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DHS Insider Update: It Has Begun

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Photo Credit: Canada Free Press

Much like my high-level source within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security outlined in a series of interviews beginning last year, the orchestrated collapse of the U.S. dollar and the entire world’s economic system has begun. The first shots in a global economic take-over were fired in Cyprus as my esteemed colleague and founding editor of Canada Free Press, Judi McLeod laid out in frank detail in her column yesterday and her follow up today.

Please read it and heed her advice, or suffer the consequences of your own normalcy bias that such an event will not happen in the United States, Canada, or from wherever you might be reading this. It will, and the plan appears to be on schedule for a shot across the bow later this spring here in the West, with a more aggressive take-over starting sometime this fall, according to my source.

The Plan
To those needing a quick refresher, the plan is quite simple and can be summarized by the Clinton-era quip attributed to political strategist James Carville, “the economy, stupid” and the June 9, 2010 statement by former Obama czar Van Jones, Socialist extraordinaire, “top down, bottom up, inside out.” It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the “middle class” will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus.

Based on the events in Cyprus, it should be quite clear to even the most vocal critic of the legitimacy of the information provided to me by my source within the DHS as published on this web site is no longer at issue. The U.S. dollar, the backbone of world currencies and the proverbial firewall preventing the erosion of our national sovereignty, is the ultimate target of a takedown by the global banking interests controlled by a handful of banks and families of the “royal elite.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Inflation Highest In More Than Three Years

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Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. consumer prices rose 0.7% in February for the largest gain since June 2009. Gasoline prices rose 9.1%, also making the largest jump since June 2009, and accounted for almost three-fourths of February’s gain in the consumer price index. The broader price category for energy increased 5.4%.

Despite the CPI’s large jump in February, longer-term trends remain within the Federal Reserve’s target. The overall CPI and the core reading, which excludes volatile energy and food categories, increased 2% over the 12 months that ended in February. Economists expect that today’s data should continue to support the Fed’s accommodative policy stance.

Looking forward, analysts expect monthly inflation to moderate as some of February’s surge in gasoline prices is reversed this month. In the most recent weekly data, average per-gallon gas prices across the U.S. fell five cents to $3.71.

“Overall, despite the sharp rise in headline prices and some modest firming in core consumer inflation pressures, the overall backdrop for consumer prices remains favorable, providing further breathing room for the Fed,” wrote Millan Mulraine, a macro strategist at TD Securities, in a research note.

Prices for food rose 0.1% in February. The core CPI rose 0.2%. Read RetireMentors: From ammunition to zucchini, prices are up.

Read more from this story HERE.

US Has Effectively Nationalized Home Mortgage Industry

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Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013

The home mortgage sector in the world’s largest economy has been “effectively nationalized,” says George Melloan, former deputy editor of the editorial page for The Wall Street Journal.

Government agencies — primarily Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also the Federal Housing Administration — insured or purchased more than 90 percent of home mortgages originated in 2012, a $1.3 trillion business, compared with 30 percent in 2006, according to ProPublica data.

Melloan, author of “The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism,” traced the situation back to the end of the last century, citing government and “powerful” lobbies.

“When President [Bill] Clinton forced the banks to begin their subprime mortgage binge in the 1990s, he called it ‘affordable housing’ for people with limited means, a politically appealing idea,” Melloan wrote in an opinion article for The Journal.

“But the real muscle came from well-heeled lobbies — the builders, real estate agents, bankers and construction-worker unions.”

Read more from this story HERE.

LAMBRO: Obama numbers that add up to one term

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The Obama economy is looking bleaker than ever. All recessions end, but this one’s going to last a lot longer than most because America remains overtaxed, overregulated and drowning in unfathomable debt.

We had the capacity to grow our way out of the 2008 recession within two years with the right growth policies, but President Obama and the Democrat-run Congress pursued impotent, anti-growth fiscal policies that drove spending to unprecedented levels at a time when the recession had sandbagged tax revenues. That forced the feds to sharply increase borrowing, which is devouring the lion’s share of our economy’s income.

When cooler heads, some within his own administration, were urging him to concentrate on the economy, he focused on a massive new government health care entitlement program. That’s in the process of running up a mountain of future bills – plus crushing anti-job-creating regulations – on an economy struggling to climb out of one of the severest recessions since the Great Depression.

When a recession hits and incomes fall, Americans instinctively tighten their belts, reduce spending, pay off credit cards and sock money away in savings in case things get worse. But Mr. Obama and his party did just the opposite. They expanded government, raised spending and burdened the economy with $3 trillion in higher debt.

The Obama crew lived in a separate reality of its own making, believing its exaggerated rhetoric that the economy was moving “in the right direction.” But as the economy grew weaker, revenues fell, budget deficits rose, and the unemployment rate climbed into the 9 percent range.

Read More at the Washington Times By Donald Lambro, The Washington Times

Bernanke, the Wizard Behind Obama’s Sham Economy

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On July 11, The Center for Vision & Values posted my article decrying the insulting name-calling directed toward Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke. The very next day, Bernanke made me question my forbearance by telling Congress that a third round of “quantitative easing,” or “QE3,” could be a near-term option.

Now it’s my turn to call Bernanke a name, but I’ll use a clinical label, not a crude one. He is an inflationist, although he may prefer the label “anti-deflationist.” He so fears a deflationary spiral that he will create however many dollars he believes necessary to avert deflation.

Bernanke’s repeated attempts to patch over the nation’s economic weakness, rottenness, and dead wood with newly created dollars remind me of the “Potemkin village” ruse. The Soviet communists duped foreign visitors into thinking that communism was a viable and prosperous system by steering them to sham factories, stores, villages, etc., which appeared to be productive, bustling, and attractive. In reality, Potemkin villages were like movie sets, built to disguise the widespread poverty and backwardness that characterized life in the “workers’ paradise.”

Official statistics insist that the Great Recession ended two years ago. Yet unemployment is creeping up, record numbers of workers are remaining unemployed for record lengths of time, income is down for small proprietors, and millions of people feel as though the recession never ended.

It is proverbial that statistics lie. One such statistic is the gross domestic product. GDP has risen modestly the last two years, supposedly indicating growth rather than recession. Here is the flaw in GDP: By definition, GDP=C+I+G. In other words, GDP equals the sum of consumer spending, private investment, and government spending. (There is also a problematical addendum of net exports, reflecting the mystical mercantilist notion that a country is richer if foreigners obtain more goods and services than domestic residents do, but let’s omit that here.)

Read More at Floyd Reports By Mark W. Hendrickson, Floyd Reports

Morning Bell: The Unstimulated Obama Economy

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Newsflash from The New York Times: President Barack Obama’s stimulus did not work. No, the Times doesn’t say that in so many words, but in an op-ed this morning, the paper laments the sputtering economy and the fact that Washington just isn’t doing enough to help the economy grow. The problem, of course, is that Washington has done too much of the wrong things to get the economy moving again.

The economic news that’s really sticking in the Old Gray Lady’s craw is revised data released last week that shows the economy’s growth stuck at 1.8 percent, slow consumer spending, stagnant wages, higher prices for gas and food, the poor housing market, flagging consumer confidence and a recent Labor Department report showing a higher-than-expected rise in claims for jobless benefits. The Times complains:

The grim numbers tell an unavoidable truth: The economy is not growing nearly fast enough to dent unemployment. Unfortunately, no one in Washington is pushing policies to promote stronger growth now.

What the Times forgot to mention, though, is that Washington over the past two years has done a lot—a whole lot—with the biggest ticket item being the Obama-Reid-Pelosi $787 billion stimulus that was designed to “create or save” 3.5 million new jobs by 2011. Despite the extraordinarily high cost, that didn’t happen, and unemployment has increased to 9 percent.

But don’t tell that to the Obama stimulus apologists, though. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace remarked that in light of the dismal economic numbers, the Obama Administration’s policies and near $1 trillion stimulus “isn’t working” and asked Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to respond. For her, those dots just don’t connect:

Well, I mean – I don’t know that I agree with that, because, you know, first of all – let me finish here. I mean, first of all, the trillion dollars for stimulus package – actually $786 billion – was absolutely necessary to make sure that this economy didn’t go into a freefall. We also know that we had to make sure that we began to stimulate the kind of growth that we need in this country to invest in the future.

For the American people, though, that reality is hitting home. Joseph Lupton, an economist at JP Morgan Chase and Company, says, “There are pretty big costs to not really generating a sizeable recovery.” And as The Wall Street Journal reports, those costs are high unemployment, with 5.8 million people out of work for more than six months.

Read More at The Foundry Mike Brownfield, The Foundry