Where is All the Money

“The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.” — Noam Chomsky

As a record amount of U.S. citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEOs are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening, how did we get to this point?

The Economic Elite have escalated their attack on U.S. workers over the past few years; however, this attack began to build intensity in the 1970s. In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made. Due to technological advancements, production and profit levels exploded from 1970 – 2000. With the lion’s share of increased profits going to the CEO’s, this pay ratio dramatically rose to $90 for CEOs to $1 for the average worker.

As ridiculous as that seems, an in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that, including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1.
… Continue Reading

Is the Dollar Collapsing

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This eye opening video may give an interesting perspective of the current or coming state of affairs concerning the possible collapse of the U.S. Dollar.

U.K. Protests, Spying Government, Greedy Bankers

Today one of Britain’s most senior police officers with responsibility for public order raises the spectre of a ’summer of rage’, with victims of the increasingly bitter recession taking to the streets in possibly violent protest.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, warned that law-abiding middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

Many will consider such a scenario unlikely, or point out this has not been the ‘British way’ over the past two decades.

Violent protests take place in Europe – in recent weeks Greek farmers have blocked roads over falling agricultural prices, a million workers in France took to the streets to demand greater protection for their jobs and wages and Icelandic demonstrators have clashed with police in Reykjavik – but not here.

But can we really be so sure? The public’s rage with the banks and the Government is growing by the day.

Thousands are losing their jobs through no fault of their own because bankers who made millions during the good times are calling in the loans which their employers need to stay afloat.

Homes are being repossessed across the country, but not the penthouse flats and country piles of bank bosses who thought nothing of taking home vast seven-figure bonuses, and consider £1 million a year a modest income.

Protesters expressed anger at being made to pay for the folly of those who caused the financial collapse

The innocent are being punished while the guilty continue to lead affluent lives.

As Ken Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions says today: ‘If you mug someone in the street and you are caught, the chances are that you will go to prison. In recent years, mugging someone out of their savings or their pension would probably earn you a yacht.’

Add to this a second issue highlighted by Sir Ken: the march of the surveillance state.

Ministers have been spending their time focussing on eroding our most treasured individual freedoms, while doing little or nothing to curb criminal behaviour by the banks.

The DNA database containing the samples of hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent people…the largest number of CCTV cameras in the world…anti-terrorist powers being deployed against dog foulers…restrictions on telling religious jokes…

All of these intrusive, liberty-sapping polices were developed while the banks were blowing billions on reckless sub-prime lending.

How much better a place Britain would be today if Labour had focussed on regulating the banks and getting a grip on the shambolic, toothless Financial Services Authority, rather than building a surveillance state.

That the public is being watched by Big Brother at every turn is deeply alarming. That the innocent were being tracked going about their every day lives while a blind eye was being turned to a financial sector apparently hell-bent on destruction is unforgivable.

Thus, the idea of the ’summer of rage’ may not be as far-fetched as it first appears.

Superintendent Hartshorn talks of the banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, becoming ‘viable targets’. Likewise, the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.

It is to their eternal shame that our banks should find themselves in such a position, and that Labour – while eroding the civil liberties Britain has fought so hard to defend over the centuries – was prepared to sit back and allow it to happen.

White House View of Housing Crisis

THE WHITE HOUSE

Washington:
Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan
Fact Sheet
The deep contraction in the economy and in the housing market has created devastating
consequences for homeowners and communities throughout the country. Millions of responsible
families who make their monthly payments and fulfill their obligations have seen their property
values fall, and are now unable to refinance to lower mortgage rates. Meanwhile, millions of
workers have lost their jobs or had their hours cut, and are now struggling to stay current on their
mortgage payments. As a result, as many as 6 million families are expected to face foreclosure in
the next several years, with millions more struggling to stay current on their payments.
The present crisis is real, but temporary. As home prices fall, demand for housing will increase,
and conditions will ultimately find a new balance. Yet in the absence of decisive action, we risk
an intensifying spiral in which lenders foreclose, pushing home prices still lower, reducing the
value of household savings, and making it harder for all families to refinance. In some studies,
foreclosure on a home has been found to reduce the prices of nearby homes by as much as 9
percent – creating the potential that even borrowers who make every payment suffer from an
increase in foreclosures in their community.
The Obama Administration’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan will offer assistance to
as many as 7 to 9 million homeowners making a good-faith effort to stay current on their
mortgage payments, while attempting to prevent the destructive impact of foreclosures on
families and communities. It will not provide money to speculators, and it will target support to
the working homeowners who have made every possible effort to stay current on their mortgage
payments. Just as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act works to save or create several
million new jobs and the Financial Stability Plan works to get credit flowing, the Homeowner
Affordability and Stability Plan will support a recovery in the housing market and ensure that
these workers can continue paying off their mortgages.
By supporting low mortgage rates by strengthening confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
providing up to 4 to 5 million homeowners with new access to refinancing and enacting a
comprehensive stability initiative to offer reduced monthly payments for up to 3 to 4 million atrisk
homeowners, this plan – which draws off the best ideas developed within the Administration,
as well as from Congressional housing leaders and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair
Sheila Bair – brings together the government, lenders and borrowers to share responsibility
towards ensuring working Americans can afford to stay in their homes. … Continue Reading

Respected Trend Forcaster Celente Predicts Doom, Gloom

A Crisis is coming to America Which Will be Worse than the Great Depression.

The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions – all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

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Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.

The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.

The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

Here is a compiled list of quotes attesting to Celente’s respectability and accuracy as a trend forecaster.

“When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.”
— CNN Headline News

“A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.”
— The Economist

“Gerald Celente has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right.”
— USA Today

“There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.”
- CNBC

“Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.”
— The Wall Street Journal

“Gerald Celente is always ahead of the curve on trends and uncannily on the mark … he’s one of the most accurate forecasters around.”
— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Mr. Celente tracks the world’s social, economic and business trends for corporate clients.”
— The New York Times

“Mr. Celente is a very intelligent guy. We are able to learn about trends from an authority.”
— 48 Hours, CBS News

“Gerald Celente has a solid track record. He has predicted everything from the 1987 stock market crash and the demise of the Soviet Union to green marketing and corporate downsizing.”
— The Detroit News

“Gerald Celente forecast the 1987 stock market crash, ‘green marketing,’ and the boom in gourmet coffees.”
— Chicago Tribune

“The Trends Research Institute is the Standard and Poors of Popular Culture.”
— The Los Angeles Times

“If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.”
— New York Post

So there you have it – hardly a nutjob conspiracy theorist blowhard now is he? The price of not heeding his warnings will be far greater than the cost of preparing for the future now. Storable food and gold are two good places to make a start.