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IAMAHUSKER
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12 Economic Collapse Scenarios That We Could Potentially See In 2011
What could cause an economic collapse in 2011? Well, unfortunately there are quite a few "nightmare scenarios" that could plunge the entire globe into another massive financial crisis. The United States, Japan and most of the nations in Europe are absolutely drowning in debt. The Federal Reserve continues to play reckless games with the U.S. dollar. The price of oil is skyrocketing and the global price of food just hit a new record high. Food riots are already breaking out all over the world. Meanwhile, the rampant fraud and corruption going on in world financial markets is starting to be exposed and the whole house of cards could come crashing down at any time. Most Americans have no idea that a horrific economic collapse could happen at literally any time. There is no way that all of this debt and all of this financial corruption is sustainable. At some point we are going to reach a moment of "total system failure".
So will it be soon? Let's hope not. Let's certainly hope that it does not happen in 2011. Many of us need more time to prepare. Most of our families and friends need more time to prepare. Once this thing implodes there isn't going to be an opportunity to have a "do over". We simply will not be able to put the toothpaste back into the tube again.
So we had all better be getting prepared for hard times. The following are 12 economic collapse scenarios that we could potentially see in 2011....
#1 U.S. debt could become a massive crisis at any moment. China is saying all of the right things at the moment, but many analysts are openly worried about what could happen if China suddenly decides to start dumping all of the U.S. debt that they have accumulated. Right now about the only thing keeping U.S. government finances going is the ability to borrow gigantic amounts of money at extremely low interest rates. If anything upsets that paradigm, it could potentially have enormous consequences for the entire world financial system.
#2 Speaking of threats to the global financial system, it turns out that "quantitative easing 2" has had the exact opposite effect that Ben Bernanke planned for it to have. Bernanke insisted that the main goal of QE2 was to lower interest rates, but instead all it has done is cause interest rates to go up substantially. If Bernanke this incompetent or is he trying to mess everything up on purpose?
#3 The debt bubble that the entire global economy is based on could burst at any time and throw the whole planet into chaos. According to a new report from the World Economic Forum, the total amount of credit in the world increased from $57 trillion in 2000 to $109 trillion in 2009. The WEF says that now the world is going to need another $100 trillion in credit to support projected "economic growth" over the next decade. So is this how the new "global economy" works? We just keep doubling the total amount of debt every decade?
#4 As the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve continue to pump massive amounts of new dollars into the system, the floor could fall out from underneath the U.S. dollar at any time. The truth is that we are already starting to see inflation really accelerate and everyone pretty much acknowledges that official U.S. governments figures for inflation are an absolute joke. According to one new study, the cost of college tuition has risen 286% over the last 20 years, and the cost of "hospital, nursing-home and adult-day-care services" rose 269% during those same two decades. All of this happened during a period of supposedly "low" inflation. So what are price increases going to look like when we actually have "high" inflation?
#5 One of the primary drivers of global inflation during 2011 could be the price of oil. A large number of economists are now projecting that the price of oil could surge well past $100 dollars a barrel in 2011. If that happens, it is going to put significant pressure on the price of almost everything else in the entire global economy. In fact, as I have explained previously, the higher the price of oil goes, the faster the U.S. economy will decline.
#6 Food inflation is already so bad in some areas of the globe that it is setting off massive food riots in nations such as Tunisia and Algeria. In fact, there have been reports of people setting themselves on fire all over the Middle East as a way to draw attention to how desperate they are. So what is going to happen if global food prices go up another 10 or 20 percent and food riots spread literally all over the globe during 2011?
#7 There are persistent rumors that simply will not go away of massive physical gold and silver shortages. Demand for precious metals has never been higher. So what is going to happen when many investors begin to absolutely insist on physical delivery of their precious metals? What is going to happen when the fact that far, far, far more "paper gold" and "paper silver" has been sold than has ever actually physically existed in the history of the planet starts to come out? What would that do to the price of gold and silver?
#8 The U.S. housing industry could plunge the U.S. economy into another recession at any time. The real estate market is absolutely flooded with homes and virtually nobody is buying. This massive oversupply of homes means that the construction of new homes has fallen off a cliff. In 2010, only 703,000 single family, multi-family and manufactured homes were completed. This was a new record low, and it was down 17% from the previous all-time record which had just been set in 2009.
#9 A combination of extreme weather and disease could make this an absolutely brutal year for U.S. farmers. This winter we have already seen thousands of new cold weather and snowfall records set across the United States. Now there is some very disturbing news emerging out of Florida of an "incurable bacteria" that is ravaging citrus crops all over Florida. Is there a reason why so many bad things are happening all of a sudden?
#10 The municipal bond crisis could go "supernova" at any time. Already, investors are bailing out of bonds at a frightening pace. State and local government debt is now sitting at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP. According to Meredith Whitney, the municipal bond crisis that we are facing is a gigantic threat to our financial system....
http://www.sierratimes.com/tedlang.htm
by John Coleman
You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist's attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That's the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.
With a preacher's zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.
Here is my rebuttal.
There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind's activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.
Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call "Interglacial periods". For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature's global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.
Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980's and 1990's as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where's the global warming?
The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind's warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren't so serious, it would be laughable.
Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here's the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don't have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that's it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.
The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle's paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.
All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.
Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.
Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can't. That's all there is to it; it can't.
The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other's papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960's. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today's cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.
Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.
So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.
So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.
To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure. Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that's enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming. It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard. After all the media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it's pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.
So who is going to go against all of that power? Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.
I suspect you haven't heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.
In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won't give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn't ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it's a long way from the Court room.
I am very serious about this issue. I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.
The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist's prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world - it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.
So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy. We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.
So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.
I love this civilization. I want to do my part to protect it.
If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.
My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.
Story Created: Jun 12, 2008 at 12:53 PM PDT
Story Updated: Jun 12, 2008 at 12:54 PM PDT
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By Colin McNickle
Sunday, October 20, 2002
"Bill," 55, lives in an East Hills suburb. He's the safety manager of a medium-sized company responsible for a number of distribution warehouses, a truck fleet and manufacturing facilities in North America.
And though he thinks "George Quincy Bush" is "a rich, hypocritical, did-nothing-until-the-age-of-40 playboy," he still supports him "because that is what we do in this country," he told me in an e-mail last week.
So, I'll call "Bill" a bit of an oddity for a liberal, for that and the following reason:
"I may be a liberal but I am willing to bet I own more firearms than most people - about 30 at last count," he tells me. I'm not identifying "Bill" for that very reason - I don't want him to be the target of thieves.
"Bill," who says he has a carry permit, considers himself a "sportsman." But what frosts his britches is the ease with which people can purchase firearms and the types of guns they can buy.
To wit one:
"Several years ago I went into a Kmart to purchase my hunting license," he recounted. "There were two men who were together in front of me looking at a .22(-caliber) Marlin semi-automatic rifle." Noting that they had a number of forms to fill out, "Bill" said he interrupted the salesperson to ask for his license application while the two fellows were completing their paperwork.
"Both of these guys turned on me and began yelling at me to just wait my turn because they were first," he said. "I was terrified. Not because of the immediate physical threat these two bozos were trying to impose on me but by the fact they smelled like two inspectors who worked a double shift at the Iron City brewery."
It was obvious to "Bill" that Bozo 1 and Bozo 2 were "totally in the bag." Yet, there they were, buying a semi-automatic rifle. "As someone who has devoted his working life to safety and spent many leisure hours pursuing the shooting sports, I found this horrifying. Does this make any sense to you?"
No, it does not. Any responsible seller of firearms - just as any responsible bartender - should not be serving drunken bozos.
To wit two:
"(W)hatever the Founding Fathers intended 200 years ago (regarding the right to bear arms) has little significance today," he said. "In 1780, a firearm was as important to most families as a phone, car, or credit card is today."
But not so today, "Bill" says. "We have stores to buy goods (meaning we don't have to hunt for our own food), police and the military to protect us, and other means of security to give us peace of mind in our homes."
The bottom line of my e-mail correspondent: "I believe automatic and semi-automatic firearms have no place in the hands of private citizens and I think it is totally absurd that most anyone in this country can purchase a firearm at will."
"Bill" stressed that he does not favor banning guns. Let me repeat that: "Bill" does not favor banning guns. However, he says there should be "reasonable controls" on their purchase. "Do airplane pilots want flying banned? Do motorcyclists want their bikes locked up? Of course not, but they want to see the people using them to be trained and competent to use them. And they do.
"Why should firearm ownership be any different?" asks "Bill."
Well, "Bill," this is where liberals - even gun-responsible, gun-appreciating and Bush-tolerating liberals - get tripped up. Firearms are different by their very nature. For firearms - unlike airplanes and motorcycles - are protected by the Second Amendment. And you can't legislate or adjudicate away constitutional rights, though politicians and the courts - oh, the courts! - have done their damnedest to do so.
Using "Bill's" logic (i.e., "Is this what you really believe those great men (the Founders) intended so long ago?"), we thus are forced to rationalize each and every right enumerated in the Constitution. I'll break down the First Amendment to make my example:
The Framers wrote that freedom of speech shall not be abridged. Their quill was put to parchment in a time long before any microphone was connected to a set of loudspeakers. Does this mean that electromechanical freedom of speech can be abridged?
The freedom of the press also is not to be subducted under the First Amendment. But given that in the Colonial period the manual, arm-and-screw, single-side/sheet printing press was a far cry from the thousands-of-copies-an-hour behemoth that printed today's Trib, does this mean that highly mechanized (and "electronicized") freedom of the press can be abridged?
The First Amendment also enumerates "the right of the people peaceably to assemble." It was written in an era of town squares and halls and small pubs and private meeting rooms. Does this mean that we don't have the right to peaceably assemble in a large convention center the likes of which were unknown two-and-a-quarter centuries ago or in a 65,000-plus-seat stadium?
No, no and no.
I wholeheartedly concur with "Bill" in being horrified by two apparent drunks so easily buying a semi-auto Marlin at their friendly, neighborhood Kmart. He should be. We all should be. Indeed, common sense took a holiday.
But the Second Amendment still says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It doesn't say "the right of the people to keep and bear the kinds of arms we have as of Dec. 15, 1791 (the ratification date of the Bill of Rights), shall not be infringed."
If "Bill" feels as strongly as his e-mail indicted that anything other than a sportsman's firearm (I'll let "Bill" define the particular gun or guns) "have no place in the hands of private citizens," he should endeavor to amend the Second Amendment. It's the only legal way to codify the restrictions he proposes. But that action, folks, has no traction.
Actually, "Bill's" gun concerns were not the primary reason for his e-mail last week. His correspondence was prompted by "someone" who threw a copy of my Sept. 8 column ("Another lousy history text") onto his desk.
"This individual knows that I am a liberal and hoped to get a rise out of me. She did!"
The column dealt with a textbook being used to teach juniors in the Mt. Lebanon School District that pushes the collectivist theory of the Second Amendment, dismissing - by not even mentioning - the individual right inherent to the amendment. The text, I wrote, "is passing off liberal ideology as a fact," and that represents "illiberal intellectual dishonesty."
"Bill" takes exception to my labeling.
"Quit fostering hate by making these references to certain groups and slotting people," he wrote. Those who read such characterizations - or those who hear them on conservative talk radio programs - "are convinced anyone who has been labeled a liberal is an enemy against American values. If you don't have an enemy to blame things on, create one."
In "Bill's" mind, "a liberal is someone who believes in a liberal interpretation of the Constitution. That's all! Like JFK and FDR!"
Ahem.
Space constraints prevent me from really getting started on this one, "Bill," but let me say this: Liberalism - which today is no better than Marxist theologism - is a dire threat to American values and the Constitution itself.
The Founders, dear "Bill," would be mortified to know that 21st-century Americans would be accused of "fostering hate" for defending their vision.
Colin McNickle is the Trib's editorial page editor. Ring him at (412) 320-7836. E-mail him at: cmcnickle@tribweb.com.
SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the best gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net
I'm not quite sure why this is considered a "good article". He just keeps repeating "Its not happening.....Its not happening" over and over again with nothing to back it up. You can get that same kind of insight right here on the Gunbroker General Discussion Forum. [:p]
BTW: It takes a special kind of retarded to claim that the Earth has been cooling since 1998
If Coleman had bothered to actually read the reports he would have seen that 1998 was the hottest year on record for the UNITED STATES...not the world
Here's the global data. IIRC, 2005 was listed as the hottest on record, with 2007 coming in as the second hottest.
quote:Originally posted by IAMAHUSKER
I suspect you haven't heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand.
31,000 "scientists". HA! Anyone with a Bachelor's Degree could sign it as a "scientist"
That would be the same article that took me about 2 hours to thrash. I can only imagine what would happen if a group of PhD's had a couple days with it.....
It should have been titled "31,000 people who wouldn't know research if it bit them in the *" [:)]