Walmart Abruptly Closing 260 Sam's Club Stores, Firing Thousands On Same Day It Raised Minimum Wages

The lie is its AMAZON...but its not. Online sales of ALL SOURCES only amount to 11% of all retail sales. This is about NO MONEY IN THE FAMILY PANTRY ANY MORE.

we are in a depression. Have been for years. Unless you work for the government, state or federal.

Gasoline demand in USA lowest in 48 years, MOM

An unprecedented collapse in gasoline demand. As the firm's energy analyst Damien Courvalin said on February 8, when discussing the 6% fall in US gasoline demand, such a plunge "would require a US recession" and add that "implied demand data points to US gasoline demand in January declining 460 kb/d or 5.2% year-on-year. In the absence of a base effect, such a decline has only occurred in four periods since 1960 during which time PCE contracted."

Now, 6 months later, the situation is very much different: with the US now inside peak summer driving season, the cyclical drivers behind gasoline supply and demand are vastly different, and yet something has remained the same: gasoline demand in the US simply refuses to rebound, surprising analysts by how weak it is. So weak, in fact, that Bank of America has released a note which, like Goldman half a year ago, reveals confusion about why - if the economy is indeed strong -  demand hasn't kept up and has prompted BofA's energy analyst Francisco Blanch to ask "where is the driving season?" and, more specifically, "is this year's driving season over before it began?"

If you're not building and repairing infrastructure you're not using diesel fuel for heavy equipment, the bosses aren't driving brand new company trucks (gasoline), the workers aren't traveling to the construction site, carpenters aren't driving nails into lumber, the coffee truck isn't selling anyone sandwiches, the workers aren't going to the pub for a beer after work on Friday, the kids aren't getting a new skateboard, welders aren't welding (steel), iron workers aren't raising re-bar, concrete isn't being poured, rocks aren't being crushed, construction boots aren't being sold. You get the picture.

 One more 'CANARY IN THE COAL MINE' indicator that screams DEPRESSION!!! Government figures are nothing but FAKE NEWS based on FAKE DATA performed with FAKE ANALYSIS. We call this the "OBAMA ECONOMICS" program. Just ask Illinois how it is working out.
I believe this is getting very real right before our very eyes. Below is latest economic information from a REAL PERSON using REAL ANALYSIS TOOLS and GOOD DATA.

===== WWW.SHADOWSTATS.COM =====
No. 898: June Labor Conditions, Money Supply M3
July 7th, 2017
• June Payroll Gain Was on Top of Upside Revisions
• Nonetheless, Unadjusted Annual Payroll Growth Held at Low Levels Common to Periods Preceding Economic Recession
• Headline Unemployment Remained Well Short of Common Experience
• June 2017 Unemployment: U.3 Rose to 4.4% from 4.3%, U.6 Rose to 8.6% from 8.4% and the ShadowStats-Alternate Rose to 22.1% from 22.0%
• Watch Out for Reporting Surprises in Week Ahead
• June Money Supply M3 Annual Growth Declined to 3.1% from 3.5% in May.
=====
No. 897: Trade Deficit, Construction Spending, Freight Index, Private Jobs Surveying
July 6th, 2017
• Second-Quarter 2017 Real Merchandise Trade Deficit Remained on Track for Worst Showing Since Second-Quarter 2007
• June Real-World Employment Conditions Continued in Annual Decline, Albeit at a Narrowed Pace Still Not Seen Since the Depths of the 2009 Collapse
• In Ongoing, Low-Level Stagnation, May Freight Index Gained Year-to-Year, Holding Shy of Recovering Its Pre-Recession Peak by 12.1% (-12.1%)
• Construction Spending Benchmark Revisions Confirmed Likely Downside-Benchmark Revisions Pending for the GDP
• Recent Patterns of Real Annual Growth in Construction Spending Revised from Up-trending to Sharply Down-trending, Consistent with a Recession
• Real Construction Spending Remained 20.7% (-20.7%) Shy of Recovering Its Pre-Recession Peak, Still Holding in Low-Level Stagnation
 
When the cost of gasoline and diesel near parity, which they have, we are in a recession.  EVERY TIME. We are at that point now. We never recovered from 2008. We won't financially survive this one. 10 years was just too much, and age is taking its toll. 0% on savings ate the principal and I bonds.

Since you have 102 millions people in labor force not working  those still wondering about the numbers can keep doing what there are doing = nothing.

8 years of Obama and his fanatic socialist and Marxists (Piglosi, Reid, Jarrett, Lowrenta, etc) has consequences.

The Great Western Economic Depression going on 9 years. The media and govt lies about state of the union

Western economies are “recovering”. How do we know this? We are told this, over and over and over again by our governments. Then this assertion is repeated thousands of times more by the dutiful parrots of the Corporate media. And it's the biggest damnable lie going. The only people doing well are satanic network members who get the only jobs left and or work in some form of government.

The problem is that in the real world there is not a shred of evidence to support this assertion that the economy is in recovery. In the U.S.; ridiculous official lies were created claiming the creation of 15 million new jobs. In reality, there are three millionless Americans with jobs today than at the official end of the “recession”.

These imaginary jobs are invented by assorted statistical frauds, with the primary deceit being so-called “seasonal adjustments”. To be legitimate, all seasonal adjustments must to net to zero at the end of each year. Instead, in the U.S.A., the biggest job creator in the nation every year is the calendar.

Beyond the grandiose but absurd claims of new jobs in the U.S., there have been few signs of economic health across the Corrupt West. Despite this, these traitorous regimes continue the pretense that their horrific mismanagement of our economies is making things better rather than worse.

There are numerous subtle means of demonstrating that Western economies have never been in more calamitous ill health than they are today. Fortunately, there are also two very large and important indicators which provide absolute proof that all of the economies of the Corrupt West are in a Greater Depression: interest rates and energy demand.

Regular readers have often seen the observation in these commentaries that interest rates across the West have never been this low for this long in the entire history of these nations – not even close. Why not? Two reasons:

1.  Interest rates this low have always been perceived (by our governments and all legitimate economic commentators) as being so reckless that any short-term benefit from such rates would have been more than offset by long-term harm.
2.  The reason why our governments have always deemed interest rates this low to be reckless is that in remotely healthy economies such rates would cause these economies to “over-heat” so rapidly and extremely that they would reach unsustainable levels of production and demand.

Are our economies over-heating? No. Nothing could be further from the truth. We see nothing but over-capacity all around us: one hundred million permanently unemployed people across the West, relentless business closures, declining real wages, and near-empty shopping malls (in “consumer economies”).The last time retail collapsed this much was in the 1930s.

Interest rates this low are supposed to cause such rapid business expansion that the economy suffers from a labour shortage. Why are there a hundred million people unemployed across the West instead of labour shortages?

Regular readers have seen this question answered in the past in the form of a metaphor. Consider 0% and near-zero interest rates to be the economic equivalent of a defibrillator: the most-extreme, last-resort attempt to “stimulate” the human body when it is near death.

Our economies have had this economic defibrillator attached to them for more than eight years – without the slightest glimmer of life. What would happen to a human body if it was defibrillated continuously for more than eight years? Charred meat. This is what Western economies have become: charred meat.

In the case of the Corrupt West, we see this charred meat in the form of asset bubbles. Why are extremely low interest rates deemed to be so incredibly reckless? Asset bubbles. Near-zero interest rates are literally rocket fuel for the acceleration of asset bubbles.

We’ve been fueling our housing markets and our equity markets with this bubble-producing rocket fuel for more than eight years. What has been the result? Surprise, surprise: we see the biggest asset bubbles in history – especially in real estate markets.

In the United States, both its stock market bubble and bond market bubble are at all-time highs, simultaneously. This is not even theoretically possible in legitimate markets. Stocks and bonds are counter-cyclical markets.

These insane, reckless bubbles have created a thin veneer of “health” in Western economies. The absurd bubble levels (and temporary prices) in equity markets create what crooked bankers like B.S. Bernanke call “a wealth effect”: bubble prices create the illusion of greater wealth. However, with more than 80% of all equities held by the top-10%, it’s a fairly narrow illusion.

Much broader is the “wealth effect” (illusion of wealth) seen in our real estate markets. Real estate is held across a larger segment of society than equities. Also, constructing millions of superfluous housing units across the West just to satisfy the demand from speculators has created significant amounts of temporary employment in the construction and real estate industries.

What happens when the bubbles are burst, all of this illusory “wealth” evaporates, and all of the temporary employment disappears? Don’t answer that question yet.

Some readers may still refuse to believe that Western economies are mired in a permanent depression, despite the fact that eight years of defibrillation-by-interest-rate has produced no discernible reaction in these Corpse Economies. Eight years of hard-core “recovery” propaganda can be very convincing.

However, as stated at the beginning, there is a second means of proving that Western economies are mired in a Greater Depression: energy demand – meaning the lack of energy demand in the West.

It’s a simple equation. Economies use energy. Growing economies use more energy. There is no exception to this economic tautology. Even very efficient economies will require some incremental amounts of energy to grow. And our economies are not “very efficient” from an energy standpoint – the Right Wing has fought very hard for decades to prevent this.

For our economies to grow, they must consume more energy. Western economies are not consuming more energy.

Over the past eight years, all increases in global energy demand have come from the Rest of the World. According to the Western media, growth rates in the Rest of the World over the past eight years have been dismal, and those economies are using more energy.

Observe this July 2015 headline from the World Economic Forum:

The surprising decline in US petroleum consumption

The only reason this declining consumption is a “surprise” is because the corrupt liars in the U.S. government continue to pretend that this train-wreck economy is growing. If the U.S. government was honest and acknowledged the U.S. Greater Depression, this is the headline we would have seen at the WEF:  

The decline in U.S. petroleum consumption is expected

Growing economies use more energy; shrinking economies use less energy. And if the Corrupt West wasn’t using its energy-intensive war machine so regularly, the collapse in energy demand in the Western world would have been even more pronounced. No economy with flat energy demand can pretend to be growing. No economy with its interest rates set permanently at near-zero levels can pretend to be growing. Both of those preceding statements are economic tautologies. Absolute proof. Western economies are not growing because two absolutely unequivocal economic fundamentals indicate such growth to be impossible. Here is a quote from the WEF article:

Petroleum consumption in the US was lower in 2014 than it was in 1997, despite the fact that the economy grew almost 50% over this period.

Here is the correction to that quote:

Petroleum consumption in the US was lower in 2014 than it was in 1997, despite the fact that the U.S. government pretended that the economy grew almost 50% over this period. The convenient thing about imaginary economic growth is that it requires no energy to fuel it. There has been some small degree of divergence in the U.S. from petroleum consumption into alternative energy sources. Putting the statement above into context, since 1997, there has been very little real growth in the U.S. economy – and none in the last ten years.

Note one of the implications of two decades of imaginary U.S. GDP. The U.S. government claims the U.S. economy generates total GDP of $16.77. But in 1997; official U.S. GDP was below $10 trillion – and now we can see that most of the “GDP” since then is just more statistical smoke-and-mirrors.

The U.S. national debt might have already hit $20 TRILLION by the time this article is read. And that number excludes countless $trillions of debt which previous regimes have hidden with assorted accounting frauds. This is how/why U.S. “unfunded liabilities” exceed $200 TRILLION – because significant amounts of actual debt have been transformed into mere “liabilities” via accounting fraud.

Real U.S. debt is well above $20 trillion. Real U.S. GDP is down around $10 trillion. Without this extreme, permanent accounting fraud and years and years of falsifying GDP, it would be impossible for the U.S. government to pretend that the United States wasn’t already bankrupt. Other Western economies are only in marginally better condition – while their Traitor Governments run these economies into the ground as quickly as possible.

Look at the extreme, reckless (criminal) interest rates across the Western world. Understand what those rates mean. Look at the anemic energy demand across the Western world. Understand what it means.

The Western world is mired in a Greater Depression. To people who are paying attention, it couldn’t be more obvious.

The Great Western Economic Depression

Americans Not In The Labor Force Rise To Record 92.9 Million As Participation Rate Declines Again (larger numbers than in the GREAT DEPRESSION)

For those (very few now, with even the Fed admitting the unemployment rate has become a meaningless, anachronistic relic) still wondering why the unemployment rate dropped once again, sliding from 5.7% to 5.5%, the reason is that while the number of unemployed Americans dropped by 274K thousand while those employed rose by 96K, the underlying math is that the civilian labor force dropped from 157,180 to 157,002 (following the major revisions posted last month), while the people not in the labor force rose by 354,000 in February, rising to a record 92,898,000 (people who currently want a job rose to 6,538K) matching the all time high number of Americans not in the labor force.
End result: the labor force participation rate dropped once more, declining to only 62.8%, which as the chart below shows is just off the lowest print recorded since 1978.

Source: BLS

The Fed Is Paying Banks Not To Lend (thereby insuring the EXACT SAME SCENARIO that caused the great depression - a shrinkage of money credit to business)

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,


Did you know that U.S. banks have more than 1.8 trillion dollars parked at the Federal Reserve and that the Fed is actually paying them not to lend that money to us? We were always told that the goal of quantitative easing was to "help the economy", but the truth is that the vast majority of the money that the Fed has created through quantitative easing has not even gotten into the system. Instead, most of it is sitting at the Fed slowly earning interest for the bankers.

 
Back in October 2008, just as the last financial crisis was starting, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Federal Reserve would start paying interest on the reserves that banks keep at the Fed. This caused an absolute explosion in the size of these reserves. Back in 2008, U.S. banks had less than 2 billion dollars of excess reserves parked at the Fed. Today, they have more than 1.8 trillion. In less than five years, the pile of excess reserves has gotten nearly 1,000 times larger. This is utter insanity, and it will have very serious consequences down the road.

Posted below is a chart that shows the explosive growth of these excess reserves in recent years...

Bankers get fat; you get bankrupt

This explains why all of the crazy money printing that the Fed has been doing has not caused tremendous inflation yet. Most of the money has not even gotten into the economy. The Fed has been paying banks not to lend it out.

But now that big pile of money is sitting out there, and at some point it is going to come pouring in to the U.S. economy. When that happens, we could very well see an absolutely massive tsunami of inflation.

Posted below is a chart that shows the growth of the M2 money supply over the past several decades. It has been fairly steady, but imagine what would happen if you took the hockey stick from the chart above and suddenly added it to the top of this one...

The longer that the Federal Reserve continues to engage in quantitative easing and continues to pay banks not to lend that money out to the rest of us, the larger that inflationary time bomb is going to become.

In a recent article for the Huffington Post, Professor Robert Auerbach of the University of Texas explained the nightmarish situation that we are facing...

One reason that the excess reserves grew to an extraordinary level is that in October 2008, one month after the financial crisis when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the Bernanke Fed began paying interest on bank reserves. Although it has been 1/4 of 1 percent interest, this risk free rate was not low compared to the Fed's policy of keeping short-term market rates near zero. The interest banks received was and is an incentive to hold the excess reserves rather than lend to consumers and businesses in the risky environment of the major recession and the slow recovery.

The Bernanke Fed is now facing a $1.863 trillion time bomb, they helped to create, of excess reserves in the private banking system. If rates of interest on income earning assets (including bank loans to consumers and businesses) rise, the Fed will have to pay the banks more interest to hold their excess reserves.

If interest rates move up dramatically (and they are already starting to rise significantly), banks will have an incentive to take that money out of the Fed and start lending it out. Professor Auerbach suggests that this could cause an "avalanche" of money pouring into the economy...

Eighty five billion a month will seem tiny compared to the avalanche of the $1.863 trillion excess reserves exploding rapidly into the economy. That would devalue the currency, cause more rapid inflation and worry investors about a coming collapse.

So the Fed has kind of painted itself into a corner. If the Fed keeps printing money, they continue to grossly distort our financial system even more and the excess reserves time bomb just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

But even the suggestion that the Fed would begin to start "tapering" quantitative easing caused the financial markets to throw an epic temper tantrum in recent weeks. Interest rates immediately began to skyrocket and Fed officials did their best to try to settle everyone down.

So where do we go from here?

Unfortunately, as Jim Rogers recently explained, this massive experiment in financial manipulation is ultimately going to end in disaster...

I’m afraid that in the end, we’re all going to suffer perhaps, worse than we ever have, with inflation, currency turmoil, and higher interest rates.

The Fed and other global central banks have created the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet. If the Fed ends quantitative easing, the bond market is going to try to revert to normal.

That would be disastrous for the global financial system. The following is what Jim Willie told Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com...

Everything is dependent on Fed support. They know if they take it away, they’re going to create a black hole. The Treasury bond is the greatest asset bubble in history. It’s at least twice as large as the housing and mortgage bubble, maybe three or four times as large.

But even if the central banks keep printing money, they may not be able to maintain control over the bond market. In fact, there are already signs that they are starting to lose control. The following is what billionaire Eric Sprott told King World News the other day...

It’s total orchestration. And it’s orchestration because they might have lost control of the bond market. I find it such a juxtaposition that central banks on a daily basis buy more bonds today than they ever purchased, and interest rates are going up, which is almost perverted. I mean how can that happen?

They’ve lost control of the market in my mind, and that’s why they are so desperately trying to get us all to forget the word ‘taper.’ In fact, we probably won’t even hear the word ‘taper’ anymore because it has such a sickening reaction to people in the bond market, and perhaps even people in the stock market. They will probably do away with the word. But the system is totally out of control. And then we’ve got this quadrillion dollars of derivatives. It just blows blows my mind to think about what could really be going on behind the scenes.

Sprott made a really good point about derivatives.

The quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble could bring down the global financial system at any time.

And remember, interest rate derivatives make up the biggest chunk of that. Today, there are 441 trillion dollars of interest rate derivatives sitting out there. If interest rates begin skyrocketing at some point, that is going to create some absolutely massive losses in the system. We could potentially be talking about an event that would make the failure of Lehman Brothers look like a Sunday picnic.

We are moving into a time of great financial instability. People are going to be absolutely shocked by what happens.

Our financial system is a house of cards built on a foundation of risk, leverage and debt. When it all comes tumbling down, it should not be a surprise to any of us.

1936 Redux - It's Really Never Different This Time

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-14/1936-redux-its-really-never-different-time

Past then, is present now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElCtm6DWQl8&feature=share&list=ULElCtm6DWQl8

Wage slaves then is wage slaves now

Good News for the well-to-do whose biggest problem in winter is where to vacation

Very soon, with the way you've manipulated the system to victimize us poor, useless eaters, we will all start dying off pretty soon. Sure. You can count on it. Done deal. See, we don't have health insurance, so when bad things happen to us, we're screwed. We've no way of paying for outrageous medical services like you can. And what with Fukushima spewing tons of radionucleides into the atmostphere and poisonous chemtrails, we don't stand a chance. Well done. Kudos to you, dudes and dudettes.

You are vetted, order-obeying cogs in the network machine. We aren't. Because of our "free jack" status, we don't have jobs guranteed, insurance on the hoof, a  secure income, or anything. We struggle each and every week to eat and survive. We earn minmum wage - when we can get it -  do our best to stay out of your pissed off way.

We are trying to not be so very visible to your lives. We know it's upsetting to see proles like us when you drive up in your new car and visit the shops to get stuff. We do try to blend into the background. Really, we do.

But, the way you have made it so very hard to even heat a home or cook a decent meal, we know that with all the food price hikes you and your kind have engineered to finish our kind off, we don't have much time left. Already, we have to choose between eating or driving, eating or heat, eating or electricity. Christmas presents? Out of the question for us. New computers and clothes? Hahahahahahahahaha.

I haven't bought clothes for myself since 2004.

So, keep doing what you do best - get yours and F everybody else, and I'll still hand money (whatever change or bill is in my pocket) to the homeless family begging in front of the discount food store while you zip by, sneering in your brand new Lexus. We'll try not to burden your life with our hardships, or presence, very much longer. We know it annoys you ad that's the last thing we want. To have your kind pissing and shouting on TV and radio about us useless eaters, us homeless, us...

the poor of the world.

The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water

I understand and can relate to their plight. For four winters in a row, we, being abysmally poor, have been unable to afford the heat/electric bill that comes with heating this s-hole apartment we call our home. Lately, at night, it's been in the low 30s F., and so we turn burners on the stove to keep warm, which really doesn't work. You bundle up and stay close. Here in Los Angeles, the cost of centrally heating the place runs about $400 a month, about $350 more than we have. So, it's either eat or freeze. And the rates keep climbing every year. If it weren't food eating right and juicing, we'd constantly be sick. Last week, the stove went out, broke. And it usually takes the apartment manager 1 to 3 weeks to get it together to deal with such things. We have ice on the windows and snow out the door in the hills. We only drive where we absolutely have to, because gas prices around $4 a gallon here make doing anything else like surfing ot visiting people, out of the question.

The people in those counties who are being raped financially by rich county supervisors have my deepest sympathy. And for years now. BUt, you can survive. Wear layers of clothes and many blankets on the bed.

Wish we had a fireplace...

================================

Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed.




But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.



And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers.



Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse.



She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this."



Mrs Lucas's monthly sewerage rate bills - the amount levied by the county to flush away waste and provide water for baths and showers - has quadrupled in the past 15 years. She says it is currently running at $150 (£97) a month, which leaves little left out of her $600 social security cheque for food and electricity.



"We need to keep the water running because we're women," she says. "We need to take baths. I try to pay the sewer bill and the water bill together and then what little I got left I try to put on my lights. I got to have lights."

more at


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16037798

The Greater Depression

The Great Depression II

The below story is everyone's story, sooner or later, if you try to live honestly. In 2007, I lived in my truck for 11 months. Even now, with no employment to be had, we are facing this again. My four sons and I face this constantly, like staring into the face of a monster that refuses to leave. Ever.

------------------

econimccollapseblog.com




Economic despair is beginning to spread rapidly in America. As you read this, there are millions of American families that are just barely hanging on by their fingernails. For a growing number of Americans, it has become an all-out battle just to be able to afford to sleep under a roof and put a little bit of food on the table. Sadly, there are more people than ever that are losing that battle. Tonight, tens of thousands of formerly middle class Americans will be sleeping in their cars, even though that is illegal in many U.S. cities. Tens of thousands of others will be sleeping in tent cities or on the streets. Meanwhile, communities all over America are passing measures that are meant to push tent cities and homeless people out of their areas. It turns out that once you lose your job and your home in this country you become something of an outcast. Sadly, the number of "outcasts" is going to continue to grow as the U.S. economy continues to collapse.



Most Americans that end up living in their cars on in tent cities never thought that it would happen to them.



An article in Der Spiegel profiled one American couple that is absolutely shocked at what has happened to them....



Chanelle Sabedra is already on that road. She and her husband have been sleeping in their car for almost three weeks now. "We never saw this coming, never ever," says Sabedra. She starts to cry. "I'm an adult, I can take care of myself one way or another, and same with my husband, but (my kids are) too little to go through these things." She has three children; they are nine, five and three years old.



"We had a house further south, in San Bernardino," says Sabedra. Her husband lost his job building prefab houses in July 2009. The utility company turned off the gas. "We were boiling water on the barbeque to bathe our kids," she says. No longer able to pay the rent, the Sabedras were evicted from their house in August.

How would you feel if you had a 3 year old kid and a 5 year old kid and you were sleeping in a car?



Sadly, if child protective services finds out about that family those kids will probably be stolen away and never returned.



America is becoming a very cruel place.



Unfortunately, what has happened to that family is not an isolated incident. As rampant unemployment has spread across America, the number of people that have lost their homes has soared.



Today, it is estimated that approximately a third of the homeless population in Seattle live in their cars.



It is even happening to my readers. A reader named JD left the following comment on one of my articles a while back....



I was laid off from my construction job almost 2 yrs ago was on unenjoyment for over a yr they cut me off last september so i lost my apartment. Since then ive been couch surfing and hotel hopping. Now i occaisonally sleep in my car. I was lucky enough to have a friend with a lawn care business so i can at least put ever increasing gas in my car\house. I hate to say it but i think we will see hoovervilles in the major cities soon. When the welfare & food stamps & all the other govt. programs end the anarchy begins.

Desperation is rising all over America. Most people had hoped to see an economic recovery by now but it just hasn't happened.



The phenomenon of Americans living in their cars has become so prominent that even Time Magazine has done a story about it....



For people who cannot afford rent, a car is the last rung of dignity and sanity above the despair of the streets. A home on wheels is a classic American affair, from the wagon train to the RV. Now, for some formerly upwardly mobile Americans, the economic storm has turned the backseat or the rear of the van into the bedroom. "We found six people sleeping in their cars on an overnight police ride-along in December," says John Edmund, chief of staff to Long Beach councilman Dee Andrews. "One was a widow living in a four-door sedan. She and her husband had been Air Force veterans. She did not know about the agencies that could help her. I had tears in my eyes afterwards."

Unfortunately, it turns out that sleeping in cars has been made illegal in many areas of the United States.



In many cities, police are putting boots on the cars and when the homeless owners can't pay the fines the vehicles are being taken away from them.



Venice, California is one place where people have been arrested for living in vehicles. Venice had been a popular spot for people living in their RVs to go, but police started arresting people that were living in RVs and they began towing away their vehicles. The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared on the Daily Kos website....



They took Eric while he was changing his battery in his car. Claimed he lived in his car. A few days later they went to 3th Street and took his RV because he was in jail and no one moved it for 72 hours. Saturday they did a sweep of 7th and took Bear and his RV. They also took Elizabeth's RV but do not know if they took Elizabeth but can not find her. The police went to 6th and took the white RV that always parks by Broadway on 6th. Everyday they take 1 to 4 RVs. Very soon there will be no one left.

Once you are down on your luck in America you will quickly find that authorities will try to take everything else you still have away from you.



The United States can be a very brutal place to be if you are poor.



All over America, communities are making tent cities illegal or they are simply just chasing them away.



It turns out that many Americans really don't like large numbers of homeless people camping out in their neighborhoods.



But many of those now living in tent cities used to be just like you and me.



What is being done to tent cities in some areas of the country is absolutely disgusting.



For example, who could ever forget this video of police in St. Petersburg, Florida using box cutters to slash up the tents of the homeless....







What goes through your mind when you watch something like that?



If you don't feel at least a little bit of compassion for those people then something is wrong.



You never know - you might be the next one forced to take refuge in a tent city.



In many U.S. cities, it is even illegal to sleep on the street. If you are homeless I am not sure what you are supposed to do. In some areas of the U.S. you can't sleep in your car, you can't sleep in a tent city and you can't sleep on the street.



So what should we do with all of the Americans that are being forced out of their homes by this economy?



Should we just round them all up and put them into fenced camps?



Don't laugh - we are getting closer to that kind of thing every day.



We live in very frightening times.



Poverty is absolutely exploding in America. The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006. There are 44 million Americans on food stamps. If it was not for measures like these, the streets of America would be filled with destitute people.



Things are tough out there and they are about to get tougher.



At the beginning of next year, the extended unemployment benefits that have been helping the unemployed during this economic downturn will expire. Up to now, many unemployed Americans have been able to enjoy up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. Now that is coming to an end.



According to the New York Times, this is going to drain 37 billion dollars out of the wallets of unemployed Americans that are just barely hanging on.



What in the world is that going to do to the economy?



This all comes at a time when it looks like unemployment is going to start rising once again.



Cisco has just announced that they are going to be laying off 10,000 workers. Other large firms are expected to announce more layoffs shortly. The number of good jobs continues to shrink.



There are other signs that the economy is slowing once again. Pre-orders for Christmas toys are way down. Vacancies at U.S. shopping malls are rising again. Nearly every major poll shows that Americans are extremely pessimistic about the economy right now.



So why in the world is all of this happening?



Where in the world did all of our jobs go?



Well, it turns out that millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas where the labor is far, far cheaper and it is really starting to catch up with us.



On The American Dream website, I just finished an article entitled "How Globalism Has Destroyed Our Jobs, Businesses And National Wealth In 10 Easy Steps". It is a 2500 word essay that explains how globalization has absolutely gutted our economy. The article will hopefully help you understand why so many good jobs have left the United States and why they aren't coming back.



Many of our great cities that used to be the envy of the entire globe are now a bad joke to the rest of the world.



The following is what one reporter from the UK found when he visited one of the worst areas of Detroit....



Occasionally a half-ruined or half-burned house still stands to remind you that this used to be a cityscape. Pathetic, besieged knots of surviving homes remind you of what was once here. Sometimes amazing efforts have been made to keep them smart. More often, they haven’t.



Many bear menacing notices warning visitors to stay away. On the door of one, easy to imagine as a neat home with an iron-pillared porch where the head of the family must once have sat on summer evenings, are the words ‘Enter at ya own risk’ accompanied by a crude drawing of an angry face.



I ventured into a nearby ruin, smashed, charred and half-filled with garbage. You have no idea who or what might be lurking in these houses.

But don't laugh at Detroit. What is happening in Detroit is coming to your area soon enough.



America is in an advanced state of decay. The number of "outcasts" is going to multiply as more Americans lose their jobs and their homes. Millions more Americans will be sleeping in their cars, in tent cities or on the streets before this is all over.



The U.S. economy is never going to get back to "normal". What we are living through now is the "new normal" and it is rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming.



Please show compassion to the people around you that are hurting right now.



You never know, as the economy continues to unravel it may be you that needs some compassion soon.