Mark Matheny
April 9, 2012
We heard all last year that we were in the "summer of recovery", yet unemployment remained high, and food prices have continued to rise as the Federal Reserve continues it's game of expanding the money supply to "stabilize" the economy. The summer turned to winter with no recovery signs in sight.
Now ABC news is reporting that gas prices could hit the $4 mark this week!
As for jobs, there is also alot to be desired. According to the Department of Labor, 120,000 jobs were added in March, however, those jobs were far below the number added in January and February and missed the target number of additional jobs that forecasters expected. Of course what is not being said is that there are currently about 87 million Americans not even looking for a job anymore, having dropped out of the labor force due to the hopelessness of it all.
Then there is the price of food. Have you noticed the products on the shelves are shrinking, yet the price stays the same, or even climbs still? Yet Bernanke says inflation is not significantly climbing, but is at only 2% or so. Yeah, right. Ron Paul has been one of the few who has been showing inflation to be at around 9%:
The Head of Nestle, one of the world's biggest food companies stated back in 2011:
"The situation is similar (to 2008). This has become the new reality," the Swiss giant's chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told the Salzburger Nachrichten daily in his native Austria in an interview.I reported on Higher food prices in February of this year as well :
"We have reached a level of food prices that is substantially higher than before. It will likely settle down at this level.
"If you live in a developing country and spend 80 percent of your income on food then of course you are going to feel it more than here (in Europe) where it is maybe eight percent."
Food prices grew steadily in 2011. U.S. consumer food prices rose more than 6% last year.
What can we expect for 2012? According to AG Today, we can expect home food prices to increase again this year on an average of 3 and 4%. Bread cereal and bakery products may see higher increases than 2011 due to higher wheat prices.
We can expect higher meat prices as well due to smaller herds, and while produce and dairy may run at an average increase of 3 to 4%, bad weather in 2012 could drive fruit and vegetable prices to higher than usual rates.
But here in the U.S. we are feeling the effects of "recovery" as our paychecks seem to do less and less to sustain us. Gerald Celente once said, "It's not a recovery - it's a coverup!"
I will leave you with some sobering facts from The American Dream as to the truth behind the "recovery" that Obama and the administration is playing up:
1 - 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.
2 - The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve has been ballooning like crazy. At this point, the Federal Reserve has very little capital backing a balance sheet that is well over 2 trillion dollars.
The following is how Michael Pento of Euro Pacific Capital describes the situation that the Fed is in....
Today, the Fed has $52.5 billion of capital backing a $2.7 trillion balance sheet.Prior to the bursting of the credit bubble, the public was shocked to learn that our biggest investment banks were levered 30-to-1. When asset values fell, those banks were quickly wiped out. But now the Fed is holding many of the same types of assets and is levered 51-to-1! If the value of their portfolio were to fall by just 2%, the Fed itself would be wiped out.
3 - It is being estimated that it would take a total of 3 trillion euros to bail out all of the countries in Europe that are in imminent danger of financial implosion. Europe is heading for a gigantic financial crisis, and when it happens the United States is going to be dragged down as well.
4 - As the U.S. economy continues to decline, millions of American families are having a very hard time feeding themselves. Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
5 - The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year. It looks like the federal government is going to have to help the U.S. Postal Service out financially.
6 - Freddie Mac says that it is going to need another $6 billion bailout from the federal government.
7 - Fannie Mae says that it is going to need another $7.8 billion bailout from the federal government.
8 - We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year.
9 - The U.S. unemployment rate has been hovering around 9 percent for 30 straight months. It is currently sitting at 9.0 percent.
10 - The total cost of just three federal government programs - the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare - exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars.
11 - Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
12 - The "free trade" agenda being pushed by our globalist politicians is absolutely killing us. Even in industries that we were once dominant in we are now getting wiped out. For instance, in 2010 South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them. Hundreds of billions of dollars that should be going to support American jobs and businesses is going overseas instead.
13 - Since 1985, the federal government has added 13 trillion dollars to the national debt.
14 - The U.S. Treasury Department says that instead of $14.3 billion, the total losses from the auto industry bailouts will actually be $23.6 billion.
15 - Amazingly, the U.S. federal government is now 15 trillion dollars in debt. When Obama first took office the debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.
16 - According to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Federal Reserve made 16 trillion dollars in secret loans to big corporations, Wall Street banks, foreign nations and wealthy individuals during the financial crisis.
17 - The "too big to fail" banks just keep getting larger and larger. In the year 2000, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo held approximately 22 percent of all banking deposits in FDIC-insured institutions. By the middle of 2009 that figure was up to 39 percent. That is an increase of 17 percent in less than a decade.
18 - More Americans than ever are totally dependent on the government. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.
19 - As a result of the lack of good jobs, we have huge numbers of Americans in their prime working years that cannot financially support themselves. As I have written about previously, 19% of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are living with their parents.
20 - America is rapidly getting poorer. Today, more than one out of every seven Americans is living in poverty and more than 20 million of them are considered to be living in extreme poverty.
21 - Income inequality is rising to very dangerous levels. According to a joint House and Senate report entitled "Income Inequality and the Great Recession", the top one percent of all income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had skyrocketed to 21.0 percent.
22 - It is not just the federal government with a debt problem. State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP. Many state and local governments are even closer to going broke than the federal government is.
23 - If you can believe it, during 2010 an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States. Our economy is literally being gutted like a fish.
24 - Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
25 - According to Shadow Government Statistics, the "real" rate of unemployment in the United States is creeping up toward 25 percent.
26 - The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (an agency of the federal government) says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a bailout from the federal government.
27 - In the midst of everything else, the United States is bleeding national wealth like crazy. Tens of billions of dollars more goes out of this country each month than comes into it. Instead of improving, our trade deficit just keeps getting worse. For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
28 - The U.S. housing crash is a crisis that never seems to end. According to one source, approximately 28 percent of all home loans in the United States are currently "underwater". So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?
29 - The federal government has borrowed more than 29,000 dollars per household since Barack Obama first took office.
30 - 30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about 15 times smaller than it is today. How in the world are we ever going to explain this foolishness to future generations?
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