The Coming Collapse, Late November 2012 Edition

The Economic Collapse blog consolidated many different sites as they composed the massive list of lay offs and firings after Obama won re-election.

From the Blaze,.... major corporations have all announced layoffs in just the past two days...

Energizer; Exide Technologies; Westinghouse; Research in Motion Limited; Lightyear Network Solutions; Providence Journal; Hawker Beechcraft; Boeing (30% of their management staff); CVPH Medical Center; US Cellular; Momentive Performance Materials; Rocketdyne; Brake Parts; and Vestas Wind Systems; Husqvarna; Center for Hospice New York; Bristol-Meyers; OCE North America; Darden Restaurants; West Ridge Mine; United Blood Services Gulf;

From the American Thinker, we get a list of other companies downsizing,......

Teco Coal officials announce layoffs; Momentive Inc plans temporary layoffs for 150; Wilkes-Barre officials to announce mandatory layoffs; 600 layoffs at Groupon; More layoffs announced at Aniston Weapons Incinerator; Murray Energy confirms 150 layoffs at 3 subsidiaries; 130 laid off in Minnesota dairy plant closure; Stanford brake plant to lay off 75; Turbocare, Oce to lay off more than 220 workers; ATI plans to lay off 172 workers in North Richland Hills; SpaceX claims its first victims as Rocketdyne lays off 100; Providence Journal lays off 23 full-time employees; CVPH lays off 17; New Energy lays off 40 employees; 102 Utah miners laid off because of 'war on coal', company says; US Cellular drops Chicago, cuts 640 jobs; Career Education to cut 900 jobs, close 23 campuses; Vestas to cut 3,000 more jobs; First Energy to cut 400 jobs by 2016; Mine owner blames Obama for layoffs (54 fired last night); Canceled program costs 115 jobs at Ohio air base; AMD trims Austin workforce - 400 jobs slashed; 100 workers lose jobs as Caterpillar closes plant in Minnesota; Exide to lay off 150 workers; TE Connectivity to close Guilford plant, lay off 620; More Layoffs for Major Wind Company (3,000 jobs cut); Cigna to lay off 1,300 workers worldwide; Ameridose to lay off hundreds of workers;

From a Sy Harding on Forbes we get the analysis that people are generally ignorant of the coming collapse,...

The global economic recovery from the 2007-2009 financial collapse stalled last year and continues to worsen this year, with the International Monetary Fund cutting its forecasts for global economic recovery yet again, including for the U.S., and warning last week that risks of the world dropping back into a global recession “are alarmingly high”, and that “no significant improvements appear in the offing.”

That certainly sounds like the IMF doesn’t have much confidence that the ‘Troika’ (the IMF, EU, and ECB) will be successful with the euro-zone rescue plans and stimulus measures announced a month ago.

Meanwhile China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies, are in a serious economic slowdown. China’s stock market is down 40% from its peak in 2009. Japan’s market is down 22% from its 2010 peak and still 51% beneath its peak in 2007.

U.S. corporations seem to be preparing for the difficult times ahead. They are hoarding capital and refusing to invest it in their futures, apparently being to make sure they can pay their bills and survive anything that might lie ahead.

The fear of corporate managements could also be seen in the way that corporate insiders sold off holdings and continued even after the Fed announced its QE3 stimulus measures. Hedge-fund managers likewise did not participate in the June rally, instead selling off as well.

Private-equity funds are having a similar under-performing year, up on average of only 4%. As the Journal says, that is not what their investors planned on. The funds were also suspicious of the rally, and are sitting on close to $1trillion in cash.

However, U.S. consumer confidence has jumped to 83.1 in October from 78.3 in September!!

And at 83.1, consumer confidence is getting close to the 87 level it averaged in the year prior to the 2008-2009 recession. That’s a lot more recovery than global economies have achieved, including that of the U.S. Is it just due to the pixie dust being puffed out by Wall Street and the Fed, about to be blown away by the gathering storm others see coming? We are likely to soon know the answer.

All this before we face the Govermental Fiscal Cliff that is finally in the mainstream news after heading this way for the past five years. Wait until the Department of Defense lays off a butt load of civil service and downsizes the military. Further military cuts will impact negatively not only major defense contractors (see Boeing in the list of lay offs) but local businesses around military installations.

Taxes are going up; more government spending and debt; inflated prices from everything from fuel to food.

Then there is the National Drought,...
And finally, the ability of the United States to produce food to feed the people has greatly diminished simply because of the great drought that has occured.  The worst U.S. drought in decades has deepened again after more than a month of encouraging reports of slowly improving conditions.

60.1 percent of the lower 48 states were in some form of drought as of Tuesday, up from 58.8 percent the previous week. The amount of land in extreme or exceptional drought — the two worst classifications — increased from 18.3 percent to 19.04 percent.   Read the entire article on the national drought conditions here.

Stock up people,..prepare well. 

Recession and Revolution

A reader of UrbanSurvivalSkills.com sent us this article written by well known author Seth Godin, whose book Tribes is a good read for the average urban or suburban survival prepper to provide some concepts and ideas about leading, connecting and creating movements, such as building a survival network or team in case of SHTF.

Anyway, Seth Godin's article below, is entitled "The Forever Recession (and the Coming Revolution)" is a good read for all Survivalists.

By Seth Godin

There are actually two recessions:

The first is the cyclical one, the one that inevitably comes and then inevitably goes. There's plenty of evidence that intervention can shorten it, and also indications that overdoing a response to it is a waste or even harmful.

The other recession, though, the one with the loss of "good factory jobs" and systemic unemployment--I fear that this recession is here forever.

Why do we believe that jobs where we are paid really good money to do work that can be systemized, written in a manual and/or exported are going to come back ever? The internet has squeezed inefficiencies out of many systems, and the ability to move work around, coordinate activity and digitize data all combine to eliminate a wide swath of the jobs the industrial age created.

There's a race to the bottom, one where communities fight to suspend labor and environmental rules in order to become the world's cheapest supplier. The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win...

Factories were at the center of the industrial age. Buildings where workers came together to efficiently craft cars, pottery, insurance policies and organ transplants--these are job-centric activities, places where local inefficiencies are trumped by the gains from mass production and interchangeable parts. If local labor costs the industrialist more, he has to pay it, because what choice does he have?

No longer. If it can be systemized, it will be. If the pressured middleman can find a cheaper source, she will. If the unaffiliated consumer can save a nickel by clicking over here or over there, then that's what's going to happen.

It was the inefficiency caused by geography that permitted local workers to earn a better wage, and it was the inefficiency of imperfect communication that allowed companies to charge higher prices.

The industrial age, the one that started with the industrial revolution, is fading away. It is no longer the growth engine of the economy and it seems absurd to imagine that great pay for replaceable work is on the horizon.

This represents a significant discontinuity, a life-changing disappointment for hard-working people who are hoping for stability but are unlikely to get it. It's a recession, the recession of a hundred years of the growth of the industrial complex.

I'm not a pessimist, though, because the new revolution, the revolution of connection, creates all sorts of new productivity and new opportunities. Not for repetitive factory work, though, not for the sort of thing ADP measures. Most of the wealth created by this revolution doesn't look like a job, not a full time one anyway.

When everyone has a laptop and connection to the world, then everyone owns a factory. Instead of coming together physically, we have the ability to come together virtually, to earn attention, to connect labor and resources, to deliver value.

Stressful? Of course it is. No one is trained in how to do this, in how to initiate, to visualize, to solve interesting problems and then deliver. Some see the new work as a hodgepodge of little projects, a pale imitation of a 'real' job. Others realize that this is a platform for a kind of art, a far more level playing field in which owning a factory isn't a birthright for a tiny minority but something that hundreds of millions of people have the chance to do.

Gears are going to be shifted regardless. In one direction is lowered expectations and plenty of burger flipping. In the other is a race to the top, in which individuals who are awaiting instructions begin to give them instead.

The future feels a lot more like marketing--it's impromptu, it's based on innovation and inspiration, and it involves connections between and among people--and a lot less like factory work, in which you do what you did yesterday, but faster and cheaper.

This means we may need to change our expectations, change our training and change how we engage with the future. Still, it's better than fighting for a status quo that is no longer. The good news is clear: every forever recession is followed by a lifetime of growth from the next thing...

Job creation is a false idol. The future is about gigs and assets and art and an ever-shifting series of partnerships and projects. It will change the fabric of our society along the way. No one is demanding that we like the change, but the sooner we see it and set out to become an irreplaceable linchpin, the faster the pain will fade, as we get down to the work that needs to be (and now can be) done.

This revolution is at least as big as the last one, and the last one changed everything.

Largest Financial Crisis in History is Looming

Previously unknown to UrbanSurvivalSkills.com is the The National Inflation Association (NIA) which is an organization that states they are dedicated to preparing Americans for hyperinflation and helping Americans not only survive, but prosper in the upcoming hyper-inflationary crisis.

NIA believes the largest financial crisis in history is ahead of us as a direct result of the U.S. government unwilling to accept a much needed recession. We are now at a point where our national debt is impossible to pay off. Due to rising interest payments on our national debt, it is unlikely the U.S. will be able to balance its budget ever again. Foreigners will eventually stop lending the U.S. money and the Federal Reserve will most likely have to print the money to fund our deficit spending out of thin air.

Article and Movie Trailer from the National Inflation Association



Inflation to Make All Americans Billionaires By 2020

One of the Federal Reserve's original stated purposes was to manage the nation's money supply through monetary policy that provides for stable prices without inflation or deflation. Shocking just about the whole world except for NIA members, the Federal Reserve this past week shifted its purpose from being an inflation fighter to now being an inflation advocate. Charles Evans, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is now saying that inflation in the U.S. is too low and the Federal Reserve needs to publicly declare a new goal of having inflation that is much higher than its informal 2% target. William Dudley, President of the New York Federal Reserve, is calling current low levels of U.S. inflation "a problem" because "it means slower nominal income growth".

Dudley believes "slower nominal income growth" is unacceptable because it "means that less of the needed adjustment in household debt-to-income ratios will come from rising incomes. This puts more of the adjustment burden on paying down debt." In other words, he wants to monetize our debts by printing so much money that all Americans are earning enough income to pay back their debts. NIA fears that one of the unintended consequences of such a policy will be an insurmountable currency crisis; this will lead to a U.S. societal collapse with class warfare, millions of Americans starving to death, and a return to a barter based system that will last until we can come up with a new form of workable government based on sound money that is backed by gold and silver.

When our government creates inflation with the goal of generating higher incomes, the real incomes of Americans always decline dramatically. Inflation never creates wealth, but instead mis-allocates resources that would have went towards productive purposes if the free market was allowed to operate. During periods of high inflation, no matter how fast incomes rise nominally, they never keep pace with rising gold prices. (Try to picture Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe trying to keep pace in a race against Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt.)

Back in 1970, the median family income in the U.S. was $9,870. During the next decade, the U.S. government created unprecedented amounts of inflation, which led to the median family income rising in 1980 to $21,020 for a gain of 113%. Gold was only $35 per ounce in 1970, but rose to a high in 1980 of $850 per ounce for a gain of 2,329%. One year of income in 1970 would have bought 282 ounces of gold, but one year of income in 1980 would have only bought 25 ounces of gold. Priced in gold, families saw their real incomes decline during the 1970s by 91%.

On July 19th of this year, with everybody in the mainstream media warning Americans about the threat of deflation, NIA predicted that the Federal Reserve was, "quietly getting ready to implement 'The Mother of All Quantitative Easing'". NIA said that, "come this October, Bernanke is likely to shoot up his largest ever dose of quantitative easing." Then on July 28th with gold down to $1,158 per ounce and silver down to $17.63 per ounce, NIA sent out an alert entitled, "Gold and Silver Capitulation is Near" in which we said, "The sentiment on gold and silver has abruptly changed to the negative like nothing we have ever seen before and to us this means the big move to the upside is right around the corner."

NIA called the bottom on gold and silver perfectly. Since July 28th, gold and silver have both risen 34 out of 49 days, with gold rising by 16% and silver rising by 30%. Many people are asking us when precious metals are going to dip. Although gold and silver will make many dips in the years to come, NIA is never going to make an attempt to predict these short-term, temporary dips. It is far too risky and dangerous to sell gold and silver with the hope of buying back on a dip. Those who actively trade gold and silver, usually go long the U.S. dollar while they are waiting for a dip. There will come a time when the U.S. dollar crashes, with gold rising hundreds or even thousands of dollars in a day, and silver potentially doubling or tripling in value in a day. Trust us, you do not want to be on the wrong side of the trade on that day. NIA is focused on the long-term risk of hyperinflation and is not concerned about short-term volatility.

NIA believes that if the Federal Reserve doesn't reverse course immediately, we are on a direct path to all Americans becoming billionaires by the year 2020, if not much sooner. Being a billionaire in dollars won't mean anything. The wealth of Americans later this decade will be calculated based on how much gold and silver they own. We are at the beginning stages of a massive worldwide rush out of the U.S. dollar and into gold and silver.

Gold, at a new all time high of $1,344 per ounce, is still very undervalued. If gold's total bull run from its 2001 low of $256 per ounce equals a percentage gain of 2,329% (just like the 1970s) we will see a gold price of $6,218 per ounce. Silver, at a new 30-year high of $23 per ounce, is still an absolute steal. Just like NIA predicted, the gold/silver ratio has declined in recent months from 70 down to 58, but is still well above the historical average of 16. In our opinion, because silver has been undervalued for so long with artificially high gold/silver ratios, once JP Morgan is forced to cover their naked short position in silver we could see the ratio decline to an artificially low level as low as 8. Therefore, if we see $6,218 per ounce gold, we wouldn't be surprised to also see $777.25 per ounce silver.

Dudley's solution to our current economic crisis is to "find ways to increase the amount of stimulus we currently provide via our balance sheet." This is pure insanity. Bush's $200 billion stimulus sent oil prices to $147 per barrel, Obama's $800 billion stimulus prevented massive price deflation (that would have made cost of living in America a lot more affordable) during a period of rapidly rising unemployment, and now the Federal Reserve believes even greater stimulus will fix our economy. Dudley is calling for the Federal Reserve to purchase $500 billion in bonds, but the Federal Reserve's real quantitative easing will be much greater. Dudley doesn't want to steal the show from Bernanke. He must allow Bernanke to be the one who first suggests the "genius" idea of having quantitative easing of $1 trillion or more.

The truth is, the exact amount of the Federal Reserve's short-term purchases is absolutely meaningless. Keep your eyes on the big picture and remember that if the Federal Reserve's treasury purchases aren't enough to create massive price inflation in the short-term, they will continue to unleash even larger doses of quantitative easing. Our gut feeling is that we are practically at the point where the U.S. economy is about to overdose on any further quantitative easing. A "Meltup" is currently taking place, exactly like NIA predicted in our documentary 'Meltup' that was released on May 13th (it has now been viewed by over 808,000 people).

We may be forced to soon change our hyperinflation forecast from the years 2014-2015 to as soon as the year 2012. NIA has long been predicting ever since its first documentary 'Hyperinflation Nation' that besides gold and silver, we would see inflation most in agricultural commodities. During the month of September alone we saw huge gains in agricultural commodities like soybeans +9.5%, rice +10%, corn +12%, orange juice +13%, cotton +17.5%, and sugar +19.3%.

All countries are now in a war with each other to have the weakest currency, with the false belief that having a strong currency destroys their export markets. When history looks back to the time period we are currently in, our world leaders (especially our elected representatives in Washington) will be considered the most incompetent and corrupt in world history. NIA's new documentary being released later this month will expose the U.S. societal collapse from a perspective that has never been addressed before by anybody in the media. NIA's co-founders are currently on their way to Kingston, NY, to interview Gerald Celente, the most accurate trends forecaster of all time. His interview in 'Meltup' was widely considered to be the most insightful and eye-opening economic interview to ever be a part of any documentary and his interview in our new documentary promises to be even better.