A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck under the sea south of Japan on Sunday, shaking buildings in the capital but causing no apparent damage or tsunami.Earthquakes are a fact of life in countries that border the 'Ring of Fire' in the Pacific Ocean. CBC
The quake struck near the uninhabited island of Torishima in the Pacific Ocean, about 600 kilometres south of Tokyo, and its epicentre was about 370 kilometres below the sea, the Meterological Agency said. It did not generate a tsunami.
Buildings in the Tokyo area shook, but no damage or injuries were reported. Express trains in northern and central Japan were suspended temporarily for safety checks but later resumed.
No abnormalities were reported at power plants, including the crippled nuclear power plant in northeast Japan hit by the March earthquake and tsunami, public broadcaster NHK reported.
A massive earthquake and tsunami March 11 left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing. Japan, which lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire, is one of the world's most seismically active countries.
CBC News
Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing. The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012. The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden. Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades. Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families. Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace. As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting pooreras a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.
Today I went over to Safeway and I was absolutely appalled at the prices. I honestly don't know how most families make it these days. I ended up paying over 140 dollars for about two-thirds of a cart of food. That was after I "saved" 67 dollars on sale items.
When the cost of the basic things that we need - housing, food, gas, electricity - go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer.
Sadly, if you look at the long-term numbers, some very clear negative trends emerge....
-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.
-The rate of inflation continues to outpace the rate that our wages are going up.
-American consumers are going into almost unbelievable amounts of debt.
-The number of Americans that are considered to be "poor" continues to grow.
-The number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for financial assistance continues to go up.
After you read the information below, it should become abundantly clear that the U.S. middle class is in a whole heap of trouble.
The following are 30 statistics that show that the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012....
#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.
#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are working.
#3 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.
#4 Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#5 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in "the fretful zone just above it".
#6 According to that same article in the New York Times, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or "near poverty", and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or "near poverty".
#7 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger. Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.
#8 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.
#9 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today. Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.
#10 Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns. Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent. In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty.
#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.
#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by18,000% since 1913. The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.
#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.
#14 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#15 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years. During 2010 it got even worse. Last year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.
#16 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#17 Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace. The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.
#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#20 The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.
#21 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation in the United States would be well over 10 percent.
#22 If the number of Americans considered to be "looking for work" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.
#23 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012. Most of that debt is owed by members of the middle class.
#24 Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.
#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.
#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods". By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".
#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.
#29 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#30 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5%of all the wealth in the United States.
Sadly, this article could have been much, much longer. There are so many other statistics about the middle class that could have been included.
For even more insane economic numbers that show just how dramatically the U.S. economy is declining, just check out this article: "50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe".
What is even more frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get.
We have already had "the economic recovery", such as it was.
Now we are heading for another major financial crisis. Just like back in 2008, the entire world is going to feel the pain.
But we never recovered from the last financial crisis. We are like a boxer that is not ready to handle another blow.
And who is going to get hurt the most? It will be those at the bottom of the food chain of course. Tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty will experience a massive amount of pain, and millions more Americans will fall out of the middle class and will join them.
If you have a good job, do your best to hang on to it. If you don't have a job, do your best to get one while you still can. Jobs will become very precious in the years ahead.
But also try to do what you can to become less dependent on the system. Almost anyone can find ways to make some extra money on the side. Yes, it will likely cut into your television time. If someday you were to lose your job you don't want to be left with zero income.
Right now, the U.S. economy is slowly dying and as time goes by the number of middle class Americans it will be able to support will continue to decrease.
Yes, it is like a perverse game of musical chairs, but this is where we are at.
I encourage all of you to think about how you plan to make it through the collapse that is ahead.
Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anyone.
But if we all start planning for the storm that is ahead, and if we get others around us to wake up as well, that is going to do a great deal of good in the long run.
(Reuters) - Spain's new government said on Friday that this year's budget deficit would be much larger than expected and announced a slew of surprise tax hikes and wage freezes that could drag the country back to the centre of the euro zone debt crisis.
In its first decrees since sweeping to victory in November, the centre-right government said the public deficit for 2011 would come in at 8 percent of gross domestic product, well above an official target of 6 percent.
It announced initial public spending cuts of 8.9 billion euros ($11.5 billion) and tax hikes aimed at bringing in an additional 6 billion euros a year to tackle the shortfall.
"This is just the beginning ... We're facing an extraordinary and unexpected situation, forcing us to take extraordinary and unexpected measures," Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said.
Spain has been under market scrutiny over its ability to control its public finances, and Madrid has seen risk premiums soar to record highs on contagion fears as the euro zone debt crisis spread.
Ten days ago the Treasury said the central government budget deficit was on course to meet a full-year target of 4.8 percent of GDP, which analysts said would push Spain's overall public deficit above its 6 percent target for the year.
But the scale of the overshoot took some economists by surprise and led them to forecast a deeper recession, ending the year on a downbeat note for the euro zone as a whole.
"This is a strong shock. I didn't expect this kind of deficit increase. How can we achieve the objective using personal income taxes and capital taxes? This means making the recession much worse," economist at Barcelona ESADE university Robert Tornabell.
While Italy's debt mountain has been the biggest concern in financial markets in recent months, Spain had been seen as faring somewhat better. Measures taken by the previous Socialist government, while costing it the election, have kept the markets from pushing Spanish yields to unsustainable levels.
But as recession looms across the euro zone, the new government faces a rocky few years. After Friday's initial round of tax hikes and spending cuts, it plans to unveil a final 2012 budget by the end of March.
The Socialists cut the budget shortfall from 11.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, and the conservatives must take up the baton and bring the deficit down to 4.4 percent in 2012 and 3 percent in 2013.
If the final 2011 deficit hits the 8 percent mark, as the conservatives say, the government will need to make total savings worth more than 35 billion euros in 2012 to meet the official target.
TAX THE RICH
Spain's economy, the fourth-largest in the euro zone, is likely to have shrunk as much as 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said this week, and many economists expect output to keep shrinking in early 2012.
The collapse of the property market after the 2007 global credit crunch and shrinking consumer confidence have hit the economic cornerstones of construction and services, leaving Spain struggling to grow since emerging from recession in 2010.
Now, the euro zone debt crisis and fear of economic slump across the bloc has hit Spanish export growth, the only element of the economy to promote growth through 2011.
The tax hikes announced by the conservatives on Friday, which they have always said would be counterproductive to a struggling economy, will be aimed at the country's wealthiest.
The government froze civil servants wages, but also pledged to help the country's poorest by raising pensions and holding electricity tariffs steady for small consumers.
Beyond deficit reduction, the new government said it would concentrate its first few measures on the broken labor market, which has left Spain with an unemployment rate more than double the European Union average, and the banking system.
Spain has rapidly lost competitiveness since the birth of the single currency bloc as wages have followed a higher-than-average inflation rate, a situation the conservatives have pledged to changed through labor reform.
Spanish wages have risen by 20.8 percent in 2003-2008 compared to just 9.7 percent in Germany according to data from the IESE business school.
The government is in talks with unions and employers' representatives to produce a reform plan in the first two weeks of January.
Meanwhile, the banking system has been badly hit by the burst property bubble and new Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said the banks must be forced to announce losses on the housing market in a new step in the ongoing restructuring plan.
But some economists say that while Spain must reform and cut costs, its future depends on decisions by euro zone leaders on creating a viable backstop for troubled regional economies.
"There is very little that the Rajoy government can do on its own to bring down Spain's borrowing costs significantly, not least as its fiscal policies are going to depress growth further. The real challenge in Spain is to get the economy moving," said Spiro Sovereign Strategy's Nicholas Spiro.
LONDON — At least one country will pull out of the euro area this year as the breakup of the single currency begins, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
“It now looks as though 2012 will be the year when the euro starts to break up,” the London-based CEBR said in a statement today. “It is not a done deal yet — we are only forecasting a 60 percent probability — but our forecast is that by the end of the year at least one country (and probably more) will leave.”
CEBR said the likelihood of a euro breakup in the next decade has increased to 99 percent.
European leaders return to work this week seeking to buy time for the Spanish and Italian governments to wrest control over their debt and rescue the euro from fragmentation in its 10th anniversary year.
Ten years after euro bank notes replaced national currencies on Jan. 1, 2002, the euro has for the first time recorded two consecutive annual losses against the U.S. dollar while plunging to a record low against the yen. That raises the pressure on leaders as they struggle to hold the monetary union together in the face of credit downgrades, European Union splits and a looming recession that might compound rising debt.
The crisis may force “most of the French and German banking systems” to seek bailouts to compensate for writedowns on their holdings of sovereign debt, CEBR said. “They might even be nationalized as well. Many other European banks will go back into crisis.”
The euro was trading at $1.2946 at 1:26 p.m. in Brussels, down 0.1 percent on the day.
Financial Post
Ministers yesterday said they were "alarmed" by the figures and warned that millions of British workers facing a "poorer future" when they retire.
The new analysis by the Department for Work and Pensions found that the number of working-age people saving into a private pension fell from 46 per cent in 2000 to 38 per cent last year.
The fall was most dramatic in people under the age of 40, while men are less likely to have saved for their retirement than women.
An estimated 11.6 million people currently have private pensions, meaning that millions fewer people are saving for one than a decade ago.
Steve Webb, the Pensions minister, said: “With fewer people saving into a pension, lower annuity rates and an average of 23 years in retirement, many people could face a poorer future in their later lives.”
He said that the “alarming” figures underscore why the Government’s pension reforms will be "vital”.
From next year, companies will be forced to start automatically enrolling their staff in workplace pension schemes. This will give millions of people access to a pension for the first time.
The proportion of men saving for their retirement has fallen from 52 per cent to 39 per cent over the last decade. Among people aged between 20 and 39, pension provision fell from 43 per cent to 31 per cent.
Mr Webb said: “We simply must put a stop this trend and get people saving. Automatic enrolment, beginning for the largest employers later this year, will get millions of people saving, many for the first time.”
The Department for Work and Pensions found that the highest pension provision in the UK is in the South East, where 43 per cent of people are saving into a private retirement fund, and Scotland, where 42 per cent are.
The lowest pension participation is in Northern Ireland, London and West Midlands, where around a third of people save into a pension.
Experts have warned that the “golden age” of pensions is over, and that millions of Britons will be left with measly retirement pots.
Joanne Segars, chief executive of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), which represents the UK’s pensions industry, said earlier this month that the UK “simply isn’t salting enough away for its old age”.
Mark Hyde Harrison, the NAPF’s chairman, recently said that the pension industry has declined markedly.
He argued that defined contribution pension schemes, into which about five million Britons save, were structured in an "inefficient and wasteful" way.
Mr Hyde Harrison said: “The collective view is that our golden age of pensions is gone, and we are on course for potential failure.
The Government recently announced changes to the pensions system to make it easier for people who have moved house or job to be “re-united” with small workplace pension pots that they might have lost trace of.
Mr Webb said that around £3 billion of unclaimed pensions are sitting in UK pension schemes.
The Telegraph
Wolfgang Schauble said he was confident that the currency union will survive and the political measures will underpin the shattered eurozone economies. "We will be far enough along in the next 12 months that we will have banished the dangers of contagion and stabilised the eurozone," he told newspaper Handelsblatt.
As the euro plunged against the yen to its lowest level for 10 years, Mr Schauble was reported as saying he could rule out the eurozone breaking up: "According to everything that I know at the moment, yes."
Terry Smith, chief executive of Tullett Prebon, said the Mr Schauble was "talking his own book" in hoping the current agreements will save the euro. "The German finance minister has not said anything substantive which changes the situation," he told The Daily Telegraph. "If the eurozone crisis could be solved by confident pronouncements, it would already be saved. I would be shocked if Greece does not leave the eurozone in 2012 and this does not lead the markets to test the resolve to defend the positions of Portugal, Spain, Italy and, ultimately, France."
Jurgen Michels, an economist at Citigroup, said that Mr Schauble was being "optimistic" as "we expect a severe recession in the euro area and sharp contractions in the periphery countries including Italy and Spain – 2012 will be a very difficult year for the euro area."
Nicolas Spiro, a sovereign risk consultant, said it was more likely that the crisis would escalate because leaders have "failed to meaningfully address the issue that concerns investors the most: the solvency of governments".
Raoul Ruparel, from the think-tank Open Europe, said Mr Schauble was trying to "talk up" the rescue processes ahead of the next round of meetings in January. "It's the usual rhetoric over substance," he said.
The euro, whose notes and coins were launched 10 years ago today, fell below 100 yen for the first time in 10 years. Analysts warned that the currency, which has been unexpectedly robust throughout the crisis, might be buckling under the pressure. On the bondmarkets, the yield on Italian 10-year bonds finished the year just above the 7pc danger level.
In Spain, the scale of the crisis was underscored by Mariano Rajoy who forecast a bigger-than-expected budget deficit for 2011. After his second cabinet meeting, the newly elected prime minister said he expected the budget deficit to be around 8pc of GDP, up from the previous government's target of 6pc. The gap is twice the shortfall forecast for Italy and more than four times that of Germany. Mr Rajoy said he would cut government spending by €8.9bn in the first quarter of 2012 and impose higher taxes on income, saving and higher-value properties.
Hungary passed laws for its central bank in a move that experts warned could jeopardise its chances of securing international bail-out funds if it needs them. Officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have warned about the rules which will undermine the independence of the central bank. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban the country would not bow to the "European fashion that the central bank must be in a sacred state of independence".
The Telegraph
One of the most frustrating issues to haunt the halls of alternative economic analysis is the threat of misrepresentative terminology. For instance, when the U.S. government decided to back the private Federal Reserve in lowering the interest rates on lending windows to European banks last month, they did not call this a bailout, even though that’s exactly what it was. They did not call it quantitative easing, or fiat printing, or a hyperinflationary landmine; rarely does bureaucracy ever apply honest terminology to their subversive activities. False terminology is the bane of every honest analyst, because in order for them to educate and awaken those who are unaware of the truth, they must first battle through the daunting muck of the general public’s horrifically improper perceptions and vocabulary.
The chain of financial events taking place over the past decade in Asia have been correspondingly mislabeled and misunderstood. What some economists see as total collapse is actually a new and decidedly prophetic (or engineered) transition. What some naively see as the “natural” progression of globalism, is actually a distinctly deliberate program of centralization meant to further the goals of world economic and political totalitarianism. Asia, and most especially China, is a Petri dish for elitist psychopaths. What we see as suffocating collectivism in this region of the world today is the exact social schematic intended for the West tomorrow. Call it whatever you will, but on the other side of the Pacific, like the eerie smile of a sinister clown, sits fabricated fate.
The genius of globalization is not in how it “works”, but in how it DOESN’T work. Globalization chains mismatched cultures together through circumstance and throws us into the deep end of the pool. If one sinks, we all sink, enslaving us with interdependency. The question one must ask, then, is if all sovereign economies are currently tied together in the same way? The answer is no, not anymore. Certain countries have moved to insulate themselves from the domino effect of debt implosion, one of the primary examples being China.
Since at least 2005, China has been taking the exact steps required to counter the brunt of a global debt collapse; not enough to make it untouchable, but enough that its infrastructure will survive. One could even surmise that China’s actions indicate a foreknowledge of the events that would eventually escalate in 2008. How they knew is hard to say, but if the available evidence causes you to lean towards collapse as a Hegelian creation (and it should if you are paying any attention), then China’s activity begins to make perfect sense. If a globalist insider told you that in a few short years the two most powerful financial empires in the world were going to topple like bowling pins under the weight of their own liabilities, what would you do? Probably separate yourself as much as possible from the diseased dynamic and construct your own replacement system. This is what China has done…
China started with the circulation of Yuan denominated bonds, like T-Bonds, meant to securitize Chinese debt, creating an outlet for the currency to go global. China’s considerable forex and bond reserves make this move a rather suspicious one. With so much savings at their disposal, why bother to issue bonds at all? Why threaten the traditional export based economy and the uneven trade advantage that the country had been thriving on for decades? The success of Chinese bonds would mean the internationalization of the Yuan, a floating valuation of the currency, and the loss of the desirable trade deficit with the U.S. Back in 2005, this all would surely seem like a novelty that was going nowhere fast. Of course, today China’s actions suggest an unprecedented push to convert to a consumer hub at the center of a massive trading bloc. To put it simply; China knew ahead of schedule that the U.S. was no longer going to be a viable customer, and reliance on such a country would spell disaster. They have been preparing to break away from America’s consumer markets and the dollar for some time.
In 2008, after China announced the use of the Yuan in cross border trade on a limited basis, I began to write about the possibility that China was preparing to break from the Greenback. For the past few years my primary focus in terms of finance has been the East as a kind of warning bell for the state of the global economy. In 2009 and 2010, it became absolutely clear that China (with the help of global corporate entities) was developing the skeleton of a new system; a trade network that that had the capacity to supplant the U.S. and end the dollar’s world reserve status.
Since then, Yuan bonds have spread across the planet, China has dropped the dollar in bilateral trade with Russia, the ASEAN trading bloc has formed into a tight shell of export partners, and that is just the beginning. Two major announcements in 2011 have solidified my belief that a complete dump of the dollar by eastern interests is near…
First was the announcement that China was actively and openly pursuing the establishment of a central bank for the whole of ASEAN, with the Yuan utilized as the reserve currency instead of the dollar:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-china-asean-financial-idUST...
This news, of course, has barely been reported on in the mainstream. As I discussed at the beginning of this article, the terminology surrounding economic developments has been diluted and twisted. When China states that an ASEAN central bank is in the works, we need to point out what this really means; the ASEAN trading bloc is about to become the Asian Union. The only missing piece of the puzzle is something that I have been warning about for at least a couple years, ever since my days at Neithercorp (see “Migration Of The Black Swans” as a recent example). This key catalyst is the inclusion of Japan in ASEAN, something which many said would take five to ten years to unfold. News released this Christmas speaks otherwise:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-25/china-japan-to-promote-direct-trading-of-currencies-to-cut-company-costs.html
Japan has indeed entered into an agreement to drop the dollar in currency exchange with China and has expressed interest in melting into ASEAN. Japan has also struck somewhat similar though slightly more limited deals with India, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines almost simultaneously:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/japan-india-seal-15-billion-currency-swap-arrangement-to-shore-up-rupee.html
This means that the two largest foreign holders of U.S. debt and Greenbacks will soon be in a position to tap into an export market far more profitable than that of America, and that all of this trade will be facilitated by currencies OTHER THAN THE DOLLAR. It means the end of the dollar as the world reserve and probably the end of the dollar as we know it.
Japan’s inclusion in this process was inevitable. With its economy already in steep deflationary decline, the Yen skyrocketing in value against the dollar making exports difficult, as well as the ongoing nuclear meltdown problem at Fukushima, the island nation has been on the edge of complete collapse. Its only option, therefore, is to sink into the chaotic sees, or float like a buoy tied to an Asian Union. There can be absolutely no doubt now that Japan will soon implement the latter solution.
The dilemma at this point becomes one of timing. Now that we are certain that two of the largest economies in the world are about the dump the Greenback, what signals can we watch when preparing for the event? My belief is that the trigger will come squarely from the U.S. and the Federal Reserve, either as legislation to heavily tax Asian imports, a renewed threat of further credit downgrades like that which S&P brought down in August, or the announcement of more open quantitative easing. Any and all of these issues could very well arise in the course of the next 6-12 months, QE3 being a basic no-brainer. ASEAN could, certainly, drop the dollar immediately after their central bank apparatus is put in place, resulting in a much more volatile trade war atmosphere (also useful for full global centralization later down the road). The point is, we are truly at a place in our economic life when ANYTHING is possible.
My hope is that as our predictions in the alternative economic community are proven correct with every passing quarter, more Americans will take note, and prepare. I can say quite confidently that we have entered the first stages of the catastrophic phase of the economic implosion. All the fantastic and terrible consequences many once considered theory or science fiction, are about to become reality. Practical solutions have been offered by myself and many others. The only thing left now is to take action, or ride the tidal wave of destruction like so much driftwood. We can help to determine the outcome, or we can be idle spectators. In everything, there is a choice…
Zero Hedge
