Monday, April 2, 2012
Japanese 'ghost ship' shifts course towards Alaska
he herald of 1.5 million tonnes of debris left in the wake of last March’s Japanese earthquake and ensuing tsunami has shifted course, abandoning Canadian waters for the time being, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
An RCAF aircraft initially spotted the 50-metre Japanese ‘ghost ship’ about 260 kilometres off the southern tip of Haida Gwaii. On Saturday morning, it passed the U.S.-Canadian border near the Dixon Entrance, a stretch of sea off the shores of Prince Rupert, B.C., said Petty Officer First Class David Mosley.
“We flew one of our … Hercules aircraft to the vessel and we dropped a buoy on the vessel to monitor its position (Saturday afternoon),” he said. “All we know is it’s tracking north. We’ll continue to track it and continue to follow its path.”
Mosley said if the squid trawler remains on course, it would eventually reach Sitka, Alaska. He said it’s unclear how long that would take, however, as the ship’s speed is dependent on currents and wind.
The ship could be a problem for ocean traffic if it remains in Dixon Entrance, Mosley said. Authorities on both sides of the border, meanwhile, have not yet decided to act beyond a “monitoring” approach.
“We’ve got cargo ships, fuel tankers and in the summertime there’s a lot of cruise ships in (the Dixon Entrance) area, so we’re very mindful how this vessel could impact maritime traffic,” Mosley said.
Canadian officials estimate the ship is still about 350 kilometres off the shore of mainland B.C., according to data recorded Saturday.
“The Government of Canada is monitoring the derelict vessel and the departments are working together on a co-ordinated plan to deal with the Japanese fishing vessel as it approaches our shoreline,” said Sau Sau Lin, a Transport Canada spokeswoman, in a statement.
“There is no immediate threat to public or environmental safety.”
According to Patrick Cummins, a Canadian research expert of ocean currents, the ship is merely the head of the beast.
“It is slow, it is steady, but all the debris that remains afloat from that cataclysmic event is slowly making its way to the Pacific Northwest,” he told QMI Agency.
“Some oceanographers estimate the debris field is 3,700 kilometres long and 1,800 kilometres wide, but we have no concrete figures because of the sheer spread.”
According to ocean researchers in Hawaii, the rest of the debris could reach Canadian shores by early 2013.
Toronto Sun
RICHARD RUSSELL: A Massive Stock Market Collapse Will Wipe Out 60 Years Of Inflation
Richard Russell, writer of the Dow Theory Letters, is just looking for the right time to buy stocks.
But that time isn't now. And until that time comes, Russell will be keeping his wealth in gold.
He writes in King World News:
What I want to illustrate is that great fortunes are made at super-bear market lows. But you must have the money at the lows. Which is why gold is so singular and valuable. If you have gold at the bottom of the next bear market, you can exchange it for a collection of great common stocks or funds, and then sit back and relax.
You are then betting on the lasting power of the US. If the US comes back, you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams. But you have to have the guts to hang on to your gold. And you need patience -- the patience of ten men.
And when the time comes, things will get messy before they get good.
And I wonder -- is there a super bear market waiting for us somewhere in the future? The great ride from the end of WWII to today has never been fully corrected. Some day it will be. And impossible bargains in stocks will be lying around -- with very few willing or solvent buyers.
...My thinking is that sooner or later we will be subject to a major correction (bear market) that will wipe out or correct 60 years of inflation and leveraging. When that happens, I want to own the only kind of money that the Fed can't destroy.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-russell-stock-market-collapse-2012-3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMoneyGame+%28The+Money+Game%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#ixzz1qtSXxtgy
National IDs to start rolling-out by year’s end
Government appreciates the concern expressed by many Ugandans about the delay in establishing the National Identification Register (NIR) under the National Security Information System (NSIS) project.
The Government of Uganda, through the work of the National Citizenship and Immigration Board, is committed to its obligations under Article 16 of the Constitution of Uganda to establish citizenship registration as well as its complementary obligations as a signatory to the EAC Common Market Protocol. It is in light of these obligations that the Government of Uganda has put in place both a legal and institutional framework to establish an effective identity management infrastructure.
It is unquestionable that the inability to prove people’s identity undermines national and international economics, political and social security, international relations and hinders the free movement of people and their rights of establishment in places of their choice. Successful implementation of the NSIS project is expected to curb illegal immigration, enable the compilation of an accurate electoral (and other population) register(s), prevent identity fraud, expand the tax database, and promote orderly movement of people across the East African Community via the streamlining of travel document issuance.
To achieve this, the government signed an agreement on 19 March, 2010 with the German firm Mühlbauer High Tech International (MHTI) to supply equipment and related services for the establishment of a biometric National Identity Register and the issuance of unique National Identification Numbers (NINs) under the NSIS. The NSIS agreement with MHIT is a supply contract for specified equipment and related services to enable government establish and manage a modern biometric registration and ID issuing system.
The NSIS aims to establish an efficient and convenient system for proving identity, age, domicile and citizenship and to modernize the national vital registration system (i.e. births, marriages and deaths). It is expected that efficient recording of such data will eliminate duplication, overlaps and gaps in the existing identity management systems. A card production feasibility project was set up and approximately 409 cards were printed under a pilot scheme to test the card’s issuance system and processes.
To date, the project has successfully delivered (in the first phase), an updated voters’ register, equipment and consumables for data processing and the personalization centre (the ID cards printing facility). The first National Identity Register containing 5.2 million biometrically enrolled residents has also been delivered and these will as early as May start receiving their national identity cards once the personalization centre is complete.
As a result of the successful completion of these objectives, any phase I activities that have not yet been implemented, namely, building and installing equipment for the data processing and personalization centres, training, ramp up, production and maintenance support of IT hardware and all equipment, production and issuance of ID cards will now be delivered.
In the NSIS second phase, citizens and aliens’ enrolment will be done and an estimated 16 million national identity cards will be issued in the following months. After mass database enrolment has been accomplished, links between the NIR and other databases such as the National Population Data Bank will be established. It will then be possible to create a well-organised National Population Data Bank which as per the mandate of National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U) under the ICT ministry.
Government has prioritized the successful completion of the NSIS project and it is hoped to have it completed by December 2014 so as to prevent the unnecessary duplication of data collection and the unnecessary spending of funds by the Electoral Commission in advance of the 2016 elections. The opportunity for the successful accomplishment of the project came by way of a commitment by the ministry of Finance to allocate Shs 87.6bn for the NSIS operations in the FY 2012/13.
In order to further prioritize this project, a new department to handle citizens’ registration, verification and ID cards issuance is also being established under the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control. A framework to direct the project management, the budget, roadmap, stakeholder interests and participation will soon be tabled before the Cabinet Standing Committee for approval.
Priority for issuing the national identity cards is being given to the 5.2 million wananchi whose data was captured during the national voters exercise. The Citizenship and Immigration Directorate is currently reviewing this data to ensure that only citizens whose full details were captured are issued national IDs.
The Observer
Israeli strike on Iran would be 'disastrous,' Turkey's Erdoğan says
The outcomes of an Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would be "disastrous," Turkish Prime MinisterRecep Tayyip Erdoğan said.
Erdoğan talked to journalists on board an airplane on his way from a meeting with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hürriyet reported today.
"The entire region would be devastated if Israel strikes Iran," Erdoğan said and added that he shared his views with U.S. President Barack Obama.
A regional conflict triggered by a possible Israeli strike "would not end up like the war between U.S. and Iraq. Israel should not attack Iran," Erdoğan said and added that Israel was taking part in "disaster-mongering" with its constant threats of a possible strike on Iran.
Israeli warheads
"Israel has between 250 to 300 nuclear warheads. Nobody is discussing that," Erdoğan told journalists.
"Iran says they would not produce nuclear weapons. They are saying that they would produce a specific amount of enriched uranium rods and stop after that," Erdoğan added.
Daily News
Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.
With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.
But civil liberties advocates say the wider use of cell tracking raises legal and constitutional questions, particularly when the police act without judicial orders. While many departments require warrants to use phone tracking in nonemergencies, others claim broad discretion to get the records on their own, according to 5,500 pages of internal records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from 205 police departments nationwide.
The internal documents, which were provided to The New York Times, open a window into a cloak-and-dagger practice that police officials are wary about discussing publicly. While cell tracking by local police departments has received some limited public attention in the last few years, the A.C.L.U. documents show that the practice is in much wider use — with far looser safeguards — than officials have previously acknowledged.
The issue has taken on new legal urgency in light of a Supreme Court ruling in January finding that a Global Positioning System tracking device placed on a drug suspect’s car violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches. While the ruling did not directly involve cellphones — many of which also include GPS locators — it raised questions about the standards for cellphone tracking, lawyers say.
The police records show many departments struggling to understand and abide by the legal complexities of cellphone tracking, even as they work to exploit the technology.
In cities in Nevada, North Carolina and other states, police departments have gotten wireless carriers to track cellphone signals back to cell towers as part of nonemergency investigations to identify all the callers using a particular tower, records show.
In California, state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.
In Ogden, Utah, when the Sheriff’s Department wants information on a cellphone, it leaves it up to the carrier to determine what the sheriff must provide. “Some companies ask that when we have time to do so, we obtain court approval for the tracking request,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a written response to the A.C.L.U.
And in Arizona, even small police departments found cell surveillance so valuable that they acquired their own tracking equipment to avoid the time and expense of having the phone companies carry out the operations for them. The police in the town of Gilbert, for one, spent $244,000 on such equipment.
Cell carriers, staffed with special law enforcement liaison teams, charge police departments from a few hundred dollars for locating a phone to more than $2,200 for a full-scale wiretap of a suspect, records show.
Most of the police departments cited in the records did not return calls seeking comment. But other law enforcement officials said the legal questions were outweighed by real-life benefits.
The police in Grand Rapids, Mich., for instance, used a cell locator in February to find a stabbing victim who was in a basement hiding from his attacker.
“It’s pretty valuable, simply because there are so many people who have cellphones,” said Roxann Ryan, a criminal analyst with Iowa’s state intelligence branch. “We find people,” she said, “and it saves lives.”
NY Times
Fearing Syria war, Gantz holds surprise drills
Fearing a future war with Syria, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.- Gen. Benny Gantz held a surprise drill inspection of two key military bases in the North on Sunday to ensure that they will be able to continue operating in the event of significant missile attacks.
Commanders at the bases – one a critical ammunition depot and the other a key maintenance base for IDF armored vehicles – were surprised when Gantz and other senior officers arrived at the gates of their bases to review operations there.
A senior IDF officer who participated in the inspections said that they were aimed at ensuring the military’s readiness for a wide range of scenarios including possible war with Syria as well as additional border demonstrations like those held over the weekend.
“Our assumption is that both of these bases will come under major missile fire in a future war and nevertheless, soldiers there will need to know how to continue to operate,” the officer said.
The officer said that commanders and soldiers at both bases had invested in digging trenches as well as the construction of various reinforced structures throughout the bases that could be used to protect soldiers.
Surprise inspections like those conducted on Sunday have become Gantz’s trademark since he took up the post as chief of staff in February 2011. On the eve of Yom Kippur in October, for example, Gantz held a drill in the North during which he scrambled various units to ensure that they could be quickly mobilized if a war erupted.
At the end of a visit to the Ramon Air Force Base a few months ago, in another example, Gantz announced that the Syrian Air Force had infiltrated Israeli airspace and was on its way to bomb targets in the South.
Gantz stood by, watching the clock as fighter jets were mobilized and pilots suited up and jumped into their cockpits.
He called off the surprise drill only after the jets were already on the runway and about to take off.
Gantz has explained that the objective of the drills is to help create a new mindset within the IDF according to which Israel needs to be prepared for the possibility that war could erupt without warning, particularly in light of the ongoing upheaval sweeping the Middle East.
Meanwhile Sunday, the IDF was holding joint air and navy maneuvers with the United States and Greece in the Mediterranean Sea. According to reports in the Greek press, the drill was focusing on air-toair combat scenarios as well as anti-submarine warfare. The drill is under the supervision of the US’s Sixth Fleet.
The exercise, called Noble Dina, was first held in 2011 and came to fill a void created after Turkey pulled out of joint maneuvers it had held with Israel since 1998 after Ankara suspended military cooperation with the IDF in 2010.
Jerusalem Post
Tourists flee in frantic scenes as devastating floods hit Fiji
A tropical cyclone is expected to miss Fiji today but will continue to bring heavy rainfall, strong winds and damaging swells to the flooded South Pacific nation, a meteorologist says, as the Fijian government lifted its ban on flights carrying inbound passengers.
At least three people have died and about 8000 Fijians have been relocated to emergency evacuation centres, Agence France-Presse reported.
Tourists were also stranded after a tropical storm inundated Fiji, flooding properties and roads.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Qantas will increase capacity to ensure stranded Australians can get home.
He said he spoke with the airline's chief executive Alan Joyce, who told him, "Qantas will add capacity as required".
International Federation of Red Cross shelter and disaster management delegate David O'Meara told smh.com.au on the phone from Fiji's capital Suva.
"The flooding comes on top of the earlier flooding in January and is more extensive. ... It's all through the west and up in the north."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/tourists-flee-in-frantic-scenes-as-devastating-floods-hit-fiji-20120402-1w73h.html#ixzz1qtRK30hu
Germany Opposes French Call for Trillion-Euro Bailout Fund
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has spoken out against plans to increase the permanent euro bailout fund to €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion), saying that, "Giving out more and more money is not the solution." In doing so, Schäuble is signalling the German government's resistance to French calls for such a bolstering of the fund.
On Thursday, French Finance Minister François Baroin had echoed calls made by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Tuesday to boost the amount of available loan assistance to this level in order to shore up market confidence and prevent the possibility of contagion in the euro crisis. "The firewall, it's a little like the nuclear option in military planning, it's there for dissuasion, not to be used," Baroin said in a radio interview.
On Thursday evening, the day before euro-zone finance ministers will begin meeting in Copenhagen, Schäuble said the German government is willing to continue to operate the two bailout funds simultaneously -- at least for a transition period. The original plan had been to replace the current European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) originally established to aid Greece, Ireland and Portugal with a permanent successor fund known as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which would initially be funded with €500 billion and go into effect in mid-2012. But now it appears that the two funds, with a combined total of roughly $800 billion, will be kept in operation alongside each other -- at least initially. "That is convincing," Schäuble said of this figure. "That is enough." Likewise, the chorus of those speaking out against the expansion of the bailout fund has also been joined by Jens Weidmann, the president of the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank.
The State of Negotiations
On Friday, euro-zone finance ministers meeting in Copenhagen hope to make a decision on how much more in available funding will be committed to the twin bailout funds. A draft agreement envisions lifting the cap on the combined total of both of them from €500 billion to €700 billion. Should the debt crisis worsen once again, however, it also foresees the possibility of boosting this figure to €940 billion "under extraordinary circumstances" in order to pump hundreds of billion euros into the overall bailout apparatus.
Bolstering the bailout funds has been an issue of contention among euro-zone states for months. Germany and a number of smaller countries were initially adamantly opposed to lifting the funding cap above €500 billion. But the majority of euro-zone countries were joined by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in calling for a higher financial "firewall" to provide extra protection against possible effects of the debt crisis. Indeed, it was only this week that Germany finally relented.
On Tuesday, the governing parties and the opposition also reached a compromise agreement that will allow the German parliament to decide on whether to release billions of euros to bail out troubled EU member states. The compromise came after Germany's highest court ruled that a planned nine-member special panel of lawmakers to approve quick bailout decisions did not provide sufficient parliamentary involvement.
What's more, speaking during a panel discussion at the University of Copenhagen on Thursday evening, Schäuble once again stressed that no member country will be forced to leave the euro zone. The issue had generated much speculation in recent months because many believed that, despite two bailout packages totalling over €240 billion and the fact that private creditors have agreed to wave substantial portions of their claims, Greece's chances of getting a grip on its state debt were poor, which in turn increased its chances of either voluntarily or involuntarily abandoning the currency union.
Spiegel
The 15 Trillion Dollar Party
If you knew that you could live in luxury for the rest of your life but that by doing so it would absolutely destroy the future for your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren would you do it? Well, that is exactly what we are doing as a nation. Over the past several decades, we have stolen 15 trillion dollars from future generations so that we could enjoy a dramatically inflated level of prosperity. Our 15 trillion dollar party has been a lot of fun, but what we have done to our children and our grandchildren has been beyond criminal. We ran up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the planet and we are sticking them with the bill. Sadly, both political parties have been responsible for the big spending that has been going on. Both Democrats and Republicans have run up huge budget deficits when in power. But instead of learning the hard lessons of the past, both political parties continue to vote for even more debt. They would rather continue to steal trillions of dollars from future generations than have the party end and have to face the consequences.
And the consequences will be dramatic when the party ends. During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars. That means that the U.S. government spent about 1.3 trillion dollars that it did not have. It is important to understand that even if the U.S. government spent that 1.3 trillion dollars on really stupid things, that money still got into the pockets of ordinary Americans who then spent it on things like food, gas, housing, etc. In turn, most of those that received money from providing those goods and services would spend it on other things.
So extra government spending can definitely stimulate the economy. The problem is that we have been doing it permanently. Since 1975, we have added more than 15 trillion dollars to the national debt. This has fueled a false prosperity that was way beyond what we could afford.
If the U.S. government tried to go to a balanced budget now, our standard of living would crash and there would be riots in the streets. The American people have been enjoying false prosperity for so long that they have lost any notion of what "normal" actually is.
Think of it this way. If your family makes $40,000 this year and you spend an extra $20,000 on your credit cards, your family would be enjoying a false sense of prosperity.
You could do that year after year as long as the credit card companies keep loaning you more money.
But debt always catches up with you in the end.
It is the same thing with the United States.
We have been running up our national credit card balance and the interest payments have become quite painful.
The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.
That is 454 billion dollars that the people of the United States do not receive anything in return for.
So in order to keep up with interest on the national debt and to enjoy a standard of living that is beyond our means we now have to run deficits that are in excess of a trillion dollars every single year.
And a trillion dollars is a staggering amount of money.
If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
Since Barack Obama was elected, the U.S. government has added about 5trillion more dollars to the national debt.
That kind of debt is a recipe for national financial suicide.
How are we supposed to explain to our children that we are passing a debt of$15,579,852,946,457.64 down to them?
At this point, the United States government is responsible for more than a thirdof all the government debt in the entire world.
The 15 trillion dollar party that we have been enjoying has been amazing, but all of that debt is soon going to bring us a tremendous amount of pain.
And there is really no way out under our current financial system. As our population ages, government budget deficits are projected to spiral wildly out of control in future years.
Already, entitlement programs are starting to cause massive problems. For example, mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
If the federal government used GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) like all publicly-traded corporations are required to do, the situation would be much worse.
The truth is that the U.S. government never had a "balanced budget" during the end of the Clinton administration. The federal government was borrowing gigantic amounts of money from the Social Security trust fund to finance regular government operations. It was a big fraud. Under GAAP, there would have been huge budget deficits during those years.
And even under the non-GAAP numbers used by the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. national debt still increased every single year during the Clinton administration.
So let's get real.
Our national financial situation has always been much worse than we have been told.
It has been estimated that our current budget deficits would be in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 trillion dollars under GAAP.
And looking down the road a bit, we are facing a tsunami of unfunded liabilities that is absolutely nightmarish.
In other words, we have committed ourselves to tens of trillions of dollars of expenses that we don't have any money for.
According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a "fiscal gap" of over 200 trillion dollars in the coming years. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN....
The government's total indebtedness -- its fiscal gap -- now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations -- including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt -- and all projected future taxes.
And it just keeps getting worse. Recently it was revealed that Obamacare will add 17 trillion dollars more to our long-term unfunded obligations.
Basically what we have done is we have committed future generations to a life of endless debt slavery to pay for our debts and for the financial promises that we have made.
How could we be so stupid?
Of course this entire fraudulent system is going to completely collapse before we get too much farther down the road anyway. Right now the whole thing is essentially being held together by chicken wire and duct tape.
Most Americans do not realize this, but the Federal Reserve bought approximately61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011.
Normally, the Federal Reserve is not supposed to be doing this.
But right now there are not nearly enough buyers of U.S. government debt at the super low interest rates that the U.S. government wants to pay. A recent Money News article explained that foreigners have been increasingly shying away from U.S. debt....
"In 2009, such foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to 6 percent of GDP and has since falled by over eighty percent to a paltry 0.9 percent."
Instead of interest rates on U.S. Treasuries rising to attract additional investors, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been intervening to make up the difference.
This is essentially "monetizing the debt" and it is something that Ben Bernanke promised that he would never do.
But he is doing it.
If the Federal Reserve was not buying up all this debt, interest rates on U.S. debt would soar and so would U.S. government interest payments.
Yes, this is a giant Ponzi scheme and it cannot last for long.
Of course all of this could have been avoided if our politicians had not been running up such massive amounts of debt all these years.
Some have suggested that our problems could be solved by simply increasing taxes on the wealthy.
Well, the truth is that the top 5 percent of all income earners already pay nearly 50 percent of all federal taxes and soaking them even more will not even come close to solving the federal budget crisis.
For example, if Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
And as Bill Whittle has shown, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38 percent of the federal budget.
So taxing the wealthy will certainly not solve all of our problems.
In fact, when you tax the wealthy and the "somewhat wealthy" it slows economic growth in a number of different ways.
Number one, they have less money to spend into the economy.
Number two, they have less money to invest in business activities.
Number three, it gives wealthy individuals and corporations more of an incentive to move out of the United States. As I have written about previously, the global elite are already hiding about 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks. The U.S. government keeps trying to tap into all of that offshore wealth, but the elite always seem to be a few steps ahead of the game.
Yes, we should try to close loopholes in the tax system, but the truth is that the root cause of our problem is that the federal government is simply spending way, way too much money.
Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
But our politicians always want to put off spending cuts for another day because they know that immediate spending cuts would really hurt the economy.
For example, just check out this recent quote from White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew....
“The time for austerity is not today,” Lew told NBC News “Meet the Press.” “If we were to put in austerity measures right now, it would take the economy in the wrong way.”
Yes, the Obama administration definitely does not want to hurt the economy with an election coming up in a few months.
So when will it be time to seriously cut government spending?
The day never seems to arrive.
But even though the federal government has been pumping more than a trillion extra dollars into the economy every year, the economy has not shown much improvement. The percentage of working age Americans that have jobs has barely budged for over two years.
Yes, the policies of the Obama administration have stabilized the U.S. economy for the moment, but if he was actually going to tell the truth he would say something like this....
"By mortgaging the future of our children and our grand-children I have stabilized our economic statistics for the short-term. Unfortunately, I am going to have to continue to financially abuse future generations to keep us from falling into another Great Depression. Meanwhile, I am making our long-term financial problems far, far worse. But the most important thing is that I win re-election so that I can continue to be president. Thank you for being so selfish and so willing to destroy the future of your children. Vote for me in 2012 and let the party continue!"
Unfortunately, the party is going to come crashing to an end at some point.
Right now, the global financial system is based on the U.S. dollar and on U.S. government debt.
There will come a time when the rest of the world is going to get sick and tired of watching this Ponzi scheme play out and they are going to completely lose faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. government debt. In fact, there are already signs that this is starting to happen.
When faith in our currency and our debt is completely gone, it will be nearly impossible to get back and the game will be over.
The false prosperity that we are experiencing right now is about as good as things are going to get.
Enjoy it while you still can, because when it is gone that will be the end of it.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have failed us. They played fast and loose with our future and they never planned for the long-term.
Now we are facing a collapse of unprecedented magnitude that most Americans will never even see coming.
A horrifying economic collapse is coming.
You better get ready for it.
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