FEWER THAN HALF OF WORKING AGE AMERICANS HAVE FULL TIME JOBS

There is nothing that is reported in the main stream media anymore about our economy that isn't manipulated and massaged. Every number and law is being designed to benefit bankers and their friends in government. What we are watching is the last efforts of a dying empire to carry on long enough to insure the maximum transfer of its dwindling resources to the few that pull the strings in the background.

If you still believe that what you hear on NBC (owned by GE which at this point is about as wrapped up with our government as a company can be) or any other media outlet, yes, including the conservative Fox News, you , my friend, are out of your mind. Somehow, someway the powers that be have managed to corrupt damned near everything in traditional media. The internet is the only place left that we can still get the truth and that won't be available much longer what with the FCC being granted regulatory powers over it.

But, in the end it may not matter. If nearly half the work force in America is not fully employed, and based on personal and anecdotal experience I suspect this is fairly accurate, then this can't go on much longer. If most people have dome the things my family have to adjust to this new reality then I can tell you that about the only spending going on right now is the spending that can't be avoided. And in a country with an economy that is built around consumer spending, to the tune of 70% of GDP, this means that slowdown doesn't even come close to describing what's really going on. And as fuel prices rise and the cost of getting to that lower paying job begins to eat into the paycheck along with the cost of heating and cooling the house and the price increases in everything due to the increased transportation costs start to roll through the system, well, we ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to a slowdown in discretionary consumer spending, the kind of debt driven buying of useless crap that has been the earmark and foundation of our economy for the last 30 years.

No more expensive latte machines are even expensive latte's at Starbucks. No more new cars. No more new clothes just to keep up with fashion. Fix it instead of throwing it out. It used to be that a car that lasted 100,000 miles was something of an outlier. Not anymore. With proper maintenance modern cars can last well over 200,000. So now people will take better care of them and make 'em last. New houses are about done with. There's plenty of used ones on the market at cheap prices and the baby boomers, the ones that drove this house building orgy over the last thirty years, are getting old and downsizing, not to mention facing the new reality that most won't be able to retire with a big portfolio but instead will have to scrape by with whatever their old bodies can tolerate to make some money.

You take cars and houses out of the picture and the few remaining middle class blue collar jobs left that paid a decent wage go by the wayside. That's millions of more consumers done spending. Add in the young coming along needing jobs and the oldsters still having to work and the future holds a bleak picture for all of us. Too many workers and too few jobs means low wages for those that can find any work at all. And don't think this just means for the blue collar guys, either. This will trickle over to the white collar world, too. Look at how many college graduates are coming through the doors with no real prospects for good jobs. They'll be competing with the rest of the white collar workers, working cheaper and with fewer benefits, bringing down paychecks at an office near you soon.

So don't believe these smiley face happy-happy, joy-joy reports of economic growth that the media is shoving down our throats. Common sense tells me that they can't be true and there is enough evidence on the net from those that look at the numbers honestly to confirm my opinion.

Buckle up, pray and prepare for our new reality. We've got a lot of tough years ahead of us and the sooner we all quit pretending like it could never happen here the sooner we can get real solutions and make the changes needed to weather the coming storm.



Just a few highlights:

"To summarize: 108.616 million people in America are either unemployed, underemployed or "Not in the labor force". This represents 45.5% of working age Americans.

If you count the "Part time employed for non-economic reasons", you get 126.8 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, working part time or "Not in the labor force". That represents 53% of working age Americans.

So only 47% of working age Americans have full time jobs. While the official unemployment rate is 9.4%. Something's missing somewhere....


...You just have to love this one: at the stroke of a pen, it has become impossible for the Federal Reserve to incur losses. They're all simply written down as "liabilities to the Treasury". Yes, that would be you! And the Fed can keep on buying any and all toxic paper they can lay their hands on. They can accept as collateral "assets" from Wall Street that are not worth the paper they're written on (and there's a lot of that) and stick you with the bill by pressing a key.

It's time to seriously start wondering why the US still holds elections. Given that Congress can be bypassed this way through a sort of accounting that if it isn't yet illegal certainly should be, and which will burden Americans with trillions of dollars in additional debt, we might as well let Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest organize Indecision 2012...

...Yes, I know, solving Fannie and Freddie is a Herculean task. Nobody wants to shake the housing market any more than it already has been. That is, of course, nobody except for potential homebuyers. And yes, dissolving Fannie and Freddie will greatly increase the "official" US debt. It will also mean the end of the major Wall Street banks.

But if the only alternative is to give those banks, who would long be broke and live on only as zombies and even that only because of accounting tricks, the ability to hand out loans and invest in securities (and potentially other derivatives) backed by a 100% US government guarantee (how thick can you lay on moral hazard?), you will be directly responsible for destroying your grandchildren's America."