The Coming Financial Meltdown

[Gary Oak]

Obama's legacy isn't just allowing the USA to be flooded with traitors but his destroying the American economy as well and not to mention his damage to the American military etc...


Men Without Work: Millions Missing From The Workforce


Why are so many men in their prime working years unemployed? The Obama administration would have us believe that unemployment is low in this country, but that is not true at all. In fact, one author quoted by NPR says that "it's kind of worse than it was in the depression in 1940.

Most Americans don't realize this, but more men from ages 25 to 54 are "inactive" right now than was the case during the last recession. We have millions upon millions of strong young men just sitting around doing nothing.

They aren't employed and they aren't considered to be looking for employment either, and so they don't show up in the official unemployment numbers. But they don't have jobs, and nothing the Obama administration does can eliminate that fact.

According to NPR, "nearly 100 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked" in the 1960s.

In those days, just about any dependable, hard working American man could get hired almost immediately. The economy was growing and the demand for labor was seemingly insatiable.

But today, one out of every six men in their prime working years does not have a job...

In a recent report, President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers said 83 percent of men in the prime working ages of 25-54 who were not in the labor force had not worked in the previous year. So, essentially, 10 million men are missing from the workforce.

"One in six prime-age guys has no job; it's kind of worse than it was in the depression in 1940," says Nicholas Eberstadt, an economic and demographic researcher at American Enterprise Institute who wrote the book Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis. He says these men aren't even counted among the jobless, because they aren't seeking work.

So why is this happening?

If you look at the inactivity rate for men in the 25 to 54 age bracket, it was sitting at just 8.1 percent in January 2000.

In January 2008, right at the beginning of the last recession, it was sitting at 9.2 percent, and by the end of the recession it had risen to 10.3 percent.

Today, it is sitting at 11.5 percent.

Remember, these are men that don't even count toward the official unemployment rate. They are not working, but they are not considered to be "looking for work" either.

So what are these men doing?

You may be tempted to think that many of them have decided to stay home and raise the kids as their wives go off to work. But according to NPR, that is not what is happening...

What the missing men aren't doing in large numbers is staying home to take care of family. Forty percent of nonworking women are primary caregivers; that's true of only 5 percent of men out of the workforce.

We do have the largest prison population in the entire world by far, and without a doubt that does play a role in these numbers. However, a far bigger factor is the millions of men that have become content being dependents of the federal government.

More than 100 million Americans receive money from the government each month, and a lot of people (both men and women) have found that it is just easier to sit back and collect government checks than it is to go out and try to work hard for a living.

But of course the number one factor is the lack of jobs available. I personally know people that have been looking for work in their fields for years and have not been able to get hired. We have a major employment crisis in this nation, and it is only going to get worse in the years ahead as we continue to lose jobs to technology and millions more good jobs get shipped overseas.

And a lot of the "jobs" that have been created during the Obama administration have been very low quality jobs. Since December 2014, we have gained about half a million jobs for waiters and bartenders, but meanwhile we have actually lost good paying manufacturing jobs. If we continue down this road, the middle class will continue to shrink.

In addition to everything that I have just shared, here are some other facts that are pertinent to this discussion...

-Right at this moment, there are approximately 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job.

-Nearly one out of every five young adults are currently living with their parents.

-The Wall Street Journal recently declared that this is the weakest "economic recovery" since 1949.

-Barack Obama is on track to be the only president in U.S. history to never have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by at least 3 percent.

The economy is far weaker than you are being told, the employment crisis is far worse than you are being told, and as I mentioned yesterday, the stage is clearly set for a new financial crisis of epic proportions.

And if we are going to see markets crash, this time of the year is a good time for it. In fact, CNBC says that history tells us that this is the "worst period of the year for stocks"...

The worst period of the year for stocks has just begun -- at least based on market history.

Over the entire 120-year history of the Dow Jones industrial average, Sept. 6 to Oct. 29 tends to be the worst period for the market. And more specifically, the last few weeks of September have been an especially bad time.

Someday when people look back at this time in history, they will not be surprised by how horrific the coming collapse will be. The truth is that anyone with a lick of common sense can see that the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world is going to end badly.

No, what is going to amaze them is that the system was able to hold together as long as it did. It truly is incredible that the debt-based, fiat currency Ponzi scheme that the central banks of the world have been desperately trying to prop up has been able to keep chugging along all the way to the middle of 2016.

How much longer can they keep the magic going?

I don't know, but history tells us that time is not on their side...

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/articl ... YpAILbX.99

[Gary Oak]

Barack Hussein Obama has successfully damaged the american economy. This is probably one of his proudest accomplishments. Americans actually voted him in for a second term. At least he will hopefully be stepping down soon. The sooner the better for the non islamic world.

Time To Face The True State Of The Middle Class In America

By Michael Snyder/Economic Collapse Blog September 23, 2016

Do you remember the old Saturday Night Live sketches in which comedian Chris Farley portrayed a motivational speaker that lived in a van down by the river? Unfortunately, this is becoming a reality for way too many Americans. As the middle class has shrunk and the cost of living has increased, a lot of people have decided to quite literally "live on the road".

Whether it is a car, a truck, a van, a bus or an RV, an increasing number of Americans are using their vehicles as their homes. Just recently, someone that I know took a trip down the west coast of the United States and stayed at a number of campgrounds along the way.

What she discovered was that a lot of people were actually living at these campgrounds. Of course there are some that actually prefer that lifestyle, but many others are doing it out of necessity.

Earlier this week, Circa.com posted a story about "the van life". One of the individuals that they featured was a recent graduate of the University of Southern California named Stephen Hutchins. Without much of an income at the moment, he decided that the best way to cut expenses was to live in his van...

"The main expenses are insurance for the van, which is like $60 a month," said Hutchins. "Then, I have a storage unit for like $60."

That puts his monthly rent at $120. The van cost him just $125 at an auction.

Living in a van is certainly not the most comfortable way to go, and many of you are probably wondering how he performs basic tasks such as cooking and bathing. Well, it turns out that he makes extensive use of public facilities...

He showers at the gym, cooks on a portable stove on a sidewalk (he stores his butane at his friends' place nearby) and uses wifi at nearby coffeeshops.

For a while such a lifestyle may seem like "an adventure", but after a while it will start to get really old. And not a lot of women are going to be excited about dating a man that lives in a van, and you certainly wouldn't want to raise a family in a vehicle.

Sadly, just like during the last economic crisis many Americans are getting to the point where staying in their homes may not be an option. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent New York Post article entitled "The terrifying signs of a looming housing crisis"...

The number of New Yorkers applying for emergency grants to stay in their homes is skyrocketing -- as the number of people staying in homeless shelters reached an all-time high last weekend, records show.

There were 82,306 applications for one-time emergency grants to prevent evictions in fiscal 2016, up 26 percent from 65,138 requests the previous year, according to the Mayor's Management Report.

First of all, it is very alarming to hear that the number of New Yorkers staying in homeless shelters "reached an all-time high" last weekend. I thought that we were supposed to be in an "economic recovery", but apparently things in New York are rapidly getting worse.

Secondly, the fact that applications for emergency grants are up 26 percent compared to last year is another indication of how rough things are right now for average families in New York. We all remember what happened when millions of families lost their homes to foreclosure across the nation during the last financial crisis, and nobody should want to see a repeat of that any time soon.

During this election season, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would like all of us to believe that the economy is doing just fine, but that is not true at all.

Even using the doctored numbers that the government gives us, Barack Obama is solidly on track to be the only president in all of U.S. history to never have a single year of 3 percent GDP growth, and he has had two terms to try to do that.

Gallup CEO Jim Clifton is also quite skeptical of this "economic recovery", and he recently authored an article on this subject that is receiving a tremendous amount of attention. The following is how that article begins...

I've been reading a lot about a "recovering" economy. It was even trumpeted on Page 1 of The New York Times and Financial Times last week.

I don't think it's true.

The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and 2008 to 51% today.

Other surveys have found that it is even worse than that.

For example, a Pew Research Center study from the end of last year discovered that the middle class in America has now actually become a minority in this country.

Here are some other numbers that Clifton included in his article...

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of the total U.S. adult population that has a full-time job has been hovering around 48% since 2010 -- this is the lowest full-time employment level since 1983.

The number of publicly listed companies trading on U.S. exchanges has been cut almost in half in the past 20 years -- from about 7,300 to 3,700. Because firms can't grow organically -- that is, build more business from new and existing customers -- they give up and pay high prices to acquire their competitors, thus drastically shrinking the number of U.S. public companies. This seriously contributes to the massive loss of U.S. middle-class jobs.

New business startups are at historical lows. Americans have stopped starting businesses. And the businesses that do start are growing at historically slow rates.
Once upon a time, America was the land of opportunity.

We were the place where anything was possible and where entrepreneurship was greatly encouraged.

But today we strangle small businesses to death with rules, regulations, red tape and taxes.

If we want a stronger middle class, we need to create a much better environment for the creation of small businesses. Small business ownership often lifts individuals into the middle class, and small businesses have traditionally been the primary engine for the growth of good jobs in this country.

If the middle class continues to shrink, poverty will continue to rise. Previously I have written about how the number of homeless children in the United States has shot up by 60 percent since the last economic crisis, and Poverty USA claims that a staggering 1.6 million children slept either in a homeless shelter or in some other form of emergency housing during 2015.

If you will be sleeping in a warm bed in a comfortable home tonight, you should be thankful. An increasing number of Americans are sleeping in tent cities, in their vehicles or on the streets. These hurting people deserve our love, our compassion and our prayers.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/articl ... KQDSBM0.99

[Blue Frost]

Spreading the wealth, let everyone be paid the same, and lets have social justice over democracy.
That's until the money is gone, and you have government in full control to do with you as they wish.

[Gary Oak]

Obama has plenty of cash. I think he likes Americans suffering.

[Blue Frost]

He, and others like the Hollywood crowd fancy themselves as the ruling cast over the unwashed masses.

[Gary Oak]

Is the USA still a free nation ? Bush and Obama have really changed America from the country I hitch hiked around over thirty years ago. Now they are trying to make it impossible for Americans to live free overseas! Will the next president make it a triple whammy ?


The Government Is Turning the Entire United States Into A Debt Prison

Since the United States was founded, citizenship has represented a safe haven from oppressive regimes around the world. By preserving the principles of small government and free markets, those who were willing to work hard found success, and America became a magnet for innovation.


But as the U.S. continues to erode personal and economic freedom, more people than ever before are handing over their U.S. passports to seek better opportunities abroad.


The staggering amount of debt held by the American empire ensures the public will be working it off for generations to come. The government has already begun its campaign to make it more difficult to leave the country, and it has also begun to crack down on the finances of the eight million Americans living abroad.

Regardless of whether you're a millionaire with multiple foreign bank accounts or a recent college graduate with a boatload of debt, the status of being a United States citizen brings with it a burden that will only grow heavier over time.

Since 2008, the number of individuals giving up their citizenship has increased by almost 560%, setting new records each of the past three years. Some of these expats are motivated by the extra tax load paid when working abroad while others are trying to avoid student loan debt. Others have just had enough of the encroaching police state.

Every taxpayer left in the country now owes more than $149,000 of the national debt, so it's no surprise the tide is beginning to turn. By hook or by crook, in the coming years, citizens will be fleeced of that money through higher taxes, savings that are inflated away, and an overall drop in their standard of living.

Many can see the writing on the wall and have become determined to protect themselves from the years of economic repression coming down the pipe.

Draconian steps have already been taken to slow the rate of expatriation. For one, the IRS has broadened its reach into foreign bank accounts through the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Through agreements with over 100 nations, the law is able to require all financial institutions abroad to report the account details of any American customers they have. With access to this new information, the IRS can revoke the passports of potential tax evaders and hinder their ability to travel using yet another additional power the agency was granted last year.

The Internal Revenue Service is one of the most powerful agencies of the federal government and has a track record of persecuting groups for political reasons. The fact that they have now set their sights are expats shouldn't surprise anyone.

The Tea Party movement, whatever your views on it, experienced this first-hand during the 2012 elections. Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots spoke on the targeting scandal:

"The IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power. This deliberate targeting and harassment of tea party groups reaches a new low in illegal government activity and overreach."

While penalties are being levied against those with enough money to work around the world, the most impactful measures are aimed at those just making ends meet. The initial paperwork for renouncing citizenship used to cost just $450, but it has skyrocketed to $2,350, making it the most expensive fee of any country in the world.

It may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but this additional expense directly targets the young and working class, creating a huge barrier to even starting the process. As an added bonus, the price increase has raised over $12 million for government coffers in just over a year.

The $19.5 trillion in debt that has been amassed through decades of interventionist policies and clandestine operations can only be maintained by taxing the government's human livestock. After all, the federal government counts student loans as almost 30% of their net worth.

If the young and productive workers of the future are allowed to leave, U.S. power and wealth will go with them.

The Millennial generation has been completely duped by the federal loan programs, pumped out to any 18-year-old with a pulse. The $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loans is akin to indentured servitude for those entering the dismal job market.

And students themselves aren't the only ones on the chopping block -- 90% of these loans are co-signed by the parents, attaching the ball and chain further up the family tree.

For those tempted to jump ship and disappear into another country, their families will be held responsible in their stead. It's reminiscent of North Korea, where the families of defectors are punished.

Noah Brown, president of the Association of Community College Trustees wrote:

"If you default, your financial life is ruined. You have to deal in cash for the rest of your life. It used to be death and taxes were the only certainty. You can throw in student loans now."

Many are learning the hard way that these loans are unique and can't be wiped away by simply declaring bankruptcy. Instead of the collateral being a house or a car, it's future earnings that can be seized.

Those who find themselves with no way out have been offered a deal with the devil -- work in the public sector for 10 years and you will be granted your freedom. This has created a perverse incentive to work directly for the state, placing fresh cogs in the military, police, and bureaucratic machines.

The policies seen so far are soft measures compared to what may be tried in the future as the government grows and the economy weakens.

A new type of debt prison is being built in the U.S., and as the inmates realize their predicament, the rush for the exits could be chaotic -- so long as people can afford to pay the fee to leave.

Those who understand the fragile state of our economic and political system can see that when politicians start building walls, it may be more about keeping people in than out.

Despite the brainwashing often conducted in public schools, many are realizing the future for U.S. citizens may look very different than the past.

The freedom and opportunity that have been synonymous with U.S. citizenship are being transformed before our eyes. When America abandoned its core values and let loose the scourge of oppressive big government, the countdown to when citizens would pay the price began.

Originally published at theAntimedia.org - reposted with permission.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/articl ... OtET8sR.99

[Blue Frost]

Bush, and Obama need took out, and tossed in the septic tank for the stuff they did to America.
It started earlier though, Johnson for sure, Nixon with China, and the gold standard, Clinton also selling us out in several ways.
Bush, and Obama though, they have transformed us into an Orwellian society with spy cameras, and hurt feelings being a crime.

[Blue Frost]

Great job Obama, we knew you could do it.

[Gary Oak]

Obama really nails the straight face while he does his rosy state of the union lies.

[Blue Frost]

All he does is lie, and still the masses believe him like the demented sick sheep they are. Hillary is a habitual lying person, and don't hide it anymore that she don't care, but people will follow her into the toilet .

[Gary Oak]

I wonder what if Merkels influx of refugees has anything to do with this. They must be a severe drain on the German economy.

Deutsche Bank Collapse: The Most Important Bank In Europe On The Brink


The largest and most important bank in the largest and most important economy in Europe is imploding right in front of our eyes. Deutsche Bank is the 11th biggest bank on the entire planet, and due to the enormous exposure to derivatives that it has, it has been called "the world's most dangerous bank".

Over the past year, I have repeatedly warned that Deutsche Bank is heading for disaster and is a likely candidate to be "the next Lehman Brothers".


On September 16th, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice wanted 14 billion dollars from Deutsche Bank to settle a case related to the mis-handling of mortgage-backed securities during the last financial crisis.

As a result of that announcement, confidence in the bank has been greatly shaken, the stock price has fallen to record lows, and analysts are warning that Deutsche Bank may be facing a "liquidity event" unlike anything that we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers back in 2008.

At one point on Friday, Deutsche Bank stock fell below the 10 euro mark for the first time ever before bouncing back a bit. A completely unverified rumor that was spreading on Twitter that claimed that Deutsche Bank would settle with the Department of Justice for only 5.4 billion dollars was the reason for the bounce.

But the size of the fine is not really the issue now. Shares of Deutsche Bank have fallen by more than half so far in 2016, and this latest episode seems to have been the final straw for the deeply troubled financial institution. Old sources of liquidity are being cut off, and nobody wants to be the idiot that offers Deutsche Bank a new source of liquidity at this point.

As a result, Deutsche Bank is potentially facing a "liquidity event" on a scale that we have not seen since the financial crisis of 2008. The following comes from Zero Hedge...

It is not solvency, or the lack of capital - a vague, synthetic, and usually quite arbitrary concept, determined by regulators - that kills a bank; it is - as Dick Fuld will tell anyone who bothers to listen - the loss of (access to) liquidity: cold, hard, fungible (something Jon Corzine knew all too well when he commingled and was caught) cash, that pushes a bank into its grave, usually quite rapidly: recall that it took Lehman just a few days for its stock to plunge from the high double digits to zero.

It is also liquidity, or rather concerns about it, that sent Deutsche Bank stock crashing to new all time lows earlier today: after all, the investing world already knew for nearly two weeks that its capitalization is insufficient.

As we reported earlier this week, it was a report by Citigroup, among many other, that found how badly undercapitalized the German lender is, noting that DB's "leverage ratio, at 3.4%, looks even worse relative to the 4.5% company target by 20183 and calculated that while he only models ¬2.9bn in litigation charges over 2H16-2017 - far less than the $14 billion settlement figure proposed by the DOJ - and includes a successful disposal of a 70% stake in Postbank at end-2017 for 0.4x book he still only reaches a CET 1 ratio of 11.6% by end-2018, meaning the bank would have a Tier 1 capital ¬3bn shortfall to the company target of 12.5%, and a leverage ratio of 3.9%, resulting in an ¬8bn shortfall to the target of 4.5%.

The more the stock price drops, the faster other financial institutions, investors and regular banking clients are going to want to pull their money out of Deutsche Bank. And every time there is news about people pulling money out of the bank, that is just going to drive the stock price even lower.

In other words, Deutsche Bank may be entering a death spiral that may be impossible to stop without a government bailout, and the German government has already stated that there will be no bailout for Deutsche Bank.

Banking customers have a total of approximately 566 billion euros deposited with the bank, and even if a small fraction of those clients start demanding their money back it is going to cause a major, major crunch.

Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan attempted to calm nerves on Friday by releasing a memo to employees that blamed "speculators" for the decline in the stock price...

Instead of doing what many have correctly suggested he should be doing, namely focusing on ways to raise more capital for the undercapitalized Deutsche Bank in order to stem the slow (at first) liquidity leak, first thing this morning CEO John Cryan issued another morale-boosting note to employees of Deustche Bank who have been watching their stock price crash to another record low, dipping under ¬10 in early trading for the first time ever.

In the memo the embattled CEO worryingly did what Dick Fuld and other chief executives did when they felt the situation slipping out of control, namely blaming evil "rumor-spreading" shorts, saying "our bank has become subject to speculation. Ongoing rumours are causing significant swings in our stock price. ... Trust is the foundation of banking. Some forces in the markets are currently trying to damage this trust."

Just as important, Cryan confirms the Bloomberg report that "a few of our hedge fund clients have reduced some activities with us. That is causing unjustified concerns."

As we explained last night, the concerns are very much justified if they spread to the biggest risk-factor for the German bank: its depositors, which collectively hold over ¬550 billion in liquidity-providing instruments.

One of the reasons why Deutsche Bank is considered to be so systemically "dangerous" is because it has 42 trillion euros worth of exposure to derivatives. That is an amount of money that is 14 times larger than the GDP of the entire nation of Germany.

Some firms that were derivatives clients of the bank have already gotten spooked and have moved their business to other institutions. It was this report from Bloomberg that really helped drive down the stock price of Deutsche Bank earlier this week...

The funds, a small subset of the more than 800 clients in the bank's hedge fund business, have shifted part of their listed derivatives holdings to other firms this week, according to an internal bank document seen by Bloomberg News.

Among them are Izzy Englander's $34 billion Millennium Partners, Chris Rokos's $4 billion Rokos Capital Management, and the $14 billion Capula Investment Management, said a person with knowledge of the situation who declined to be identified talking about confidential client matters.

"The issue here is now one of confidence," said Chris Wheeler, a financial analyst with Atlantic Equities LLP in London.

So what comes next?

Monday is a banking holiday for Germany, so we may not see anything major happen until Tuesday.

An announcement of a major reduction in the Department of Justice fine may buy Deutsche Bank some time, but any reprieve would likely only be temporary.

What appears to be more likely is the scenario that Jeffrey Gundlach is suggesting...

But Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, said investors betting that Berlin would not rescue Deutsche could find themselves nursing big losses.

'The market is going to push down Deutsche Bank until there is some recognition of support. They will get assistance, if need be,' said Gundlach, who oversees more than $100 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine.

It will be very interesting to see how desperate things become before the German government finally gives in to the pressure.

The complete and total collapse of Deutsche Bank would be an event many times more significant for the global financial system than the collapse of Lehman Brothers was.

Global leaders simply cannot afford for such a thing to happen, but without serious intervention it appears that is precisely where we are heading.

Personally, I don't know exactly what will happen next, but it will be fascinating to watch

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/articl ... ue6xUhV.99

[Blue Frost]

Looks bad for them, and the country thanks to the elitist robbing us all. How can they pay for all those invaders, the sorry bums they already had, and keep running also.
My guess the looting by the rich has took it's toll the most.

[Gary Oak]

Canada I believe is doing better than most countries but we too are starting to feel the pinch

.The Noose Is Tightening Quickly On The Global Economy
By Brandon Smith/Daily Sheeple October 06, 2016
The investment world has an embarrassingly short attention span. But frankly, it is a necessity. If daytraders, hedge funds and other horses in the carousel actually had to look beyond the next week of market activity or study back on market history in comparison to today, then they would not be able to retain their blind optimism, which is exactly what is necessary for them to continue functioning.

If they were all to examine the global financial situation with any honesty, the entire facade would collapse tomorrow.

At bottom, it is not central bank stimulus and intervention alone that drives equities and bond markets; it is the naive faith and willful ignorance of average market participants. There is a problem with this kind of economic model, however. Reality is never kept in check indefinitely. Fiscal truths will be exposed, one way or another.

How does one know when this full spectrum shift in awareness will occur? Well, there's no science that can help us with that. While basic economics is subject to the forces of supply, demand and mathematical inevitability, it is also subject to human psychology, which is another matter entirely.

In the past I have made a point to outline similarities in responses to various economic crises. For example, the media response and public perception at the onset of the Great Depression was a highly unfortunate exercise in false optimism.

The response just before the credit crash of 2008 by the media and the masses was much the same. It is interesting to note in particular that the mainstream media tends to become more over-the-top in its certainty of economic stability the closer the system comes to collapse.

That is to say, the nearer we edge towards financial calamity, the more violently the mainstream media attacks people who suggest that danger is on the horizon.

Notice any striking similarities between the mainstream rhetoric of 2006/2007 and the mainstream rhetoric of today? Notice how emotionally aggressive and almost desperate the media becomes when maintaining market faith, rather than looking at the situation objectively as the fundamentals begin to overwhelm investor complacency?

To be clear, while mainstream economists are almost always wrong, independent analysts are not prophets. We usually cannot provide the exact timing for the economic shifts we see coming. All we can do is provide a general window in which the events are likely to take place.

Peter Schiff's predictions on how the housing bubble and the credit crisis would play out were absolutely correct, even though he was about six months to eight months off his timing. Again, this is not an exact science, and human psychology has the ability to offset market fundamentals for months.

The supposed "catalyst" for the 2008 crash is primarily attributed to the fall of Lehman Brothers. I highly recommend any of the "bullish" economists out there arguing today that the central banks intend to prolong a stock rally indefinitely examine the statements made in the mainstream about Lehman and by Lehman leading up to their eventual death rattle. Then, absorb and really think on some of the recent statements and tactics used by Germany's Deutsche Bank.

Specifically, note Lehman's use of accounting and derivatives gimmicks and the cycling of funds through various accounts in order to make the company appear solvent. Then, take a look at revelations coming out of places like Italy that Deutsche Bank has been using the same model of false accounts and market manipulation, once again, with derivatives as a main tool for fraud.

Also notice the same outright dismissals of all pertinent evidence that Deutsche Bank might be suffering a capital shortfall, as Chief Executive John Cryan blames "speculators" for the companies losses.

Lehman's Dick Fuld and Bear Stearns' Jimmy Cain both blamed "speculators" and "rumors and conspiracies" for the fall of their companies during the derivatives debacle eight years ago. It would seem that history doesn't just rhyme, it sometimes repeats exactly.

Below is a rather revealing chart from the folks at Zero Hedge comparing the collapse of Lehman Brothers stock value to the steady decline of Deutsche Bank. Check it out:



image: https://plnami.blob.core.windows.net/me ... utsche.jpg



To be clear, Lehman was no catalyst. It was only a litmus test for a system completely devoid of tangible value and drowning in toxic debt. Lehman was a part of a much larger problem, it was not the cause of the problem. The same is true for Deutsche Bank.

The panic growing around Germany's second largest financial institution, Commerzbank, as it moves to lay off nearly 10,000 employees and suspend its dividend is another crisis indicator separate from Deutsche Bank. The clear solvency issues in Italy's major banks, including Monte dei Paschi, are yet another explosive element.

Keep in mind that when these edifices begin to crumble and Europe enters a state of financial emergency, the mainstream media and numerous governments will continue to blame speculators. They will also claim that the entire disaster was set in motion through a "domino effect"; the first domino probably being Deutsche Bank. This will be a lie. There is no line of dominoes.

One bank will not be bringing down the other banks -- yes, there is terrible interdependency, but the real issue is that ALL of these banks are falling due to their own cancerous behaviors. The very system they are built around is a corrupt and unsustainable model, and I hold that this is by design.

International financiers do not want the general public to look at the validity of the system, they want the public to view collapse events as an oversimplified case of cause and effect.

If the public were to understand that the global banking model is a destructive one (for the public, not for the elites), then they might demand the erasure of the model and its institutions entirely.

The elites don't want that. What they want is to be free to conjure crisis after crisis after crisis; to have the option to collapse the system only to replace it with something identical in nature but even more oppressive in its function. They want to create chaos today so that greater centralization can be purchased in the future through mass fear.

I continue to maintain as I always have that central banks around the world are shifting strategies and will do very little to intervene from this point on in the propping up of insolvent banking groups or equities markets. It is very unlikely that Germany or the European Central Bank, for example, will move to infuse Deutsch Bank with capital (at least, not until the damage has already been done).

It is also unlikely that any central bank will move to openly stimulate markets until an equities crash has run its course. In fact, some central banks including the Federal Reserve may act to expedite a stock crash -- watch for this to occur if Donald Trump attains the White House.

This has all happened before. It happened in 2008 when the Federal Reserve stepped back and allowed Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt. It will probably happen again when the German government and the ECB refuse to back Deutsche Bank.

The noose is tightening on the global economy and, once again, the mainstream media is too biased or too dumb to see it. They'll accuse the alternative media of crying "doom and gloom," and perhaps our timing will be off.

But exact timing will not really matter once the house of cards begins to topple. If we stick to our positions and refuse to be intimidated by rhetoric, the time will come when people will only remember that we were right for the most part and that the mainstream media was incompetent or dishonest.

In the meantime, we have a whole swarm of other trigger events before the end of the year. I predicted in my article The World Is Turning Ugly As 2016 Winds Down that the Saudi 9/11 bill might be vetoed by Obama and that the veto would be overturned by the Senate.

This has now taken place, which means increased Saudi tensions with the U.S. resulting in the eventual demise of the dollar's petro-currency status.

Watch the coming Italian constitutional referendum which could pave the way for conservative movements to initiate an Italian version of the Brexit. Also keep an eye on Syria yet again as diplomatic conflict flares between the U.S. and Russia (gee, who didn't see that coming?).

And, of course, the U.S. presidential election which appears to be culminating into the most divisive political event in America in decades.

Ignore the delusional positivism of the mainstream media and a large part of the equities trading community. Their fantasies only grow more elaborate the closer we get to a market heart attack. And remember, economic collapse is a process, not an overnight affair.

The progression of global decline should be apparent to anyone paying attention since 2008. The only question is, when will the average citizen become aware? My feeling according to current trends is, very soon.

Originally published at the Daily Sheeple - reposted with permission.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/articl ... WCGfRH3.99

[Gary Oak]

I believe that we are doing a bit better in Canada. But with Justin Trudeau in office now this will probably change for the worse soon.


Two-Thirds Will Be Out Of Cash Almost Immediately If Economic Crisis Hits


Did you know that almost 70 percent of the U.S. population is essentially living paycheck to paycheck?

As you will see below, a brand new survey has found that 69 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. Of course one of the primary reasons for this is that most of us are absolutely drowning in debt.

In fact, the total amount of household debt in the United States now exceeds 12 trillion dollars. So many Americans are so busy just trying to pay off their existing debts that they can't even think about saving anything for the future.

If economic conditions remain relatively stable, the fact that so many of us are living on the edge probably won't kill us. But the moment the economy plunges into another 2008-style crisis (or worse), we could be facing a situation where two-thirds of the country is in imminent danger of running out of cash.

If you are living paycheck to paycheck, you live under the constant threat of your life being totally turned upside down if that paycheck ever goes away. During the last crisis, millions of Americans lost their jobs very rapidly, and because so many of them were living paycheck to paycheck all of a sudden large numbers of people couldn't pay their mortgages.

As a result, multitudes of American families went through the extremely painful process of foreclosure.

Unfortunately, it appears that we have not learned anything from the last go around. According to the brand new survey that I mentioned above, 69 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings...

Last year, GoBankingRates surveyed more than 5,000 Americans only to uncover that 62% of them had less than $1,000 in savings. Last month GoBankingRates again posed the question to Americans of how much they had in their savings account, only this time it asked 7,052 people.

The result? Nearly seven in 10 Americans (69%) had less than $1,000 in their savings account.

Breaking the survey data down a bit further, we find that 34% of Americans don't have a dime in their savings account, while another 35% have less than $1,000. Of the remaining survey-takers, 11% have between $1,000 and $4,999, 4% have between $5,000 and $9,999, and 15% have more than $10,000.

Perhaps the most alarming fact from this survey is that 62 percent of all Americans had less than $1,000 in savings last year. So that means that this number has gotten 7 percent worse over the last 12 months.

How did that happen? I thought the mainstream media was telling us that the economy was getting better...

Look, if you don't have an emergency fund you are in danger of losing everything. This is a point that I have been making over and over again for years, and in an article about this new survey USA Today made this point very strongly as well...

This data is particularly worrisome since the recommendation is for Americans to have six months in expenses saved in case of an emergency, such as a large medical expense, car repair bill, or losing your job. Without this emergency fund to fall back on, millions of Americans could be risking financial disaster.

As the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, people are constantly asking me what they should do to get prepared for what is coming.

The number one thing that I always suggest is to build up an emergency fund.

In a chaotic situation it is always hard to anticipate accurately what is going to happen, but without a doubt we are all going to need to continue to pay our bills and to buy things for our families during the next crisis.

Yes, someday the U.S. dollar will become rather worthless, but until that happens you are going to need to continue to put a roof over the heads of your family and to put food on the table.

And you are going to need money to do those things.

Some time ago, the Federal Reserve also found that a large percentage of Americans are living on the edge of financial disaster.

They discovered that 47 percent of all Americans could not even come up with $400 to pay for an unexpected emergency room visit without borrowing the money or selling something that they own.

If you can't even come up with $400 you are really hurting, but that is the status of about half the country these days.

We are continually being told that the economy is strong, but that is simply not the truth.

In fact, it turns out that the period from 2005 to 2015 was the worst period for per capita real GDP growth in modern American history. The following comes from Zero Hedge...

Growth was unusually strong in the 1960s and early 1970s. In every year from 1966 through 1973, per-capita income was up between 30 percent and 40 percent from a decade earlier. Thus, it's not surprising that many Americans recall this as a great period for the nation's economy.

In every year from 1984 to 2007 -- a period that economists call the Great Moderation, because of the way both growth and interest rates stabilized -- per-person income was up between 20 percent and 30 percent from a decade earlier. That's ample reason for Americans to view this as a good period for the economy.

Cumulative per-person growth from 2005 to 2015 was lower than in any prior decade in the sample. That certainly helps explain why many Americans are unhappy with the nation's recent economic performance

And as I repeat over and over, Barack Obama is on track to be the one and only president in all of American history to never have a single year when the economy grew by at least 3 percent, and he has had eight years to try to accomplish that feat.

Why doesn't Donald Trump ever bring up that amazing fact? I would think that he could get a lot of mileage out of that number.

At this point, nobody can deny that the middle class is shrinking. 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle class households in 1971, but now the middle class makes up a minority of the population for the very first time in our history.

Back in 1970, the middle class brought home approximately 62 percent of all income, but today that figure has plummeted to just 43 percent.

Those that are still doing well often dismiss those that are struggling by barking out such phrases as "get a job", but the truth is that getting a good job is not so easy these days.

The most recent statistics show that there are 7.9 million Americans that are considered to be officially unemployed. When you add that number to the 94.1 million working age Americans that are considered to be "not in the labor force", you get a grand total of 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

And just because you do have a job does not mean that everything is okay. As I have discussed previously, 51 percent of all U.S. workers make less than $30,000 a year according to the Social Security Administration.

Everywhere you look things seem to be getting worse and not better. Not too long ago I documented the explosion of tent cities all over the country as poverty continues to rise, and I discussed how one study found that some young women in our impoverished inner cities are so desperate that they are actually trading sex for food.

Sadly, it isn't just a few hard cases that we are talking about. Even in areas of the country that are supposed to be "doing well" we are seeing record-setting poverty numbers.

For example, it was recently reported that the number of New Yorkers sleeping in homeless shelters just set a brand new all-time high, and the number of New York families permanently living in homeless shelters is up 60 percent over the past five years.

If things are this bad during an "economic recovery", what are they going to look like once the economy really starts imploding?

And considering the fact that almost 70 percent of the population has virtually no savings, could our nation handle an extended economic downturn that may be even worse than what we experienced in 2008 and 2009?

As a nation we truly are living on the edge, and it isn't going to take very much at all to push us into oblivion.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/articl ... LsKITG8.99

[Gary Oak]

What's your take Bluefrost ? Is it really as bad as this reportewr is reporting ? My friend in Ohio hasn't been able to find a job for one year and is has almost two master degrees. Obama's rosy picture he presents of how he did wonders for the USA may not be that truthful an assessment after all.


US FeaturesAmerica’s Hidden Unemployment Crisis Millions have stopped looking for work yet go uncounted in the Unemployment

In a June 6 speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said that the U.S. economy was “now fairly close to the … goal of maximum employment.”

At a jobs fair held in Newburgh, New York, on Oct. 5, Drew Smith begged to differ. A former stock broker and trader for 27 years, Smith has been unemployed and looking for work for four years. The full parking lot he surveyed as he walked into the fair reinforced his belief that the unemployment rate is much higher than the official numbers.


Read More
•Job Guarantee Program Could Solve America’s Unemployment Crisis

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said unemployment in June was 4.9 percent—the figure Yellen had in mind when she said the United States was close to maximum employment. In the September jobs report, that figure inched up to 5 percent.


(Epoch Times Staff)In the gap between Yellen’s and Smith’s unemployment estimates lies an unacknowledged catastrophe, as tens of millions of Americans either can’t find or have given up on looking for work. This crisis involves two distinct problems: There are large numbers who are looking for full-time work but can’t find it, and there are large numbers who have accepted not working as a norm.

This group of the non-working has been almost invisible to society, but it presents unique problems. Having a large number of adults give up on work weakens the economy and represents a staggering waste of human potential.

To begin to understand this story, one first has to look at the numbers.

The unemployment figure Yellen referenced is called the U3 unemployment rate. It measures everyone who has actively sought a job in the past four weeks and is what people most often refer to when they discuss the unemployment rate.

In a letter published on his company’s website, Jim Clifton, the CEO of the Gallup polling company, called the U3 rate “extremely misleading” and “a big lie.”


(Epoch Times Staff)Clifton points out that if someone is discouraged and has stopped looking for work, then that person is not counted in the U3 number as unemployed. He also notes that if someone works just one hour a week and is paid $20, he or she is not counted as unemployed.

Gallup publishes on its website the U6 unemployment rate, which it calls “real unemployment.” This is the BLS’s most capacious unemployment rate, including all of those counted in the U3 rate plus “discouraged workers,” “marginally attached workers,” and those “employed part-time for economic reasons.”

The marginally attached are defined as people who have looked for work sometime in the past year, but not in the past four weeks. The discouraged are those who have not looked for work in the past year because they believe there is no work available to them or none for which they would qualify. Those who are employed part time for economic reasons would like a full-time job, but can only find part-time work.

The September U6 rate was 9.3 percent, which translates into 14.87 million unemployed. While this rate gives a fuller picture than the U3 rate, it does not count those who have stopped looking for work for longer than one year, individuals whom the BLS classifies as “not in the labor force.”

Not in the Labor Force
In June 2016, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers released a report titled “The Long-Term Decline in Prime-Age Male Labor Force Participation.” The report notes that since 1965 the labor force participation rate of men in their prime working years (defined as ages 25 to 54) has steadily declined. In 1965, the number of men in their prime who were employed or unemployed and looking for a job was 96.7 percent. As of May 2016, that figure had dropped to 88.4 percent, meaning that 11.6 percent were not looking for work.

Nicholas Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, has written a book about these men titled “Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis.”

Eberstadt reports that in 2014 there were 7.2 million prime-working-age men not in the labor force. But this number understates those missing from our labor force—unemployed but not counted in the unemployment figures—by failing to account for men outside the ages of 25 to 54.

In an interview Eberstadt said, “If American men over the age of 20 just had the same work rates that our society had back in 1965 … there would be almost 10 million more men with paid jobs.”

Eberstadt points out the 7.2 million also misses the declining situation for women. While up to the year 2000 women’s labor force participation rates had been steadily improving, since 2000 those rates have been dropping similarly to men’s.

Calculating from data published by the BLS for 2014, an additional 3.6 million women would have had jobs in 2014, if they had been working at the year 2000 participation rates.

If 13.6 million long-term discouraged workers are added into the current BLS labor force number of 159.9 million, the unemployment rate swells from the U6’s 9.3 percent to 16.4 percent.

This estimate of the unemployed depends upon the surveying done by the BLS. John Williams of the Shadow Government Statistics newsletter calls those surveys into question.

For three decades, Williams has been a private consulting economist whose clients pay him to make sense of the government’s often difficult-to-interpret economic statistics. Each month he painstakingly goes over the minutiae of official data on unemployment, GDP, household income, trade, and more, and sends his estimated corrections to the data to his clientele.

In a commentary on his website, Shadowstats.com, Williams says that in 1994, when the BLS redesigned how it gathers and delivers unemployment statistics, it redefined discouraged workers so that they were no longer counted after one year. Previously they had been counted for as long as they were discouraged. The BLS also changed the survey questions. The changes made it meaningfully more difficult to identify long-term displaced workers, Williams says.

The BLS uses two surveys to measure employment and unemployment: the Current Population Survey, or household survey, and the Current Employment Statistics, or payroll survey. The household survey is of 60,000 eligible households and the payroll survey is of 146,000 businesses and government agencies.

Williams sees significant flaws in both surveys.

The household survey is modified with seasonal adjustments, which are necessary because of regular, seasonal changes in the labor force occasioned by events such as the start of the school year and the Christmas holidays.

The difficulty is that the BLS calculates each month’s adjustments on a different basis, which makes month-to-month comparisons of the data useless.

The payroll survey is made inaccurate by the BLS’s use of something called an upside bias factor.

“Following the 1983 recession, the BLS had the political embarrassment of undercounting job growth,” Williams said. “This was explained to me by the person at the BLS who handled the numbers. And so they started adding a ‘bias factor’ each month to increase the job numbers.

“They began getting criticized for this, and so they developed the Birth-Death model, which claimed to count the number of jobs gained from new businesses starting versus those lost by businesses failing.

“The Birth/Death model has a different name, but it is really the same thing they began doing in 1983.”

A commentary on Williams’s Shadowstats website estimates that in the 12 months prior to this September, the Birth-Death model added 846,000 jobs to the employment numbers reported by the payroll survey.

“The BLS cannot measure meaningfully the impact of jobs loss and jobs creation from employers starting up or going out of business on a timely basis,” reads the commentary. “Such information simply is guesstimated by the BLS.”

Williams says the decline in the BLS’s U3 unemployment number since the Great Recession has mainly occurred because discouraged workers who’ve stopped looking for work for more than a year are no longer counted in the labor force. As the labor force decreases, then the same number of employed workers becomes a larger percentage of it, which means the unemployment rate goes down.

Researchers at the Federal Reserve have argued that the decline in the labor force is due mainly to the baby boomer generation retiring. Williams called this “nonsense.”

He pointed out that many baby boomers are continuing to work past retirement age, and many who are not working want to work, because they can’t make ends meet.

He pegs the unemployment rate at 23 percent.

Blind Spot
Whether the “real” unemployment rate is 9.3 percent or 16.4 percent or 23 percent, most Americans don’t have the information they need to understand the misfortune of unemployment suffered by vast numbers of their fellows. This ignorance makes recognizing and responding to the problem of long-term unemployment more difficult.

For instance, when Yellen declared in June that the economy was nearly at full employment, the press reported her remarks uncritically. Readers were generally not given any context as to what the U3 unemployment rate actually measures. Nor were they told that the numbers of jobless people might be much greater than the U3 estimates. This has been typical of most reporting on unemployment, although there are occasional articles critiquing the statistics.

This uncritical reporting may be a consequence of the BLS’s 1994 redesign of its reporting, which resulted in the unemployment rate becoming more difficult to understand. The fact that busy journalists would take the bureau’s featured unemployment statistic at face value is not surprising.

Beyond the news coverage, though, our society may have changed in ways that cause its elite decision-makers to be less familiar with the lower class and therefore less able to respond to the crisis of unemployment.

To explain this change, Eberstadt points to Charles Murray’s description of a new upper class separated from the rest of society by a bubble. In his book “Coming Apart,” Murray argues that the United States has in the last five decades developed a new class system.

The new upper class comprises the experts and leading figures in technology, business, politics, academics, the media, entertainment, and culture who make decisions for everyone else. Gathered together in select zip codes, the members of this new class tend to have high incomes, go to the same elite schools, share the same culture, and intermarry with one another.

Increasingly, these experts are less likely to know well anyone who is experiencing persistent unemployment.

At the same time, the long-term unemployed have tended to be quiet. One hasn’t seen protests demanding jobs or that society help them.

Williams, though, said they have begun to make noise. The white working class has rallied behind Donald Trump, Williams said, because Trump says things can be changed.

Unemployed and Not Looking for Work
Eberstadt’s book “Men Without Work” describes a group of men who have simply given up on working.

According to the BLS , this withdrawal began in earnest in 1965, when 96.7 percent of prime-age (25 to 54) men were in the workforce. That percentage has decreased steadily, reaching 88.4 percent in May 2016.

The BLS reports that in 2014, 7.2 million prime-age men were not in the workforce. Looking at census data, Eberstadt found that from 1994 to 2014, on average 14 percent were looking for work, which means 86 percent were not looking for work. In 2014 numbers, this is approximately 6.2 million men.

According to census data, those absent from the workforce for education and training constitute about one in nine of those not in the workforce, or about 800,000. Subtracting these leaves a group of about 5.4 million not looking for work.

Vulnerable
Not surprisingly, this group of 5.4 million is found disproportionately among the most vulnerable in society.

According to the BLS, in 1964 the labor force participation rates for prime-age men of different educational levels were almost identical, with those with a bachelor’s degree or more at 98 percent and those with a high school diploma or less at 97 percent.

By 2015, the participation rate for college educated prime-age men had slipped to less than 94 percent, while those with a high school diploma or less had fallen steeply to 83 percent.

In what may be a residual effect of racism, black prime-age men are much more likely not to be in the labor force than whites or Hispanics. According to the Council on Economic Advisors, the labor force participation rate for blacks was approximately 78 percent in 2015, while that for Hispanics was at around 91 percent and non-Hispanic whites around 89 percent.


(Epoch Times Staff)Using the BLS’s National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Eberstadt found that men “with at least one spell in prison always have the lowest employment rates.”

Family arrangements matter too. Men who were married or who lived with children in the household were more likely to be employed.

Sources of Meaning
Using a BLS survey on time use, Eberstadt found that those prime-age men classified as “not in the labor force” spend 2,150 hours a year on average—what amounts to a full-time job—on “socializing, relaxing, and leisure.”

In particular, for those not in the labor force who are not full-time students, watching TV occupied almost 5.5 hours a day.

Eberstadt cites a study by the National Opinion Research Center that reports 31 percent of those not in the labor force admit to using illegal drugs.

BLS data indicates those not in the labor force who are not enrolled as students spend less time volunteering in their communities or caring for family members than men who are employed or looking for work. They are also less likely to vote, read a newspaper, or go to church.

According to the Census Bureau, in 2014 prime-age men not in the labor force consumed on average $5,700 a year in government benefits, compared to $500 for the employed. Those not in the labor force also received support from family members.

Eberstadt writes that “to a distressing degree these men appear to have relinquished what we think of ordinarily as adult responsibilities.”

These troubled men seem to be turning their backs on what are usually considered the sources of meaning for human life: family, work, and religion. Millions are living a life without the dignity of work or the possibility of a life elevated by a vocation.


(Epoch Times Staff)

Eberstadt writes that these millions dropping out has lead to slower economic growth, greater inequality, and higher deficits and national debt, while increasing family breakdown, welfare dependence, and the practice of women supporting jobless men.

This problem of men not in the labor force has grown in size and intensity for 50 years, and since 2000 the problem has grown to include women. As robots diminish the need for human labor, the need for society to find solutions grows more urgent.

In his review of “Men Without Work,” former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers writes that for two generations we have already seen technology cause job destruction. In part due to the increasing pace of technological change, he expects that “one-third of all men between 25 and 54 will be out of work by mid-century.”

Eberstadt sees this danger as a spur to action: “However acute one believes the coming displacement may be, this should only reinforce our interest in focusing a spotlight on this invisible crisis.”

***********

Unemployed and Looking For Work
Daphne Brewster

Daphne Brewster in Manhattan, New York, on Sept. 22, 2016. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)Daphne Brewster, 53, has been unemployed for at least 10 years, during which time she cared for her elderly father. Getting back into the workforce is difficult, she said.

“It’s stressful,” she said. “It’s like a shellshock. What you used to know is not true anymore.”

Brewster spends her days sending out resumes and trying to network. She has sent out dozens and dozens of resumes and had a couple of interviews. She has been to training programs to refresh her skills and even shadowed someone on the job for a week.

But it takes its toll.

“It’s not the greatest. I can’t afford things I used to be able to afford,” she said. “I don’t want to become homeless. I want to be able to provide for myself and my future.”

She is looking for an administrative assistant or executive assistant role.

Gerald Taft

Gerald Taft attends a job fair in the Bronx, New York, on Sept. 21, 2016. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/Epoch Times)Gerald Taft, 61, says he needs another 6 to 7 years of work before he can retire. He was made redundant in April after 10 years at a contracting company in the accounts payable department.

So far, Taft has applied for about 20 jobs and has just started some weekend work at a home for young people and adults with behavioral problems. He said job hunting is “a numbers game.”

Taft still gets up at 5 a.m. every day and attributed his positive outlook to his mother.

“My mother was a very strong woman,” he said. “You can knock me down, I’m going to get back up.”

He said he gets disappointed “from time to time” with the job search, but “I can’t give up.”

Yvette Pabon

Yvette Pabon attends a job fair in the Bronx, New York, on Sept. 21, 2016. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/Epoch Times)Yvette Pabon, 43, has sent out more than 100 resumes and has had close to 25 interviews—but no job.

“This process has definitely humbled me,” she said. “It tests my confidence level.”

It is the first time she has had to look for a job in 10 years—she was made redundant in December and has been looking ever since.

“I condition myself to get up as if I’m going to work,” she said. She searches on her computer, uses LinkedIn, and attends workshops to try to land a job.

“It’s pretty scary,” she said. “There have been times when I’ve had anxiety.”

Pabon finished getting her master’s in public administration last year and has 20 years experience in retail management in the private sector—but with no experience in the public sector, she is finding it hard to break through.

The job interview process has changed in the last decade, too, she said. Whereas one to two interviews used to be the norm, now it’s four to five. And she is aware that her next boss might be 20 years her junior.

“The older you get, the more challenging it is,” she said.

Pabon’s dream is to “be in a job where I can really make a difference.” She enjoys being a manager and a mentor and wants to work in an organization that values a work-life balance.

Rosemary Cano

Rosemary Cano searches for job openings at a career center in El Monte, Calif., on Sept. 29, 2016. (Sarah Le/Epoch Times)Rosemary Cano is 65 and lives in Whittier just east of Los Angeles. She was laid off from her job as a physical therapy aide due to company downsizing in 2010, and since then has been struggling to find permanent work.

“I couldn’t find a job at all,” she said. “I ran out of unemployment, so I [was forced to] go on social security.”

But her $688 a month social security payments were not enough. Cano is now just looking for supplemental work to pay her bills, but said she’s run into a lot of employers who have refused to hire older people, such as herself, even if they are fully capable of doing the job.

“I know people that are sleeping in their cars right now because they can’t live off their social security and nobody will hire them because of their age,” she said.

Cano’s bank offered her a temporary loan modification for her mortgage when she lost her job. However, she was unable to find permanent work before the modification expired, and in order for the bank to continue financing her loan, she was told she had to make a $10,000 payment by the end of the month.

“I told them, ‘Please take my [monthly] payment. Just take it. I’ve saved it.’ They said, ‘We can’t because you need $10,000.’ I said, ‘But you never warned me that I was going to have to come up with $10,000.’ Nowhere on my contract does it say that.”

Her home is now in foreclosure.

“You feel like you’re nothing,” she said. “There’s not a time that I haven’t even thought about suicide, because you feel hopeless.”

For the last four years, Cano has spent nearly all her time off at a WorkSource California center near her home, where she can search for jobs and fill out applications online.

“I used to come every single day, but now I don’t have enough gas in my car to come every day, and I don’t have a computer, because I can’t afford all this stuff at home. Everything’s gone.”

Patrick Dulak

Patrick Dulak at a job fair in Newburgh, N.Y., on Oct. 5, 2016. (Stephen Gregory/Epoch Times)After working part time and raising children as a stay-at-home dad, Patrick Dulak, 61, of Putnam County, New York, is looking to re-enter the work force.

He formerly worked full time as a contractor in the electroplating industry, but he finds there are fewer jobs there than before.

“More and more manufacturing has gone overseas,” Dulak said. “It can be a dirty, polluting industry if you don’t do it right, because the benefits of say going over to China are there. Cheap labor, pollution standards aren’t as strong.”

He has looked for work for a few months, but so far has found potential employers often don’t reply to his applications.

He understands his age may be a liability in his job search. “How long I will be around” is probably a big question any employer has, Dulak said.

But he also knows that with his age come some positives. “I bring experience and essentially can be a self-starter in most situations.”

With the holidays coming, Dulak knows seasonal retail work will be available, but his eye is on something that meets his career expectations.

Drew Smith

Drew Smith at a job fair in Newburgh, N.Y., on Oct. 5, 2016. (Stephen Gregory/Epoch Times)Drew Smith, 58, of Goshen, New York, has been looking for work for four years. He worked 27 years on Wall Street, which was followed by stints in insurance and retail.

Smith was a broker and trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange floor, but after it computerized, there was no longer a trading floor.

Being unemployed has been tough: “You try to keep a brave face. Try to keep upbeat. The worst part about it is the rejection. And then sort of depression sets in. And you fight that.”

“I am always fighting that [feeling down],” Smith said. “Every day you wake up. Make sure you make the bed. Go down and face the computer. And it is just like more dead ends, send out more résumés, more dead ends.”

Smith estimates he has sent out 300 résumés over the past four years. With extended unemployment, his financial situation is becoming more difficult. He reports his bank account has gone down drastically, he has cashed in his stocks and bonds, and borrowed against insurance policies.

He serves on the board of directors for a local theater company, which he says helps.

“I have devoted a lot of time to that,” Smith said. “I have been relying on this, I fall back on it, for a sense of purpose. Unfortunately, they don’t pay.”

Deirdre Campbell

Deirdre Campbell at a job fair in Newburgh, N.Y., on Oct. 5, 2016. (Stephen Gregory/Epoch Times)Deirdre Campbell of Middletown has had the advantage of knowing long in advance that she will lose her job. Her last day at Pfizer, where she has worked as an executive assistant to the site leader, will be Oct. 28.

Pfizer is moving the jobs from her plant “because it is cheaper to make things overseas, although that is not what they say,” Campbell said.

Her plant used to make baby vaccine and Centrum. The vaccine is now being made in Guayama, Puerto Rico and Centrum in Gwrych Castle, Ireland.

The Pfizer plant opened in 1907 and its closing has stretched out over five years. During that time, Campbell has seen “generations of people, families” lose their jobs. “So, it’s kind of hard,” she said.

Pfizer, however, has been “very transparent” throughout and done “very much” to help the workers losing their jobs. It hired employment services and résumé writing classes and brought in different federal bureaucracies to let the employees know what services are available to them.

Campbell, who is in her forties, had a meeting the week before with someone who explained the training available through the Trade Act Agreement to those whose jobs have moved overseas.

She says she “is not ready yet” to make a change, but she has started to look around. She is determined “to be positive and just move forward.”

Relsiea Pruner

Relsiea Pruner at a job fair in Newburgh, N.Y., on Oct. 5, 2016. (Stephen Gregory/Epoch Times)Relsiea Pruner, 43, of Verbank, New York, feels she has grown due to her experience of unemployment. It has been five years since Pruner has had a full-time job, and during this time she has cobbled together contract work as substitute teacher for several school districts.

While she continues to apply for full-time teaching positions, she feels the market in New York is saturated–she says each teaching job has between 300 and 2,000 applicants. She is turning her job search more toward business, in which she has ten years of experience.

Pruner has found unemployment “financially limiting and disabling” and also very frustrating.

She feels the official statistics don’t show the reality of unemployment, which she feels has gotten worse or remained the same.

And Pruner is frustrated that the market doesn’t recognize her skills. “The job market will not consider your skillset unless it has been recent—within 3 months to a year to two years—and deems your skills kind of outdated,” she said. In this scenario, she finds her diverse background of business and education, which she feels is a strength, does not open doors for her.

In response to a difficult environment, Pruner said she has learned how she “can adapt, and change, and acclimate myself.”

The job search has been very demanding in the time it takes and in how it requires constant vigilance. “You have to be on your guard with your eyes and ears open, and can never be looking in enough directions it seems,” she said.

Still, Pruner said her experience of unemployment has “made me become more well rounded and open minded, and I have learned to think outside of the box.”

And she has learned, “You look for the pluses in the meantime, and that has made me happy for what I do have…and that will help you persevere.”

Rick Childs

Rick Childs, on Oct. 15, 2016 in Leadville, Colorado. (Jim Fogarty/Epoch Times)Rick Childs, 52, of Leadville, Colorado, is a construction worker who feels he is getting priced out of the job market.

Laid off three weeks ago, he is busy looking for work. He says the construction industry in Colorado is being changed by an influx of illegal immigrants.

On his last job, Childs said the ratio of Hispanics to whites was 75 to 2. The wages paid the Hispanic workers, Childs said, are lower.

“White construction workers are becoming extinct,” he said.

With his time off, Childs has fixed things around his house, and taken care of medical and dental appointments. He enjoys being off, but is already feeling a financial pinch. He won’t be able this month to pay his credit card bills or his mortgage payment.

He has sent out around 20 job applications, and is looking for a possible career change. At 52, Childs is not sure his body will hold up until retirement under the rough work he has been doing.

But to be eligible for a less physically demanding job, he needs training. The last time he was laid off, he tried applying for grants to cover training, but didn’t receive anything.

Without a job, he can’t cover tuition. But if he is working, he doesn’t have time for school.

Charlotte Cuthbertson in New York, Jim Fogarty in Leadville, Colo., and Sarah Le in San Gabriel Valley, Calif., contributed to this report.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2163987 ... nt-crisis/

[Blue Frost]

It is bad, most the jobs is just mediocre support jobs not good jobs that make much.
I know a few people working fast food, and Walmart jobs that had collage.

[Blue Frost]

One serving tables at two jobs.

[Gary Oak]

5 Urgent Warnings From Big Banks That the "Economy Has Gone Suicidal"

The economy has gone suicidal.

It is working against the very people who need its energy to survive. It is collapsing on its own weight, and the weight of literally incalculable levels of toxic debt. And it is going to create the greatest disaster of our time, if the warnings from the world's most powerful bankers are any indication.

While the general population is obsessed with the details of the world's most entertaining and bizarre election in American history, the big banks are gearing up for a deadly serious economic collapse.

Just during the past few weeks, there have been major discussions about stock markets dropping, the insolvency of Europe's biggest investment bank, the mounting debt crisis and a deeper, long-term decline for 'everyday Americans.'

Here's what you probably missed while the Hillary-Trump cage match has taken over the collective psyche:

1. HSBC Issues "Red Alert" Over Imminent Sell-Off of Stocks

The U.S. stock market is artificially propped up by the Federal Reserve, but their ability to stimulate the economy has worn off. Immunity has set in, and they've got nothing left.

It is only a matter of time until Yellen raises rates.

When the shoe drops, everything falls with it.

via Business Insider:

In a note to clients released Wednesday, Murray Gunn, the head of technical analysis for HSBC, said he had become on "RED ALERT" for an imminent sell-off in stocks given the price action over the past few weeks.

In late September, Gunn said the stock market's moves looked eerily similar to those just before the 1987 stock market crash. Citi's Tom Fitzpatrick also highlighted the market's similarities to the 1987 crash just a few days ago. "With the US stock market selling off aggressively on 11 October, we now issue a RED ALERT," Gunn said.

2. I.M.F. Issues "Stability Warning" Over Deutsche Bank

Germany's - and Europe's - largest investment bank is in the midst of a terrible crisis with its balance sheets, overloaded with toxic debt that is big enough to topple several continents. Goldman Sachs and others, of course, have echoed their concerns.

According to the NY Times:

"The focus of investors has shifted from the level of capital to the business model, and that is why banks are under pressure," said Peter Dattels, deputy director in the I.M.F.'s capital markets division.

In their report, the fund's economists argued that the problems with European banks were deeply structural: a toxic brew of low levels of capital, troubled loans and business models that no longer delivered profits in an era of low growth and negative interest rates.

In particular, Mr. Dattels said, "banks are transitioning from outdated business models that rely on large scale balance sheets," saying that Deutsche Bank fell into this bucket.

Economists and regulators have argued that Deutsche Bank, given its size and culture of risk-taking, poses more of a risk to financial markets than its peers in Europe and the United States.

As per usual with the haunting spectre of 2008, Deutsche Bank's demise threatens contagion on a global basis, and will almost certainly infect U.S. markets as well.

3. Bank of America Warns That a Recession is Imminent, and Unavoidable

As SHTF reported, even the big banks are being forced to admit that stimulus is no longer working, and that consequences are happening.

The Fed's disastrous rescue plan after the 2008 financial crisis has left the U.S. economy in a fragile and vulnerable state.

via CNBC:

"We are seven years into a full-fledged, all out, central bankers doing everything they can to stimulate demand," Bank of America-Merrill Lynch's head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy Savita Subramanian recently warned on CNBC's " Fast Money ."

"We looked at all of these indicators that have been pretty good at forecasting recessions and we extrapolated that if they follow the current trends they're on, we're going to hit a recession sometime in the second half of next year."

"What scares me is the market been so fragile.

Again, we're playing with musical chairs here, not theoretical possibilities. The recording will end, and play time will be over.

4. Macquarie Group's Leading Investor Warns That the Private Sector Will Never Recover From QE3... and the Age of Human Jobs Is Over

Federal Reserve monetary policy has absolutely eviscerated small businesses. Even typical players in investment markets are no longer able to get returns in private investment.

This is forcing a de facto state-run economy, and to make matters worse, all the humans are about to be laid off as robots take their jobs.

In the coming decade, 3.5 million truckers will lose their jobs, and along with will go waitresses, secretaries, teachers, office workers and much more. What then?

As SHTF reported:

The head of the investment banking firm Macquarie Group went even further, cautioning that we are witnessing nothing short of a terminal economy... one which they very well might not be able to put back together again:

via the Epoch Times:

Global central banks with their easy money policies of negative interest rates and quantitative easing are working against a debt deflation scenario, with limited success, according to Shvets. "That was the entire idea of aggressive monetary policies: Stimulate investment and consumption. None of that works, there is no evidence. It can impact asset prices, but they don't flow into the real economy," he said.

"There is no productivity on a global basis... The private sector will never recover, it will never multiply money again..."

5. The Bank of International Settlements - the Central Bank of Central Banks - Warns of Chinese Economy Meltdown

Our financial problems are global in nature, and markets in China are just as vulnerable to collapse. Basically, all the major economies are playing the same dangerous shell game.

As Michael Snyder reported:

The pinnacle of the global financial system is warning that conditions are right for a "full-blown banking crisis" in China. Since the last financial crisis, there has been a credit boom in China that is really unprecedented in world history.

At this point the total value of all outstanding loans in China has hit a grand total of more than 28 trillion dollars. That is essentially equivalent to the commercial banking systems of the United States and Japan combined.

The Bank for International Settlements warned in its quarterly report that China's "credit to GDP gap" has reached 30.1, the highest to date and in a different league altogether from any other major country tracked by the institution. It is also significantly higher than the scores in East Asia's speculative boom on 1997 or in the US subprime bubble before the Lehman crisis.

But of course there is more.

Put this together with the downright eerie predictions of ranking figures in Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.

" Goldman Sachs warns that the "Third Wave" of the financial crisis is upon us, and will be the worst phase of it yet:

This wave is characterised by rock-bottom commodities prices, stalling growth in China and other emerging-markets economies, and low global inflation, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Peter Oppenheimer said in a big-picture note.

This triple whammy has its roots in the response to the first two waves of crisis -- the banking collapse and European sovereign-debt crisis -- and it is all part of the so-called debt supercycle of the past few decades. (source)

" JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned last year that a "volatile crisis" is coming.

He is preparing his firm to dig deeper into control over the digital grid, and the fees, penalties and surcharges that go along with it.

As SHTF reported:

The trigger to the next crisis will not be the same as the trigger to the last one - but there will be another crisis. Triggering events could be geopolitical (the 1973 Middle East crisis), a recession where the Fed rapidly increases interest rates (the 1980-1982 recession), a commodities price collapse (oil in the late 1980s), the commercial real estate crisis (in the early 1990s), the Asian crisis (in 1997), so-called "bubbles" (the 2000 Internet bubble and the 2008 mortgage/housing bubble), etc

These "reaction" transactions of the next financial crisis will be intensified by the new financial terrain:

" automated, rapid via computers, algorithms, big data;

" "shallow markets" and threatened with "illiquidity";

" positioned to charge for deposits and transactions while less likely to lend and returning little or no interest;

" vulnerable to cyber theft and subject to account freezes;

" market "depth" limited by gravity of actions of big fish in the pond - big banks, Federal Reserve bond purchases, derivatives moved by enormous players and rapid computerized trades; dark pools of billionaires steering big deals from the shadows;

What do they know that we don't, and how bad is it going to be? More importantly, are you prepared to survive such a crisis?

Originally published at SHTFplan.com - reposted with permission

[Gary Oak]

Drowning In Debt: 35 Percent Of All Americans Have Debt Past Due


More than a third of all Americans can't pay their debts. I don't know about you, but to me that is a shocking figure. As you will see below, 35 percent of the people living in this country have debt in collections. When a debt is in collections, it is at least 180 days past due.

And this is happening during the "economic recovery" that the mainstream media keeps touting, although the truth is that Barack Obama is going to be the only president in United States history to never have a single year when the economy grew by at least 3 percent.

But at least things are fairly stable for the moment, and if this many Americans are having trouble paying their bills right now, what are things going to look like when the economy becomes extremely unstable once again.

The 35 percent figure is a nugget that I discovered in a CNN article about Detroit that I was reading earlier today...

And the city's troubles have left a mark on the financial stability of its residents in a big way, according to a new report from the Urban Institute.

About 66% of residents have debt in collections -- meaning more than 180 days past due -- at a median amount of $1,847. Across the U.S., 35% of Americans have debt in collections.

It is hard to believe that 66 percent of the residents of one of our largest cities could have debt in collections, but without a doubt the city of Detroit is a complete and utter economic wasteland at this point.

But to me, the 35 percent figure for the nation as a whole is a much greater concern.

And much of the debt that is in collections is credit card debt.

In the immediate aftermath of the last financial crisis, many Americans started getting out of debt, and that was a very good thing.

Unfortunately, that trend has completely reversed itself over the past few years, and now credit card balances are rising at a pace that is quite alarming...

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve, ValuePenguin found that the average credit card debt for households that carry a balance is a shocking $16,048 -- a figure that has risen by 10% over the past three years.

At the average variable credit card interest rate of 16.1%, this translates to nearly $2,600 in credit card interest alone. And many credit cards have interest rates much higher than the average.

Even scarier, consider that based on the average interest rate and a minimum payment of 1.5% of the balance, it would take nearly 14 years for the typical indebted household to pay off its existing credit card debt, at a staggering cost of more than $40,200. Keep in mind that this assumes no additional credit card debt is added to the tab along the way.

Those that have been there know exactly how it feels to be drowning in credit card debt.

You know, they don't teach you about credit cards in high school or in college. At least they didn't in my day. So once I got out into the "real world" and discovered the joy of instantly getting whatever I wanted with a credit card, I didn't understand how painful it would be to pay that money back someday.

If you have credit card balances that are out of control, they can keep you up late into the night. The worry and the fear can eat away at you like a cancer, and many people play a game of moving balances from one card to another in a desperate attempt to stay afloat.

Fortunately I learned my hard lessons at an early enough age to get things turned around. Now I warn others about the danger of credit card debt through my writing, and my hope is that the things that I share on my websites are doing some good for others that may be struggling financially.

When you are deep in debt, it is exceedingly difficult to build up any wealth of your own. This is one of the primary reasons why 69 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings today.

In essence, more than two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, and that is a recipe for disaster when the next major economic downturn in the U.S. strikes.

Overall, household debt in America has now reached a grand total of 12.3 trillion dollars. When you break that down, it comes to $38,557 for every man, woman and child in the entire nation.

So for a family of five, your share of that total would be $192,785.

And remember, that is just household debt. That total does not include any form of business debt or any form of government debt.

We truly are a "buy now, pay later" society. We were the wealthiest and most prosperous nation on the entire planet, and previous generations handed us the keys to the greatest economic machine in world history, but that wasn't good enough for us.

We always had to have more, more, more - and now we have accumulated more debt than any society in the history of the globe.

It is inevitable that this giant debt bubble is going to burst. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that.

What we experienced in 2008 was just a preview of the hard times that are coming. The next recession is going to be even worse, and most economists are convinced that it will happen within the next four years no matter who is elected president in November.

The following comes from the Wall Street Journal via the Calculated Risk blog...

Economists in The Wall Street Journal's latest monthly survey of economists put the odds of the next downturn happening within the next four years at nearly 60%.

Just like the last time around, millions of those that are "living on the edge" financially will fall out of the middle class and into poverty when they lose their jobs.

Hopefully most of you that have been reading my work for an extended period of time have already been getting out of debt and have been building up a financial cushion.

Sadly, most of the country continues to act as if they are living in a pre-2008 world, and the economic wake up call that is coming is going to be incredibly painful for those that thought they could get away with being exceedingly reckless financially.

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[Gary Oak]

I believe that Americans and some Canadians are hoping that Donald Trump can save America. I do believe that Hillary Clinton will be another disaster like Barak Obama and George Bush Junior. Can North America survive another disasterous president ?

The Approaching Economic Storm


The next recession appears likely to hit in the spring of 2017, and many experts are expressing increased concern over the weakened position of the Federal Reserve.

After years of low rates from the Federal Reserve and massive stimulus programs from China, there may be very little left that governments can do to push back against this macroeconomic tide. What is worse, it is widely believed that the Fed is planning to raise rates in December of 2016.

Whereas its intention may be to provide room to lower rates later in a crisis, there is also a strong chance that this could help precipitate the recession.

Though notoriously difficult to predict, financial cycles are an inescapable part of a fiat currency system based on fractional reserve banking.

A currency model built on debt and controlled with the imperfect levers of interest rates set by central banks, the sin of usury, writ large across the globe, will expand and contract. The only warnings of the coming crash are a set of leading economic indicators, perhaps six months to a year in advance.

With many calling the recovery from the 2008 recession both weak and artificial, the stage is set for a devastating economic pullback. But why are financial experts predicting the chances of a recession in the next year with estimates ranging from as low as 25% to a 60% or higher?

Home Price Inflation

With the memory of the last housing bubble still fresh, home prices in the US have risen sharply since 2012 and are now nearing the pre-crash highs of 2006.

This rise in asset prices has outstripped the slowing rate of income growth. Low interest rates have fueled a paper-recovery that could very soon prove to be unsustainable at these levels.

Decline in Corporate Profits

We are now in the fifth quarter of declining corporate profits, a key leading indicator of overall economic health. Stock prices can be manipulated, asset values can inflate and unemployment numbers are notoriously unreliable, but corporate profits drive economic expansion, hiring and tax revenues.

The effects are not immediate on a macro level but instead lead the cycle by between six and nine months. But dwindling liquidity levels are now being felt globally. Michael Howell of CrossBorder Capital Group stated this month that "We are seeing a serious deterioration on a monthly basis." He went on to say, "We think the US is heading for recession by the Spring of 2017.

It is absolutely bonkers for the Fed to even think about raising rates right now." The cut-backs corporations are now imposing will soon be felt globally.

The Fed Using Repos to Pump Liquidity into Markets

The Federal Reserve has been using a macroeconomic lever known as "reverse-repos" to inject additional liquidity into the market. With little room to drop the Fed Funds Rate any further, the American Central Bank has turned to other methods to stimulate the economy in the face of shrinking corporate profits.

According to the analysts of CrossBorder, the liquidity levels in the US are now nearing the same inflection points seen a shortly before the recessions of 1990, 2001 and in November 2007, just over a year before the Lehman Brothers implosion.

Fed Funds Rate Hike Expected in December 2016

Even the vice-chairmen of the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer, admitted this week that the Fed has little left in its toolbox after keeping interest rates so low for so long and that this, "could therefore lead to longer and deeper recessions when the economy is hit by negative shocks."

His solution? Raise the interest rates now while the economy is still in motion to create what he has called "a buffer", or room to lower rates again in the coming recession.

This move however, is considered by many market experts to be extremely dangerous because it threatens to act as the catalyst for the recession it hopes to cure.

The Treasury Yield Curve

The analysts at Deutsche Bank, led by Dominic Konstam, point to a narrowing in the rates between the three-month and ten-year US treasury bonds. This yield curve is an important predictor of the future economic conditions and if the natural rate differences are taken into account, this curve has already inverted.

Deutsche Bank's analysis now believe that this indicates a 60% chance of a recession occurring in the US within the next nine months.

Sovereign Debt Ratios

The ratio of national debt to countries' gross domestic product is, though not a perfect metric for stability, an often-cited statistic for national monetary policy.

Looking at the ratios across both developed countries and emerging markets, we now see debt ratios approximately 35% higher than they were at the beginning of the last major financial crisis that brought the world's economic system to the brink.

While not itself indicative of a crash in the short term, such dangerous debt ratios in nearly every country mean that governments have few options left to pull their economies back from the edge. Thus, the depression that government stimulus may have avoided eight years ago may no longer be avoidable. China, for example, will not be able to step in to save the day.

Beijing is far past any reasonable or safe limits on credit to the tune of nearly $30 trillion in loans, and Fitch Ratings believes that bad loans in their banking system are as much as 1,000% the official claim.

Weakness of GDI to GDP

The ratio of gross domestic income to gross domestic product is another leading indicator that now mirrors the previous recession.

Albert Edwards of Société Générale points out that this indicator has been flat for the previous two quarters and that "The pronounced weakness of GDI relative to GDP might be an ominous omen, for it may well be indicating that a US recession is already underway - just as it was in 2007."

Uncertainty

Economic cycles are influenced by natural disasters, human psychology and millions of unobserved factors in addition to the management of government, so there remains ample room for doubt.

But when we consider that we are already in the fourth longest recovery in 150 years, the list of leading indicators begins to look all the more ominous.

Taken alone, any single indicator can be ignored, but together they paint the picture of economic storm clouds on the horizon.

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