Devvy Kidd -- The Stark Reality of America's Financial Meltdown, Part 2

THE STARK REALITY OF AMERICA'S FINANCIAL MELTDOWN
PART 2 of 2

By: Devvy

October 10, 2005

NewsWithViews.com

"The bell tolls for the US Dollar because it is doomed. Like the Dodo bird, the US Dollar will, within the foreseeable future, disappear into the history books in the chapter on "Extinct Species." --Alf Field, Le Metropole Cafe

Here are a few items you may have missed due to a busy schedule.

August 12, 2005 Bush acknowledges the collapsing US economy The US administration aims to spend $286 billion on the development of the American transport system

"US President George W. Bush released a remarkable statement a short time ago. The remark has not been highlighted in the world media yet, although there is every reason to do so. Bush virtually acknowledged that the USA was experiencing a serious economic crisis. Moreover, the US government was taking immense efforts to avoid a massive outbreak of social uneasiness, the American president believes...the White House is desperately looking for measures to find employment for crowds of unemployed American citizens and hungry migrants, which threaten to enrage the rest of the States."

This is an e-mail exchange between individuals I know who have been trying to sound the warning bell for a long time:

"September 24, 2005: Hedge funds, derivatives, and the average Joe - I'm forwarding two CNN Money stories from last Friday, which are symptomatic of behind-the-scenes panic at hedge fund/derivatives catastrophes which have already happened but which haven't reached the surface yet. Sanio (top German financial regulator) told German media last week, as he headed to the Bear Stearns/Morgan Stanley parley in New York on dangers of hedge fund/ derivative breakdowns, that "another LTCM is inevitable" given failure to institute regulatory control since the LTCM meltdown of 1998.

"Check out today's (Sept. 26) Financial Times, for a similar warning..."Hedge Fund Derivatives Disaster Lurking behind Delta and Northwest. Commenting on the unserious reaction by the financial community to warnings of a hedge fund collapse by German bank regulator Jochem Sanio, the FT warns of a derivative disaster lurking behind Delta and Northwest Airlines bankruptcies."

What is going to happen to the trillions of dollars in pension funds when this meltdown reaches hyper speed? How many Americans who have their life's savings in the stock market or other investments really understand what's happening right now? Tens of millions of Americans and everything they have ever worked for is in dire jeopardy and that is no exaggeration:

All eyes on hedge funds/Scandal at Bayou, weakening returns. September 22, 2005/By Amanda Cantrell, CNN/Money staff writer

".....Meanwhile, several funds have come under the scrutiny of federal regulators this year for allegedly defrauding investors. Two principals of KL Financial, a $200 million, West Palm Beach, Fla., hedge fund, fled the country after the SEC sued them in March for lying about their funds' returns and issuing bogus reports to investors. More recently, Daniel Marino, the chief financial officer of Bayou Management LLC, admitted to years of cooking the books in a suicide note, though he never killed himself, according to media reports.

"Marino and Bayou's founder, Samuel Israel III, are now being investigated for falsifying returns to cover up trading losses, and state officials in Arizona seized $100 million in funds believed to belong to Bayou's investors, according to court documents. Federal prosecutors filed a suit alleging that Bayou's managers raised $300 million from between 1998 and 2005 by lying to investors about the fund's returns and other issues."

September 28, 2005/Overdue Credit Card Bills Hit Record High By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer

"Surging energy prices, low personal savings and the higher cost of borrowing have combined to produce a record level of overdue credit card bills. The American Bankers Association reported Wednesday that the percentage of credit card accounts 30 or more days past due climbed to an all-time high of 4.81 percent in the April-to-June period....The previous high of 4.76 percent came during the first three months of the year, in keeping with a generally steady rise over the past several years.

"The personal savings rate dipped to a record low of negative 0.6 percent in July. The negative percentage means that people did not have enough left over after paying their taxes to cover all of their spending in July. As a result, they dipped into savings to cover the shortfall."

Individuals who can't make even the minimum payment on their credit cards can't spend. They have no disposable income left for anything other than basic survival. People who file for bankruptcy are credit strapped and can't spend because they have no disposable income left for anything other than basic survival. Those of us who know what's here and maturing, aren't spending - especially on cheap junk manufactured by slave labor in communist countries like China.

Too much of our economy is based on "fun times" and entertainment. When it gets down to basic survival vs. fun spending, guess where that consumer dollar will go? It will go for rent and food, not casinos, movie tickets or ski trips this winter. The poor will continue to slip into deep poverty and the middle class will be driven into their first taste of poverty in order to subsidize - via more and more taxation - the poor, unconstitutional wars, foreign aid and more unauthorized spending through borrowing. Right behind the feds are the states picking your pocket and most of it is done through borrowing or more bonds. Debt slapped on top of more debt, yet the voters seemingly don't mind as they continue to reelect the same communists, fascists and socialists to their state legislatures.

If you haven't read 'Borrowing, Spending, Counterfeiting' by Congressman Ron Paul, I highly recommend you do so. This column was written back in August in response to the transportation bill that was signed by Bush - legislation passed solely to create more jobs via government subsidizing (more communism) and a very transparent effort to keep Americans from seeing the real destruction of our key job sectors as a result of these insidious trade treaties. Bankruptcy filings are at record levels in this country. A new federal law goes into effect October 17, 2005 which will make erasing debts more difficult. By the end of September, filings were running 13,000 a day; year-to-date filings of 1.36 million are up 14% from last year. This cannot all be laid at Katrina's door, believe me. Those in the industry know better:

"The headlines this weekend are truly shocking. For the third quarter of 2005 Natural Gas rose 80%, gasoline 44% and crude oil 13%! If you read many of the mainstream news comments about the energy market you will come to the conclusion that two very wild and mischievous twin sisters, Katrina and Rita were responsible for all of this, with a bit of blame also going to insurgents in Iraq who keep blowing up pipelines. So while it is painful to pay such sky-high prices for natural gas and gasoline we can rest assured that as soon as the storm damage to the energy industry infrastructure on the US Gulf Coast is repaired, and things get more stable in Iraq, Americans can go back to gas guzzling with their SUVs at a buck a gallon for gasoline. Unfortunately, that will not be the case. The current energy crisis has been more than 35 years in the making. Recent events have only acted as catalysts to what was already an accident waiting to happen." Adrian Douglas "Running on Empty - The Anatomy of an Energy Crisis"

Oil is black gold. Oil runs the industrialized world. We can all see the impact of the high cost of this liquid gold at the pump is having on our daily lives. The cost of everything is increasing; high fuel prices are curtailing Americans in their spending habits which is bad for the economy. However, it goes much deeper than that. On October 5, 2005, Michael Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon, gave a speech in NYC for the Petrocollapse Collapse conference. There are those who make their living at convincing you peak oil is a bunch of hooey. In Crossing the Rubicon, Ruppert uses an old Saudi saying which goes something like this: "My father rode a camel, I ride in a car, my son rides in a jet and his son will ride a camel." Chilling coming from a country that supplies so much of the world's oil.

I have a copy of Ruppert's entire speech which is only available to members on his site From the Wilderness. As it is copyrighted, I can use just a couple of paragraphs of this powerful presentation: Government, Financial And Political Awareness Of Peak Oil Prior To 2005.

"MAY 2001 - THE NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY DEVELOPMENT GROUP This secret task force, which fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keeps its records and deliberations secret from the public, is for me the place where the deepest darkest secrets of both the September 11th attacks and government's awareness of Peak Oil lie buried. The task force convened just as the first 20 out of 25 wells drilled in the Caspian Basin came up dry holes. In "Crossing the Rubicon" I discuss the meager seven pages of NEPDG records released after lawsuits which confirm the group's obsession, not with oil discovery, conservation (economic stagnation) or energy substitutes, but with where the known oil was, who owned it and apparently who had to be dealt with to get it.

"The public report of the NEPDG told us, just four months before the 9/11 attacks: " America in the year 2001 faces the most serious energy shortage since the oil embargoes of the 1970s. "Estimates indicate that over the next 20 years, US oil consumption will increase by 33 percent, natural gas consumption by well over 50 percent, and demand for electricity will rise by 45 percent.

"US energy consumption is expected to increase by about 32 percent by 2020. Between 2000 and 2020, US natural gas demand is projected by the Energy Information Administration to increase by more than 50 percent. Yet we produce 39 percent less oil today than we did in 1970, leaving us ever more reliant on foreign suppliers. On our present course, America 20 years from now will import nearly two of every three barrels of oil - a condition of increased dependency on foreign powers that do not always have America's interests at heart.

"February 2005 - SAIC Report Of Robert Hirsch. Science Applications International Corporation is one of the most elite military and intelligence technology companies in the world. It controls a significant part of the Internet and is one of the core companies in the field of data mining technology used by the US government to spy on potential enemies - us. In 2004 the US government commissioned SAIC to look at Peak Oil and to recommend various strategies for dealing with it. That report - published this summer - revealed some of the immediacy of the pending collapse. While refusing to take a position as to when actual peak would occur, the report -- PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION: IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT - made the picture pretty clear.

"Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program action leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades."
".If mitigation were to be too little, too late, world supply/demand balance will be achieved through massive demand destruction (shortages), which would translate to significant economic hardship."

"Ladies and gentlemen, there is a plan to deal with Peak Oil. It has been formulated for some time and it is being carried out right in front of our very eyes this minute. It contains none of the aspects you would like to see or hope to initiate but it is irreversible, etched in stone, and nothing is going to deter it. While I have met with Congressman Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and while I applaud his singular and sincere efforts on the subject I hold no optimism that he will have any influence on public policy. He is truly a good man, I believe. But one member of the House of Representatives who chairs no relevant committees and who does not enjoy the total support of either his party's leadership or the White House can do little except educate and warn the public. We cannot look to Mr. Bartlett, however good his intentions, to solve anything for us. We are witnessing government response to Peak Oil now." (End of quote)

On top of all discussed in this two part series, you need to factor in the economic Armageddon which will happen when he first wave of baby boomers retire in less than three years. There is no getting around this one. Congress doesn't have the political stomach to make the hard choices, they are simply going to let the whole mess get dumped right into our laps to deal with, but most won't be prepared. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark, but the massive, deadly storm is already beginning to rain on America.

As Dr. Edwin Vieira pointed out in one of his brilliant columns earlier this year- don't look to Congress to save your assets and everything you have ever worked for - it isn't going to happen. We are very far down the road and I am trying to help people understand just how vulnerable they are to losing everything. If you want to learn more, please contact Harvey Gordin for a complimentary copy of a 32-page report that you need to read. There is no obligation. Get the truth and take the necessary steps to protect you and your family and don't put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow is already here. Get out of debt as quickly as you can and take steps to protect your assets. Long term survival is now top priority.

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Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty, which sold close to 2,000,000 copies. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country, ran for Congress and is a highly sought after public speaker. Your complimentary copy of the 32-page report may be obtained from El Dorado Gold. Devvy is a contributing writer for www.NewsWithViews.com.

Devvy's website: www.devvy.com

E-mail is: devvyk@earthlink.net

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Individuals who can't make even the minimum payment on their credit cards can't spend. They have no disposable income left for anything other than basic survival.