80% Of Americans Will Face Financial Hardship In Their Life Time

From Think Progress:      

Eighty percent of Americans will struggle with joblessness, live on the edge of poverty, or rely on public programs for at least part of their lives, according to an analysis of survey data from the Associated Press. The report defines “economic insecurity” as a year or more of periodic unemployment, relying on government assistance such as food stamps, or making an income below 150 percent of the poverty line.

The risk of falling into poverty has increased in recent decades, particularly for people aged 35 to 55, the analysis finds. That age group had a 17 percent risk from 1969 to 1989, but it’s increased to 23 percent. For those between 45 and 55, the risk jumped from 11.8 to 17.7 percent. The report predicts that by 2030, nearly 85 percent of adults will experience periods of economic insecurity.

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This is bad news for Americans of all stripes, the standard of living in America is declining and no one is doing a damn thing about it. The majority of the politicians in Washington have been bought off, there seems to be no one in DC who's working on behalf of the working class. There are a few national pols that seems to be fighting for the middle and lower class people but their power and influence is limited.

You have members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus who actually want to help poor and working class people but they're basically marginalize. The President rarely invites members of the CBC and CPC to the White House for meetings even though they  were his most loyal supporters.

The income gap is this country is getting wider every year. The rich and the wealthy are the only ones who have benefitted over the last couple of decades and they still want more. They know the country is in trouble financially and they still want to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The rich have the entire Republican Party and half of the Democratic Party in their pockets, which means, the rest of us don't have a chance.

It's time for ordinary Americans to put their petty differences aside, organize and fight for our share of what's left of this country.  

Militaristic, corrupt America increasingly resembles a Third World state

Despite a change of presidents, America remains mired in economic, institutional, and cultural purgatory, with Obama’s exalted oratory circling the stratosphere like a taunt.

Angry nationalism shouts down prudence. Disproportionate military spending threatens economic wellbeing. Industry has its hand so deep in the government’s purse that private enterprise is becoming public property. The currency falters, the infrastructure crumbles. And a supine media, once a watchdog of the powerful, happily licks the strongman’s hand.

If the picture looks familiar, that’s because we’ve seen it many times before, from Argentina to Chile to Russia. The U.S. is third worlding.

That statement may smack of hyperbole. It may also understate the phenomenon, for many of the countries that the United States increasingly resembles are not only Third World—they are authoritarian, even rogue.

This is not to say the U.S. will be indistinguishable from a Third World country any time soon. We’re clearly nowhere near Sudanese levels of violence or Bangladeshi depths of poverty. But in terms of institutional structure, financial stability, and even national spirit, the U.S. looks little like the country it was a generation ago and more like nations it has long condemned.

The turning point came on 9/11. Terrorism is now a weary concern: other issues dominate the headlines—stimulus, healthcare, climate change. Yet the attacks were a pretext for a host of foreign and domestic policies that promised to secure America against its hell-bent enemies but have instead dragged the country down, eroding the qualities that distinguished it from the rest of the world.

The Third Worlding of America is less cinematic but more serious than empire-in-decline analogies suggest. After all, Britain no longer wields global supremacy, but it is still firmly in the First World, its political class scrutinized by an independent, assertive media. And even after its post-World War II penury, it did not backpedal on political reforms at home. This is not to excuse the colonizer’s brutality abroad but rather to distinguish Britain’s imperial decline from America’s homeland decay.

The United States has transgressed her traditions in the fog of war before, only to redeem herself later. But we are now engaged in a war without borders against a self-multiplying enemy. There is no army to trounce, so no clear end to the bloodletting or bankrupting.

The patchouli-scented youth, who protest in the streets of D.C. with their towering papier-mâché effigies, may have been correct after all in highlighting the breadth of America’s all-encompassing problems—if not their remedies. Crisis has pushed the U.S. toward Third World policies with alarming swiftness. But the risk is not that Americans will bring out the pitchforks and join the protestors. Rather, citizens seem as disaffected and resigned as their Third World brethren, only occasionally roused from reality TV by their favorite pundit peddling the outrage du jour.

The far Right wallows in paranoia with its dreams of overturning an election by discovering a Kenyan birth certificate. Most on the Left seem too mesmerized by the president to hold him accountable. The media ranges from insipid to hysterical. This country may never see the reasons for—and the parallels to—its disintegration.

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How to create millions of jobs in the U.S. imediately

By repealing NAFTA, CAFTA and renegotiating or scrapping GATT altogether.

Ban the sale of goods in America by American companies that use foreign slave/serf labor. Known as reimportation.

Ban reimportation.

Tax/tariff all imports that were produced by low paid sweatshop type labor. So that said products are forced to compete with products produced by workers who are paid a fair wage.

An American company should never again be allowed to produce a product in a foreign country then reimport it back into the US to sell it in America.

It's a sad day in America when the term "American Made" has become a foreign concept.

Is it too much to ask and expect that Dems actually act like they give a fuck about the little fella?

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In order for this to happen, we would first need politicians that will stand up and regulate the corporations and that's not happening anytime soon because too many of our politicians are bought and paid for by the Wall Street blood. corporations.

Why Black Businesses Have A Hard Time Surviving In America

Why do Black businesses have a hard time surviving in America? Deric Muhammad did a good job trying to explain this problem and to offer some advice to black entrepreneurs. Deric Muhammad breaks it down like this:

Over 300 years of chattel slavery in America totally destroyed Black people’s natural desire to do-for-self. After Abraham Lincoln issued the executive order known as the Emancipation Proclamation, Black slaves were declared free, yet were given few opportunities to make a living to feed their families. Many slaves immediately returned to the plantations of their slave masters because they did not know what else to do.

For a long time, slaves were forbidden to read and write. However, the slave master made certain they knew how to count. How else were they to keep up with their daily cotton quotas on the plantation? Many slaves utilized the skills that they mastered as plantation workers and began doing business for themselves. As a matter of fact many slaves had already started businesses and became strong enough economically to purchase freedom for some of their family members. A price was paid before Black people were able to do business in the United States of America.

Yes slavery played a big part in shaping black people mind set to form somewhat of a dependency on white people. But later on, after slavery and during Reconstruction and Jim Crow, black people started businesses and over all a lot of the businesses were successful. One reason is, prior to integration blacks were not welcome in white establishments so they relied on black businesses for their services. So these black businesses strived. But when segregation ended black customer made a mad dash to the white businesses and left the black businesses to struggle. Deric Muhammad goes on to explain:

Our businesses thrived in this country when we understood the urgency of moments in time like “Reconstruction,” the Great Depression and Jim Crow. We knew that if we did not support one another we could not survive. Prior to integration, Whites refused to do business with us.

These days it is difficult to keep a Black business open. According to statistics, Black-owned businesses open and close faster than businesses owned by any other ethnic group in America.

He goes on to talk about some of the problems plaguing black businesses today. He also offers advice on how to correct this problem so black businesses can be competitive in todays market:

I regularly hear horror stories about how hard-working people pay Black contractors to do a job that never gets finished. You sometimes show up at a coffee shop or restaurant and they are closed when they are supposed to be open. Too often, we say that we will have a service completed by a certain date and fail to deliver. Many Black businesses close themselves down.

Now let’s flip the coin to the Black business patron. Too often good Black businesses cringe at doing business with our own people, because we are always looking for “the hook-up.” There are good Black contractors who finish jobs and then are paid with a rubber check! We show up at the Black coffee shop just to use the internet and then go buy a latte from Starbucks. Sometimes Black business owners just give up or move to the suburbs because doing business in the ‘hood, proves to be too challenging.

In all fairness, these business snafus are not only relegated to Black businesses. You can go anywhere in town and find poor customer service. However, if we are to survive during these economically challenging times, we must get back to the basics of nation building and self-development. We must support Black businesses that are serious about doing business and eliminate businesses that poison the water that we all must drink from.

In order to do business, we must show character. We must open and close when we say we will open and close. We must treat the Black customer with the same regard that we would treat a dignitary. It does not matter whether the brother or sister is spending $5 or $5,000. If you treat us like kings and queens, we will return to do business with you once again.

US Empire 'to decline by 2025'

The American people better start putting money away for rainy days because the future is looking kind of cloudy. I know Americans are not good at saving but you better learn to kick that habit of just buying stuff just because it's the "new thing". We got to learn to put something away for our kid's future because it's going to be tougher on them to live the life we Americans have become accustom to living. Not to mention the country's debt they will inherit. This article from Al Jazeera should wake a lot of folks up:

US economic and political power is set to decline over the next two decades and the world will grow more dangerous as the battle for scarce resources intensifies, a report by US intelligence agencies has predicted.

The current global financial crisis is the beginning of a weakening of the US dollar to the point where it becomes "first among equals", said the National Intelligence Council's (NIC) Global Trends 2025 report published on Thursday.

One of the main conclusions of the report is that "the unipolar world is over, [or] certainly will be by 2025", said Thomas Fingar, the NIC's deputy director, at a press conference in Washington DC.

China and India were likely to join the US at the top of a multipolar world and compete for influence, the report added.

Russia's future was less certain, but Iran, Turkey and Indonesia were also seen by the report as gaining power.

"The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over scarce resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," said the report.

"Widening gaps in birth rates and wealth-to-poverty ratios, and the uneven impact of climate change, could further exacerbate tensions."

The New Republican Job Market

McCain Adviser: Raise Retirement Age To 70

It's coming.

According to Phil Gramm, senior economic adviser to John McCain, the retirement age will have to be raised.

Gramm told the Washington Times that a bipartisan deal might include raising the retirement age to 70 over 30 years, indexing the benefits of wealthier retirees to inflation rather than the more generous wage rate, and creating a private account program for younger workers.

This means that if you are 40 and under, you will be working as much as 5 years longer than your parents did.

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There you have it folks, Republicans want you to work as slaves for corporations until you drop dead. What a plan, if you're dead then the government doesn't have to pay Social Security. Let's not forget administrations for decades have borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund, if they put back the money they've borrowed instead of blowing in their oil wars, there wouldn't be a problem with Social Security and we could all look forward to retiring at the age of 65 with full benefits.

McCains economic advisor says Americans are a nation of whiners

This was supposed to be John McCain's week to re-re-launch his campaign, this time with a tightly focused message about the economy and how he plans to fix it. He had a nicely staged debut in Denver, even if the experts quickly demanded to know how he could preserve George Bush's tax cuts, stay in Iraq and yet balance the federal budget by 2013. Details, details! Still, McCain was back in the game.

Then a one-man thundercloud named Phil Gramm rained on McCain's Main Street parade.

In one of the more boneheaded remarks in recent presidential politics (and Gramm has uttered others) the former Texas senator declared that we are in the midst of a "mental recession" and that we have "sort of become a nation of whiners."

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McCain, polls show, is struggling to persuade voters—even in his own party—that Republicans deserve to retain stewardship of the economy. Obama and the Democrats are way ahead in polls on questions related to jobs, health care, gas prices, business regulation, the mortgage mess—you name it.

At a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline (or more), of falling home prices in most American cities, of skyrocketing food costs and steadily rising unemployment rates, dismissing worried American voters as whining, depressed basket cases is, well, insane. Read the entire article

These remarks came from a millionaire Republican, this is the conventional thinking of these rich, Reagan idolizing, selfish Republicans. They think that supply side economics solves everything and if you can't make it then it's your fault and you should get off your ass and stop whining. Those cock roaches don't care if the majority of people are struggling as along as they and their love ones are making a killing. Republicans Pols are fucking theives, half of them should be locked up in jail some where and the rest should be sent packing.

Yes, Capitalism has succeeded!

How frustrating it is to hear the same old Cold War propaganda coming out of the mouths of many Americans whose economic well-being is presently being jeopardized not by Engels, Marx, or Lenin, but by Wall Street and Washington.

How can this latest economic fiasco in America be the fault of Marxist labor unions, when the jobs of millions of union members have long since been outsourced across the border and overseas?

How can the loss of one's home be the fault of a Communist conspiracy to seize private property when it was the Capitalist banks which lured potential homeowners into unworkable adjustable rate mortgages which destroyed the housing market, causing millions to lose their homes?

Can we blame Karl Marx for the rising cost of everything from gasoline to toilet paper, rising unemployment, hundreds of billions of dollars in Government and private debt, and an imbalance of trade in the trillions, when all along it was the manipulations of the money grubbing Wall Street Capitalists and their enablers on the Potomac which created this debacle?

I am fed up with this mindset which excuses the excesses of Capitalism when compared with the real or imagined shortcomings of Socialism.

Having lived through the Cold War and having been subjected to the interminable demonization of Socialism/ Marxism, it is understandable how one could have been deluded into thinking that Capitalism succeeds when all else fails.

Yes, Capitalism has succeeded! It has succeeded in destroying organized labor and the American workplace. It has succeeded in destroying the American dream of home ownership. It has succeeded in destroying the living standards of millions of American families. It has succeeded in ruining the economic well being of the entire Nation for the profit of a very few. Yes, it has once again succeeded in giving us another Great Depression.

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Five Years of a Disastrous War and the Bills are Coming Due

It’s appropriate that on this week of the fifth anniversary of the criminal US invasion of Iraq, we are also seeing several other things: the death toll of American troops in that doomed adventure is rising past 4000, the economy is sliding into a recession which could be deep and long, and the financial markets are teetering on the edge of a possibly historic collapse.

The conjunction of all of these dire things is no coincidence.

The war on Iraq was a predictable disaster from day one, when the administration tried to do it on the cheap, using less than half the manpower that Bush’s own generals said would be needed to control the country after the inevitable collapse of its government and military. But of course the US had to conduct this war on the cheap because the country was never really behind the war in the first place. It was a war that was "marketed" to us like a risky financial investment or a badly designed new car. The idea was to close the sale and get away from the deal as quickly as possible, leaving no office forwarding address.

The problem was that Iraqis, the victims of our attack, didn’t cooperate. They didn’t lie down and play dead. They decided to resist our effort to take over their country and run it like a retail gas station. So now the US has wasted over $500 billion in a country trying--and failing--to gain control over a country no bigger than a mid-sized state, battling against resistance forces armed with homemade bombs, obsolete grenade launchers and Vietnam-era AK-47 rifles.

But because the Bush/Cheney administration could never admit to Americans what this war would be costing, and has cost, all that money has been borrowed. As for the deaths and the tens of thousands of injuries, the government has hidden these, flying in the casualties in the dead of night and burying them quickly and as quietly as possible, while sticking the wounded in closed off VA hospitals and rehab centers, from which the press, for the most part, are barred (if they even bother to try and do a story).

That need to hide the truth means that the real cost of the war is running into the trillions of dollars, because of the interest on the debt, and because of the the future costs of providing for all those who are injured.

The war in Iraq has helped to bankrupt this country, which, to be honest, is the state we’re in when the US, year in and year out, is buying more than it is selling, leaving creditor nations like China, Japan and Saudi Arabia owning trillions of dollars in debt that cannot be repaid. It has also distorted the economy. By pushing up the price of oil to record levels of above $100/barrel, a result of uncertainty about supplies, plus the virtual removal of Iraq, the world’s second or third-largest oil-producing region, from the market, not to mention the jeopardizing of the entire oil supply through the Persian Gulf, which accounts for over 20 percent of the world’s oil, the Iraq War has thrown the US economy into a slump, while at the same time pushing up inflation.

In order to keep things going in the face of all this, the administration and the Federal Reserve for years have kept mortgage rates low and encouraged homeowners to borrow on their home equity in order to keep spending, and thus the whole system, afloat. That gambit has now run its course, with the housing bubble finally bursting.

It would seem that there is little left to keep the economy going.
The housing crisis has left the nation’s banks and investment banks holding trillions of dollars in assets that are actually worth only a fraction of their face value. So rickety is the system that over the weekend, as the Federal Reserve worked frantically to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank, there was real fear of a total collapse of the finance system, ala 1929. Such a thing could still happen, when the next bank or investment bank comes a cropper.

Consumers, for their part, are spent out.

And the war continues apace, the bodies, and the bills, piling up.

President Bush is saying it was all worth it. Cheney, touring the Middle East while trying to drum up support for what would be a catastrophic and even more criminal attack on Iran, is saying that the “progress” in Iraq has been “phenomenal.” And John McCain, the addled, past-his-sell-date Republican candidate for president, is committed to continuing this madness for another century, even if he cannot remember who the US is fighting over there (he confused the so-called “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” group--all Sunni--with the Shia militias and had to be corrected by his travel buddy, Sen. Joe Lieberman).

It’s a somber anniversary. Five years of a war that never should have happened. A country destroyed. America on the ropes economically. A million Iraqi civilians dead. 4000 American soldiers killed and another 20,000 maimed.

At some point, the American people will finally say they’ve had enough of this madness, manipulation and malfeasance.

The question is what will be left of this place when they finally put a stop to it and bring the troops home to a jobless economy.

The hucksters and flim-flam men who produced this mess have had their fun and are preparing to run off with their winnings. We should really organize a pitchforks and torches march on the White House and Congress and run them out of town on rails, tarred and feathered, while we can. They’ll be hard to track down once people realize how we’ve all been had.

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International experts foresee collapse of U.S. economy

Excerpt

And you thought that I had a gloomy outlook on the economy. Now the bad news pops up everywhere.

Harry Koza in the Globe and Mail quotes Bernard Connelly, the global strategist at Banque AIG in London, who claims that the likelihood of a Great Depression is growing by the day.

Martin Wolf, celebrated columnist of the U.K.-based Financial Times, cites Dr. Nouriel Roubini of the New York University's Stern School of Business, who, in 12 steps, outlines how the losses of the American financial system will grow to more than $1 trillion - that's one million times $1 million. That amount is equal to all the assets of all American banks.

Every day now, thousands of people all over the U.S. and Great Britain are walking away from their homes - simply mailing their house keys to the banks - as housing bailout plans fail.

With unemployment growing, the next phase will hit commercial real estate making the financial institutions the unwilling owners not only of quickly depreciating houses, but also of empty strip malls and even larger shopping centres.

The next domino to fall will be credit card defaults, and after that... who knows? There are so many exotic funds out there, with trillions of dollars in paper - or rather computer-screen money - all carrying assorted acronyms, and all about to disintegrate into nothingness. Over the next couple of years, scores of banks that have thrived on these devices, based on quickly disappearing equities, will fail.

The most frightening forecast so far comes from the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB), available for 200 euros - about $300 - for 16 issues annually. Its prediction is quite specific.

Where my warnings never spelled out an exact date, this think tank has it pegged precisely. Here are its very words:

"The end of the third quarter of 2008 (thus late September, a mere seven months from now) will be marked by a new tipping point in the unfolding of the global systemic crisis.

"At that time indeed, the cumulated impact of the various sequences of the crisis will reach its maximum strength and affect decisively the very heart of the systems concerned, on the front line of which (is) the United States, epicentre of the current crisis.

"In the United States, this new tipping point will translate into - get this - a collapse of the real economy, (the) final socio-economic stage of the serial bursting of the housing and financial bubbles and of the pursuance of the U.S. dollar fall. The collapse of U.S. real economy means the virtual freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies in large numbers, companies and public services closing down."

The report goes on to say that we are entering a period for which there is no historic precedent. Any comparisons with previous situations in our modern economy are invalid.

Are you ready for the Great Depression of 2008?

Are you ready for the upcoming Great Depression of 2008? If not, I advise you to start preparing for it because it is coming folks. Leon Fisher over at Unknown News has the perfect solution that will help you through the upcoming economic calamity that this country is facing. He writes the following:

Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to bring you a revolutionary new product, the Great Depression of '08 Survival Kit, from the same folks who gave your grandparents the Great Depression of 1929.

A consortium of prestigious Wall Street investment firms with decades of experience between them, the Great Depression of '08 Company offers the support and enthusiasm of our wonderful, caring, representatives in Washington DC. We have come together to offer you a once in a lifetime opportunity to invest in your future. Do not hesitate to take advantage of this great offer, as every passing day brings our blessed Nation closer and closer to economic ruin.


Do not get caught short like the folks back in '29, be ready when your job goes overseas, when the bank forecloses on your home, and repossesses your SUV. No reason for concern, simply break out your Great Depression of '08 Survival Kit and put your mind to rest.

The Great Depression of '08 Survival kit contains everything a penniless, homeless, out of work American family will need to cope with the ravages of economic deprivation. The centerpiece of the Kit contains a high quality, made in China topless 55 gallon drum, perfect for burning most combustible materials quickly and efficiently, keeping you, your family, and your neighbors warm even on the coldest nights.

But that's not all, the Great Depression of '08 Kit also includes a pair of tough brown workman's gloves, the fingers of which having already been removed saving you the time and trouble to concentrate on begging and scrounging for food. And that's not all. folks, the Great Depression of '08 Kit also contains luxury living quarters, nothing less than a spacious heavy duty cardboard refrigerator carton, top notch shelter for you and your family.

Just think of it, the Great Depression of '08 deluxe refrigerator carton will not only keep you and yours dry, but will bring all your family members closer together, just like the old days.

Wait a minute, there is much more! The Great Depression of '08 Company has thought of everything. We at Great Depression of '08 understand that there will be moments of doubt and pain during these uncertain times, so we have thoughtfully provided a bottle of muscatel, along with a handy brown paper carrying bag in the deal, free of charge. And, as the owner of the prestigious Great Depression of '08 Survival Kit, not only will you be surviving in style, but will be the envy of your less fortunate fellow citizens living under bridges or down by the river, who foolishly passed up this wonderful once in a lifetime offer.

And if you act now, we'll throw in a refurbished shopping cart with original chrome finish, plus a list of all the local soup kitchens and charitable organizations in your area. Unbelievable!

So call our special toll free number now, 1800-NWO-4-YOU. Our operators are standing by to take your order. Cash or money order only! Sorry, no haggling!

American economy hijacked by corruption

Well, so far I have not heard any of the financial talking heads, or for that matter any of the candidates running for election in 2008, putting the blame of our rapidly disintegrating economy on the root cause, so-called "free trade".

This criminal money-making scheme, imposed upon the peoples of the world by the supporters of Globalism and their fellow conspirators on Wall Street and in Washington, has been a monumental failure right from the start. Designed to undermine organized labor by outsourcing both union and non union jobs to Third World nations, and by lowering or keeping stagnant the wages of those Americans still working,
the net result is that the rich are getting richer, and the poor getting poorer.

This is nothing new, as the rich and powerful have always been constantly at odds with the working man for as long as history has been recorded. What is different is the complete and total support for these destructive trade policies by those elected representatives of the people, the President, the Congress, and the Senate, who with few exceptions, are taking no action to head off the economic fiasco which now is bearing down on our hapless nation.

The unwillingness of our elected representatives to act upon the coming economic disaster can only be defined as treason, pure and simple. This sellout of the American worker began in earnest with Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers during his term the White House, and it has continued under the subsequent administrations of GHW Bush and Bill Clinton.

While it was not surprising that the Republicans, with their traditional ties to big business, were hostile to the American labor force, it was a shock when Clinton, a Democrat, whose political party at one time enthusiastically supported labor in America, refused to veto NAFTA despite its obvious implications for the American worker.

Clinton's sellout to Wall Street and the Globalists began a stampede of businesses and manufacturers across the border into Mexico as soon as it was signed into law. Since Clinton's treason, the flow of American jobs out of the country has become a tidal wave, with most jobs formerly done by Americans now gone forever.

Indeed, It has not taken long for America to go into economic tailspin once the Wall Street conspirators and their political lackeys in Washington decided to stab their countrymen in the back. By supporting the voodoo economics practiced by the evil high priests of Wall Street, and conspiring with the backers of a Globalist New World Order, the corrupt and treasonous imposters who claim to represent the best interests of the American people have, so to speak, opened the gates of the nation to the depredations of modern day economic vandals.

With the burst of the housing bubble, the first of what will be many of the economic dominos to fall, and despite the infusion of billions of dollars by the Fed and billions from private investment banks, nothing is going to stave off the inevitable collapse so long as the fraud known as "free trade" remains in place.

The architects of this scam knew right from the get go that "free trade" would never work to the benefit of the masses. It was only but an opportunity for short-term looting and plunder of the economies of the world by the wealthy and powerful under the guise of legitimate economic planning.

However, like their co-conspirators in government with regard to foreign policy, concerning the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in particular, the Wall Street crooks do not have an exit plan to disengage once things start to go wrong. Therefore we the people will be forced unfairly to bear the brunt of the economic hardship initiated by a small group of traitors and criminals who have through greed and corruption hijacked a healthy and vibrant economy and replaced it with war, debt, inflation, growing unemployment, and the implementation of a police state.

Should we the people ever regain our Constitutional right to once more govern ourselves, those individuals who did their best to destroy our nation and to render us powerless must not be allowed to get away with it. Like the trials of the Nazi war criminals after WWII, the perpetrators of this coming economic calamity must be brought to justice for the harm they are bringing down upon the American people, and to those they have exploited around the World as well. We must not allow them to escape with their loot to live the rest of their lives in luxury -- they must face punishment for what they have done.

The Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials attempted to defend their horrendous actions by saying they were just following orders. That did not wash. The Wall Street executives and Washington politicians are already trying to justify their crimes against their country and the world as simply doing business. Sorry, but that is not going to wash either. Actions speak louder than words.

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Tent city in suburbs is cost of home crisis

Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

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As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.

While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it's just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.

"They don't hit the streets immediately," said activist Jane Mercer. Most families can find transitional housing in a motel or with friends before turning to charity or the streets. "They only hit tent city when they really bottom out."

Read More

The Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

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Gee, I wonder how that happened, who's responsible for this trend. It's seems the Reagan Legacy lives on unchallenged. Welcome to the New World order folks.

The Shame of Our Flag

The United States is the power behind world repression. Since World War Two we have made it our policy to support the corporate exploitation of resources and populations the world over, so long as the bulk of those riches flowed into the US to maintain US consumption and economic growth.

The US is the leading producer of greenhouse gasses. Yet the US is the one country that has refused to do anything about them. It is the top consumer of world resources, consuming at a level far exceeding the carrying capacity of the environment. As such, the US is largely responsible for resource depletion and mass extinction.

Yet even our gluttonous over-consumption is not enough to sustain economic growth. So we have turned to juggling bubbles of debt. The public is told that it is their patriotic duty to consume, consume, consume, even as their adjusted income continues to shrink. To fulfill our patriotic duty, we take out second and third mortgages, and we max out credit cards. Our debts are then repackaged and sold off as investments.

Now these bubbles are becoming unmanageable. Foreign investors, the other pillar of our economy, are beginning to divest themselves of the US dollar. A major economic crash is imminent, a crash that could make the Great Depression pale in comparison. Once this crash is complete, plans are already in place to replace the US dollar with the North American Amero, to establish the supremacy of the North American Union over the federal governments of the US, Canada and Mexico, and to keep the public in line through the establishment of a repressive police state.

Meanwhile the US Empire and the conquest of the rest of the world will continue. Under the guise of fighting a war on terror, we have assumed the right to attack any country we wish through so-called pre-emptive strikes. We can imprison anyone anywhere indefinitely, without filing formal charges. And we can use any amount of force necessary, even torture.

The country we live in has become a fascist empire. Our government and our corporations have joined together to commit crimes against humanity and crimes against the planet. If allowed to go on, all of us will suffer - all of us but our elite masters. That is, if their insane greed does not destroy this planet's ability to support complex life.

Something has to be done to stop this madness, the sooner the better. And that goal will not be achieved by voting, writing letters to our congresspeople, or marching on the capitol. Our only recourse to prevent the unthinkable is a major uprising.