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Excellent study of how we got into this problem that the socialist are now using to kill forever the American Dream: "..... Forty years ago, depository institutions handled mortgage credit risk very differently than they do today. Back then, the depository institution, which was typically a savings and loan association, held mortgages that were underwritten by its own employees, given to borrowers and backed by homes in its own community. These were almost always 30-year, fixed-rate loans, with borrowers having made a significant down payment, often 20 percent of the price of the home. Call this approach to mortgage lending "Method A." Today, mortgage loans held by depository institutions are often in the form of securities. These securities are backed by loans originated in distant communities by unknown borrowers, underwritten by mortgage brokers or other personnel not employed by the depository institution. The loans are often not 30-year fixed-rate loans, and the borrowers have typically made down payments of 5 percent or less, including loans with no down payment at all. Call this approach to mortgage lending "Method B." If you compare the two methods using common sense, then Method B does not pass a simple sanity check. In fact, the current financial crisis consists of banks that are up to their necks in Method B......"

Empire of Debt was published in 2006. It stated bluntly that the housing market occupied the center of an inflated bubble. The authors asserted the bubble would pop, leaving a sticky residue everywhere. They were right. The authors stated that Alan Greenspan's policies were detrimental to the U.S. economy. They were right. Empire of Debt not only identified the problems, but it provided a solution. Invest in gold or the Japanese yen. It would appear that once again they were right. The yen is strong and gold has made a phenomenal run, selling for over $1000 per ounce.

Interview with Seth Lipsky, former Wall street Asia - NY Sun editor, and journalist.  Seth explains the constitutional requirements that Congress control and protect a hard currency.  He also explains his support for Ron Paul, the Paul-Perry-Cain "flat tax" proposals, and the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  Hard to believe Seth worked for the Wall Street Journal, otherwise known as the globalist bankster voice.  IMHO, no one has done more to confuse the public with free market - capitalism posturing while promoting outrageous banksterism, crony capitalism and a militaristic global corporatism that threatens the sovereignty of the USA than the WSJ.  Seth however is great. excerpt: The founding fathers named the U.S. currency after a coin called a Spanish-milled dollar, which represented 371.25 grains of pure silver, and put protecting its value in the hands of Congress. "They meant the dollar to be a measure of value and in fact they gave Congress the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof in the same sentence of the Constitution in which they gave Congress the power to fix the standards of weights and measures," Lipsky told Newsmax.TV. _________________________________________________________ Editor's note: To get 'It Shines for All' at a great price - Click Here Now. _________________________________________________________  "What the reform movement that we have been covering in The Sun wants Congress to do is to step up to that Constitutional responsibility to establish a proper value to the dollar, and then we wouldn't have to worry about inflation and rising prices," he said. "We would have to conduct the government's budgetary operations in a way that didn't result in a collapse in the value of our currency," said Lipsky. Under President Obama, the White House has enacted stimulus measures to incentivize job creation while the Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with money and swollen its balance sheet in an effort to spur

Paul Craig Roberts wields a pen striking at the very heart of what ails American government.

How Much Does Mental Health Disability Pay In 2023 Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI or SSD) is the sole source of income for millions of Americans who are unable to work due to a non-work-related injury or illness. SSDI benefits are available only to workers and former workers with a substantial employment history. Both physical and mental disabilities are covered under the Social Security Act. While SSDI pays the same benefits for qualifying mental impairments as it does for physical impairments, the amount each individual receives in benefits depends on their history of earnings. This blog post will explain how Social Security defines qualifying disabilities, including mental impairments, and determines each individual's benefit payment. At The Clauson Law Firm, we know how important it is for every disability applicant and benefit recipient to understand how their benefits are arrived at, what affects their continued benefits, and how their benefits can change over time. Contact Clauson Law today if you have questions about qualifying for SSDI benefits or need help filing a claim or appealing a denial. We've helped thousands of disabled people across the U.S. with their disability claims. Mental Impairments And Social Security Disability More than 40% of SSD cases in the United States have some mental health or intellectual impairment as a component in the claim. Mental health impairments can result from an almost unlimited array of circumstances, including traumatic stress; depression; genetic predisposition to depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia; or traumatic brain injury (TBI); one of the many forms of dementia; and others. The ways in which mental impairments affect the person suffering can often interfere with their ability to perform work on a regular basis. These are discussed in detail in the section "Common Mental Disabilities that May Qualify for SSDI" below. But first, let's look at how you qualify for SSD benefits and how you

How Much Does Mental Health Disability Pay In 2023

Monetary policy of, by, and for banksters continues in the U.S. One irony is that banksters press for transition to an all digital currency so that savers can be penalized, a blatant "trickle-up"economic policy, whilst also pressing for more bank bailouts, wielding the thoroughly-discredited "trickle down" economic theory. But "trickle down" theory, in the context of bank bailouts, has not successfully trickled down and the only beneficiaries have been the few Americans who can still invest in the stock market, paying the highest dividends to the wealthiest among us. Has their ever been a time when the stock market's behavior has been so divorced from the well-being of the middle and lower economic classes? I doubt there has been at least in the last 50 years. Where would we be if the bank bail-out trillions had instead been mailed as checks to the middle and lower economic classes? "Trickle up" works and that is what built the American economy to its peak in inflation-adjusted dollars -- an affluent middle class. But do not expect leadership from Washington, D.C. in correcting income inquequality; only political rhetoric and a fight over extension of unemployment benefits, now lapsed. "According to the World Bank, the GINI coefficient "measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution." Therefore it is used as an indication of income inequality within countries. ... In the late 2000s, Chile had the highest GINI coefficient, after taxes and transfers, among OECD member countries. The United States, Turkey and Mexico came right before it. At the other end of the scale, Slovenia, Denmark and Norway led the ranking with the lowest levels of income inequality." http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/11944-wealth-distribution-income-inequality.html#ixzz2pGpv4xGZ Higher minimum wages? How about instead abolishing the Feder

"Doug Casey: I don't see a real recovery until they stop debasing the currency, radically cut government spending and taxation and eliminate most regulation. In other words, cease doing the things that caused this depression. And that's not going to happen until there's a collapse of the current order. Things have cyclically improved since the height of the crisis of 2008-09. The trillions of currency units created by the Federal Reserve have jammed the stock market higher and kept the big banks from going under. What surprises me is that retail prices have not moved as significantly as I would have expected. The reason, I believe, is that most of that money is still sitting in financial institutions. It has gone into cash out of fear, into stocks because they represent real wealth with earning power and into various speculative assets like artwork and collectible cars. Real estate has recovered somewhat, not because of strong fundamentals but strictly because of money creation. This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference - not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save - when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better. They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be. Although, I hasten to add, I hate to pontificate on what the Fed "should" do. In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy. In fact, if it wasn't for the state, I suspect we'd all have a vastly higher standard of living, and would be colonizing the Moon, Mars and

10/22/10 Hong Kong, China - Austerity be damned, at this rate Mr. Bernanke will go down in the history books as one of the greatest money creators ever to have walked this planet! Never mind sky-high deficits and a crushing debt overhang, at its most recent FOMC meeting, the Federal Reserve all but guaranteed another round of quantitative easing. The truth is that the US is insolvent and its policymakers will stop at nothing in order to avoid sovereign default. So, it should come as no surprise that at its latest meeting, the Federal Reserve downplayed the risk of inflation, thereby setting the stage for another round of money creation.

Troubled assets are just stuff that banks paid too much for. Mostly, that stuff is loans made to people who cannot afford to pay them off, secured by collateral that is worth less than the loan value. Those loans were made so people could buy everything from homes and cars to shopping malls and construction companies. The reason they are financially crippling is that banks don't want to admit how badly they overpaid, so they keep carrying worthless junk at inflated values on their balance sheets.  The "systemic" problems arise because everyone knows the banks are holding junk that they are pretending are jewels. Investors and lenders don't believe the assets are worth what the banks say they are, so they won't lend or invest against the phoney valuations.

There are some intriguing similarities between the political situation in 1946 and the political situation today. In the off-year election of 1946, Republicans gained 13 seats in the Senate and emerged with a 51-45 majority there, the largest majority that they enjoyed between 1930 and 1980. They gained 55 seats in the House, giving them a 246-188 majority in that body, the largest majority they have held since 1930. First, Democrats were promising (or threatening) to vastly increase the size and scope of government. Government's share of gross domestic product had risen to over 40% in World War II, and it was obvious that there would be some scaling back. At the same time, the Allied victory in World War II had enhanced the prestige of the state, just as the 1930s Depression weakened faith in free markets. In Britain, the 1942 Beveridge Report urged creating a welfare state after the war, and the Labour Party won a resounding victory in the July 1945 election and promptly proceeded to adopt the Beveridge recommendations and more. In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt in his January 1944 State of the Union address echoed the Beveridge Report. As I pointed out in my 1990 book Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, he called for "steeply graduated taxes, government controls on crop prices and food prices [and] continued controls on wages . . . Government should guarantee everyone a job, an education, and clothing, housing, medical care, and financial security against the risks of old age and sickness." "True individual freedom," Roosevelt said, "cannot exist without economic security and independence." The similarities between the policy choices facing Congress in 1945-1946 and those facing it in 2009-2010 are obviously far from exact. Nevertheless, there are some. In both cases a Democratic president was proposing and a Democratic Congress was considering proposals to substantially increase the size and scope of gov

The two presidents have a lot in common. Both inherited an American economy in collapse. And both applied daring, expensive remedies. Mr. Reagan passed the biggest tax cut ever, combined with an agenda of deregulation, monetary restraint and spending controls. Mr. Obama, of course, has given us a $1 trillion spending stimulus. By the end of the summer of Reagan's third year in office, the economy was soaring. The GDP growth rate was 5% and racing toward 7%, even 8% growth. In 1983 and '84 output was growing so fast the biggest worry was that the economy would "overheat." In the summer of 2011 we have an economy limping along at barely 1% growth and by some indications headed toward a "double-dip" recession. By the end of Reagan's first term, it was Morning in America. Today there is gloomy talk of America in its twilight. My purpose here is not more Reagan idolatry, but to point out an incontrovertible truth: One program for recovery worked, and the other hasn't. The Reagan philosophy was to incentivize production-i.e., the "supply side" of the economy-by lowering restraints on business expansion and investment. This was done by slashing marginal income tax rates, eliminating regulatory high hurdles, and reining in inflation with a tighter monetary policy.

Behind the facade of politico-speak of a recovering economy and dedication to growing the economy, the political class in Washington, D.C. has done nothing along those lines that is worthy of mention, not even removing the tax incentives for off-shoring middle class jobs. Unless you live in one of the small pockets of prosperity, reality sets in as soon as you walk out the door; the economy just keeps getting worse rather than better and it shows just about everywhere you go. This article takes a useful look at how the 90th percentile of American workers fared during the recovery from the Great Depression compared to how they fared in the "recovery" from the Great Recession, after adjusting for inflation and what-not. It's dismal reading. But there's a silver-lining on the edge of that tornado. That's the fact that a lot more Americans are now a lot more reality-based in how they view their government: This is not a government of, by, and for the People and it never has been. It's always been a government of, by, and for the oligarchs. So shed a tear for those lies you used to believe; at least you've gained a whole bunch of sanity.    

I vividly recall that around 1965, the price of T-Bone steak was generally in the range of 17-19 cents per pound. I don't remember the price of ground beef, but it was a lot less than that.   Inflation is the cruelest tax of all. 

The established New York credit agencies would play a strategic role in this post-1971 dollar system. During the 1970's the US Government's Securities & Exchange Commission, charged with oversight of bond and stock markets, issued a ruling giving the then-dominant New York credit rating agencies-Moody's and Standard & Poor's (and later Fitch Ratings)-a de facto guaranteed monopoly in an unregulated market, when they ruled that only "Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations" would be qualified to issue appropriate ratings, i.e. only Moody's and S&P. Corruption was made endemic to the US ratings game and Washington was party to the dirty deal. By the end of the 1970's, using the vast amount of OPEC "petro-dollars" from the two oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979, New York international banks, using London, began to loan to the rest of the world to finance imports of oil and other essentials. The New York credit rating agencies, previously primarily rating US corporate bonds, expanded into the new foreign debt markets as the largest and only established rating agencies in the new phase of dollarization and globalization of capital markets. They set up branches in Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, Argentina and other emerging markets much like the US Big Five accounting firms. During the 1980s the rating agencies played a key role in down-rating the debt of the Latin American debtor countries such as Mexico and Argentina. Their ratings determined if the debtor countries could borrow or not. Financial market insiders in London and New York openly spoke of the "political" rating agencies using their de facto monopoly to advance the agenda of Wall Street and the Dollar System behind it. Then in the 1990's, the New York rating agencies played a decisive role in spreading the "Asia Crisis" of 1997-98. With the precise timing of its downgrades they could worsen the panic because they had been suspiciously silent right up un

It's a big problem in Venezuela. The government subsidizes the purchase of consumer goods so that they can be priced lower for those with low incomes. But the right-wing "capitalists" aligned with U.S. covert agencies hoard the goods, creating artificial market shortages, then sell the goods on the black market at inflated prices. The current response by the government is criiminal prosecutions coupled with nationalization of businesses that don't hear the message. I suspect that the government may be forced at some point to drop the subsidies and begin writing welfare checks to low income citizens instead. The Bolivarian government is absolutely committed to ending poverty in Venezuela. Of course this smells too much of socialism for U.S. government tastes, which has been attempting to overthrow the Bolivarian government ever since it nationalized the oil industry. 

I've been following and reading Porter's publications since September of 2008, when the mighty Marbux pointed me to Porter and the libertarian economists as a first step to understanding the financial collapse of 2008, and the incredible role the Federal government / Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel played. Porter started the Project to Restore Americqa, and wrote this very concise and well thought out manifesto explaining a new direction for America to consider.  If you love your country, please take a few minutes to read this.  Rarely has the truth been so clearly stated, and a solution so precisely, yet simply, presented.  Good stuff.  +1 "We have to stop giving our citizens improper incentives. We have to increase the "skin" voters have in the game by spreading the burden of government more equally. And we have to ensure the government doesn't have the power to destroy our currency. Americans now owe $56 trillion in total debt, much of it held by foreign investors. We must spend $3.5 trillion each year on interest. That is already more than the federal government spends, in total. We will never be able to repay these debts - already equal to roughly four times our country's GDP. The largest components of the debts we owe are government debts... and they are growing rapidly and show no signs of stopping. Do you think it's more likely we'll find a way to actually pay down these debts... or simply choose to print more money to pay these debts? That's what we're doing right now. So far, the Federal Reserve has printed more than $2 trillion of new money and used it to finance our government's borrowing binge. So the question is, what can we do to change the direction in which we are headed? We have to fundamentally restructure our system. There must be more balance between rights and responsibilities. There must be some fundamental limit on spending and on taxes. And we need sound money to prohibit the government from taxing us silently via inflation an

Fascinating presentation filled with stats and charts depicting the state of the world's economy.  51 slides in total, so it takes some time.  The summation is clear though.  We are in a world of hurt.  The $85 Billion per month the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel is pumping into the financial markets is the only thing holding the world economy together.  When the dollar collapses, the USA must officially devaluate the dollar, the QEII $85 Billion per month joy ride will be over. ""Something happened in the middle of May," said investing god Jeff Gundlach as he began his latest webcast on the state of the global markets and the economy. He was referring to how global interest rates quietly rallied and how the Japanese stock market fell spectacularly. He notes that the magnitude of the interest rate rally isn't unusual.  Having said that, Gundlach believes rates will stay low thanks to a "put" by the Federal Reserve. Should rates rise, Gundlach believes the Fed would actually expand quantitative easing. This is because high interest rates would put too much pressure on the economy, and it would cause Federal interest expenses to become too onerous. "I certainly think the Fed is going to reduce quantitative easing," he said. But he attributes the reduction to the shrinking Federal deficit. "I'm starting to like long-term Treasuries," said Gundlach as he predicted the 10-year Treasury yield would end the year at 1.7%. All of Gundlach's theses are based on the fact that the global economy remains weak, GDP growth forecasts continue to come down, and unemployment remains high and lop-sided. He communicates all of this in his eye-opening, hand-picked collection of charts on growth, employment, inflation, stocks, bonds, and other critical global macro indicators. Anyone who is serious about investing must consider his charts. And for anyone who's just curious, these charts will give you a peek into how Gundlach thinks. Click Here To See Gundlach's Presentation >"

Thanks to Marbux we have this extraordinary collection of facts and figures describing the economic catastrophe that has hit the USA.  excerpt: "What a year 2012 has been!  The mainstream media continues to tell us what a "great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class.  It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening.  If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode.  Just "tweaking" things slightly is not going to fix our economy.  We need a fundamental change in direction.  Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic "adjustment" that America has ever gone through.  We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up. The end of the year is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the year.  Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your loved ones.  Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading into economic oblivion.  So if you have someone among your family and friends that believes that everything is going to be "just fine", just show them these numbers.  They are a good summary of the problems that the U

"Some thoughts on "Russia's Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election," the newly released declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 1. The primary purpose of the declassified report, which offers no evidence to support its assertions that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election campaign, is to discredit Donald Trump. I am not saying there was no Russian hack of John Podesta's emails. I am saying we have yet to see any tangible proof to back up the accusation. This charge-Sen. John McCain has likened the alleged effort by Russia to an act of war-is the first salvo in what will be a relentless campaign by the Republican and Democratic establishment, along with its corporatist allies and the mass media, to destroy the credibility of the president-elect and prepare the way for impeachment. The allegations in the report, amplified in breathtaking pronouncements by a compliant corporate media that operates in a non-fact-based universe every bit as pernicious as that inhabited by Trump, are designed to make Trump look like Vladimir Putin's useful idiot. An orchestrated and sustained campaign of innuendo and character assassination will be directed against Trump. When impeachment is finally proposed, Trump will have little public support and few allies and will have become a figure of open ridicule in the corporate media. 2. The second task of the report is to bolster the McCarthyist smear campaign against independent media, including Truthdig, as witting or unwitting agents of the Russian government. The demise of the English programming of Al-Jazeera and TeleSur, along with the collapse of the nation's public broadcasting, designed to give a voice to those not beholden to corporate or party interests, leaves RT America and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! as the only two electronic outlets with a national reach that are willing to give a platform to critics of corporate power and imperialism s