American Reality Check

Welcome to the Precious Metals Bug Forums

Welcome to the PMBug forums - a watering hole for folks interested in gold, silver, precious metals, sound money, investing, market and economic news, central bank monetary policies, politics and more. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.

Why not register an account and join the discussions? When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no Google ads, market data/charts, access to trade/barter with the community and much more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!

Last edited:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dail...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

The USD is entirely too strong and must be printed into weakness!
:judge:

"When do the chickens come home to roost?," he asks. If trading partners do start to let their currencies get stronger and the psychology of U.S. consumers changes about the threat of inflation. "Instead of nice smooth path from 2% to 3%, [inflation] could gap to 6% in a matter of months,"
 
"Beatings will continue until morale improves."
 
Ahhh, time to start off this fine moring with a trifecta of problems with the U.S.A.

The number of Americans on food stamps has now exceed 47 million people; I wonder how this is being paid for...
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Govern...s-Outnumber-Populations-Of-24-States-Combined

Luckily, someone is profiting off of it...
"A recent report by the Government Accountability Institute found that since 2004, JP Morgan's 24 state EBT contracts have totaled at least $560,492,596.02."

Excellent, the evil weathly are going to pay for all those food stamps...
http://marketdailynews.com/2012/11/20/why-changes-in-tax-law-will-devastate-our-economy/

Especially, those evil family farms...
"According to the American Farm Bureau, approximately 97 percent of all farms and ranches in the United States would be subject to the estate tax if the exemption was reduced to just a million dollars. "

No one is buying the U.S. federal debt anymore; except the good ole FED. I wonder where they are getting all the USD to pay for it....
http://johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/fed-bought-77-of-federal-debt-increase.html

:noevil:
 
Amazing to find such a good piece in the Wall Street Journal...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578127374039087636.html?mod=hp_opinion

"The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion."

"Included in the annual Medicare Trustees' report are separate actuarial estimates of the unfunded liability for Medicare Part A (the hospital portion), Part B (medical insurance) and Part D (prescription drug coverage).
As of the most recent Trustees' report in April, the net present value of the unfunded liability of Medicare was $42.8 trillion. The comparable balance sheet liability for Social Security is $20.5 trillion."

"...if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of these American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the year before the recession, it wouldn't be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities."
 
Last edited:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-gdp...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

"Yes, today’s fiscal-cliff drama is just a warm-up for what’s coming. America’s economic future is a disaster. We are going over a bigger game-changing economic cliff, into a long-term chasm. And it’s unavoidable.

Why? Because our myopic Congressional leaders and Fed chairman are focused on short-term fixes, piling on more monetary-stimulus debt, while avoiding America’s systemic long-term problems. Yes, we are our own worst enemy and nothing will keep us from driving down the road to zero growth and into painful austerity, just like the 1930s."
 
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/percent-379256-government-spending.html

Wow, where to start... this article is a pretty epic rant!

"Americans love Big Government as much as Europeans. The only difference is that Americans refuse to admit it."

"According to the most recent (2009) OECD statistics: Government expenditures per person in France, $18,866.00; in the United States, $19,266.00."

"Government spending in the United States is 42.2 percent, but revenues are 24 percent – the widest spending/taxing gulf in any major economy"

"We already have a more severely redistributive taxation system than Europe, in which the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans pay 70 percent of income tax while the poorest 20 percent shoulder just three-fifths of 1 percent."

"the American Enterprise Institute calculated that, if Washington were to increase every single tax by 30 percent, it would be enough to balance the books – in 25 years. If you were to raise taxes by 50 percent, it would be enough to fund our entitlement liabilities – just our current ones, not our future liabilities, which would require further increases."

:judge::clap:
 
benjamen said:
"...in August and September, over three times as many foodstamp recipients were added to the economy as jobs" ..... "a record 47.7 million Americans are now living in poverty at least according to the USDA."
Click to expand...

This is the real story and shows how society is becoming more and more polarised.
 
This is how we hide a depression today. Set up a system whereby one can virtually anonymously apply for food aid, then assign those folks little credit-lookin' cards so they won't be "embarrassed" or feel somehow "stigmatized" at the checkout counter and voila!

For all those fatherless little kids, set up another program so they can get free milk, cheese, beans and cereals, that will supplement the SNAP benefits. Then, set up housing vouchers for those who cannot afford a house on their WalMart salary, and there you have it, a successfully hidden depression within which a greater percentage of the working age population is not working than the Great Depression.

Well done 'Boyzz! Well done!
 
Last edited:
ancona said:
For all those fatherless little kids, set up another program so they can get free milk, cheese, beans and cereals, that will supplement the SNAP benefitsThen, set up housing vouchers for those who cannot afford a house on their WalMart salary. , and there you have it, a successfully hidden depression within which a greater percentage of the working age population is not working than the Great Depression.

Well done 'Boyzz! Well done!
Click to expand...

They kind of tried that already, you could say. Cheap/unqualified/unbacked loan isn't much different from a voucher in the end.
 
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-...illion-americans-enter-poverty-last-two-month

Since the end of 2007, the cumulative number of people on foodstamp and/or disability has increased by 21.8 MILLION, while the cumulative number of people with a job has decreased by 4.4 Million.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article37953.html
"In the last year, the civilian noninstitutional population rose by 3,733,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 1,354,000."

Essentially, we still have less people with jobs now than before the beginning of this financial crisis. One top of that, the rate of new jobs being generated is far less than the rate of new people entering the job market. Just like ancient Rome, the government must give free bread to the masses to keep them from rioting.
:paperbag:
 
Don't fret Benjamen, we'll just hide it using statistics. See? All better now! Just look at this weeks initial claims.
 
"the American Enterprise Institute calculated that, if Washington were to increase every single tax by 30 percent, it would be enough to balance the books – in 25 years. If you were to raise taxes by 50 percent, it would be enough to fund our entitlement liabilities – just our current ones, not our future liabilities, which would require further increases."
Click to expand...

a good one! Basically, any number I see, that compares the US liabilities, to anything meaningfull, like it's GDP, tax base, etc. - it always shows, that there's simply NO CHANCE whatsoever, that this country is not bankrupt. It is, by any sane measure. And people pretending it isn't, are simply in denial, or practice some kind of magical thinking.

Don't fret Benjamen, we'll just hide it using statistics.
Click to expand...
"governments are using statistics in the same way, as drunken man uses lamp posts - for support, rather than for enlightenment" - love that one :)
 
Highest-Paid California Trooper Is Chief Banking $484,000

By Alison Vekshin, Elise Young and Rodney Yap | Bloomberg – 9 hours ago

California Highway Patrol division chief Jeff Talbott retired last year as the best-paid officer in the 12 most-populous U.S. states, collecting $483,581 in salary, pension and other compensation.

Talbott, 53, received $280,259 for accrued leave and vacation time and took a new job running the public-safety department at a private university in Southern California. He also began collecting an annual pension of $174,888 from the state.

Union-negotiated benefits, coupled with overtime that can exceed regular pay and lax enforcement of limits on accumulating unused vacation, allow some troopers to double their annual earnings and retire as young as age 50. The payments they get are unmatched by those elsewhere, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on 1.4 million employees of the 12 states. Some, like Talbott, go on to second careers.
...
Click to expand...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/highest-paid-california-trooper-chief-030402254.html
 
No wonder these guys were always smiling...

MV5BMjM0Nzg2NzI0Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTIxMDQzMQ@@._V1._SY317_CR5,0,214,317_.jpg
 
PMBug said:
No wonder these guys were always smiling...

MV5BMjM0Nzg2NzI0Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTIxMDQzMQ@@._V1._SY317_CR5,0,214,317_.jpg
Click to expand...

IMHO, it should be ILLEGAL to participate in unions, for any tax-paid worker, i.e. "the public SERVANT". Sorry, if you don't like the concept, or the pay - go and find a real job (a free-market one!)

Of course there is a whole gray area, of private, semi-private sub contractors, that I do not have answer straight away - unless, if you are applying for the taxpayer-paid contract, you must not hire union workers, or union agreements must be exampt from that particular contract - I do not know.
 
Last edited:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/04/news/economy/hopelessly-unemployed-workers/index.html?iid=s_mpm
http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm

"An often overlooked number calculated by the Labor Department shows millions of Americans want a job but haven't searched for one in at least a year. They've simply given up hope."

"Five years ago, before the recession began, about 2.5 million people said they wanted a job but hadn't searched for one in at least a year. Now, that number is around 3.25 million."
 
Always good to see a honest article in the mainstream world. He may be a bit off with his numbers, but he has the right idea...
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-...-two-trillion-dollar-coins-005206800.html?l=1

"In 2007, the monetary base – the amount of money our government printed in its 231 years of existence totaled $800 billion. Today it totals $2.8 trillion."

"Today, 12 cents out of ever dollar being spent by our government is being printed. As indicated, the money supply has more than tripled. While inflation, let alone hyperinflation, has not yet occurred, everything is in place for this outcome."
 
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dail...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

“Republicans will have to concede that while it is arithmetically possible to do the entire job on the spending side, it is politically impossible. Democrats will have to concede that the majority of deficit reduction must come on the spending side, including entitlements like Medicare.”

While this is very true, what are the odds that either, let alone both sides, will concede any such thing?

:flushed:
 
benjamen said:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dail...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

“Republicans will have to concede that while it is arithmetically possible to do the entire job on the spending side, it is politically impossible. Democrats will have to concede that the majority of deficit reduction must come on the spending side, including entitlements like Medicare.”

While this is very true, what are the odds that either, let alone both sides, will concede any such thing?

:flushed:
Click to expand...

See how they frame the debate for us? They never mention cutting spending on the war mongering.
 
I wonder what the budget would look like if we withdrew our imperial forces from all posts around the globe and stopped all of our illegal wars?
 
ancona said:
I wonder what the budget would look like if we withdrew our imperial forces from all posts around the globe and stopped all of our illegal wars?
Click to expand...

might bump the unemployment numbers a bit :popcorn:

and its so Keynesian to blow things up :noevil:

more likely that we can 'turn things around' with a whole lot more encouragement of 'democracy' :flushed:
 
If you took all the armed forces employees
and the armament industry employees
and the aerospace employees
and .........

They would probably be able to close off the mexico border pretty effectively

They might need to close the top border too, to keep everyone in (-:
 
rblong2us

That's probably what the Northern Command is really for, guard the Canadian border to keep productive Americans in!

Besides it would be easier to guard our northern border than our Mexican one, no heavily-armed drug gangs armed with "Fast and Furious" Made-in-USA AR-15s...
 
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/14569-its-baaack-obamas-minimum-wage-folly

"President Obama made no secret of his views on the minimum wage. “No one who works full time should have to live in poverty,” the president told his State of the Union audience."

Completely aribitrary poverty level is $23,050 per year for the head of a family of 4:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

A little basic math:
(23050)/(52 weeks * 40 hours per week) = 11.08 dollars per hour

So, if your goal is to mandate no one who works full time be in povery, why not raise minimum wage to $11.08?

:noevil:



Good article skewering the idea of minimum wages:
http://mises.org/daily/6367/Outlawing-Jobs-The-Minimum-Wage
 
Last edited:
U.S. Treasury monthly statement as of Jan 31, 2013:
http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0113.pdf

The chart on the bottom of page two is very interesting.
Over the past 16 months, the U.S. federal government has run an average monthly deficit of (1,089,193 + 290,415)/16 = 86,226, which is about 86 billion dollars.

Everyone is throwing a fit because the government is going to have to cut 85 billion dollars from it's yearly expeditures in March?!
http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/26/news/economy/budget-cuts-jobs/index.html?hpt=hp_bn3
 
The Fed's QE program is also supposedly roughly 85 billion a month right now. Coincidence?
 
Classic strategy to make budget cuts that you dont like as painful as possible, then blame the other party:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/5/email-tells-feds-make-sequester-painful-promised/

"In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of."
 
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/s...-surprisingly-strong-jobs-numbers-aren-t-real

"According to the household survey, where the BLS asks how many are working in a household, 170,000 new jobs were added in February of this year — despite the addition of an astounding 446,000 part-time jobs. What this means is that some 276,000 full-time jobs were lost in February. A Gallup survey released the day before the Labor Department’s report noted:

Although fewer people are unemployed now than a year ago, they are not migrating to full-time jobs for an employer. In fact, fewer Americans are working full-time for an employer than were doing so a year ago, and more Americans are working part time.

This may be an effect of the ObamaCare rule that employees working 30 hours a week or more must be covered with health insurance, and as a result of that more and more employers are cutting hours and hiring more part-time people. And as hours are cut, more and more people are seeking a second job to make up the difference. That would be another of those “unintended consequences” of government interference in the marketplace."
 
When you cut back all employees to 30 hours or less, it is common sense that you will need more workers to produce what previously could be produced with fewer people putting in 40 hours. What blows me away is the administration crowing about all the "new jobs" there are and how we're in a recovery. What a fucking canard. When the shift is complete, all we will have accomplished will be the topping off of the welfare and food stamp rolls and the placing of millions upon millions more people in to abject poverty. 30 hours at eight or nine bucks an hour is hardly enough for even a childless couple, let alone a family. Even with both parents working there is nothing left after taxes and necessary items like food, electricity and water. The absurd lengths this administration seems prepared to go through to make sure every single one of us has an overpriced insurance policy [whether we want one or not] is absolutely overwhelming.

When this goes in to effect next year, it will cost me fourteen grand out-of-pocket to comply, and that's fourteen large I cannot afford to spend. If it were not for the fact that my house will be paid off in a few months, I would have to opt to pay the fine and hope for the best.

If healthcare does what I think it will do, we will rapidly fall down the scale of health care quality until we end up with euthanasia clinics like they had in Soylent Green. It's not hard to imagine this right now, especially with so many doctors quitting the practice because reimbursement rates are just too low to continue. What does Obama intend to do when there are five hundred patients for every doctor? Rationing folks, rationing. Just like the UK, where a panel of unelected, non-doctors decide if you are a candidate for a hip replacement or a candidate for a much cheaper amputation, we will be given health care on the basis of how much longer we could be expected to live. Cancer treatment? Sorry Ancona, you would only be expected to live for a few extra years, so the cost isn't justifiable to the taxpayers. Here, take these Percocets and enjoy your last days.
 
Last edited:
http://news.yahoo.com/president-obama-no-debt-crisis-135606679--abc-news-politics.html

"We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt," President Obama said in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos for "Good Morning America." "In fact, for the next 10 years, it's gonna be in a sustainable place."
:noevil:

"the Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $845 billion - that's lower than the $1 trillion-plus deficits we've seen over the past four years and, as a percentage of the total economy, half the annual deficit of 2009. But, CBO also warns that the deficit is projected to continue rising once again after 2015, adding a total of $7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years."

"Ten thousand [Americans] a day are turning 65," Simpson told me. "This is madness. And life expectancy is 78.1, and in five years will be 80. Who is kidding who? This will eat a hole through America."
 
RE:

I think still the unemployment rises and government have no control on that.And the rate published is less than the original.And the job offered to general public have a low payout.What you think how can we control over that rate and also on debts?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom