Denial Is Not Just A River In Egypt: 10 Hilarious Examples
Of How Clueless Our Leaders Are About The Economy
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com
http://albertpeia.com/usleaderscluelessoneconomy.htm
‘They didn't see it coming last time either. Back in 2007,
President Bush, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and just about every
prominent voice in the financial world were all predicting that we would
experience tremendous economic prosperity well into the future. In fact,
as late as January 2008 Bernanke boldly declared that "the Federal Reserve is
not currently forecasting a recession." At the time, only the
"doom and gloomers" were warning that everything was about to fall
apart. And of course we all know what happened. But just a few
short years later, history seems to be repeating itself. Barack Obama,
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and almost every prominent voice in the
financial world are all promising that the U.S. "economic recovery"
is going to continue even though Europe is coming apart like a 20 dollar suit. But the economic fundamentals tell a different
story. Our national debt is more than $6,000,000,000,000 larger than it
was back in 2008, the number of Americans on food stamps just hit another brand
new all-time record, and the bankers up
on Wall Street are selling gigantic mountains of the exact same kind of toxic
derivatives that caused so much trouble the last time around. But all of
our "leaders" swear that everything is going to be okay. You
can believe them if you want, but denial is not just a river in Egypt, and
another crash is inevitably coming.
Sadly,
many Americans are not even going to see the crash coming because they still
have faith in the "experts". They haven't figured out that the
"experts" really do not know what they are doing.
The
blind are leading the blind, and in the end the results are going to be
absolutely tragic.
The
following are 10 hilarious examples of how clueless our leaders are about the
economy...
#1
When I first came across the following chart the other day, it made me
chuckle. It is a chart that supposedly tells us the
"probability" of a recession, and it was taken from the website of
the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. According to the chart, right now
there is a 0.16% chance of a recession...
#2
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has also been proclaiming his belief that
the U.S. economy will continue to grow. The following is an excerpt from
his recent remarks to Congress...
The pause in real GDP growth
last quarter does not appear to reflect a stalling-out of the recovery. Rather,
economic activity was temporarily restrained by weather-related disruptions and
by transitory declines in a few volatile categories of spending, even as demand
by U.S. households and businesses continued to expand. Available information
suggests that economic growth has picked up again this year.
And Bernanke also insists that
the labor market is "improving"...
Consistent with the moderate
pace of economic growth, conditions in the labor market have been improving
gradually.
Of course the labor market is
not actually improving. I showed this using the Fed's own numbers the other day.
And you can put stock in
Bernanke's forecasting ability if you like, but considering his track record of
failure in the past, that might not be too wise. Just check out what he
was saying before the last financial crisis: "30
Ben Bernanke Quotes That Are So Stupid That You Won’t Know Whether To Laugh Or
Cry".
#3 Although
Bernanke has such a nightmarish track record of failure, Warren Buffett still has faith in
him. In fact, Buffett loves all of the money printing that Bernanke has
been doing...
The U.S. economy might be
“dead in the water” without the stimulus provided by the Federal Reserve under
Chairman Ben Bernanke, according to Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.
“I think very cheap money
makes things happen, it makes asset values higher. When asset values are
higher, people do have a greater propensity to spend,” Buffett told CNBC.
“I think Bernanke has sort of
carried the load himself during this period.”
If Buffett thinks the wild
money printing that the Fed has been doing is so wonderful, then he probably
would have absolutely loved living in the Weimar Republic.
#4
Barack Obama continues to insist that we do not have a debt crisis, but that we
will not be able to balance the budget any time in the foreseeable future
either.
Even though the national debt
has grown by more than 6 trillion dollars under his leadership and our debt to
GDP ratio is now well over 100%, Obama does
not believe that it is a significant problem...
"We don’t have an
immediate crisis in terms of debt"
And Obama certainly does not
plan to even come close to balancing the budget during his second term.
In fact, he openly admits that we won't see
a balanced budget at any point within
the next decade...
"We're not gonna balance
the budget in 10 years"
Sadly, the truth is that the
U.S. will never have a balanced budget ever again under our current system, but
most of our politicians are not willing to go that far and admit that sad fact
to the American people just yet.
#5
But of course it would certainly help if the U.S. government would stop wasting
so much money. For example, did you know that the federal government is
helping dead people get free cell phones? The following is from a recent
article in the New York Post...
Dead people don’t need cell
phones.
That’s the message Rep. Tim
Griffin of Arkansas wants to send Congress, after he says a controversial
government-backed program that helps provide phones to low-income Americans
ended up sending mobiles to the dead relatives of his constituents. Griffin has
introduced a bill that targets the phone hand-out program, which has ballooned
into a fiscal headache for the government.
And of course a lot of living
people are abusing the free cell phone program as well. Rep. Griffin says
that he has heard of some people getting as many as 10 free cell phones from
the government...
"I’ve also gotten calls
from people who say their employees were bragging about having 10 phones."
#6
Meanwhile, the most prominent economic journalist in the United States, Paul Krugman of the New York Times,
continues to insist that it is a good thing for the government to be running up
so much debt...
First of all... that
trillion-dollar deficit is overwhelmingly the result of a depressed economy.
And when the economy's depressed it's good to run a deficit. You don't want the
government to try and balance its budget right now.
Krugman is also operating
under the delusion that the federal government "can't run out of
cash", that it can just print money whenever it wants and that printing
giant piles of money would not hurt anything.
The United States is a country
that has its own currency--can’t run out of cash because we print the money. If
you even try to think what would happen--suppose that investors get down on the
United States. Even so, that would weaken the dollar, not send interest rates
soaring, and that would be good. That would help our exports
It is frightening that the top
economic journalist in America has such little understanding of how our system
actually works. I would encourage Krugman to read a couple of my previous
articles so that he won't be so ignorant in the future...
-"Where
Does Money Come From? The Giant Federal Reserve Scam That Most Americans Do Not
Understand"
-"10
Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve"
#7
Many Americans have wondered why the federal government never seems to go after
the big Wall Street banks. Well, now we know why. The other day, the Attorney
General of the United States admitted that the federal government is very
hesitant to prosecute anyone from the big banks because of what it might do to
the global economy...
"I am concerned that the
size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become
difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you
do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact
on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy"
So I guess we now live in a
world where there is a different set of rules for the big banks, eh?
Most of us already knew that
this was the case, but it is quite chilling to hear the Attorney General of the
United States publicly admit this.
#8
Many of the big Wall Street banks are absolutely giddy that the Dow keeps
setting new all-time highs, and many of them are projecting wonderful things
ahead for the U.S. economy. For example, here is one forecast from Morgan Stanley's
Vincent Reinhart ...
"In the Morgan Stanley
forecast for the US, the trajectory of economic activity marks an inflection
point midway through 2013. The severe financial crisis of 2008-09 necessitated
significant downward adjustments by the private sector to the levels of
aggregate demand and efficient supply. As the event recedes further into
history, however, the drag on growth from these ongoing level adjustments plays
out.
In our forecast, the expansion
of real GDP steps up to around 2-3/4 percent in the second half of this year
and beyond."
#9 Vice-President Lobotomy Joe
Biden is pushing economic optimism to ridiculous levels. Apparently
he believes that most Americans are "no longer worried" that a major
economic crisis is coming...
But all kidding aside, I think
the American people have moved -- Democrats, Republicans, independents.
They know that the possibilities for this country are immense. They're no
longer traumatized by what was a traumatizing event, the great collapse in
2008. They're no longer worried, I think, about our economy being overwhelmed
either by Europe writ large, the EU, or China somehow swallowing up every bit
of innovation that exists in the world. They're no longer, I think,
worried about our economy being overwhelmed beyond our shores.
And I don't think they're any
more -- there’s no -- there’s very little doubt in any circles out there about
America’s ability to be in position to lead the world in the 21st century, not
only in terms of our foreign policy, our incredible defense establishment, but
economically.
#10
Right now, many in the financial world are projecting that this will be a year
to remember for the stock market. During a recent interview with Fox
Business, Wharton
School of Business Finance Professor Jeremy Siegel declared that the Dow
will cross the 16,000 mark by the end of this year...
"I think by the end of
this year, we’ll be in the 16,000 to 17,000 range."
Of course it is true that
other analysts have a much different view of things. Many of them are
absolutely amazed that the U.S. economy has become so disconnected from
economic reality. For example, just check out what Steve Russell and
Hamish Baillie, fund managers at the Ruffer Investment Company, recently
had to say...
"If this was explained to
a recently arrived Martian he would no doubt be puzzled – US unemployment has
almost doubled since 2007, GDP [gross domestic product] growth is a third lower
and debt as a percentage of GDP is within a whisker of doubling. The market is
forward looking but this is extreme"
So who is right and who is
wrong?
Time will tell.
Fortunately, it appears that
the American people are getting fed up with the constant stream of lies that
they have been told.
According to a new Pew
Research survey, just 26 percent of all Americans trust the
government to do the right thing.
So what about you?
Do you trust what the
government and the "experts" are telling you?
Do you trust them to do the
right thing?
Feel free to post a comment
with your thoughts below...’
