After WWII, European anti-Semitism seemed to disappear. It's back, to a very disquieting degree.

On April 19, the Corfu synagogue, in Greece, was burned. How many Jews live in Corfu today? One hundred and fifty. How many Jews live in Greece? Eight thousand, or about 0.8% of the population. For some, it seems these figures are still far too high. Two other synagogues were burned in Greece during the past year. Anti-Semitic graffiti on the walls are spreading all over the country.

What happened in Greece is happening everywhere across the European continent.

During the last decade, synagogues were vandalized or set on fire in Poland, Sweden, Hungary, France. Anti-Semitic inscriptions are being drawn on building walls in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Berlin and Rome. Jewish cemeteries are being ransacked. Jews are being attacked on the streets of most major cities on the continent. In the Netherlands, the police use "decoy Jews" in order to try arrest the perpetrators red-handed.

Jewish schools are being placed under police protection everywhere, and are usually equipped with security gates. Jewish children in public high schools are bullied; when parents complain, they are encouraged to choose another place of learning for their children.
In some cities such as Malmö, Sweden, or Roubaix, France, the persecution suffered by the Jewish community has reached such a degree that people are selling their homes at any price and leaving. Those who stay have the constant feeling that they are risking their lives: they must be extremely streetwise and carry no sign showing who they are. In 1990, approximately 2000 Jewish people lived in Malmö; now there are fewer than 700, and the number is decreasing every year.

Jews now, in fact, have to be streetwise in all European countries: men wearing a skullcap usually hide it under a hat or a cap. Owners of kosher restaurants located on avenues where protests are organized close their facilities before the arrival of the participants -- even if the protest is about wages or retirement age. They know too well that among the demonstrators, there will always be some who will express their rage at the sight of a Jewish name or a star of David on a store front. In Paris, on Labor Day, May 1st, in front of a Jewish café on Avenue of the Republic, several hundred demonstrators stopped and began to boo "Jews" and "Zionists." A man coming out of the café was assaulted until police officers arrived on the scene.
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Food stamp usage hits a fresh record!....44.199 million people

Food stamp usage hits a fresh record! This chart says it all, 44.199 million people now look to the government to help feed themselves. This is an absolute tragedy. If the Federal Reserve would just allow market forces to work, we might of actually seen prices come down over the last few years, but the Fed is so determined to keep prices high. This food stamp participation chart mimics the Dow Jones Industrial Average instead.

   

44.199 Million, a fresh record!               Dow Jones since quantitative easing 1

 

Notice that food stamp use was already in an upward trend, but didn't begin to spike up until early 2009 when the Fed made deflation its number one enemy. FutureMoneyTrends.com equates food stamps to a modern day breadline, currently just over 14% of the population is in it. Since the recovery began, according to the government, food stamp use has risen 33% since June of 2009. In our opinion, this confirms what economist John Williams from ShadowStats.com has been predicting for years, an inflationary depression in the U.S.
The Housing Collapse Continues!

 
The Case-Shiller index surprised Wall St. this morning coming in at -0.23%, despite the Goldman Sachs expectation of +0.1%. According to the Case-Shiller press release, home prices are back to their mid 2002 levels. Home ownership is down to 1998 levels which is when the bubble began. In our opinion, this is actually good news, homes becoming more affordable is really the only way housing will one day have a chance at a real recovery. For more information about the housing market, please read our recent article 'Why Housing Needs To Crash.'

One very important observation to note is that housing is still going down despite the trillions that have been thrown at it. Low interest rates, bailouts, government loans, guarantees, and tax incentives could not overcome the natural economic science of supply and demand. After reviewing the Case-Shiller index, ZeroHedge.com put it best, "Keynes can now be put to bed."

Floods, Drought, Quantitative Easing, and FOOD!

2011 is shaping up to be a very difficult year for the world, especially everyone who doesn't have a budget tied to 'core inflation.' You know, the inflation rate the government cares about, the one that doesn't include food and energy. Not only do we have monetary inflation to deal with, double and even triple digit food prices. 2011 has seen some natural disasters that are going to put significant pressure on all of our non-core inflation grocery bills. The floods in the U.S. has decimated farmland, tornadoes have almost taken out entire towns, and frost in the west has also damaged crops in Southern California and Mexico. We also recently read in "China Daily" that the drought in China is now the worst they have seen in 50 years. The price of rice, cabbage, and other vegetables have soared in China due to the drought. With oil at $103, corn inventories at a 15 year low, and rising tensions in the middle east, food, as we predicted in our special food inflation report, is going to be one of the biggest issues for the entire world in 2011.
The Natives Are Getting Restless!

This past weekend, with a real unemployment rate closer to 20% and 50% of college grads not being able to find a job, the long Memorial Day weekend showed us a sneak peak into what happens when the 'youth' have nothing to do and nothing to lose.


Long Island Beach Riot - Long Beach police responded to an incident that involved hundreds of people spilling out onto the streets where fights erupted. According to police, it took about 3 hours to get the situation under control.

Charlotte - 70 people were arrested including 15 juveniles. During a fight that broke out, one person pulled out a gun and shot someone in the leg, this is just one of several fights that broke out during a Speed Street celebration. Some stores had their windows broken and robbed before police were able to get things under control. Charlotte police had to call in their Civil Emergency Unit.


Charlotte Beach - Fights involving about 50 youth broke out around 7pm Monday night. Those that were trying to enjoy the Rib Fest were allowed to stay after 20 cops showed up to get things under control. One police officer was treated for a minor injury of scratches to the face.

Nashville - Large crowds of people became so disruptive that 24 police officers were called to respond at a water theme park. Park managers were forced to close the park down after several fights broke out and crowds of people jumping into the park over a fence without paying. Here is the banger, the people jumping over the fence to get in without paying were not just kids. These were adults, some with children and strollers! This is the first time in the park's history that they had to close early.

Carson Beach - 1,000 youth broke out into an uncontrollable crowd, 5 law enforcement agencies had to respond to stop the violence. 

FutureMoneyTrends.com believes much of this tension is coming from economic hard times. We were shocked to read about people breaking into a theme park with strollers. We have to admit, when we first heard about the story we assumed it was probably high school kids, but according to the theme park managers, that wasn't the case. As food stamp use increases, unemployment rises, and measures are taken to reduce state and federal budget deficits, you can expect to hear more stories like this. Hopefully, we are still at least a year off from seeing the public union bosses getting involved in the type of coordinated civil unrest we have seen in Greece, Spain, and other countries dealing with massive deficits and bad economies.


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Strategist: World On The Verge Of Great, Great Depression And The Fed Knows It

Gold spikes on grinding economic halt, coming Fed QE3

A notable market strategist has told CNBC that the world is on the verge of the largest financial meltdown in history, warning that Wall Street is at a loss as to what to do regarding the ailing economy.

“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” said Peter Yastrow, of Yastrow Origer. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.” the futures trader added.

“What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money,” he said.

Meanwhile, gold spiked today on the news that a third round of so-called quantitative easing on behalf of the Federal Reserve is in the works.

“There’s a lot of iffiness about the end of QE2 and questions about whether there will be a QE3,” said Matt Zeman, a strategist at Kingsview Financial in Chicago. “There’s a serious soft patch in economic data, and the Fed is not going to be able to raise interest rates anytime soon. That’s going to be a dollar negative and gold positive.”

Gold futures hit a four-week high today as the dollar slumped to a three week low and equities continued to decline.

Futures for August delivery reached $1,551.60, the highest since May 2, before dropping back to to $1,550.30, still a rise of $13.50, or 0.9 percent.

“The dollar is starting to weaken again,” said Frank McGhee, the head dealer at Integrated Brokerage Services LLC in Chicago. “Stocks are selling off, and there’s a flight to quality into gold.”

Steve Watson –Prisonplanet.com

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If Any Of You Have Bonds, I Would Urge You To Go Home And Sell Them

"If any of you have bonds, I would urge you to go home and sell them. If any of you are bond portfolio managers, I would get another job if I were you, I would think about becoming a farmer.” -in Uncommon Wisdom Daily

Jim Rogers is an author, financial commentator and successful international investor. He has been frequently featured in Time, The New York Times, Barron’s, Forbes, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and is a regular guest on Bloomberg and CNBC.

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Falling Home Prices Hit Big Banks, Fannie, Freddie

Home prices began double-dipping months ago, but now that S&P/Case Shiller has chimed in, it really must be so.

This report is the most widely-followed home price index, equally quoted in bank boardrooms, Treasury Department back rooms, and Congressional Committees.

The report finds home prices in Q1 of this year are now 2.9 percent below the previous quarterly bottom in Q1 of 2009, effectively giving up all the gains of the past few years, which were of course fueled by the home buyer tax credit.

"Just about everybody agrees we're going to miss the seasonally strong period in 2011, which we should be at the very beginning of right now with May, but nobody thinks that will make any difference," says S&P's David Blitzer. "Everybody's now keeping their fingers crossed for 2012 and wondering whether people just don't want to own homes anymore."

Keeping your fingers crossed for the housing market is just the tip of the iceberg. Prices have now fallen, on this index, more than they did during the Great Depression. "On that occasion, the peak in prices was not regained until 19 years after they first fell," notes Paul Dales at Capital Economics.

So what about the banks? Sure, they took huge write-downs already, but there is clearly more pain to come, especially given that this report out today is actually a three month running average based on home sale closings in March, so really you could say the whole thing is based on sales contracts signed around six months ago. We've seen considerably more housing weakness since then.

"All will have to take new markdowns if these price pressures continue, which everything points to the fact that it will," says Peter Boockvar at Miller Tabak. "Bank balance sheets are still cluttered with mortgage loans, and they are still being asked to take back bad mortgages from those that bought them, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so the lower home prices go, the risk rises that another round of balance sheet write downs may be necessary."

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High levels of strontium detected at Fukushima

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it has detected high levels of a radioactive substance that tends to accumulate in human bones.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it took soil samples on May 9th at 3 locations about 500 meters from the No.1 and No.2 reactors and analyzed them.

The utility detected up to 480 becquerels of radioactive strontium 90 per kilogram of soil. That's about 100 times higher than the maximum reading recorded in Fukushima Prefecture following atmospheric nuclear tests carried out by foreign countries during the Cold War era.

TEPCO reported detecting 2,800 becquerels of strontium 89 per kilogram of soil at the same location.

This is the second time since April that radioactive strontium has been found inside the plant compound.

The substance was also detected in soil and plants more than 30 kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear power station in March.

When people inhale radioactive strontium, it accumulates in bones. Scientists say that strontium could cause cancer.

Tokyo Electric Power says it believes that radioactive strontium was released from the damaged plant and it will continue to monitor radiation levels.

An expert on radioactive substances says he thinks radioactive strontium may continue to be detected around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. But he says the strontium levels that might be detected in soil will be far lower than those of the radioactive cesium released in the accident by a factor of several thousand.

Yoshihiro Ikeuchi of the Japan Chemical Analysis Center says strontium tends to accumulate in bones, like calcium. But he also says its levels in the air are thought to be lower than those for soil and even if people inhale the substance, no health problems will be caused by such internal exposure to radiation.

NHK


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$100 Silver and economic analisis

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