Facts: Obama Owns Worst Economic Numbers in 80 Years, Since 1932

Dow slides 391; oil and China drops rattle investors

A recession worse than 2008 is coming

This Is Not 2008, It’s Much Worse Warns One Of The Top Economists In The World

Real Time Currency Collapse In Canada – This Is What It’s Going To Look Like In the USA

Another angle that people need to get smart on is learning about the BDI (Baltic dry index) It is at all time record lows. It is the shipping of goods across the world. Right now there are zero ships shipping goods in the Atlantic. You read that right, zero!

This is 1 index that they cannot manipulate like they do on a lot of the others. Read up boys and get smart. It affects you and yours.

Leo, I found that hard to believe, so I checked on it. You\'re right.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Prepare for the coming shortages of whatever is imported. Oh, I dont know, AMMO...

The price on all commodities has been dropping for some time. As the economy slows radically,
China and numerous other countries are no longer buying mass quantities of raw material. Over production and the economic slowdown caused sharp decline in the price of fuel. We all like cheap gas. But, as the economy hits bottom so will production/output. Then you can look for the price of everything to skyrocket. Think mass layoffs, high unemployment and shortages of essentials. No matter which way things go ...food is going to become very expensive when it's available.

We can't depend on someone elses infrastructure to supply our needs. Nows the time to store food, fuel, batteries etc.

Get what you need while you still can.

Anyone here remember the olden days, when falling oil prices was good news?

Onward and upward,
airforce

This last year my investments into gold and silver have virtually stopped... Putting that money into guns, ammo and prepping gear/supplies.

Now is a good time to buy silver if you figure your firepower situation is already good.

I cringe at current Gold prices about as much as I cringe at current ammo prices.

What I can say about the metal is stay the heck out of Numismatic stuff. One of our guys was heavily into that with early 1900s Gold Eagles, fell into some hard times and was selling them on ebay. By the time he got done with ebay and paypal fees and people screwing around with false accusations about the way they were slabbed and graded, he was worse off than if he had been just dealing straight bullion in quarter ounce increments.

Prepping gear and supplies are likely to be also readily available during a SHTF situation.

Weapons stockipiles are a dicey thing right now, and if you have weapon stockpiles, not just a nice hefty collection but an honest to goodness weapon stockpile, cache that stuff immediately. Learn how to sight in those firearms, clean them up, oil them up, seal them in proper packaging and containers and put them in the ground.

We have been losing people and assets over weapons hijack situations.

For firearms and ammo, stick to the common unless you get some real killer deals on stuff.

Lots of good quality off brand 9mm handguns out there right now coming from Turkey and some old mainstays have reasonable prices on the used gun market. The issue is a lot of stuff needing proprietary magazines, which is a real problem with the Turkish stuff. Even Ruger is screwing that up a bit with newer models not being compatible with older model magazines.

ARs, dime a dozen right now, especially if you can snag factory guns on the used market for prices which are below the cost of parts and a lower. Building ARs, from what people tell me, is not all that profitable and will not be all that profitable until the laws change for the worse, then it is risky business. On that note, the 80% lower based guns are three times the work, half the reward, nobody really wants them, but they are a good backup plan compared to guns you bought on paper.

AR magazines can't get any cheaper right now, especially when bought in bulk and staying away from the really specialized hicaps like the Surefire or Beta mags.

Optics, does not matter, they will be available if not cheaper after any ban but it seems the high end mainstays have gone nuts with pricing. Acogs going for twice the money of the rifle they bolt to.

I would not fret food, fuel or batteries as much right now, as they are still around in the early stages of a collapse except right now fuel is pretty cheap and can be worth stockpiling if you have the storage capacity for it.

I have been slowly building up on Gold the last few years. I've found British Soveriegns tone the best bang for the buck. At made of 22 carrot gold (11/12th) they are 0.23542 oz of pure gold. Around here I can buy them for right at spot, when 1/4 Krugers, Eagles or Mapleleafs are going for way over spot.

I figure that WHEN the crisis hits, all gold will be recognized as the value in trade that they are.... Coins, bullion, jewelry and teeth alike.

The next step has to be getting my brother and dad to be willing to let me stage supplies out at their farm. They do not see the danger, and view my perspective as paranoid.

When SHTF they will be grateful that I'm around.

I don't have any gold to speak of at the moment. My main thing has been to keep around a month's supply of money available in Silver in case there is a currency crisis. As prices go down, I keep having to buy more just to keep the same dollar value around. I hate to say how much I was buying in the $23-$27 per oz range. I hear it will go down to $10/oz in the coming year, but right now, any time I can get it south of $17, I buy with spare money only.

I personally never did like the Kugerrands and that copper alloy they use. I much prefer the nickel alloy in some of the brighter coins, but at current prices, they are out of my league.

Since lunch time today. The Dow futures market was down 391 points. I take a look at it after work at 4:10 and its up to 1,055 points. My point is this. It went up almost up over 1400 points in 3 1/2 hours?!

Something smells in Denmark. The plunge protection team is working way to hard to accomplish this Bs. Look at the graph and tell me its not manipulated.

The U.S. Is At The Center Of The Global Economic Meltdown]

by Brandon Smith Alt-Market.com,

While the economic implosion progresses this year, there will be considerable misdirection and disinformation as to the true nature of what is taking place. As I have outlined in the past, the masses were so ill informed by the mainstream media during the Great Depression that most people had no idea they were actually in the midst of an “official” depression until years after it began. The chorus of economic journalists of the day made sure to argue consistently that recovery was “right around the corner.” Our current depression has been no different, but something is about to change.

Unlike the Great Depression, social crisis will eventually eclipse economic crisis in the U.S. That is to say, our society today is so unequipped to deal with a financial collapse that the event will inevitably trigger cultural upheaval and violent internal conflict. In the 1930s, nearly 50% of the American population was rural. Farmers made up 21% of the labor force. Today, only 20% of the population is rural. Less than 2% work in farming and agriculture. That’s a rather dramatic shift from a more independent and knowledgeable land-utilizing society to a far more helpless and hapless consumer-based system.

What’s the bottom line? About 80% of the current population in the U.S. is more than likely inexperienced in any meaningful form of food production and self-reliance.

The rationale for lying to the public is certainly there. Economic and political officials could argue that to reveal the truth of our fiscal situation would result in utter panic and immediate social breakdown. When 80% of the citizenry is completely unprepared for a decline in the mainstream grid, a loss of savings through falling equities and a loss of buying power through currency destruction, their first response to such dangers would be predictably uncivilized.

Of course, the powers-that-be are not really interested in protecting the American people from themselves. They are interested only in positioning their own finances and resources in the most advantageous investments while using our loss and fear to extract more centralization, more control and more consent. Thus, the hiding of economic decline is enacted because the decline itself is useful to the elites.

And just to be clear for those who buy into the propaganda, the U.S. is indeed in a speedy decline.

In 'Lies You Will Hear As The Economic Collapse Progresses', published in summer of last year, I predicted that “Chinese contagion” would be used as the scapegoat for the downturn in order to hide the true source: American wealth destruction. Today, as the Dow and other markets plummet and oil markets tank due to falling demand and glut inventories, all we seem to hear from the mainstream talking heads and the people who parrot them in various forums is that the U.S. is the “only stable economy by comparison” and the rest of the world (mainly China) is a poison to our otherwise exemplary financial health. This is delusional fiction.

The U.S. is the No. 1 consumer market in the world with a 29% overall share and a 21% share in energy usage, despite having only 5 percent of the world’s total population. If there is a global slowdown in consumption, manufacturing, exports and imports, then the first place to look should be America.

Trucking freight in the U.S. is in steep decline, with freight companies pointing to a “glut in inventories” and a fall in demand as the culprit.

Morgan Stanley’s freight transportation update indicates a collapse in freight demand worse than that seen during 2009.

The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of global freight rates and thus a measure of global demand for shipping of raw materials, has collapsed to even more dismal historic lows. Hucksters in the mainstream continue to push the lie that the fall in the BDI is due to an “overabundance of new ships.” However, the CEO of A.P. Moeller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, put that nonsense to rest when he admitted in November that “global growth is slowing down” and “[t]rade is currently significantly weaker than it normally would be under the growth forecasts we see.”

Maersk ties the decline in global shipping to a FALL IN DEMAND, not an increase in shipping fleets.

This point is driven home when one examines the real-time MarineTraffic map, which tracks all cargo ships around the world. For the past few weeks, the map has remained almost completely inactive with the vast majority of the world’s cargo ships sitting idle in port, not traveling across oceans to deliver goods. The reality is, global demand has fallen down a black hole, and the U.S. is at the top of the list in terms of crashing consumer markets.

To drive the point home even further, the U.S. is by far the world’s largest petroleum consumer. Therefore, any sizable collapse in global oil demand would have to be predicated in large part on a fall in American consumption. Oil inventories are now overflowing, indicating an unheard-of crash in energy use and purchasing.

U.S. petroleum consumption was actually lower in 2014 than it was in 1997 and 25% lower than earlier projections predicted. A large part of this reduction in gas use has been attributed to fewer vehicle miles traveled. Though oil markets have seen massive price cuts, the lack of demand continued through 2015.

This collapse in consumption is reflected partially in newly adjusted 4th quarter GDP forecasts by the Federal Reserve, which are now slashed down to 0.7%. And remember, Fed and government calculate GDP stats by counting government spending of taxpayer money as "production" or "commerce". They also count parasitic programs like Obamacare towards GDP as well. If one were to remove government spending of taxpayer funds from the equation, real GDP would be far in the negative. That is to say, if the fake numbers are this bad, then the real numbers must be horrendous.

And finally, let’s talk about Wal-Mart. There is a good reason why mainstream pundits are attempting to marginalize Wal-Mart’s sudden announcement of 269 store closures, 154 of them within the U.S. with at least 10,000 employees being laid off. Admitting weakness in Wal-Mart means admitting weakness in the U.S. economy, and they don’t want to do that.

Wal-Mart is America’s largest retailer and largest employer. In 2014, Wal-Mart announced a sweeping plan to essentially crush neighborhood grocery markets with its Wal-Mart Express stores, building hundreds within months. Today, those Wal-Mart Express stores are being shut down in droves, along with some supercenters. Their top business model lasted around a year before it was abandoned.

Some in the mainstream argue that this is not necessarily a sign of economic decline because Wal-Mart claims it will be building 200 to 240 new stores worldwide by 2017. This is interesting to me because Wal-Mart just suffered its steepest stock drop in 27 years on reports that projected sales will fall by 6% to 12% for the next two years.

It would seem to me highly unlikely that Wal-Mart would close 154 stores in the U.S. (269 stores worldwide) and then open 240 other stores during a projected steep crash in sales that caused the worst stock trend in the company’s history. I think it far more likely that Wal-Mart executives are attempting to appease shareholders with expansion promises they do not plan to keep.

I am going to call it here and now and predict that most of these store sites will never see construction and that Wal-Mart will continue to make cuts, either with store closings, employee layoffs or both.

As the above data indicates, global demand is disintegrating; and the U.S. is a core driver.

The best way to sweep all these negative indicators under the rug is to fabricate some grand idea of outside threats and fiscal dominoes. It is much easier for Americans to believe our country is being battered from without rather than destroyed from within.

Does China have considerable fiscal issues including debt bubble issues? Absolutely. Is this a catalyst for global collapse? No. China’s problems are many but if there is a first “domino” in the chain, then the U.S. economy claims that distinction.

China is the largest exporter in the world, not the largest consumer. If anything, a crash in China’s economy is only a REFLECTION of an underlying collapse in U.S. demand for Chinese goods (among others). That is to say, the mainstream dullards have it backward; a crash in China is a herald of a larger collapse in U.S. markets. A crash in China is a symptom of the greater fiscal disease in America. The U.S. is the primary cause; it is not the victim of Chinese contagion. And the crisis in the U.S. will ultimately be far worse by comparison.

I wrote in 'What Fresh Horror Awaits The Economy After Fed Rate Hike?', published before Christmas:

"Market turmoil is a guarantee given the fact that banks and corporations have been utterly reliant on near-zero interest rates and free overnight lending from the Fed. They have been using these no-cost and low-cost loans primarily for stock buybacks, purchasing back their own stocks and reducing the number of shares on the market, thereby artificially elevating the value of the remaining shares and driving up the market as a whole. Now that near-zero lending is over, these banks and corporations will not be able to afford constant overnight borrowing, and the buybacks will cease. Thus, stock markets will crash in the near term.



This process has already begun with increased volatility leading up to and after the Fed rate hike. Watch for far more erratic stock movements (300 to 500 points or more) up and down taking place more frequently, with the overall trend leading down into the 15,000-point range for the Dow in the first two quarters of 2016. Extraordinary but short lived positive increases in the markets will occur at times (Christmas and New Year’s tend to result in positive rallies), but shock rallies are just as much a sign of volatility and instability as shock crashes."

Markets moved immediately into crash territory after the new year began. This was an easy prediction to make and one that I have been reiterating for months — just as the timing of the Fed rate hike was an easy prediction to make, based on the Fed’s history of deliberately increasing instability through bad policy as the economy moves into deflationary spirals. The Fed did it during the Great Depression and is doing it again today.

It is no coincidence that global markets began to tank after the first Fed rate hike; no-cost overnight lending to banks and corporations was the key to maintaining equities in a relatively static position. As the U.S. loses momentum, the world loses momentum. As the Fed ends outright stimulation and manipulation, the house of cards falls.

I have said it many times and I’ll say it yet again: If you think the Fed’s motivation is to prolong or protect the U.S. economy and currency, then you will never understand why it takes the policy actions it does. If you understand and accept the fact that the Fed is a saboteur working carefully and incrementally toward the destruction of the U.S. to make way for a new globally centralized system, everything falls into place.

To summarize, the U.S. economy as we know it is not slated to survive the next few years. Read my article 'The Economic Endgame Explained' for more in-depth information on why a collapse is being engineered and what the openly admitted goal is, including the referenced 1988 article from The Economist titled “Get Ready A World Currency In 2018,” which outlines the plan for a reduction of the dollar and the U.S. system in order to make way for a global basket reserve currency (Special Drawing Rights).

It is astonishingly foolish to assume that even though the U.S. has held the title of king of global consumption share for decades, that our economy is somehow not a primary faulty part in the sputtering global economic engine. Economies are falling because demand is falling. Demand is falling because Americans are not buying. Americans are not buying because Americans are broke. Americans are broke because central bank policy has created an environment of wealth destruction. This wealth destruction in the U.S. has been ongoing, but only now is it becoming truly visible. The volatility we see in developing nations is paltry compared to the financial chaos we now face. Anyone who attempts to dismiss the dangers of a U.S. breakdown or the threat to the unprepared public is either an idiot, or they are trying to divert and distract you from reality. The coming months will undoubtedly verify this.

Forced Economic Free Fall the Precursor to Collapse: “The World Is About To Enter A Global Depression Unlike Anything Seen Before”

Jeremiah Johnson
January 22nd, 2016
SHTFplan.com

Almost every society that has collapsed has seen such a fall heralded by severe economic turmoil. We are seeing such turmoil in the freefall of the U.S. economy and, from a bigger picture, the world economy. The world is about to enter into a period of global depression unlike anything seen before, and the necessary element to cement such a depression will soon be present: the element of war. With that element present the final link will have arrived in Obama’s grand plan to enslave the citizenry completely and destroy the U.S.

Warfare is necessary to provide the justification needed for the administration to declare martial law. Little by little Obama has been chipping away at every cornerstone of the foundations of American society. He originally had both houses of Congress, and now he’s down to just one; however, his actions have not abated. If anything they’ve increased, especially in rapidity as he has (we hope!) only a year left.

Just the other day, the administration announced that it was giving $1.5 billion back to the Iranians for interest owed during the time that Iranian assets and accounts were frozen. In essence, the administration is using the public funds to do this. The administration has also won a hiatus with the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of permitting citizenship to be conferred “temporarily” on “anchor babies,” that is those children born in the U.S. to illegal alien parents.

The case will not be heard until the election, and this affects (rather temporarily pardons) at least 5 million illegal aliens. In the meantime, they stay: complete with green cards, they’ll be part of the public dole. Cloward and Piven strategy at its best. Everything…from the phony jobs numbers to the amount of first-time jobless claims… all of the numbers are being manipulated. Soon the question of the Syrian “refugees” will be front and center, and from the look of things Congress is not going to be able to prevent the incursion (even if they indeed did want to prevent it).

As of this writ, the price of crude oil has fallen below $28 per barrel and the BDI is at 363. We have no true domestic manufacturing base and domestically even the consumer marketing-based businesses are suffering. Wal-Mart recently announced the closings of 154 stores domestically; the closures are slated for January 17 through January 28, and affects more than 10,000 employees. Other big-box and department stores are suffering: Target, JC Penney, Macy’s…all are purging themselves both of employees and facilities.

All of this is forced: direct or indirect results of the administration’s actions or policies. We are at the twilight of our nation’s existence. The corporate interests and their oligarchs, the administration, the congress, the media, and foreign interests are all bringing the country to its knees. We are seeing the abolition of the middle class and the slow, inexorable grab of private property by the federal government. Surely there is not much time before all of it comes to a screeching halt.

In 1989, gas prices were in the $2 per gallon range and the world did not end. All I am seeing is the seasonal January slowdown in construction and remodel work as people wait for the weather to get better in order to begin projects.

The big boys are all running minimum crews right now while little operations like me are barely keeping it going with off schedule stuff like closet shelving and such. It's normal for this time of year, just like in the spring everyone says it's a booming economy for he rich but the poor get screwed with a a drop in wages.

Again seasonal. They always try to tell you that you need to agree to work cheap and give up your stuff cheap coming out of the post Christmas season.

The best thing I do in these times is work on personal projects which make myself wealthier over time. Clean out the garage and build something useful. Get with some buddies and rebuild a riding lawnmower or old motorcycle.

Something to understand about cheap shipping container rates right now is at we have better than ever access to world markets and that makes Amercan stuff like motorcycles, tractors and classic cars more world market competitive than ever.

The U.S. shale oil industry won't disappear. Big money people are getting ready to buy up any shale oil companies that go bust, and are prepared to simply sit on them until the oil price rebounds. And it will, eventually; The Saudis will eventually have to bite the bullet and reduce production.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Word I got from oil people in Texas is the Saudis are lowballing their oil in order to drive US production down into the pits, but the US production side people told me that they are fully prepared to wait it out and as soon as gas prices go up, they ramp up US production, so the way they see it, right now it is tough times but those who prepared weather through it.

Those who bought $40,000 pickups with $10,000 worth of additional modifications on time payments, yeah, that's another score.