Corporate Debt Defaults Explode To Catastrophic Levels Not Seen Since The Last Financial Crisis

If a new financial crisis had already begun, we would expect to see corporate debt defaults skyrocket, and that is precisely what is happening.  As you will see below, corporate defaults are currently at the highest level that we have seen since 2009.  A wave of bankruptcies is sweeping the energy industry, but it isn’t just the energy industry that is in trouble.  In fact, the average credit rating for U.S. corporations is now lower than it was at any point during the last recession.  This is yet another sign that we are in the early chapters of a major league economic crisis.  Yesterday I talked about how 23.2 percent of all Americans in their prime working years do not have a job right now, but today I am going to focus on the employers.  Big corporate giants all over America are in deep, deep financial trouble, and this is going to result in a tremendous wave of layoffs in the coming months.

We should rejoice that U.S. stocks have rebounded a bit in the short-term, but the euphoria in the markets is not doing anything to stop the wave of corporate defaults that is starting to hit Wall Street like a freight train.  Zero Hedge is reporting that we have not seen this many corporate defaults since the extremely painful year of 2009…

While many were looking forward to the weekend in last week’s holiday-shortened week for some overdue downtime, the CEOs of five, mostly energy, companies had nothing but bad news for their employees and shareholders: they had no choice but to throw in the towel and file for bankruptcy.

And, as Bloomberg reports, with last week’s five defaults, the 2016 to date total is now 31, the highest since 2009 when there were 42 company defaults, according to Standard & Poor’s. Four of the defaults in the week ended March 23 were by U.S. issuers including UCI Holdings Ltd. and Peabody Energy Corp., the credit rating company said.

And by all indications, what we have seen so far is just the beginning.  According to Wolf Richter, the average rating on U.S. corporate debt is already lower than it was at any point during the last financial crisis…

Credit rating agencies, such as Standard & Poor’s, are not known for early warnings. They’re mired in conflicts of interest and reluctant to cut ratings for fear of losing clients. When they finally do warn, it’s late and it’s feeble, and the problem is already here and it’s big.

So Standard & Poor’s, via a report by S&P Capital IQ, just warned about US corporate borrowers’ average credit rating, which at “BB,” and thus in junk territory, hit a record low, even “below the average we recorded in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 credit crisis.”

What all of this tells us is that we are in the early stages of an absolutely epic financial meltdown.

Meanwhile, we continue to get more indications that the real economy is slowing down significantly.  According to the Atlanta Fed, U.S. GDP growth for the first quarter is now expected to come in at just 0.6 percent, and Moody’s Analytics is projecting a similar number…

First-quarter growth is now tracking at just 0.9 percent, after new data showed surprising weakness in consumer spending and a wider-than-expected trade gap.

According to the CNBC/Moody’s Analytics rapid update, economists now see the sluggish growth pace based on already reported data, down from 1.4 percent last week.

Of course if the government was actually using honest numbers, people wouldn’t be talking about the potential start of a new recession.  Instead, they would be talking about the deepening of a recession that never ended.

We are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble the world has ever experienced.  For decades, the United States has been running up government debt, corporate debt and consumer debt.  Our trade deficits have been bigger than anything the world has ever seen before, and our massively inflated standard of living was funded by an ever increasing pile of IOUs.  I love how Doug Noland described this in his recent piece…

With U.S. officials turning their backs on financial excesses, Bubble Dynamics and unrelenting Current Account Deficits, I expected the world to lose its appetite for U.S. financial claims. After all, how long should the world be expected to trade real goods and services for endless U.S. IOUs?

As it turned out, rather than acting to discipline the profligate U.S. Credit system, the world acquiesced to Bubble Dynamics. No one was willing to be left behind. Along the way it was learned that large reserves of U.S. financial assets were integral to booming financial inflows and attendant domestic investment and growth. The U.S. has now run persistently large Current Account Deficits for going on 25 years.

Seemingly the entire globe is now trapped in a regime of unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus required to levitate a world with unmatched debt and economic imbalances. History has seen nothing comparable. And I would strongly argue that the consequences of Bubbles become much more problematic over time. The longer excesses persist the deeper the structural impairment.

As this bubble bursts, we are going to endure a period of adjustment unlike anything America has ever known before.  I talk about the pain coming to America in my new book entitled “The Rapture Verdict” which is currently the #1 new release in Christian eschatology on Amazon.com.  To be honest, I don’t know if any of us really understands the horror that is coming to this nation in the years ahead.  None of us have ever experienced anything similar to it, so we don’t really have a frame of reference to imagine what it will be like.

This spike in corporate debt defaults is a major league red flag.  Since the last financial crisis, our big corporations went on a massive debt binge, and now they are starting to pay the price.

We never seem to learn from the errors of the past.  Instead of learning our lessons the last time around, we just went out and made even bigger mistakes.

I am afraid that history is going to judge us rather harshly.

Those that are waiting for the next great financial crisis to begin can quit waiting, because it is already happening right in front of our eyes.

If you believe that the temporary rebound of U.S. stocks is somehow going to change the trajectory of where things are heading, you are going to end up deeply, deeply disappointed.

Credit to Economic Collapse

"Europe Is Burning" Nigel Farage Slams Merkel's Migration Maelstrom

From ISIS marches in Germany to refugees "doing normal manly things" to women in Sweden, UKIP leader Nigel Farage confronts Angela Merkel and her peers in the European parliament over their dreadfully misguided immigration policies. 

"Europe is burning," he exclaims, adding that - just like the central-bankers of the world - their solution is insanely simple-minded: "Europe isn't working, so we must have more Europe." The only hope lies, he adds, in the British referendum showing the rest of Europe it is possible to take back control of its own borders.

Credit to Zero Hedge

HORRIFIC ECONOMIC DATA & GOLD CARTEL LOSING CONTROL

The Undeniable Reasons Why Civil War Is Nea

 

According to Harry Dent,” in 1929, the top 1% held 50% of the wealth, but they lost their grip on it. By 1976, they only held 24% of the wealth. Then they regained some of that lost wealth, holding 50% again by 2007″. I would add that something very disturbing is at work, today, as opposed to how things were in 1929. What is different is that the American corporate structure is based upon the concepts of merger acquisition and subsidiary holdings. When factors in what one controls, as opposed to what one owns, it is easy to see that the bulk of the American people are left to fight over the meager crumbs that criminal elite leave on the floor and this is why America is so angry. Yes, it took someone like Donalt Trump to galvanize America.  However,  a simple  examination

cWehave not econoTrickle down economics have stopped trickling. The American middle class is the most downtrodden in the modern world. Our children, in large part, have little to no future. They sense it too as so many flock to support the “something for nothing candidate”, Bernie Sanders. The big lure for our Sanders-fascinated youth is largely predicated on “universal free college”. Even if this could be successfully funded, and it cannot be, what would our youth, armed with their college degrees, find for employment? The jobs and their future have been sucked out of the country. This is why there are 315,000 waiters and waitresses with college degrees.

Bernie Sanders in Phoenix, tells it like it is! We have no economic future, but unfortunately for Sanders, socialism is not the answer.

When one looks at the chart, listed above, isn’t it interesting that China’s middle class is better off than the American middle class? This makes Trump the right man for the right time.

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

At the conclusion of World War II, the United States was the only major nation that did not lie in ruins. America emerged from the war with an economy and an enriched middle class like the world has ever seen. In 1945, the United States possessed 90% of the world’s phones, automobiles and income levels of the middle class were rising faster than the one percent. Americans went from living in Depression-era-Hooverville shanty towns to living in privately owned track homes following World War II.

The problem with the American middle class is that they expected the gravy train to continue and they proved to be “easy pickings” by the corporations and the government that the corporations learned how to better control. The 1960 Presidential election was the first to be covered on television, and that took money and the American system of politics, which allows legalized bribery (i.e. campaign contributions). This fact, coupled with the fact that American factory workers soon began to make $20 per hour with benefits became unacceptable to the corporations when they learned that they hire the “low hanging fruit” workers for pennies on the dollar, with no benefits and no EPA expensive work place protections.

There was only one barrier that the corporations had to overcome in order for them to drastically reduce their overhead and that was to eliminate all tariffs on these cheaply produced products coming back into the country. Thus, corporations with roots in America and in Europe began to think about unions, no not automobile worker unions. I am speaking about the European Union and the North American Union where the goal was to eliminate all tariffs while the corporations sought out cheap labor AND the duty free importation of products destined to be bought by the very people whose jobs were being eliminated by these unions and this was all being accomplished by free trade agreements (i.e. NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, TPP).

The City of Detroit Is the Barometer of the Health of the American Middle Class Worker

Detroit is America’s first Third World city, but certainly not the last.

In the 1960’s, Detroit was a vibrant city of over two million people. Collectively, these two million people had the highest standard of living in North America for any segment of any middle class worker on the continent. But when NAFTA was born, Detroit died. Now the city is home for 700,000 beleaguered Americans with the lowest standard of living for any major city in the United States and

this once proud city is razing entire neighborhoods of abandoned houses, block after block. Detroit is home to the worst school system in America. Most police departments close at 5pm and they will only dispatch officers in relation to the most serious crimes. Today, Detroit looks more like Caracas instead of an American city. Cleveland and St. Louis are on the verge of falling off of the financial cliff. This is all due to free trade agreements. Detroit automobile manufacturing jobs are now located in Guadalajara. At the height American manufacturing, in 1968, we now see that 86% of all American manufacturing jobs have relocated outside of the country. This is how the American middle class is in last place in relation to the middle class’ sharing of wealth among all developed nations. 

NAFTA: The end of the American Dream. NAFTA took the American worker from first to worst in the developed world.

NAFTA also produced another telling effect and that was illegal immigration on steroids where today, an estimated 30 million illegal immigrants are taking jobs away, in large numbers from the American lower-middle-class. It was not possible to export ALL the jobs. Therefore, the globalists that seek destroy America as a prerequisite move on the way to a New World Order, had to bring millions of workers to America with the goal of displacing as many American workers as possible as well as depressing the former wage scale. Yes, we need immigrants because of a 1.8 birthrate. However, we do not need illegal immigration with pitfalls that have accompanied it, namely, the terror threat.

Europe Is Ablaze and America Will Be Very Soon

Also, this is what we are seeing in Europe, as Europe will eventually lose its middle class as millions of unsolicited immigrants pour into Europe bringing with them future promises of middle class poverty and widespread terrorism directed at the original inhabitants. Three photos describe what is happening in Europe with regard to its immigration problem and soon, this will be America’s number one issues as well.

The Paris Attacks

Mass terrorism, the consequence of uncontrolled immigration.

There will be more terrorist attacks resulting from unchecked immigration with “refugees” who are not screened.

The  Terrorists Are Already In Our Backyard

Can America read? This ISIS sign and more signs like it appeared in the Ferguson riots. I feel like I am watching a remake of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Very soon, America will be Europe and Europe will be no more.

The 2016 Election Is About the Continuation of NWO Status Quo

 the site of

Liberty University was the site of the Cruz decision to run for office. Here is pictured with globalist wife, Heidi, of the CFR and Goldman Sachs.

The number two front-runner for the Republican nomination for President, Ted Cruz, is sleeping with America’s enemy. She has a name and it is Heidi. If you think this sounds harsh, look at the following:

“In the 2007 bestselling book “The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada,”Pastor was dubbed “the father of the North American Union” for the influence the CFR report had on a tripartite summit meeting between the heads of state of the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The meeting culminated in President George W. Bush declaring without congressional approval the formation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

On the CFR website, at that time, Heidi Cruz is listed as one of 31 members of the Task Force on the Future of North America” (i.e. The North American Union).

Gary Franchi of Next News Network has weighed in the topic of Heidi Cruz as well.

For Every Action, There Is An Opposite and Equal Reaction and His Name Is Donald Trump

The strong feelings of the American middle class has led to the rise of Donald Trump. Trump is filling a vacuum of leadership that has been missing for sometime.

The election of Donald Trump is not likely. As Trump promises to continue the rhetoric of a 35% tax on all imports, thus brining jobs back to America cannot be allowed to happen and stopping illegal immigration. The building of a wall and the stopping of illegal immigration cannot be allowed to happen in order for the plan to regionalize the planet under various unions as a subgoal on the road to planetary subjugation by the criminal elite that are attempting to run this planet.

Conclusion

What Trump has accomplished is that he has galvanized and given shape to the first real large-scale resistance to the New World Order. When Trump is finally derailed as a Presidential candidate, America’s frustrations will boil over. Let’s not forget that we live in a country with 300 million guns. The frustration level will boil over and will first appear as civil disobedience on the scale of several Ferguson riots. However, things will soon escalate and eventually widespread violence will rear its ugly head. This is the micro analysis of the current state of affairs. Harry Dent has an interesting macro view of our present time. Dent feels that America has entered an unmistakable pattern of revolution that occurs about every 250 years. The coming conflict is inevitable as America’s anger will be released when Trump is deposed.

In future articles, I will take a look at how the forces of the New World Order have already aligned to deal with the coming civil war.

Credit to Common Sense

Planet Nine Or Planet X? New Evidence Of A Mystery Object On The Periphery Of Our Solar System

An astronomer at Caltech says that new evidence has been discovered that indicates that there is a massive planet lurking somewhere on the outer edges of our solar system.  It has been dubbed “Planet Nine”, but that is only because Pluto is not considered to be a planet anymore.  If we included Pluto, this new astronomical body would be known as “Planet Ten” or “Planet X”, but scientists try very hard to avoid using the phrase “Planet X” because it is associated with so many “conspiracy theories”.  Based on the new evidence that has emerged, it is believed that Planet Nine is approximately 20 times further away from the sun than Neptune is, and it is being projected that it would take somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years for this planet to make one trip around the sun.

Perhaps due in part to my legal training, I have always been skeptical when it comes to things like this.  Whenever anyone has tried to tell me about Planet X in the past, I have always wanted to see proof.  And of course solid proof regarding Planet X has always seemed to be in short supply.

But there was a big change in that regard during the month of January.  The following comes from the Independent…

Objects have been spotted moving around unusually at the edge of our solar system. And the best explanation for the strange orbits is the mysterious Planet Nine, according to one of the scientists who has argued that the hidden planet exists.

In January, a pair of scientists argued that they had found another planet, based on calculations using objects at the distant end of our solar system. By studying the orbit of six objects in the Kuiper Belt – a mysterious area thought to be filled of astroids and other icy objects – they argued that they were being affected by something large and previously unknown.

At that time, scientists were telling us that this newly discovered object was likely 10 times more massive than the Earth.

So we are definitely not talking about some small piece of rock.

Now, astronomer Mike Brown of Caltech has come forward with new evidence that this massive planetary body exists.  The following comes from the Daily Mail…

Last week, Mike Brown tweeted a photo that shows the plot of a newly discovered eccentric Kuiper Belt Object (KBO).

In the post, Brown wrote,: Hey Planet Nine fans, a new eccentric KBO was discovered. And it is exactly where Planet Nine says it should be.’

The KBO in question is ‘uo3L91,’ shown with a solid blue line in the graph. Brown writes that the slide comes from a recent talk at the Seti Institute.

This discovery was made from an Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS) on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, according to a subsequent tweet.

Of course it is still too early to say anything really definitive about this new object.

There are still plenty of skeptics, and back in January NASA refused to confirm or deny that this new planet even exists…

In a YouTube video, Jim Green, director of planetary science at Nasa addressed the new findings.

‘The January 20 paper in the Astronomical Journal is fueling our interest in planetary exploration,’ Green said.

‘Stimulating a healthy debate that’s part of the scientific process.

‘It is not, however, the detection of a new planet. It’s too early to say with certainty that there’s a so-called ‘Planet X’ out there.

He pledged Nasa experts would take part in the process to try and find it.

Personally, I would not be surprised at all if it turns out that there are numerous large objects out there that the public does not know anything about right now.

For years, there has been rampant speculation that an astronomical body known as “Planet X” would soon approach the Earth and cause unprecedented natural disasters.  Many of these predictions that have included specific dates have turned out to be false alarms.  But that doesn’t mean that something like this will not eventually happen someday.

The following excerpt from an Inquisitr article summarizes what some people believe about Planet X…

According to conspiracy theorists, recently leaked secret NASA “Planet X” files reveal that the agency is aware that the gravitational influence of Planet X had disrupted the orbits of other planets during a previous passage into the inner solar system hundreds of years ago; and that the next disruptive passage into the inner solar system is imminent.

The approach of the mysterious Planet X is currently sending waves of charged “plasmatic energy particles” through our solar system. The flow of energy will finally disrupt the “core flows” of the Earth and trigger catastrophic changes in Earth’s climate.

We have been feeling the disruptive effects of the inbound rogue Planet X since 1996 in the form of increased seismic and volcanic activities, freak weather patterns, and natural disasters.

I don’t know if any of that is true or untrue.

But what I do know is that the Bible tells us that there will be “signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars” just prior to the return of Jesus Christ.  This is something that I discuss in my new book entitled “The Rapture Verdict” which is currently the #1 new release in Christian eschatology on Amazon.com.

Will some giant astronomical body play a role in causing those signs?

I don’t know.

However, without a doubt I will continue watching for new evidence of unusual things happening in our solar system.

And it is true that heavenly bodies can have a tremendous influence on our planet.  Over the past few years, I have detailed how earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters have been increasing in number and intensity.  How much of this activity can be attributed to forces outside of our own planet is certainly up for debate.

Just like you, I am still learning.  And so far, I haven’t seen any solid evidence that an encounter with a giant celestial body known as “Planet X” is imminent, but it is entirely possible that I could come across something tomorrow that could completely change my mind.

So what do you think about all of this talk regarding “Planet X”?

Credit to End of the American Dream

Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake: "We All Lie For The CIA"

With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naive many Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes, Dr. Ulfkotte went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.

He recently made an appearance on RT news to share these facts:

I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.

But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia — this is a point of no return and I’m going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe.

It’s important to keep in mind that Dr. Ulfkotte is not the only person making these claims; multiple reporters have done the same and this kind of truthfulness is something the world needs more of.

One (out of many) great examples of a whistleblowing reporter is investigative journalist and former CBC News reporter Sharyl Attkisson.

She delivered a hard-hitting TEDx talk showing how fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and distort media messages.

Another great example is Amber Lyon, a three-time Emmy award winning journalist at CC, who said that they are routinely paid by the US government and foreign governments to selectively report and even distort information on certain events. She has also indicated that the government has editorial control over content.

Ever since Operation Mockingbird, a CIA-based initiative to control mainstream media, more and more people are expressing their concern that what we see in the media is nothing short of brainwashing.

This is also evident by blatant lies that continue to spam the TV screen, especially when it comes to topics such as health, food, war (‘terrorism‘), poverty, and more.

Things have not changed, in fact, when in comes to mainstream media distorting information and telling lies. They have gotten much worse in recent years, in fact, so it is highly encouraging that more people are starting to see through these lies, even without the help of whistleblowers like Dr. Ulfkotte.

One great example is the supposed ‘war on terror,’ or ‘false flag terrorism.’ There are evenWikileaks documents alluding to the fact that the United States government planned to “retaliate and cause pain” to countries refusing GMOs.

Mainstream media’s continual support of GMOs rages on, despite the fact that a number of countries are now banning these products.

The list of lies goes on and on. It’s time to turn off your T.V. and do your own research if you are curious about what is happening on our planet. It’s time to wake up.


Credit to Zero Hedge

Big Brother Rising: US Turns Into Full-Blown 'Surveillance State'

The recent revelation that the NSA has plans to share intercepted private communications with other domestic intelligence agencies has caused a massive backlash, with many viewing the shift as “unconstitutional.” Two experts join Radio Sputnik’s Brian Becker to discuss if the policy is just a “giant fishing expedition for law enforcement.”

The agency’s plan circumvented the US Congress and was revealed in a New York Times report last month. In response, a number of US lawmakers wrote a letter to the NSA director to express their concerns.

Speaking to Loud & Clear host Brian Becker, Bryan Ford, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, stresses that the legislative branch should not be left in the dark about any government policies.

“We shouldn’t be finding out about what’s happening with the NSA form the New York Times,” Declan McCullagh, a technology journalist, adds. “It’s the Authority Oversight Committee. They should be finding it from the NSA itself. There is a failure of Democratic enforcement here.”

Credit to Sputnik

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/us/20160329/1037113909/us-surveillance-state.html#ixzz44FuTRULJ

MASSIVE KILLER OF THE MIND

Three-year-old girl beheaded in 'random' attack outside subway in Taipei

A three-year-old girl has been decapitated in an apparently random attack outside a subway station in Taipei.

According to Taiwanese media, a man identified only by his surname Wang has been arrested following the attack and remanded in custody.

The girl was riding her bicycle a short distance in front of her mother when the man approached, and the mother was quoted by the TVBS broadcaster as saying she initially thought he was going to help her cycle up the hill.

When he pulled out a large knife and attacked the girl, however, she was unable to prevent the attack.

Local media said the man was tackled by passers-by and police were called shortly before noon on Monday.

TV footage showed an angry crowd gathered outside the police station where the 33-year-old suspect was being questioned.

The government-run Central News Agency said he had an arrest record for drug crimes and had been treated for mental illness.

His father, quoted by the Eastern Broadcasting company, said he lived at home and was unemployed.

Credit to The Independent.co.uk