Dr. A. H. Krieg
|
The harbingers of truth and bad tidings are almost always badmouthed about in the mainstream as well as the general public, but if America needs one thing then that is a healthy dose of truth and reality.
Unemployment: The official unemployment rate in the United States according the U. S. Department of labor as of Mach 2007 is 5.7%. This number is bogus representing about half of the unemployed. The reason for this false statistic is that the parameters for measuring unemployment by the Dep. of Labor is seriously flawed as are those of all other statistical department government agencies. To explain, the 5.7% number consists only of those in the labor market who receive unemployment checks. Thus missing from the reported statistic is: All those whose unemployment payments have ceased because their benefits have run out. All those who were unable to find jobs in their fields and had to take lower paying jobs for which they are overqualified. The homeless of whom we have over one million are not counted. The Department of Labor then set an arbitrary number of 35,000 jobs created in the "underground economy" which they call the "Plug Factor" per month, that is totally unverifiable, that they deduct from the actual unemployed numbers. Members of the National Guard that have been removed from the economy as of this date over 100,000 are counted as employed, if they came back today there would be no jobs for them. We also have about 144,000 mercenaries in Iraq 70% of which are Americans that's another 100,000 taken out of the labor pool. Help wanted ads in newspapers are at the lowest point in 30 years. Citizens suffering from injuries unable to work or in hospital are not counted. Unemployment based solely on government reported numbers has been rising at a rate of about 1,4% per year for the last two years. A realistic unemployment percentage would be in the neighborhood of 11.4%. The unemployment rates as reported in the EU are about that average, which further verify this hypothesis. Inflation: Official government inflation numbers are so false that every housewife and businessman in America knows them to be wrong. Washington informs us that the inflation on average in America hovers about 1.3%, now if you believe that I would like to speak with you about this bridge in Brooklyn that I have for sale. Fuel costs in the last 12 months have risen about 36%. When G. W. Bush came to office the euro was introduced at $.86C. In May of 2007 the euro had risen to $1.35,a rise of 63%. A comparison of the euro, Swiss Frank English pound, gold, silver and platinum vs. the dollar indicates a dollar value depreciation of 19.7% over the last 14 months. Gold, silver, and platinum show a value increase of over 50% in the last 14 months. How do they get away with it? Simple, the issues that in the economy demonstrate the highest price rises are simply omitted from the statistics. Fuel, Food, oil, taxes, and housing are all removed before the statistics are calculated. But that still does not do it, so on the balance they simply make up false statistics. Realistic inflation statistics considering all sectors of the economy and then comparing to those hard assets would indicate an inflation rate of close to 20% for 2006. Trade: For almost fifteen years America has not seen one month of trade surplus. Put another way we nationally purchase more than we sell overseas every month year in and year out. Not satisfied with this dismal performance the Republocrats proceeded to arrange a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada called NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. This agreement, by the way called an agreement because it was illegally implemented by an executive order by Bill Clinton (D). Illegal because a treaty is law and the executive is forbidden to make law (US Constituion Sec. 1 Para1) has managed to turn a $ 5.7-billion annual trade surplus with Mexico into a $52 billion deficit in a short ten years. But Republocrat G. W. Bush (R) was not satisfied with that dismal performance so he introduced CAFTA which congress in stellar show voted into law in 2006; it expanded NAFTA into the Caribbean Basin. Presently our national trade deficit hovers between minus $ 50 to minus $ 63.9 billion every month. Just this March our trade imbalance again peaked at a rise of 10.3% to 63.9 billions for the Month. One of our principle trade partners is China; a comparison of the first three months of 2006 and 2007 indicates a deficit growth rate of 20.4%. China, whose communist leaders seem more adroit in matters of fiancé then all our plutocrat mandarins combined purposely lower the value of the Yuan making their goods cheaper for export. Our leaders reaction was to ask them to float the Yuan which they did limiting its increase of a couple of percent which means nothing. Think of it this way you earn $1,000 per month and spend $ 1500 per month, how long do you think that you can keep this up? Housing: The national disaster that is our housing industry brought on by Alan Greenspan's ludicrous monetary policies has come home to roost. Greenspawn in order to keep Bush in office continuously reduced the prime interest rate until it was almost zero. Through this act he created the bubble economy and the great housing bubble of recent history. By the time Greenspawn quit office after 18 years, during which the dollar lost 78% of its value, the most common form of mortgage was an interest only mortgage with no money down. Housing worth was so ridiculously over-valued that homes that had construction costs of $ 200,000 sold on the open market for $ 550,000. But if a property is worth $ 200,000 (construction cost plus land) that's what its worth and not one cent more. Banks however granted interst only mortgages to new, mostly unqualified, buyers for interest only with nothing down on the 550 number. Today many of these properties are on the market due to foreclosures, In the Bradenton Sarasota market area we have over 1,000 foreclosures and Florida as a state has over 20,000. In the example above the bank now places the property on the market and lo-and-behold is lucky if they can get $ 200,000 for it, taking a huge $250,000 book loss. New construction is at a standstill because housing inventories that two years ago represented an average sales turnover inventory of 30 days or about 500 units now takes over 14 months, i.e. the average house in Manatee County FL takes 14 months to sell and the county inventory is at a staggering 3,746 units. Additionally all the houses in inventory are grossly overpriced, which is one of the reasons they don't sell. Home inventories represent a massive increase eliminating the previous sellers market that has evaporated and we have a buyer market. Reported sales prices by realtors are totally bogus because they are trying to induce the public into a fairytale by only reporting the last price reduction against selling price. Per example a home is placed on the market for $ 340,000, after four month reduced to $305,000 after another four months reduced to 289,000, and then finally reduced to $265,000 then it sells for $ 249,900 and the realtors report the sales price to have been 8.4% below asking price when actually it sold for 26+ % below the original asking price. National Debt: Our national debt regardless of what lies you are told now hovers at about $ 30 trillion. I don't care about statistics from any government agency all are lies. They officially report the national deficit to be about three to four trillion dollars. What they do not tell you is how they arrived at that false number. They neglect per example to include all the IOU's that the General Fund has placed in the various trust funds and also omit the income of agencies running at surplus whose fund have also been stolen. These include; The Social Security Trust Fund, The Highway Trust Fund the US Patent Office Trust fund and scores of others. But wait, it gets worse they then actually count the non-existent trust funds, which in fact are IOU's as an asset. Sort of gives the phrase; smoke and mirrors an entirely new perspective. The little matter of hard assets to back the dollar is simply overlooked, that is to say the fact that the entire national silver inventory was sold off during the first G.W. Bush (The Lesser) administration is not reported, and for that matter where the monies from the sale went to also remains a mystery. Gold backing of the dollar is a myth the only thing backing the dollar is debt. The interest on the national debt now accounts for 22.7% of our national budgetary expenses. In other words about one quarter of all the money you pay in taxes goes out as interest payments to the bankers. Just imagine if in your personal finances you were forced to pay a quarter of your income for interest payments to creditors. After defense this is the second largest government expense. This debt is incurred because congress spends more money than the government takes in, borrowing the difference from anyone who is willing to purchase government debt instruments like savings bonds, T-notes and T-bills. Because of the continually rising inflation rate these debt papers are a very poor investment, which additionally is backed by nothing. With a national inflation rate of close to 20% a loan paper that pays 5 to 6% represents an investment loss of 14 to 15%. And believe me that 20% inflation rate over the term of any of these government debt papers, which can be up to thirty years is extremely conservative. Taxes: One of the quickest growing costs in the 21st century is taxes. Here in Florida we have the advantage of capped property taxes, whereby the taxes on property for anyone with a homestead exemption can realize a maximum of 3% property tax increase per year. But you can bet that on a compounded rate your property tax will increase by 3% every year. It's when we use government statistics not a very good deal either because if as the government claims the inflation rate to be no more than 2.4% we are already behind the eight ball by .06% However property taxes are only part of the entire state and federal tax structure which accounts for just under 200 different taxes. The major of these are: Sales taxes, Income taxes, Business taxes, Social Security taxes, Healthcare taxes, Occupancy taxes, and then come all the hundreds of licenses, fees, tolls, and what have you. Compiled, the Average American family of four pays 49.20% of their total income in taxes, or in other terms half of what they earn. A historic perspective indicates that serfs in the Middle Ages, and under Rome and in Russia were allowed to keep half of what they produced to maintain themselves and their families, so, you see, nothing in government and fiancé' has changed in the last 2,000 years. Property taxes in Florida have become so astronomical that the state has promised some sort of easement in the spring legislative session, nothing happened. All the local community managers are screaming like stuck pigs (no pun intended) that all services will have to be cut. This simply begs yet another question; if we elect a mayor city counsel or County Commissioners to manage our civic affairs why do they then hire a consultant to interview a prospective Town manager to do their job? It all just smacks of more waste and inefficiency. It would furthermore be much more productive if these bureaucrats looked to better management, lower payrolls, and more efficiency rather then local tax increases. Homeowners Insurance: With the inducement within our society that every family deserves a single-family home came the problem of homeowners insurance. All mortgage companies require these policies as a form of protecting their outstanding investment in your home. If you own the home free and clear you are still subject by common sense to protect your investment by insuring it against catastrophic loss. In all the Gulf States and several Western states the premiums for these policies has risen astronomically in the last five years. The prime cause of these increases is the construction of homes in marginally safe geographic regions. What I mean is that construction in tidal basins along our coasts has simply exploded. Insurance carriers ever eager for profit tended to lump these newly issued policies in only marginally secure locations in with those houses in secure locations. This has caused rates to skyrocket as imminent losses occurred particularly in the last ten years. Increases of up to 400% are not uncommon. Our home insurance carrier went belly up and the State took over coverage, only to dump us 9 months later because we were not in a tidal basin. Our new policy cost $ 800 more we assume to offset the risk of relal estate located on the Gulf coast. Law Suites: Trial lawyers and for that matter all lawyers are social parasites that serve but one end; the increase of the cost of every product and service you use. In fact it is not an unfair criticism of the entire judicial system and profession to claim it to have no social redeeming value. America graduates more lawyers from college than the entire rest of the world combined. By percentage every other nation graduates more engineers than we do, in the long run that will lead to our demise. These leaches operate on contingency fee basis clogging the courts with unnecessary costly litigation to line their own pockets. The average contingency law suite results in the law firm collecting 30% to 40% off the top, then they bill, nickel and dimeing their clients to the point where the clients are lucky to see 20% of the entire take. Tort reform is the answer that no one shall see this century. The majority of all legislators are lawyers; they will not vote on any issue that diminishes their earning power or that of their fellow litigants. The litigiousness of our society ensures their success to continue running our legal and legislative systems to our own determent. When I started my manufacturing business in the early 60's we paid $ 340.00 a year for product liability insurance, by the time I liquidated my business in the late 80's we were paying $ 45,000.00 in liability insurance and had never ever seen a suite against our firm on any grounds. A reasonable conclusion to the existing liability laws is that they add between 10% and 15% to the cost of everything including taxation for the sole benefit of the legal profession. Wars: Let us count our wars; The war on alcohol, The war on poverty, The war on drugs, The Korean war, The Viet-Nam war, The war on terror, The War in Afghanistan, Gulf war I and Gulf War II The war on Gambling and those are just the major ones in the last few decades. We either lost or wasted our energy on every one of them and to put it bluntly they all seem to have come about for the political expediency of keeping the political system that we created in power at the helm of our now degenerate empire. The war on alcohol we called prohibition, it did not take us very long to conclude that this misadventure brought about the largest criminal expansion in world history and that legislation against popularly conceived pastimes are useless. The woman's Temperance League therefore altered it direction to a higher calling –glass ceilings and other rubbish. It was manned from day one to the present movement by the feminist political left wing that has not to date ever produced anything of any value to society. The war on poverty was LBJ's great effort to make him a place on the table of history. It did. Since its inception America has wasted over three trillion dollars under our Republocrats system to absolutely no avail. Johnson goes down in history as the greatest waster of the people's assets in history. The present percentage of poor vs. the past (before LBJ) percentage of poor of the total population has not changed by one percent over its entire enactment. The war on drugs more properly called the war by the liqueur barons (Bronfman & co) against the marijuana farmers likewise is a waste of time and has produced nothing except a bludgeoning and expensive prison population. The most commonly used prohibited recreational drug marijuana is totally harmless and has less depilatory influence on the user than does alcohol. The Korean War was a (police action) to avoid having to get a declaration of war from congress and was a UN action against the communists of N. Korea who were led by a charismatic nut for the greater good of a totally failed social and political movement called communism. N. Korea remains today as one of the few dictator led nations practicing this social disaster to the detriment of its entire population. The Viet-Nam war resulted like others on false information in effort to justify a religious war. (Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) South Vietnam (French Indo China) was Ronan Catholic; America had elected its first Roman Catholic president (Kennedy) who after consultation with the Pope took over the war from the French who were losing badly (what war did they ever win?) against the communist atheists. It resulted in a loss for America in more than just one way. The war on terror is conceptually an entirely new commencement in that it is a war against a political idea. The use of force to fight an idea is a total waste of time as has been proven thru ought history, in that it is un-winnable. This is in fact fourth generation warfare and our attempts to fight it using third generation tactics have so far lost us every battle. We have become a militarily reactive force, and reactive actions in a conflict are not winning strategies. The Afghan war is the first attempt to turn a losing reactive strategy into a winning one by engaging an enemy on his terms. The fact that the Iraq war is a civil war has not eluded anyone of my acquaintance. The problems are however that we are basically fighting an idea and the only successful way of doing that is with another better and more popular idea. Don't wait for our political leaders to grasp understanding of this issue. Gulf War I was purposely constructed by our Iraqi ambassador and the Kuwaiti government through oil theft from Iraq by Kuwaiti slant drilling into Iraq's oil fields. And Gulf War II was and is based on a series of lies produced by the Mossad of Israel. All the grounds for the present war in Iraq are lies. Gambling has been a popular worldwide pastime since pre-history. Government prohibitions in every case in world history failed. Not to be put out American government from state to federal realizing the futility of anti-gambling legislation simply joined in to become the prime provider of recreational gambling in the nation. All this touted under the banner if you can't lick em, then join em. Which they have done with a vengeance offering odds that are at best ten times worse than any legitimate private gambling enterprise including organized crime. Free Trade: There can be no valid argument to support the free trade scenario in any context. Free trade is a massive fiasco that is systematically destroying all of America's manufacturing base. Since the inception of this insidious plan America has gone from a trade surplus nation to the largest debtor state in the entire world. We have lost over 4,000 manufacturing plants and well over four million manufacturing jobs that were then replaced with service sector jobs paying an average of 40% less in individual employee income. Our massive $ 56 to $ 64 Billion monthy deficit is in fact bankrupting the nation. Simply put free trade is a lie. EU, WTO, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, and scores of other international government treaties control international trade. Multinational corporations in turn, because they wrote these laws as UN, NGO's, control all of them. The primary purpose of "Free Trade" is the elimination of small business competition to the multinational corporations. Large corporations are not adroit, and not inventive, they gain most of their new technology by buying out smaller rivals and then using the technologies developed by these small businesses to expand their sales. Multinational corporations care about corporate profits, and their corporate family, they don't care about you about our nation, about your community, or about your state. To verify that just look what Wall-Mart has done to our rural communities in the way of destroying community, small business, and down town areas of those communities. What you must understand is that the multinational corporate structure results in a closed system from which individuals not in management, family, community, state and nation are excluded. These firms bleed our economies destroy our communities, and wreak havoc on our social and religious ethic. Furthermore some are so large that they in fact represent a monopoly. Consider a rural community, Claremont, NH Wal-Mart came in and the following went out: Grocery store, hardware store, two drug stores, book seller, two diners, coffee house, hotel, all together 26 businesses previously located on main street are gone. Many products particularly books and magazines are no longer available thus we have corporate censorship. Many previous middle class business owners are retired or employed as number 1184663298489 employees at the local Wal-Mart as sales clerks. Jointly all these wars America is engaged in are big time losers that are destroying our economy, and cannot be shown to demonstrate any redeeming value to America or the world. Our latest attempts at empire are the worst of the lot. As to the question at hand, are we headed into a depression, I'm sorry but I don't have a crystal ball. I will however say that with the dismal leadership now running America I see little light at the end of the tunnel. The dummies (and that's what they are) running our nation do everything that can be done wrong, wrong. I have become a huge pessimist when in all my previous life I was an optimist. It saddens me to see the nation I came to in the 50's brought down by its own doing because its citizens refuse to stop supporting the political system in power. Only through the election of third party citizens will we be able to save our republic. |