CajunWin4's Blog

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•                 John Hawkins                     John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Right Wing News

            Aug 24,  2012

1) Obama took 700 billion dollars out of the Medicare program and put it into his wildly unpopular health care program. This is despite the fact that even Obama has admitted,

Medicare in particular will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.

 

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will put that money back into the Medicare program where it belongs, while Obama won't.

2) Barack Obama's stimulus plan cost more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, and putting a man on the moon — combined and it was a complete and utter failure -- more than 800 billion dollars that accomplished nothing of significance.

3) If Barack Obama is re-elected, Obamacare will go into effect in 2014. This will lead to huge doctor shortages, exploding health care costs, companies dropping insurance, death panels, much longer waits to see a doctor, and a dramatic deterioration in the quality of American medical care.

4) Do you believe that your taxes should go up in the next four years? Well, Barack Obama does,

"Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years." — Barack Obama

 

5) Even the left-wingers at Politifact admit that Obama broke his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

6) America lost its AAA credit rating for the first time since 1917 on Obama's watch.

7) Even though Barack Obama keeps blaming do-nothing Republicans for his myriad of failures, the Republicans in the House have passed multiple budgets while Barack Obama and the Democrats in the Senate haven't pushed a budget through in the last three years. That's a big deal because passing a budget is one of the most basic duties of Congress. A Congress that can't pass a budget is like a mechanic who can't handle an oil change.

8) Barack Obama called George Bush "unpatriotic" for adding so much to the debt. Yet, Obama added more debt in 3 years and 2 months than Bush did in both terms.

9) "Do you think it’s okay for Barack Obama’s campaign contributors at Solyndra to receive a 535 million dollar government loan, approved by one of Obama’s fundraisers, even though it was known that the company was in trouble and there was an excellent chance it wouldn’t be able to pay back the loan?"

10) Barack Obama is touting his interference on behalf of his union cronies at General Motors and Chevrolet as a big "success." The cost of that "success" for the taxpayers? 25 billion dollars.

11) Obama selected Tim Geithner, a man who was a tax cheat, to be his Treasury Secretary. That's bad enough, but then Obama spent his whole first term lobbying for tax increases and accusing other people of being greedy for wanting to keep more of their own money. When even the Treasury Secretary refuses to willingly pay all of his taxes, maybe the problem is that you're spending too much, not taxing the American people too little.

12) Under the "Cash for Clunkers" program, Obama spent 3 billion so he could buy and destroy perfectly functional cars. This was mind-numbingly stupid, but it was supposed to at least cause a major spike in auto sales and improve gas efficiency. The program is now almost universally recognized as a failure on every count.

13) Barack Obama put an end to NASA's manned space flight. In other words, because of Obama we no longer even have the same capabilities that we had in 1969. Meanwhile, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says the "foremost" mission of NASA is now Muslim outreach. Yes, really.

14) Despite the fact that Obama had a disastrous first term, he hasn't even put forth a second term agenda. After one of the worst four year runs of any President in American history, Obama's message to the voters is, "Trust my judgment when it comes to deciding what we'll do differently." 

15) "If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, ‘Well, it must be ’cause I was just so smart.’ There are a lot of smart people out there. ‘It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.’ Let me tell you something: If you’ve got a business, that–you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” -- Barack Obama

16) After BP had a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama exacerbated the crisis and dramatically slowed down the clean-up with his incompetent handling of the whole affair. Obama performed so poorly that even James Carville and Chris Matthews were publicly criticizing him.

17) "No, no. I have been practicing…I bowled a 129. It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something." — Barack Obama. Classy!

18) We were told that George W. Bush was a cowboy who was making the world hate us. Yet, as Chuck Norris notes,

The Washington Times reports that, according to a poll by even two left-leaning groups, “A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than two years ago and believe President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security.”

 

In February 2012, Gallup reported that “Americans continue to express much greater dissatisfaction than satisfaction with the United States’ position in the world, and their views have improved little since hitting a low point in 2008.”

 

19) "But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking." — Barack Obama. In 2008, Barack Obama ran as a moderate, bipartisan reformer who was going to change the tone in Washington. He has governed as a hyper-partisan, arrogant, divisive, polar opposite of the man he pretended to be in 2008.

20) Although liberals and conservatives disagree on who's to blame for Obama's poor performance as President, there seems to be general agreement that he hasn't done very well. Of course, you can't tell Obama that.

Oprah: What grade would you give yourself, for this year?
Obama: Um, good solid B+
…Oprah: So B+, what could you have done better?
Obama: Well B+ because of the things that are undone. Health care is not yet signed. If I get health care passed we tip into A minus.

 

21) Despite claiming to be in favor of traditional marriage to get elected, Barack Obama betrayed Christians by coming out in favor of gay marriage.

22) The First Amendment rights of the Catholic Church are being violated under Obamacare. Despite its long recognized religious opposition to contraceptives and abortifacients, Obama is demanding that Catholic hospitals go against their faith to remain open. Every last Catholic bishop in the United States opposes Obama's anti-Christian policy and it will likely lead to numerous Catholic hospitals shutting down if Obama is re-elected.

23) Barack Obama despicably played the race card by telling Hispanic Americans that Republicans were their "enemies."

And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us, if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder – and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.

 

The President of the United States shouldn't be trying to pit different groups of Americans against each other based on the color of their skin.

24) "The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. . . . What I think we know — separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in their country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact." — Barack Obama on the arrest of his friend, Henry Louis Gates.

25) The "Justice Department" helped put guns in the hands of drug cartels via Operation Fast and Furious that were used to kill hundreds of Mexican citizens and at least one American, Brian Terry. After stonewalling a congressional investigation, Barack Obama asserted executive privilege to try to keep the truth from coming out about the biggest scandal since Watergate.

26) We essentially have an open borders policy in America now for illegal aliens who haven't committed felonies in the United States.

27) Barack Obama is illegally trying to implement the DREAM Act by fiat, despite the fact that it failed to get through Congress.

28) The fence on our southern border was supposed to be completed in 2009. Not only has it not been completed, but the virtual fence has been put off until at least 2016.

29) Because Barack Obama is so out of touch, he thinks that "the private sector is doing fine.".

30) Obama has blocked the keystone pipeline and ANWR while he has held up offshore drilling in the Gulf and demonized oil companies. It's hard to say how much more you're paying at the pump because of Barack Obama, but we can be sure the amount is considerable.

31) In 2011, nearly 1 in 7 Americans were on food stamps. Is setting a record for putting the most Americans on food stamps really the sort of achievement that should merit a second term?

32) Despite the billions of dollars that were spent on TARP, U.S. home ownership is at a decade long low. So is the number of Americans who say their home is worth more than they paid for it. Home prices are the lowest they’ve been since 2002.

33) The staggering cost of the new regulations that the Obama Administration has implemented on American businesses over the last 3 1/2 years? 84 billion dollars.

34) Obama sent BILLIONS of dollars of YOUR TAX DOLLARS overseas as part of the stimulus package. The stimulus may have been a complete failure here in America, but I'm sure the companies in China, Spain, and South Korea sure loved pocketing our money.

35) In a more competent administration, what happened with Johnson Controls, Inc would have been a big scandal. That company was given 300 million dollars of stimulus money and used it to create.....150 jobs. That's 2 million dollars per job created. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration has performed so poorly, in so many ways, that this minor disaster has barely even been a blip on the radar.

36) George W. Bush started the TARP program, but Barack Obama supported the program, continued it, and made it worse. The cost of bailing out all those "too big to fail" fatcats who wanted capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down? At least 34 billion dollars of taxpayer money although that dramatically understates the real cost because many banks paid back the TARP money with other funds that they received from the government.

37) We've had the longest streak of above 8% unemployment under Barack Obama since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, according to the Obama Administration, his stimulus bill was supposed to have produced 5.6% unemployment by now.

38) The terrible jobless numbers don't really give you a sense of how badly Obama has done as President because those who quit looking for jobs are no longer counted in the numbers. We've had the most rapid decline in labor force participation in recent history under Obama -- from 65.7% in 2009 to 63.7% in 2012.

39) Under Barack Obama's leadership, we've had the weakest economic recovery of any country, anywhere in the world since 1970

40) "Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years. And, you know, a year from now I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress. But there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition." -- Barack Obama on the economy in February of 2009

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•                 Daniel Doherty                     Web Editor, Townhall.com               

            Jun 26,  2012 10:14 AM EST

At a fundraiser Monday night in Boston, Massachusetts, President Obama was booed by supporters when he jokingly thanked the Fenway Faithful for trading third baseman and World Series champion Kevin Youkulis to the Chicago White Sox.   Yikes, Mr. President.

 

On a more serious note, though, does it surprise you to learn President Obama will appear at four fundraisers today in Atlanta and Miami after he attended three yesterday in Massachusetts? That's seven fundraisers in 48 hours! Incredible. Of course, I recognize it’s an election year and therefore it’s tacitly accepted incumbent presidents will spend long hours on the campaign trail. This is to be expected. But if President Obama is literally spending all of his time campaigning and fundraising (which, I think, seems to be the case) how does he find the time, say, to meet with lawmakers about the impending debt crisis or the escalating unemployment rate? The point is Obama & Co. has given up on governing until after the election.  And, sure, while one can certainly charge Mitt Romney with overzealous campaigning, too, at least he’s not President of the United States.

 

            Posted at            5:18 PM ET, 8/22/2012

Often lost in the daily hubbub of the 2012 horse race is the proverbial sword of Damocles hovering over the nation's economy.  The CBO sounds the alarm.  Again:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday warned the economy will enter a recession next year if the country goes over the so-called fiscal cliff. In its most dire warning yet about the fiscal cliff, the CBO said the economy would contract by 0.5 percent in calendar year 2013 if the George W. Bush-era tax rates expire and automatic spending cuts are implemented. Unemployment also would rise from 8.2 percent in 2012 to 9.1 percent next year, the office estimates ... Under current law, there will be 2 million fewer jobs if the fiscal cliff is allowed to take place, and said most of the contraction is due to the tax increases. The contraction would be very severe in the first half of 2013. CBO sees the economy contracting by 2.9 percent in the first half — deeper than the 1.3 percent negative growth it had seen previously from the fiscal cliff ... CBO says the fiscal cliff will be worse than it had previously projected and that the “underlying strength” of the economy is weaker.

The "fiscal cliff" would instantly raise taxes on all American families, as well as millions of small businesses.  It would also implement severe and over-broad defense cuts, which Obama's own Secretary of Defense has likened to the United States military shooting itself "in the head."  And it would drag the economy back into recession, shedding millions of jobs along the way.  House Republicans have acted to modify the cuts in a more targeted and sensible fashion, and to extend the current tax rates for all taxpayers.  Democrats are holding the economy hostage (to use their favorite expression), adamantly refusing to avoid the fiscal cliff unless the plan includes raising taxes on nearly one million small businesses.  They brashly claim that they're willing to steer the U.S.S. Tax Hike over our impending economic Niagra Falls, so long as they're able to score some class-warfarealicious political points against Republicans along the way.  Such priorities and leadership, no?  The White House is spinning the CBO report to demonstrate the "urgent need" for Congress to act.  The Republican-held House of Representatives already has acted.  The Democrat-controlled Senate, shockingly, has done nothing.  Why?  Because several Senate Democrats are squeamish about signing on to Obama's tax hikes scheme  Perhaps they were actually paying attention when Obama himself made the argument against raising taxes on anyone during a "fragile" economic recovery back in 2010:

 

Never mind all that jargon about economic "consensus," and whatnot.  There's an election to be won.  Cliffward, Ho!

Source: Susanne Posel In 2007, the Sentinel Management Group (SMG) collapsed, leaving many customer segregated funds lost after they had been used as collateral. After a plethora of lawsuits and creditor claims, a decision earlier this month in the 7th Circuit Court placed the banking cartels ahead of customer claims for funds returned. Essentially, the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) sued to be first in line for return on stolen customer account monies – and won the right by the US court system.

In the mainstream media (MSM), the SMG collapse and subsequent ruling in favor of BNYM was touted as a difficulty “for customers to recoup money lost”.

SMG, a Chicago-based futures broker, had stolen more than $500 million in segregated customer funds to use as collateral on a loan to BNYM for in-house proprietary trading operations. Their books were audited by the National Futures Association (NFA), however the NFA admitted that they could not understand the convoluted mess they were provided by SMG to sign off on. And yet they did; and approved the audit.

BNYM sued SMG to re-coup any monies owed to them. However, these monies were customer segregated funds that SMG stole and re-hypothecated.

In federal court, John D. Tinder, US Circuit Court Judge ruled “that Sentinel failed to keep client funds properly segregated is not, on its own, sufficient to rule as a matter of law that Sentinel acted ‘with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud’ its customers.”

This means that once a banking customer deposits their money into an account with a bank, the funds become property of the bank. The customer, at the point of deposit, relinquishes all rights to that money regardless of any laws in place, legal assurances, claims or guarantees; and this extends from investments to private checking accounts.

Once the bank has physical possession of your money, they own it and can use it for any means they deem fit. The veil has been lifted on separation of customer and bank funds. They are now legally co-mingled.

The bank could use it as collateral (as SMG did), to pay off debts, or place it on the stock market to bump up their trading with extra cash. And in the event that the customer allocated funds are lost, the bank does not owe the customer the money back.

Essentially, once you deposit money in your bank account it is gone.

Fred Grede, SMG trustee remarked: “I don’t think that’s what the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had in mind. It does not bode well for the protection of customer funds.”

The MF Global (MFG) scandal rocked the investment world because Jon Corzine, chief executive officer of MF Global, instructed the transfer of $200 million from their customer segregated funds to cover the corporation’s overdraft account with JP Morgan Chase.

Corzine emailed this order just three days before the official collapse of MFG. At the same time Corzine was moving customer money, this missing $6.3 billion dollars were used on bets on European indebted nations. As those European nation’s credit ratings plummeted, JP Morgan profited financially.

Our financial institutions have been planning for a financial collapse wherein the US government will not offer assistance. The resolution plans required by the Federal Reserve Bank, described schemes to have the major domestic banks remain afloat by selling off assets, finding alternative sources of funding, reducing risky measures that make a quick buck. These strategies were to be perfected with “no assumption of extraordinary support from the public sector.”

By selling “non-core assets” without upsetting shareholders while protecting the monetary system, taxpayers and creditors is the work of the mega-banks who have contributed solely to the destruction of the global financial markets. Bank of America (BoA) and Citibank have already begun to liquidate some of their assets – an action a bank takes when they are insolvent.

Both mega-banks and credit unions have been silently altering their deposit/withdrawal policies to deter customers from emptying out their accounts.

Because the digital record of monies is greater than the physical cash held by banks, this is a scheme to stave off a “run on the banks”.

With the Patriot Act , signed in 2001 by former President George W. Bush, and extended in 2011 by President Obama states that all banks must record all banking transactions with photo ID and fingerprints that will then be sent to an FBI database wherein all banking information tied to each individual on file can be traced for future reference.

Of recent, when withdrawing cash from an ATM, the daily allotted amount has decreased with some banks, thereby forcing the customer to go into the branch and extract the difference with a teller. At this point, according to anonymous informants, the customer is taken into a backroom to be questioned as to why they want the cash, what they are purchasing with the cash, why they are not choosing to use a debit card or another form of digital trade to make the purchase. These questions are not only intrusive, they are illegal.

Some anonymous sources have said that banking representatives who conduct the integrations are directed to keep a record of customer responses on an online application that will be sent to the FBI in conjunction with Patriot Act mandates on tracking banking activity.

While American citizens sit on the fence about whether or not they even subscribe to a banking collapse in the US, globalists like George Soros are investing heavily in gold.

Soros recently “unloaded over one million shares of stock in financial companies and banks that include Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares). The total value of the stock sales amounts to nearly $50 million” and then purchased 884,000 shares of Gold with SPDR Gold Trust.

The mega-banks, through Wall Street, are also acquiring firearms, ammunition and control over private mercenary corporations like DynCorp and ‘Blackwater” as authorized by the Department of Defense (DoD) directive 3025.18 .

DynCorp is a military-based private mercenary contractor that provides (among other services) intelligence training and support, international security, contingency plans and operations. Ninety-six percent of their funding is based on annual revenues from the US federal government. The international branch of DynCorp has operated as a “police force” even assisting local law enforcement during Hurricane Katrina.

Named as investors for the amassing of gun and ammunition manufacturers are Citibank, BoA, Barclays and Deutsche Bank who are pouring money into Cerebus and Veritas Equity who have taken over private corporations involved in the controlling riot situations.

The Federal Reserve Bank, one of the heads of banking cartels, has their own police force which operates as a protective security for the Fed against the American public. As part of the Federal Reserve Act signed in 1913, the designation of a Federal Law Enforcement – special police officers that are exclusively regulated by authority of the Fed (whether in uniform or plain clothes. These specialized police officers (who train with Special Response Teams) can work in tandem with local law enforcement or US federal agencies. These officers are heavily armed with semi-automatic pistols, sub machine guns and assault rifles as well as body armor.

Just this month, the Kaspersky Lab discovered Gauss, a banking surveillance virus believed to have the capability of stealing money out of customer’s bank accounts, as well as spying on banking transactions, stealing login information for social networks, email and instant messaging. So far, Middle Eastern banks have reported having been affected by Gauss – however both Citibank and Ebay’s Paypal have also been infected by this new viral threat to our banking systems.

It is clear that the financial collapse could be eminent. Banks are not only preparing with contingency plans, but also amassing a private police force for protection. With the legalization of stealing from customer secured funds, combined with a possible banking virus that could provide the perfect cover for an all-in-one banking holiday, the stage is being set for utter financial destination.

Once all customer funds were electronically transferred into off-shore accounts, the specialized police forces and hired mercenaries would be allocated forward to protect the technocrats from retaliation for their crimes.

The banking holiday will not come with flashing neon signs. Our warnings are right in front of us, if we choose to see them.

            Aug 21,  2012

    The New York Times reported, "With waning approval ratings and a stagnant economy, the possibility that Mr. Obama will not be re-elected has entered the political bloodstream." It's more than entered; it's flowing strong.

 

Last week in Part 1, I began to list my Top 10 reasons not to re-elect President Obama. Though I would encourage readers to read the details of each of those points, here they are in summary:

 

10) Obama's economic actions have failed to lower the unemployment rate in the U.S. below 8 percent for last 42 record months.

 

9) The Obama administration's out-of-control spending has lead America to the economic brink and destroyed our country's credit rating.

 

8) Obama's reckless spending and fiscal policies have added more to the national debt than most U.S. presidents combined: roughly $6 trillion in his first term in office (making the total debt nearly $16 trillion, and by White House projections alone, $21.3 trillion by the end of fiscal 2017, $25 trillion in 2021 and $25.9 trillion in 2022).

 

7) Obama has not only detrimentally increased the costs of entitlements but the dependency of citizens upon government subsidies, rather than empowering the people's autonomy, responsibility and freedom.

 

6) Obama demeans private enterprise and the entrepreneurial spirit -- the very heart of America -- and instead believes that "only" government is our savior.

 

Here are a few more unquestionable justifications for ousting him from office.

 

5) President Obama has left the U.S. in a weaker and more disrespected position in the global community.

 

In 2009, President Obama began his presidency by humiliating our superpower nation and parading U.S. weaknesses and mistakes to the world on what many now call his "apology tour," in which he embarked on global travel with his apologetic Top 10 decries of America, as detailed by the Heritage Foundation.

 

  And is the U.S. better off among the nations?

 

The Washington Times report that, according to a poll by even two left-leaning groups, "A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than two years ago and believe President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security."

 

In February 2012, Gallup reported that "Americans continue to express much greater dissatisfaction than satisfaction with the United States' position in the world, and their views have improved little since hitting a low point in 2008."

 

The Bipartisan Policy Center, including many of the original 9/11 Commission members, reported on national preparedness 10 years after those catastrophic terrorist attacks: "Our country is undoubtedly safer and more secure than it was a decade ago," but "we fail to achieve the security we could or should have." The report concluded that the federal government has failed to meet nine of the original 9/11 Commission's 41 recommendations.

 

And what is President Obama's response? He plans to initiate more than $500 billion in automatic cuts to the defense budget over a decade, starting next January. And Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported that Obama's Democratic-controlled Senate voted to authorize another reduced Pentagon war and defense-related spending package.

 

4) Obama has broken or unfulfilled 324 campaign promises.

 

In the over 500 promises Obama made during his campaign and presidency, even the pro-Obama PolitiFact website and their Obamameter has rated his scorecard: 184 promises kept, 60 compromised, 71 broken, 61 stalled, 130 in the works and two not yet rated. What that verbiage means is that even according to the political left, Obama has fulfilled 184 promises and left 324pledges broken and unfulfilled.

 

In 2010, feeling a bit defensive and maybe insecure, Obama fired back in anger to those who were accusing him of selling out by breaking so many of his campaign promises. Wielding his verbose verbal sword, the president retorted: "Take a tally. Look at what I promised during the campaign. There's not a single thing that I've said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven't gotten it done yet, I'm still trying to do it."

 

"Not a single thing?"

 

That's right -- it's 324 single things.

 

3) Through his presidency, President Obama is invoking and enabling a radically progressive secular state in the U.S.

 

In 2010, before his run for the presidency, Newt Gingrich stated on the tour for his insightful book "To Save America" that the Obama regime is "the most radical administration in America's history. This is a secular socialist machine ... deeply opposed to God being in public life, deeply opposed to religious values defining how we think about things ... they clearly represent a value system that any reasonable person would call secular ... on a scale that is the opposite of the Founding Fathers."

 

When New York churches can no longer meet in public school settings, a federal court orders a Rhode Island public school to remove a prayer banner that has been posted for over five decades (and it complies), the federal government mandates Catholic institutions to cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization (at no cost to the patient), the U.S. Air Force removes "God" from the motto of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the National Park Service omits the words "Laus Deo" (Latin, "Praise be to God") from a Washington Monument capstone replica, atheists continue to contest "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance, town councils can't pray to start their meetings, evangelical pillars like Franklin Graham are subdued by gotcha-gangs in the mainstream media and cultural icons like football superstar Tim Tebow can't even bow in silent prayer without criticism, etc., you can be assured that religious liberty (and Christianity, in particular) is under assault by secular progressives across America. And leading the national charge is none other than our own president, Barack Obama.

 

Is it any wonder Obama hasn't fought for a single Christian cause or crisis in culture? Is it any surprise that his ethical campaign promises have fallen flat?

 

Remember when Obama promised during his 2008 campaign to "clean up both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue" with "the most sweeping ethics reform in history." He repeatedly declared that "an Obama administration is going to have the toughest ethics laws of any administration in history."

 

Who are you kidding, Mr. President?

 

(In Part 3 next week, I will complete my Top 10 reasons not to re-elect President Obama.)

 

 

It is absolutely amazing what some people will do to make a living in this economy.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we have not seen this kind of desperation for jobs in America since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  What some people are willing to put up with just to bring home a paycheck these days will totally shock you.  For example, would you slaughter dogs all day long even though you are really a dog lover?  Would you personally train your replacement from China even though you knew he was about to take your job?  Would you trade sex for a job?  There are people out there actually doing all these things and worse.  Every night in America, millions upon millions of people roll around endlessly in their beds and stare at their ceilings for hours because they can't sleep.  They are sick to their stomachs because their money is gone and nobody will hire them.  They can't provide even the basics for their families and they feel worthless.  Unemployment can be absolutely soul crushing and it can suck the life right out of you.  Things were supposed to be better by now, but they aren't.  The month after Barack Obama took office the unemployment rate broke the 8 percent barrier and it has stayed above it ever since.  But the truth is that the "official" unemployment number greatly understates the real amount of suffering that is going on out there.  In reality, the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs is lower today than when the last recession ended.  There are millions upon millions of Americans that are desperate for some hope, and there is no hope on the horizon.  In fact, things are going to be getting a whole lot worse for the U.S. economy.

I like personal stories because they tell us things that all of the economic statistics in the world never could.

There are millions of Americans that have had their lives totally turned upside down by this economy.  They feel abandoned and worthless, and many of them feel as though life is no longer worth living.

As you read the following stories, try to put yourself in their shoes and try to feel their pain.

Also, try to remember that these kinds of stories are going to multiply in the years ahead as the U.S. economy falls apart all around us.

A 61-Year-Old Woman Begging For A Job

A recent article posted on gawker.com included the story of a 61-year-old woman who has been through hell and back during this economic downturn....

I sent out close to 500 resumes. Most never were even acknowledged and those that were I was told I was over qualified. When you would press them they would fumble but I was sure my age was part of the "over qualified". The thoughts of wanting life to be over were with me every day. I wanted the horror to stop. Every time I would hear of the unemployment rates I would cry-what about ME.

At one point she was so desperate she took a job where she was making the decision about what dogs to slaughter at an animal shelter.  Approximately 85 percent of the dogs at the shelter ended up being killed, and she was working about 80 hours a week doing this.  The really sad part is that she really loves dogs....

In 2008 I was able to get a job at the local shelter as a dog trainer. That turned into a job as an Operations Manager. Though I was thankful for the job we had a euthanasia rate of nearly 85%. I was the one that would be the decision maker on who lives and dies of over 10,000 animals per year and the toll mentally was hard. Being salary I was working nearly 80 hours a week due to shorthanded staff.

After she was fired for not being aggressive enough in killing off dogs, she started endlessly sending out resumes once again.  Nobody wants to hire her, and she essentially feels like an old lady begging for a job....

Since February I began sending out 3 resumes a day. As the no return answer, over qualified and now I was getting I was out of engineering too long I started to set my sights lower. I have sent in resumes to sit in the booth in gas stations, secretary and so on. Local colleges have said I am qualified to teach there but they have no openings. I am for all purposes the old lady begging for a job.

Personally Training Their Replacements

If you knew that your company was going to tear down your factory and send your job to China, would you personally train your replacement?

That is what a whole bunch of workers in Illinois are doing.

The following is from a recent article that appeared in the Guardian....

The shock of losing a precious job in a town afflicted by high unemployment is always hard. A foundation for a stable family life and secure home instantly disappears, replaced with a future filled with fears over health insurance, missed mortgage payments and the potential for a slip below the breadline.

But for Bonnie Borman – and 170 other men and women in Freeport, Illinois – there is a brutal twist to the torture. Borman, 52, and the other workers of a soon-to-be-shuttered car parts plant are personally training the Chinese workers who will replace them.

It's a surreal experience, they say. For months they have watched their plant being dismantled and shipped to China, piece by piece, as they show teams of Chinese workers how to do the jobs they have dedicated their lives to.

Can you imagine that?

Would you be willing to do the same thing just to keep the paychecks coming in for as long as possible?

Sadly, both major political parties are obsessed with promoting unrestricted free trade even though millions of American jobs continue to go overseas.

Our top political candidates even argue about which of them love "free trade" more.

It truly is sickening.

Do you remember when U.S. taxpayers bailed out the auto industry?

Well, since the auto industry bailout approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.

The insanity has gotten to such a level that some Americans simply cannot take it anymore.  Just consider the following example from a recent article by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele....

On his last day on the job, Kevin Flanagan, after clearing out a few personal effects and putting them in boxes in the back of his Ford Ranger, left the building where he'd worked for seven years.

He settled into the front seat of his pickup truck on the lower level of the company garage, placed a 12-gauge Remington shotgun to his head, and pulled the trigger. He was 41 years old.

He was a computer programmer. He'd been a programmer his entire working life. Until, that is, his job was shipped overseas. The business of moving traditional U.S. jobs abroad-called "outsourcing"-has been one of this country's few growth industries. It's the ultimate short-sighted business promoted by the country's elite because it means lower wages and fatter profits. As for the American workers eliminated along the way, they are just collateral damage.

It turns out that Kevin's replacement was a programmer from India that he personally trained.

Trading Sex For A Job

If you were truly desperate, would you trade sex for a job?

I hope not, but that is exactly what some Americans are doing.

The following is a story from a desperate unemployed woman that was posted on gawker.com recently....

I have been very depressed since I lost my job. I go through periods where I spend most of my days in bed, and although I've had a few interviews those people don't even have the decency to let you know the position is filled. Sometimes I'd call for weeks asking for updates only to get the HR persons voicemail, and they'd never return my calls. With no experience I can't even get a job waiting tables. I apply to every job in the paper and online, whether I'm qualified or not, and have had 7 interviews total, none of which ended with a job offer. Living paycheck to paycheck would be a blessing at this point.

She has become so desperate that she is even willing to trade her body for a paycheck....

The current 'bright side' is that I know someone who owns a small retail clothing chain and has offered me a minimum wage job there on the condition that we become 'close friends'. I think you & I both know what that entails, but at this time in my life it seems like a better alternative than losing the little that I have. I'd have a paycheck equal to what I am getting on unemployment with the opportunity for overtime and advancements, full benefits and a schedule that would allow me to continue schooling.

A Lot More Layoffs Coming Soon

The frightening thing is that a whole lot more layoffs are on the horizon.

Just check out this excerpt from a recent article on thehill.com....

Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney are going forward with plans to issue layoff notices to thousands of employees due to looming defense cuts under sequestration, despite administration claims that such warnings are unnecessary.

So how many jobs will be lost?

Unfortunately, it is being projected that we could be looking at a million jobs lost....

Top industry officials have said publicly that automatic cut under sequestration could lead to the loss of 1 million defense-related jobs.

Industry leaders and their supporters in Congress say those job losses would hit battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida particularly hard.

Like I have written about before, we simply cannot continue to steal more than a trillion dollars from future generations every single year, but when we do make deep cuts to the federal budget the economic pain is going to be immense.

We already have more than 100 million Americans on welfare.

What is this country going to look like if things get even worse?

The good news is that if you do lose your job and your home you might have somewhere to sleep.  New York City is opening up a bunch of new homeless shelters....

New York City has opened nine new shelters in the last two months in efforts to handle the city's rapidly growing homeless population, officials said.

The city recorded 43,731 homeless people in shelters this week, which is up 18 percent from the 37,143 at the same time last year, The New York Times reported.

So don't get too down.

If you can't find a job and you can't afford a home perhaps you can at least get into one of those shiny new homeless shelters.

Seriously, I don't actually want anyone reading this to end up in a homeless shelter.

That is why I endlessly urge people to adjust their priorities and to work as hard as they can right now to prepare for the very hard economic times that are coming.

Now is not the time to be going on expensive vacations and now is not the time to be blowing your money on all kinds of stupid stuff.

We are moving into the most difficult times that any of us have ever seen, and if you do nothing to prepare yourself you will be very sorry.

 

Are you willing to bet against three of the wealthiest men in the entire world?  Jacob Rothschild recently bet approximately 200 million dollars that the euro will go down.  Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson made somewhere around 20 billion dollars betting against the U.S. housing market during the last financial crisis, and now he has made huge bets that the euro will go down and that the price of gold will go up.  And as I wrote about in my last article, George Soros put approximately 130 million more dollars into gold last quarter.  So will the euro plummet like a rock?  Will the price of gold absolutely soar?  Well, if a massive financial disaster does occur both of those two things are likely to happen.  The European economy is becoming more unstable with each passing day, and investors all over the globe are looking for safe places to put their money.  The mainstream media keeps telling us that everything is going to be okay, but the global elite are sending us a much, much different message by their actions.  Certainly Rothschild, Paulson and Soros know about things happening in the financial world that the rest of us don't.  The fact that they are all behaving in a consistent manner right now should be alarming for all of us.

Let's start with Jacob Rothschild.  Apparently he believes that the euro is headed for quite a tumble.  The following is from a recent CNBC article....

You know the euro is in deep water when a doyen of the banking industry, Lord Jacob Rothschild takes a £130 million ($200 million) bet against it.

Okay, but the euro has already been falling dramatically.  In mid-2011, the EUR/USD was above the 1.40 mark, and right now it is at about 1.23.

Does it really have that much more that it can fall?

If the eurozone ends up breaking apart it sure does.

If there is a Greek default, or if Germany leaves the euro, or if a new currency comes along to replace the euro those currently betting against it will end up looking like geniuses.

Another big name in the financial world that is betting against the euro right now is John Paulson.  The following is from a recent Der Spiegel article....

One of these warriors is John Paulson. The hedge fund manager once made billions by betting on a collapse of the American real estate market. Not surprisingly, the financial world sat up and took notice when Paulson, who is now widely despised in America as a crisis profiteer, announced in the spring that he would bet on a collapse of the euro.

And as I noted in my last article, Paulson has also been putting billions of dollars into gold.

So just what are Rothschild and Paulson anticipating?

Could we be on the verge of a massive financial collapse in Europe?

According to the Der Spiegel article mentioned above, a lot of investors seem to be preparing for such a possibility right now....

Banks, companies and investors are preparing themselves for a collapse of the euro. Cross-border bank lending is falling, asset managers are shunning Europe and money is flowing into German real estate and bonds. The euro remains stable against the dollar because America has debt problems too. But unlike the euro, the dollar's structure isn't in doubt.

The financial world is starting to wake up to the fact that the globe is absolutely drowning in debt and it is not really good to be holding fiat currencies when a debt crisis erupts.

When men like John Paulson and George Soros start pouring huge amounts of money into gold, it is time to start becoming alarmed about the state of the global financial system.

The amount of money that these men are investing in gold is staggering....

There was also news last week in an SEC filing that both George Soros and John Paulson had increased their investment in SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest publicly traded physical gold exchange traded fund (ETF).

Mr Soros upped his stake in the ETF to 884,400 shares from 319,550 and Mr Paulson bought 4.53m shares, bringing his stake to 21.3m.

At the current price of about $156 a share, these are new investments of about $88m of Mr Soros’ cash and more than $700m from Mr Paulson’s funds. These are significant positions.

And the central banks of the world are certainly buying gold at an unprecedented rate as well.  According to the World Gold Council, the central banks of the world added 157.5 metric tons of gold last quarter.  That was the biggest move into gold by the central banks of the globe that we have seen in modern financial history.

But that might just be the beginning.

According to a recent Marketwatch article, there are persistent rumors that China has plans to buy thousands of metric tons of gold....

Within the gold market, there is unconfirmed speculation that China plans to buy up to at least 5,000 to 6,000 metric tons of gold and that it will start to buy during this year, according to Kevin Kerr, president of Kerr Trading International.

If China buys this much gold, that would exceed annual, global production of gold, he said. “We do not have enough gold for China to buy that much, and it will take China time to purchase this amount of gold.”

So what comes next?

Nobody is quite sure.

Another major financial crisis could erupt in Europe at any moment.

A major war in the Middle East could start literally at any time.

Renowned investor Jim Rogers believes that things are really going to get "bad after the next election".

Others believe that the action could start even sooner than that.

The truth is that even though we have not seen a "Lehman Brothers moment" yet, things in Europe just continue to get progressively worse.  The following is from a recent article by Mark E. Grant....

Whether you turn your attention to Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal or even Ireland; it is getting worse. Nowhere on the Continent are things improving and even in France and Germany the financial strains are beginning to show. It is not a question of Euro-bear or Euro-bull; it is just the numbers as they come rolling out month after month.

There is a growing realization in Europe that the euro simply does not work.  Italy is absolutely drowning in debt, the Spanish economy has basically descended into a depression, and Greece has been experiencing depression-like conditions for years at this point.

The euro is doomed.  The only question is who is going to blink first.

Nobody wants to be the first to leave the euro.  There are rumblings that it could actually be Finland that leaves the euro first, and that would please Germany just fine because they don't want to look like the bad guys in all of this.

But that doesn't mean that Germany won't eventually pull the trigger if nobody else does.  The German public is sick and tired of bailing out the weak sisters of southern Europe, and at this point it looks like it would take perpetual bailouts just to keep the euro together.

And recently there have been lots of little signs that Germany is starting to move slowly toward the exit doors.

In fact, I found it quite interesting that a giant euro sculpture was recently removed from the Frankfurt International Airport....

A massive € sculpture (identical to the one in front of the European Central Bank) was dismantled and removed from the Frankfurt International Airport in Germany Thursday.

The official explanation is ‘the plastic parts are getting weak after 11 years and the terminal needed the space‘.

Does € sculpture’s removal from the Frankfurt Airport indicate Germany is preparing for a surprise return to the Deutsche Mark?

Sure that might just be a coincidence, but it also could be a harbinger of things to come.

Sadly, most average people living in North America and Europe have absolutely no idea what is coming.  Most of them just want to be able to get up in the morning and go to work and pay the bills and take care of their families.

Unfortunately, millions upon millions of those hard working individuals are in for a very rude awakening.

A lot of people are about to have their current lifestyles totally turned upside down.

But it doesn't have to be all bad.

In fact, I found it very interesting to read about how some young people are responding to the depression in Greece....

In the spring of 2010, just as the Greek government was embarking on some of its harshest austerity measures, 29-year-old Apostolos Sianos packed in his well-paid job as a website designer, gave up his Athens apartment and walked away from modern civilisation.

In the foothills of Mount Telaithrion on the Greek island of Evia, Mr Sianos and three other like-minded Athenians set up an eco-community.

The idea was to live in an entirely sustainable way, free from the ties of money and cut off from the national electricity grid.

The group sleeps communally in yurts they have built themselves, they grow their own food and exchange the surplus in the nearest village for any necessities they cannot produce.

I think there is a lesson to be learned there.

When the system fails, it is going to be important to be able to live independently of the system.

Governments and big banks all over the world have been rapidly preparing for the coming financial collapse.

Perhaps the rest of us should be too.

If you can believe it, 77 percent of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.

If another major economic crisis comes along, many of those people are going to be totally wiped out.

And there are already signs that the U.S. economy is basically on life support at this point.

Just look at the velocity of money.

In an economy that is growing and healthy, money tends to circulate very, very quickly.

But when an economy is sick, money tends to circulate very slowly.

And that is exactly what is happening right now.  In fact, the velocity of money is currently at the lowest level in modern U.S. history....

For much more discussion on this, please check out this article.

This is exactly what happened back in the 1930s.  The velocity of money absolutely plummeted.  When people are scared, credit is tight and times are hard, money does not exchange hands as rapidly.

But this is just the beginning.

What we are experiencing right now is rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming.

Jacob Rothschild, John Paulson and George Soros are preparing themselves for the tremendous chaos that is coming.

Are you getting prepared?

 

            Kate Hicks       

The  Gallup Organization had some bad news for Barack Obama on Friday. It's not that  Obama fell behind Mitt Romney by two points in Gallup's daily tracking poll,  although that couldn't have helped the the O-Team's spirits heading into the  weekend. Between now and the election, polls are likely to be less stable than  Joe Biden's thought process.

The  really bad news for the Chicago mob is that Gallup's unemployment survey shows  the Obama economy is getting even worse. Gallup reported an uptick in  joblessness in their latest survey of 30,000 households.

"(T)his  suggests that the government's unadjusted unemployment rate could increase to  8.7% ... The government's measurement of the unadjusted unemployment rate has  been known to differ with Gallup's findings, but a drop of 0.3% ... is  necessary to bring the government's unadjusted rate down to Gallup  levels."

However,  the figure that is most commonly used in reporting joblessness is the Bureau of  Labor Statistics's (BLS's) seasonally adjusted rate. Of that rate, Gallup  notes:

"More  interestingly, there were no BLS seasonal adjustments in August 2011.  If this remains the same in 2012, the Gallup seasonally adjusted  unemployment rate for August would be 8.3% while that of the BLS would be 8.7%,  assuming a similar increase to that shown in the Gallup data."

That  would represent a .4% increase over last month's numbers and would raise the  official government jobless rate dangerously close to 9%.

Gallup  adds:

"Further,  Gallup's data show the labor force participation rate to be increasing in  August. In turn, that could have an additional negative impact on the  unemployment rate for August if the government's data show a similar  pattern."

Gallup  hints that only something like manipulation of data will prevent the BLS from  reporting a substantial increase in unemployment.

"Regardless,  barring heroic adjustments or a sharp change in direction, Gallup data  suggest the seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate for August will increase  -- possibly substantially -- when announced in early September." (emphasis  added)

As  previously noted, Gallup pointed out that last year's August data was not  adjusted. It will be interesting to see if the BLS decides to adjust their data  this year.

The  BLS has generally enjoyed a favorable reputation. However, under the Obama gang,  economists have begun to scratch their heads over some of the numbers produced.  Last month, for instance, the Bureau's payroll survey of employers reported the  economy added a slightly better than expected number of jobs, but the BLS also  reported that the unemployment rate actually increased. That's because its  separate survey of 60,000 households, the one that most closely matches  Gallup's, reported that 200,000 fewer folks had jobs in July.

The  Bureau of Labor Statistics will report its August unemployment figures, the  next-to-last report before the November election, on September 7th -- about the  time many people start giving the election serious thought. It's been said that  the campaign doesn't start until after Labor Day.

With  Gallup reporting on Friday that 1 in 4 American workers are either unemployed or  underemployed -- not counting the millions of folks who've given up looking for  work -- this is simply devastating news for the guy who said he'd be a  one-termer if he didn't fix the economy. Or would be if it's  reported.

Look  for it to be buried, though.

Instead  we're likely to see coverage of how many years of his taxes Romney should  release, or the differences between Romney's and Paul Ryan's budget proposals,  or Obama campaign stops, or, say, Hillary's hairdo. Anything but the one thing  that just about everybody predicted would be the central issue heading into this  election.

There  used to be an old joke that, if you wanted to distract somebody, you'd point in  the air behind them and say, "Look, it's the Goodyear blimp!"

So,  when you hear or read about Romney's taxes, or Ryan's budget, or even  gaffe-a-minute Biden's latest mis-statement, it's the media's way of pointing  over your shoulder and trying to convince you that there's a certain dirigible  back there.

Don't  fall for it. It's a trick.

William  Tate is an award-winning journalist and  author

Bill Witherell, Cumberland Advisors|Aug. 18, 2012

The global food crisis of 2007-2008 is threatening to repeat in the coming  months, as the worst drought in 50 years devastates the US corn crop, with 51%  of the crop rated "Poor/very poor" by the US Department of Agriculture. This  crop is said to be on a par with that of 1988 crop, the worst in the past thirty  years. Note that the US is the top producer and exporter of corn. Our   account for nearly half of the world's corn and also a third of the world's  soybeans, the harvest for which will be the lowest in five years. The  director-general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, José Graziano da  Silva, characterizes the present global food situation as "precarious," as do  experts we have contacted. The food crisis in 2008 led to riots in  some 30, mainly very poor, countries and immeasurable hardships in many more.  Following that crisis, governments vowed to act to improve global food security,  including at a G8 Summit in Italy in 2009. The followup is reported to have been  a mixture of some gains and some disappointments. Among the gains are the  provision of improved strains of some crops and increased agricultural aid.  There have been disappointments in the areas of humanitarian food aid and a  failure to agree on binding agreements to regulate food export bans. The 2008  crisis was made more severe by export restrictions by some important  agricultural producers, including Russia and the Ukraine. The  threat of a new crisis has led the governments of the twenty leading countries  that make up the Group of 20 (the G20) to hold a conference call in the week of  August 27, to arrange a meeting to discuss ways to avoid policies that would  worsen the situation, such as export restrictions and hoarding. This would be  the first meeting of the recently created Rapid Response Forum, which has the  mandate to "promote early discussion among decision-level officials about  abnormal international market conditions." One issue that is sure  to be raised by the UN is biofuel policies and the government-mandated biofuel  production targets of the US and European Union. The US is projected to divert  about 40% of its corn crop into ethanol, and about 60% of Europe's rapeseed crop  goes to the production of biodiesel. Brazilian ethanol production consumes half  of their sugarcane crop. This is a politically divisive issue, and we do not  anticipate the G20 will be able to reach agreement on the UN's call for an  immediate suspension of biofuel production mandates. There are  several factors that are more positive in the current situation, as compared  with 2007-8. The demand pressure from China and India is less than it was five  years ago. Stocks of rice are high and rice prices have been fairly stable,  although Thailand's policy of stockpiling rice and thereby reducing exports is  worrying. Wheat stocks are also said to be high, but Russia's wheat production  has been hurt by a drought. Production of African crops such as cassava has  increased significantly. And the global economic slowdown has had a moderating  effect on the demand for food. On balance, as investment managers,  we see the sharp increases in global food prices that have already begun and the  potential for a global food crisis as a serious economic and geopolitical risk  that capital markets appear to be underestimating.  It is yet another  reason Cumberland Advisors has moved to more defensive positions in our equity  portfolios, maintaining cash positions in our US and International Portfolios  and a higher than usual fixed-income position in our Global Multi-Asset Class  Portfolios. Countries that have felt able to move to significantly  eased monetary policies to encourage growth, including many emerging markets,  may soon be under pressure to reverse course as higher food prices increase the  risk of more general inflation. Higher food prices will hurt consumer demand in  all countries, particularly those where food accounts for a high share of total  consumer spending. On the other hand, the equity markets of food-exporting  countries such as Australia, Canada, and Brazil would be expected to benefit  from the higher agricultural prices.

Mac Slavo SHTFplan.com

In a harbinger of what may be coming our way in the Fall of 2012, billionaire financier George Soros has sold all of his equity positions in major financial stocks according to a 13-F report filed with the SEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2012.

Soros, who manages funds through various accounts in the US and the Cayman Islands, has reportedly unloaded over one million shares of stock in financial companies and banks that include Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares). The total value of the stock sales amounts to nearly $50 million.

What’s equally as interesting as his sale of major financials is where Soros has shifted his money. At the same time he was selling bank stocks, he was acquiring some 884,000 shares (approx. $130 million) of Gold via the SPDR Gold Trust.

When a major global player with direct ties to the White House, Wall Street, and the banking system starts off-loading stocks and starts stacking gold, it suggests a very serious market move is set to happen.

While often lambasted for his calls to centralize global banking, increase government intervention in the economy and his support of what he has called an “emergence of the new world order,” if there’s anyone with an inside track of where things are headed next it’s Soros.

Soros, who has written extensively of a coming global paradigm shift  in his book The Crash of 2008 and What It Means, calling the current economic and political model ”an end of an era,” hasrecently suggested that the financial and economic situation across the world is so serious that Europe could soon descend into chaos and conflict. He also notes that the world is entering “one of the most dangerous periods in modern history”, and foresees violent riots in America and a brutal clamp-down by the government that will dramatically curtail civil liberties.

This is an individual who not only predicted the collapse of 2008 and took action to insulate himself, he also proposed the various fixes that governments in Europe and the US would eventually implement in order to stave off a deflationary depression. In his aforementioned book he suggested that central banks infuse the system with massive amounts of monetary expansion, but also warned that not injecting enough money would simply extend the onset of deflation and printing too much could lead to hyperinflationary currency collapse.

Based on recent activity in Soros’ US held accounts, it seems that governments and central banks have failed at those efforts to stabilize the system. As such, Soros is getting out of those companies which are most at risk should the financial system buckle like it did in 2008 and he’s shifting his assets into what may be the only asset class left standing when it’s all said and done.

If you want to figure out what is going to happen next in the financial markets, carefully watch what the insiders are doing.  Those that are “connected” have access to far better sources of information than the rest of us have, and if they hear that something big is coming up they will often make very significant moves with their money in anticipation of what is about to happen.  Right now, Wall Street insiders and central banks all around the globe are making some very unusual moves.  In fact, they appear to be rapidly preparing for something really big.  So exactly what are they up to?  In a previous article entitled “Are The Government And The Big Banks Quietly Preparing For An Imminent Financial Collapse?“, I speculated that they may be preparing for a financial meltdown of some sort.  As I noted in that article, more than 600 banking executives have resigned from their positions over the past 12 months, and I have been personally told that a substantial number of Wall Street bankers have been shopping for “prepper properties” this summer.  But now even more evidence has emerged that quiet preparations are being made for an imminent financial collapse.  That doesn’t guarantee that something will happen or won’t happen.  Like any good detective, we are gathering clues and trying to figure out what the evidence is telling us.

Why Is George Soros Selling So Much Stock And Buying So Much Gold?

I am certainly not a fan of George Soros.  He has funneled millions upon millions of dollars into organizations that are trying to take America in the exact wrong direction.

However, I do recognize that he is extremely well connected in the financial world.  Soros is almost always ahead of the curve on financial matters, and if something big is going to go down George Soros is probably going to know about it ahead of time.

That is why it is very alarming that he has dumped all of his banking stocks and that he is massively hoarding gold.  The following is from shtfplan.com….

In a harbinger of what may be coming our way in the Fall of 2012, billionaire financier George Soros has sold all of his equity positions in major financial stocks according to a 13-F report filedwith the SEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2012.

Soros, who manages funds through various accounts in the US and the Cayman Islands, has reportedly unloaded over one million shares of stock in financial companies and banks that include Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares). The total value of the stock sales amounts to nearly $50 million.

What’s equally as interesting as his sale of major financials is where Soros has shifted his money. At the same time he was selling bank stocks, he was acquiring some 884,000 shares (approx. $130 million) of Gold via the SPDR Gold Trust.

Why would you dump over a million shares of stock in major banks and purchase more than 100 million dollars worth of gold?

Well, it would make perfect sense if you believed that a collapse of the financial system was about to happen.

Earlier this year, George Soros told the following to Newsweek….

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”

It looks like he is putting his money where his mouth is.

Perhaps even more disturbing is what he believes is coming after the financial collapse….

As anger rises, riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable. “Yes, yes, yes,” he says, almost gleefully. The response to the unrest could be more damaging than the violence itself. “It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”

That doesn’t sound good.

George Soros has told us what he believes is going to happen, and now he is making moves with his money that indicate that he is convinced that it is actually about to start happening.

But he is not the only one that has been busy accumulating gold.

Billionaire John Paulson (the one that made 20 billion dollars on the subprime mortgage meltdown) has been buying gold like crazy and his company now “has 44 percent of its $24 billion fund exposed to bullion.”

So why are Soros and Paulson buying up so much gold?

Central Banks Are Also Hoarding Gold

According to the World Gold Council, the amount of gold bought by the central banks of the world absolutely soared during the second quarter of 2012.  The 157.5 metric tons of gold bought by the central banks of the world last quarter was an increase of 62.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012 and a 137.9 percent increase from the second quarter of 2011.

Prior to 2009, the central banks of the world had been net sellers of gold for about two decades.  But now that has totally changed, and last quarter central banks stocked up on gold in quantities that we have not seen before….

At 157.5 metric tons, gold buying among central banks came in at its highest quarterly level since the sector became a net buyer of the precious metal in the second quarter of 2009, data in the organization’s quarterly Gold Demand Trends report show.

So why have the central banks of the world become such gold bugs?

Is there something they aren’t telling us?

Rampant Insider Selling

Wall Street insiders have been dumping a whole lot of stock this year.

In my previous article, I linked to a CNN article from back in April….

First quarter earnings have been decent, if not spectacular. And many corporate executives are issuing cautiously optimistic guidance for the rest of the year.

But while insiders’ lips are saying one thing, their wallets are saying another. The level of insider selling among S&P 500 (SPX) companies is the highest in nearly 10 years. That is not good.

A lot of insiders appear to be getting out at the top of the market while the getting is still good.

Other insiders appear to be bailing out before the bottom falls out from beneath them.

Just check out what has been happening to Facebook stock.  It hit another new record low on Thursday as insiders dumped stock.  The following is from a CNN article….

Facebook’s life as a public company has been a nightmare from day one, and the pain continued on Thursday as some company insiders got their first chance to dump shares.

Facebook stock hit a new intra-day low of $19.69 Thursday morning, and ended the day 6.3% lower at $19.87.

Sadly, Facebook has now lost close to half of its value since the IPO.

Will Facebook end up being the poster child for the irrational stock market bubble that we have seen over the past couple of years?

Overall, retail investors have been very busy pulling money out of stocks in recent weeks.

The following are the net inflows to equity funds over the past five weeks (in millions of dollars) according to ICI….

7/11/2012: -537

7/18/2012: 637

7/25/2012: -2,999

8/1/2012: -6,866

8/8/2012: -3,684

According to the figures above, more than 10 billion dollars has been pulled out of equity funds over the past two weeks alone.

So does this mean anything?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

But it is very interesting and it bears watching.

Why Does The U.S. Government Need So Much Ammunition?

In my previous article, I also noted that the U.S. government appears to be very rapidly making preparations for something really big.

This week, it was revealed that the Social Security Administration plans to buy 174,000 hollow point bullets which will be delivered to 41 different locations all over America.

Now why in the world does the Social Security Administration need 174,000 bullets?

And why do they need hollow point bullets?  Those bullets are designed to cause as much damage to internal organs as possible.

But of course this is only the latest in a series of very large purchases of ammunition by U.S. government agencies.  The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson….

Back in March, Homeland Security purchased 450 million rounds of .40-caliber hollow point bullets that are designed to expand upon entry and cause maximum organ damage, prompting questions as to why the DHS needed such a large amount of powerful bullets merely for training purposes.

This was followed by another DHS solicitation asking for a further 750 million rounds of assorted bullets, including 357 mag rounds that are able to penetrate walls.

Now why in the world would the government need over a billion rounds of ammunition?

If it was the U.S. military I could understand this.  You can burn through a whole lot of ammunition fighting wars.

But this makes no sense – unless they believe that big trouble is coming.

Personally, I wouldn’t blame them for getting prepared.  Our economy continues to fall apart and there are signs of social decay everywhere around us.

The American people are more frustrated and more angry than at any other time in modern history.  This upcoming election is only going to cause Americans to become even more angry and even more divided.

All it would take is just the right “spark” to cause this country to erupt.

It could be the upcoming election.

It could be the collapse of the financial system.

Or it might be something else.

But the conditions are definitely there for it to happen.

Unfortunately, the American public is never told to prepare because authorities never want “to panic” the general population.

We are always the last to know, and that stinks.

So don’t wait for someone to come on the television and announce that a crisis is happening.

If you wait that long, it will be too late.

Instead, open up your eyes and think for yourself.

We all need to work hard to get prepared for the coming crisis while we still can.

As you can see, Wall Street insiders, the U.S. government and the central banks of the world are busy getting prepared.

Don’t put your head in the sand.

The warning signs are there and time is running out.