-2009 • Time magazine

What made Summers' frank comment important is that it suggests this just-add-gas relationship may now be malfunctioning. The American economy has been shedding jobs much, much faster than Okun's law predicts.   According to that rough rule, we should be at about 8.5% unemployment today, not slipping toward 10%. Something new and possibly strange seems to be happening in this recession. Something unpredicted by the experts.   "I don't think," Summers told the Peterson Institute crowd — deviating again from his text — "that anyone fully understands this phenomenon." And that raises some worrying questions.

The Consumer Credit Game Is OVER

09-10-2009 • The Market Ticker

Do not be fooled by the talking heads on TV - the above graph proves what is really going on and what is at stake. It is not possible to "restart" credit demand among consumers as we have failed in our efforts to boost consumer income, the means by which one pays debt. The consumer has hit the wall as ever-increasing demands on income for the necessities of life - the price of which (food, fuel and medical care in particular) has risen much faster than their income and they are trapped. Finally, the insane ramp in Federal Borrowing has resulted in a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar - a decline that is now threatening to become disorderly. In other words, policy actions have had and will have no impact on the group that must recover for a durable economic recovery - the consumer - as those lower borrowing costs either can't be or haven't been passed through but instead are being STOLEN to cover up bank insolvencies and are CAUSING upward pressure