Spanish Bad Loans Jump To New Record As Banks Come Clean Over Mortgage Defaults

Spanish loan delinquencies as a percentage of the total have risen for the 8th straight month to a new record high of 13.00% (even as sovereign bond spreads continue to plunge to multi-year lows signaling all is well). With unemployment rates stuck stubbornly high, however, reality is starting to dawn in the Spanish banking system as mortgage defaults are rising following the Bank of Spain's order for lenders to review their portfolios. As Bloomberg reports, the default rate for Banco Santander alone jumped to 7% (from 3.1%) following its "reclassification" of loans that it had refinanced (never expecting to be repaid) and with home prices still falling, "there is an urgency to come clean" as regulators see the need for banks to cover a further EUR5 billion shortfall in provisions.

The slow-and-steady rise in deliquencies smacks of an industry that is dripping out there problems - hiding facts from reality and the spike for Banco Santander is merely highlighting the mis-statement...

Via Bloomberg,

With Spain’s persistently high unemployment rate now at 26 percent, the couple is among the 350,000 homeowners who may be foreclosed upon by lenders in the next two years as the housing crisis worsens, according to AFES, a Madrid-based association that advises on restructuring debt. Since 2008, about 150,000 families have been hit with a foreclosure.

“We refinanced three years ago, but now the noose is around our necks,” Males, 42, said. “Not only do we still owe more than the original loan. We’re losing our home as well.”

...

As mortgage defaults rise, lenders will have to set aside money to cover losses, hurting profits, according to Juan Villen, head of mortgages at Spanish property web site Idealista.com. Spanish banks absorbed 87 billion euros ($120 billion) of impairment charges last year after Economy Minister Luis de Guindos forced them to record more defaults on loans to developers. The government took 41 billion euros in European assistance to shore up its failing lenders.

...

Defaults are rising partly because of changes required by the Bank of Spain that force lenders to book more soured mortgages.

“When the real estate bubble burst in 2008, banks used refinancing en masse to cover up non-performing residential mortgage loans,”

Which led to a broad loan review...

In April, the Bank of Spain ordered lenders to review their portfolios of refinanced loans, including mortgages, to make sure they’re classified in a uniform way. Lenders had 208 billion euros of loans on their books that they’d restructured or refinanced as of the end of 2012, according to the regulator.

The review led the regulator to the preliminary conclusion that classifying all refinanced loans correctly would cause a 21 billion-euro increase in defaults.Lenders would need to generate a further 5 billion euros of provisions to cover the losses.

The default rate for Banco Santander SA (SAN)’s Spanish mortgages jumped to 7 percent in September from 3.1 percent in June as it reclassified loans that it had refinanced.

“As a bank this will be the main focus area, whether you are properly recording your non-performing loans, especially the refinanced ones,” said Alexander Pelteshki, an analyst at ING Financial Markets in Amsterdam. “There is an urgency to come clean.”

But it's not going to get better any time soon...

“Until Spain starts creating jobs and credit starts flowing again, house prices aren’t going to recover,” Beatriz Toribio, head of research at Fotocasa, said. “We expect further price declines, albeit smaller than in previous years, in 2014.”

Credit to Zero Hedge 

State can seize your assets to pay for care after you’re forced into Medicaid by Obamacare

My, this is an unpleasant consequence of Obamacare. I’m not going to call it unintended because in its current form, it potentially earns a bunch of money for states, so I’m pretty sure that’s intentional. What I think is unintentional is anyone noticing this is what they’re up to.

But the Seattle Times noticed:

It wasn’t the moonlight, holiday-season euphoria or family pressure that made Sophia Prins and Gary Balhorn, both 62, suddenly decide to get married.

It was the fine print.

As fine print is wont to do, it had buried itself in a long form — Balhorn’s application for free health insurance through the expanded state Medicaid program. As the paperwork lay on the dining-room table in Port Townsend, Prins began reading.

She was shocked: If you’re 55 or over, Medicaid can come back after you’re dead and bill your estate for ordinary health-care expenses.

The way Prins saw it, that meant health insurance via Medicaid is hardly “free” for Washington residents 55 or older. It’s a loan, one whose payback requirements aren’t well advertised. And it penalizes people who, despite having a low income, have managed to keep a home or some savings they hope to pass to heirs, Prins said.

So, here’s the deal. There used to be a provision whereby the state could recuperate funds spent on a Medicaid patient post-55 years old from whatever assets he owned. So, a low-income individual in nursing home care after age 55 might pass away and his kids would find out the family home or car of whatever he had to his name had to be bought back from the state if they wanted it. It’s called estate recovery, and sounds pretty shady if it’s not boldly advertised as the terms for Medicaid enrollment, which is most definitely is not.

Before the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, there weren’t that many people in Medicaid who had much in the way of assets for seizing. But now that Medicaid enrollment requirements have been relaxed, more people with assets but low income are joining the program or being forced into it. For instance, a couple in their 50s who, say, retired early after losing jobs in the bad economy may have assets but show a very low income. Under Obamacare, if their income is low enough to qualify for Medicaid, they must enroll in Medicaid unless they want to buy totally unsubsidized coverage in the now-inflated individual market. As teh Times notes, this is no small difference:

People cannot receive a tax credit to subsidize their purchase of a private health plan if their income qualifies them for Medicaid, said Bethany Frey, spokeswoman for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

But they could buy a health plan without a tax credit, she added.

For someone age 55 to 64 at the Medicaid-income level — below $15,856 a year — it’s quite a jump from free Medicaid health insurance to an unsubsidized individual plan. Premiums in King County for an age 60 non-tobacco user for the most modest plan run from $451 to $859 per month.

The couple in the Times story was able to marry, combine their incomes, and get out of the Medicaid trap. Others will not be so lucky, and may not even read the fine print:

Prins, an artist, and Balhorn, a retired fisherman-turned-tango instructor, separately qualified for health insurance through Medicaid based on their sole incomes.

But if they were married, they calculated, they could “just squeak by” with enough income to qualify for a subsidized health plan — and avoid any encumbrance on the home they hope to leave to Prins’ two sons.

For no one else in the world is it a-okay to give low-income people a loan that might endanger their family’s assets and not even clearly inform them they’re getting a loan.

This Daily Kos diarist has a nice write-up (I know) on the toll this could take on lower and middle-class people looking for relief and getting what amounts to a surprise predatory loan instead:

We haven’t had lots of people younger than 65 on Medicaid, because in most states simply earning less than the Federal Poverty Level did not qualify one for Medicaid.

And we haven’t had many people with lots of assets on Medicaid, because in most places you have to have less than around $2400 to your name before Medicaid will cover you. You can keep your house and your car, but Medicaid reserves the right to put liens on them and take them when you die.

But now we have the Affordable Care Act, and its expectation that everyone in the lower tier of income will end up in the Medicaid system. To accomplish this, they have dropped the asset test. So now we will have lots of people ages 55-64, who have assets but not a lot of income right now, for whatever reason, on Medicaid.

The kicker of it is, if you make the right amount to qualify for a subsidized health insurance plan, your costs are going to be shared and subsidized by the government. But if you go on Medicaid, you owe the entire amount that Medicaid spends on you from the day you turn 55…

How will this play out? No one knows, as far as I can tell. But it is easy to see how this could become a real problem. If someone is low income and goes on Medicaid, will Medicaid put a lien on their house? If they need to sell their house and move, will they then lose all their equity in paying off the lien? Will people get hit with bills and liens for many thousands of dollars, even if they were healthy and hardly ever went to the doctor?

The fact that this is being treated with seriousness at Kos is an indication of how large a liability it could be for this government program. Washington is scrambling to change the law. No doubt other states will start looking at their implementation of this part of Obamacare. But there will be people caught unaware that their houses effectively belong to the government because the government forced them into Medicaid coverage. You’re welcome!

Credit to Hot Air

Hitler Survivor Warns To America, Please Hear Me

Obama's Trillion Dollar Small Business Fraud

The Beginning of Martial Law Approaching

The Invasion Will Come From Within

After the coming false flag, where will you go? It is clear that the powers that be will have ready-made facilities for you are you nearby public venue. What is disaster strikes while the kids are in school and you are at work. What if it is an EMP attack and you cannot drive your car? Do you have a meet-up place if disaster strikes in the middle of the day? Do you have a bug out location stocked with supplies? Will you hunker down? Do you have food and water? Do you have a means to protect what you set aside? The next three parts of this series will address these issues.

The invasion will commence from within and will begin following a series of false flag attacks. 

An Ominous Sign

Earlier this week, a court ruled that the NSA’s spying on our phone calls was illegal and that Ed Snowden had been vindicated. Most people in the Patriot movement are championing this as a victory.  This would be a very naive viewpoint.

Congress and the President are completely under the control of the police state surveillance grid. The Federal government has made absolutely no move to counter the NSA and its highly illegal activities. And now we are supposed to believe that a judge has discovered his Constitutional conscience? Are we to believe that there is a judge that the NSA cannot get to? Is there really a judge who can’t be followed, his family intimidated or bribed? Really?

With the undertaking of any project, there is the informational gathering phase which is followed by the implementation of the action phase. I firmly believe that we are witnessing the implementation of the action phase. The NSA has all they need to create an enemies list. Who is a threat and who can be re-educated is known. Who lives and who will die has been determined by their spy grid matrix. The ruling by this judge is a deception designed to lull America into a further sense of complacency. The NSA already has what they need and the action phase will soon commence..

Is the Third Time Is a Charm?

Some people are having trouble believing that the relationship between Obama and the military is broken. Two hundred is the magic number. When a President fires over 200 senior command officers, there is something very seriously wrong. When 2-5 nukes go missing, there is something very seriously wrong. When a Senator (i.e. Lindsay Graham) announces that he is worried about a nuke going off in his home state, something is seriously wrong.

Obama has been thwarted in taking down the power grid. He has been thwarted in detonating nukes . And now, the tables have been turned, as the military holds 2-5 missing nukes at their disposal. Checkmate!

Will Obama attempt a false flag for the third time?

The military and Obama are embroiled in a game of chicken. Who will blink first? Meanwhile, many writers and talk show hosts are receiving multiple reports of foreign troops being sent to our country. The President has vacated the White House in favor of Hawaii for a long term stay. Given the present climate, I would be nervous if I lived in the Washington DC area.

Gatlinburg

Is there a third attempted false flag in the offing? I think this is unquestionably the case. Not only do we have the Russians and Chinese to worry about, now I am receiving first hand reports of large numbers of Muslims appearing in communities where there is a large Russian contingent. Yesterday, I received two emails regarding this development in Gatlinburg, TN. One source is direct eyewitness to this fact. Interestingly, the Russians in Gatlinburg are notoriously stand-offish. However, this eyewitness says the Muslims and the Russians are interacting. The other email I received was a from a person living near the Canadian border who reports that her parents have seen pretty much the same thing in Gatlinburg.

It is interesting that the Gatlinburg area has had its nearby mountain trails and national parks closed to visitors. My mind immediately harkens back to the reports filed by Sherrie Wilcox, which she related on The Common Sense Show. Also, Sherrie has videos of Russian troops in DHS vehicles which are available at www.sherriequestioningall.com.  

Local residents in Gatlinburg have been reporting to me stories of strange helicopters landing on a golf course late at night. Russians who speak impeccable English, but refuse to interact with the locals. Gatlinburg resident, Dr. Susan Helman, has twice been a guest on The Common Sense Show, in which she has offered details of the Russian invasion of her community along with her personal sightings of the aforementioned helicopters.  Below is an example of the type of emails that I get from people in Gatlinburg.

“…My mother’s family live there (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc) and have confirmed that the Russian soldiers arrived in droves over the last 3 years.  Also a large segment of the rural counties have seen the Russian mafia buy up land and homes.  I told a DEA agent about the Russian mafia scaring the locals about 5 years ago and they successfully had a couple drug raids. Tennessee is becoming more Muslim…”  

Let’s connect some dots here. Why are trails and roads leading from Gatlinburg into the Smoky Mountains being closed? Why are the national parks being closed? Why are Russians and now Muslims appearing in Gatlinburg in such large numbers. How do these facts correlate with each other?

Certainly, Muslims  would generally pose no threat. However, when they begin to appear in significant numbers where there are Russians in significant numbers, then we should all be paying attention. I think it is likely that this is a 5th column insurgent group. The closing down of vast wilderness areas in this proximity suggests to me that this is a staging area, a base of operations. It is a military foothold. Many in Gatlinburg feel the same way.

The fact that Sherrie Wilcox caught Russians in DHS vehicles is an important development as well. This is strongly suggestive of the fact that the lines for civil war are being drawn. Foreign troops plus DHS are one side and the US military, along with the American people are on the other side. Does it make any more sense to you as to why DHS purchased 2.2 billion rounds of ammo to go with their 2700 armored personnel carriers? Is this why much of our fighting force is in Afghanistan and Iraq and plans are being made to strand them there when the fighting begins here?

Similar Messages From Around the Country

Over the past several months, I have received messages from Alaska, California, Idaho and Oregon, from first hand witnesses of foreign troops on American soil.  The following is an example of emails that I have received from Alaska.

Dear Mr. Hodges,

I live in Ketchikan, Alaska. Since you ran your article on The Russians Are Coming, we have all been talking about Russian soldiers in our town in full military gear walking in groups of 5 or 6. There are Russian civilians that moved into the area here a few years ago. They are arrogant and don’t talk to anyone. But they speak perfect English when they have to talk. They get welfare cards and they are not even Americans. I have brought this subject up to our leaders and they do not want to talk about it. I have a friend who lives on the coast who ex-navy submarine sailor. He says he sees Russian subs now all the time off of the coast partially submerged. He said he never used to see them. I also know there is Russian military equipment in the native lands in No. Alaska. Do you think they are going to invade? Dave, do you know why they are here?…   

Here is another example of Russian troop sightings in the Victorville, CA. area, where I have had three people contact me with similar sightings.

…Do not use my name, but I have to tell you that when I was doing deliveries to a local base near Victorville, Cal, I have seen Russian soldiers training with soldiers wearing the UN blue helmets….I saw Russian tanks and other armored vehicles…

I have spoken with two members of the MSM media and they are frightened to death. They know they cannot report on these developments, but they know what is happening. We should all know what is happening. The sides for the coming civil war are being drawn.

In the next part of this series, I will be discussing how the other side will attempt to deal with our overwhelming numbers and how we will likely be drawn into our own demise.

Credit to The common Sense Show

Marc Faber on the thoughts we all have

Gun-Free America or the Cancer of Authoritarian “Security”

By Mark Andrew Dwyer (Bio and Archives) Monday, December 16, 2013




I could not believe my eyes when I saw a photo of hundred law-abiding Americans waiting obediently in line outside of the Arapahoe High School, with their hands up, to be patted down by armed-to-teeth sheriff deputies in the aftermath of the shooting a few days ago.

That picture reminded me how insignificant We the People are in the eyes of the authorities and their enforcement agencies. Deprived of their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, unarmed and defenseless subjects, the People were treated as if they posed a deadly threat to the sheriff and his deputies armed with assault weapons, many of whom in body armor and Kevlar military-style helmets, that apparently cared much more about their own safety than the safety of people that they were supposed to serve and protect.

I would expect a picture like that to be taken in a Nazi Germany of 1930s and 40s where the authorities did not try to sugarcoat their hostility to the regime’s real and imaginary adversaries. But in America? We have come a long way from the land of the free and the home of the brave to a socialistic-like system in which individual liberties are often referred to as loopholes or outdated reminiscences of the bygone era where the governments were for the people and not the other way around.

Our governments, apparently irritated with our stubborn refusal to give up our Second Amendment rights and to delegate our right to self-defense to the “trained professionals,” become increasingly impatient, if not outright hostile to the majority of Americans.

The law enforcement agencies grew into a privileged class. That class not only is exempted from the draconian “gun-control” laws that the rest of us must obey but has become a major political power, due to potent and vocal police and sheriff’s deputies labor unions (organized in Fraternal Order of Police) that can sway local elections and influence local and state governments that yield to these unions’ demands.

Cops and sheriff deputies used to be like all other folks, with the same rights and same guns like the rest of us. The only major difference between us and them was that they were authorized to enforce the law while we were only allowed to protect ourselves from the criminal acts in progress. Now, that equality has been broken and for no good Constitutional reason.

Our inalienable right to self-defense with a deadly weapon is being nixed little-by-little, as if it were somehow unworthy of a civilized person to take responsibility for his or her own property, safety, and survival. We are being constantly lectured by our governments how unfit we are to fulfill that responsibility and how our “clinging to our guns” aids criminals and derailed maniacs, and leads to outbursts of deadly violence.

At the same time, police and sheriff deputies are being armed with military weaponry, including armor-protected military fighting vehicles with gun turrets, bulletproof glass, and other necessities that their labor unions deemed minimum workplace safety standards that their members are entitled to. All these are in addition to their generous salaries (often in excess of 100,000 dollars a year, including overtime), retirement benefits (standard retirement age that makes them eligible to 100 percent of their salaries is 55), and other privileges (e.g., to concealed carry) that many of us can only dream of.

And the result? The photo at the beginning of this article says it all. They are our rulers, we are their subjects, with hands in the air waiting in line until they “clear” us, with no one even asking who is going to get killed, the defenseless civilians of the armed and armored deputies, if a gunmen is still at large. Ostensibly, this travesty of freedom and security has been put in place for our own safety. (Horse feathers!)

What you see here is not a coincidence or an isolated phenomenon. It is a result of the well-orchestrated political process that began sometime after the World War II. The goal of that process is to submit the majority of once free individuals to the will of the collective, or rather its ruling clique, and the social engineers that promise to eliminate social injustice and economic inequality. Not surprisingly, the individual right to keep and bear arms is the first liberty that had to go in order for that process to accomplish its goal.

America has AIDS. It’s Liberalism, a curse of our once free society. Within a few decades, our nation has been transformed from the beacon of individual liberty to an intrusively regulated and controlled system where unionized law enforcement agencies have become a privileged class to which all others must submit.

Public sector unions are like a cancer that grows on the nation whose natural immune system has been badly damaged by an AIDS of Liberalism. No longer able to defend themselves, Americans are being submitted to the discretion of authorities that usurped for themselves unprecedented powers. And they do not hesitate to use their powers against the majority of Americans towards whom they become increasingly hostile.

But when it comes to areas where the authorities have a Constitutional responsibility to exercise necessary and proper safety measures, the most adequate characterization of the status quo is: dereliction of duty. Border enforcement, deportation of illegal aliens who often participate in brazen criminal activities, keeping gangsters in jails and mentally ill in hospitals, have been declared “too intrusive,” “too offensive,” or “too inhumane” by the Liberal ideologues.

Mentally ill people are not confined to medical facilities anymore. They are not even monitored and are left to their own devices so that they can exercise their Constitutional freedoms.

Criminals are given a more humane treatment, too. Parole and early release programs, light or suspended sentences, and the “they paid their debt to the society” approach to ex-cons, help those who broke the law exercise their Constitutional freedoms, too.

Violent gangs get a pass, too. Although who is a gang member is mostly known to law enforcement, gangs are allowed to exist so that their members can exercise their Constitutional right to free association (to “peaceably assemble”, as the First Amendment says), even though in many areas (like L.A.) most of the gangsters are not even U.S. citizens.

But when any of these shoot and kill innocent Americans, it is the law-abiding who are being punished with another yet “gun-control” law. You see, the rights of the mentally ill, of the law breakers, and of gang members are sacrosanct, but the rights of the law abiding citizens are not. Why am I not surprised?

What is mind boggling here is that the majority of law-abiding Americans are not raging while being deprived of their Constitutional rights and liberties but obediently accept all the usurpation of power by their governments, instead.

If you care for your individual freedoms and for the freedom of your children then, please, do whatever you lawfully can to rid America of the AIDS of Liberalism, and to cure her of the cancer of public sector unions. This is not going to be easy, but, as Edmund Burke wrote, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”


Credit to Canada Free Press

Obama's SOCIALIST AGENDA is DESTROYING Middle Class

83 Numbers From 2013 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

During 2013, America continued to steadily march down a self-destructive path toward oblivion.  As a society, our debt levels are completely and totally out of control.  Our financial system has been transformed into the largest casino on the entire planet and our big banks are behaving even more recklessly than they did just before the last financial crisis.  We continue to see thousands of businesses and millions of jobs get shipped out of the United States, and the middle class is being absolutely eviscerated.  Due to the lack of decent jobs, poverty is absolutely exploding.  Government dependence is at an all-time high and crime is rising.  Evidence of social and moral decay is seemingly everywhere, and our government appears to be going insane.  If we are going to have any hope of solving these problems, the American people need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and finally admit how bad things have actually become.  If we all just blindly have faith that "everything is going to be okay", the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions are going to absolutely blindside us and we will be absolutely devastated by the great crisis that is rapidly approaching.  The United States is in a massive amount of trouble, and it is time that we all started facing the truth.  The following are 83 numbers from 2013 that are almost too crazy to believe...

#1 Most people that hear this statistic do not believe that it is actually true, but right now an all-time record 102 million working age Americans do not have a job.  That number has risen by about 27 million since the year 2000.

#2 Because of the lack of jobs, poverty is spreading like wildfire in the United States.  According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program each month.

#3 As society breaks down, the government feels a greater need than ever before to watch, monitor and track the population.  For example, every single day the NSA intercepts and permanently stores close to 2 billion emails and phone calls in addition to a whole host of other data.

#4 The Bank for International Settlements says that total public and private debt levels around the globe are now 30 percent higher than they were back during the financial crisis of 2008.

#5 According to a recent World Bank report, private domestic debt in China has grown from 9 trillion dollars in 2008 to 23 trillion dollars today.

#6 In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States.  Today, there are only 6,891 left.

#7 The six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.

#8 The U.S. banking system has 14.4 trillion dollars in total assets.  The six largest banks now account for 67 percent of those assets and all of the other banks account for only 33 percent of those assets.

#9 JPMorgan Chase is roughly the size of the entire British economy.

#10 The five largest banks now account for 42 percent of all loans in the United States.

#11 Right now, four of the "too big to fail" banks each have total exposure to derivatives that is well in excess of 40 trillion dollars.

#12 The total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 381 times greater than their total assets.

#13 According to the Bank for International Settlements, the global financial system has a total of 441 trillion dollars worth of exposure to interest rate derivatives.

#14 Through the end of November, approximately 365,000 Americans had signed up for Obamacare but approximately 4 million Americanshad already lost their current health insurance policies because of Obamacare.

#15 It is being projected that up to 100 million more Americanscould have their health insurance policies canceled by the time Obamacare is fully rolled out.

#16 At this point, 82.4 million Americans live in a home where at least one person is enrolled in the Medicaid program.

#17 It is has been estimated that Obamacare will add 21 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#18 It is being projected that health insurance premiums for healthy 30-year-old men will rise by an average of 260 percent under Obamacare.

#19 One couple down in Texas received a letter from their health insurance company that informed them that they were being hit with a 539 percent rate increase because of Obamacare.

#20 Back in 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by employment-based health insurance.

#21 The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollarson welfare programs over the past five years.

#22 Incredibly, 74 percent of all the wealth in the United States is owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of all Americans.

#23 According to Consumer Reports, the number of children in the United States taking antipsychotic drugs has nearly tripled over the past 15 years.

#24 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low.  Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of just 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.

#25 According to a shocking new study, the average American that turned 65 this year will receive $327,500 more in federal benefits than they paid in taxes over the course of their lifetimes.

#26 In just one week in December, a combined total of more than 2000 new cold temperature and snowfall records were set in the United States.

#27 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row.

#28 The rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row.

#29 Only 47 percent of all adults in America have a full-time job at this point.

#30 The unemployment rate in the eurozone recently hit a new all-time high of 12.2 percent.

#31 If you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#32 In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

#33 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006.  Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.

#34 Only 19 percent of all Americans believe that the job market is better than it was a year ago.

#35 Just 14 percent of all Americans believe that the stock market will rise next year.

#36 According to CNBC, Pinterest is currently valued at more than 3 billion dollars even though it has never earned a profit.

#37 Twitter is a seven-year-old company that has never made a profit.  It actually lost 64.6 million dollars last quarter.  But according to the financial markets it is currently worth about 22 billion dollars.

#38 Right now, Facebook is trading at a valuation that is equivalent to approximately 100 years of earnings, and it is currently supposedly worth about 115 billion dollars.

#39 Total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.

#40 Student loans are up by an astounding 61 percent over the past three years.

#41 At this moment, there are 6 million Americans in the 16 to 24-year-old age group that are neither in school or working.

#42 The "inactivity rate" for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) has just hit a brand new all-time record high.

#43 It is hard to believe, but in America today one out of every ten jobs is now filled by a temp agency.

#44 Middle-wage jobs accounted for 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession, but they have accounted for only 22 percent of the jobs created since then.

#45 According to the Social Security Administration, 40 percent of all U.S. workers make less than $20,000 a year.

#46 Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.

#47 After accounting for inflation, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

#48 When Barack Obama took office, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks.  Today, it is 37.2 weeks.

#49 Investors pulled an astounding 72 billion dollars out of bond mutual funds in 2013.  It was the worst year for bond funds ever.

#50 Small business is rapidly dying in America.  At this point, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed.  That is an all-time record low.

#51 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.

#52 Once January 1st hits, it will officially be illegal to manufacture or import traditional incandescent light bulbs in the United States.  It is being projected that millions of Americans will attempt to stock up on the old light bulbs before they are totally gone from store shelves.

#53 The Japanese government has estimated that approximately 300 tons of highly radioactive water is being released into the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear facility every single day.

#54 Back in 1967, the U.S. military had more than 31,000 strategic nuclear warheads.  That number is already being cut down to 1,550, and now Barack Obama wants to reduce it to only about 1,000.

#55 As you read this, 60 percent of all children in Detroit are living in poverty and there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.

#56 Wal-Mart recently opened up two new stores in Washington D.C., and more than 23,000 people applied for just 600 positions.  That means that only about 2.6 percent of the applicants were ultimately hired.  In comparison, Harvard offers admission to 6.1 percent of their applicants.

#57 At this point, almost half of all public school students in America come from low income homes.

#58 Tragically, there are 1.2 million students that attend public schools in the United States that are homeless.  That number has risen by 72 percent since the start of the last recession.

#59 According to a Gallup poll that was recently released, 20.0 percent of all Americans did not have enough money to buy food that they or their families needed at some point over the past year.  That is just under the all-time record of 20.4 percent that was set back in November 2008.

#60 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.

#61 Right now, one out of every five households in the United States is on food stamps.

#62 The U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#63 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#64 According to one survey, approximately 75 percent of all American women do not have any interest in dating unemployed men.

#65 China exports 4 billion pounds of food to the United States every year.

#66 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

#67 The number of Americans on Social Security Disability now exceedsthe entire population of Greece, and the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

#68 It is being projected that the number of Americans on Social Security will rise from 57 million today to more than 100 million in 25 years.

#69 Back in 1970, the total amount of debt in the United States (government debt + business debt + consumer debt, etc.) was less than 2 trillion dollars.  Today it is over 56 trillion dollars.

#70 Back on September 30th, 2012 our national debt was sitting at a total of 16.1 trillion dollars.  Today, it is up to 17.2 trillion dollars.

#71 The U.S. government "rolled over" more than 7.5 trillion dollars of existing debt in fiscal 2013.

#72 If the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

#73 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent.  Today, it is up to 101 percent.

#74 The U.S. national debt is on pace to more than double during the eight years of the Obama administration.  In other words, under Barack Obama the U.S. government will accumulate more debt than it did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.

#75 The federal government is borrowing (stealing) roughly 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.

#76 At this point, the U.S. already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.

#77 Japan now has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 211 percent.

#78 As of December 5th, 83 volcanic eruptions had been recorded around the planet so far this year.  That is a new all-time record high.

#79 53 percent of all Americans do not have a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and water in their homes.

#80 Violent crime in the United States was up 15 percent last year.

#81 According to a very surprising survey that was recently conducted,68 percent of all Americans believe that the country is currently on the wrong track.

#82 Back in 1972, 46 percent of all Americans believed that "most people can be trusted".  Today, only 32 percent of all Americans believe that "most people can be trusted".

#83 According to a recent Pew Research survey, only 19 percent of all Americans trust the government.   Back in 1958, 73 percent of all Americans trusted the government.

So do you have any numbers from 2013 that you would add to this list?  If so, please feel free to share them by posting a comment below...

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