U.S. Economic News

Power Brokers Meet at Private Renaissance Weekend ‘Ideas Festival’

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

Upon returning to South Carolina after attending the 2012 Bilderberg Protest held in Chantilly, Virginia, I began using the “what were you doing in Virginia” question to my advantage. For as long as the novelty of my trip lasted (which wasn’t long), I attempted to use the generic curiosity of others as an educational program; a perfect opportunity to spread awareness of the Bilderberg Group and its relevance to current world affairs.

What surprised me, however, was that several of the more politically active individuals I spoke to actually began telling me about yet another annual meeting of power brokers that takes place in my own state, one which I had never heard of. This was particularly surprising considering the proximity of the meetings and the fact that they have been taking place for well over thirty years.

What they were talking about was the annual Renaissance Weekend.

The Renaissance Weekend began in 1981 and was founded by Philip and Linda LeSourd Lader. It is a private, invitation-only gathering of a relatively large number of high- to low-level players in U.S. politics. The event takes place over an entire weekend and is usually held in eloquent resorts in Charleston, South Carolina.

In recent years, the conference has developed branches in other locations such as Aspen, Co, Santa Monica, CA, Monterey, CA, Napa, CA, and Jackson Hole, WY.

The official website for the Renaissance Weekend describes the event as follows:

Renaissance Weekends® — ‘the grand-daddy of ideas festivals” — build bridges among innovative leaders of all ages, with exceptionally diverse perspectives. Unusually candid, the programs are always provocative, fueled by a unique interaction of thought-leaders, trend-setters and authorities.

The attendees are then described in this manner:

CEOs, venture capitalists & entrepreneurs, Nobel laureates & Pulitzer Prize-winners, artists, educators & scientists, astronauts & Olympians, judges, diplomats, social entrepreneurs & non-profit leaders, change-makers of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street & Main Street, professors & priests, Republicans, Democrats & Independents.

To be clear, Renaissance Weekends are not Bilderberg. This much can be seen by thefact that the overwhelming majority of the participants are Americans, and also that the organizers are quite open about the conference and who attends it. One can even visit the Illustrative List of Past Participants on the official website to get a sense of who is attending the event, along with pictures and a brief qualification listing for each person.

Indeed, the sheer amount of people attending the conference precludes the cloud of secrecy that surrounds confabs like Bilderberg. Not only that, but the levels of “true power brokers” taking part in Renaissance Weekends is much lower than that of other “private” meetings.

Although the meetings are both closed to the public, and access is granted by invitation only, many low-level politicians, scientists, CEOs, bankers, and academics, mostly of the more privileged class of the general population are allowed in. Thus, it is apparent that one need not be part of any conspiracy to be invited to the Renaissance Weekend.

However, the conference is not merely a gathering of proficient high school students either. A quick look at the Participants List reveals that much.

Indeed, considering the individuals who were instrumental in founding the Renaissance Weekend, we should not be eager to dismiss the event as nothing more than entertainment.

Philip Lader and his wife Linda LeSourd Lader both have some interesting insideconnections of their own.

Philip Lader, for instance, has been the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Chairman of the WPP Group, Senior Advisor to Morgan Stanley, and a Partner in the Nelson Mullins Law Firm. Most notably, he is Vice Chairman of the RAND Corporation and serves on the boards of Marathon Oil, RusAl, Lloyds of London, and AES Corporations. Lader is also on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council. He is a member of the Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East, Council of American Ambassadors, the Pilgrims Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Lader was also the former President of the Sea Pines Company and the Executive Vice President of Sir James Goldsmith’s US holdings.

Philip Lader’s wife, Linda LeSourd Lader, is a trustee of the Tony Blair Foundation and Communities in Schools. She has also served on the board of Habitat for Humanity International, International Justice Mission, and Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life. She also assisted with “the White House liaison to American communities of faith” and served as an advisor to the President on issues of religion in American culture. Lader was educated at Yale Divinity School where she became a Fellow at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

It should be noted, however, that a large amount of the attendees to the Renaissance Weekend do not have biographies anything close to that of the Laders or the Clintons who also attend these functions. Indeed, many participants have no real official qualifications at all and many of them bring their entire family along as a “children’s program,” Camp Renaissance, is run simultaneous to the adult programs. Teenagers are also welcome.

College students can also be invited and are encouraged to blend in to the full program schedule with the other more select guests.

With this in mind, and as I have mentioned earlier, Renaissance Weekend is obviously no Bilderberg. Yet it is no mere educational conference either. What Renaissance does appear to be is a mix between the higher level worker bees of the true power brokers in society with mid- and low-level agents of the system.

More importantly, Renaissance may serve as a recruiting ground for future agents of the system, whether on a long-term or temporary basis. By allowing seasoned globalist operatives to mingle with state or local level ladder climbers, as well as students and academics with high aspirations, those individuals who express desire to manifest their potential within globalist systems are able to be identified for future grooming.

Thus, Rennaissance can be considered a possible farm team of the general public for the globalist elite which functions in addition to the more traditional methods already in place.

Regardless of the direct influence that discussions at Renaissance have on world affairs, the conference stands as yet another “private” event made up of elites, government officials, financiers, corporate operatives, and academics that meet largely in secret to discuss public policy and other relevant issues outside of the eye of those they have been “elected” to serve.

But, while members of the public are often invited (after having been vetted), we cannot be so naïve to think that the real discussions of Renaissance take place in the conference halls or in front of large audiences of eager and wide-eyed serfs.

Read other articles by Brandon Turbeville here.

Why doesn’t the stock market reflect the imminent Global Depression?

June 20, 2012 – ECONOMY – We seem to be heading towards an economic downturn equivalent to the Great Depression of the 1930s. This isn’t a secret. The synthesis below is derived from: Lawrence Summers, Nouriel Roubini, Simon Johnson, Niall Ferguson, and Paul Krugman to name just a few. This crisis is not happening quickly. It’s more of a slow-motion train wreck—Greece’s crisis started in 2009. But that leaves a puzzle—why is the American stock market not reacting to obvious warning signs? Greece and Spain already have unemployment rates exceeding 20 percent. If that isn’t a depression, what is? Greece is in very deep trouble. Spain (the Euro’s fourth largest economy) just needed a $125 billion bank bailout. The weaker economies (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) face severe credit crunches as local banks lose deposits (withdrawn because of credit concerns and fear of forced devaluations following a Euro exit). Serious discussion is already taking place about the demise of the Euro, or even worse the break-up of the European common market—in which case unemployment rates across Europe will exceed 20 percent. National incomes will decline sharply, resulting in large-scale corporate insolvencies, with the crisis spilling over into the U.S. and Asia. The U.S. faces a recession next year if the Budget Control Act takes effect, which is likely if Obama wins and partisan gridlock continues. House Speaker Boehner already announced that if Obama’s re-elected, the GOP will treat us to another debt ceiling confrontation. If Romney wins, the Democrats (having learnt their lesson from the Republicans) would be as disruptive as possible. If the U.S. faces a major economic crisis triggered by the Euro’s collapse, bipartisan consensus on how to resolve it is unlikely. China’s growth model may be reaching its limit. If the rest of the world’s problem is too much ideology, China’s is arguably the absence of any ideology except kleptocracy. China lacks a functioning legal system. Its officials are disciplined by shadowy communist party entities, rather than accountable to a transparent legal system. Nominally ruling in the name of the proletarian vanguard, China is governed by princelings and kleptocrats, with friction escalating among the kleptocrats. Internationally, another regional war appears increasingly likely in the Middle East. The U.S. and/or Israel might have a military confrontation with Iran, over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Syrian situation has the potential to become a regional conflict (Syria, Iran and Russia fighting Syrian dissidents supported by some coalition of Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Turkey and other countries). A Middle Eastern war would lead to significant oil price increases, and trigger a global recession (at a minimum). Compared to the financial crisis of 2008, governments everywhere are far more constrained by weaker balance sheets, loss of public trust and crisis fatigue.

The Economic Abuse Of Veterans In America

Brandon Smith, Contributor
Activist Post

Volunteering to join the military has always been a process rife with internal and external conflictions. A vital aspect of one’s ultimate decision to do so often depends greatly upon the era in which one becomes eligible. U.S. citizens leaped at the chance to defend their country at the onset of World War II because the enemies were indeed a legitimate and obvious threat to the freedom and sovereignty of all nations.

During Vietnam, the waters were muddied (at least in the view of millions of citizens), and many Americans did not see the fight as their own. The line between our system, and the enemies we were supposed to despise, had become progressively more foggy and disjointed. For any wise and honorable man to go out of his way to risk his life, the fight must be clearly just, otherwise, he may feel that his death will serve no purpose.

No matter what era of war an American soldier happens to take part in, his desire is usually simple and honest; most seek to defend the underlying principles of freedom which have guided the soul of this country for generations. They seek a righteous cause, and transparent leadership.

Unfortunately, for decades, sincere leadership by our government, from Washington D.C. down to the good-old-boy networks of county politics, has all but been erased. Not even a trace of truth permeates the bedrock of our legal or bureaucratic structure anymore. The system has become so corrupt, so leprous and putrid, that it now actually influences originally honorable men and women to do great evil just to survive and to thrive. Our administrative structure encourages and even breeds thieves, murderers, and tyrants. It is a self-perpetuating monster machine.

U.S. soldiers are in a unique position in the middle of this plague of political power gaming. They are usually the first to bear witness to the blunders (or crimes) of government. They get to experience up close on the ground where decisions go wrong and how. They are among the first to witness the changes of mood within our political dynamic, and the first to know when a government has gone rogue. When these soldiers leave the service as veterans, many have seen the ugliest of the ugly faces of the officialdom running the show. They become a liability to the carefully crafted image of the U.S. government and the military industrial complex because they know the ultimate truth.

The mistreatment of veterans is often examined with shock and dismay, primarily because the general public cannot fathom why federal, state, and local governments would work against men and women who once served their interests. However, when one understands that the establishment system views veterans as a political and social threat, a cultural base that is respected by average citizens and carries weight when exposing corruption, the abusive actions of the oligarchy make perfect sense.

I could delve into the disparaging world of Veterans Hospitals and the horror stories surrounding the dime-store-style socialized medical care that men and women receive there (I could also point out that this is a perfect active example of what medical treatment would be like under Obamacare). I could write for hours about soldiers exposed to chemical and biological warfare from Vietnam to the Gulf War; soldiers who went on to suffer recurring health problems, and who were quickly swept under the rug by Washington. I could even outline the numerous instances in which the DHS, the Bush Administration, and the Obama Administration, have all attempted to categorize veterans as “possible terrorists” who present a danger to national security:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/16/napolitano-stands-rightwing-extremism/

While it is absolutely imperative that veterans and current serving military alike research every aspect of these issues, I would like for a moment to focus on a far less discussed crisis that looms over former military; financial subversion.

Today, most people are suffering an economic loss of one kind or another, and the knee-jerk response by those in financial dire straights might be to question why they should care at all about veterans being squeezed by the system. I would point out that while the credit crisis is certain to strike the vast majority of average Americans, it has crashed like a ten-ton sack of bricks upon the heads of veterans in particular.

While the U.S. Interagency Council On Homelessness did launch a program called “Opening Doors” in an effort to reduce veteran homelessness, claiming a 12% reduction in 2011, the official number of homeless former serving still stands at 67,000. This, unfortunately, is a misleading stat, and only counts veterans who have are considered “consistently without shelter”. In reality, it is estimated that 200,000 or more veterans are homeless on any given night:

http://www.military.com/benefits/veteran-benefits/homeless-veterans-programs.html

That is large population of people under consistent poverty (23% of overall homeless by some measures), and this is not even counting those veterans that just scrape by. Approximately 40% of these homeless veterans suffer from war related psychological disorders, including Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and are not responsible for the difficulties they face in the job market.

The unemployment rate for veterans continues to be epidemic, with official numbers between 8% and 9% (and we all know how the Labor Department undercuts real unemployment statistics). For younger veterans, especially those involved in Gulf War II, unemployment has skyrocketed to 30%:

http://www.businessweek.com/finance/occupy-wall-street/archives/2011/11/the_vets_job_crisis_is_worse_than_you_think.html

One would think that a military background with years of training and command experience in the midst of the most chaotic environments the world has to offer would translate well in the business and working world, but the numbers say otherwise.

Government programs to aid veterans are tossed to the public every year like trick-or-treat candy, but in most cases, they are only a half-hearted attempt to pay lip service to the problem, falsely reassure Americans, and place a band-aid on the gaping wound. This has become painfully apparent after the 2008 derivatives bubble implosion, which has now triggered the bankruptcy foreclosures of over ONE THIRD of all veteran households:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/30/banks-targeting-military-families-for-illegal-foreclosures/

A homeowner’s mortgage assistance program under the U.S. government does exist, but only covers active duty military. Veterans are forgotten.

The most active banks foreclosing on veterans include JP Morgan, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, and PNC. All of these institutions have been cited for using illegal and hidden fees to increase mortgage liability. This tactic has been specifically and violently applied to veterans in particular, and over 30,000 cases of possible banking fraud against veterans were exposed in 2011 alone:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-10/politics/congress.military.mortgages_1_military-orders-active-duty-service-member-returns?_s=PM:POLITICS

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/05/veterans-bank-fees_n_996422.html

Why would banks place such priority on aiming their crosshairs at veterans? There are a multitude of reasons. Most veterans have made a career out of following a chain of command and paying heed to authority figures. Often, this mindset is carried over into the civilian world, where new authority figures like lawyers, judges, bailiffs, even bank representatives, are given far too much credence and are approached with a subservient attitude. Many veterans also spend so much time within the unique legal structure of the military system that they lose familiarity with civil law, and become frustrated with its operations and complexities. Some find it impossible to adapt. To put it bluntly, corporate banks see veterans as easy targets.

To make matters much worse, local bureaucracies have been more than happy to aid major banks in their criminal enterprises, and veterans have been principle victims. Instead of providing relief and aid to those in financial distress as was originally intended when the bankruptcy court apparatus was created, it has now become a network of parasites honing in on the fiscally weak and using their despair and confusion to rob them of every last possession.

I have WITNESSED this first hand while examining the case of Warren Bodecker, a Montana local and WWII hero who helped to liberate over 2000 prisoners near execution from the Los Banos prison camp in the Philippines.

Bodecker’s 89 years of life have been filled with amazing accomplishments and a certain level of success. It is saddening that in his old age, during days in which he should be allowed some measure of peace, he has come under attack by so many despicable circumstances and people.

Warren’s wife, after battling cancer for a decade, had finally passed. Her body was put to rest on the family farm, but her medical bills were not. With debt and interest payments mounting, and Warren living essentially alone, the stress and fear of insolvency ruled his waking moments. He then made a terrible error; he trusted his fate and his home to the bankruptcy system. Warren’s story in his own words can be found in the video interview below, conducted by the founder of Oath Keepers and Constitutional Lawyer Stewart Rhodes:

I analyze and write about legal corruption on a regular basis. I have uncovered and outlined banking criminality for years. But, to watch this tyranny wrought upon an individual right in front of me, a man I know to be good hearted, a person who absolutely does not deserve it, is difficult to endure.

What I found most disturbing in this case was the number of deviants who came out of the woodwork to claim their pound of flesh. The Trustee, Christy Brandon, has gone out of her way to intimidate Warren, which puzzled me until I learned that she had also appointed HERSELF lawyer for the estate. If proceedings became “adversarial”, under the law, she would be conveniently awarded a percentage of the bankruptcy loot. Warren’s former son-in-law (whose motivations remain mysterious and suspicious) wrote secret letters to the courts accusing him of deliberately hiding gold and silver assets. Warren’s own lawyer advised him little, and in some cases very poorly, pushing him to wave his homestead exemption and feeding Warren to the wolves as it were while he quietly collected his salary.

The vet was surrounded by frenzied piranha. With little understanding of bankruptcy law or what was expected of him, he didn’t have a chance. The system, his lawyer, and the Trustee all asserted the same lie; that if he just quietly rolled over, all would be well. He has now lost everything, including his home. He will be forced to exhume his wife’s body from the land he also planned to rest on, with no conceivable future beyond homelessness and regret.

The system not only failed Warren, it hunted him down and mauled him. At every level, the legal structure sought to harm him, not protect him, or to conduct fair justice. It became clear to me after speaking with Warren, even more so than before, that there is no recourse through the legal realm. It is utterly broken, and beyond all possible repair. If a veteran and WWII combat hero can be treated so egregiously, what possible chance do the rest of us have?

Warren is just one example of a detrimental and sometimes organized crippling of veterans and their economic safety across America. Sometimes it is done out of mere greed, sometimes it is done out of idiocy, sometimes it is done with downright malicious intent, and sometimes it’s a combination of all three. In light of this, and as Warren Bodecker’s situation proves, there are no solutions within the bounds of the establishment anymore. The problem, then, goes to those of us who are aware, and to those who also share a military background. It is up to the Liberty Movement to rally around veterans, and for veterans to rally around each other. The enemies they face today are much more insidious than any they ever faced on the battlefields of the past. There will be no relief or comfort unless we support each other.

If you would like to make a donation to the Warren Bodecker Fund, please visit the link below and scroll to the paypal button at the bottom of the article:

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2012/06/15/wwii-veteran-forced-out-of-home-and-forced-to-exhume-wifes-body-needs-your-help/

If you would like to question Christy Brandon, Trustee for this case, on her side of the story, or if you wish to ask her why she is handling the situation in such a manner, you can use the contact information she provided on her publicly released court documentation (please remain courteous):

Attorney Christy Brandon
Brandon Law Firm, PLLC
P.O. Box 1544
Bigfork, MT 59911
Phone: (406) 837-5445
Fax: (406) 837-5420
Christy@brandonlawfirm.com

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

Asia has more millionaires than North America — that’s a first

North America no longer has the most millionaires.

For the first time, the Asia Pacific region is now home to the largest group of people with more than $1 million to invest.

The U.S. and Canada together still make up the richest territory, even though overall wealth fell 2.3% to $11.4 trillion last year amid market volatility, according to a report from Capgemini consultancy and RBC Wealth Management.

But the area lost 1.1% of its millionaires in 2011, as its 3.35-million affluent households were outnumbered by their 3.37-million peers in China, Japan and other Asian nations.

The ranks of millionaires in the Far East swelled by 1.6%, though their wealth slid 1.1% to $10.7 trillion. Surprisingly, given its severe debt crisis, Europe saw its own count increase by 1.1% to 3.2 million, though wealth stumbled a bit to $10.1 trillion. The Middle East had 450,000 high net-worth households, up 2.7%, a group that together boosted its wealth 0.7% to $1.7 trillion.

Worldwide, the population of millionaires climbed 0.8% to hit a record 11 million. In 2010, the demographic expanded 8.3%.

Their overall personal worth, however, slumped 1.7% to $42 trillion amid general economic lethargy, instability in Europe, the tsunami in Japan, the “Arab Spring” and the U.S. debt downgrade. It was the first global decline since the 2008 downturn, when global wealth slid 19.5%.

Among individual countries, the U.S. remains top-ranked, followed by Japan and Germany, together claiming 53.3% of all millionaires.

The number of well-off Indians slumped 18% to 125,500, while their counterparts in Hong Kong dipped 17.4%. Despite the beginnings of a slowdown in China, the nation’s cadre of millionaires grew 5.2% to 562,400 people. Brazil’s number increased 6.2%.

 

19 Reasons to Start Preparing for a Global Economic Collapse

Michael Snyder, Contributor
Activist Post

Yes, it is officially time to start freaking out about the global economy. The European financial system is falling apart and it is going to go down hard. If Europe was going to be saved it would have happened by now. The big money insiders have already pulled their funds from vulnerable positions and they are ready to ride out the coming chaos.

Over the next few months the slow motion train wreck currently unfolding in Europe will continue to play out and things will likely really start really heating up in the fall once summer vacations are over.

Most Americans greatly underestimate how much Europe can affect the global economy. Europe actually has a larger population than the United States does. Europe also has a significantly larger economy and a much larger banking system. The world is more interconnected today than ever before, and a collapse of the financial system in Europe will cause a massive global recession. Once the global economy slides into another major recession, it is going to take years to recover. The pain is going to be immense. Yes, that is going to include the United States. Sadly, we never recovered from the last recession, and it is frightening to think about how much further this next recession is going to knock us down.

The big problem is that there is simply way, way, way too much debt in the United States and Europe. It has been a lot of fun spending all of this borrowed money, but now we get to pay the price.

The following are 19 reasons why it is time to start freaking out about the global economy….

#1 The yield on 10 year Italian bonds has now risen to more than 6 percent.

#2 The yield on 10 year Spanish bonds has now risen to more than 7 percent. This is considered to be an unsustainable level.

#3 Citigroup Chief Economist Willem Buiter says that both Italy and Spain are going to need major bailouts.

#4 The Spanish banking crisis continues to get worse. The following is from aCNN article that was posted on Monday….

But the depth of the nation’s crisis has raised doubts about whether €100 billion will be enough to recapitalize the banks. For example, the Bank of Spain, the nation’s central bank, released data Monday showing that “doubtful” loans — those that are more than 3 months overdue — rose to €152.7 billion in April, equal to 8.7% of all the loans held by the nation’s banks.

#5 Unemployment in Spain is sitting at a record high of over 24 percent with no hope in sight.

#6 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole has hit a brand new all-time record high.

#7 The socialists won an outright majority in the recent parliamentary elections in France. That means that France and Germany are now headed in completely different directions. The close cooperation that we have seen between France and Germany in recent years is now over.

#8 New French President Francois Hollande has promised to implement a top tax rate of 75 percent on those making over 1 million euros a year.

#9 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that Germany will not budge at all on the terms of the Greek bailout.

#10 Analysts at Citigroup Global Markets are projecting that the odds of Greece leaving the euro over the next 12 to 18 months are still between 50 and 75 percent.

#11 Money is being transferred from banks in southern Europe to banks in northern Europe at an astounding pace….

Financial advisers and private bankers whose clients have accounts too large to be covered by a Europe-wide guarantee on deposits up to 100,000 euros ($125,000), are reporting a ‘bank run by wire transfer’ that has picked up during May.

Much of this money has headed north to banks in London, Frankfurt and Geneva,financial advisers say.

‘It’s been an ongoing process but it certainly picked up pace a couple of weeks ago We believe there is a continuous 2-3 year bank run by wire transfer,’ said Lorne Baring, managing director at B Capital, a Geneva-based pan European wealth management firm.

#12 As I wrote about recently, about 500 million euros a day has been pulled out of Greek banks so far this month.

#13 The Bank for International Settlements is warning that global lending is contracting at the fastest rate that we have seen since the end of the last financial crisis.

#14 Lloyd’s of London has publicly admitted that it is making preparations for a collapse of the eurozone.

#15 Government debt levels all over the industrialized world have exploded in recent years. The following is from a recent article by Stephen Lendman….

Five years ago, OECD countries sovereign debt/GDP ratios were 70%. Today it’s 106% and rising.

Anything over 100% is considered to be an extremely dangerous level.

#16 The economic problems in Europe are already taking a toll on the U.S. economy. At this point U.S. exports to Europe are way down.

#17 One recent poll found that 75 percent of Americans are either “very or somewhat worried” that the U.S. economy is heading for another recession.

#18 Under Barack Obama, the United States has been indulging in a debt binge unlike anything ever seen in U.S. history. The following is from a recent Forbes article….

After just one year of the Obama spending binge, federal spending had already rocketed to 25.2% of GDP, the highest in American history except for World War II. That compares to 20.8% in 2008, and an average of 19.6% during Bush’s two terms. The average during President Clinton’s two terms was 19.8%, and during the 60-plus years from World War II until 2008 — 19.7%. Obama’s own fiscal 2013 budget released in February projects the average during the entire 4 years of the Obama Administration to come in at 24.4% in just a few months. That budget shows federal spending increasing from $2.983 trillion in 2008 to an all time record $3.796 trillion in 2012, an increase of 27.3%.

Moreover, before Obama there had never been a deficit anywhere near $1 trillion. The highest previously was $458 billion, or less than half a trillion, in 2008. The federal deficit for the last budget adopted by a Republican controlled Congress was $161 billion for fiscal year 2007. But the budget deficits for Obama’s four years were reported in Obama’s own 2013 budget as $1.413 trillion for 2009, $1.293 trillion for 2010, $1.3 trillion for 2011, and $1.327 trillion for 2012, four years in a row of deficits of $1.3 trillion or more, the highest in world history.

#19 Barack Obama almost seems more focused on his golf game than on the problems the global economy is having. He just finished up playing his 100th round of golf since he became president.

If you are looking for some kind of a global financial miracle you can stop watching.

If European leaders had a master plan to save Europe they would have shown it by now.

If Barack Obama had a master plan to fix things he would have implemented it by now.

If the Federal Reserve had a master plan to fix things we would have seen it by now.

The entire house of cards is starting to come down and things are going to get really messy.

A lot of people both in the United States and in Europe are going to lose their jobs and their homes over the next few years. It is likely that the next recession will be even more painful than the last one was.

Now is not the time to panic. If you acknowledge what is coming and prepare accordingly then you will likely be in good shape.

But if you stick your head in the sand and pretend that everything is going to be okay then the next few years will likely be incredibly painful for you.

This article first appeared here at The Economic Collapse.  Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.

Dollar falls on expectations Fed will announce a new round of bond buying on Wednesday