37 Facts About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families -

37 Facts About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families - 



Have you ever laid in bed awake at night with a knot in your stomach because you didn’t know how your family was possibly going to make it through the next month financially?  Have you ever felt the desperation of not being able to provide the basic necessities for your family even though you tried as hard as you could?  All over America tonight, there are millions of desperate families that are being ripped apart by this economy.  There aren’t nearly enough jobs, and millions of Americans that actually do have jobs aren’t making enough to even provide the basics for their families.  When you have tried everything that you can think of and nothing works, it can be absolutely soul crushing.  Today, one of my regular readers explained that he was not going to be online for a while because his power had been turned off.  He has been out of work for quite a while, and eventually the money runs out.  Have you ever been there?  If you have ever experienced that moment, you know that it stays with you for the rest of your life.  If you are single that is bad enough, but when you have to look into the eyes of your children and explain to them why there won’t be any dinner tonight or why they have to move into a homeless shelter it can feel like someone has driven a stake into your heart.  In this article you will find a lot of very shocking economic statistics.  But please remember that behind each statistic are the tragic stories of millions of desperately hurting American families.
Over the past decade, things have steadily gotten worse for American families no matter what our politicians have tried.  Poverty and government dependence continue to rise.  The cost of living continues to go up and incomes continue to go down.  It is truly frightening to think about what this country is going to look like if current trends continue.
The following are 37 facts that show how cruel this economy has been to millions of desperate American families…
1. One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.
2. A different recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.
3. In the United States today, there are close to 10 million households that do not have a single bank account.  That number has increased by about a million since 2009.
4. Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.
5. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over the past four years.
6. Median household income has fallen for four years in a row.  Overall, it has declined by more than $4000 over the past four years.
7. 62 percent of middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
8. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 85 percent of middle class Americans say that it is more difficult to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.
9. In the United States today, 77 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.
10. In the United States today, more than 41 percent of all working age Americans are not working.
11. Since January 2009, the “labor force” in the United States has increased by 827,000, but “those not in the labor force” has increased by 8,208,000.  This is how they have gotten the unemployment numbers to “come down”.
12. Sadly, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
13. Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the federal poverty level.
14. Right now, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
15. At this point, less than 25 percent of all jobs in the United States are “good jobs”, and that number continues to shrink.
16. There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
17. According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.
18. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
19. In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.
20. Health insurance premiums rose faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2011 and that is happening once againin 2012.  In fact, it has been happening for a very long time.
21. According to one recent survey, approximately 10 percent of all employers in the United States plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now.
22. Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned.  By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
23. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
24. Total consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.
25. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
26. According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
27. Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living at home with their parents.
28. The percentage of Americans that find that they are able to retire when they reach retirement age continues to decline.  According to one new survey, 70 percent of middle class Americans plan to work during retirement and 30 percent plan to work until they are at least 80 years old.
29. The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.
30. In 2010, the number of jobs created at new businesses in the United States was less than half of what it was back in the year 2000.
31. Back in 2007, 19.2 percent of all American families had a net worth of zero or less than zero.  By 2010, that figure had soared to 32.5 percent.
32. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
33. In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.
34. In October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, 46.7 million Americans are on food stamps.
35. Approximately one-fourth of all children in the United States are enrolled in the food stamp program.
36. Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare.
37. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.
What makes all of this even more frightening is that many homeless shelters and food banks around the nation are so overloaded at this point that they are already over capacity.  Just consider this example…
When Janice Coe, a homeless advocate in Loudoun County, learned through her prayer group that a young woman was sleeping in the New Carrollton Metro station with a toddler and a 2-month-old, she sprang into action.
Coe contacted the young woman and arranged for her to take the train to Virginia, where she put the little family up in a Comfort Suites hotel. Then Coe began calling shelters to see who could take them.
Despite several phone calls, she came up empty. Coe was shocked to learn that many of the local shelters that cater to families were full, including Good Shepherd Alliance, where Coe was once director of social services.
“I don’t know why nobody will take this girl in,” Coe said. “The baby still had a hospital bracelet on her wrist.”
Keep in mind that Loudoun Country is smack dab in the middle of one of the wealthiest areas of Virginia.
So if things are that bad in the wealthy areas, exactly how bad are things getting in many of the poorer areas?
Unfortunately, things continue to get worse for this economy.  DuPont has just announced plans to eliminate 1,500 jobs.  There are more major layoff announcements almost every single day.  So how bad will things get when ourcrumbling economic system finally collapses?  When kind of chaos will be unleashed all over the nation when millions upon millions of Americans finally lose all hope?
In the introduction to this article, I mentioned that one of my regular readers has had his lights turned off.  The following is how he described his situation…
No gas, no water, no electricity at my house. Couldn’t pay the bills. I’m broke. Desperately searching for any means of income, or at least enough cash to get the juice (electricity) restored.
Typing this missive in a dark house using the battery on my laptop. Feels like I’m camping out at home. Hope to get this situation fixed tomorrow… somehow. Needless to say, I *…. hate this.
I was ready for this, but it is still a major league inconvenience. For those of you who DO have power, etc. – and are not ready… oh brother. You need to get ready. Seriously, you do. Because what I’m going through is just an inconvenience. It may someday be a normal occurence. Ugh. (expletives deleted)
Hopefully a way can be found to get his situation turned around, but the truth is that there are tens of millions of other similar stories out there in America today.
What about you?  What are things like in your neck of the woods?  Please feel free to share your thoughts below…

Read more - 
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/37-facts-that-show-how-cruel-this-economy-has-been-to-millions-of-desperate-american-families

Woman eating bar of soap rams into cars outside naval base... -

Woman eating bar of soap rams into cars outside naval base... - 



A Virginia woman is in custody after police say she rammed her car into a vehicle outside the entrance of Bethesda Naval medical.

Police say an officer at the hospital shot at the woman's car after the collision Tuesday morning but did not strike her. The officer was injured, apparently when he used a baton to strike the woman's car.

Montgomery County Police spokesman Paul Starks identifies the woman as Angela Akosua Cobbold from Manassas. Starks says she is being treated and charges are pending.

Starks says earlier Tuesday, Cobbold's car had been spotted going more than 90 mph on Interstate 66 in Virginia. He says officers also received a report that the woman was seen eating a bar of soap.

The woman never got on the base.

Read more -
http://www.wtop.com//46/3089992/Woman-rams-vehicle-outside-Bethesda-Naval-medical

Fake gold bars discovered at Australia’s Perth Mint, Chinese forgery factory uncovered -

Fake gold bars discovered at Australia’s Perth Mint, Chinese forgery factory uncovered - 



Less than a month ago news broke that 10 PAMP gold bars filled with tungsten had been discovered in Manhattan.  An SD reader then discovered a Chinese firm openly promoting the sale and production of tungsten filled gold bars and coins.
The tungsten filled gold scandal has just gotten exponentially larger, as an Australian Seven News investigation discovered 300 fake Perth Mint gold bars and uncovered a Chinese gold ‘forgery factory’.
The investigators were able to purchase 300 Chinese sourced 1oz gold bars for a total of $300- and to no one’s surprise, when the investigators melted down the bars, all 300 were discovered to contain roughly the same gold content as Fort Knox. 
Seven News reports:

An Australian mint has called in the Federal Police after being shown evidence by Seven News that its gold bars are being counterfeited.
The investigation uncovered Chinese ‘forgery factories’ that will churn out fake bullion and even Australian coins, for a fraction of their face value.
Just one of the bars (seen below) should be worth more than $1,700.

The fake bars discovered are reportedly Perth Mint Kangaroos:

“There are some poor people out there who have gone and bought these products thinking they’ve got a bargain and have actually been ripped off,” Ron Currie from the Perth Mint said.
At Wenzhou, in China’s south east, a suspicious discovery is made after taking a tour of one factory that makes medals and badges – there are thousands of samples.
On the front is stamped “Perth Mint Australia”, on the back are kangaroos – a close copy of the actual design used by the mint.
The tour guide doesn’t hold back when quizzed about the procedure.
“First we did the silver plating, then the gold plating,” he said.
What should be valued at $510,000, is actually counterfeited gold bars that Seven News paid $300 for (300 pieces at $1 each).
Mr Currie says while the number reaching Australia is relatively small, the damage can be significant – but there are tell-tale signs.
“If it looks like a deal that’s too good to refuse – you should refuse it. Secondly the quality – the quality is nowhere near as good as the real product,” he said.
“We’ll of course follow it through and take it up with the Australian Federal Police.
“The Australian Federal police are very helpful and are very interested in stopping counterfeits or copies coming into Australia.”
China has long forged Western products, but this is altogether different because it has the potential to do so much harm.
We again stress to our readers the importance of purchasing your bullion from a reputable dealer that purchases its product DIRECTLY from major wholesalers and refiners.
In other news, the Chinese forgery factory reported Monday a record 150 ton order from long time client the NY Fed. Chinese forgery factory reported Monday a record 150 ton order from long time client the NY Fed.

Read more -
http://www.silverdoctors.com/300-fake-perth-mint-gold-bars-discovered-in-australia-as-chinese-gold-forgery-factory-uncovered/

Message in a bottle from Canada arrives in Ireland after 8 years at sea -

Message in a bottle from Canada arrives in Ireland after 8 years at sea - 



Oisin Millea can hardly believe his luck — and instant fame he’s gained — from sorting through “rubbish” along the shoreline near his home in Ireland.

The nine-year-old schoolboy, along with his photographer mother Aoife Millea, 31, was looking at the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shores of the tiny village of Passage East, County Waterford, last week by a particularly high tide when he discovered a two-litre green plastic pop bottle with something inside it.

It turned out to be a note, written in French, from two 12-year-old Montreal girls, Charlaine and Claudia, tossed into the Gulf of St, Lawrence in 2004 while they were vacationing in the Gaspe.

Eight years and 5,100 kilometres later, it arrived.

“I only thought it was a piece of rubbish . . . I really didn’t think anything until I opened it,” Oisin told the Toronto Star from his home on the east coast of Ireland, southeast of Waterford town.

The two scrambled back home to run the note through Google translate. The date was all they could make out.

Oisin’s surprising find has now made him “famous” among his classmates and launched a search for the two girls (no last names), now women, who said in their note they got idea from a TV show about young people putting messages in bottles. The mystery bottle has captured the attention of media on both sides of the Atlantic.

“If you find our bottle, tell us when and how you found our bottle. Also tell us your name, age, place of residence. Example: Paris, Miami, etc . . . To contact us write to us at: cheval-rouge95@hotmail.com,” the message read. Unfortunately the email address not longer works.

But the two girls have been identified as Charlaine Dalpé and Claudia Garneau, according to the Montreal Gazette.

The original message from 2004 stated:

“Hello, we are two girls who had the idea to launch a bottle into the sea. We are called Charlaine and Claudia. We are both 12 and we live in Montreal. We are on vacation in the Gaspésie, in the village of Grande Vallée. We had the idea to launch a bottle into the sea because we saw a TV show about young people putting messages in bottles. If you find our bottle, tell us when and how you found our bottle. Also tell us your name, age, place of residence. Example: Paris, Miami, etc ... To contact us write to us at: cheval-rouge95@hotmail.com”

To finish, if you don’t have Internet, go to a friend’s or go to an Internet café because we are very curious to know if our bottle was found.

Charlaine and Claudia”

Aoife Millea said even after all those years, the note, which was rolled up and held together by a hair tie, was bone dry and written on the back of map of the area in the Gaspe where the bottle was launched.

“It was a really, really high tide that came in around the houses into the streets. This was the good news from the high tides,” she said, explaining the village is located on the River Suir estuary.

Millea said Oisin is “over the moon because he is quite the treasure hunter. This could not have happened to anyone better.”

“He was wondering if he was too famous to go to school today,” she told the Star.

It wasn’t until Millea and her son translated the note they realized it was from Quebec and not France. “He was even more excited that it came from Canada,” she said.

Millea said her son is eager to meet the women, now 20, who wrote the note, which he now plans to frame.

At last notice, Oisin was hoping to speak to Charlaine and Claudia by Skype sometime Tuesday.

Read more -
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1275913--message-in-a-bottle-from-canada-arrives-in-ireland-after-8-years-at-sea

Bank Of Canada Fires Shot Across Bow, Says "Withdrawal Of Stimulus Will Likely Be Required" -

Bank Of Canada Fires Shot Across Bow, Says "Withdrawal Of Stimulus Will Likely Be Required" - 




With the entire world engaged in global coordinated easing, slashing, burning, and overall lowering rates and printing money by the wheelbarrow, the Bank of Canada just fired a shot across the bow. Here is the kicker: "Reflecting all of these factors, the Bank has decided to maintain the target for the overnight rate at 1 per cent. Over time, some modest withdrawal of monetary policy stimulus will likely be required." Surely they must be punished for this blasphemy in the holy church of Saint John Maynard and the apostles of collapsing fiat.

The Loonie is happy:




Goldman is not. From GS' Andrew Tilton.

Keeping and strengthening the tightening bias, a hawkish surprise

The Bank of Canada today kept the target for the overnight rate unchanged, as was widely expected. Instead, the main focus today was on the language of the statement following Governor Carney’s speech last week at which he omitted mention of the BoC’s tightening bias. In the event, the tightening bias was strengthened, while the growth forecast was kept essentially unchanged. Overall, relative to the speech by Governor Carney last week, this represents a big surprise and suggests that concern over imbalances in the household sector may have grown.

In contrast to Governor Carney’s speech last week, where the tightening bias was omitted, the language of the tightening bias has been strengthened in two ways. First, language that conditioned tightening on the pace of the recovery has been dropped. Second, tightening is now called “likely,” where as before it was termed “may become appropriate.” The tightening bias language now reads: “Over time, some modest withdrawal of monetary policy stimulus will likely be required, consistent with achieving the 2 per cent inflation target.” The statement now explicitly also mentions the evolution of imbalances in the household sector, which suggests that concerns over household leverage have moved up the list of priorities for the Bank of Canada.

In this context, the Bank of Canada held its growth forecasts essentially unchanged. Growth for 2012 has been revised up to2.2% in 2012 (from 2.1%), was kept unchanged at 2.3% in 2013 and taken to 2.4% in 2014 (from 2.5%). Given Governor Carney’s emphasis on the deterioration in business sentiment and the investment outlook, this is also a hawkish surprise. The statement refers as it did previously to “very stimulative financial conditions” as sources of support for consumption and business investment. These seem to have trumped the concern over higher frequency indicators that were pointing to weakness. The output gap is now expected to close end-2013, slightly after the H2 2013 date given previously.

Overall, the statement stands in marked contrast to the Governor Carney speech last week and sounds more hawkish than we expected. However, we are sticking to our call of no rate hikes until Q4 2013
Full statement link here, and a side by side comparison with the last statement below.

Bank of Canada

Read more -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-23/bank-canada-fires-shot-across-bow-says-withdrawal-stimulus-will-likely-be-required

Why A Balanced Budget Is Impossible In America -

Why A Balanced Budget Is Impossible In America - 

If the US government cut all government services except Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments, federal spending would still outpace revenues. As we noted here, these four mandatory items dominate costs. All the arguing over sequestration and the fiscal cliff are moot since as Professor Antony Davis notes in this brief clip, there are no specific cust that will enable government to balance the budget; in fact "nothing less than a complete redesign will solve the problem." That redesign begins with determing the proper role of government.



Read more -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-16/why-balanced-budget-impossible-america

CBS News affiliate calls 2012 presidential race for Barack Obama weeks ahead of election -

CBS News affiliate calls 2012 presidential race for Barack Obama weeks ahead of election - 




The 2012 presidential election is still more than two weeks away, but on Friday a CBS News affiliate in Arizona called the race for President Barack Obama.

For 17 seconds, Phoenix, Arizona CBS News affiliate KPHO ran a lower third graphic that showed that Obama had won the Nov. 6 election over Gov. Mitt Romney with 99% of the precincts reporting. The lower third graphic appeared around 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 19, during an episode of “The People’s Court.”

The CBS News graphic showed Obama winning the election with 43 percent of the vote nationwide to Romney’s 40 percent -– or 40,237,966 votes to 38,116,216. It is unclear who garnered the other 17 percent in the fictional election results.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/21/cbs-news-affiliate-calls-2012-presidential-race-for-barack-obama-weeks-ahead-of-election/

British engineers create gasoline from thin air -

British engineers create gasoline from thin air - 



Genius Brit engineers have pioneered a new technology that produces petrol – from air.
Experts hailed the breakthrough as a potential “game-changer” as scientists seek to solve the world’s energy crisis.
The small company from the north England has developed “air capture” technology which creates synthetic petrol with only air and electricity.
Company chiefs say they have produced five litres of petrol in less than three months at a small refinery in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
They now hope to build a large plant generating more than a tonne of petrol per day within two years – and a refinery size operation within the next 15 years.
The fuel works in any petrol tank and promises to be “completely carbon neutral” so long as renewable energy is used to provide the electricity.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/10/22/british-engineers-create-gasoline-from-thin-air/?intcmp=features

How sugar may make you stupid

How sugar may make you stupid - 



Bad news sugar lovers: a diet high in fructose won’t just make you fat, it may also make you stupid, according to research out of California.

A steady high-fructose diet disrupts the brain’s cognitive abilities, leading to poor learning and memory retention, says a study by Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a neurosurgery professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Rahul Agrawal, a visiting UCLA postdoctoral fellow from India.

“This type of diet. . . (affects) the transmission of information across cells. . . learning and memory and practically any type of brain function depends very much on how transmission is transported across cells,” Gomez-Pinilla said in an interview with the Star.

Health concerns

Their study, published in the May 15 edition of the Journal of Physiology, looked at high sugar consumption, focusing less on naturally occurring fructose in fruits and more on the fructose in high-fructose corn syrup.

Research has already proven a high-fructose diet leads to a slew of health concerns, including obesity, diabetes and fatty liver.

The U.S. is the world’s largest consumer of sweeteners.

High-fructose corn syrup, which acts as a preservative and sweetener, is found in a variety of processed foods, from soft drinks and baby food to salad dressings and condiments.

The average American consumes approximately 21 kilograms of cane sugar and 16 kilograms of high-fructose corn syrup annually, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Role of fatty acids

Gomez-Pinilla and Agrawal studied two groups of rats, both of which drank a fructose solution in their drinking water for six weeks. One of the groups also consumed omega-3 fatty acids, from flaxseed oil and a DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) capsule. Omega-3 fatty acids have been found to guard against heat disease, high cholesterol and mental conditions such as bipolar disorder and depression, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Both rat groups were trained on a maze for five days before starting their new diet. After six weeks, Gomez-Pinilla and Agrawal retested the rats on the maze to monitor brain function and memory retention, noting the rats that consumed the fructose solution without the omega-3 fatty acids had problems with how they were able to think and recall routes in the maze.

Those rats also showed a resistance to insulin, a hormone that regulates sugar levels in the body.

“Rats fed on a (omega-3 fatty acids) deficient diet showed memory deficits in a Barnes maze, which were further exacerbated by fructose take,” the authors write.

They found that a rich diet of omega-3 fatty acids counteracted the negative affects of fructose.

Implications for humans

In terms of humans, Gomez-Pinilla predicts such changes in the brain to happen within six months to a year.

“The implication(s) here (are) the high consumption and the chronic consumption for man,” Gomez-Pinilla said, adding research needs to be done on the specific affects on humans.

“We don’t know yet how long (the damage) can last.”

The war on unhealthy food choices is a growing. In September, New York City announced it would ban sugar-filled drinks larger than 16-ounces from concession and fast-food stands, restaurants and movie theatres.

In Canada, a push on healthy eating is on the rise as the country grapples with the fact that 31.5 per cent of Canadian children aged 5 to 17 are either overweight or obese, according to a Statistics Canada report released in September.

“Diabetes is very prevalent in western society. It’s known already there is an (epidemic) of diabetes, which is highly related to a consumption of foods high in sugar,” Gomez-Pinilla said.

Gomez-Pinilla advocates a nutrient-rich dietthat includes omega-3 fatty acids and a proper mix of healthy choices to offset the dangers of fructose.

Foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids include flaxseed oil, some types of fish, such as salmon, and nuts.

Read more -
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1273659--how-sugar-may-make-you-stupid

Goats released on football field forces high school to move football game -

Goats released on football field forces high school to move football game - 



A small herd of goats caused plenty of problems for a North Carolina high school hoping to play a home football game on senior night.
The Shelby Star reports that nearly a dozen goats were released in the Burns High School stadium in Cleveland County Thursday night or Friday morning. School officials say the goats caused enough of a mess to force the game against Rutherfordton-Spindale Central to be moved.
The prank raised concern because of a recent outbreak of E. coli cases associated with the Cleveland County Fair west of Charlotte this month. Burns Athletic Director Eddy Taylor said health department officials came to the school and told them the game would have to be moved.
Other activities scheduled at Burns on Friday also had to be moved.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/10/20/goats-released-on-football-field-forces-high-school-to-move-football-game/?test=latestnews