The Total Collapse » financial crisis

Shocking Collapse Of World Economy Warned Is Underway

TheTotalCollapse.com — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:39:54 +0000

A grim report just issued by the Finance Ministry that is circulating in the Kremlin today says the United States Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS) has ground to a virtual halt signaling that a major global economic collapse is currently underway and could very well likely enter into the dreaded “freefall zone.”

Virtually unknown to all but the global financial elite, CHIPS is the main privately held clearing house for large-value transactions in the United States, settling well over $1 trillion a day in around 250,000 interbank payments that together with the Fedwire Funds Service, which is operated by the Federal Reserve Banks, forms the primary US network for large-value domestic and international US dollar payments where it has a market share of around 96%.

The cause underlying the collapse of CHIPS, this report says, is due to the “unprecedented” demand for immediate liquidity relief being sought by the largest banks in the US and EU that are being crushed under of the combined debt of both the United States and Europe said to total near $39 trillion.

Important to note is that what is currently happening is a virtual repeat of the 2008 Financial Crisis that the United States Senate’s Levin–Coburn Report found “was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.”

Grimly echoing this Ministry report is the latest data [see chart 2^nd photo left, or click on link] from The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) that is a number issued daily by the London-based Baltic Exchange and shows it in freefall dropping 65% in the past 30 days alone, a terrifying amount of loss not seen since the dark days of late 2008.

Not restricted to Baltic Sea countries, the BDI tracks worldwide international shipping prices of various dry bulk cargoes that has collapsed so severely global shipping has all but ceased thus leaving our world’s largest transport ships anchored and empty off the coast of Singapore in what is described as“the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history whose numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined.”

During the 2008 Financial Crisis an outright global economic catastrophe was only averted after the US Federal Reserve secretly gave out to US banks and corporations, and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland, over $16 trillion that was only discovered due to an amendment to the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed by the American Congress that called for their being audited for the first time in their 99-year history.

Note: To place that $16 trillion into perspective, remember that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States is only $14.12 trillion, and the entire national debt of theUnited States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion.

Curiously, the aforementioned amendment to the Dodd-Frank law only called only for a one-time audit of any emergency lending facility established by the Federal Reserve since 1 December 2007 and ending with the date of enactment of the law when it was signed by President Obama on 21 July 2010 thus keeping hidden from the American people who is getting their money.

To if anyone in the world, even the powerful US Federal Reserve, has the power to avert this coming catastrophe, this Ministry report warns, it is unlikely due to the cascading collapse of the global derivative market due to the mounting gridlock in liquidity that US billionaire and Obama confidant Warren Buffet warned back in 2003 were “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

Though the word “derivatives” sounds complicated and technical, understanding them is really not that hard. A derivative is essentially a fancy way of saying that a bet has been made. Originally, these bets were designed to hedge risk, but today the derivatives market has mushroomed into a mountain of speculation unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Estimates of the notional value of the worldwide derivatives market go from $600 trillion all the way up to $1.4 quadrillion.

$1.4 Quadrillion is roughly: -40 TIMES THE WORLD’S STOCK MARKET. -10 TIMES the value of EVERY STOCK & EVERY BOND ON THE PLANET. -23 TIMES WORLD GDP.

Failing to be noticed by the Western peoples about this global economic collapse is that it has been, in all probability, a “planned event” due to occur so as to initiate a New World Order that has long been sought after by the elites, but was condemned by the ancients who warned that the uniting of our world as an economic dictatorship would lead to every human being having to obtain the Mark of The Beast thus bringing this present age to its end.

In a Western world devoid of morality, and lacking the knowledge of the ancients, it is beyond doubt that this coming economic collapse will take them by complete surprise (as the last one did) as they have been trained like dutiful slaves to only adhere to those voices leading them to their doom.

But for those who know the truth, the time is nearing an end for preparing… it will come much sooner than anyone will believe.

Goldman Sachs Conquers Europe

TheTotalCollapse.com — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:31:21 +0000

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank’s alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund’s European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.

Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as “the Vampire Squid”, and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman’s interests are intricately tied up with the answer to that question.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren’t “bought and paid for” by corporations, as in the US, he says. “Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions.”

This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest.

Mr Monti is one of Italy’s most eminent economists, and he spent most of his career in academia and thinktankery, but it was when Mr Berlusconi appointed him to the European Commission in 1995 that Goldman Sachs started to get interested in him. First as commissioner for the internal market, and then especially as commissioner for competition, he has made decisions that could make or break the takeover and merger deals that Goldman’s bankers were working on or providing the funding for. Mr Monti also later chaired the Italian Treasury’s committee on the banking and financial system, which set the country’s financial policies.

With these connections, it was natural for Goldman to invite him to join its board of international advisers. The bank’s two dozen-strong international advisers act as informal lobbyists for its interests with the politicians that regulate its work. Other advisers include Otmar Issing who, as a board member of the German Bundesbank and then the European Central Bank, was one of the architects of the euro.

Perhaps the most prominent ex-politician inside the bank is Peter Sutherland, Attorney General of Ireland in the 1980s and another former EU Competition Commissioner. He is now non-executive chairman of Goldman’s UK-based broker-dealer arm, Goldman Sachs International, and until its collapse and nationalisation he was also a non-executive director of Royal Bank of Scotland. He has been a prominent voice within Ireland on its bailout by the EU, arguing that the terms of emergency loans should be eased, so as not to exacerbate the country’s financial woes. The EU agreed to cut Ireland’s interest rate this summer.

Picking up well-connected policymakers on their way out of government is only one half of the Project, sending Goldman alumni into government is the other half. Like Mr Monti, Mario Draghi, who took over as President of the ECB on 1 November, has been in and out of government and in and out of Goldman. He was a member of the World Bank and managing director of the Italian Treasury before spending three years as managing director of Goldman Sachs International between 2002 and 2005 – only to return to government as president of the Italian central bank.

Mr Draghi has been dogged by controversy over the accounting tricks conducted by Italy and other nations on the eurozone periphery as they tried to squeeze into the single currency a decade ago. By using complex derivatives, Italy and Greece were able to slim down the apparent size of their government debt, which euro rules mandated shouldn’t be above 60 per cent of the size of the economy. And the brains behind several of those derivatives were the men and women of Goldman Sachs.

The bank’s traders created a number of financial deals that allowed Greece to raise money to cut its budget deficit immediately, in return for repayments over time. In one deal, Goldman channelled $1bn of funding to the Greek government in 2002 in a transaction called a cross-currency swap. On the other side of the deal, working in the National Bank of Greece, was Petros Christodoulou, who had begun his career at Goldman, and who has been promoted now to head the office managing government Greek debt. Lucas Papademos, now installed as Prime Minister in Greece’s unity government, was a technocrat running the Central Bank of Greece at the time.

Goldman says that the debt reduction achieved by the swaps was negligible in relation to euro rules, but it expressed some regrets over the deals. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman partner who came to the bank after running the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve, told a UK parliamentary hearing last year: “It is clear with hindsight that the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher.”

When the issue was raised at confirmation hearings in the European Parliament for his job at the ECB, Mr Draghi says he wasn’t involved in the swaps deals either at the Treasury or at Goldman.

It has proved impossible to hold the line on Greece, which under the latest EU proposals is effectively going to default on its debt by asking creditors to take a “voluntary” haircut of 50 per cent on its bonds, but the current consensus in the eurozone is that the creditors of bigger nations like Italy and Spain must be paid in full. These creditors, of course, are the continent’s big banks, and it is their health that is the primary concern of policymakers. The combination of austerity measures imposed by the new technocratic governments in Athens and Rome and the leaders of other eurozone countries, such as Ireland, and rescue funds from the IMF and the largely German-backed European Financial Stability Facility, can all be traced to this consensus.

“My former colleagues at the IMF are running around trying to justify bailouts of €1.5trn-€4trn, but what does that mean?” says Simon Johnson. “It means bailing out the creditors 100 per cent. It is another bank bailout, like in 2008: The mechanism is different, in that this is happening at the sovereign level not the bank level, but the rationale is the same.”

So certain is the financial elite that the banks will be bailed out, that some are placing bet-the-company wagers on just such an outcome. Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, returned to Wall Street last year after almost a decade in politics and took control of a historic firm called MF Global. He placed a $6bn bet with the firm’s money that Italian government bonds will not default.

When the bet was revealed last month, clients and trading partners decided it was too risky to do business with MF Global and the firm collapsed within days. It was one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in US history.

The grave danger is that, if Italy stops paying its debts, creditor banks could be made insolvent. Goldman Sachs, which has written over $2trn of insurance, including an undisclosed amount on eurozone countries’ debt, would not escape unharmed, especially if some of the $2trn of insurance it has purchased on that insurance turns out to be with a bank that has gone under. No bank – and especially not the Vampire Squid – can easily untangle its tentacles from the tentacles of its peers. This is the rationale for the bailouts and the austerity, the reason we are getting more Goldman, not less. The alternative is a second financial crisis, a second economic collapse.

Shared illusions, perhaps? Who would dare test it?

Source.

Debt deal likely to face defeat in US House on Monday

TheTotalCollapse.com — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 09:50:42 +0000

The markets are popping champagne. The traders are clapping and cheering. The media is awash with the phrase “the crisis is over”.

But for a default to be averted, a vote on the agreement reached today still needs to be voted on and approved.

Democratic and Republican leaders have conceded that while it’s possible it may get the OK from the Senate, its passage through Congress is by no means assured.

For example, the Tea Party firebrands of the GOP are viciously opposed to raising the debt ceiling under any circumstances, and they’re going to be some of the ones voting tomorrow.

Irrespective of the consequences, the more radical elements within the GOP feel a default necessary to force revolutionary spending cuts.

Another interesting twist is the Armed Services Committee who yesterday vowed to repel any attempt by Obama to slash over $900 billion from the defence budget over the next ten years.

They declared that they would “not let the greatest military the world has ever seen” go quietly into the night at the expense of political deal-making. Considering the strength and scope of the US military-industrial complex, this is a rather significant statement.

And then there’s the rogue Democrats who oppose any short-term deals being made. The knives are already coming out with many of them saying Obama has “surrendered” to the GOP.

Together, this all paints a very disturbing portrait of what has now turned into gunboat diplomacy.

So it begs the question: why are the media outlets parading the agreement as “the end of the debt crisis”. Moreover, how can they say that a default has been averted?

The reason that this announcement received blanket coverage worldwide was because the Asian markets opened today. Plain and simple.

If they hadn’t timed the announcement this it would have been a bloodbath when the bell rang at every stock exchange from Tokyo to Beijing.

But that’s in the past now.

What the mainstream media may have a difficult time explaining tomorrow if the deal is not passed through the Senate or Congress is how they got away with saying “crisis over” today.

Let’s be clear about this: yes, there has been an agreement of sorts, but that agreement must now receive safe passage through the US Senate and Congress.

So until it does, it’s no use popping the champagne bottles yet.

There may be a much bigger headache to awake to tomorrow than a hangover.

Source.

New Report Forecasts “the End of the World in 35-40 Years”

TheTotalCollapse.com — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:18:54 +0000

The world population will rise dramatically; every 13-15 years there will be one billion additional people: In 30-40 years the planet will no longer be able to sustain the population; this will have distressing effects for humankind.
10 billion people are manageable only with dictatorship and military suppression; culture, individual development and life of free spirit will no longer be allowed, it will be impossible and definitely not open to discussion.
Exorbitant spending on military, wars, large industries and state administration together with corruption do not allow for any solutions.
The incredibly hyped up weapons and car industry will drain the earth of its resources and lead the planet to total collapse resulting in the complete destruction of life.
Due to huge debts and speculation the next financial crisis will lead to a complete breakdown of the system and destroy with it entire countries and nations resulting in widespread anarchy and suffering.
The unequal distribution of wealth and natural resources of the earth will mean the end of supra-millionaires and billionaires as well as their children’s future.
Increasing and ever more unpredictable change in the climate will bring enormous destruction to continents resulting in incalculable damage and costs; not to mention hideous suffering.
We have to expect more drought, floods, heat waves, fires, heavy rainfall, storms, tornadoes, cyclones with the worst imaginable aftermath for the environment and people.
Sea levels will increase by 20-60 cm. in the next 20-60 years; some experts predict an increase of 90-150 cm. By 2100, all this will wreak havoc.
Beaches, landscapes, entire islands and natural habitats will be completely destroyed or simply disappear; there will be overwhelmingly more contamination and pollution.
Natural resources (e.g. fish, drinking water, natural food, water for agricultural productions, healthy farm land) will decrease spectacularly and become more and more contaminated.
Mega-cities and widespread construction as well as pollution, littering, contamination and radiation of the earth, air, water, seas and food will increase.
All variations of cancer and serious illnesses will increase dramatically as a result of pollution, poisoning, fine dust and radiation: What the chain reactions in the human body will be nobody knows. No one has been there before.
1-2 billion people will fall into poverty in the coming 10 years; in 30-40 years this will be 80% of the population; completely without or at best with minimum medical provision.
The sewage water (with poisonous substances) of 2.5 billion people flows directly into the oceans and seas today; this amount will double in the next 25 years and in 40 years will completely destroy nature.
Several hundred million people will migrate in search of a new home as a result of unemployment, wars, climate change and natural catastrophes.
All kinds of rubbish and waste, especially nuclear, electric and car waste, will take on gigantic dimensions and totally poison land, oceans and seas.
The price of oil, wheat, corn, rice, coffee, sugar and soya will rise dramatically and thus become unattainable for 30% of the world’s population; 80% will have to live under the bread line.
Most people in industrialized nations will have significantly less disposable wealth which will curtail holidays. Tourism around the globe will collapse.
Unemployment statistics fail to reflect reality. Around the world today there are over half a billion people who have no work or too little work; this will result in massive social unrest.
Crises, unrest, revolutions, wars, tax hikes and martial laws will completely choke the human experience; religious conflict will form part of everyday life.
The explosive hotspots and conflicts will increase and totally change the world; WWIII is imminent, ongoing and can begin any moment; they are all ready.
Humanity and all religions have lost the Archetypes of the Soul, also Love, the Truth, Trust, as well as genuine inner needs and the inner Spirit.
The truth has no chance today. Lies, perversion, lunacy, religious psychosis, narcissism, arrogance, ignorance and stupidity have replaced the truth.
Humanity is (nearly) completely brainwashed and manipulated, degenerated in its inner being. It has become soulless; therefore driven by illusions, greed and repression of guilt.
The world will collapse beyond repair in 30-40 years with 9-10 billion people. The “end” is foreseeable and will become reality for those alive today and especially for the coming generation!

Download the World Report 2011…

Jewish Billionaire brothers arrested over Icelandic bank collapse

TheTotalCollapse.com — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:07:42 +0000

The Sun – The Jewish property entrepreneurs Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz were among nine people arrested today in connection with the collapse of Icelandic banking giant Kaupthing.

Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz were arrested early this morning and are being questioned by police in central London.

Robert Tchenguiz was a director and key borrower of Kaupthing until it failed during Iceland’s financial collapse in 2008. He was thought to owe up to £1.72 billion when it collapsed.

Kaupthing last year became the subject of a Serious Fraud Office probe regarding alleged manipulation of the markets.

The brothers’ vast business portfolios, said to have been significantly reduced by the financial crisis, previously included holdings in Sainsbury’s, and stakes in restaurant and pub groups Slug & Lettuce and Mitchells & Butlers.

In 2009 Vincent Tchenguiz was accused of mismanaging his retirement homes firm the Consensus Business Group by overcharging pensioners for rent and services.

The brothers grew up in Iran after their family was forced to flee Iraq after Israel was created. They are known for their philanthropy as donors to charities including the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

A spokesman for Vincent Tchenguiz told The Telegraph that he expected the pair would remain in police custody until later tonight when the arrest warrant ran out.

Nothing Is Stable Anymore

TheTotalCollapse.com — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:29:05 +0000

(theeconomiccollapseblog.com) The world is becoming a very unstable place, and the pace at which things are changing all around us has become absolutely mind-numbing. In fact, change has become one of the only constants in today’s world. Once upon a time, people in the United States could actually make 20 or 30 year plans and feel confident about achieving them. But now, nothing is stable anymore. The financial crisis showed us that some of the biggest corporations on the globe can collapse in a single day. The events of the past few weeks have shown us that entire governments can be brought down in a single week. We live in a world where there are now very few “guarantees” that you can count on. One of the only things that is guaranteed is that technology and information will continue to grow at exponential speeds. This year, the total amount of information produced on electronic devices around the globe is projected to be more than a zettabyte. A zettabyte is equivalent to one sextillion bytes. In other words, imagine a one with more than 21 zeroes following it.

Many of the things that we take for granted today didn’t even exist a few short years ago. Facebook has only been with us since 2004. YouTube has only been with us since 2005. Can you imagine a world where those two websites did not exist?

We live in a world of information overload. Once upon a time it would have been possible to go to sleep for a decade and wake up and everything would still be pretty much the same. But today if you were to do that you would be in for a case of severe culture shock.

Do you remember when you could buy a set of encyclopedias and the information in them would still be good a decade or two later?

Well, things do not work that way anymore.

In fact, most of the articles on this website will be obsolete a month from now.

In today’s world, you really have to think twice before you say that something is “not possible”.

A few months ago, it was absolutely inconceivable that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would declare to the world that he has “spent enough time serving Egypt“.

Yet here we are.

One week the government of Tunisia seemed perfectly stable and the next week it was toppled.

Do any of you out there still think that you can make realistic “plans for the future” in today’s world?

Once upon a time in America, many of us were taught that if we worked really hard in school we could get a great job with a great company. We were promised that if we were faithful to that company for 30 or 40 years that we would be treated fairly and given a good pension.

Well, in today’s world you might as well crumple up that plan and throw it into the wastebasket.

There is no such thing as a stable job anymore. Businesses are coming into existence and going out of existence faster than ever before. Today, one out of every four Americans workers has been with their empl0yer for less than a year.

Most Americans still don’t really understand that they are now part of a global economy. They keep thinking that things were the way they used to be. They keep thinking that the U.S. economy is invincible.

Well, those days are long gone. The United States is being deindustrialized at lightning speed. Tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions of jobs have been sent overseas. China, once a complete economic backwater, is now kicking the crap out of us on the global economic stage.

Our financial system is certainly on incredibly shaky ground. Will any of us ever forget what happened in 2008?

Do any of us actually believe that it can’t happen again?

Our health care system is also incredibly unstable. Today, 46 million Americans have absolutely no health insurance. That means that 46 million Americans are just one major injury or illness away from financial ruin with no protection whatsoever.

Not that those that actually have health insurance are protected. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that did have health insurance.

So just because you have health insurance does not mean anything. One bad accident or one really bad disease and you could be totally wiped out.

Isn’t that comforting?

But the truth is that our entire economy is on the verge of total collapse.

World famous investor Harry Schultz recently published the last issue of his legendary financial newsletter. After 45 years, the following is how Schultz summed up the economic collapse that we are now facing….

“Roughly speaking, the mess we are in is the worst since 17th century financial collapse. Comparisons with the 1930’s are ludicrous. We’ve gone far beyond that. And, alas, the courage & political will to recognize the mess & act wisely to reverse gears, is absent in U.S. leadership, where the problems were hatched & where the rot is by far the deepest.”

David Stockman, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan was quoted by Schultz as saying the following about how desperate things are about to become….

“Get some gold, beans, water, anything that Bernanke can’t destroy. Ron Paul is right. We’re entering a global monetary conflagration. If a sell-off of U.S. bonds starts, it will be an Armageddon.”

Millions of Americans have become “preppers” in recent years as they have come to realize that our economy is headed down a very dark road.

But sadly, the reality is that the vast majority of Americans are not prepared for any kind of economic or natural disaster. As this week has shown us, just the threat of a major snow storm can wipe out store shelves in a single day.

So what would this country look like if a major disaster fundamentally changed life in America and suddenly people were desperate for food and supplies?

It is a frightening thing to think about.

As the pace of change has accelerated dramatically, the U.S. government and other governments around the world have responded by trying to get a tighter grip on everyone and everything.

To get on an airplane in the United States today, you either have to allow a security goon to use a scanner to look over your completely exposed body, or you have to allow a security goon to feel up all of your private areas with the fronts of his or her hands.

Not only that, but the U.S. government has now deployed VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams to set up security checkpoints at bus terminals, subway stations and on major highways.

The America that so many of us once loved is rapidly disappearing.

But it is not just our man-made systems that are rapidly changing. Something seems to be happening to the entire planet. Flooding of biblical proportions has hit Australia, Brazil, China and Pakistan over the past 12 months. Scorching heat caused massive crop failures all over Russia last summer. Record-setting cold temperatures and snowfalls all over the northern hemisphere have scientists scratching their heads. On top of everything else, mass deaths of birds and fish are suddenly being reported all over the globe.

Even the crust of the earth is becoming increasingly unstable. Did you see that volcano go off in Japan the other day? Over the past two years it seems like volcanoes have been suddenly erupting all over the world.

Not only that, but sinkholes have become an absolute epidemic all over the planet. Some of these sinkholes have been so large that they have swallowed entire apartment buildings.

In addition, it seems like there is a magnitude 6 or magnitude 7 earthquake somewhere in the world almost every day now. They have become so common that the mainstream media barely even takes notice of them anymore unless one happens near a very populated area.

None of us really knows what the world is going to look like ten years from now. What will the “new” Facebooks and YouTubes be? Will Ben Bernanke’s reckless money printing destroy our economy by then? Will our U.S. dollars still be of any value ten years from now? Will there even still be a U.S. dollar?

Will we still be able to feed most of the people in the world by 2011? Will shortages of food, water and oil start driving people crazy? Could some amazing energy discovery completely transform society?

Who will be the president of the United States? Will there even be a president of the United States? Will war have erupted in the Middle East by that point? Will the United States be in another war by then?

The truth is that things are changing so fast that it is hard to even come up with the right questions to ask. The world is going to change faster this year than it did last year. In 2012 the pace of change will be even faster.

So buckle up and hold on tight because this is going to be one wild ride.

For much more on how incredibly fast the pace of change is in our modern society, check out the video posted below. It is entitled “Did You Know?” and it has been viewed more than 12 million times on YouTube….

UK: standard of living to plunge at fastest rate since 1920s

TheTotalCollapse.com — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:49:35 +0000

Households face the most dramatic squeeze in living standards since the 1920s, the Governor of the Bank of England warned, as he reacted to the shock disclosure that the economy was shrinking again.

Families will see their disposable income eaten up as they “pay the inevitable price” for the financial crisis, Mervyn King warned.

With wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation, workers’ take- home pay will end the year worth the same as in 2005 — the most prolonged fall in living standards for more than 80 years, he claimed.

Mr King issued the warning in a speech in Newcastle upon Tyne after official figures showed that gross domestic product fell by 0.5 per cent during the final three months last year. The Government blamed the unexpected reduction — the first since the third quarter of 2009 — on the freezing weather that paralysed much of the country last month.

But there were fears that the country was poised to slip back into recession, defined as two successive quarters of negative growth. Economists said the situation was “an absolute disaster”.

The economic gloom deepened this morning as figures showed that mortgage lending by the major banks dived to an 11-and-a-half-year low during December.

Read the full article.

Global financial crisis leaves two million Australians in poverty

TheTotalCollapse.com — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 04:21:14 +0000

Two studies have provided a damning picture of the immense social distress being caused by the restructuring of working and living conditions in Australia following the financial crash of 2008.

The reports point to the reality of the country’s “two-track” economy. Beneath the surface of the mining-led “recovery”, millions of ordinary people are suffering economic insecurity, acute financial difficulties and housing stress.

“Perceptions of Poverty,” a report by the religious charity, the Salvation Army, estimates that two million people are living in poverty—that is, one in ten. Among children the poverty rate is even higher—around 12 percent. These statistics, however, are almost certainly understated because they rely on a semi-official poverty line—first developed for the Whitlam Labor government’s 1975 Poverty Report—which is based on estimations of what family units need to live at an “austere” level, rather than a decent one.

By another measure, two million people are now so destitute that they depend on charitable food relief programs each year. Around half of them are children, who often go to school without breakfast or to bed without dinner.

One in seven children is growing up in a family where no one works—one of the highest rates among Western countries. But unemployment is no longer the only substantial cause of poverty. Over the past year, there has been a sharp increase in the number of “working poor”—families living in poverty despite at least one parent working. Last year, reductions in working hours and wages, and failures in small family businesses, led at least 80,000 people to seek help from the Salvation Army for the first time.

Half the households using the organisation’s Community Support Services in 2010 reported experiencing cash flow problems, with more than a quarter needing to increase credit card debt, exhaust savings and borrow money from friends and family. About 55 percent believed they were worse off because of the financial situation, 52 percent had cut down on necessities, and 45 percent felt stressed about the future.

Spokesman Peter Sutcliffe told ABC radio: “The economic downturn was simply the tipping point for many families.” Even before the crash, research had estimated that around 14 percent, or one in seven, full-time adult workers was low paid, with the highest concentrations in the hospitality, retail and health and community services sectors.

The report shows that traditional stereotypes of poverty are inaccurate. Some of the most disadvantaged people are indigenous, elderly, disabled or mentally ill, but poverty has become entrenched more broadly. Generations of families are trapped in hardship, which cannot be explained simply by individual circumstances or personal factors.

Although the official jobless rate is not as high as in the US and Europe, more than 600,000 families remain affected by unemployment, with another 800,000 people, or 7.7 percent of the workforce, under-employed. Between February 2008 and February 2010, the number of people in full-time work dropped from 7.693 million to 7.660 million, while the number in part-time work increased from 3.035 million to 3.311 million.

Employers have used the global economic breakdown to accelerate a longer-term trend. The report refers to a recent University of Sydney study that showed a dramatic drop in full-time jobs with paid leave—they now make up slightly more than 55 percent of jobs, down from nearly 75 percent in the early 1990s.

Economic stress and family breakdowns have also resulted in many more single parent families. Contrary to media stereotypes, less than 3 percent of single parents are teenagers. “Most are 30 to 50 years old and were previously married,” the Perceptions of Poverty report states.

According to statistics from the Australian Council of Social Services, 57 percent of sole parents reported they could not pay a utility bill in the past 12 months, 54 percent could not afford necessary dental treatment, 47 percent had sought financial help from friends and family and 12 percent had gone without meals.

Young people from poor backgrounds who fail to complete secondary schooling or obtain a Certificate III vocational qualification—close to one in five of all young adults—find it almost impossible to secure work. Even in 2004, 97.5 percent of the 236,000 new jobs created went to people with skills and either a university degree, a TAFE diploma or equivalent work experience.

An estimated 600,000 families and single people are experiencing housing stress—defined as paying more than 30 percent of income on rent or mortgage payments. As a result, homelessness is rising well above the level of 105,000 people identified in the 2006 Census. Salvation Army services reported a 65 percent jump in the number of homeless people across New South Wales during the 2009-10 financial year.

Compounding this crisis is a long-term reduction in public housing. Homelessness Australia reported that the number of public housing dwellings fell by 30,000, from 372,000 in 1996 to 341,000 in 2006, “leaving 180,000 households to languish on waiting lists”.

The Salvation Army notes that in Australia, which is considered a “wealthy country,” the “poor are getting poorer” while the “rich are getting richer”. In 2007, Australia’s richest 200 people had a combined wealth of over $128 billion—a jump of 27 percent in just 12 months. (This figure pre-dates the global financial crisis, and the gap has widened since then. According to the latest BRW Rich 200 list, after a sluggish year in 2009, Australia’s wealthiest people “bounced back in style” this year, adding more than $21 billion to their collective fortunes of almost $136 billion, with property and mining magnates doing the best.)

Polling commissioned for the report found that despite “misinformed stereotyping” that blamed the poor for their own plight, 53 percent of people thought that taking action to reduce poverty should be a “very high priority”. Another 41 percent considered it important, although not a high priority. Only 6 percent of respondents said it was not a priority, or could not say.

The other report, released by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) shows the impact of soaring house prices and rents. Over the past decade, the proportion of first time home buyers in housing stress—spending more than 30 percent of their income on mortgage repayments—increased from 43 to 47 percent.

The biggest factor was that, on average, disposable incomes grew by 64 percent in 10 years, but house prices soared twice as fast—by 132 percent. The numbers in stress grew fastest in Melbourne, where 53 percent of first time buyers are under pressure, up from 36 percent. There, the median house price rose 138 percent to $470,000, but disposable incomes for households increased by only 58 percent.

NATSEM warns that higher interest rates—some economists are predicting rises of up to 2 percentage points over the coming 12 months—are likely to push more first home buyers into deeper trouble, with the proportion paying more than 30 percent, probably rising into “the high 50s and early 60s [percent]”.

The NATSEM research also shows that the number of first home buyers dropped 10 percent between 2000 and 2007. In the same period, Australia’s population rose 12 percent. This divergence, which shows that home ownership is increasingly out of reach for young people, is putting upward pressure on rents.

NATSEM notes that rising interest rates will add to the pressures on many first home buyers who obtained large mortgages at low interest rates between August 2008 and December 2009, when the federal Labor government introduced a first home buyers’ grant of $14,000 (cut to $7,000 from September 2009). Under the pretext of assisting young families, the government used the grants to prop up the real estate and home building industry as part of its economic stimulus packages. As a result, housing prices were driven up, further exacerbating the affordability crisis.

Neither NATSEM nor the Salvation Army called into question the underlying source of the social crisis—the capitalist private profit system. Instead, both called on the Gillard government to change course, a demand that flies in the face of Labor’s policies over the past three decades, and its ongoing unconditional commitment to free-market economic “reform”. NATSEM suggested the need for government policies to encourage the supply of new housing, and for the abolition of stamp duty on housing purchases, while the Salvation Army called for the adoption of a national child poverty strategy. The latter recalls the Hawke Labor government’s cynical election pledge in 1987 to abolish child poverty by 1990. The Salvation Army also urged reform of the social security system, noting that the unemployment benefit for a married couple with two children is $97 per week below the poverty line, while the payment for a single adult is $118 per week below the poverty line. The Labor government, however, has deliberately kept benefits at those levels, precisely to push the jobless into low-paid and insecure work.

Far from reversing its anti-working class policies, the Gillard Labor government is preparing a new round of spending cuts, including to welfare, housing and health, that will only intensify the growing impoverishment of millions of ordinary people.

Read the full article.

Can America stop an Israeli ‘nuclear’ 9/11?

TheTotalCollapse.com — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:23:05 +0000

The American people are afraid, they see disaster coming. Everyone is waiting to see what city is chosen to be sacrificed. Will it be Phoenix or Sacramento or perhaps Atlanta? This is the real fear, the “not so secret” fear in the heart of every American.

By Gordon Duff

For years, America’s military has been divided, competent military professionals and patriots on one side and Christian Zionists, loyal to Israel and addicted to a propaganda “dreamworld” on the other.

Americans sat, on 9/11, with their military “asleep at the switch,” their president in a daze and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, perhaps out of confusion, we may never know, talking about airliners being shot down and the Pentagon being attacked by missiles. Yes, he said these things, things he couldn’t “unsay” but things the press showed once and quickly buried. Something terribly wrong happened, something years in planning, but not planned in a cave in Afghanistan. Everywhere investigators look, one thing pops up, Israel. The moment that door is opened, it is slammed shut, often with threats, often with more than threats.

We may never know the full extent of the brutality used against those who have spoken up. We know that Arab leaders can be assassinated anywhere, any time. America will remain silent and the news will always support Israel. Israel owns the news.

What about the “suicided” British scientist Dr. David Kelly, the man responsible for moving the Israeli nukes out of South Africa? Reliable sources tell us he was ready to come forward with the facts about a massive political scandal, a cover-up of lost nuclear weapons, blackmail and bribery.

Do we really believe that there are so many unlucky United States senators? Crashes of small aircraft has done more to control the US Senate than any election, control used to set the stage for a generation of wars. With AIPAC capable of buying any election, capable, willing and doing it, not an American organization at all but a lobby for a foreign government, one that likes America “not so much” as we are led to believe, is representative government in the United States dead? When someone swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, is it meaningless when the government itself is no longer “American?”

Control of America, or, more appropriately, control of America’s vast military, tired and worn as it is, represents the key to ruling the world. Fooling the people, buying the government and duping America’s military through infiltrating every level of critical decision making and communications is a task, not only attempted but one long since accomplished. Problem is, even with, not only control of the press, but powerful news organizations directly under foreign control like Fox News, word is getting out.

When and if it happens, Americans are not so willing to believe a few goatherds in a cave 8,000 miles away planned it, not anymore.

Why do you think Senator Lieberman has demanded a “kill switch” on the internet? Why do you think “censorship czar” Cass Sunstein has asked to have accusations of Israeli complicity in 9/11 made a criminal act and openly advocated infiltration of groups pushing for an honest investigation. Who is the real “conspiracy theorist” now?

With thousands of of military and intelligence officials, retirees openly, others hiding their rage, aware of the decades of Israeli spying and the 9/11 cover-up, this divide has never been so strong. What we don’t know is how many serving today have the personal courage to speak out openly. Now the threat is nuclear weapons, not just a “shoebox dirty bomb” but full sized nukes, the weapons we have been hunting for years, claiming Saddam was prepared to use them “at 45 minutes notice,” the same nukes “sent to Syria by ambulance.” They could be anywhere and anyone could be ready to use one. There is only one possible culprit capable of doing this, however, only one country with something to gain and the willingness to act.

“We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital . . . our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us.” (Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld)

Today, America may be facing the nuclear holocaust Creveld describes and there is no reason to trust that our military, intelligence and law enforcement, the dozens of agencies, bureaus and commands tasked with defending America are willing to do so if the attack comes from Israel. In fact, some leaders, even a former head of the Department of Homeland Security, could be on a list of those that might be one of the America’s greatest terrorist threats. How can perceptions differ so much? If perceptions are based on information and that information is pure propaganda, consistent, continual and skillfully presented, not only in news format but reinforced in movies, television series and anyone publicly questioning the “message “is attacked and destroyed, and they are, perceptions can be assumed to be false.

Thus, the general basis for the public’s ideas about who Israel is, what Zionism advocates and what Islam is really about will be unreliable. When you add control of universities, all academic publishing and even total disruption of free speech, the most extreme ideas can be accepted as fact. They have been.

A substantial evidentiary trail exists that places Israel’s possible involvement in 9/11 on the table, with dozens of suspects questioned and more and more of the “facts” about 9/11 now proving, as with the Kennedy assassinations, to be lies.

Real theories, not “conspiracy,” tell us that 9/11 was planned to get America to attack Iraq, part of Israel’s long term strategy for the region, leaving them, not only the only nuclear power, but an armed aggressor afloat in a sea of broken nations occupied by American troops, troops who take orders from politicians who take orders from Israel. However, after the massive Bush administration blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and the virtual destruction of a military incapable of sustaining a decade long war, the planned Israeli attack using American troops, again, isn’t moving forward as we all know it was planned to.

This time, after America was so badly burned, pushed by the Bush security team, almost all Israeli citizens, many of them still around, running America for Obama, into two insane “Vietnams” it will take more than 3000 murders. With the “duping of America” over 9/11 coming unraveled, something horrendous is in the planning. There is an obvious next step and it has to be nuclear. Anything less would bring an outcry against Israel immediately. Only the “unthinkable” combined with a strong public relations campaign and a cover story with a “do it yourself” terrorist group, like so many of the “just add water” terrorist organizations the Mossad has organized for just such an occasion, will sell the lie, this and the press, not just in America but the other real voice of Israel, the BBC.

The stories about the mobile labs, the “yellow cake” uranium were lies, pap fed to a willing and complicit press. However, the threats are real but how does America protect herself when those tasked with that duty turn a blind eye to the biggest threat. In 1967, Israel was allowed to kill or wound 201 of 296 Americans on the USS Liberty. Surviving crewmen are still threatened by Israeli security for speaking up, as Philip Tourney and his wife will gladly tell you. Captain McGonagle, who won the Medal of Honor working to save his crew from hours of brutal attacks, cried out for justice to his dying day. The American military stood silent as it did on 9/11, as it did on that day in 1967 and as it may have done many times since.

Those among America’s military in 1967, those willing to send the planes from the carriers America and Saratoga to bomb Egypt on behalf of Israel received the thanks of a grateful nation. Too bad that nation was not the United States of America. Only when Israel informed Washington that it had failed to both sink the USS Liberty and effect a takeover of the ship, killing the entire crew, did Admiral McCain order planes headed toward Egypt to return. It had been previously believed these planes were meant to help the USS Liberty.

We have since been reliably informed by sources within the Navy that the planes were armed for ground attack. Thus, as early as 1967, America was willing to see its own troops butchered “for the good of Greater Israel.” Proof of this is incontrovertible and witnesses on both the Liberty and Saratoga have come forward.

We will never know for sure, what secrets are stolen, what weapons given, what enemies aided, what American interests betrayed. With dozens of organizations demanding 9/11 be investigated and the lowest estimate of those who no longer believe the cover story at 30 percent, not a single active duty military officer, not one member of congress nor a single member of the mainstream press has said a word about it. How can thousands of prominent Americans demand that their country begin defending itself and it be covered up? Who has that power?

America has lost at least six nuclear weapons since 1990, maybe more, not Russia or some “breakaway republic,” once part of the Soviet Union. Three were American hydrogen bombs off Somalia, no longer usable but with enough plutonium in them to build many fission weapons. Three more were part of 9 produced by Israel in South Africa back in the 80s, all supposedly sent to America for dismantling. Three of the containers were filled with concrete blocks. They had been consigned to “friends of Israel” for shipment and were stolen from an unguarded facility in Oman after having been abandoned for months. This would be a wild claim if we hadn’t interviewed those involved in the project and been made privy to a well documented and detailed history of the operation.

These “unattributable” nukes have only one purpose, to be used in a terrorist attack on the United States, a “false flag” attack, to drive America to attack Iran and Pakistan.

How many loyal Americans, FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies are searching the nation, warehouses, ports, looking for the blue 20 foot shipping containers? How many “dual citizens” are tasked with some other purpose? Are our “protectors” really “ours” or do they work for the same pack that bought our congress? Will we find out when a mushroom cloud appears over one of our cities?

Today, America is facing the biggest threat since World War 2. Nothing will be in the news, nothing will ever be in the news, not the truth anyway. When it happens, the news will be ready, like on 9/11 when it was called on to talk Arabs and box cutters, a childish conspiracy theory millions still believe. It was ready to talk weapons of mass destruction and when that turned out to be a lie, it was ready to sit silent for its complicity in war crimes. “War crimes” seems like a harsh term but the definition fits. Invading Iraq on, not a whim, but a series of lies orchestrated by a criminal conspiracy is a war crime. Less obvious to many, the takeover of Afghanistan as a drug production facility or a base for destabilizing Pakistan or an operation center for gas pipelines, whichever reason you choose, was justified by lies as serious as those used to justify Iraq.

For those who follow such things, real leaks are proving two things:

Osama bin Laden never stopped working for the Central Intelligence Agency and their “regional affiliates.”
Bin Laden was murdered to silence him after 9/11 just as Benzir Bhutto was murdered to silence her.

Real news never reaches America, news that shows terrorism, corporate banditry and the biggest drug cartel in history, tied to American allies, some Muslim but one worse than all combined, Israel. Even today, the mythology of “threatened” Israel and the rockets raining down on their cities, all imagination, is still believed by many in our military. When 9/11 came, be it radio controlled planes, missiles, controlled demolition, our military was on “stand down,” ordered to let the attacks move forward and then roll across the Middle East, an Army hijacked by Israel to help them start their long planned world conquest. Today, America basks in defeat and humiliation and Israel laughs.

We have continual debates about religion in the military. Should Christian sects be able to force troops to prayer? Is America a Christian nation, is this what the founding fathers meant? What if, lets say, these sects were not loyal to the United States but rather constituted a national threat? Is an officer belonging to a Christian Zionist church likely to pass secrets on to Israel? Will they obey orders from the Mossad above their own commanders? Will an Christian Zionist with nuclear access follow his religious calling and cause a nuclear war to bring about Armageddon?

What if their power in the military was that great, part of a systematic infiltration of the military through an extremist take-over of the chaplain’s services and eventually admissions and curriculum of the service academies themselves? What else could explain the total silence we have seen when torture, kidnapping, illegal invasions and “stand downs” to allow terrorist attacks are the norm. How many officers have violated the Geneva Convention, their oaths and the Uniform Code of Military Justice because they felt obliged to a “higher power” to exhibit extreme cruelty, cleansing the world of “infidels?”

Those in the military that feel, as Christians, they are tied to Israel, have lost their minds. Islam and Judaism are much closer than Christianity and Judaism. With the advent of the trinity, both Jews and Muslims see Christians as, not only polytheistic, worshiping 3 gods, not one, but idolaters as well. To both Jews and Muslims, these issues alone are enough to make Christianity an enemy. Islam, a religion totally based on Judaism, an Abrahamic faith, built on the foundation of the books of Moses, sees itself as a reform movement stressing moral values as outlined in the Koran and the teachings of the prophet, Mohammad (peace be on him).

To a Christian with a real education, the struggle between the Jews and Muslims is a “family matter.” Jews are the beloved children of Islam who have yet to accept the reforms that defined the true religion. We must remember, without Judaism and g-d’s covenant with Israel, there would be no Islam. Christianity is seen as a Hellenistic bastardization of biblical teachings watered down to sell to the pagan Roman empire. You won’t hear it, not publicly, but it is exactly what is taught to every student, Jew, Muslim — this is their belief.

Muslims have “jihad” and Jews were chosen by g-d to rule the world. Ninety percent of the most serious accusations each makes of the other are, actually, part of the religion of both, only Jews are much better at public relations. After all, they own 90 percent of the world’s media, print, broadcast, even much of the Internet. How do we trust military leaders who don’t know that “goyim” means “cattle?” If you are “cattle” and you believe those who see you as such are your best friends, you are not dealing with reality. Perhaps we should teach The Scorpion and the Toad at West Point. This should be the start of the first day’s lecture on America’s Strategic Security in the 21st Century:

The scorpion, in the course of a long journey, encounters a river. The scorpion cannot swim and so he is momentarily stymied until he spies the toad, on the opposite river bank. “Toad!” the scorpion calls out, “will you please let me ride on your back to the other side of the river because, you see, I cannot swim.” “No way,” replied the toad, “if I let you ride on my back you will sting me!” To which the scorpion replied, “But if I am riding on your back and I sting you then we will both die because I cannot swim.” After thinking on it for a moment or two the toad agrees, swims over to the opposite bank of the river where the scorpion jumps onto his back and he turns to swim to the other side. When the toad, with the scorpion riding on his back, gets to the middle of the river, the scorpion stings him. “Scorpion!” Exclaimed the toad, “Why did you sting me? Now we both die.”

“Because it is in my nature.” Was the scorpion’s response.

Should we be sick of watching our troops walk through poppy fields, knowing the heroin being produced is destroying the United States, filling our prisons but, at the same time, filling the pockets of, well who? Who is getting a cut of the $65 billion dollars a year earned from the partnership in Afghanistan? Israel is the money end, the CIA does transportation, the Afghan government runs production, but who does distribution? Do the planes really land on military bases? We have already found bales of cash leaving Afghanistan heading for Dubai.

This is only a small part of the money involved. It is this money, combined with the billions we give Israel, the billions they take out of the American economy through control of the Federal Reserve System (a quasi-governmental scheme of banks with Rothschild lineage that control America) that makes it impossible to get honest news, elect honest politicians and even trust our own military.

In fact, a large majority of Americans openly admit, on every opinion poll, that they don’t trust our congress, our president or any American institution. Nobody asks them why. Would they know? Is it because a foreign country controls our banks, our news, our congress, our military, our foreign policy? Is it because the only reason politics exist in America is so the greedy can line up at the trough, not caring who is pouring the slop, as long as they get theirs first?

No American has a clue where President Obama came from. Many believe he is foreign born, many more think he is Muslim and some believe he is a space alien. In 250 years, documents will be declassified that will either prove or disprove that former President Bush belonged in prison, not the White House, guilty of not AWOL (absent without leave) but desertion during wartime. There is no reasonable doubt of his guilt, only that he used his power to prevent arrest and prosecution. After 9/11, no more questions were asked, and no more witnesses had to receive new homes, fat government jobs or have mysterious heart attacks.

For the Bush years, it was made clear that a military career had to be built on loyalty to Israel, even though their nuclear arsenal and their ethnic cleansing of Palestine are the root of every conflict confronting America today. There is no military alliance with Israel. America has no potential enemies. In fact, every nation in the region is either controlled by the United States, occupied or frightened to death. Iran trying to stand against America is the equivalent of Denmark standing against Hitler’s blitzkrieg.

The view of the state of affairs taught our military is childishly stupid. How many of our military leaders are childishly stupid also?

Also read: Trend Alert: Deadliest False Flag Terror Attack Soon! Updated

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic officer of UN humanitarian groups. Gordon Duff’s articles are published around the world and translated into a number of languages.

China: The US is Insolvent and Faces Bankruptcy

TheTotalCollapse.com — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:02:36 +0000

A recent article in the Financial Times quotes the head of China’s biggest credit rating agency has said that the US is insolvent and U.S. credit ratings are a joke.

“The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards,” Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, told the Financial Times in an interview. “China is the biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged.”

Mr. Guan also laid blame on the credit rating agencies for the financial crisis which was caused by the rating agencies. Their lack of disclosure “brought the entire US financial system to the verge of collapse, causing huge damage to the US and its strategic interests,” said Guan.

Mr. Guan aslo went on to declare that the US is basically broke: “The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation but the rating agencies still give it high rankings ,” Mr Guan said. “Actually, the huge military expenditure of the US is not created by themselves but comes from borrowed money, which is not sustainable.”

Source.