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•                 John Hawkins                    

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"This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." -- Barack Obama

So far, the message of the Obama campaign essentially seems to be,"I'm unable to effectively govern because Republicans won't do everything I want. Re-elect me so I can deliver more of the same. Oh, also Paul Ryan wants to push old people off a cliff while Mitt Romney will give you cancer."That doesn't tell you much about what Obama would try to do in his second term, but given that he appears to be largely indifferent to the law and the wishes of the American people, there's no reason to be hopeful. Furthermore, given how deferential the Supreme Court has been to Obama and the fact that the GOP would undoubtedly be more willing to go along to get along if it’s defeated this year, the damage Obama could do in a second term would be incalculable.

1) America's credit rating slides further: Under Barack Obama's leadership, America lost its AAA credit rating for the first time since 1917.That means our country is now more of a gamble to loan money to than Microsoft. Given that Barack Obama has shown zero inclination to get spending under control or seriously tackle entitlement reform, our rating would be practically guaranteed to drop at least another notch. In other words, this country would soon have the same S&P rating as Qatar and the Czech Republic.

2) The middle class will see massive tax increases: Congress has been at an impasse because Republicans want to cut spending and Democrats want to raise taxes. Despite all the talk you hear about the "Buffet Rule," it would produce a comparatively small amount of actual revenue because the rich are close to tapped out. The real money is in the middle class. If we're not going to cut our escalating spending, then taxes on the middle class will have to soar like an eagle fired out of a cannon.

3) Gas and energy prices will be dramatically higher: Obama once said, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." His Energy Secretary Steven Chu added,"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."Is it any wonder that Obama won't drill ANWR, has blocked the Keystone Pipeline, and has slow-walked offshore drilling? Obama views sky high energy prices as a feature, not a bug and if he doesn't have to face the voters again, expect to see energy prices lift off like the manned space shuttles Obama permanently grounded.

4) Obamacare goes into effect:If the GOP controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, it should be able to gut Obamacare and keep it from ever going into effect. On the other hand if Obama is reelected, there's a better chance of the NAACP endorsing Mitt Romney than there is that health care reform will ever be repealed.

5) The Supreme Court moves to the left:Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 79, Antonin Scalia is 76, Anthony Kennedy is 75, and Stephen Breyer is 73. Replacing Ginsburg or Breyer with 50 year old liberals would be bad enough, but imagine Obama selecting a replacement for Scalia or Kennedy. If that happens, Obama would have five guaranteed votes on the Supreme Court for anything he wants to do. Once we get to that point, the Constitution might as well not even exist.

6) Get ready for open borders: Barack Obama has already bypassed Congress to implement the DREAM ACT by fiat, he's planning to break the law to hand out work permits to illegal aliens, he's openly proclaimed that ICE won't pick up many of the illegals detained by Arizona, and illegals are now being released by the border patrolsans proof if they claim they went to high school here. We're very close to having an open border policy right now for any illegal alien who hasn't committed a felony here and in an Obama second term, it's fair to assume that the primary qualification for citizenship would be the ability to sneak into the country.

7) Gun control will be a priority: Barack Obama filled out a "questionnaire in which he called for banning 'the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns'" and he let everyone know what he thought about gun owners even before he was elected with his notorious "bitter clingers" quip. His campaign website doesn't even have a section addressing 2nd Amendment issues, perhaps because Obama would have to admit that he's already calling for a reinstatement of the Assault Weapons Ban. Without an election to keep him in check, expect Barack Obama to "evolve" on gun control the same way he did on gay marriage.

Something really strange appears to be happening.  All over the globe, governments and big banks are acting as if they are anticipating an imminent financial collapse.  Unfortunately, we are not privy to the quiet conversations that are taking place in corporate boardrooms and in the halls of power in places such as Washington D.C. and London, so all we can do is try to make sense of all the clues that are all around us.  Of course it is completely possible to misinterpret these clues, but sticking our heads in the sand is not going to do any good either.  Last week, it was revealed that the U.S. government has been secretly directing five of the biggest banks in America "to develop plans for staving off collapse" for the last two years.  By itself, that wouldn't be that big of a deal.  But when you add that piece to the dozens of other clues of imminent financial collapse, a very troubling picture begins to emerge.  Over the past 12 months, hundreds of banking executives have been resigning, corporate insiders have been selling off enormous amounts of stock, and I have been personally told that a significant number of Wall Street bankers have been shopping for "prepper properties" in rural communities this summer.  Meanwhile, there have been reports that the U.S. government has been stockpiling food and ammunition, and Barack Obama has been signing a whole bunch of executive orders that would potentially be implemented in the event of a major meltdown of society.  So what does all of this mean?  It could mean something or it could mean nothing.  What we do know is that a financial collapse is coming at some point.  Over the past 40 years, the total amount of all debt in the United States has grown from about 2 trillion dollars to nearly 55 trillion dollars.  That is a recipe for financial armageddon, and it is inevitable that this gigantic bubble of debt is going to burst at some point.

In normal times, the U.S. government does not tell major banks to "develop plans for staving off collapse".

But according to a recent Reuters article, that is apparently exactly what has been happening....

U.S. regulators directed five of the country's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.

The two-year-old program, which has been largely secret until now, is in addition to the "living wills" the banks crafted to help regulators dismantle them if they actually do fail. It shows how hard regulators are working to ensure that banks have plans for worst-case scenarios and can act rationally in times of distress.

Does it seem odd to anyone else that only five really big banks got such a warning?

And why keep it secret from the American public?

Does the federal government actually expect such a collapse to happen?

If federal officials do expect a financial collapse to occur, they would not be the only ones.  An increasing number of very respected economists are speaking about the coming financial collapse as if there is a certain inevitability about it.

For example, check out the following quote from a recent Money Morning article....

Richard Duncan, formerly of the World Bank and chief economist at Blackhorse Asset Mgmt., says America's $16 trillion federal debt has escalated into a "death spiral," as he told CNBC.

And it could result in a depression so severe that he doesn't "think our civilization could survive it."

A former World Bank executive is warning that our civilization might not survive what is coming?

That is pretty chilling.

Economist Nouriel Roubini says that he believes that the coming crisis will be even worse than 2008....

"Worse because like 2008 you will have an economic and financial crisis but unlike 2008, you are running out of policy bullets. In 2008, you could cut rates; do QE1, QE2; you could do fiscal stimulus; you could backstop/ringfence/guarantee banks and everybody else. Today, more QEs are becoming less and less effective because the problems are of solvency not liquidity. Fiscal deficits are already so large and you cannot bail out the banks because 1) there is a political opposition to it; and 2) governments are near-insolvent - they cannot bailout themselves let alone their banks. The problem is that we are running out of policy rabbits to pull out of the hat!"

Across the pond, many European officials are echoing similar sentiments.

What Nigel Farage told King World News the other day is very ominous....

Today MEP (Member European Parliament) Nigel Farage spoke with King World News about what he described as the possibility of, “a really dramatic banking collapse.”  Farage also warned that central planners want to enslave and imprison people inside of a ‘New Order,’ and he described the situation as “horrifying.”

The situation in Europe continues to get worse and worse.  The authorities in Europe have come out with "solution" after "solution", and yet unemployment continues to skyrocket and economic conditions in the EU have deteriorated very steadily over the past 12 months.

If all of that was not bad enough, there are an increasing number of indications that Germany is actually considering leaving the euro.

Needless to say, that would be a complete and total disaster for the rest of the eurozone.

Of course there are any number of ways that the financial crisis in Europe could potentially play out.

But all of the realistic scenarios would be very bad for the global economy.

Meanwhile, our resources are dwindling, war in the Middle East could erupt at any moment and our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  The following is from a recent article by Paul B. Farrell on Marketwatch.com....

Fasten your seat belts, soon we’ll all be shocked out of denial. Some unpredictable black swan. A global wake-up call will trigger the Pentagon’s prediction in Fortune a decade ago at the launch of the Iraq War: “By 2020 ... an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies is emerging ... warfare defining human life.”

It is almost as if a "perfect storm" is brewing.

Of course the historic drought that is ravaging food production in the United States this summer is not helping matters either.  Another summer or two like this one and we could be looking at a return of Dust Bowl conditions.

Anyone that is watching what is going on in the world and is not concerned at all about what is happening is simply being delusional.

Recently, a "team of scientists, economists, and geopolitical analysts" examined the current state of the global economic system and the conclusions they reached were absolutely staggering....

One member of this team, Chris Martenson, a pathologist and former VP of a Fortune 300 company, explains their findings:

"We found an identical pattern in our debt, total credit market, and money supply that guarantees they're going to fail. This pattern is nearly the same as in any pyramid scheme, one that escalates exponentially fast before it collapses. Governments around the globe are chiefly responsible.

"And what's really disturbing about these findings is that the pattern isn't limited to our economy. We found the same catastrophic pattern in our energy, food, and water systems as well."

According to Martenson: "These systems could all implode at the same time. Food, water, energy, money. Everything."

Hmmmm - it sounds like they have been reading The Economic Collapse Blog.

The truth is that a massive worldwide financial collapse is coming.

It is inevitable, and it is going to be extremely painful.

So what do you think about all of this?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below....

by Stephen Lendman

Obama and other Western leaders face Depression conditions. Roosevelt addressed them in the 1930s. Imagine how austerity then would have imposed greater hardships.

Instead Americans got Social Security, homeowners loan refinancing, and moratoriums on foreclosures. Small farmers were helped unlike current subsidies earmarked for agribusiness.

Farm credit provided refinancing help. Doing so let many stay solvent and survive. Unemployment insurance was established in partnership with states. Jobless workers got help. Now they're being told go find a job. We won't help you. More on that below.

FDR's alphabet soup of programs created jobs. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers built public infrastructure and worked on other projects.

Civilian Works Administration (CWA), National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), Public Works Administration (PWA), Works Progress Administration (WPA), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and other federal initiatives put millions back to work.

Despite hard times, people got help. So did America. Accomplishments were impressive.

They included building or renovating 700,000 miles of roads, 7,800 bridges, 45,000 schools, 2,500 hospitals, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 1,000 airfields, and other infrastructure projects.

Much of Chicago's lakefront was built. Unemployment dropped from 25% in May 1933 to 11% in 1937. It then  spiked when victory was declared too early. War production revived economic growth. Full employment followed. Mirror opposite conditions exist today.

Over three years after the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) declared America's recession over in June 2009, unemployment, based on how calculated in the 1980s, approaches 23%.

Poverty is at Depression levels and rising. Stimulus and job creation programs are absent. Austerity is policy. So is directing America's resources for militarism, wars, banker bailouts, and other corporate handouts.

Growing public needs go begging. Instead of New Deal help, anti-New Dealism is policy. Increasingly people are on their own sink or swim.

On accepting his party's 1932 presidential nomination, Roosevelt pledged "a new deal for the American people" and delivered.

Obama promised "change you can believe in" and lied.

In his second inaugural address, Roosevelt saw "one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."

Millions, he said, had too little income to live on. Disaster threatened them daily. Millions more had many other hardships. He promised to help more and did.

In his last State of the Union Address (January 11, 1944), he proposed a second bill of rights. He called the initial one "inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness." His solution was an "economic bill of rights." He wanted it to guarantee:

employment with a living wage;

freedom from unfair competition and monopolies;

• housing;

• medical care;

• education; and

• greater social security than provided in his first 11 years in office. He urged greater protections from the economic fears of old age, illness, accident, and unemployment.

He called his proposal "security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these happiness and well-being."

Doing so, he said, was in the interest of democracy, humanity, fairness, justice, and a nation discharging its responsibilities for all its citizens equitably.

Weeks after his death (April 1944), his (GI Bill) Servicemen's Readjustment Act became law. It provided college or vocational education for 7.8 million returning vets. It also included a year of unemployment compensation.

In addition, 2.4 million got VA-backed low-interest, no down payment home loans at a time their average cost was under $5,000. Doing so let millions of families  afford them.

Studies later showed the GI Bill was one of America's soundest investments. It paid for itself seven times over. It also helped millions readjust successfully to civilian life.

Roosevelt's vision was impressive even though his proposal was partially implement. Today, it's fast eroding. Bipartisan neoliberal ideologues want social America destroyed. At the same time, they want freedoms ended and repression targeting non-believers.

For over three decades, New Deal and Great Society programs eroded, ended, or are earmarked for elimination.

Growing millions of Americans today face poverty, homelessness, hunger, and government indifference to their welfare.

Europeans face similar treatment. Banker and other corporate priorities matter most. Austerity places greater burdens on ordinary people struggling to get by.

Fragile economies get weaker. Hard times get harder. Misery Index readings show why. Prior to November 1980's election, it was 22%. It helped Reagan defeat Carter. Today it's 27% and rising.

Occupy Wall Street and European protests reflect public angst. Economic data reveal troubled economies. Readings keep heading south. June German factory orders dropped 1.7%. They're down nearly 8% below year ago levels.

The latest US CEO confidence fell to 60 in Q II. It was the largest drop since 2009. The outlook for sales, revenues, hiring and capital spending eroded significantly.

Europe's Sentix investment sentiment is lowest in over three years. China's crude steel production looks on track to decline in 2012 for the first time in 31 years. Asian trade and domestic demand are softening.

Chinese exports declined three of the past four months for the first time since spring 2009.

Markets rise on hope, not reality. Economic and corporate fundamentals are weakening. Eurozone economies are extremely unstable. Eventually expect what never should have been created to partially or wholly dissolve. 

Rising global food prices adversely affect households. Their impact with high energy costs impacts other spending.

Europe's recession is deepening and spreading. Core European industrial activity is falling. Exports are lowest since April 2009.

June US factory orders are down. Core capital goods order revisions showed more weakness than first reported.

One analyst called America's July employment report a head fake. Key distortions included exaggerated birth-death created jobs, seasonals, and internal weaknesses refuting the headline 163,000 read.

Moreover, the broader Household Survey plunged 195,000. Full-time jobs took the entire loss. They dropped three times in the past four months. Only 16.7% of industrial order books rose in July. It was the worst showing since February 2009.

Hard landings look inevitable. On January 1, around $2.2 trillion in sequestered budget cuts are scheduled. Trillions more are likely after November elections. Hard landings look inevitable.

Around half a million Americans lost extended job benefits earlier this year. On January 1, expect another two million to join them. America's Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) ends.

Beginning next year, maximum benefits last 26 weeks. Average unemployment duration way exceeds it. Obama officials said renewal won't be sought. Congress previously extended it 10 times.

People need this money to survive. It's all spent and has economic impact. America's needy care about food, rent or mortgage payments, medical care, and other essentials.

Republicans and Democrats cut a deal to spurn them. Doing so institutionalizes poverty for growing millions. Beginning next year, less than a third of jobless workers get unemployment benefits. Expect those numbers to rise perhaps exponentially if dire economic predictions prove right.

It's the wrong time to be jobless in America. It's as bad for workers earning too little, losing benefits, and vulnerable to layoffs as economic conditions weaken.

It's worse in Europe. Rising unemployment, falling wages, eroding benefits, and indifferent governments mean harder times than in decades. They're spreading globally.

People struggling to get by increasingly are on their own. Where this ends, who knows. When pain levels cross thresholds of no return, anything ahead is possible. It's hard putting a positive spin on what looks likely.

-###-

This article originally appeared at PolicyMic.

A few weeks ago, a speech Congressman Ron Paul gave on the House floor in 2002 resurfaced on the  web and went viral. At that time, the Bush Administration was planning  for war in Iraq and a "global war on terror," the PATRIOT Act had been  passed, and the Federal Reserve had lowered interest rates near zero. In  the speech, Paul clearly and consisely articulates the dangers of what  the U.S. was embarking on and the results that would likely occur.

Paul's predictions have come eerily true. The War on Terror has helped push the U.S. government even closer to bankruptcy, creates blowback,  and costs countless lives. The PATRIOT Act twisted the 4th Amendment  into a pretzel, and Paul's warnings about sacrificing liberty for  security were only enhanced with the passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The Federal  Reserve's money printing, directed by Congress and Wall Street into housing, led to the predictable boom-and-bust cycle culminating in the crash of 2008.

Ten years after the speech, it is truly amazing how prophetic and  right Paul was. All throughout his Congressional career, Paul has stood  behind a podium on the House floor issuing similar warnings about the  follies of unlimited government and foreign military interventionism. A  look at Paul's more recent statements and speeches reveals that in ten  more years, Paul will likely be proven right again and Americans will  wonder why, when given two chances to elect him president, they didn't  throw their support behind him.

Here are five  issues on which Ron Paul is simply ahead of his time:

1. The End of the Federal Reserve System

Paul entered politics in the 1970s after taking an interest in  economics, schooled by Austrian greats like Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard.  Paul knew that President Nixon's closing of the gold window in 1971 was a  recipe for financial disaster, and ever since then, has argued the case  for sound money and balanced budgets against fractional-reserve banking  and deficits. Not since Andrew Jackson shut down a central bank almost 200 years ago has someone done so much to make  people aware of the consequences of fiat money. Ten years ago, Fed  Chairman Alan Greenspan was the maestro, waving a magic wand of easy credit. Now Paul's speeches get interrupted to chants of "End the Fed!" and audits are being passed in the House.

With $15 trillion in debt and $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, Paul may have a point.

History is on his side. The average fiat currency only lasts a few decades before stumbling into a fit of hyperinflation and worthless paper.  Given that this August 15 will make it exactly 41 years since the U.S.  cut the dollar from all ties to gold, perhaps Paul will be proved  correct in sooner than a decade. That's why Paul advocates legalizing alternative currencies and competition, like gold and  silver, to help save people's purchasing power as the dollar continues  to plummet in value.

2. NDAA

After the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 was passed by  Congress and signed by President Obama on New Year's Eve with little  attention, Paul took to the House floor and immediately denounced the  legislation. It nullifies civil liberties that go back to Magna Carta,  Paul noted, to give the President the authority to use the military to  arrest and detain U.S. citizens without trial.

President Obama has said that he wouldn't use this power (and he would never lie, right?), but  even if we take him at his word, this authority will be transferred to  the next President. And given the frequency of legislation that has been  passed in the last decade which essentially abolishes the Bill of  Rights, the claimed power will either remain or grow. Just imagine a  President Romney or President Hillary Clinton having the power to make  people disappear.

Given that public protests and movements will likely grow as the effects of debt and inflation really kick in, it might be only a  matter of time before enforcing "law and order" is the norm, not the  exception. The Pentagon openly admits that it has prepared for war with the American people if they express their right to petition their government a little bit too emphatically.

Every campaign stump speech Paul gave during his 2012 presidential run included vehement opposition to the NDAA which will undoubtedly be seen as prophetic.

3. Obama, Democrats Are Not "Socialists"

Conservatives  and Republicans like to call President Obama a socialist, and deride  Obamacare as government-run medicine. Paul, on the other hand, saw the legislation for what it was: corportarism, welfare for politically-connected corporations and industries. Health care before Obama was a heavily socialized mess already, Paul argues, and it's hypocritical to oppose Obamacare so that you can replace it with Romneycare.

It is an injustice to the public that the mainstream debate is framed  as "big government Democrats" and "free market Republicans." In  reality, they are two parties devoted to the same basic philosophy and  only quibble over what kind of socialism and corporatism we should have.  Paul has used his principled understanding of economics to help peel  away the myth that the American economic system even remotely resembles a  free market and the contradictions of the left-right divide.

Because of Paul, millions have abandoned this false choice of  Republican corporatism or Democrat corporatism, and with time, that can  only increase.

4. The Follies of Empire

Paul  has given so many House floor speeches and written so many articles  about the terrible consequences of military interventionism overseas and  non-defensive wars that there is an entire book dedicated to them.

Paul is still the only presidential candidate who openly opposes  President Obama's incredibly aggressive and interventionist foreign  policy, targeted assassinations, "kill lists," and secret drone warfare.  America is supposed to be a commercial republic, Paul argues, a shining  light and example of peace and economic prosperity to a world that  desperately needs it. Lead by example, not by bombs and bribes.

Paul was laregly dismissed by conservatives for these views, even being booed in South Carolina during a Republican debate for espousing Christ's Golden Rule.

But Paul will be proven right even though the American people didn't  want to hear it. Whether or not one is convinved by Paul's arguments in  favor of a strong defense and diplomacy, there is simply no  possible way that the U.S. Navy can continue to police every ocean, that  the Army can support 1,000 foreign military bases, or that we can  continue to wage multiple hot wars forever. The U.S. is borrowing almost  half of every dollar from China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea to  maintain this empire, and eventually the troops will have to come home.

A decade from now, many Americans will probably be wishing it was  done in 2012 by President Paul out of choice and not out of financial  collapse and necessity.

5. The Liberty Movement is Here to Stay

Paul's presidential campaign stump speeches, and his tone in general,  tend to express a slight sense of despair and frustration. This  mentality, however, is only out of legimitate concern and is always  tempered by a long-term positive outlook about the future of liberty and  the country. Paul, quoting Samuel Adams, knows that "It does not require a majority to prevail,  but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in  people's minds."

With the rise of the Internet and the spread of free and cheap information, Paul's shouts from the rooftops now have a megaphone and a printing press. Thomas Paine had pamphlets,  the libertarian movement has the web and the power to circumvent the  mainstream media narrative and poke holes in propaganda.

Combine that with the grassroots, decentralized organization of  national delegates and Paul supporters inside state and local offices  around the country, and the movement that he reluctantly led is just  getting started.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan testifying before the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2010. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Central bankers

Alan Greenspan, chairman US Federal Reserve 1987-2006 A disciple of libertarian icon Ayn Rand, Greenspan became chairman of the Fed just in time to save the global economy from the 1987 stock market crash from becoming a full-blown disaster. He went on preside over the boom years of the 90s and lead the US economy through the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and was widely referred to as an "oracle" and "the maestro".

But Greenspan's super-low interest rates and consistent opposition to regulation of the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market are now widely blamed for causing the credit crisis. Under Greenspan's tenure the derivatives market went from barely registering to a $500 trillion industry, despite billionaire investor Warren Buffett warning that they were "financial weapons of mass destruction".

His rock-bottom rates encouraged Americans to load up on debt to buy homes, even when they had no savings, no income and no job prospects.

These so-called sub-prime borrowers were the cannon fodder for the biggest boom-bust in US history. The housing collapse brought the global economy to its knees.

He was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 for his "contribution to global economic stability", but in 2008, at a Congressional hearing investigating the causes of the financial crisis, Greenspan finally admitted he "made a mistake in presuming" that financial firms could regulate themselves.

"You found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right, it was not working?" Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, said.

"Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

After he quit the Fed, in 2006, Greenspan joined Pimco, the world's largest bond investor, as a special consultant. Pimco's co-founder Bill Gross said Greenspan had helped make the firm "billions of dollars'' in his role as a consultant.

Gross said Greenspan's "brilliance" was a "big money saver for us''. "He's made and saved billions of dollars for Pimco already,'' Gross said in 2008.He has also advised Deutsche Bank and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson.

Greenspan has also found time to criticise current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's programme of quantitative easing. "I've stayed away from commenting on Fed policy," he said on US TV earlier this month. "I will say this, however, that the data do show that the expansion of assets has had very little impact on the economy, for an important reason, that we've created a major increase in the asset side of the Fed balance sheet and a very large trillion and a half increase in excess reserves."

Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England

At his first meeting chairing the Bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) interest rates were cut to an historic postwar low of 3.5%. King's ambition as governor was to make the Bank "boring". If only that had been the case.

He was slow to react to the crisis and initially refused to follow Greenspan in pumping cash into the system. The Treasury select committee (TSC) said he should have noticed that the housing bubble was becoming unstable and should have been "more pro-active" to damp it down.

Just the other week King finally admitted that the financial crisis was the result of "major mistakes" by policymakers and not just the fault of greedy bankers.

At the government's Global Investment Conference in London in the buildup to the Olympics he said: "We saw this going into the crisis, we kept meeting at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but we did nothing to solve it collectively, and I don't think that this was a problem that could have been solved individually."

More recently, King had to face the TSC to explain why the Bank failed to spot the Libor interest rate-fixing scandal that pre-dated the credit crunch and last month Bob Diamond stepped down as chief executive of Barclays after King let it be known Diamond no longer had the confidence of the Bank.

In the shake-up of regulation that followed the financial meltdown, the governor of the Bank of England has emerged with more power than ever. However, King is due to stand down next summer, with former cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell and deputy governor Paul Tucker the favourites to replace him.

Politicians

Bill Clinton, former US president

Politicians' current plan to help prevent another financial crisis is to ringfence banks' risky "casino banking" divisions from the more pedestrian high street banking departments. 13 years ago Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had done just that. Clinton's move, which came after fierce lobbying from bankers, heralded the birth of superbanks and primed the sub-prime pump.

He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. Around the same time Clinton also beefed up President Carter's 1977 Community Reinvestment Act – forcing lenders to take a more sympathetic approach to poor borrowers trying to get on the housing ladder.

Gordon Brown, former prime minister

Brown's big boast as chancellor was that he had "abolished Tory boom and bust". He hadn't. His prime ministerial tenure was spent presiding over the biggest bust since the Great Depression.

In his last big speech before becoming prime minister just before the crisis began he praised bankers for their role in bringing in a "new golden age for the City of London".

To tempt foreign bankers to work in the City he backed low taxes for non-doms and "light-touch" regulation that meant they could get away with a lot more in London than elsewhere.

Brown is now working on projects to improve child poverty levels and education, worldwide, with organisations such as the United Nations.

George W Bush, former US president

The meltdown happened on Bush's watch. While Clinton got the ball rolling with sub-prime lending, Bush failed to bring in much tighter regulation, bar the Sarbanes-Oxley Act brought in after the Enron scandal. And he didn't do a lot to stop the boom in lending to "Ninjas" [no income, no job applicants].

Nouriel Roubini, the economist who earned the nickname Dr Doom for his prediction that the crisis was about to hit, blames Bush. Obama "inherited a mess", Roubini has said. "We're lucky that this Great Recession is not turning into another Great Depression."

Bush is in self-imposed political exile and has been notable for his absence in Mitt Romney's campaign to become the next Republican president. "He is enjoying his life in Texas. He's not seeking the limelight. And he is really focused on the Bush Center," his spokesman said recently. He has "no plans to endorse, at least not at present," the spokesman added.

The former president has written a book, Decision Points, about the 14 biggest decisions of his presidential career. The former president was paid $7m for 1.5m copies.

Senator Phil Gramm

"Some people look at sub-prime lending and see evil. I look at sub-prime lending and see the American dream in action," Gramm told a Senate debate in 2001.

Another dynamite quote. "When I am on Wall Street and I realise that that's the very nerve centre of American capitalism and I realise what capitalism has done for the working people of America, to me that's a holy place."

It was Gramm that had fought hardest for deregulation and helped write the law that enabled the creation of financial giants such as Citigroup and Bank of America.

He remains unrepentant. Just a couple of weeks ago Gramm, who went on to work for Swiss investment bank UBS until earlier this year and is now a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said: "I don't see any evidence that allowing them to affiliate through holding companies had anything to do with the financial crisis nor has anybody ever presented any evidence to suggest that it did."

Sandy Weill, however, a man with hands-on experience of running a too-big-to-fail bank as the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, begs to differ. Last week Weill said: "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real-estate loans and have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not too big to fail."

Weill added: "The world changed with the collapse of the housing market and the real-estate bubble … so I don't think it's right anymore (to have huge investment and retail banking combines)."

Wall Street/Bankers

Abby Cohen, Goldman Sachs senior strategist

Bear market? Cohen appears not to have heard of the term.

She made a name for herself in the late 1990s by being the bullest of the bulls during the dotcom bubble, and it's hard to remember when she hasn't been bullish since.

She's still a bull now. "If we were to look just at fair-value estimates over the next year to three, we think that returns that are roughly 8-10% on the stock market are sensible," she told Bloomberg last week.

Kathleen Corbet, former CEO, Standard & Poor's

The credit rating agencies, of which S&P is the biggest, gave triple A ratings to the mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic and were accused of conflict of interest because the bond issuers were paying them for the ratings. As one S&P analyst wrote in an email, "[A bond] could be structured by cows and we would rate it."

Another analyst emailed a colleague: "Let's hope we're all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters."

Corbet resigned amid a wave of criticism in 2007. She has since set up a company to invest in tech, energy and, of course, financial services companies. She has a tumblr, but is yet to actually blog.

Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, former chief executive AIG insurance group

While AIG was taking a multibillion-dollar bailout from the US Treasury and the Fed after its massive credit default business went sour, 100 AIG execs where spending $444,000 on a golf and spa retreat in California. "Have you heard of anything more outrageous?" said Elijah Cummings, a Democratic congressman, said. "They were getting their manicures, their facials, pedicures, massages, while the American people were footing the bill."

Greenberg, now 87, has now started over – and is running C V Starr & Co, a private equity firm named after AIG's founder Cornelius Vander Starr. Hank's son Scott is helping tap up sovereign wealth funds and the ultra-wealthy for cash for buyout deals expected to last a decade.

Andy Hornby, former HBOS boss

The former wunderkind of British business who came top of his 800-strong class at Harvard and rose to become a board director of Asda by the age of 32 was the man running HBOS when it had to be rescued by Lloyds. His reputation took a knocking from the FSA, with the regulator finding HBOS guilty of "very serious misconduct" in the run up to its taxpayer bailout and rescue by Lloyds. But he's still a busy man. After HBOS's demise he was installed as chief executive of Alliance Boots (he quit last year with no payoff) and is currently chief executive of bookies Coral and non-executive chairman of online and mail order pharmaceuticals business pharmacy2U.

Fred Goodwin, former RBS boss

Fred "the shred" was stripped of his knighthood earlier this year as public anger over his role in causing the financial crisis reached boiling point. Goodwin, who has been dubbed "the world's worst banker", brought Royal Bank of Scotland to its knees via a series of over-ambitious acquisitions. A string of 20 takeovers transformed RBS into a global leader but Goodwin wasn't satisfied and just before the financial crisis struck he led a $100bn takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro.

RBS went on to record the biggest annual loss in UK corporate history and had to be bailed out by the government to the tune of £45.5bn. It is now 82%-owned by the state.

Goodwin hit the headlines again recently when he was blamed for a crisis at Scotland's biggest architecture firm, RMJM, where he was an adviser. About 80 staff left the firm after a battle over unpaid fees.

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U.S. regulators directed five of the country's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.

The two-year-old program, which has been largely secret until now, is in addition to the "living wills" the banks crafted to help regulators dismantle them if they actually do fail. It shows how hard regulators are working to ensure that banks have plans for worst-case scenarios and can act rationally in times of distress.

Officials like Lehman Brothers former Chief Executive Dick Fuld have been criticized for having been too hesitant to take bold steps to solve their banks' problems during the financial crisis.

According to documents obtained by Reuters, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency first directed five banks - which also include Citigroup Inc,, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co - to come up with these "recovery plans" in May 2010.

Michael Snyder The Economic Collapse
Why are Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and so many other countries experiencing depression-like conditions right now?  It is because they have too much debt.  Why do they have too much debt?  It is because they allowed themselves to become enslaved to the bankers.  Borrowing money from the bankers can allow a nation to have a higher standard of living in the short-term, but it always results in a lower standard of living in the long-term.  Why is that?  It is because you always have to pay back more money than you borrowed.  And when you get to the point of having a debt to GDP ratio in excess of 100%, you are basically drowning in debt.  Huge amounts of money that could be going to providing essential services and stimulating your economy are now going to service your horrific debt.  Today, citizens in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are experiencing a standard of living far below what they should be because the bankers have trapped them in endless debt spirals.  Sadly, the vast majority of the people living in those countries have absolutely no idea what is at the root cause of their problems.

The truth is that no sovereign nation on earth ever has to borrow a single penny from anyone.

In theory, there is nothing stopping a government from printing up debt-free money and spending it into circulation.

But that is not the way our world works.

Instead, our national governments borrow money that has been zapped into existence out of thin air by central banks.

Now what kind of sense does that make?

Why don’t our governments just create the money themselves?

If the government of Greece had been directly issuing debt-free Greek currency all these years, they would have a national debt of zero and they would not be in the middle of a deep depression today.

So why isn’t anyone proposing that they go to such a system?

Instead, everyone is trying to figure out a way that the Greeks can muddle through this depression and keep paying on their unsustainable debts.

It is such a tragedy what has happened to Greece.  The city of Boston has a larger economy than the entire nation of Greece at this point.

But this is what happens when you allow the bankers to trap your country in debt.  The central banking systems of the world are designed to be endless debt spirals that systematically transfer wealth from the people through the governments and into the hands of the ultra-wealthy.

Just look at what is happening in the United States.  The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times largerthan it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.

Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the rest of the nations of the western world did not get into all this debt by accident.

This happened by design.

And we can see what happens when the system starts to unravel by looking at what is happening in Greece and in Spain right now.

The following are 11 things that can happen when you allow your country to become enslaved to the bankers….

#1 At some point nations that are drowning in debt must implement “austerity measures” in an attempt to stay solvent.

This causes economic slowdown and unemployment skyrockets.  We are seeing this happen in Greece, Spain and a whole bunch of other nations right now.

Over the past four years, the Greek economy has contracted by close to 25 percent.  Just this week it was announced that the unemployment rate in Greece has risen to 23.1 percent.

A year ago it was just 16.8 percent

In Spain, the unemployment rate is even higher.  It has hit 24.6 percent, and some analysts expect it to eventually reach 30 percent.

This would have never happened if these nations had not gotten into so much debt.

#2 Economic progress can actually go backwards in a debt-based system.

In Greece, a very large number of citizens have actually been giving up their cars and have gone back to riding bikes….

The high cost of road tax, fuel and repairs is forcing Greeks to ditch their cars in huge numbers. According to the government’s statistics office, the number of cars on Greek roads declined by more than 40 percent in each of the last two years. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 bikes were sold in 2011, up about a quarter from the previous year.

#3 Your banking system will inevitably melt down at some point.

Every debt bubble eventually bursts, and authorities all over Europe are desperately trying to keep the European banking system from completely imploding.

But despite their efforts, people are pulling money out of banks in southern Europe at a staggering pace.  Just check out the slow motion bank run that is unfolding in Spain….

Capital outflows from Spain more than quadrupled in May to €41.3 billion ($50.7 billion) compared with May 2011, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Spanish central bank.

In the first five months of 2012, a total of €163 billion left the country, the figures indicate. During the same period a year earlier, Spain recorded a net inflow of €14.6 billion.

#4 In all countries with a debt-based system, eventually your taxes will be raised to ridiculous levels.

When the income tax was introduced in the United States back in 1913, the vast majority of Americans were in the 1 percent tax bracket.

Throughout the years there have been countless promises that taxes would be limited, but those promises always end up getting broken.

Even when they give us “tax cuts” with one hand, they usually end up raising taxes ten different ways with the other hand.

In the United States today, we are literally taxed in dozens and dozens of different ways.

Our politicians love to come up with new and inventive ways to tax us without us really even feeling it.

In the end, they are going to take as much away from us as they can possibly get away with.

Just look at what is happening in France.

The newly elected socialist president of France says that his party plans to raise the top tax rate in France to 75 percent.

But even though our politicians tax us to death, they still manage to run up gigantic mountains of debt on top of that.

#5 Your currency slowly but steadily becomes worthless.

Most people don’t realize that inflation is a tax.  Every dollar you currently have in the bank is constantly losing value.  That is because in a debt-based system like we have, the total amount of money and the total amount of debt is supposed to keep perpetually expanding.

Since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. dollar has declined in value by well over 95 percent.

This did not happen by accident.  Every other major currency around the globe has been steadily declining in value as well.

#6 When things get bad enough, there will be rioting in the streets.

A few weeks ago, a total of more than a million public employees took to the streets in more than 80 different Spanish cities.  You can view footage of some of the violent clashes with police that took place right here.

#7 When a debt-based economy crashes, money becomes very tight and shortages tend to happen.

Just look at what is happening in Greece.  Medicine shortages have become a tremendous problem.  The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….

Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.

“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”

The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines.

#8 Your population will eventually become so desperate that they will start banding together to loot food and supplies from stores.

When people have no work and they cannot feed their families they often find themselves doing things that they never imagined that they would do.  Just check out what is happening in Spain right now….

Unemployed fieldworkers and other members of the union went to two supermarkets, one in Ecija (Sevilla) and one in Arcos de la Frontera (Cadiz) and loaded up trolleys with basic necessities. They said that the people were being expropriated and they planned to “expropriate the expropriators”.

The foodstuffs, including milk, sugar, chickpeas, pasta and rice, have been given to charities to distribute, who say they are unable to cope with all the requests for help they receive. Unemployment in the Sierra de Cadiz is now 40%.

#9 If things get bad enough, even essential services may start shutting down.

Authorities in Greece are legitimately concerned that there may be interruptions in the supply of natural gas and electricity.  Suppliers are leaving bills unpaid for extended periods of time, and one day millions of Greeks may wake up to find that the power to their homes has been cut off….

Greece’s power regulator RAE told Reuters on Friday it was calling an emergency meeting next week to avert a collapse of the debt-stricken country’s electricity and natural gas system.

“RAE is taking crisis initiatives throughout next week to avert the collapse of the natural gas and electricity system,” the regulator’s chief Nikos Vasilakos told Reuters.

RAE took the decision after receiving a letter from Greece’s natural gas company DEPA, which threatened to cut supplies to electricity producers if they failed to settle their arrears with the company.

#10 In an economic depression, many people begin to totally lose hope.

An increasing number of parents in southern Europe are facing such desperate situations that they are actually abandoning their babies.

The following is from a recent CNBC article….

According to SOS Villages, a European charity that attempts to help families in financial hardship before abandonment occurs, in the last year alone 1,200 children in Greece and 750 in Italy have been abandoned. That is almost double the 400 children abandoned in Italy a year ago, and up from 114 children abandoned in Greece in 2003.

#11 Just like we saw during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there is a spike in suicides when an economy crashes.

Greece has never seen anything like what is happening now.  The suicide rate has been absolutely soaring.

The following is from a Reuters article back in April….

On Monday, a 38-year-old geology lecturer hanged himself from a lamp post in Athens and on the same day a 35-year-old priest jumped to his death off his balcony in northern Greece. On Wednesday, a 23-year-old student shot himself in the head.

In a country that has had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, a surge in the number of suicides in the wake of an economic crisis has shocked and gripped the Mediterranean nation – and its media – before a May 6 election.

If you live in the United States, you need to watch what is happening in Europe very closely, because similar conditions will come to the United States soon enough.

Just like Europe, we have allowed ourselves to become enslaved to the bankers, and now we will suffer the consequences.

Sadly, most Americans do not even realize how we got into this mess.  The following is from a recent article by Professor Steven Yates….

It should have been clear that the country—indeed, Western civilization itself—was on the wrong trajectory as governments and central banks, working in tandem, severed ties between their currencies and precious metals, allowing massive credit expansion to run rampant and the national debt to skyrocket—making, e.g., the pseudo-prosperity of the roaring 1990s possible. Nixon had “closed the gold window” on August 15, 1971; our national debt was around $400 billion. Slightly over ten years later, the debt crossed the $1 trillion threshold. Ten years after that, it reached $6 trillion. When George W. Bush left office having been the biggest spending Republican in U.S. history, it had risen to over $11 trillion. Today, under the watch of the catastrophic Obama presidency, by the time this reaches print the national debt might have surmounted $16 trillion with no end in sight.

The United States has accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world and it will totally crush us at some point.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are totally unprepared for the economic chaos that is coming.

One study found that 64 percent of all Americans have less than $1000 in the bank.

Can you believe that?

Even though we could be on the verge of another global food crisis, most Americans do not have enough food in their homes to last a single month.

Even though the U.S. economy is on the verge of another recession, most Americans are still running out and buying toys that they don’t need and paying for them with credit cards that they should not be using.

If you want to see where we are headed, just look at Greece and Spain.

They are going through economic hell, and we will be joining them soon enough.

Get ready while you can.

If you were hoping for a recession in 2012, then you are going to be very happy with the numbers you are about to see.  The U.S. economy is heading downhill just in time for the 2012 election.  Retail sales have fallen for three months in a row for the first time since 2008, manufacturing activity is dropping like a rock, sales of new homes are declining again, consumer confidence has moved significantly lower and a depressingly small percentage of businesses anticipate hiring more workers in the coming months.  Even though the Federal Reserve has been wildly pumping money into the financial system and even though the federal government has been injecting gigantic piles of borrowed cash into the economy, we still haven't seen an economic recovery.  In fact, we appear to be on the verge of yet another major downturn.  In California the other night, Barack Obama told supporters that "we tried our plan — and it worked", but only those that are still drinking the Obama kool-aid would believe something so preposterous.  The truth is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for many years and now we have reached another very painful recession.

And don't let the second quarter GDP number on Friday fool you.  Analysts are expecting to see GDP growth of about 1.4 percent for the second quarter, but the only reason for our very small amount of "economic growth" is because the economy has been flooded with new dollars.

Let me give you an example.  If I could go out overnight and magically double the bank accounts of every single American, would we all be twice as wealthy?

No, because there would be twice as many dollars now chasing the same amount of goods and services.  The price of those goods and services would soon rise dramatically to reflect this new reality.

With all of those new dollars spinning around in the economy it would look like "economic growth" was going through the roof, but in reality the amount of real economic activity would be about the same.

So whenever we talk about GDP, we need to adjust it for inflation.

And as I noted the other day, after adjusting for inflation the U.S. economy has been continually experiencing negative economic growth since about 2005.

So let's not deceive ourselves.  The U.S. economy has been declining for a long time.

But soon even non-inflation adjusted GDP will turn negative.  We will probably see a slightly positive number for the second quarter, and the number will likely go negative either in the third quarter or the fourth quarter.

Economists will debate when this new recession officially "began" just like they do with every recession, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out what is happening to our economy right now.

The following are 17 reasons why those hoping for a recession in 2012 just got their wish....

1. U.S. retail sales have declined for three months in a row.  This is the first time this has happened since 2008.  Every other time this has happened in U.S. history (except for once) this has signaled that the U.S. economy was either already in a recession or was about to enter one.

2. The Philadelphia Fed index of manufacturing activity contracted for the third month in a row during July.  According to the Financial Post, this is a very bad sign....

Seven out of eight times when the average reading has been that low (-11.8) for that long the U.S. economy has tipped into recession.

3. Manufacturing activity in the mid-Atlantic region has also declined for three months in a row.  In fact, the only time in the past decade when manufacturing activity in the mid-Atlantic has fallen more dramatically was during the last recession.

4. A factory index calculated by the Institute for Supply Management has fallen to its lowest level since June 2009.

5. The Conference Board index of leading economic indicators has fallen for two of the past three months.

6. According to a recent survey conducted by the Conference Board, only 17 percent of CEOs had a positive view of the economy during the second quarter of 2012.  During the first quarter of 2012, 67 percent did.

7. Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index is now the lowest that it has been since January.

8. Optimism among small business owners has declined in three of the last four months and is now at its lowest level since last October.

9. Believe it or not, the amount of waste being carted around on trains in the United States has an 82 percent correlation with U.S. economic growth.  Unfortunately, right now the number of garbage carloads on trains is falling dramatically.

10. Sales of previously occupied homes dropped by 5.4 percent during June.

11. Sales of new homes declined by 8.4 percent during June.  At this point new home sales are less than a third of what they were during the boom years.

12. An increasing number of Americans are relying on high interest "payday loans" to pay the rent and put food on the table.

13. Far more companies are defaulting on their debts this year than last year.

14. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the unemployment rate fell in 11 states and Washington, D.C. last month, but it rose in 27 states.

15. The unemployment rate in New York City is now back up to 10 percent.  That equals the peak unemployment rate in New York City during the last recession.

16. The teen unemployment rate in Washington D.C. right now is 51.7 percent.

17. A recent survey conducted by the National Association for Business Economics found that only 23 percent of all U.S. companies plan to hire more workers over the next 6 months.  When the same question was asked a few months ago that number was at 39 percent.

All of those are very powerful pieces of evidence that a new recession has started.

But do you want to know one of my favorite indicators that the U.S. economy is sliding into recession?

In a previous article, I noted that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made the following statement to Congress recently: "At this point we don't see a double dip recession. We see continued moderate growth."

As I mentioned the other day, Bernanke has a track record of failure that is absolutely embarrassing.  Back on January 10, 2008 Bernanke made the following statement....

"The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession."

That turned out to be a great call, didn't it?

On June 10, 2008 he doubled down on his call that the U.S. economy was going to avoid a recession....

"The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so."

Just before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed Bernanke made this statement....

"The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing."

And there are dozens of other examples just like these.

This is the guy running our economic system.

I am very critical of the Federal Reserve, but there are very good reasons for this.

The Federal Reserve is running our economy into the ground, and we need to pound this into the heads of the American people so that they will wake up and demand change.

Perhaps this next recession will be painful enough to wake people up.

The Wall Street Journal is already even using the "D word" to describe what we are experiencing.  Just today, the Wall Street Journal ran an article that asked this question: "Do Two Recessions Equal One Depression?"

Sadly, this is just the leading edge of what is coming.  By the time 2014 or 2015 rolls around, we are going to look back and long for the "good old days" of 2011 and 2012.

Over the next few years, the unemployment rate is going to skyrocket and poverty in the United States is going to get a whole lot worse.

Now is not the time to goof off.  Now is the time to work really hard to get yourself and your family into the best position that you can for the storm that is coming.

Nothing is going to stop the terrible economic crisis that is coming, but at least we can get prepared for it.

There is hope in being prepared.

Sadly, most people will never even see the next crisis coming until they get blindsided by it.

by Stephen Lendman

Obama targets humanity at home and abroad. Illinoisans paying attention knew long ago. He served as senator for the state's 13th district.

He sold out straightaway. Real estate interests had their man. Gentrification demolitions rewarded them. Poor folks were driven out. Most were Black. 

Banking, finance, insurance, and real estate interests comprised his political base then and now. Needs of constituents he represented were ignored. Community uplift rhetoric disguised harming people who needed help.

Critics called his record kick back cronyism. Convicted felons and big monied interests funded him. Every dollar invested returned multiples.

Pay-to-play was always Chicago's way. City and state politics are notoriously corrupt. Obama played the game down and dirty.

He earned his bona fides. He was well suited for bigger and better things in Washington. He was singled out and took full advantage. Nationally he betrayed the poor and disadvantaged the way he did in Illinois. Globally it's much worse.

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