Economic Stories of Relevance in Today's World -- May 13, 2012

Poll shows Americans' pessimism on economy growing - AP through WRAL.com (Raleigh) - By JENNIFER AGIESTA, Associated Press; TOM RAUM, Associated Press - May 10, 2012 - Americans are growing more pessimistic about the economy and handling it remains President Barack Obama's weak spot and biggest challenge in his bid for a second term, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.                   And the gloomier outlook extends across party lines, including a steep decline in the share of Democrats who call the economy "good," down from 48 percent in February to just 31 percent now.                         Almost two-thirds of Americans — 65 percent — disapprove of Obama's handling of gas prices, up from 58 percent in February. Nearly half, 44 percent, "strongly disapprove." And just 30 percent said they approve, down from 39 percent in February.                      These findings come despite a steady decline in gas prices in recent weeks after a surge earlier in the year. The national average for a gallon of gasoline stood at $3.75, down from a 2012 peak of $3.94 on April 1.                        U.S. presidents have limited ability to affect gas prices, which are determined in international markets. However, the party out of power always blames whoever is president at the time for high gas prices, as Republican Mitt Romney is doing now and as Democrat Obama did in 2008 when George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office.               Of all the issues covered by the poll, Obama's ratings on gas prices were his worst.                      The public's views tilt negative on his handling of the overall economy, 52 percent disapprove while 46 percent approve. In February, Americans were about evenly divided on his handling of the issue.               The economy is the No. 1 issue in the presidential race, thanks to the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression and one of the shallowest-ever recoveries.                     While the recession officially ended in summer 2009, unemployment remains stubbornly high, at 8.1 percent in April. Some 12.5 million Americans are out of work.                   The increasing skepticism toward the recovery tracks a weakening overall economy as measured by the gross domestic product, and matches economic growth downgrades by many economic forecasters.                      Against this background, the weak economy looms as a huge liability for Obama, and any drop in public confidence in his ability to deal with it can threaten his re-election prospects. Although Obama held broad advantages over Romney on handling social issues and protecting the country, when it came to the economy about the same percentage said they trust Romney to handle it as trust Obama.




Ridiculous Claim: Fed Policy Not To Blame For Rising Food and Gas Prices; The Dollar Hasn’t Gone Down - SHTFplan.com - Mac Slavo - May 7th, 2012 - Government mouthpiece and well known Keynesian economist Paul Krugman makes the case for monetary easing and Fed intervention by claiming that the rising cost of food and gas has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve or the free money they’ve dished out to banks, both foreign and domestic, to the tunes of not billions, but tens of trillions of dollars.                  The latest economic theory from the Nobel Prize winning economist suggests that the Fed and government intervention couldn’t possibly have anything to do with US dollar depreciation – not for the last hundred years, and certainly not today.

The Hound: Paul Krugman should be fired for Economic malpractice. The dude just does not understand economics. Paper does only represents value. The actual (real) value lies in the actual commodities. Sure paper versus paper is maintaining its price parity, but the paper versus the commodities (Fuel, Sugar, Beef, Corn, Precious Metals, etc.) is falling drastically. What we are seeing is inflation is Necessities and deflation in discretionary items. The problem relates to dollars flushed into banks using that money to invest through speculation in commodity markets. The amount of commodities is finite, but the amount of fiat money chasing them is potentially infinite. Until we put a control mechanism on currencies, since the people running monetary policy throughout the world apparently lack self-restraint, we are going to see rampant inflation worsening until ultimate collapse, because this game cannot go on forever. If market mechanisms are not reliable, they eventually collapse.

Economic Alert: If You’re Not Worried Yet…You Should Be - Alt-Market.com - Brandon Smith -  May 8, 2012 - ...At the end of January, I covered the incredible nosedive of the Baltic Dry Index (a measure of global shipping rates that signals a fall in global demand) to historic lows.  I pointed out the tendency of stocks and the general economy to crash around 8 months (sometimes a little longer) after the BDI makes such a dramatic downturn.  Mainstream analysts, of course, attributed the fall to an “overproduction of ships”, which is the same exact excuse they used when the BDI collapsed back in 2008 just before the derivatives bubble burst.  It would seem that the cable TV talking heads were wrong yet again, as the international market facade quickly evaporates right in line with the BDI’s almost prophetic knack for calling an economic derailment in advance...                                  Former officials like Nicolas Sarkozy may have claimed to be distanced from the socialist ideal, but, as with all globalist puppets, their actions did not match their rhetoric, and they have always supported policies of centralization and big government.  The French and the Greeks have essentially replaced closet collectivists with outspoken collectivists, and will see NO relief from the crisis in the Euro-zone as a result of the political reordering.  In fact, the stage has now been set for a volatile chain of dominos.  Germany, which is the only economy left holding the EU together, has been unyielding on austerity cuts.  A conflict between France and Germany is now inevitable.  Neither will compromise their position, and I can see no other eventual result than a reexamination and perhaps abandonment of the EU charter.                       How does this affect America?  Being that international banks and corporations have forced our countries into interdependency through the engineered chicanery of globalization, any collapse in Europe is going to strike hard around the world, but the worst will hit the U.S. and China.  Which is probably why China is disengaging trade away from the U.S. and the EU and focusing on other developing nations:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/08/us-china-economy-trade-idUSBRE84702N20120508

Spain is next in line, with a 25% official unemployment rate and a massive black market economy forming.  As I have been saying for years now, when governments disrupt the financial survival of the people, they WILL form their own alternatives, including black markets and barter markets.  It is about survival.  The Spanish government does not care much for these alternatives, though, and has now banned cash transactions over 2500 euros in a futile attempt to squeeze taxes out of the populace through digitally tracked payment methods:
http://thedailybell.com/3814/Spain-Bans-Cash

Here is the bottom line; U.S. growth is a theater of shadows.  There has been no progress, no recovery, only the misrepresentation of statistics.  Millions of Americans have fallen off unemployment rolls because they have been jobless for too long, which lowers the unemployment rate, but does not change the fact that they are still without work.  Durable goods orders are dropping like an avalanche.  U.S. credit has been lowered yet again by ratings agency Egan-Jones.  With China making bilateral trade deals in numerous countries on the condition that the dollar be dropped as the primary purchasing mechanism, and with the EU turning to economic mulch, the currency’s safety is nonexistent.  Traditional investors who cling to the idea that a falling Euro spells dollar strength will be sorely disappointed when the currency is suddenly being rejected in international currency markets.                                  The Federal Reserve has already stated that any signs of “relapse” into recession (the recession that we never left) will be met with all options on the table, including QE3:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/12/us-usa-fed-idUSBRE83B1KD2012041

The real beginning of today’s collapse is tied to the events of 2008.  The pace of it has been deceptive, but also, in a way, it is a gift.  Over the past four years, I have personally seen the awakening of thousands of people that may have never had the chance if the system had gone into full spectrum breakdown right away.  The question now is, how much longer can the U.S. wobble along on one wheel?  In my view, and from the evidence I see in markets at the moment, not much longer.                           It is hard to set aside any expectations that the next leg down will be easy to digest for the populace.  The reality of our predicament is starting to hit home.  All the tax return checks have been spent.  The credit cards have been maxed.  The new cars have been sold off and traded in for ghetto-mobiles.  The good jobs have been replaced with Taco Bell slavery.  A trip to see The Avengers is now the family vacation.  And, the distractions of reality TV just aren’t buttering our bread anymore.  It’s the little things at first that really signal the financial mood of a society, as well as reveal the more vital and looming issues just over the horizon.                          All indicators suggest that this year will be unlike any other before.  In 2008, we saw the first trigger events for the collapse.  In 2008/2009, we saw the creation of the bailout culture, setting the stage for inflation and dollar disintegration.  In 2010, we saw the first bilateral trade deal cutting out the dollar between China and Russia, which is now the template for trade deals all over the globe.  In 2011, we saw the first downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and the crisis in the EU become epidemic.  In 2012, I see not just another difficulty to add to the mountain, but a culmination of all these detriments to produce something entirely new; a vast and subversive realignment forcing many of us to take a more aggressive stance in the fight for an economically and socially free America...

The 2 Billion Dollar Loss By JP Morgan Is Just A Preview Of The Coming Collapse Of The Derivatives Market - The Economic Collapse Blog - When news broke of a 2 billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan, much of the financial world was absolutely stunned.  But the truth is that this is just the beginning.  This is just a very small preview of what is going to happen when we see the collapse of the worldwide derivatives market.  When most Americans think of Wall Street, they think of a bunch of stuffy bankers trading stocks and bonds.  But over the past couple of decades it has evolved into much more than that.  Today, Wall Street is the biggest casino in the entire world.  When the "too big to fail" banks make good bets, they can make a lot of money.  When they make bad bets, they can lose a lot of money, and that is exactly what just happened to JP Morgan.  Their Chief Investment Office made a series of trades which turned out horribly, and it resulted in a loss of over 2 billion dollars over the past 40 days.  But 2 billion dollars is small potatoes compared to the vast size of the global derivatives market.  It has been estimated that the the notional value of all the derivatives in the world is somewhere between 600 trillion dollars and 1.5 quadrillion dollars.  Nobody really knows the real amount, but when this derivatives bubble finally bursts there is not going to be nearly enough money on the entire planet to fix things.                        Sadly, a lot of mainstream news reports are not even using the word "derivatives" when they discuss what just happened at JP Morgan.  This morning I listened carefully as one reporter described the 2 billion dollar loss as simply a "bad bet".
And perhaps that is easier for the American people to understand.  JP Morgan made a series of really bad bets and during a conference call last night CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that the strategy was "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored".                            The funny thing is that JP Morgan is considered to be much more "risk averse" than most other major Wall Street financial institutions are.                               So if this kind of stuff is happening at JP Morgan, then what in the world is going on at some of these other places?                    That is a really good question.                  For those interested in the technical details of the 2 billion dollar loss, an article posted on CNBC described exactly how this loss happened...                        
According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the "too big to fail" banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely mind blowing.  Just check out the following numbers from an official U.S. government report....

JPMorgan Chase - $70.1 Trillion
Citibank - $52.1 Trillion
Bank of America - $50.1 Trillion
Goldman Sachs - $44.2 Trillion


(T. Boone) Pickens: 'I Am Through With Washington' After Gas Fight - CNBC - Jeff Cox - May 10, 2012 - T. Boone Pickens says his effort to convert the government trucking fleet to natural gas is his last go-round with Washington politicians, whom he insists don't care about the country's energy independence. Pickens has been trying — and failing — to get Congress to pass what is now called the Energy Security Act, aimed particularly at the development of natural gas and breaking the country free of its dependence on Middle East oil.



A teen with a job becomes a rarity in US economy - Life Inc. Today MSN & Reuters - Allison Linn - May 3, 2012 - Only about 25 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds currently are working, a drop of 10 percentage points from just five years ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The percentage of teenagers who have jobs, expressed as the ratio of employment to population, hovered between 40 and 50 percent for much of the 1980s and 1990s. The percentage began dropping about a decade ago, but the declines have been especially steep since the beginning of the Great Recession in late 2007.                            With summer approaching and the job market showing signs of improvement, teens could have a better shot at getting hired than they have had in years. But it could take many more years for teens to resume working at pre-recession levels.
The April employment report, due out Friday, will offer more clues into how things will look in the coming months.                           Part of the issue is that fewer teens either want to work or think they can get a job. The labor force participation rate, which measures both teens who are working and those actively seeking work, also has fallen sharply since 2000.                            The White House pledged on Wednesday to help lower-income youth find summer jobs in a move likely to appeal to younger voters crucial to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.                       The initiative is in partnership with the cities of Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco and is meant to add 110,000 jobs, internships and mentorships to the 180,000 summer work opportunities for 16-24 year olds that Obama has promised to create for 2012.                       Still, most teens are facing a job market in which there are fewer positions to be had. What’s more, many believe the jobs that are available are increasingly going to adults who are desperate enough to take a job that might once have gone to a teenager.



49% of Americans aren't saving for retirement - CNN Money - Blake Ellis May 10, 2012 - America has a serious problem saving for retirement.                     About 49% of Americans say they aren't contributing to any retirement plan, according to a new survey conducted by LIMRA, a trade association for the financial services industry.                        "The findings from this survey were disturbing, given that people will increasingly need to rely on their personal savings to make ends meet in retirement," said Matthew Drinkwater, associate managing director at LIMRA's retirement research division.                     People ages 18 to 34 are the least likely to be saving, with 56% reporting that they are not currently contributing to a retirement plan like an IRA or a 401(k).


The Evil of Monsanto

TEDx Hickory April 21, 2012 - Part 6 - Cooper and Washco

DeFeet International
People you should know on the Mesh

Video is Courtesy of Dave Washco's Youtube page




The Edison Project - Good News and Great Ventures - 9/19/2011
“Promoting Entrepreneurship in Our Community” - CVCC Forum - March 6, 2012

Harry Hipps submission to the HDR - (Unedited) - THE MAYOR’S POSITION ON FIRST TALK

The Hickory Daily Record requests that submissions for Letters to the Editor be limited to 400 words. Below is Harry's initial submission before edited. This submission is in today's May 11, 2012 Hickory Daily Record on page 4. Please print this out for your friends who may not have the internet and pass it along for them to read and fully understand that Harry's problem is not the structure per se. It is about the process that led to the structure and the problems associated with it. Harry would like to thank the HDR for allowing him the opportunity to express himself to the public in their forum.

THE MAYOR’S POSITION ON FIRST TALK

Much of the First Talk with Hal Row show on WHKY this Monday morning pertained to the tent being erected on Union Square. In time, we will see if this “investment” is worth the cost. It’s not what I would have done but I’ll keep an open mind until things come to fruition. What I see, though, which seems to be the source of a lot of the acrimony is how the City goes about selecting and implementing where funds will be spent.

Mayor Wright stated that there is now a partisanship in Hickory politics that hasn’t been there in the past and in his view is “a shame”. I find scant evidence that partisanship, that is to say Republican and Democratic party involvement is at work here. There may be some, and probably everyone on Council or attending meetings has some party affiliation, but does that make it partisan? There’s none that I can see.

The Mayor may have been referring to the fact that there are now more people looking at Council’s actions and modus operandi and not liking what they see. Well, grow up. Competition of ideas and aspirations are usually present in a healthy democracy, and it’s long past due in Hickory. For too long the Council has done whatever they wanted with virtually no checks on their actions. Most citizens do not vote in municipal elections due to apathy. The local media is very weak and in my opinion are mostly tied together with the status quo. It’s time people start taking notice and speaking up. It’s a good thing.

The City was embarrassed at the last Council meeting by not knowing about the instructions for citizens removing items from the consent agenda THAT HAS BEEN THERE FOR YEARS. Why has it been there for years and it is just now an issue? Because no one has spoken up before now and Council runs partly on auto pilot and they obviously don’t even read their own publications. Now people are becoming aware and it’s a positive development. The Mayor has stated that they are reviewing the process on this issue and will make it more democratic, not less. I trust he will do what he has stated.

Beyond this, we should also have televised meetings like other municipalities have on cable government channels, records and transcripts should be on the internet within days. Public documents should be on the internet and a citizen shouldn’t have to travel to City Hall and grovel for staff to access a document for them. Closed session minutes aren’t released in a timely manner. And the agenda should be published on the internet with enough time for citizens to review it and plan to comment if desired. In short, it’s time to join the 21st century.

The City has a history of not listening to the public and showing citizens disrespect. A survey was taken years ago about the farmers market. A majority wanted the Springs Rd area, it went downtown. A survey was taken on the pools, the majority said they wanted pools in each quadrant of the City, the Council said no. People from neglected areas of the City have sought some efforts at revitalization but to no avail. While I want a nice downtown area, as most do, there seems to be scant concern for the whole city and there seem to be conflicts of interest on downtown issues. So it’s not a surprise that there is not unanimity of opinion on City issues.

Finally, and in my opinion most importantly, these projects seem to come off the cuff. We need a strategic, long term plan to get Hickory back to good health again. The Mayor is on record, on the First Talk show, going back years stating that he thinks "this is going to be Hickory’s year. Things will soon be turning around." It seems that we are just drifting and hoping something will turn up if we just put a little more money into downtown development. There is no cost/benefit analysis done, little or no public vetting or input, and no review after the fact to see if, in fact, public dollars did lead to a positive return on the investment. A little more professionalism and public dialogue would go a long way to getting the public to buy in and less acrimony. Partisanship is not the problem, a government that is not adapting to the 21st century is.


Rudy Wright's and this Council's Philadelphia moment?

TEDx Hickory April 21, 2012 - Part 5 - Carroll and Carson

http://www.fullmetalchicken.com/
The Future Economy Council, Houston Harris, The Granary
Free Range Chicken Thinking 1: What Is It?
Free Range Chicken Thinking 2: Livermush

The Orchard at Altapass - Family Fun by the Bushels!
Clinchfield Railroad - Wikipedia
Overmountain Men
Overmountain Men - Altapass
More Bill Carson Stories

TEDx Hickory April 21, 2012 - Part 4 - Yoder and the Worthingtons

https://plus.google.com/115130617390933909861/posts

Puddingstone










Foothills Transition

The Sustainable Living Project 

Rainwater Harvesting

Rudy Wright's and this Council's Philadelphia moment?

A major factor in what brought Mayor Rudy Wright into office was the spending by a previous City of Hickory Administration and officials at a restaurant in Philadelphia around 1999. As I recall, thousands of dollars were spent frivolously on a dinner by these officials during the visit to this renowned Philadelphia establishment including hundreds of dollars on single bottles of wine. When Rudy Wright ran for Mayor in 2001, he used this issue to beat Pat Moss over the head with and stated that he was going to cut out the waste in Hickory City Government.

Pat Moss was former (and in 2001 the current) Mayor Bill McDonald's hand picked successor. We know the parties that were involved in bringing Mayor Wright to office back then. That is public record. This Mayor said this morning on Hal Row's show that the issue about the Tent on Union Square was a partisan political issue and seemed to state that they had kept partisan politics out of City Council meetings until recently. Although the Mayor didn't explain this, the only conclusion that I could draw is that he is referring to the typical Republican versus Democrat politics. I don't think this has anything to do with Donkey versus Elephant issues. It has everything to do with the connected versus the disenfranchised in this community.

A legitimate question was asked about the tent on Union Square... about the cost overrun and the possibility that even more money will be asked for in the near future. The lady that called in (at the 5:30 mark in the presentation below) with concerns about cost overruns concerning the tent did not say a word about the pools, but the Mayor introduced the pool subject and said that this issue was all about the pools. The Mayor seems to believe that he shouldn't have to take ownership of the process involving the Union Square structure. He is the CEO of this city and as such everything has his stamp of approval. That is the common thread between the pools and this tent project on Union Square. That he, the Council, and City Administration own these processes. When this lady was talking about "Who is Auditing this tent on Union Square?" she was not asking who was doing the accounting. She was asking why wasn't someone keeping an eye on what was going on so that we didn't incur this additional $137,000 cost overrun/expenditure? That is obvious to anyone who listened to what she asked.



The Mayor opens up a lot of questions here. Who knew what when? You decided to move forward with this project on December 20, 2011. At what point did you find out that it was going to cost $423,000 instead. If you found out that it was going to cost $423,000, then why didn't you reassess whether you should move forward with the project? If you found out in January that you were going to incur this additional expense, then why have you waited until now to come forward and make this public? That sure seems like a Bait and Switch scheme to me.

When looking at the pools that the City Council chose to demolish, Hickory Citizens emphatically stated that they wanted Aquatic recreation and this City Council denied them their desire. Charettes, more like Charades, were held and people undeniably requested Aquatic Recreation for the public and wanted it throughout the city. Remember Mayor Wright standing in that swimming pool in the USA Today? And the City was basically dishonest in this process every step of the way for two years. First they would be only closed for one summer, then they come up with this huge cost number to justify them being shut down for the foreseeable future, and then they demolish them six months later under the guise that it was a liability safety issue. When people talked about alternatives they were shut out.

That in my opinion led to this closed process involving the tent on Union Square. The consent agenda process was abused to carry out the apparent directive that this be moved through without people being allowed to have input, discuss cost-benefit analysis, competitive bidding, alternatives and to top it all off we now see that there was no architectural or engineering design built into the original structure. Who came up with the original $285,000 budget for this project that didn't take proper factors into account? This is what happens with closed processes.

The common thread between both processes is that they were manipulated towards the desires of the Mayor, Council, and City Administration who are all of one mind.

The Mayor seems to think it is alright to take a fund created to build a parking deck in downtown and use it for anything other than its directed purpose. The money in that fund should be used for its intended purpose and then the fund should be decommissioned. The fund is not called "The Union Square Capital Project Fund" and it should not be used for that purpose. That is the definition of a slush fund - Chicago style. That is a bait and switch. That is what we complain about in Washington. Why is that okay in Hickory?

Here are some questions pertaining to this issue that would be asked by a responsible "4th Estate" media party pertaining to the Parking fund. What was the balance on the parking fund last year? What is it today? Is there money left to build a parking deck now? What else has it been used for? Could we have built that parking deck if this money had not been used for other purposes?

What we have seen are not Republican or Democrat issues. They are Hickory issues. We have members of both parties that are upset with this Mayor and City Council. If anyone has made issues partisan it is this Mayor and Administration with their dictates and insistence that everything be done the way that they want without question. Anyone who questions what they do has at some point in time been deemed a radical or a trouble maker or partisan. We are supposed to take for granted that they are operating in the interest of the public without scrutiny or accountability.

During this (Hal Row) show, the Mayor talked about businesses moving forward before all of the pieces of a plan had come together, as though that is what they had done. First of all, if you invest your own money then I get your point, but you are responsible for other people's money in this process, so you should have had those architectural and engineering plans and costs established from the get-go. You didn't have the very foundation of a plan in order. All you had was an idea and you threw dollars at the idea. That is the very thing that conservatives complain about when it comes to Big Government. Businesses who operate in this fashion end up out of business. That is alright when it is your personal risk. That is not alright when you are acting as a Fiduciary. That is what we have seen from the current lot of politicians of this era; privatize profits, socialize losses. Most of us don't want to go down that path.

When we look at issues of scrutiny and accountability, let's look back at the $25,000 spent on Graffiti (May 4, 2010 - Bottom). That was two years ago and they said that they were going to come back and discuss how the money was spent six months later. Again two years later and they still have never come back before the public to reconcile the money that was spent.

We look at the Rental Property Task Force that was created on September 7, 2010. Its recommendations were accepted by the City Council on December 7, 2010. One recommendation was that an additional Code Enforcement Officer be hired to deal with the issues of Rental Properties and Chronic Code Violations - ie Slum Lords. Code Enforcement officials were supposed to come back after a couple of months and address priorities and necessities and the task force was to be reconvened after six months to address the Council on whether the recommendations were working. So, a year ago the Rental Property Task Force was supposed to be reconvened and come back before the Council to tell the Council and Public whether its recommendations were working and that has not happened yet.

Those are a few examples of the issues that we see in this City. It boils down to accountability. No one is attacking the Mayor's personal being. What they are addressing are issues of representation and accountability. Who does the mayor represent?

At the end of this interview Rebecca Inglefield calls up (28:15 mark in the presentation above) and talks to the Mayor about when is a good time for discussion, as in give and take with the public. The Mayor never really answers and obfuscates the question.

The Mayor doesn't seem to understand that this is an issue of trust. He and the Council are in charge of Hickory's Public Trust. How many times over the last several years have we heard politicians decry that everyone was out to get'em? How many times was it about disenfranchisement, accountability, and trust? There seems to be a disconnect here. All anyone who is questioning all of this is asking is that local government be of, by, and for the people; instead of of, by, and for the chosen few.

Economic Stories of Relevance in Today's World -- May 6, 2012

The Size And Strength of Banks Is Detrimental - The International Forecaster - Bob Chapman - May 2, 2012 - Taxes and bonds to pay for retirements, as well as all the debt and mismanagement, Apple goes offshore to hide its riches from paying taxes, Europe in a new age of austerity, Banks exerting more power than ever, manufacturing cooling as investment eases.                Real estate investors competing to buy Manhattan apartment buildings have sent prices to record highs as rental demand surges, reducing yields on the properties to the lowest in more than six years. The capitalization rate, a measure of investment return that declines as prices rise, averaged 4.4% for Manhattan multifamily buildings in first three months of this year… ‘It’s the strongest of all asset classes,’ said Doug Harmon, senior managing director at Eastdil Secured LLC… ‘There is still plenty of room to run on rents, and I see absolutely no reason why this action will or should stop anytime soon.’”                         “Illinois residents, whose income taxes rose by a record last year to help close a budget deficit, are paying the price again for the state’s fiscal mismanagement. With its pile of unpaid bills growing about 30% this year, the weakest pension-funding ratio among states and falling federal aid, Illinois and its municipalities are paying a penalty above AAA debt that’s twice their five-year average. Illinois plans to issue $1.8 billion of debt as soon as next week…”                             “U.S. municipalities from California to Florida are selling the most debt in three years to pay for their workers’ retirements in a bet that investment returns will exceed borrowing costs. Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is among issuers considering a sale this year, following an offer by Pasadena, California, last month. Illinois borrowed a combined $7.2 billion in 2010 and 2011. The governments are placing taxpayers at risk by papering over pension deficits with taxable securities. The strategy can backfire if the proceeds don’t earn enough to pay off the bonds.


Business Activity in U.S. Grows at Slowest Pace Since 2009 - Bloomberg through the San Francisco Chronicle - Timothy R. Homan - April 30, 2012 - Business activity in the U.S. expanded in April at the slowest pace since November 2009, a sign that manufacturing may be cooling as business investment eases.                    The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said today its barometer decreased to 56.2 during the month, lower than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey, from 62.2 in March. Readings greater than 50 signal growth. Economists projected the gauge would fall to 60, according to the median of 55 estimates in the survey.                 A slowdown in demand may prompt companies in the U.S. to slow the rate of inventory accumulation, while exports to Europe and Asia may cool. Auto purchases may prevent a prolonged deterioration in the industry that spurred the recovery.


Disinformation On Every Front - Paul Craig Roberts.org - Paul Craig Roberts| May 4, 2012 - Some readers have come to the erroneous conclusion that the Matrix consists of Republican Party disinformation as if there is no disinformation from the left. Others think that propaganda is the business of Obama and the Democrats. In fact, propaganda from the right, the left and the middle are all part of the disinformation fed to americans.                         If I may give some examples: The other day Chuck Colson, one of the Nixon officials imprisoned for Watergate crimes, died. This gave NPR the opportunity to relive the Nixon horror.                      What precisely was the Nixon horror? Essentially, there was no such thing. Watergate was about President Nixon lying about when he learned about the Watergate burglary.                  When Nixon learned about the burglary, he did not act on it prior to his reelection, because he reasoned, rightly, that the Washington Post would blame him for the burglary, although he had nothing to do with it, in the hopes of preventing his reelection.
                         By going along with a cover-up, Nixon enabled the Washington Post to make an issue of the precise date on which Nixon learned of the burglary. White House tapes indicated that Nixon had learned of the burglary before he said he learned of it. So Nixon had permitted a cover-up and had to go, but what was the real reason?                         What was the Watergate burglary? We don’t really know. A group of men including former CIA operatives were hired by the Committee to Re-elect the President to break into a Democratic campaign office in the Watergate complex. We don’t know the purpose of the burglary. Some claim it was to wire-tap the telephones in the belief that the Democratic Party was getting re-election money from communists in Cuba or elsewhere. Others claim that the burglars were looking for a list of call girls, that compromised a White House official, as his fiancee was allegedly one of the call girls.                    Looking back from our time during which Bush and Obama have deep-sixed the US Constitution, violated numerous US and international laws, and behaved as if they were caesars unconstrained by any law or any morality, Nixon’s “crimes” appear so trivial as to be unremarkable. Yet, Nixon was driven from office and is regarded as a criminal.                      What was Watergate really about?




Unemployment rate at 8.1%, only 115K jobs added, participation rate shrinks again to new low - Hot Air - Ed Morrissey - May 4, 2012 - The April jobs report fell short of analysts expectations, as only 115,000 jobs were added.  Consensus expectations had been in the 165K-170K range, which still would have been below the rate jobs were added in February, January, and December.  While the jobless rate dropped slightly, the number of jobs added came in short of March’s disappointing level:                       So how did the jobless rate drop?  The same way it’s been dropping all along — people exiting the workforce:                  The civilian labor force participation rate declined in April to 63.6 percent, while the employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, changed little.                    That’s a new 30-year low in the participation rate.  Here’s the chart from the BLS for the last 30 years:

People Not In Labor Force Soar By 522,000, Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1981 - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden - May 4, 2012 - it is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to 88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

95 Percent Of The Jobs Lost During The Recession Were Middle Class Jobs - The Economic Collapse Blog - Who is the biggest loser in the ongoing decline of the U.S. economy? Is it the wealthy? No, the stock market has been soaring lately and their incomes are actually going up. Is it the poor? Well, the poor are definitely hurting very badly, but when you don't have much to begin with you don't have much to lose. Unfortunately, it is the middle class that has lost the most during this economic downturn. According to Bloomberg, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the recession were middle class jobs. That is an absolutely astounding figure. Yes, some executives lost their jobs during the last recession as did some minimum-wage workers. But overwhelmingly the jobs that were lost were middle income jobs. Sadly, the limited number of jobs that have been added since the end of the last recession have mostly been low income jobs. A higher percentage of Americans are working low income jobs than ever before, and the cost of living continues to rise at a very brisk pace. This is causing an erosion of the middle class unlike anything we have ever seen in American history.                    When I was growing up I was taught that the fact that we had the largest middle class in the history of the world was evidence that our economic system was working incredibly well.                      So what does the fact that the middle class is shrinking at a very rapid pace at this point say about how well our economy is working?

Why? - 21 Unanswered Questions That They Don't Want You To Look Into - The End of the American Dream. com - Do you ever get the feeling that the mainstream media is feeding you a very watered-down and twisted version of the news? Do you ever get the feeling that the federal government does not believe that the American people can actually be trusted with the truth? It is exasperating to realize that the news that the public is being fed every single day is very heavily filtered and very heavily censored. In a world where "spin" is everything, simply telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Fortunately, the Internet has helped fuel the rise of the alternative media, and millions of Americans that are starting to wake up are turning to the alternative media for answers to their unanswered questions. Increasingly, people are becoming willing to question the orthodoxy that is being shoved down their throats by the major news networks, and that is a very good thing. The world is becoming an incredibly unstable place, and it is more imperative than ever that we all learn to think for ourselves. We live during a time of great deception, and the lies are going to get even bigger and even more bold in the years to come. If we don't know why we believe what we believe, then we are in danger of falling for just about anything.                    It is those that seek the truth that end up finding it. If you just accept the version of reality that the system wants to feed you, then you are probably going to become what the system wants you to become.                         But if you are not afraid to question everything, then you will have a chance to become everything that you were always meant to be.                     So what are some things that we should be questioning right now?

The following are 21 unanswered questions that they don't want you to look into....



The 10 things they really don’t tell you at graduation - The Washington Post - Alexandra Petri - May 3, 2012 - A piece at the Wall Street Journal has been making waves recently by billing itself as “What They Don’t Tell You At Graduation.”                      The one trouble with this piece is that all the observations seemed vaguely familiar — from graduation speeches.                     Here’s what they really don’t tell you.
 
1) Next year, you will probably be unemployed, or live in your parents’ basement, or be unemployed and live in your parents’ basement....
2) You will keep in touch with friends, but not the ones you thought....
3) When you hit a certain point in your 20s, everyone around you starts to get married, for no apparent reason and without any warning...
4) In life, no one rewards you for performing mundane tasks....
5) Regardless of anything the rampant college hookup culture has taught you, you are suddenly expected to Start Going On Dates....
6) Something strange happens to music as you age....
7) Being young isn’t everything, but it’s a good thing....
8) As Cynthia Heimel says, “There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.”
9) You have no idea how personal finance works.....
10) Some days will be better than others. Some days will be worse than others.....
11) No one in book club has ever read the book. 
   


A message from Rick Smyre the Director of "Communities of the Future."

Hi Friends....

Would encourage you to take a look at this five minute dialogue on CBS about the lose of faith in institutions and how the panel explains what is happening and why. My wife, Brownie, was the one who suggested I take a look at this because of our COTF work in many of the areas discussed in the interview.

I am having this type of conversation four days a weeks with varied organizations and people throughout the U.S. and other countries. In my opinion, the fact that so many people are now beginning to have these concerns and realizing the old institutional structures and the traditional forms of leadership (as well as the corruption of leadership only focused on self-interest) are facing challenges for which they are not prepared, are key reasons we are seeing such an explosion of interest in our COTF ideas and methods.

By the way, there will be an article about our COTF work nationally in the July/August issue of The Futurist Magazine published by the World Future Society. I sincerely appreciate the interest in and support for our work shown by Cindy Wagner, the editor of The Futurist, and Ken Hunter, Chairman of the Board of WFS.

Hope the link below connecting to the CBS interview is of interest. All my best. Rick