Great photo I found
Do you remember back in September 2008 I was babbling away about letting the failing companies file Chapter 11. I got a lot of heat about saying those things but I knew what was going to eventually happen. I'm not one to say I told you so but I told you companies like GM were going to have to file bankruptcy in order to move forward. So our government spent billion of dollars on bailouts for the auto industry and look at what happen. A waste of our kids’ money. I remember those words "if we don't do something now they will not survive". This is the type of stuff that gets under my skin. Again....our government doesn't know anything about running a business. You cannot just through money at problems and it will fix them. GM could have filed back in Septemebr and already be working their way towards a different company without us spending billions of our childerns money.
Here are a few articles I read last week from some of my daily reading. Please read and do what you think is right for you and your family.
Green Shoots or Greatest Depression?
Kingston, NY, 7 May 2009 -- The financial fields replete with sprouting "green shoots" should be viewed with suspicion, if not alarm, warns Gerald Celente, The Trends Research Institute Director. "They are not a mirage, but they are ephemeral."
Field Marshall Ben Bernanke and his Green Shoot Brigade have fertilized the economic landscape with trillions of sweat equity dollars extorted from today's public and the public of generations to come. Regardless of how depleted the land, heavy doses of dollars spread so thickly over the financial and government territories, will force "green shoots" to grow. But the fundamentals of the economy remain unsound. They will not be corrected by forced fertilizing barren acreage.
"'Green shoots' may sprout," said Celente, "but they will not flower. The economy cannot be coerced back into growth with tons of money manure." As the ancient parable puts it:
"A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." -- Luke 8:4-8
Now hear this: it is inconceivable that the "green shoots" are signs of sustained economic recovery.
Celente said no one could have forecast that the government would not only intervene in the markets by pouring unprecedented trillions into bailout schemes, but that they would commandeer the whole free enterprise system.
"The 800-pound gorilla has ridden the elephant into the Oval Office, and they are there for all to see. But few will call a spade a spade," declared Celente. "Benito Mussolini described Fascism as 'The merger of state and corporate power.' He suggested that, more appropriately, it should be called 'Corporatism.' By whatever name, Corporatism or Fascism, what it's not is Free Market Capitalism, much less Democracy," Celente said.
"Green shoots" can only be brought to harvest through real productivity. Pumping gigantic sums of money into too-big-to-fail financial institutions to jump-start the lending/borrowing cycle is to perpetuate a failed economic model. (See "The Greatest Depression," Trends Journal, Winter 2009.)
"We can extrapolate creatively from data, but cannot prophesize wild cards, such as acts of God, acts of nature, or acts of man that can only be described as 'schemes undreamed of.' While there have been warnings since the founding of the United States, no one, but no one, could have predicted the mega-merger of Wall Street and Washington that is now a fait accompli," said The Trends Research Institute Director.
Trendpost: With so much money being dumped into the system, there will be money to be made ... and lost. The agile and the knowledgeable may be able to reap "green shoots" while they're sprouted. But beware! "The Greatest Depression" -- that we forecast would begin to set in by the end of this year -- may have been postponed, but it has not been averted. When it does set in, it will do so with enhanced intensity and at a pace accelerated by complex financial finagling ... all under the guise of nation-saving action. Rather than let the failing industries fail and the failed banks go bankrupt, the government is deliberately bankrupting the nation. The lesson to be learned from the financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007, is that nothing succeeds like failure. The greater their failure, the bolder they become. The more they lose, the more they take. The greater the chaos, the more control they exact. The bigger they fail, the harder we fall. No act is too unthinkable or measure too draconian for the Washington-Wall Street Mob to concoct in order to maintain power, make money and cover their losses. While it is impossible to second-guess what the government will do next, it is absolutely certain that they will stop at nothing.The "green shoots" will wither and conditions will deteriorate. Those who are prepared for the worst will not have been taken by surprise.
© MMIX The Trends Research Institute®
The Trends Research Institute P.O. Box 3476 Kingston, NY 12401
The "Bailout Bubble" -- The Bubble to End All Bubbles
KINGSTON, NY, 13 May 2009 -- The biggest financial bubble in history is being inflated in plain sight, said Gerald Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute. "This is the Mother of All Bubbles, and when it explodes," Celente warns, "it will signal the end to the boom/bust cycle that has characterized economic activity throughout the developed world." Either unwilling or unable to call the bubble by its proper name, the media, Washington and Wall Street describe the stupendous government expenditures on rescue packages, stimulus plans, buyouts and takeovers as emergency measures needed to salvage the severely damaged economy.
"All of this terminology is econo-jargon," said Celente. "It's like calling torture 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' Washington is inflating the biggest bubble ever: the 'Bailout Bubble.' "This is much bigger than the Dot-com and Real Estate bubbles which hit speculators, investors and financiers the hardest. However destructive the effects of these busts on employment, savings and productivity, the Free Market Capitalist framework was left intact. But when the 'Bailout Bubble' explodes, the system goes with it."
The economic framework of the United States has been restructured. Federal interventionist policies have given the government equity stakes, executive powers and management control of what was once private enterprise. To finance these buyouts, rescue and stimulus packages -- instead of letting failed businesses fail and bankrupt banks and bandit brokerages go bankrupt -- trillions of dollars are being injected into the stricken economy.
Phantom dollars, printed out of thin air, backed by nothing ... and producing next to nothing ... defines the "Bailout Bubble." Just as with the other bubbles, so too will this one burst. But unlike Dot-com and Real Estate, when the "Bailout Bubble" pops, neither the President nor the Federal Reserve will have the fiscal fixes or monetary policies available to inflate another. With no more massive economic bubbles left to blow up, they'll set their sights on bigger targets. "Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war," observed Celente. Since the "Bailout Bubble" is neither called nor recognized as a bubble, its sudden and spectacular explosion will create chaos. A panicked public will readily accept any Washington/Wall Street/Main Stream Media alibi that shifts the blame for the catastrophe away from the policy makers and onto some scapegoat.
"At this time we are not forecasting a war. However, the trends in play are ominous," Celente concluded. "While we cannot pinpoint precisely when the 'Bailout Bubble' will burst, we are certain it will. When it does, it should be understood that a major war could follow."
© MMIX The Trends Research Institute®
The Trends Research Institute P.O. Box 3476 Kingston, NY 12401
Tax Increases Help or Hurt Economy
