Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 18, 2011

Mort Zuckerman has for years owned U.S. News and World Report Magazine. He says in 1986 its Moscow correspondent Nicholas Daniloff was seized without warning by the KGB.

Mr. Zuckerman immediately flew to Russia but returned home when Soviet officials refused to release their new prisoner. “I worked in the White House for the next four weeks virtually every day and through that I met Reagan,” says Mr. Zuckerman. Ronald Reagan secured Mr. Daniloff’s release in a swap that included a Soviet spy held in the U.S.

“Reagan surprised me,” says Mr. Zuckerman. “He got the point of every argument. . . . He was very decisive. And everybody loved working for him. They followed his lead because they really respected his decisiveness and his instincts.” ‘I was not a Republican and I was not an admirer of his before I knew him,” continues Mr. Zuckerman.   He said the president has to be someone who can persuade the American people to do what they don’t want to do and to like it. And that’s what you have to do. Somebody like Reagan had that authority. He was liked so much and he had a kind of moral authority. That’s what this president has lost.”

More from James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal…

‘It’s as if he doesn’t like people,” says real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman of the president of the United States.

As Mr. Zuckerman ponders the Occupy Wall Street movement, he concludes that “the door to it was opened by the Obama administration, going after the ‘millionaires and billionaires’ as if everybody is a millionaire and a billionaire and they didn’t earn it. . . . To fan that flame of populist anger I think is very divisive and very dangerous for this country.”

This doesn’t mean that Mr. Zuckerman opposes the protesters or questions their motives. When pressed, he concedes that the crowd in Lower Manhattan may include some full-time radicals, but he argues that the protesters are people with a legitimate grievance, as the country suffers high unemployment and stagnant middle-class incomes.

It is a subject he has obviously studied at length, and he explains how the real unemployment rate is actually well above the official level of 9.1%, which only measures people who have applied for a job within the previous four weeks. In fact, he says, unemployment has even surged beyond the Department of Labor’s “U-6” number of 16.5% that has received increasing attention lately because it includes people who have given up looking for work within the past year, plus people who have been cut back from full-time employees to part-timers.

Mr. Zuckerman says that when you also consider the labor-force participation rate and the so-called “birth-death series” that measures business starts and failures, the real U.S. unemployment rate is now 20%.

At that time he supported Mr. Obama’s call for heavy spending on infrastructure. “But if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program,” says Mr. Zuckerman, “roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic Party.” He adds that “the Republicans understood this” and it diminished the chances for bipartisan legislating.

Then there was health-care reform: “Eighty percent of the country wanted them to get costs under control, not to extend the coverage. They used all their political capital to extend the coverage.

“Even if you want to do this to revive your support in the base, to revive your credibility on the issues of the economy and jobs, which has fallen off the table, this isn’t going to accomplish it. Another speech from this guy? The country knows this is just another speech. They understand it almost instantaneously, and his numbers have continued to go down for that reason. What the country wanted was some way of coming up with a solution.”

The only solution Mr. Zuckerman sees now to juice the economy “is to broaden the tax base and simplify and lower tax [rates]. To me that will be as close to revenue-neutral as you’re going to have so it isn’t going to be seen as a budget buster.” He views GOP candidate Herman Cain’s “9-9-9 plan” as a “little bit simple-minded,” but he says that a reform that closes loopholes and reduces compliance costs will stimulate both business and consumer spending.

Sounds like our best shot, let’s see if it happens?

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street, World News | 561 Comments »
Tags: Loopholes, Mort Zuckerman, Protesters, Ronald Reagan, Tax Base

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 17, 2011

The federal government started this whole mess, not on purpose, but it doesn’t matter at this point…the bottom line is that middle class America (the working stiff’s) still have no clue as to what’s going on, that’s why the demonstrations around the country….

The press talks about how the rich got richer. Here’s The Washington Post:

From 1973 through 1985, as Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, documented in 2009, American banks never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. By the mid-2000s, that figure rose to 41 percent. As with profits, so with pay: For more than three decades, from 1948 to 1982, pay levels in finance ranged from 99 to 108 percent of the average of private- sector pay. By 2007 they had reached 181 percent.

The post-1971 US dollar-based monetary system permitted an explosion of credit, which naturally favored the credit industry directly, and the entire financial asset-holding investoriat, indirectly. At the expense of the middle and lower classes. In other words, the expansion of credit, caused by a flexible, expandable money regime, set the whole economy ablaze. The middle and lower classes went deeply into debt to buy things. The “rich” — or at least those who owned stocks and bonds — got richer, as consumer spending lit up the business world, and particularly the financial industry itself. Profits from the financial industry were only about 10% of the total profits on Wall Street in 1970. By the time the credit bubble blew up in 2007 they had grown to 40%.

Wages for working stiffs were flat for 40 years. But earnings on Wall Street soared. In 1970, the typical salary in the financial industry was about the same as for equivalent positions in the rest of the economy. But, by the 21st century, Wall Street salaries were nearly twice as high.

There is more, but we’ll leave that for another day…..

www.thedailyreckoning.com

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, News Letters, Wall Street | 48 Comments »
Tags: Bank Profits, Sector Pay, The Rich

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 17, 2011

Some fresh perspectives from Gene Inger….Security wise the giant U.S. Air Force’s supply and logistics’ exercise in the Middle East is an early ‘stronger’ initiative from Leon Pannetta (our new Defense Secretary).

And, as to the demonstrations around the country,  the key to prosperity: a) bring back American industry (‘buy Made in the U.S.A.’ does make sense); b) realize that China no longer for larger items is so cost advantageous a manufacturer, and create incentives to move those factories back home like Whirlpool’s doing and c) discover that aside Mr. Bernanke, nobody really believes in Keynes that much (he’s still dead and can’t explain as I am what he didn’t intend for debtor nations), and that even Roosevelt wasn’t the first Keynesian President; he was simply desperate (as is Obama) to throw anything at the Depression; and was thus inclined to try that too (lots of other stuff concurrently had mediocre worth, as did Keynesian economics, prior to the buildup ahead of World War II).

10-17-2011

Geopolitics

And when you hear this week, of the giant USAF ‘supply and logistics’ exercise in the Middle East, with C-17’s and giant C-5’s, bringing troops and gear to test ‘quick landing and takeoff’ deployments to both Israel and Saudi Arabia, you’ll not be intended to know whether that’s really an exercise or a rapid build-up in some sort of ‘cover’, in-event of the kind of Iranian challenge we addressed.

It should be noted that just today the UN stated the nuclear inspectors reports are ‘classified’. That’s as the U.S. is contemplating pressing for their release as reports suggest they ‘prove’ Iran has been working on nuclear triggers and the nose-cones for missiles as well as highly processed Uranium which could give the Iranians a ‘quick’ nuclear weapon for (rumored) testing in North Korea (well that’s better than targeting a City of millions on the Mediterranean).

Speaking of the Med; the U.S. (one way or another) isn’t going to let Iran shift their small fleets (with aspirations of carriers believe it or not) into the Atlantic; as they have been good enough to threaten us with that, so we woke up a bit. That may be why the rumored ‘green-light’ to Israeli to ‘engage’ any of Iran’s warships that intrude in the Med, or even in the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden. That Israel has NOT acquiesced to this request reflects both a concern of triggering a wider conflict, and wondering if Washington ‘really’ would back them totally. I call this to your attention because this is an early ‘stronger’ initiative from Leon Pannetta (our new Defense Secretary) that has pointed Obama towards reality a bit more; and a little muscle-flexing, which is the only thing Iran understands.

Revolution?

The main story that may be sobering is the re-emergence of an old concept as always appeals to the least educated; never succeeds; but fails to strike a true middle ground, that does make some sense. That’s: ‘redistribution of wealth’.

Shakespeare may have said ‘what fools these mortals be’;but it’s the Fed that embraced Keynsian economic theory in an economic climate where even (as oft-noted) Keynes said it wouldn’t work; and incredibly they haven’t admitted it. The failure to come-to-grips with that reality would be laughable if not so tragic.

You need leaders to say to the players in this revolution: there are bad banks; but not all bankers are bad. You need leaders to point out that while there sure is greed, and bankers paying themselves salaries and bonuses exponentially higher than their own industries of just a few years ago (without justification as they recovered with taxpayer funds), this doesn’t make the system bad; just a defective series of regulatory oversights, political missteps (like Clinton signing off on repeal of Glass-Steagall, his big mistake; while he balanced the Budget; excellent at the same time), and not a call for yet more levels of Government regulation (it is sufficient to simply have the old rules enforced with adequate oversight). The piecemeal way this is being handled is overly complex, and at the same time looks a bit punitive because of the banks being bloated by the Government capital injections of 2008; so now they try to bleed-off that bloat.

That nobody is saying this promotes the prophets of doom, and limits profits in the markets going forward. Again; a failure to espouse centrist compromises in a world of polarized agendas. Actually, the mainstream of the protestors (that’s not all of them of course) are just asking for what we all want: ‘fairness’. Many, of course, saddled with student loans (which are never forgiven), and jobless prospects for now, are more centrist than our leaders; considering their often very real personal financial pressures. The leaders? They tread lightly in fear of which way the demonstrators might ‘trend’; not knowing that’s how protest of reasonable arguments risks becoming ‘a revolution’. Only in Los Angeles was it ‘let them eat cake’, where the LAPD provided supplies to the demonstrators; who generally cheered them as ‘part of the 99% too’. Four years ago we said this would lead to ‘societal discord’ along the way of the forecast ‘epic debacle’, and sadly it has. And in the U.S. at least, the protest becomes a political force in its own rights; that’s why channeling it and the Tea Party to understand ‘real politik’ and not fringe ideas, becomes ever-increasingly paramount this year. 

None of these ‘sides’ of the arguments attack the key to prosperity: a) bring back American industry (‘buy Made in the U.S.A.’ does make sense); b) realize that China no longer for larger items is so cost advantageous a manufacturer, and create incentives to move those factories back home like Whirlpool’s doing and c) discover that aside Mr. Bernanke, nobody really believes in Keynes that much (he’s still dead and can’t explain as I am what he didn’t intend for debtor nations), and that even Roosevelt wasn’t the first Keynesian President; he was simply desperate (as is Obama) to throw anything at the Depression; and was thus inclined to try that too (lots of other stuff concurrently had mediocre worth, as did Keynesian economics, prior to the buildup ahead of World War II).

Gene Inger

www.ingerletter.com

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, National Security, News Letters, Wall Street, World News | 27 Comments »
Tags: Geopolitics, Israel, Mid East, War Excercise

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 17, 2011

Ugh, what happened to the austerity cuts?  Hmm… data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven’t been any spending cuts at all.

In the first nine months of this year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That’s an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher.

Nor does the claim that state governments sharply cut spending stand up well to closer scrutiny.

Overall state spending continued to climb right through the recession, when all money from state general funds and other funds, federal grants and state bonds is combined.

Total state outlays in 2010 were almost 10% higher than in 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers’ annual State Expenditure Report.

And general fund spending — which makes up about 40% of total state spending — is expected to climb 5.2% in 2011 and 2.6% next year, according to the association’s latest survey.

NASBO says that states were able to sustain spending growth through 2010 only because the federal government was pumping more money in via the $830 billion stimulus, and that these funds are now all but exhausted.

More at: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/588254/201110170805/The-Austerity-Myth-Federal-Spending-Up-5-This-Year.htm

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street | 508 Comments »
Tags: Austerity Myth, Busted Budgets, Government Spending, No Cuts, Where Did It Go

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 17, 2011

It’s not the end of the world,  but “It’s the end of the world as we know it”…. R.E.M.

AWA Americans With An Attitude

Bob Moriarty
Oct 17, 2011

It doesn’t take long to overthrow a government. Algeria took a couple of months, Egypt took only three weeks. As of now, the Occupy Wall Street event is in its fourth week. It took three weeks of total silence for the news media before they even began to pay attention.

The Revolution probably started on September 24th as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna of the New York Police Department casually took out a pepper spray canister and blasts some young women already in the custody of the police. It was all caught on camera as he slithered away.

The mainstream media has yet to really come to grips with the protest. Neither Wall Street nor Washington DC has yet to come to terms with the protests that have now spread all over the country.

It’s true there is no coherent and single message coming from the protestors. All revolutions begin as an unorganized mob of people each with their own agenda. What neither Washington, nor Wall Street get is that Americans are finally waking up. Sure, lots of people were talking about the dangers of derivatives years ago and the stealing going on in Wall Street. But Americans had it pretty good and as long as the paychecks came in, everything was just fine.

Paychecks have stopped for 23.1% of Americans now unemployed; many will never again hold a well-paid job. Those jobs have been shipped overseas and today some 46 million Americans are on food stamps. You can take your pick as to what has caused this attitude adjustment on the part of Americans. An incredible 22.5% of mortgages are underwater. Do the owners of those houses really believe prices will recover or are they hanging on like a cat trying to climb a chalkboard?

Americans have an attitude. It’s going to get worse until we have a massive revolution in the way this country is run. Objectively speaking, it is a no win situation. The government has made promises they cannot possibly honor. Many jobs have been lost forever and Americans are going to go through a long and painful process of adjusting to living with less, in many cases, a lot less.

The 1% doesn’t get it and every time a Rove or Bloomberg or Cantor open their mouths, it becomes more obvious. Americans are pissed and they will continue to multiply on the streets until we have a change of government and attitude.

We can count on the government and police to overreact. They always do and it always makes the change far more violent. The police will start shooting protestors with no reason. Protestors will go home, pick up some of the 194 million guns in the United States and come back and start shooting cops.

This is all very predictible and the outcome is predestined. $195 trillion dollars worth of debt exists in the world and only $150 trillion dollars worth of assets exist. We have to write down the debt and start over with an honest financial system. You cannot have honesty in government without honesty in money.

Bob Moriarty
President: 321gold

Category: Commentary, Economy, Wall Street | 40 Comments »
Tags: Attitude, New Politics, Time

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 16, 2011

Let’s look at the thoughts of Robert Reich’s mission and not worry about it being Democratic or Republican…because as he explains things, it makes a lot of sense…. as for us at TheStatedTruth.com, well remember we’re just the messenger!

Robert Reich: “Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.”

“In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform”.   

Robert Reich

Sunday, October 16, 2022

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.

We are going to battle once again.

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards.

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they’re conservative jurists. But they’re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states’ rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.

Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.

In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.

Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America.

Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books.

Robert Reich

www.robertreich.org

Category: Commentary, Economy, Education and Schooling, Inspirational, National News, News Letters, Research, Wall Street, World News | 2 Comments »
Tags: Fundamental Reform, Messenger, Mission, Progressive Reforms, Robert Reich, the stated truth

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 16, 2011

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Personal Net Worth | 613 Comments »
Tags: American Poor, Bad Seats Hey Buddy, Ten Poorest Cities In America

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 16, 2011

Here’s why the grocery stores are ca put!  They are uncompetitive on price…and guess what matters most in a recession? 

Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger (Ralph’s) and Safeway (Von’s) combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.  Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street | 15 Comments »
Tags: Grocery Stores, Price Check

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 16, 2011

This sums it up….and as most know,  we ‘ve been warning of this for a while here at TheStatedTruth.com . It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what’s going on.  It’s elementary my Dear Watson!

The main problems that have led to the protests are quite obvious: a pronounced inequality in the distribution of economic gains and an even worse gap between the legal treatment of the well-connected and everyone else. Of course, ‘well-connected’ is merely a euphemism for ‘has enough money to stoke the self-interests of legislators and regulators’.

By Chris Martenson PhD

On Friday, October 7th, a beautiful blue-sky and warm-ish October day, I went to Zuccotti Park in NYC with Livio Sanchez (film editor) and Debby Brand (camera operator) to see firsthand what Occupy Wall Street was all about and record what we could.

What we found were people united by a sense that our national narrative is off course and that resentment over the patent unfairness of our current system is building. Perhaps the most common expression we found was that people, to varying degrees, thought that there was something systemically wrong.

Because of this widespread view of ‘everything being wrong,’ there was, naturally, no single message or thing around which everyone had gathered. Instead, the view was simply that the system being discussed — political, capitalist, economic, or monetary — was broken.

When you hold such a view, there’s really no ‘ask’ that makes sense. If the political system is irretrievably in the clutches of special interests, then voting new members into that system is perceived to be a waste of effort.

ChrisMartenson

www.chrismartenson.com

Category: Commentary, Economy, Inspirational, National News, Wall Street | 49 Comments »
Tags: Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Protests, Wall Street

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 15, 2011

What we have here is a warning shot over the bow; to the government, the mega rich and the elite…are they listening or in denial? Hello, Hello?

“So, you can laugh at or disparage the demonstrators all you want. You can call them spoiled, silly or sophomoric. You can single out the fringe and think it’s representative of the whole. But that won’t change the fact that this demonstration has touched a nerve. A rag-tag group is standing up where the government, regulators, media and business elite have rolled-over and played dead. They are shining a light on the financial cancer at the heart of America.”

Jim Rickards,  About Occupy Wall Street

James G. Rickards is an American lawyer, economist and investment banker with 35 years of experience on Wall Street, working in capital markets and as former general counsel for the hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management. He was also the principle negotiator in the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1998.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street, World News | 73 Comments »
Tags: Demonstrators, Jim Ricards, Occupy Wall Street, Wall Street

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 13, 2011

The $2 bill first originated on June 25, 1776, when the Continental Congress authorized issuance of the $2 denominations in “bills of credit for the defense of America.” And guess what, the $2 dollar bill is still made (just ask your bank to order you some) and the reverse side has a history lesson showing the signing of the Declaration Of Independence with some very famous recognizable people of the day in the background starting with Benjamin Franklin.

• The Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces 26 million notes a day, with a face value of approximately $907 million.
• Over 90 percent of U.S. currency is Federal Reserve notes.
• A stack of currency one-mile high would contain more than 14.5 million notes.
• Currency is actually fabric composed of 25 percent linen and 75 percent cotton. Currency paper has tiny red and blue synthetic fibers of various lengths evenly distributed through out the paper.
• The $2 bill first originated on June 25, 1776, when the Continental Congress authorized issuance of the $2 denominations in “bills of credit for the defense of America.”
• The first dollar coin was issued in 1782.
• The dollar was officially adopted as our nation’s unit of currency in 1785.
• The largest bill ever printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was the $100,000 gold certificate.
• The U.S. Secret Service was created during the Civil War to fight counterfeiting.
• The motto “In God We Trust” did not appear on paper currency until 1963.
• The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has two facilities, one in Washington, D.C. and the other in Fort Worth, Texas. Together they use approximately 9.7 tons of ink per day.
• The approximate weight of a bill is one gram. Since there are 454 grams in one pound, there are 454 notes in one pound.
• The largest note produced today is the $100 bill.
• It costs approximately 6.4 cents per note to produce U.S. currency.
• About 45 percent of the notes printed each year are $1, and 95 percent are used as replacement notes.
• About 4,000 double folds (forward and backward) are required before a note will tear.
• The average life of a Federal Reserve note depends upon its denomination:
  $1 bill – 21 months
  $5 bill – 16 months
  $10 bill – 18 months
  $20 bill – 2 years
  $50 bill – 4.5 years
  $100 bill – 7.5 years

Category: Commentary, Inspirational, National News, Tid Bits, Wall Street | 83 Comments »
Tags: dollar, Federal Reserve Notes, History Lesson

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 13, 2011

Food for deep thought…these are staggering!

State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.

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

According to a new study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

One out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

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%. The cost of a health insurance policy for the average American family rose by a whopping 9 percent last year, and according to a report put out by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, the average family health insurance policy now costs over $15,000 a year.

Average yearly tuition at U.S. private universities is now up to $27,293.

One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.

There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States right now than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

Only 55.3% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were employed last year.  That was the lowest level that we have seen since World War II.

According to Paul Osterman, a professor of economics at MIT, approximately 20 percent of all employed Americans are making $10.65 an hour or less.

The all-time record for fewest number of new homes sold in the United States was broken in 2009.  Then it was broken again in 2010.  It is on pace to be broken once again in 2011.

According to a Harris Interactive survey taken near the end of last year, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.  In 2007, the same survey found that only 43 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.

In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers.  According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.

The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007. Approximately one-third of the entire population of the state of Alabama is now on food stamps.

The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.

The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Personal Net Worth, Real Estate, Research, Wall Street | 47 Comments »
Tags: Stats, Stggering Statistics, tid bits

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 13, 2011

Category: Commentary, Inspirational, National News, Quote of the Day | 721 Comments »
Tags: Knowing, Reason, So Which Is It?Conflict

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 13, 2011

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But
then I repeat myself” ~ Mark Twain

Category: Commentary, Economy, Inspirational, National News, Wall Street | 665 Comments »
Tags: Mark Twain Quote;Idiots;, Suppose

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 12, 2011

Warren Buffett’s son Howard speaks his mind…on class warfare, the disparity has never been greater.  The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

From Bloomberg:

Howard Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) director and son of Chairman Warren Buffett, said Wall Street protesters were provoked by abuses from corporations amid a widening disparity between rich and poor.  Over the past 15 years, “we saw large corporations really screw people.”

“There has never been a larger gap between earnings in this country,” said Howard Buffett, who was in Des Moines to deliver a speech at the World Food Prize conference. “There has never been a time in my lifetime when the government is going to cut an incredible amount of programs that support poor people and feed them.”

“There has been class warfare going on,” Warren Buffett, 81, said in a Sept. 30 interview with Charlie Rose on PBS. “It’s just that my class is winning. And my class isn’t just winning, I mean we’re killing them.”

Warren Buffett has backed some of the biggest financial firms while chiding bankers for excesses in risk-taking and compensation. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire invested $700 million in Salomon Inc. in 1987, $5 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in 2008 and $5 billion in Bank of America this year. Buffett, the father, has compared Wall Street to “a church that’s running raffles on the weekend.”

Wall Street “does a lot of good things and then it has this casino,” Buffett said in October 2010. “One of the problems we still have is we have unbalanced incentives for managers of huge financial institutions.”

Blackrock Chief Executive Officer Laurence D. Fink and Jim Chanos of hedge fund Kynikos Associates said this month they understand the anger directed at financial companies. Bill Gross, who runs the biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said in a Twitter post that wage earners are fighting back after three decades of class warfare in which they were “being shot at.” Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit said yesterday he’d be happy to talk with protesters.

Category: Commentary, Economy, Finance, National News, Wall Street | 49 Comments »
Tags: Casino, Class Warfare, Corporate Abuse, Earnings Gap, Howard Buffett, Raffles On Wall Street, Wall Street Protesrers, Warren Buffett

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 12, 2011

Remember one thing…when people are broke, they have nothing to lose.  The “system” as we have known it, is going down.  There is a reason for the protests going on around the world.  Politicians and corporate America, need to get real. We are in the early stages of a huge class war – the rich vs. everybody else…the poor are broke and the middle classes are struggling for their financial lives.

From today’s WSJ:

Key parts of the U.S. supply chain have some troubling news: The traditional holiday peak in shipping volumes has disappeared.  This is unprecedented except for 2008-2009.

Both the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, which together account for more than 40% of imports into the U.S., say the rise in shipments that typically begins in July and lasts through early fall didn’t happen this year. Instead, Dick Steinke, executive director of the Port of Long Beach, says shipping volumes have posted two consecutive months of declines, and he’s anticipating a double-digit drop for September. The last time the port experienced no peak was during the height of the recession in 2009, he says. Before that, the phenomenon was unprecedented.

Rail companies and other shippers are reporting similar news.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Retail, Wall Street, World News | 22 Comments »
Tags: Shipping Volumes, Supply Chain

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 11, 2011

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated:‘If Ford had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.’ Did he really say that?

Upon some thought, here is the retort ….

If Ford had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash………..Twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning light. 

7. The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’ before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn the engine off.

Category: Inspirational, Jokes, Technology, Tid Bits | 549 Comments »
Tags: Car vs Computer

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 11, 2011

Looks like trouble…for this Wall Street fat cat!  

Category: Commentary, Pictures, Wall Street | 54 Comments »
Tags: Leaning The Wrong Way, Trouble

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 11, 2011

What’s coming at us over the next few years, will likely make 2008 look like a warm up!  Nevertheless, … analysts are expecting another earnings season of double-digit growth (the eighth quarter in a row), yep…even though corporate earnings as a percentage of GDP are in the area of all time record levels seen only 4 other times in history, levels that have in the past shown multi year declines according to Bill Gross at PIMCO.  You’ve been warned.

Here is the reality of our financial system today:

Ben Bernanke issued his own statement of warning, stating that the recovery is “close to faltering.”

The IMF and the Bank of England have recently warned that the world is facing a “financial meltdown” and possibly “the worst financial crisis in history.”

The recent manufacturing survey posted its second consecutive month of contraction. As ZeroHedge noted, collapse in this economic metric has been greater than any two-month period in the last ten years, including 2008.

This has all happened while interest rates are at the lowest level in recorded history.  What happens one day in the future when interest rates move up…it’s inevitable at some point!

So here we are…..

• The European banking system is facing a systemic collapse, and when they go down, they will likely take everyone else down with them…including Asia, Japan, China and the U.S.
• The U.S. economy has rolled over and is in a confirmed double dip in the context of a larger depression, but denial is huge here.
• The Central Banks and regulators have admitted we are peering into the abyss and they have no clue what to do.  Why is that?  Because they nor anyone else has ever seen this set up before!

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Personal Net Worth, Wall Street, World News | 387 Comments »
Tags: Disaster, national economy, Warm Up, Worse

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 9, 2011

What a joke….Read my lips…There should be no bonuses until the losses are all made up.  Period. No exceptions. None. Capice!

CalPERS, the California state  pension fund, which serves more than 1.6 million public employees, retirees and their families, estimated its unfunded liabilities at $38.6 billion on July 1, 2008, it’s bigger now!  CalPERS currently has assets totaling about $218 billion.

This is why there are riots in New York and Wall Street, this is the reason. People have had enough, they’re fed up…..CalPERS gives top execs $4.5 million in new bonuses for its most recent year ended June 30, 2011.  Back in 2008-2009….the fund lost $59 billion (almost 1/3 of it’s value) and the bonuses increased 8%!

Back in 2008-2009….the fund lost $59 billion, the money went to money heaven and the bonuses increased 8%!  Are they kidding…NO!

Real estate was the hardest-hit investment category in the CalPERS portfolio during the 2008-09 fiscal year, suffering from the same property devaluations felt across the country. That portfolio lost 47.9 percent of its value over the fiscal year. (yep, in just one year).  Yet CalPERS awarded the portfolio’s senior investment manager, Ted Eliopoulos, a $93,941 bonus on top of his $333,124 salary, which was 8 percent higher than the previous year.

According to CalPERS’ 2008-2009 annual report, the global equity portfolio saw a 26 percent decline in U.S. stocks and a 32.4 percent drop in international stocks during 2008-09. Eric Baggesen, the senior investment officer for global equity, received a 6 percent raise, bumping his salary up from $300,000 to $318,000 in the 2008-09 year. He also received bonuses totaling $254,186 over the two-year period.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Pensions and Retirement, Real Estate, Wall Street | 949 Comments »
Tags: Calpers, pensions, under funded pensions

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 9, 2011

Dexia’s Belgian Bank To Be 100% Nationalized…

They are talking Good Bank, Bad Bank….the good assets are put into a “good bank” that will operate going forward and is owned by the governments of France and Belgium, the bad bank assets (worthless?) will be in another bank to handle all of the troublesome crap….

 “The governments of France, Belgium and Luxembourg reached agreement on Sunday on a rescue package for Dexia , which will be put to the stricken Franco-Belgian bank’s board later in the day for approval. “The governments… have reaffirmed their solidarity in finding a solution to secure the future of Dexia,” said a statement from the office of Belgium’s caretaker Prime Minister Yves Leterme. “The suggested solution, which is also the result of intense consultations with all partners involved, will be submitted to Dexia’s Board of Directors for approval.”

Belgium and France may also have agreed that they will guarantee 60 percent and 40 percent, respectively, of the refinancing of about 120 billion euros ($160 billion) of bonds and loans held by Paris- and Brussels-based Dexia, sources said. Proceeds from the sale of Dexia’s profitable units will go to mitigate losses of what will be left of Dexia, which will form a bad bank, sources said.

“Belgium received approval from France to buy as much as 100 percent of Dexia SA (DEXB)’s Belgian consumer bank as part of proposals to dismantle the French-Belgian lender, people with knowledge of the talks said. [Good Bank is fully nationalized; only Dexia’s approval is now needed, and that has not come yet…]

www.zerohedge.com

Category: Commentary, Economy, Finance, National News, Wall Street, World News | 818 Comments »
Tags: Dreia Disaster, Europes Bad Banks, Good Bank Bad Bank

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 9, 2011

The Daily Reckoning……It’s Top Secret

This from an episode of Frontline called “Top Secret America.”…..One example is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. According to Dana Priest the DNI started as 11 people in the Old Executive Office Building. In short order, it grew to a couple of hundred people and moved to a bigger building. It had two floors in the massive Defense Intelligence Agency building. Still, it grew. “So they moved to some of the priciest real estate in the Washington area,” Priest says. “And now they are gigantic — 500,000 square feet, five Wal-Marts stacked on top of each other.”

Consider that in 2002, there were 34 new organizations created to work at the top-secret level. In 2003, government created 39 more; in 2004, 30 more; in 2005, another 35; and more each year since. “Every year,” Priest goes on, “more than two dozen, sometimes three dozen, entirely new federal organizations dedicated to counter terrorism [were] being created after Sept. 11.”

And this…Priest talked about how she discovered that nearly a million people have top-secret clearance. That’s 2.5 times the population of Washington, D.C. There are 1,900 companies and 1,100 federal organizations that work at the top-secret level

From an episode of Frontline, called “Top Secret America:

Chris Mayer of www.TheDailyReckoning.com reviews this:

” It’s based on the work of Dana Priest and William Arkin. I admire Priest, who is a legendary reporter at The Washington Post. Her expertise is on matters of intelligence and the “war on terror.”

What Priest uncovered as part of a near two-year investigation was a secret America growing up in the wake of Sept. 11. After Sept. 11, America’s intelligence, surveillance and counter-terrorism agencies basically got a blank check to fund their efforts. The CIA got a billion dollars right away. So did the National Security Agency (NSA). “What we found in the years immediately after Sept. 11 was that the existing agencies grew enormously,” Priest says. “They doubled in size, many of them, and new organizations were created as well, big ones.”

There was a boom in new agencies geared to fighting this new war. Consider that in 2002, there were 34 new organizations created to work at the top-secret level. In 2003, government created 39 more; in 2004, 30 more; in 2005, another 35; and more each year since. “Every year,” Priest goes on, “more than two dozen, sometimes three dozen, entirely new federal organizations dedicated to counterterrorism [were] being created after Sept. 11.”

And each agency, after its creation, grew and grew. One example is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI started as 11 people in the Old Executive Office Building. In short order, it grew to a couple of hundred people and moved to a bigger building. It had two floors in the massive Defense Intelligence Agency building. Still, it grew. “So they moved to some of the priciest real estate in the Washington area,” Priest says. “And now they are gigantic — 500,000 square feet, five Wal-Marts stacked on top of each other.”

At the conference, the big topic of discussion was defense spending. Everyone is expecting defense-spending cuts. They are inevitable. And this will affect many of the companies at the conference because they have large defense businesses.

But there is one aspect of defense spending that isn’t going go to go down. In fact, broader government spending on intelligence and surveillance and covert warfare is only to go up.

What’s going to be cut are the traditional battlefield programs. The big stuff: Tanks. Submarines. No one is going to let the air out of a ballooning secret America. “No one’s talking about turning them off,” Priest says. “It’s not like they’ve got mobile trailers that they’re up in, and then when the floods recede, they’re going to take them away.”

The rules also changed, greasing the skids. Government made it easier to higher contractors to skirt the slow process of hiring more federal workers. Now, when they want to grow quickly, they turn to the private sector. Priest talks about how the big defense contractors — CACI, Lockheed Martin, L-3 — and others saw this boom in intelligence, surveillance and the like.

The “war on terror” is not one that needs tanks and submarines and fighter jets. It needs to gather information. It needs to analyze that information. It needs surveillance equipment. Smart weaponry. Unmanned drones. It’s a top-secret America.

Priest talked about how she discovered that nearly a million people have top-secret clearance. That’s 2.5 times the population of Washington, D.C. There are 1,900 companies and 1,100 federal organizations that work at the top-secret level.

I am not going to pass judgment on what’s happening here. You can decide for yourself. I would encourage you to read Dana Priest’s and William Arkin’s work. There is a lot out there on the web, too, in addition to a book, plus the Frontline episode.

Some of their work is mind-blowing. If you were to start talking about this stuff at a dinner party, your friends would think you were a conspiracy theorist. But this is real. I mean, we’re talking about massive nondescript buildings in the Washington area that might be one or two floors up, but go 10 stories down. One of the guys on TV said they have shops and restaurants down there “just for them.” I’ll never look at the Washington suburbs in quite the same way again. What are they all doing? No one knows for sure.

www.thedailyreckoning.com

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, National Security, News Letters, World News | 104 Comments »
Tags: Government, national security, Top Secret Clearance, Wow

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 9, 2011

Here’s the real reason for the Wall Street protests….Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.  That sums it up!

Robert Reich, President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor said recently – The top one half of 1 percent of the population now owns over 28 percent of the nation’s total wealth. He goes on to say ‘Wealth over $7.2 million should be subject to a 2 percent surtax. (Notice he said wealth, not income!).  After all, the top one half of 1 percent now own over 28 percent of the nation’s total wealth. Such a tax on them would yield $70 billion a year.” According to an analysis by Yale’s Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, that would generate at least half of $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction target over ten years set for the supercommittee.

Before the recession according to the NY Times, the top 1 percent owned 23.5% of the nations total wealth. And if we go back to the late 1970s, the top 1 percent owned only “10” percent.

This from the New York Times pretty much sums things up!

Let’s repeat this: Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.

When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today’s deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.

In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.

Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its aftermath have only accelerated the decline.

Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills, including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public investment. It also skews political power, because policy almost invariably reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income Americans.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Personal Net Worth, Wall Street, World News | 448 Comments »
Tags: Lights Out, Rich Man Poor Man, Wealth Inequality

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 7, 2011

Category: Commentary, National News, Wall Street, World News | 589 Comments »
Tags: Financial Stinker, Skunky

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 7, 2011

Our immediate question that comes to mind is: What happens when a computer virus attacks the new highly technological automobiles. Answer: There will be a few less cars on the highway, that’s because the average car is over 10 years old, and all things considered, there really aren’t that many of the new versions around…The new car business will be a growth business once we get through our depression.  But that’s a few years away at best.

Wired Magazine reports, a viral infestation has just struck the U.S. drone fleet. “A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones. The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas.

More:

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

Despite their widespread use, the drone systems are known to have
security flaws. Many Reapers and Predators don’t encrypt the video they
transmit to  American troops on the ground. In the summer of 2009, U.S.
forces discovered “days and days and hours and hours of the drone footage on the laptops of Iraqi insurgents. A $26 piece of software allowed the militants to capture the video.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, National Security | 265 Comments »
Tags: Computer Virus, Drones, New Autos

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 7, 2011

The consumer has hit a wall with credit growth, and can’t handle any more agony, while the government is borrowing like a drunk sailor.

www.zerohedge.com

Category: Charts and Graphs, Commentary, Economy, Interest Rates, Bonds, National News, Pensions and Retirement, Personal Net Worth, Wall Street | 48 Comments »
Tags: consumer credit, Government Borrowing, Hitting A Wall

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 7, 2011

So, the consumer is still tapped out….duh.  The government is the only one that doesn’t see this.

The consumer credit number was dreadfully bad. It printed -$9.5bn against an expectation of +$8bn and vs  prior year of $12bn.

And…We just saw the first drop in non-revolving credit in a year. This is credit that goes out for car purchases and school loans, logically speaking maybe student loans have hit a wall ?  This is the biggest swing in the MoM contraction (or momentum deceleration) since May 1998!

What we have is a six standard-deviation deceleration (based on the last 60 years of history).

www.zerohedge.com

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street | 462 Comments »
Tags: consumer credit, Crdit Contraction

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 6, 2011

IMF Advisor Robert Shapiro comments on the European financial crisis: “In The Absence Of A Credible Plan We Will Have A Global Financial Meltdown In Two To Three Weeks”

Rest assured this is unlikely to happen, because it’s a game of dominoes. Once the first one goes down, they all go down!  And da boys in Europe know it. On the other hand…maybe stupid is their middle name.

From Zero Hedge……..

In an interview with IMF advisor Robert Shapiro, : “If they can not address [the financial crisis] in a credible way I believe within perhaps 2 to 3 weeks we will have a meltdown in sovereign debt which will produce a meltdown across the European banking system. We are not just talking about a relatively small Belgian bank, we are talking about the largest banks in the world, the largest banks in Germany, the largest banks in France, that will spread to the United Kingdom, it will spread everywhere because the global financial system is so interconnected. All those banks are counterparties to every significant bank in the United States, and in Britain, and in Japan, and around the world. This would be a crisis that would be in my view more serrious than the crisis in 2008…. What we don’t know the state of credit default swaps held by banks against sovereign debt and against European banks, nor do we know the state of CDS held by British banks, nor are we certain of how certain the exposure of British banks is to the Ireland sovereign debt problems.”

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street, World News | 49 Comments »
Tags: banks, Credit, European Dominoes, Sovereign Debt, World Debt Problem

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 5, 2011

Follow the bouncing ball…

Robert Reich takes to the dusty trail a whole lot better then Congress or the White House does.  Will someone please take off those blinders!

Today Ben Bernanke added his voice to those who are worried about Europe’s debt crisis.

But why exactly should America be so concerned? Yes, we export to Europe – but those exports aren’t going to dry up. And in any event, they’re tiny compared to the size of the U.S. economy.

If you want the real reason, follow the money. A Greek (or Irish or Spanish or Italian or Portugese) default would have roughly the same effect on our financial system as the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Financial chaos.

Investors are already getting the scent. Stocks slumped to 13-month low on Monday as investors dumped Wall Street bank shares.

The Street has lent only about $7 billion to Greece, as of the end of last year, according to the Bank for International Settlements. That’s no big deal.

But a default by Greece or any other of Europe’s debt-burdened nations could easily pummel German and French banks, which have lent Greece (and the other wobbly European countries) far more.

That’s where Wall Street comes in. Big Wall Street banks have lent German and French banks a bundle.

The Street’s total exposure to the euro zone totals about $2.7 trillion. Its exposure to to France and Germany accounts for nearly half the total.

And it’s not just Wall Street’s loans to German and French banks that are worrisome. Wall Street has also insured or bet on all sorts of derivatives emanating from Europe – on energy, currency, interest rates, and foreign exchange swaps. If a German or French bank goes down, the ripple effects are incalculable.

Get it? Follow the money: If Greece goes down, investors start fleeing Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal as well. All of this sends big French and German banks reeling. If one of these banks collapses, or show signs of major strain, Wall Street is in big trouble. Possibly even bigger trouble than it was in after Lehman Brothers went down.

That’s why shares of the biggest U.S. banks have been falling for the past month. Morgan Stanley closed Monday at its lowest since December 2008 – and the cost of insuring Morgan’s debt has jumped to levels not seen since November 2008.

It’s rumored that Morgan could lose as much as $30 billion if some French and German banks fail. (That’s from Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, which tracks all cross-border exposure of major banks.)

$30 billion is roughly $2 billion more than the assets Morgan owns (in terms of current market capitalization.)

But Morgan says its exposure to French banks is zero. Why the discrepancy? Morgan has probably taken out insurance against its loans to European banks, as well as collateral from them. So Morgan feels as if it’s not exposed.

But does anyone remember something spelled AIG? That was the giant insurance firm that went bust when Wall Street began going under. Wall Street thought it had insured its bets with AIG. Turned out, AIG couldn’t pay up.

Haven’t we been here before?

Republicans and Wall Street executives who continue to yell about Dodd-Frank overkill are dead wrong. The fact no one seems to know Morgan’s exposure to European banks or derivatives – or that of most other giant Wall Street banks – shows Dodd-Frank didn’t go nearly far enough.

Regulators still don’t know what’s happening on the Street. They have no clear picture of the derivatives exposure of giant U.S. financial institutions.

Which is why Washington officials are terrified – and why Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner keeps begging European officials to bail out Greece and the other deeply-indebted European nations.

Several months ago, when the European debt crisis first became apparent, Wall Street banks said not to worry. They had little or no exposure to Europe’s problems. The Federal Reserve said the same. In July, Ben Bernanke reassured Congress the exposure of U.S. banks to European nations in trouble was “quite small.”

Now we’re hearing a different tune.

Make no mistake. The United States wants Europe to bail out its deeply indebted nations so they can repay what they owe big European banks. Otherwise, those banks could implode — taking Wall Street with them.

One of the many ironies here is some badly-indebted European nations (Ireland is the best example) went deeply into debt in the first place bailing out their banks from the crisis that began on Wall Street.

Full circle.

In other words, Greece isn’t the real problem. Nor is Ireland, Italy, Portugal, or Spain. The real problem is the financial system — centered on Wall Street. And we still haven’t solved it.

Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His “Marketplace” commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes. He is also Common Cause’s board chairman.

www.robertreich.org 

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street | 464 Comments »
Tags: Bank Bailouts, Robert Reich, Wall Street

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 4, 2011

The Fed has used most of its tools (already) to help the economy. It said it expects to keep interest rates ultra low into 2013, maybe longer. Congress is tying to cut, not raise, spending. Europe is resisting bold steps to save its most troubled economies. The bottom line is a recession is on the verge (probably happened already) of seizing Europe and eventually spreading around the world.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke bluntly warned Congress on Tuesday of what most of America has sensed for some time: The economic recovery, such as it is, “is close to faltering.”

The Fed chief was asked about protests around Wall Street, which went on for an 18th day as demonstrators railed against corporate greed and expressed frustration over the economy.

Bernanke replied: “I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what’s happening. They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess. And they’re dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington. And at some level, I can’t blame them.”

Bernanke said he believes the Fed’s latest move to help the economy would be “meaningful but not an enormous support” for the economy. The program, known as Operation Twist, is designed to lower long-term interest rates so people and businesses will spend more money.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street | 429 Comments »
Tags: Bernanke, Economy, Fed, Tough Times

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 3, 2011

Hmm…Question: Why is Dexia in trouble? Dexia bank in Belgium has total liabilities equal to 180% of GDP of Belgium according to Harvey Organ.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street | 545 Comments »
Tags: Banking Nightmare, European Bankers, In Trouble

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 3, 2011

We should say this is a horrific economic crisis that’s about to get (out of) hand…..Debt is a very cruel master. It will almost always bring more pain and suffering than you anticipated. It is easy to get into debt, but it is very difficult to get out of debt. In the end, we will see that the debt-fueled prosperity that the western world has been enjoying for decades was just an illusion.

You can never solve a debt problem with more debt, which is what governments are trying to do, it has never worked. The next several years are going to be incredibly clear on why debt is bad.When the dominoes start to fall, we are going to witness a financial avalanche which is going to destroy the finances of millions of people. But you have been warned….don’t let this warning go unheeded! 

All across the western world, governments and major banks are rapidly becoming insolvent. So far, the powers that be are keeping all of the balls in the air by throwing around lots of bailout money. But now the political will for more bailouts is drying up and the number of troubled entities seems to grow by the day. Right now the western world is facing a debt crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in world history. Europe has had a tremendously difficult time just trying to keep Greece afloat, and several much larger European countries are now on the verge of a major financial crisis. In addition, there is a growing number of very large financial institutions all over the western world that are also rapidly approaching a day of reckoning.

If things go really badly, things could totally fall apart in a few weeks. But more likely it will be a few more months until the juggling act ends.

Right now, the banking system in Europe is coming apart at the seams. Because the global financial system is so interconnected today, when major European banks start to fail it is going to have a cascading effect across the United States and Asia as well.

The financial crisis of 2008 plunged us into the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

The next financial crisis could potentially hit the world even harder.

The following are 12 quotes from insiders that are warning about the horrific economic crisis that is almost here….

#1 George Soros: “Financial markets are driving the world towards another Great Depression with incalculable political consequences. The authorities, particularly in Europe, have lost control of the situation.”

#2 PIMCO CEO Mohammed El-Erian: “These are all signs of an institutional run on French banks. If it persists, the banks would have no choice but to delever their balance sheets in a very drastic and disorderly fashion. Retail depositors would get edgy and be tempted to follow trading and institutional clients through the exit doors. Europe would thus be thrown into a full-blown banking crisis that aggravates the sovereign debt trap, renders certain another economic recession, and significantly worsens the outlook for the global economy.”

#3 Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy, global head of securities services at UniCredit SpA (Italy’s largest bank): “The only remaining question is how many days the hopeless rearguard action of European governments and the European Central Bank can keep up Greece’s spirits.”

#4 Stefan Homburg, the head of Germany’s Institute for Public Finance: “The euro is nearing its ugly end. A collapse of monetary union now appears unavoidable.”

#5 EU Parliament Member Nigel Farage: “I think the worst in the financial system is yet to come, a possible cataclysm and if that happens the gold price could go (higher) to a number that we simply cannot, at this moment, even imagine.”

#6 Carl Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics: “At this point, our base case is that Greece will default within weeks.”

#7 Goldman Sachs strategist Alan Brazil: “Solving a debt problem with more debt has not solved the underlying problem. In the US, Treasury debt growth financed the US consumer but has not had enough of an impact on job growth. Can the US continue to depreciate the world’s base currency?”

#8 International Labour Organization director general Juan Somavia recently stated that total unemployment could “increase by some 20m to a total of 40m in G20 countries” by the end of 2012.

#9 Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman: “It is an open secret that numerous European banks would not survive having to revalue sovereign debt held on the banking book at market levels.”

#10 Alastair Newton, a strategist for Nomura Securities in London “We believe that we are just about to enter a critical period for the eurozone and that the threat of some sort of break-up between now and year-end is greater than it has been at any time since the start of the crisis”

#11 Ann Barnhardt, head of Barnhardt Capital Management, Inc.: “It’s over. There is no coming back from this. The only thing that can happen is a total and complete collapse of EVERYTHING we now know, and humanity starts from scratch. And if you think that this collapse is going to play out without one hell of a big hot war, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”

#12 Lakshman Achuthan of ECR: “When I call a recession…that means that process is starting to feed on itself, which means that you can yell and scream and you can write a big check, but it’s not going to stop.”

*****

In my opinion, the epicenter of the “next wave” of the financial collapse is going to be in Europe. But that does not mean that the United States is going to be okay. The reality is that the United States never recovered from the last recession and there are already a lot of signs that we are getting ready to enter another major recession. A major financial collapse in Europe would just accelerate our plunge into a new economic crisis.

If you want to read something that will really scare you, then you should check out what Dr. Philippa Malmgren is saying. Dr. Philippa Malmgren is the President and founder of Principalis Asset Management. She is also a former member of the Bush economic team.

Malmgren is claiming that Germany is seriously considering bringing back the Deutschmark. In fact, she claims that Germany is very busy printing new currency up. In a list of things that we could see happen over the next few months, she included the following….

“The Germans announce they are re-introducing the Deutschmark. They have already ordered the new currency and asked that the printers hurry up.”

This is quite a claim for someone to be making. You would think that someone that used to work in the White House would not make such a claim unless it was based on something solid.

If Germany did decide to leave the euro, you would see an implosion of the euro that would be truly historic.

The only way that the euro would have had a chance of working is if all of the governments using the euro would have kept debt levels very low.

Unfortunately, the financial systems of the western world are designed to push governments into high levels of debt.

The truth is that the euro was doomed from the very beginning.

Now we are approaching a day of reckoning. We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, but the bubble is ending. There are several ways that the powers that be could handle this, but all of them will lead to greater financial instability.

In the end, we will see that the debt-fueled prosperity that the western world has been enjoying for decades was just an illusion.

Debt is a very cruel master. It will almost always bring more pain and suffering than you anticipated. It is easy to get into debt, but it can be very difficult to get out of debt.

There is no way that the western world can unwind this debt spiral easily.

The only way that another massive economic crisis can be put off for even a little while would be for the powers that be to “kick the can down the road” a little farther by creating even more debt.

But in the end, you can never solve a debt problem with more debt.

The next several years are going to be an incredibly clear illustration of why debt is bad.

When the dominoes start to fall, we are going to witness a financial avalanche which is going to destroy the finances of millions of people.

Parts from www.zerohedge.com

Category: Commentary, Economy, Finance, Inspirational, National News, Personal Net Worth, Wall Street | 49 Comments »
Tags: Europe Banks, Financial Warnings, Insolvent Banks

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 2, 2011

This is how depressions start, and don’t think for a moment that the United States doesn’t know it…..one mistake turns into many.  Europe has many.  It starts in Europe, then given time it moves around the world. 

Dexia, one of Belgiums largest banks is tying its best not to go night night (no problem, the Europeans will save them because they have no other choices), as Europe stands on the cusp of a second banking crisis.  Fully aware, France is frantically trying to do a Euro recapitalisation of its top 5 banks. 

It appears that the inter-bank lending markets are failing in Europe. France and Belgium race to rescue Dexia, which has 35,000 employees and 8 million customers.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street, World News | 52 Comments »
Tags: Europe Banks, World Banks

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on October 1, 2011

It doesn’t sound like much to (all of a sudden) charge everyone $5 a month to use a bank debit card, but it’s the principle of the matter with the bankers becoming more hated by the day. To make things worse for this ill advised bankers decision, we have a tested model here…just look at Netflix, which instituted a $6/month price hike about two months ago… and is now fighting for survival. From a game theory perspective for the big banks, “everyone has to do it, or nobody will do it.”  It sounds like the small town banks just got revived!  The ball is in their court.

Category: Commentary, Economy, Finance, National News, Wall Street | 43 Comments »
Tags: Bankers, Debit Charges

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on September 30, 2011

Back in 2001 Polaroid went night night (Bankrupt).  The digital age has not been friendly to the old guard since.  Next to potentially see it’s lights go out would appear to be Eastman Kodak….Of course Kodak says no way Jose, but give us a break, that’s what they all say just before the fat lady sings!

Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) said the company has no intention to file for bankruptcy and is “committed to meeting all” obligations.

“Kodak remains focused on meeting its commitments to customers and suppliers, and on delivering on its strategy to become a profitable, sustainable digital company,” the company said in a statement.

Tidbit….Eastman Kodak  has hired law firm Jones Day for restructuring advice… while last week it pulled $160 million from its credit line. Hmm. And Kodak has burned $847 million during the first half of this year.  Geez, how much did you say?  Yep that number is right according to the WSJ!

According to The Wall Street Journal:

Jones Day’s best-known restructuring lawyer, Corinne Ball, represented Chrysler on its historic government-brokered bankruptcy, and is currently advising Hostess Brands Inc. on restructuring options.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Wall Street | 2,579 Comments »
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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on September 30, 2011

The top one half of 1 percent of the population now owns over 28 percent of the nation’s total wealth.  Are they kidding?  And the Republicans don’t want to raise taxes on the rich…..They should be ashamed of themselves, but they’re not. 

This from RobertReich.org

The President’s modest proposals to raise taxes on the rich – limiting their tax deductions, ending the Bush tax cut for incomes over $250,000, and making sure the rich pay at the same rate as average Americans – don’t come close to paying for what American families need.

Marginal tax rates should be raised at the top, and more tax brackets should be added for incomes over $500,000, over $1,500,000, over $5 million. The capital gains tax should be as high as that on ordinary income.

Wealth over $7.2 million should be subject to a 2 percent surtax. After all, the top one half of 1 percent now owns over 28 percent of the nation’s total wealth. Such a tax on them would yield $70 billion a year. According to an analysis by Yale’s Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, that would generate at least half of $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction target over ten years set for the supercommittee.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Pensions and Retirement, Personal Net Worth, Wall Street | 86 Comments »
Tags:

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on September 29, 2011

Hmm…Did you know that U.S. military spending equals that of all other military spending combined in the world.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, National Security | 379 Comments »
Tags: Defense Spending, Military Spending

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on September 29, 2011

Pending home sales fell 1.2 percent in August after dropping 1.3 percent the previous month, the National Association of Realtors said.

Homeowner sentiment also dropped to the lowest ever, falling to minus 49.5 from minus 47.1. Earlier this week, the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 4.1 percent in July from the same month in 2010. The home-price barometer has dropped for 10 consecutive months.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Real Estate, Wall Street | 434 Comments »
Tags: Pending Home Sales, Property Values, RFeal Estate

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on September 29, 2011

Are we heading for a depression or do we just feel depressed…..Ugh, we’ll let you know in a few months!

Consumer confidence slumped last week to the second-lowest level on record as Americans grew more concerned with their financial situation while the buying climate for most things worsened.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index dropped to minus 53 in the period ended Sept. 25 from minus 52.1 the prior week. The comfort gauge showed the share of households saying it was a bad time to buy needed goods and services climbed to the highest level in three years, raising the risk that the biggest part of the economy will slow heading into the holiday shopping season. A lack of jobs and growing concern that policy makers will be unable to spur the recovery may keep sentiment depressed.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News | 629 Comments »
Tags: Consumer Confidence

Posted By thestatedtruth.com on September 29, 2011

Soo…The next thing coming is to re-modify the re-modified loans….that should kick the can down the road for another year or so.  That way the bankers can collect on this years bonus money.

One in five homeowners whose mortgages were modified under a program aimed at reducing foreclosures defaulted again within a year after their payments were cut, the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency reported today.

Twenty percent of modified loans were at least 90 days delinquent within a year in the second quarter, according to the Comptroller’s “Mortgage Metrics Report.”

Mortgage delinquencies have increased amid slow economic growth and a U.S. unemployment rate that’s been 9 percent or higher since April. Default notices sent to delinquent homeowners surged 33 percent in August from the previous month, RealtyTrac Inc. said on Sept. 15.

Total loan modifications and alternative payment plans for delinquent borrowers fell to 456,397 in the three months ending June 30, down 19 percent from a year earlier, according to the Comptroller’s report. That included a 35 percent decline in modifications through the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program, which granted 70,071 new payment plans during the quarter.

Category: Commentary, Economy, National News, Real Estate, Wall Street | 1,832 Comments »
Tags: banks, Re-modify Loans, Real Estate