.... Total Chinese foreign direct investment in the U.S. is on pace to reach at least $8 billion this year, according to the report from research firm Rhodium Group......... That would top the previous record of $5.7 billion reached in 2010, said Thilo Hanemann, research director with Rhodium Group, which tracks all acquisitions and investments in manufacturing facilities, warehouses, labs and offices by foreign companies in the United States valued at $1 million or higher........ Hanemann said this year's pending multi-billion dollar acquisitions include Dalian Wanda's $2.6 billion dollar bid for movie theater chain AMC and Chinese aerospace manufacturer Superior Aviation's $1.8 billion bid for Wichita, Kan.-based aircraft maker Hawker Beechcraft.
Economy weak in second quarter, GDP grows at 1.5% rate - USA Today - Tim Mullaney - Newsmax.com - July 27, 2012 - The U.S. economy slowed in the spring, with second-quarter growth barely half the pace it hit late last year, the government reported today....
Gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.5% between April and June, down from 2.0% in the first quarter and 4.1% late last year..... More cautious consumers were the main reason. Consumer spending, which makes up about 70% of the economy, grew by 1.5% compared with 2.4% in the first quarter....... The report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis appears to include signs that other forces, from Europe's financial crisis to the impending "fiscal cliff" of tax-cut expirations and new spending cuts due to take effect Jan. 1, are also slowing the economy...... Coming amid other signs of a weakening economy, the latest GDP report will increase attention on next week's meeting of Federal Reserve policymakers and what further steps the Fed might take to stimulate the economy.......... Many economists believe the Fed will launch another round of bond buying at its September policy meeting. The aim is to drive long-term interest rates lower and encourage more borrowing and spending.
Economy: The U.S. Retail Collapse Accelerates - ETF Daily news - July 25, 2012 - Jeff Nielson: Less than two weeks ago I wrote “Crash Warning.” It outlined the current economic parameters of the global economy and explained that we were careening toward a particular form of economic Armageddon which I believe was first described by John Williams of Shadowstats.com, when he coined the phrase “hyperinflationary depression” nearly a decade ago.... The debt-laden, fraud-saturated paper Ponzi-schemes of Western bankers are now all about to implode in a deflationary (debt-default) collapse – most notably all their fraud-bonds. Simultaneously, the rabidly excessive money-printing of these reckless gamblers is causing (and will cause) the prices for hard assets (i.e. assets which actually have value) to spiral upward, with the most likely final destination being hyperinflation...... Because that previous commentary was describing a global economic paradigm, my analysis was necessarily abbreviated with respect to the apex of all economic ills: the United States. In particular, I spent less than a paragraph discussing the collapse of the retail sector in the world’s largest economy – a consumer economy.... Before we examine this train-wreck directly, let’s take a moment to define the backbone of this consumer economy: the American consumer. The two charts below should be very familiar to regular readers, and describe the American consumer in stark but precise terms: poor and/or unemployed.
We see two things in the chart above on average American wages. First we see how (in real dollars) wages for the average U.S. worker have been falling steadily for more than 40 years. Those wages have now fallen by more than 50%, all the way down to the same levels as during the Great Depression. And we see how the U.S. government’s lies about inflation have almost entirely concealed this relentless collapse in wages. How convenient........ Meanwhile, we see the percentage of Americans who are actually working also plummeting downward, to a 30-year low. The collapse in wages has been accompanied by a collapse in employment levels. Combined, it translates into a collapse in consumer purchasing power of well in excess of 50%.
Break Up Big Banks, Says Mega-Bank Pioneer - ABC News - July 26, 2012 - It’s nothing less than a remarkable about-face. One of the architects of mega banking is now calling for the breakup of the world’s largest banks. Sandy Weill, formerly CEO of Citigroup, told CNBC: “What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be the deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail.” ........ In the late ’90′s Weill was a global banking pioneer, building Citi into a financial supermarket. Now “I am suggesting that they be broken up so that the taxpayer will never be at risk,” said Weill, adding his voice to a growing chorus of regulators, and financial experts........ “Our system has been hijacked and we need to change it,” says Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general in charge of oversight of TARP. Breaking up the banks, says Barofsky, “is widely accepted.” Barofsky, who makes his case in the new book, “Bailout,” claims “the only people who have not accepted this it seems like is the big banks themselves and the politicians they seem to affectively control in Washington.”
Stephen Roach Smokes Crack-Addicted Market "QE3 Is Not Going To Work" - Tyler Durden - July 25, 2012 - Is it any wonder that Stephen Roach is now ex-Morgan Stanley? Today's brilliant truthiness in his interview on Bloomberg TV is an absolute must-watch as the veteran market practitioner notes that the Fed is forced to act next week and while consumers are telling you that they want to pay down debt - which all the monetray stimulus in the world is not going to change - that QE is nothing but crack to a ridiculously addicted market. With 70% of the US economy in a balance sheet recession, the Fed knows this (which he notes is now run by WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath since what he prints must be adhered to by Ben for fear of market disappointment) and is "dangling QE in front of the markets like raw meat - but it has not worked and it will not work!" But critically, he believes, the euphoric response of markets will be tempered since they have become "used to the fact that all of this unconventional monetary easing by the central bank is just not what it is supposed to be."
New-Home Sales Drop 8.4% as Weak Growth May Slow Housing Recovery - MarketWatch - Jeffry Bartash - July 25, 2012 - Sales of new houses fell 8.4% in June after reaching a two-year high in May, suggesting that the slowdown in the U.S. economy might be making buyers more cautious. Sales declined to an annual rate of 350,000 in June and median prices of new homes also fell to the lowest level since January, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.
Economists polled by MarketWatch had forecast sales to rise to a 375,000 rate last month. The pullback in June, however, was largely offset by a bigger increase in transactions in May than originally reported. Sales in May were revised up to an annual rate of 382,000 — the highest level since April 2010 — from 369,000. Sales in April were also revised higher.
100 Million Poor People In America And 39 Other Facts About Poverty That Will Blow Your Mind - The Economic Collapse Blog - Every single day more Americans fall into poverty. This should deeply alarm you no matter what political party you belong to and no matter what your personal economic philosophy is. Right now, approximately 100 million Americans are either "poor" or "near poor". For a lot of people "poverty" can be a nebulous concept, so let's define it. The poverty level as defined by the federal government in 2010 was $11,139 for an individual and $22,314 for a family of four. Could you take care of a family of four on less than $2000 a month? Millions upon millions of families are experiencing a tremendous amount of pain in this economy, and no matter what "solutions" we think are correct, the reality is that we all should have compassion on them. Sadly, things are about to get even worse. The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and when it hits the statistics posted below are going to look even more horrendous.
When it comes to poverty, most Americans immediately want to get into debates about tax rates and wealth redistribution and things like that. But the truth is that they are missing the main point. The way we slice up the pie is not going to solve our problems, because the pie is constantly getting smaller. Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted, the U.S. dollar is slowly losing its status as the reserve currency of the world and we are steadily getting poorer as a nation. Don't be fooled by the government statistics that show a very small amount of "economic growth". Those figures do not account for inflation. After accounting for inflation, our economic growth has actually been negative all the way back into the middle of the last decade. According to numbers compiled by John Williams of shadowstats.com, our "real GDP" has continually been negative since 2005. So that means we are getting poorer as a nation. Meanwhile, we have been piling up astounding amounts of debt. 40 years ago the total amount of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars. Today it is nearly 55 trillion dollars. So we have a massive problem. Our economic pie is shrinking and millions of Americans have been falling out of the middle class. Meanwhile, we have been piling up staggering amounts of debt in order to maintain our vastly inflated standard of living. As our economic problems get even worse, those trends are going to accelerate even more.
So don't look down on the poor. You might be joining them a lot sooner than you might think.
The following are 40 facts about poverty in America that will blow your mind.... (Follow the Link to the 39 facts).
The Creature from Jekyll Island - G Edward Griffin -
Harry Reid has promised that there will not be a vote in the Senate for 'Audit the Fed', despite his past support for an audit in 1995. Contact Harry Reid now, and tell him to AUDIT THE FED: 202-224-3542. In addition call your senators and tell them to vote to Audit The Fed!
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