Bearish News

New video about gold, economic headwinds, and the dollar. From FutureMoneyTrends.com. Comprehensive, well-produced.

Hat tip: Daniel.

Guest post by Mac Slavo of SHTFplan.com

As riots spread across the world, having started first in Europe and now engulfing the Middle East, most people in the U.S. outright reject the possibility that the same could happen right here at home. But the fact of the matter is that we remain in economic crisis and there is a real possibility of a total collapse of the system we have come to know.

If the system does happen to collapse, be it because of a hyperinflationary currency meltdown, political uprising or anything in between, here are ten things you can expect to happen, just as they are happening in the Middle East today:

1. There will be a general break down in law and order. Law enforcement will not be policing your neighborhood. This will likely lead to a community response and vigilante groups setting up neighborhood security details. The law and justice will be determined by those walking your streets with sticks and guns, so be sure to mind your P’s and Q’s. (LINK)
2. Food and water will become scarce. The average American has about three days worth of food in their home, and likely very little water, as most are dependent on their local city for this essential commodity. As with any major disaster, like hurricanes or earthquakes, panicked people will immediately make a run for the grocery store, either before or at the onset of crisis, looking to acquire any non-perishable goods. They’ll buy everything they can in one trip, which leaves less food for the next guy. Our just-in-time inventory management systems ensure that there will be no reserves in the back of the grocery store, so once the store shelves are cleared, it will be a while before they are restocked. (LINK)
3. Looting will be rampant. Until all of the food, water, diapers and HDTV’s have been cleared from store shelves, looters will be breaking into retail businesses in search of goods. In Egypt, most of the population is not armed. In the U.S., however, it’s a different story and the general rule on looters is: shoot them. Regardless of whether you are trying to acquire food for your baby or a free Xbox, you will be considered a looter if you enter a private business. (LINK ; New Orleans LINK)
4. If the rioting and looting gets bad enough, expect full deployment by the military. As we are currently seeing in Egypt, and like we saw in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina saga, government is prepared to restore order by whatever means are available. There will be heavily armed soldiers, tanks and unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling your city. (LINK)
5. When rocks start getting thrown, Molotov cocktails start exploding, and citizens take it upon themselves to shoot at military and law enforcement personnel, soldiers will fire back – and the firing will be indiscriminate, just like we’ve seen in Egypt and during the Iranian riots of 2009. One report out of Egypt indicates that President Mubarak of Egypt has issued shoot-to-kill orders giving the military authority to open fire on anyone it deems a threat. (VIDEO LINK)
6. Hospitals will run out of basic medical supplies. We saw this in Haiti and we’re seeing it in Cairo. As the injured and wounded stack up, medical personnel will be overwhelmed. Basic medicines like hydrogen peroxide and antibiotics will disappear, and minor injuries may lead to amputation or death in a matter of days if supplies are not restocked. As more dead bodies stack up, this could potentially lead to widespread outbreaks of disease like it did in Haiti. (LINK)
7. The internet will get shut down. Governments have realized that the internet is the communication medium of choice to organize protests and riots. When Iranians protested their Presidential elections in 2009, Twitter and other social networking sites were used to organize, as well as to broadcast pictures of the events in near real-time. This gives the government ample reason to shut down all digital means of communication, the most important being that government is unable to stop mass gatherings, nor are they able to control the news propaganda of the event itself. Egypt is the first country to have taken steps to completely shutdown everything from traditional internet connectivity via ISPs, as well as phone and text communications. Expect the same in your neck of the woods if and when it hits the fan. (LINK)
8. Banks will be closed and ATM’s will be out of money. With no law enforcement, banks will be unable to operate. There will be no one to refill the cash in ATM’s, and it’s possible that even if they do have money you will not be able to withdraw it because problems with electronic processing will prevent it. Those who don’t have cash or barterable goods on them will be left with no way to transact. (LINK)
9. The real value of gold and silver against most other assets will rise. Though only anecdotal reports exist at this time from the streets of Egypt, it’s clear that anytime governmental, economic or social instability hits a particular region, the value of these precious metals rises. The 2010 riots in Greece prove this point, as the price of gold on the street rose to a reported $1700 per ounce, even while gold in global commodity exchanges was trading at $1100. When there are no open banks or working ATM’s, precious metals will become the de facto reserve currency on the ground. (LINK)
10. The ‘important’ people will probably get the heck out of Dodge. If you’ve got money and power, you’re going to be fast-tracked out of the region. President Mubarak’s sons quickly fled Egypt when the riots broke out. In Tunisia, the President’s wife made a beeline for the nearest international destination – with a ton of gold in tow. While the elite will have access to evacuate a disintegrating regional riot or collapse, everyday folks will likely be stranded. Expect that wherever you are when it hits the fan is where you’ll stay, so be sure to be stocked up on the essentials. (LINK , LINK)

Re-published from SHTFplan.com with author permission.

Guest post by Bradford Hansen, CEO of CSLFinancialGroup.net.

One of the biggest questions we have had this week is what happened with the job rate last Friday. Why did it go from 9.8% to 9.4% when the job market is still very tough?

The answer is that the workforce shrank officially by 260,000 jobs. Unofficially, according to the most recent census data, our workforce should actually be growing by about 125-150,000 people per month. So, how is it possible for the BLS to shrink the workforce? It all depends on how you ask the question, literally. The unemployment rate is determined by a phone survey.

These are the questions the surveyor is supposed to find the answers to.

1. Are you employed full time?
2. Are you employed part time?
3. Do you want a job?
4. Are you available for a job?
5. Have you looked for a job in the last four weeks?

Remember, that even if you work 1 hour the BLS considers you officially fully employed. Currently, we have about 9 million people who are working part time, but want a full time job. Obviously your answer to the first 3 are no brainers, a “yes” to those puts you in the workforce regardless of employment status! It’s #4 and #5 that can get you kicked out of the workforce statistic, according to the BLS.

Let’s say you want a job, but are not available because you have gone back to school, you are now officially out of the workforce. Or if you have been unemployed for a while and you give up looking, you are also now considered to be out of the workforce.

Also, people who want to work but decided to give up and collect their social security are now, according to the BLS, officially out of the workforce. So, as you can see because of the way the BLS keeps track of the unemployment rate, it’s actually possible for the job market to get worse causing the official rate to go down. As people give up, retire, or go back to school, the workforce will continue to officially shrink.

CSL Financial Group’s outlook for jobs.

We’ll keep this short and to the point since most people don’t want to hear this. Currently, we have 25 million people either unemployed or underemployed, this is the official number of people who want to work a full time job.

Now, during the 1990’s, we had the internet revolution, the dot com bubble, and towards the end of the decade housing started to pick up. During that decade 22 million jobs were created. That means even if we froze the current population and didn’t have any new adults enter the workforce, not only would it take more than a decade to absorb the people who are currently unemployed, but it would take something like a new internet boom. We would need to see a new driver for jobs. Currently, in our opinion, there is no driver for jobs. There are only trillion dollar deficits trying to keep the old ones around.

With that said, use this knowledge accordingly. If you have a good job or are offered a job that isn’t ideal, work because there is no guarantee that people are going to find jobs this decade.

Market Update

Today, the market is going to have to deal with what we just talked about, a lower rate with more people losing jobs. This morning the BLS reported that 445,000 people filed for initial jobless claims, Wall St. was expecting that number to be around 400,000.

Now again, we hate to sound like we are bears or pessimists for telling the truth, but we wouldn’t be giving you an honest assessment if we didn’t mention the raw data. Remember, we said seasonal adjustment which means the BLS was in charge of how much to offset a post holiday number. Ignoring the seasonal adjusted number and looking at the actual claims, initial jobless claims surged to 770,413 people, up 191,686 from last week.

We have to admit this is a jaw dropping number, especially with what’s reported to the public. In fact, this is the largest number we have seen in a year for weekly jobless claims.

Bradford Hansen is CEO of CSLFinancialGroup.net. Re-published with permission.

Hitler is not happy about another aspect of the housing scam being exposed.

Bravo to whoever put this together. I hope the studio doesn’t take this one down.

Via Zero Hedge. BTW — If you haven’t been reading ZH lately, I suggest you catch up. They’ve been breaking big stuff on an almost daily basis. And here’s some context, if you’ve never seen one of these Hitler-rant satire things before.