posted on September 8, 2003 11:19:15 AM new
I keep on saying that this will happen, and no-one wants to hear it because it's too much doom and gloom, well folks, when it does happen, and it will, then please contact me and let me know your feelings, that's if you still got a computer, and job, and family, and the will to keep on living.
This is why i emphasis that this present administration will be the cause of all this, and why you should IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE, as human kind you can change this predication, stop the money from going to war and put it back into the American system and make jobs, up grade our infrastrutures,which are in dire need, keep the money here. OLD SAYING " War makes only a few rich, peace makes more rich "
On the Verge of Collapse?
Experts from all over predict an economic collapse but you can protect yourself and prosper.
By James P. Tucker Jr.
Several prominent financial experts have forecast the likely collapse of the U.S. economy in the not-so-distant future, which would mean not only ruin for hundreds of millions of Americans but also disaster for the countless foreign countries linked by Wall Street banks to the United States. But, according to these same leading authorities, there are steps which Americans can take that may save their life savings from the widely predicted economic collapse.
You can prosper when the anticipated stock market crash comes by putting your money in silver and gold, where prices are artificially low and the value survives.
Although the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) are conspiring to keep the price of gold low, prices will rise dramatically in the next few years, advises Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Commit tee, as well as precious metals dealers, Ed Lee, Bill Haynes and James Cook.
Murphy’s committee can show that at least 10,000 tons of gold have been sold short al though the actual amount of salable gold is far less. Murphy told this to the Fourth International Conference on Authentic History & the First Amendment, jointly sponsored by The Barnes Review and American Free Press.
Murphy’s committee is suing the Fed and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) is sponsoring legislation to abolish the illegal consortium of private, international bankers that manipulates the economy in secret meetings.
For 90 years, the Fed has operated in absolute secrecy and has never been audited. American taxpayers are audited and jailed if the IRS can nail them on something—but no one ever audits the Fed, including the General Accounting Office. What monstrosities are being covered up boggles the imagination.
“Since the creation of the Federal Reserve,” said Paul, “middle- and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy.
“In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies,” Paul said. “This represents a real, if hidden, tax.”
Paul is also pushing the Honest Money Act to repeal legal tender laws that force Americans to accept irredeemable paper ticket or electronic money.
“Legal tender laws disadvantage ordinary citizens by forcing them to use money that is vulnerable to vast depreciation,” Paul said. “As Stephen T. Byington wrote in the September 1895 issue of the American Federationist: ‘No legal tender law is ever needed to make men take good money; its only use is to make them take bad money.’”
“U.S. stocks today are still overvalued,” said economist Kurt Richebacher. “”The worst part of the bear markets is still to come and it will result in the wholesale destruction of wealth from the bubble economy.”
“When you say it can’t be like 1929 through 1931 [when stocks lost 89 percent of their value], you’re right,” said Michael O’Higgins, a money manager. “It could be worse.”
“Asian central banks alone hold $1.4 trillion in U.S. ‘paper,’ ” said Bill Buckler, newsletter editor. “If part of this immense stock of funds lent to the U.S. were to start to run for the exits, the U.S. financial system would be forced against a wall and then off a cliff.”
* For more on this subject, you can order AFP’s informational reports, Billions for the Bankers: Debts for the People, or 8 Reasons Why the Budget is a Fraud (one copy is $2, six copies are $4 and 40 or more are 30 cents each). Write to American Free Press, 1433 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. Call toll free at 1-888-699-NEWS to order by Visa or Mastercard
posted on September 8, 2003 01:15:30 PM new
Although I agree that the economy is awful and NOT getting better (not that I can see anyway), I don't see any suggestions there.
Impeach the Prez? OK, then what? What would you want his successor to do?
Although I think another 87 BILLION dollars for Iraq is insane, we simply CANNOT pull out now.
Cutting the interest rate repeatedly does not work either. We need JOBS. That means getting companies to quit sending jobs overseas. That means cutting back on the unions that stifle the companies that are just hanging on. It means lowering the corprate tax rate so we can draw back some of the businesses that have left for overseas locations.
Cut out the income tax and go with a national sales tax!
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Replay Media
Games of all kinds!
posted on September 8, 2003 04:26:43 PM new
some suggestions for your questions replaymedia
pull the US military out completely now, there is nothing wrong in saying you made a mistake, problem is it will not happen because this present regime wants the oil, already a proven fact, and the companies that are involved are all Bush and Cheney buddies. Ever hear of a company getting a contract without bidding for it? not me. This 87 billion and what was already been given is going mostly to Bush and Cheney's buddies.
Now does this make sense, American infrastruture is falling apart rapidly, why would someone want to sink american taxpayer money into some other country's infrastruture ? Go figure.
If you don't pull the military out, you will see the U.S. economy destroyed, complete. It happened with the russians and now it will happen here.
All this money that Bush wants should be put back into the US economy,
one more question, does it make business sense to do what Bush is doing? maybe for him and his buddies yes but for the rest of the country, i think not.How will you and most people like you prosper with the way Bush is investing taxpayers money?
anyway you better start buying gold and silver, plus precious jewels, because that will be the currancy soon
posted on September 8, 2003 04:54:53 PM new
If you pull the military out tomorrow, Syria and Iran will be in there and running the show by Wednesday. Simply pulling out is NOT an option.
The whole point was to go in, eliminate the old regime, set up a new "basic" government and get out. This idea that we need 87 Billion dollars to rebuild Iraq is just INSANE. Spend it over here!
"If you don't pull the military out, you will see the U.S. economy destroyed, complete"
I'm not saying you are wrong. We've gotten ourselves into a mess here. Pulling out is bad, staying there is expensive.
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Replay Media
Games of all kinds!
posted on September 9, 2003 04:50:17 AM new
This thread is just a spam for precious metals.
You have to have lots of funds and know what you are doing buying and selling commodities.
And buying a few dozen coins and throwing them in the safe is not going to safeguard your future.
posted on September 9, 2003 08:24:48 AM new
for gravid
this has nothing to do with trying to push gold commodities. If you read what is been said, the question is " For 90 years, the Fed has operated in absolute secrecy and has never been audited. American taxpayers are audited and jailed if the IRS can nail them on something—but no one ever audits the Fed, including the General Accounting Office. " Now why is that, and what are they trying to hide from the masses ?
another question is where is all the money going to come from for the bills ? It was already said that most of this mess will be paid for by the American taxpayer, that's you. But Bush and gang do not pay, or that 3 per cent who make a certain amount, pay nothing, zero, nadda. So these are the guys running the store, and instead of putting back into the store, they take what money they can and say, bye-bye. Leave you the mess to clean up.
So if this is just too gloomy,and I am wrong, contact me in a couple of years and tell me I'm full of it.
So if you can refute what is being said here with some proof, as far as I am concerned, bye-bye American economy.....
posted on September 9, 2003 09:29:16 AM new
The coming first world debt crisis
Ann Pettifor
1 - 9 - 2003
The reckless financial policies of leading western powers in the last two decades make it likely that the next seismic debt crisis will be in America, not Argentina. It can be avoided, says Ann Pettifor of the Real World Economic Outlook, only by serious efforts to bring regulation and balance to the international economy.
Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the team that spearheaded global awareness of a third world debt crisis released provocative new research in September 2003 which argues that the “first world” is approaching a major debt crisis. These findings appear in the first of NEF’s annual reports on the global economy, Real World Economic Outlook – which shadows the IMF’s annual World Economic Outlook.
The report predicts that a giant credit bubble, created by central bankers and finance ministers (the engineers of decades of “easy money”) has now reached a “tipping point”. This point – at which the “bubble” of financial assets exceeds GDP by nine times – has triggered financial crisis elsewhere. Another “tipping point” would be a rise in interest rates – not unlikely for economies like the US and UK which have massive foreign deficits.
The financial system: unbalanced, unfair, unsustainable
On a global level, there is $100 trillion of debt outstanding, but only $33 trillion of income with which to repay those debts. Even the drastic recent stock market falls have barely dented the credit superstructure. When this credit bubble bursts in the United States and Britain, it will be middle-class consumers that will first bear the brunt of the financial crash.
That will be unjust and unfair, because American and British consumers have been actively encouraged in their borrowing by the financial deregulation policies of both central bankers and governments. Moreover, politicians and bankers have watched as dutiful and compliant consumers have propped up these two big economies – helping to keep the global economy afloat. They will be rewarded for their heroic efforts by bankruptcy, losses, liabilities, and personal anguish – which will extend some time into the future. The impact of a collapsing credit bubble will reverberate around the world, and hurt the poorest most.
The crisis will be exacerbated for individual consumers, because the end of the credit boom will take place in a deflationary environment. Deflation is in part a consequence of the policies of central bankers and finance ministers for opening up markets, and clamping down on wages and prices. Deflation is good for lenders, but bad for debtors. This is because the value of debts rises in real terms in a deflationary environment. This is in contrast to inflation, which ultimately erodes the value of debt.
A financial crisis under debt-deflationary conditions will be catastrophic for many debtors. It will also be grossly unjust and unfair, because while central bankers and finance ministers have clamped down on prices and wages – they have used the credit bubble (borrowing) to inflate asset values (stocks, bonds, and property) to extraordinary heights.
On the whole, it is the poor and the middle classes that rely on wages and salaries – while the rich derive their incomes from wealth. However, while the rich have been getting richer, they have not become indebted. Nor are they using these assets to spend and boost the economy. Instead, on the whole, they are standing by while their assets rise in value. The poor, by contrast, have watched as their wages and salaries declined as a share of GDP, and have had to borrow to compensate for these losses. By doing so, they are providing a service to the rest of the economy, and helping asset prices stay high.
Winston Churchill’s storm warning
The team producing Real World Economic Outlook warns that the coming “first world” debt crisis will resemble the debt crisis of the 1920s – when bankers and politicians embarked on a similar experiment of “globalising” and deregulating capital. Then, as now, their liberalisation of capital markets and reckless inflation of credit encouraged massive borrowing. Then as now, the burden of resulting debts fell most heavily on the middle classes and poor.
Winston Churchill, in his book about that period, The Gathering Storm, described it well:
“The year 1929 reached almost the end of its third quarter under the promise and appearance of increasing prosperity, particularly in the United States. Extraordinary optimism sustained an orgy of speculation. Books were written to prove that economic crisis was a phase, which expanding business organisation and science had at last mastered. “We are apparently finished and done with economic cycles as we have known them” said the President of the New York Stock Exchange in September. But in October a sudden and violent tempest swept over Wall Street…
The whole wealth so swiftly gathered in the paper values of previous years vanished. The prosperity of millions of American homes had grown up a gigantic structure of inflated credit, now suddenly proved phantom. Apart from the nation-wide speculation in shares which even the most famous banks had encouraged by easy loans, a vast system of purchase by instalment of houses, furniture, cars and numberless kinds of household conveniences and indulgences had grown up. All now fell together. But yesterday, there had been the urgent question of parking the motor-cars in which thousands of artisans and craftsmen were beginning to travel to their daily work. Today the grievous pangs of falling wages and rising unemployment afflicted the whole community, engaged till this moment in the most active creation of all kinds of desirable articles…”
If we substitute “the urgent question of parking motor-cars” with the “urgent question of parking SUVs”, Winston Churchill could be writing in 2003.
A cycle of illusions
How did we get into this mess? Real World Economic Outlook challenges standard explanations for the launch of the “globalisation” experiment. We contest the view that deregulation of capital flows – the very core of the globalisation project – was brought about by a form of “spontaneous combustion” caused by new technology. Nor do we share the view of many activists that globalisation is “corporate-driven”.
Instead, we argue, globalisation was triggered by elected politicians, and central bankers, in both the US and the UK. In the post-Vietnam war era, led by Richard Nixon and later Ronald Reagan, these politicians sought ways to avoid making the “structural adjustments” necessary to the American economy if debts incurred by foreign wars were to be repaid by US taxpayers. Rather, these politicians preferred to disband the existing system of paying off debts by exchanging gold, and opening up capital markets, so that the US could borrow to pay off its debts.
This new arrangement also allowed them to print the money in which they paid off those debts (unlike poor countries which have to repay debts in foreign currencies like dollars or sterling). British politicians and central bankers were only too happy to act as US intermediaries in the capital markets. Together they constructed a new financial architecture that effectively obliges central banks of both rich and poor countries to lend to the US – by buying US treasury bills (debt).
It is US treasury bills that have now effectively become the world’s reserve currency – where once that reserve currency was neutral (gold). It is this international financial system that makes the US administration so arrogant in its refusal to “adjust” its economy by cutting spending and pay its way – as poor, indebted nations are required to do by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (The IMF’s double standards in its dealings with poor countries on the one hand, and the US on the other, are breathtaking).
It is this financial system which makes US financiers so confident that the rest of the world will continue to finance their nation’s extravagant spending binge. In the words of David Goldman, head of debt research at Banc of America Securities: “America is at little risk for the foreseeable future, simply because the world’s capital has nowhere else to go”(Wall Street Journal, 13 August 2003).
The day of reckoning
The Real World Economic Outlook challenges that view. There is now a growing consensus that the vast build-up of household, corporate, state and foreign debts of the US is not sustainable. Some central banks are already switching out of US dollars and into euros. When capital flows shift away from the US, and there are recent signs of this happening, Alan Greenspan may have to raise interest rates to attract capital back into the US to fund the growing federal, state and foreign deficits. Indeed, the bond markets seem to be signalling that they expect this to happen quite soon.
When interest rates begin to rise again, when debt costs soar both for corporates and households, when defaults and bankruptcies increase more rapidly than now – then the “tipping point” will be reached.
The latest official US government statistics show that mortgage debt rose in the previous year by a staggering $700 billion, to $6,219 trillion, in the first quarter of 2003. That is double the increase in the 1990s. At the same time, personal bankruptcies in the US rose in the last quarter by 9.0% more than in the same period in 2002; business bankruptcies in two successive quarters rose by 5.9%. Samuel J. Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute said as far back as May 2003: “Today’s new bankruptcy record is continued evidence that U.S. households continue to struggle with the burden resulting from consumer debts incurred in the 1990s”.
Avoiding the next great crash
For some, therefore, the day of reckoning has already arrived. When it arrives for the millions more that are dutifully and heroically borrowing and spending, and thereby propping up the economy, great pain and anguish will be inflicted on individuals, businesses, their workers, families and communities. The consequences for the rest of us, and particularly for those in the poorest countries, are frightening.
Real World Economic Outlook calls on governments and central banks to take three measures to take responsibility for their reckless deregulation of finance.
First, we call on them to re-regulate international capital, by bringing back exchange controls. (It has been done before, and can be again. Capital was re-regulated in 1944, at Bretton Woods, after the “globalisation” experiment of the 1920s that created a giant credit bubble, which led to the crash of the 1920s and 1930s).
Second, we call on them to rein in the “easy money” of reckless lending and borrowing; to return the economy to scale.
Third, we call on governments and central banks to compensate those consumers now dutifully propping up the US and the UK economies. But we argue that this should not be done by taxing the middle classes, but by obliging the rich to share some of the incredible gains that economic and political leaders have allowed them to make over the last two decades.
Our world has been turned upside down. It is time to put it right again.
posted on September 9, 2003 09:56:12 AM new
I agree with gravid on this one......
[sorry gravid ]
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There is a lot of gold in this world, it is not in short supply. The price just has to be right to encourage more gold mining.
Each and everytime the US has faced rough times the gold sellers start pushing the sale of gold. Feeds into peoples fears. But can anyone give an example of when 'hording' gold turned out to be the best thing for them to do? Ususally, in the past, people buy gold and if they have to sell it, sell at a loss compared to what they paid for it.
Many who bought gold when it was close to, or over, $800.00 an ounce are still waiting for the price to return to those levels so they can break even.
Most of those who made the money were the commodity sellers, not the individual buyers.
posted on September 10, 2003 07:25:51 AM new
This president just kicked the house of cards down, and now you will have 2 kinds of people left, The Haves and The Have Nots, which will create chaos for sure witnin this country, thank you Mr Bush and gang, and oh yea, the president and gang have been investing in the Euro for themselves.
End of the credit line?
America could be in for a nasty shock if foreign investors decide to stop bankrolling its massive trade deficit, writes William Keegan
Tuesday September 9, 2003
A hegemonic economy can do what it likes - or can it? The widespread assumption in the financial markets until recently was that the Bush administration can go on piling up record trade deficits and there is not much the rest of the world can do about it.
Indeed, what the rest of the world does, especially the east Asian part of it, is to recycle hundreds of billions of dollars straight back to New York, in the form of purchases of bonds and Treasury bills.
This arrangement, we are told, produces bliss all round. The US consumer carries on consuming more than he or she produces; the US government carries on borrowing as if there were no tomorrow; and countries such as Japan and China do not have to revalue their currencies, thereby retaining the international competitiveness that sustains the remarkable Chinese growth rate and Japan's slow recovery from recession.
Such is the putative convenience of this process that some commentators have even begun to suggest that Treasury secretary John Snow's recent trip to east Asia - when he did not have much success in persuading governments to revalue their currencies - was just a charade to please those in the US heartlands who are worried about losing jobs to the supercompetitive east.
I wonder. It seems to this distant observer - but regular visitor to the US - that the jobless recovery is a big issue over there. However much the consumer benefits from cheap Asian imports, in the end citizens and voters want jobs, and they hold the government responsible. Hence the famous Clinton remark, now an almost unbearable cliché: "It's the economy, stupid." In this context, one of the paradoxes of the phenomenon known as globalisation is the way US multinationals own many of the companies which manufacture in, and export from, mainland China, thereby profiting - literally - from low-cost labour and an extremely competitive exchange rate.
But how long can the willing recycling of trade surpluses continue? The limits of economic hegemony seem to have occurred to the US administration as it contemplates a $4bn (£2.5bn) monthly bill for military operations in Iraq and estimates that rebuilding Iraq next year could cost $75bn. Suddenly, having gone to war against the wishes of continental Europe, Washington wants the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" and others to share the bill.
At the same time the combination of escalating US budget deficits and a falling bond market has aroused fears in financial circles about US dependence on foreign funds. As for the Asian investors themselves, there were suggestions in yesterday's Financial Times that flows may not be so generous in the future.
There are precedents for the denting of assumptions that the hegemonic economic power can go on blissfully borrowing indefinitely. Britain in the heyday of empire, and during its long decline from hegemony, found that its economy could be vulnerable to sudden withdrawals of funds that were deposited in London.
In 1979 the US economy itself was hit by a crisis of confidence, which involved a slowdown and withdrawal of foreign inflows. These are early days, and recent reports may prove to be alarmist. But the Bush administration, whose economic policy is obviously dominated by electoral considerations, could get nasty shock if foreign investors began to demand a significantly higher price for their funds.
Americans are paying the price for the overconfidence of their second-tier governments.
When you consider how much attention we (rightly) pay to American politics, it's surprising how little we hear about the adventures - and misadventures - of the 50 American state governments. Few of us know those governments are putting themselves and their citizens through the financial wringer at present, even though it's a cautionary tale for our own state governments.
You would have heard that California's governor, Gray Davis, is so hugely unpopular he's been recalled by popular petition, with Arnie Schwarzenegger running in a vast field of would-be replacements.
The greatest cause of Davis's unpopularity is the draconian measures he's been taking to deal with California's yawning budget deficit. But its budgetary crisis is just the most extreme of the crises facing virtually all the US states. Between them, they have deficits totalling $125 billion.
How did the states get themselves in such a parlous position when America's recession in 2001 was the mildest on record? Well, it was pretty much all their own work.
Their tax revenues grew strongly during the long boom of the 1990s, particularly their cut of the capital gains made from the sharemarket's tech stock boom. (Most US states have income taxes and company taxes, which they piggyback on the federal versions.)
The state pollies saved a little of the extra revenue by putting it into "rainy day" reserve funds. For the most part, however, they conformed to Parkinson's third law: "Expenditures rise to meet revenues and to exceed them."
Over the course of the 1990s, the states' spending per person grew by 28 per cent in real terms. In particular, they spent more on primary and secondary education, more on prisons and more on health care.
The states have primary responsibility for a joint federal-state program called Medicaid, which subsidises the health care needs of the elderly and other low-income people.
There is, however, a qualification to the rule that politicians will spend every dollar that falls into their hands. As the '90s boom progressed, the states became confident the good times were here to stay, so they cut tax rates quite heavily.
After that masterstroke, it was only a matter of time before the bursting of the sharemarket bubble and the slowdown in the economy left the states up a creek. Their revenue has fallen, their spending hasn't, and now they face budget deficits equivalent to 20 or 25 per cent of their annual revenues.
It's worth noting that the revenue currently being lost as a result of those earlier cuts in tax rates is equivalent to roughly half the size of the deficits the states now face.
Note, too, that all but one of the states have constitutional or legislative provisions requiring them to at least balance their recurrent budgets. Fortunately, however, most of those provisions have built-in loopholes that allow the pollies to fudge around them to a greater or lesser extent.
Even so, for the past year or two the states have been under huge pressure to do whatever it takes to eliminate their deficits (notwithstanding the weak state of their economies).
About half of them have raised tax rates, or are considering it, particularly taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. Some have increased sales tax and a few income tax.
Some states are looking to increase their revenue from gambling, while most have jacked up all manner of court fines and fees for services, including tuition fees at state universities and colleges. The University of Iowa's fees were raised by 18 per cent (and no namby-pamby stuff about real interest-free loans).
For the most part, however, the states are slashing their spending rather than raising taxes (some enacted provisions during the '90s requiring that bills for tax increases be passed by more than a simple majority).
Virtually all states have reduced Medicaid benefits to low-income earners, restricting dental cover and occupational and physiotherapy, and reducing spending on nursing home care.
Kentucky has released lesser-offence prisoners up to a year early. To fend off Oregon's plan to cut its school year by a month, its teachers agreed to work for two weeks without pay.
Primary and secondary school teachers have received lay-off notices in more than a dozen states. In Oklahoma teachers have driven buses, mopped floors and cooked cafeteria food as support staff have been sharply reduced. In parts of Colorado, schools have shifted to a four-day week.
According to The New York Times, states are also "dismissing state troopers, closing parks and schools, dropping bus routes, eliminating college scholarships and slashing a host of other services that have long been taken for granted".
Then comes the tricky stuff. Because the US states still use cash accounting and don't publish balance sheets, they can pull stunts such as shifting public service payday from the last day in the old year to the first day of the new year.
The Illinois Government has sold its big glass office building in downtown Chicago and pocketed the proceeds. But, instead of moving out, it's renting the building back. (To be fair, the Howard Government has pulled that trick countless times.)
And get a load of this. In 1998, the US states won a major case against the tobacco companies that entitled them to perpetual compensation for the costs tobacco-induced illness had imposed on them.
The Davis administration has sold for almost $4 billion California's right to collect over the next 25 years a total of $8 billion in compensation. Other states have done similar deals.
So ... thank your lucky stars you're not a Yank. Only in America. It could never happen here. Or could it? Over the past five or six years, our states have been waxing fat on the strong economy plus amazing growth in conveyancing duty revenue from the never-ending property boom. Needless to say, they've spent most of the extra revenue.
But when the property boom ends, conveyancing duty won't just grow more slowly, it will collapse (because what drives collections is not so much the rising price of houses as the number changing hands).
Remember the foolish virgins? I'm not sure our political virgins are much less foolish than America's.
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