Grey Alien depicted on Canadian $20 Silver Commemorative Canoe Coin (video)
Red Ice Creations
January 6, 2012
From: youtube.com
The story, as told by the artist Jason Bouwman
The canoe has become as much a part of the Canadian visual lexicon as the Canada goose, the beaver and the maple leaf. This design shows a young person enjoying a recreational outing. The boy breaks from paddling to dip his hand in the water… and touches the past – the reflection reveals an early native paddler (or voyageur) in a traditional birch-bark canoe as it also appears on the early silver dollar of 1935.
Link here: mint.ca
Pension troubles in store for retired workers as plans across Canada face deficits
By Kenyon Wallace
Toronto Star
January 9, 2012
When Ellen Sargent took a job as a purchaser with the City of Saint John in New Brunswick 26 years ago, she didn’t expect that living below the poverty line when she retired would become a possibility.
Like most municipal employees across Canada, Sargent was promised an indexed pension by the city as part of the terms of her contract — a pension that both she and the city would contribute to over the course of her employment.
But now the 55-year-old widowed retiree is facing the prospect of having to subsist on her $25,000 annual pension without it increasing to meet the rising cost of living.
That’s because the City of Saint John is struggling with a $165 million funding shortfall in its pension plan, and is attempting to make a number of contentious changes, including suspending pension indexing, to close the gap.
30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012
The Economic Collapse Blog
December 31, 2011
Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen.
Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing. The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012.
The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden. Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades.
Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families.
Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace.
As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.
Today I went over to Safeway and I was absolutely appalled at the prices. I honestly don’t know how most families make it these days. I ended up paying over 140 dollars for about two-thirds of a cart of food. That was after I “saved” 67 dollars on sale items.
When the cost of the basic things that we need – housing, food, gas, electricity – go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer.
Sadly, if you look at the long-term numbers, some very clear negative trends emerge….
-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.
-The rate of inflation continues to outpace the rate that our wages are going up.
-American consumers are going into almost unbelievable amounts of debt.
-The number of Americans that are considered to be “poor” continues to grow.
-The number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for financial assistance continues to go up.
After you read the information below, it should become abundantly clear that the U.S. middle class is in a whole heap of trouble.
The following are 30 statistics that show that the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012….
#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.
#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are working.
#3 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.
#4 Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#5 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.
#6 According to that same article in the New York Times, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or “near poverty”, and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or “near poverty”.
#7 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger. Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.
#8 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.
#9 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today. Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.
#10 Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns. Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent. In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty.
#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.
#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by 18,000% since 1913. The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.
#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.
#14 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#15 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years. During 2010 it got even worse. Last year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.
#16 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#17 Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace. The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.
#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#20 The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.
#21 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation in the United States would be well over 10 percent.
#22 If the number of Americans considered to be “looking for work” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.
#23 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012. Most of that debt is owed by members of the middle class.
#24 Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.
#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.
#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”. By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.
#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.
#29 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#30 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
Sadly, this article could have been much, much longer. There are so many other statistics about the middle class that could have been included.
For even more insane economic numbers that show just how dramatically the U.S. economy is declining, just check out this article: “50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe“.
What is even more frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get.
We have already had “the economic recovery”, such as it was.
Now we are heading for another major financial crisis. Just like back in 2008, the entire world is going to feel the pain.
But we never recovered from the last financial crisis. We are like a boxer that is not ready to handle another blow.
And who is going to get hurt the most? It will be those at the bottom of the food chain of course. Tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty will experience a massive amount of pain, and millions more Americans will fall out of the middle class and will join them.
If you have a good job, do your best to hang on to it. If you don’t have a job, do your best to get one while you still can. Jobs will become very precious in the years ahead.
But also try to do what you can to become less dependent on the system. Almost anyone can find ways to make some extra money on the side. Yes, it will likely cut into your television time. If someday you were to lose your job you don’t want to be left with zero income.
Right now, the U.S. economy is slowly dying and as time goes by the number of middle class Americans it will be able to support will continue to decrease.
Yes, it is like a perverse game of musical chairs, but this is where we are at.
I encourage all of you to think about how you plan to make it through the collapse that is ahead.
Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anyone.
But if we all start planning for the storm that is ahead, and if we get others around us to wake up as well, that is going to do a great deal of good in the long run.
—————————–
(hat tip: The Intel Hub)
New Asian Union Means The Fall Of The Dollar
by Brandon Smith, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
December 30, 2011
One of the most frustrating issues to haunt the halls of alternative economic analysis is the threat of misrepresentative terminology. For instance, when the U.S. government decided to back the private Federal Reserve in lowering the interest rates on lending windows to European banks last month, they did not call this a bailout, even though that’s exactly what it was. They did not call it quantitative easing, or fiat printing, or a hyperinflationary landmine; rarely does bureaucracy ever apply honest terminology to their subversive activities. False terminology is the bane of every honest analyst, because in order for them to educate and awaken those who are unaware of the truth, they must first battle through the daunting muck of the general public’s horrifically improper perceptions and vocabulary.
The chain of financial events taking place over the past decade in Asia has been correspondingly mislabeled and misunderstood. What some economists see as total collapse is actually a new and decidedly prophetic (or engineered) transition. What some naively see as the “natural” progression of globalism, is actually a distinctly deliberate program of centralization meant to further the goals of world economic and political totalitarianism. Asia, and most especially China, is a Petri dish for elitist psychopaths. What we see as suffocating collectivism in this region of the world today is the exact social schematic intended for the West tomorrow. Call it whatever you will, but on the other side of the Pacific, like the eerie smile of a sinister clown, sits fabricated fate.
The genius of globalization is not in how it “works”, but in how it DOESN’T work. Globalization chains together mismatched cultures through circumstance and throws us into the deep end of the pool. If one sinks, we all sink, enslaving us with interdependency. The question one must ask, then, is whether sovereign economies are currently tied together in the same way? The answer is no, not anymore. Certain countries have moved to insulate themselves from the domino effect of debt implosion; one of the primary examples being China.
Since at least 2005, China has been taking the exact steps required to counter the brunt of a global debt collapse; not enough to make it untouchable, but enough that its infrastructure will survive. One could even surmise that China’s actions indicate a foreknowledge of the events that would eventually escalate in 2008. How they knew is hard to say, but if the available evidence causes you to lean towards collapse as a Hegelian creation (and it should if you are paying any attention), then China’s activity begins to make perfect sense. If a globalist insider told you that in a few short years the two most powerful financial empires in the world were going to topple like bowling pins under the weight of their own liabilities, what would you do? Probably separate yourself as much as possible from the diseased dynamic and construct your own replacement system. This is what China has done….
China started with the circulation of Yuan-denominated bonds, like T-Bonds, meant to securitize Chinese debt, creating an outlet for the currency to go global. China’s considerable forex and bond reserves make this move a rather suspicious one. With so much savings at their disposal, why bother to issue bonds at all? Why threaten the traditional export-based economy and the uneven trade advantage that the country had been thriving on for decades? The success of Chinese bonds would mean the internationalization of the Yuan, a floating valuation of the currency, and the loss of the desirable trade deficit with the United States. Back in 2005, this all would surely seem like a novelty that was going nowhere fast. Of course, today China’s actions suggest an unprecedented push to convert to a consumer hub at the center of a massive trading bloc. To put it simply; China knew ahead of schedule that the U.S. was no longer going to be a viable customer, and reliance on such a country would spell disaster. They have been preparing to break away from America’s consumer markets and the dollar for some time.
In 2008, after China announced the use of the Yuan in cross-border trade on a limited basis, I began to write about the possibility that China was preparing to break from the Greenback. For the past few years my primary focus in terms of finance has been the East as a kind of warning bell for the state of the global economy. In 2009 and 2010, it became absolutely clear that China (with the help of global corporate entities) was developing the skeleton of a new system; a trade network that that had the capacity to supplant the U.S. and end the dollar’s world reserve status.
Since then, Yuan bonds have spread across the planet, China has dropped the dollar in bilateral trade with Russia, the ASEAN trading bloc has formed into a tight shell of export partners, and that is just the beginning. Two major announcements in 2011 have solidified my belief that a complete dump of the dollar by Eastern interests is near…
First was the announcement that China was actively and openly pursuing the establishment of a central bank for the whole of ASEAN, with the Yuan utilized as the reserve currency instead of the dollar:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-china-asean-financial-idUSTRE79Q2F520111027
This news, of course, has barely been reported on in the mainstream. As I discussed at the beginning of this article, the terminology surrounding economic developments has been diluted and twisted. When China states that an ASEAN central bank is in the works, we need to point out what this really means; the ASEAN trading bloc is about to become the Asian Union. The only missing piece of the puzzle is something that I have been warning about for at least a couple years, ever since my days at Neithercorp (see “Migration Of The Black Swans” as a recent example). This key catalyst is the inclusion of Japan in ASEAN, something which many said would take five to ten years to unfold. News released this Christmas speaks otherwise:
Japan has indeed entered into an agreement to drop the dollar in currency exchange with China and has expressed interest in melting into ASEAN. Japan has also struck somewhat similar though slightly more limited deals with India, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines almost simultaneously:
This means that the two largest foreign holders of U.S. debt and Greenbacks will soon be in a position to tap into an export market far more profitable than that of America, and that all of this trade will be facilitated by currencies OTHER THAN THE DOLLAR. It means the end of the dollar as the world reserve, and probably the end of the dollar as we know it.
Japan’s inclusion in this process was inevitable. With its economy already in steep deflationary decline, the Yen skyrocketing in value against the dollar making exports difficult, as well as the ongoing nuclear meltdown problem at Fukushima, the island nation has been on the edge of complete collapse. Its only option, therefore, is to sink into the chaotic seas, or float like a buoy tied to an Asian Union. There can be absolutely no doubt now that Japan will soon implement the latter solution.
The dilemma at this point becomes one of timing. Now that we are certain that two of the largest economies in the world are about the dump the Greenback, what signals can we watch when preparing for the event? My belief is that the trigger will come squarely from the U.S. and the Federal Reserve, either as legislation to heavily tax Asian imports, a renewed threat of further credit downgrades like that which S&P brought down in August, or the announcement of more open quantitative easing. Any and all of these issues could very well arise in the course of the next 6-12 months, QE3 being a basic no-brainer. ASEAN could, certainly, drop the dollar immediately after their central bank apparatus is put in place, resulting in a much more volatile trade war atmosphere (also useful for full global centralization later down the road). The point is, we are truly at a place in our economic life when ANYTHING is possible.
My hope is that as our predictions in the alternative economic community are proven correct with every passing quarter, more Americans will take note, and prepare. I can say quite confidently that we have entered the first stages of the catastrophic phase of the economic implosion. All the fantastic and terrible consequences many once considered theory or science fiction, are about to become reality.
Practical solutions have been offered by myself and many others. The only thing left now is to take action, or ride the tidal wave of destruction like so much driftwood. We can help to determine the outcome, or we can be idle spectators. In everything, there is a choice….
Brandon Smith is the founder of Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better or contribute to their Safe Haven Project. You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com
The year of dissent: Battling Europe (video)
RT
January 1, 2012
2011 will be remembered for its mass protests in Greece where angry crowds clashed with police and trashed the streets of Athens in response to the government’s austerity measures. The leaders there remain have been under immense pressure from the EU to make saving cuts in order to qualify for desperately-needed bailout money. RT’s correspondent Sara Firth has been covering the protests in Greece during the past year.
Outlook for 2012: Total Collapse of Society and The End of Internet Freedom (video)
The Alex Jones Show
January 2, 2012
On this first live show of 2012, Alex takes a large number of your calls and talks about the latest news, including the Iowa caucus tomorrow and Ron Paul’s chances as the Republican establishment plots against him and pushes the script-reading warmongers Mitt Romney and the recently come-from-behind candidate Rick Santorum, who has proposed air strikes on Iran. Alex also talks about the concerted effort by the corporate media to fiddle with poll results in order to downplay Ron Paul’s obvious lead in the eleventh hour before the caucus. Alex takes a look at the police state NDAA legislation signed into law by Obama, who promises he will not send the military to arrest American citizens and strip them of their rights under the Fourth Amendment.
The Casino Gulag Model with Max Keiser (video)
The Alex Jones Show
December 31, 2011
Additional guests include former trader Max Keiser on the imploding economy .
http://maxkeiser.com/
http://www.infowars.com/
PN 