|
Can U.S. Economy Ever Recover?
Bankers Have Dug Hole So Deep, Experts See No Solution to Crisis
By Victor Thorn
“President Obama, are you listening?” In what has been dubbed “Rant of the Year,” CNBC host and financial analyst Rick Santelli had a meltdown live on nationwide television. Reminiscent of Howard Beale’s “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” character in the movie Network, fellow commentators were concerned that mob rule would take over the Chicago Stock Exchange.
Among the highlights of Santelli’s diatribe were: “The new administration is big on computers and technology. How about this, Mr. President. Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages?”
Amid a supportive chorus of boos, Santelli asked, “How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”
With tensions mounting, the television personality finally announced, “It’s time for another Tea Party. What we’re doing in this country would make Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin roll over in their graves.”
He isn’t the only one firing his musket. Fox News owner and media baron Rupert Murdoch circulated an internal memo to his employees. “We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered.”
The implications of this statement are enormous. He then stressed, “Many companies will be mortally wounded.”
Globalist speculator George Soros agrees. Reuters reported his most recent comments: “The world financial system has effectively disintegrated,
and there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis. The turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression.”
He then compared our predicament to the Soviet Union’s demise.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman and current Obama adviser Paul Volcker echoed this sentiment. “I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, so uniformly around the world.”
Economist Nouriel Roubini, who predicted this collapse in 2005, warned that financial institutions may become nationalized to fend off further catastrophe. He told Reuters: “The United States is nowhere near the end of the banking and credit crisis.”
Volcker seems to be speaking from both sides of his mouth. He told Eileen Connelly of the Associated Press, “It is evident in the United States, and not just in the United States, the central bank is taking on a role that is way beyond what a central bank should be doing.” On the other hand, mirroring the aims of his New World Order allies, Volcker called for “international cooperation in creating a new regulatory framework.”
Is he hinting at the establishment of a one-world bank and currency when stating, “The more international agreement we have on where we want to get to, the better off we’ll be” ?
Abroad, the Chinese definitely feel squeezed between a rock and a hard place. At the 10th Annual Risk Management Convention in New York City, Luo Ping—director general of the Chinese Banking Regulatory Commission—directed these loaded comments toward his U.S. counterparts.
“We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion, $2 trillion … we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys; but there is nothing much we can do.”
The reason they’re in a fix is evident. If China dumps our bonds or refuses to keep buying new Treasuries, our economy will tank. As a result, the manufacturing base that China has been building for the past two decades will also collapse because we won’t be able to buy their products. So, when faced with this lose-lose situation, Chinese leaders realize that if we sink, so do they.
The problem, however, is even worse than Ping conveyed. At the much-ballyhooed fiscal summit in Washington, David Walker—former comptroller general under President George W. Bush—told President Obama, “We are $11 trillion in the hole on the balance sheet, but the problem’s not the balance sheet. It is off the balance sheet, with $45 trillion in unfunded obligations.”
In other words, our government owes four times the national debt on future payouts such as Medicare, Social Security, health care and pensions. This figure is staggering, and there is absolutely no way we can cover it, especially with the spate of bailouts we’ve seen over recent months.
Gerald Celente brings this scenario full circle. In Russia Today, Celente predicted, “We’re going to see an economic collapse the likes of which the world has never seen before. It’s not only in the United States. It’s going global.”
Reminiscent of the 1930s where unemployment ran rampant, Celente explained how official figures aren’t giving us an accurate portrait. “There are two sets of books that the government keeps. When they measure unemployment, they don’t add in the people who are no longer looking for jobs because they’ve become discouraged since they cannot find employment for so long. And they don’t include part-time workers. When you put that number into it, the [actual unemployment rate] is 13.7 percent.”
Similar to a recent article in the American Free Press regarding kidnappings in Phoenix, Ariz., Celente envisions a harrowing future. “You’re going to see crime levels in America that are going to rival the third world. Welcome to Mexico City. You’re going to start seeing people kidnapped in this country like they do in other underdeveloped nations. It’s going to be very violent in America.”
With disenfranchisement on the rise, Celente wonders how we could ever trust those in power: “Read my lips. No new taxes. I didn’t have sex with that woman. I smoked but I didn’t inhale. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. Why would anybody believe these people? There’s going to be a revolution in this country. It’s going to be a tax revolt. People are one job away from losing everything.”
Americans are in for a bumpy economic ride. During the 2008 election campaign, many got seduced by a message of “hope” and “change.” Regrettably, eight years of George W. Bush’s cheerleader tactics didn’t change reality, nor will Barack Obama’s slick rhetoric.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Howard Beale in Network bellowed, “We’re as mad as hell.”
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.
(Issue # 11, March 16, 2009)
|
|
