http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aQb4ns2nRBUE&refer=us

May 6 (Bloomberg) — A growing number of U.S. homeowners owe more than their properties are worth after prices extended their two-year decline in the first quarter, Zillow.com said.

About 21.8 percent of all owners were underwater as of March 31, the Seattle-based real estate data service said in a report today. At the end of the fourth quarter, 17.6 percent of homeowners owed more than their original mortgage, while 14.3 percent had negative equity three months earlier.

Property values dropped 14 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, reducing the median value of U.S. single- family homes, condominiums and cooperatives to $182,378, Zillow said. The decline has left about 20.4 million of the U.S.’s 93 million houses, condos and co-ops with loans higher than the properties are worth. The gain in underwater homeowners will lead to more bank repossessions, Zillow said.

By Michael C. Ruppert, Thursday April 30, 2009

http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com

It is pretty clear now that we’re going for the full ride with swine flu. This is not like SARS (see FTW). It is bigger and much more ominous. There are good reasons to separate the ice cream from the bs right now — the things that should be focused on from the things that distract, lead into blind alleys or induce panic. I had an epiphany today about why the W.H.O. and all governments are so concerned… It is not just the “unknown” nature of the bug but the fact that this is just more evidence that there are too many humans on this planet. It’s so simple. With almost seven billion people, more of us are coming into contact with more of us… at a faster rate than ever; thanks to oil-powered transportation and population growth. It couldn’t be more obvious. We’re popcorn. We’re also running out of energy, water, minerals, seafood and arable land… you name it.– Now compound that with the fact that the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919 — which killed between 20 and 40 million people — was/is a variant of H1N1 Swine Flu and there’s reason for one’s ears to pick up. If it killed that many, that fast, in 1918 how many could it kill now and how fast with airplanes, cars, trucks and ships? And this epidemic/nascent pandemic is behaving more like Spanish flu that swine flu. It likes to kill young adults with healthy immune systems.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8025457.stm

Women’s activist groups in Kenya have slapped their partners with a week-long sex ban in protest over the infighting plaguing the national unity government.

The Women’s Development Organisation coalition said they would also pay prostitutes to join their strike.

The campaigners are asking the wives of the Kenyan president and the prime minister to join in the embargo.

They say they want to avoid a repeat of the violence which convulsed the country after the late-2007 elections.

Relations between Kenya’s coalition partners, led by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, have become increasingly acrimonious.

Now the dispute has moved to the nation’s bedrooms.

Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida), one of the organisations in the campaign, said they hoped the seven-day sex ban would force the squabbling rivals to make up.

http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/03/fed-is-planning-15-fold-increase-in-us.html

by Eric deCarbonnel

The fed is planning moves that would more than double its balance-sheet assets by September to $4.5 trillion from $1.9 trillion. Whether expressing approval or concern over the fed’s intentions, most commentators fail to understand the real magnitude of the projected expansion of the US monetary base because they don’t take into account the amount of dollars circulating abroad.

At least 70 percent of all US currency is held outside the country, and this means the US monetary base is considerably smaller than the fed’s overall balance sheet. Take, for example, the true US domestic money supply at the beginning of September 2008, before the fed started its quantitative easing. From the Federal Reserve’s website, we know that currency in circulation was 833 Billion. This translates as 583 Billion dollars circulating abroad (70 percent), and 250 Billion dollars circulating domestically (30 percent). Since the bank reserve balances held with Federal Reserve Banks were 12 billion, that gives us a 262 Billion domestic monetary base as of September 2008. Now compare that to the projected US domestic monetary base for September 2009 which is 3,818 billion (4,500 billion – 583 billion (dollars circulating abroad) – 99 billion (other fed liabilities not part of the money supply)). The fed’s planned balance sheet expansion results in a 15-fold increase in the base money supply.

262 Billion = US monetary base as of September 2008 (minus dollars held abroad)

3,818 Billion = projected US monetary base in September 2009 (minus dollars held abroad)

3,818 Billion / 262 Billion = 15-Fold Increase in US monetary base

This is a staggering devaluation of the US currency! It means that for every dollar in America in September 2008, the fed is going to create fourteen more of them! Below is a rough sketch of what this increase in US monetary base would look like:

This 15-Fold Increase will be impossible to reverse

Next September, when the fed realizes it has gone too far and tries to reverse its balance sheet expansion, it will be unable to do so. The realities which will hinder the fed’s control of the money supply are:

1) The toxic assets filling its balance sheet

Expanding the money supply is easy. All the fed has to do is print dollars and then use them to buy assets. There is no effective limit to how much the fed can print and spend.

Shrinking the money is much trickier. To shrink the base money supply, the fed sell assets and takes the dollars it receives for them out of circulation. The amount the fed can shrink the money supply is therefore effectively limited by the market value of assets on its balance sheets. Since the fed is in the process of loading up on toxic securities while trying to restore health to the financial sector, it is now sitting billions of unrealized losses. These unrealized losses means the fed has little ammunition available to bring the money supply under control.

Once September rolls around, If the fed wants to reverse the expansion of its balance sheet and shrink the monetary base back down from 3,818 billion to 262 billion, then it will need to sell 3,556 billion worth of assets. However, the market value of its assets will only be worth a fraction of that.

2) Political constrains on fed’s actions

Even if the fed does try to shrink the money, it is likely to run into political constrains on its actions:

A) Selling toxic assets at a loss could become a crippling source of major embarrassment for the fed, undermining its authority. For example, last year when the fed took 29 billion toxic assets to help JPMorgan’s takeover of Bear Stearns, it assured Americans that by holding those securities till maturity, the cost to taxpayers would be minimal. If the fed sells those toxic Bearn Stearns assets at a catastrophic loss, it would cause fury and outrage from voters and lawmakers.

B) Selling assets at below book value will quickly cause the fed’s equity to turn negative. The Federal Reserve would then need to be recapitalized by new debt from the treasury, which would increase the national debt.

3) The benefits from of its balance sheet expansion would be lost if the fed starts selling assets

The fed is accumulating toxic mortgage backed securities, long term treasuries, and other assets to unfreeze the credit markets and spur economic growth. Turning around and selling those assets would result in the collapse of the credit markets and the financial system, which the fed has been desperately trying to prevent.

Upwards pressure on interest rates

On top of all the issues above, the fed’s woes are going to be compounded by upwards pressure on the yields of treasuries and other US debt. This upwards pressure will likely force the fed to monetize far more treasuries than the planned $300 billion purchases it has already announced, and will greatly complicate any efforts by the fed to control the money supply.

Below are the nine factors which will cause yields to move higher.

by Matt Taibbi

The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution.

It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/1

I find it a bit difficult to imagine how the dollar might actually crash

in one day. In a snowball effect. This video helps educate how it might happen.

Economist and Author, David Morgan reenatcs a dramatic scene from the Movie “Rollover” (1981), a frightening worldwide currency crisis he says we should be prepared for in our lifetimes.

By Douglas Hamilton

.Feb 16, 09

The slump that has swept through developed nations like the UK, the eurozone and the United States is hitting the world’s emerging economies with a speed and ferocity that has shocked even the most pessimistic analysts.

Until recently, many investors and economists thought such countries could provide a bulwark against the collapse in growth elsewhere. Instead, the latest data suggests that emerging economies as a group actually contracted late last year, and will likely shrink further in 2009.

The pace of the turnaround has caught policymakers and investors off guard. In a matter of months, key gauges of growth in trade and industrial production in a number of countries went from acceptable to alarming – even domestic demand is suffering.

http://www.theherald.co.uk

by John Paul Mitchell

There is a high chance a majority of the States within the United States of America could file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. There are currently 46 states with high budget deficits, Arizona being one of them.

.

BOOMERS – YOUR CRISIS HAS ARRIVED
by James Quinn
February 10, 2009

The generation that won World War II passed the ultimate test and proceeded to produce the next generation, the Baby Boom Generation. Their rendezvous with destiny is underway. Will it be a rendezvous with history that results in World War III, the collapse of the Great American Republic, dictatorship, or a return to the original Constitutional principles upon which this country was founded?

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0210.html

Includes predictions such as

The stimulus package and TARP 6 plan will be implemented. The economy will not improve. By the Fall, Obama and the Democratic led Congress will push through trillions more in spending. The dollar will continue to fall versus gold. As the deficits grow and foreigners buy less and less of our debt, interest rates will rise. Oil will gradually rise as long as no external event causes it to spike. Protectionism will increase, leading to declining world trade. When we have not pulled out of this downturn in 2010, people will realize we are in a Depression and politicians have lied to them again. Social unrest will grow. Riots are likely to break out in poor urban areas. Governments always react to internal strife by seeking an external threat.

Trends Researcher Gerald Celente on Russia Today discussing the coming economic collapse and the probability of a revolution in the form of a tax revolt.

U.S. Companies Cut 519,895 Jobs Since Election

.

Dr Doom and The Black Swan on CNBC Feb. 9, 2009

by Michael S. Rozeff

Hyperinflation in the U.S. hasn’t happened for quite some time. The last two instances that come to mind are confederate money in the 1860s and the continentals in the 1770s. In both these cases, governments used inflation to finance wars because their tax systems were weak.

A strong tax system (from the government’s perspective) has several aspects. It has a large productive capacity that it can tax without causing production to decline by a great deal. It can enforce tax collections. The required taxes are low compared to the overall government spending.

The U.S. tax system is not weak, but it is weakening. The productive capacity is difficult to evaluate, but it too has probably weakened. The U.S. economy has a large government sector (at least 40 percent) that is relatively inefficient. It also interferes with and distorts the private economy. The federal government has not been able to finance its spending by current taxes in a long time. Instead it has resorted to borrowing (deficit spending) and inflation. The results are a large national debt and a depreciating currency.

U.S. government financing has weakened further in the past year. The government is borrowing very heavily to pay for such actions as the absorption of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bailouts of AIG and large banks, and the rest of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. A short while ago, the government sent out $160 billions of dollars of tax rebates. Meanwhile the Fed has, on its own and with government cooperation, vastly increased credits to the private economy. This has dramatically inflated the monetary base.

Continued on…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff267.html

MOVING OUT

There are some homes
you can never leave.
Their grass will always be greener.

You walk on floors
connected
to the center of the earth.

The water from their taps
come from the spring
of your deepest dreams.

The trees have grown beside you,
and you know you would
never cut them down.

Is it my imagination, or are those palms
drooping lower? Edges of shrubs starting
to brown? Is this the way yards mourn?

Some houses you can never leave.
You move the furniture out
but the pieces remain, invisible.

and now your footsteps
patter
across rugless expanses

Butterflies fly in and out,
oblivious.
They don’t live here anyway.

The patio, empty of furniture,
is a striped shadow of minutes
ticking away.

Draw the curtains over unmet dreams:
that book you never got
to write,

the lover who was once
in your bed
who never came back.

The house holds your orgasms
as they echos through empty rooms
looking for you.

Some houses you can never leave.
They come back to taunt you as you
look for a new house,

lovely and pale, but most inferior
with too much dust,
creaking and reeking of the past owners.

They are pale, mere shadows
of the real arches and posts
that drove your life home,

as you bustled in and out
without ever thinking
you would leave.

You almost wish you had burned it down
that time you charred beans
filled it with smoke,

and now you are alarmed
with every ounce of longing
as you close the door behind you.

You do not see but it is breaking,
ready to follow you
with wood and beams clattering in a parade

like cheerleaders urging you to find
new land
and a steady spot.

You swing open the gate
but you too start
to break.

No wonder, the new owners
won’t feel at home.
Because your spirit has never left.

by JGrace

*The failure of our world to resolve the issue of war, poverty, and corruption, rests within a gross ignorance about what guides human behavior to begin with. ‘Zeitgeist-Addendum’ addresses the true source of the instability in our society, while offering the only fundamental, long term solution.

…

You can view Zeitgeist for free online:

Imagine you have a square meter or two of space to bury preps, in your small yard,
what would you bury?

Let’s assume the worst; that you bugged out and in the interval the hordes came and completely trashed your house.

When you returned there was permanent economic collapse.

So what would you be sure to put in the ground, if you had to start all over
again, living from your hidden preps?

Here are some suggestions from various friends.

1.  10 ounces gold in 1/10th ounce coins
2. Three box pack strike anywhere matches
3. Med kit with anti bacterial creams, compression bandages, penicillin, etc
4. Folding knife, razor knife, gutting knife, and a lanskey sharpener
5. sleeping bag with water proof outer shell
6. 5 pair moisture wicking socks
7. Portable water purification system
8. 2 pair leather gloves
9. 4 rolls toilet paper
10. $2500 cash in $5, $10 and $20 bills

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/024615.html

List of Troubled Banks

Posted by Chris Brunner at December 29, 2008 02:04 PM

Ready to see where your bank stands?

A few days ago, a friend of mine called me to ask if I had any idea how to figure out which banks would be the next to fail. Some extensive googling revealed that while lists of troubled banks obviously exist, none of them seem to be readily available to the public. Why? Because the bankers do not want you to have this. Just watch the president of the American Bankers Association in this interview talk about how important it is to keep this private.

This is a list of all of the banks in the United States and the corresponding Texas Ratio for each one. Developed by Gerard Cassidy, the Texas ratio is a measure of a bank’s credit troubles. Basically, the higher the ratio, the worse the situation is for that particular bank. Banks with a ratio of 100 and higher are in very serious danger of collapse, and banks with a ratio of 50 or higher are vulnerable.

This is the formula I used:
100 * ((Non-performing Assets – U.S guaranteed loans) + Other REO) / (Equity + Loss Reserves)

All of this information is available on the FDIC website, but it’s extremely difficult to gather in a meaningful way. In fact, I don’t think you’ll find a list like this anywhere else on the internet.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/chris/banks/banks.html

The first episode of The Oracle with Max Keiser which aired on BBC World News on 9 January 2009.

Guests: Jacques Attali and Carrie Quinlan

Topics: Recession or Depression? The global financial crisis. The low wages that caused the crisis.

Max Keiser is the host of “The Oracle with Max Keiser” for BBC World airing from 9 January 2009.

Max has also presented news features for Aljazeera English. He is a frequent guest on Aljazeera English and France 24 and a blogger for both the Huffington Post and Intrade.

As a presenter, Max co-hosts “The Truth About Markets” on ResonanceFM 104.4 in London; produces documentary films covering markets and finance for Al Jazeera’s “People & Power” series and written a column in the Ecologist magazine covering markets and the ecology.

Max Keiser has been involved with markets and finance for 25 years. He started his career as a stock broker on Wall Street after graduating from NYU.