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Why is the economy going to collapse? Have you ever been asked that question? If so, what did you say?
Sometimes it is difficult to communicate dozens of complicated economic and financial concepts in a package that the average person on the street can easily digest. It can be very frustrating to know that something is true but not be able to explain it clearly to someone else.
Hopefully many of you out there will find the list below useful. It is a list of 70 numbers that show why we are headed for a national economic nightmare.
So why does the title of the article single out Barack Obama? Well, it is because right now he is the biggest cheerleader for the economy. He is attempting to convince all of us that everything is just fine and that the economy is heading in a positive direction. Well, the truth is that everything is not fine and things are about to get a whole lot worse. Certainly others should share in the blame as well. Congress has been steering the economy in the wrong direction for decades, the "too big to fail" banks have turned Wall Street into a pyramid of risk, leverage and debt, and the Federal Reserve has more power over the financial system than anyone else does.
Our economy has been in decline for quite a while now, and soon we are going to smash directly into an economic brick wall. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are in denial about this. A lot of people out there doubt that an economic collapse is coming. Well, if you know someone who believes that the U.S. economy is going to be "just fine", just show them the list below.
The following are 70 facts that Barack Obama does not want you to see....
$3.59 - When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.59.
22 - It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping 22 percent.
23 - According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day during 2010.
30 - Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.
32 - The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
35 - U.S. housing prices are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.
40 - The official U.S. unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.
42 - According to one survey, 42 percent of all American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
48 - Shockingly, at this point 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.
49 - Today, an astounding 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.
53 - Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.
60 - According to a recent Gallup poll, only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.61 - At this point the Federal Reserve is essentially monetizing much of the U.S. national debt. For example, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.
63 - One recent survey found that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.
71 - Today, 71 percent of all small business owners believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession.
80 - Americans buy 80 percent of the pain pills sold on the entire globe each year.
81 - Credit card debt among Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket has risen by 81 percent since 1989.
85 - 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are made in China.
86 - According to one survey, 86 percent of Americans workers in their sixties say that they will continue working past their 65th birthday.
90 - In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
93 - The United States now ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.
95 - The middle class continues to shrink - 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.
107 - Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.
350 - The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes.
400 - According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
$500 - In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.
627 - In 2010, China produced 627 million metric tons of steel. The United States only produced 80 million metric tons of steel.
877 - 20,000 workers recently applied for just 877 jobs at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama.
900 - Auto parts exports from China to the United States have increased by more than 900 percent since the year 2000.
$1580 - When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1580 an ounce.1700 - Consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971.
2016 - It is being projected that the Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2016.
$4155 - The average American household spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
$4300 - The amount by which real median household income has declined since Barack Obama entered the White House.
$6000 - If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
$10,000 - According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
49,000 - In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
50,000 - The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
56,000 - The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
$85,000 - According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
$175,587 - The Obama administration spent $175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.
$328,404 - Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
$361,330 - This is what the average banker in New York City made in 2010.
440,00 - If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to totally pay it off.
500,000 - According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
2,000,000 - Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today.
$2,000,000 - At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.
2,600,000 - In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
5,400,000 - When Barack Obama first took office there were 2.7 million long-term unemployed Americans. Today there are twice as many.
16,000,000 - It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
$20,000,000 - The amount of money the U.S. government was spending to create a version of Sesame Street for children in Pakistan.
25,000,000 - Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
40,000,000 - According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
46,405,204 - The number of Americans currently on food stamps. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.
88,000,000 - Today there are more than 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.
100,000,000 - Overall, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.
$150,000,000 - This is approximately the amount of money that the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress are stealing from future generations of Americans every single hour.
$2,000,000,000 - The amount of money that JP Morgan has admitted that it will lose from derivatives trades gone bad. Many analysts are convinced that the real number will actually end up being much higher.$147,000,000,000 - In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately 147 billion dollars a year.
295,500,000,000 - Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
$359,100,000,000 - During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.
$454,000,000,000 - During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
$1,000,000,000,000 - The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
$1,170,000,000,000 - China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.
$1,600,000,000,000 - The amount that has been added to the U.S. national debt since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is more than the first 97 Congresses added to the national debt combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 - The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 - What the real U.S. budget deficit in 2011 would have been if the federal government had used generally accepted accounting principles.
$11,440,000,000,000 - The total amount of consumer debt in the United States.
$15,734,596,578,458.59 - The U.S. national debt as of June 7, 2012.
$200,000,000,000,000 - Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the derivatives market completely collapses there won't be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.
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12 comments:
Is the President the only person in the country capable of making jobs? Is there no accountability for the republican party filibustering for most of the 10 months the Democrats actually had the numbers to pass bills? What about the other 3 years of them refusing to pass anything? How about the impending financial meltdown in Europe that Obama has nothing to do with? That doesn't contribute hugely to economic instability? Or what about Wall Street investment firms like Romney used to run, who have been shutting down factories and moving work overseas for decades now, while Bush handed out tax credits amd started two wars we essentially launched on credit? Yea, Obama better be scared, because dipshits with statistics want you to believe it's all his fault.
in case you missed it, it's not about democrats or republicans in the white house; it's the fact that they're in there at all. the system has been "broken" (ie, rigged) forever. you've just been blinded by the red, white and blue bullshit. time to wake up.
'voting' has never, ever solved anything or made things better at all for the 99%. it has always benefitted only the 1% at the top. 'voting' is as rigged as the system it supports and to engage in 'voting' is a complete waste of time and energy. it is insanity. time to wake up.
if you want to waste your time playing the blame game, go right ahead, just take it somewhere else. i'm sure there are lots of other zombies who'll sit and argue with you all day and into the night. while you're arguing with zombies, the people who are already awake are preparing for collapse and growing food. i'm one of those people who are awake right now. if you come to my yard looking for food because you were too shortsighted or in denial, i will shoot your ass dead where you stand.
take your obama-romney bullshit somewhere else. this website is for people who are awake and preparing. take your political arguments to a politics website.
the blame game isn't worth playing because there's no way to adequately punish those who are really responsible. those who are really responsible will never admit their own faults, so it's pointless. all there is to do now is prepare for collapse.
What is interesting, is some of the statistics start from Mid 80's to early 90's.
Does anyone remember a certain candidate that warned of all of these things? Even took his own private money to air infomercials describing the future that came to fruition. Dana Carvey played him on SNL - while the US was riding high they could laugh him off as a Kook.
But he who has the last laugh, laughs best. Sadly it won't be the American people laughing but crying.
Here is in 1992 ringing the alarm at 4.3 Trillion in debt -- if you haven't guessed already
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERlGndQ_xtM&feature=related
This is where the avalanche began, and this is the man who said it was coming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkgx1C_S6ls&feature=related
We're on a runaway train now - going off the rails like a crazy train
It ain't gonna be pretty folks- it's too late to break and 2008 is when it became breaks failed and we had a bailout- It's runaway train now.
This article is a disjointed amalgamation of facts, but seriously, if it were not for the few social welfare programs that were not utterly gutted by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, maybe teh US would be on the edge of violent revolution. Ever think about that? An hungry man is an angry man, a hungry crowd is an angry mob. A homeless crowd can be made to do a lot of things in order to find a place to sleep!
"$3.59 - When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.59."
Are you fucking kidding me? You lost me with that lie. When the guy took over gas was at about 3 bucks per gallon. During Bush we hit 5. I don't like the guy for crying out loud, making up shit for the hell of it just doesn't cut it.
Hey wake up! The off the books Bush tax cuts, the Medicare drug benefit that was off the books and two illegal foreign occupations made the debt look like it exploded. In reality, the honesty in actually putting the debt on the books is refreshing. Maybe someday we will also see the great inflationary recessionary predictor of the M3 money supply statistics brought back. It was, for the larger measure, George Bushes fault. You can't run foreign excusions without paying for them and you don't take a surplus and spend it on tax cuts that disproportionately went to the super rich and call that economic progress. GB was a full fledged crook and member of the long term crime family. We need an immediate min. wage increase and tariffs and a military incursion to the Cayman Islands and wherever else the dollars have been hiding from corporate monopolistic, conglomerative thieves.
This is among the dumbest things you guys have published in months. Why would Obama care that plastic Christmas trees are made in China? You have free trade to thank for that. So you're going to need to blame Bush 1, and then Clinton for that.
The Federal Reserve has been a problem since 1913. Why are you bringing it up now?
When you guys print stuff like this, you're as bad as the Corporate media with agenda pushing.
Or maybe it's just easier to beat up on the incumbent. Hey, whatever generates impressions, right?
Here is a number for you.......
2
The number of American political parties who serve corporate scum.
As in two sides, the perfect number to divide, confuse and conquer the American people.
At this stage of the game, anyone ANYONE shilling for either criminal enterprise D or R.....is a duplicitous scum bag.
There is a website that shows the true scale of debt in piles of bank notes such as USD, GBP and Euro's. The amount of US Government unsecured debt liability for social economic programmes is over USD $122 trillion! The website can be found at:
http://demonocracy.info
If you Anounymous Chickens don't believe the truth of these numbers, why don't you tell the Author. Most of us reading this don't really care what you are guessing at or your OPINION! Can't you back your claim?
NOT to defend Barry and the Gang but, many of these so-called "facts" are used more than once, just said differently. Gasoline is not much more expensive than it was during the bush fiasco. A crook is a crook is a crook, period. No matter where he/she comes from, no matter if Demopublican or Repulicrat, they are ALL the same. For decades people from all over the world have risked EVERYTHING, sold every possession, defied all odds and put their lives in mortal danger just to have a chance at the "American Dream", and many became fair, honest, successful, and productive members of American society. That was then. This is now. It amazes but, not surprises me, over 10 thousand families are LEAVING America for good every year! We now have more citizens in the PRISON system than every other country on the planet except for China and Russia. For being the land of the free and home of the brave, we sure have more rules, laws, regulations, conditions, and over-all slavery in this new world, how can anyone think we are still America?
Beloved ,I would not have you to be ignorant ,so just do what the BOOK say's and the problems will be solved. Here is the answer ! Get ready,here it comes... " If my people,who are called by my name,will humble themselves, turn from their wicked ways,pray and seek my face,THEN I will forgive their sins
and HEAL their land. " 2nd Chron 7 : 14
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