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Friday May 01, 2015
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16 Signs That The Economy Has Stalled Out And The Next Economic Downturn Is Here
ZeroHedge | author | 05/01/15

If U.S. economic growth falls any lower, we are officially going to be in recession territory. On Wednesday, we learned that U.S. GDP grew at a 0.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2015. That was much lower than all of the "experts" were projecting. And of course there are all sorts of questions whether the GDP numbers the government feeds us are legitimate anyway. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were used they would show that U.S. GDP growth has been continuously negative since 2005. ...

  1. We just learned that U.S. GDP grew at an anemic 0.2 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2015...
  2. If you strip a very unusual inventory buildup out of the GDP number, U.S. GDP would have actually fallen at a -2.5 percent annual rate during the first quarter...
  3. Our trade deficit with the rest of the planet is absolutely killing our economic growth. According to the Reality Chek Blog, U.S. economic growth would have been a total of 8 percent higher since the end of the last recession if we actually had balanced trade with other nations...
  4. According to numbers that were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in one out of every five American families nobody has a job. So how in the world can the "unemployment rate" be sitting at "5.5 percent" when everyone is unemployed in 20 percent of all families in the United States? It doesn't make any sense.
  5. The rate of homeownership in the United States has just hit a brand new 25 year low. How can anyone claim that the middle class is "healthy" when the percentage of Americans that own a home is the lowest that it has been in more than two decades?
  6. Back in 2013, 31 percent of all Americans said that they did not anticipate buying a home "for the foreseeable future". Just two years later, that number has risen to 41 percent.
  7. The student loan bubble is clearly bursting. According to Bloomberg, only 37 percent of all student loan borrowers are actually up to date on their payments and reducing their balances...
  8. Procter & Gamble has announced that it will be cutting up to 6,000 more jobs from their payroll. Why would they be doing this if the economy is "getting better"?
  9. McDonald's plans to permanently shut down 700 "poorly performing" restaurants over the course of 2015. Why would they be doing this if the economy is "getting better"?
  10. It is being projected that half of all fracking companies in the United States will be either "dead or sold" by the end of 2015.
  11. Retail sales in the U.S. have not dropped this rapidly since the last recession.
  12. Wholesale sales in the U.S. have not dropped this rapidly since the last recession.
  13. Factory orders in the U.S. have not dropped this rapidly since the last recession.
  14. Credit requests are being declined at a rate that we haven't seen since the last recession.
  15. U.S. export growth has gone negative for the first time since the last recession.
  16. As the U.S. economy begins to head into another downturn, most Americans are completely unprepared for it. In fact, one recent survey discovered that 62 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
Read more

Brace for a flood of foreclosures when boom-era HELOCs turn 10
msn.com | Jerry Kronenberg | 04/27/15

Millions of Americans will soon see monthly bills shoot up on home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) taken out during the housing boom, because HELOCs are going to start making homeowners pay both interest and principal, not just interest. That's bad news because many consumers are already underwater, meaning they owe more than their places are worth, a RealtyTrac study shows.

"A lot of people were using their homes as ATMs during the bubble, and that -- coupled with the fact that home values have since gone down -- has backed a lot of them into a corner," says Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac, which recently analyzed home equity lines of credit on millions of properties. ... Read more

US Manufacturing Weakest In 2 Years As Construction Spending Plunges.

How Shale Is Becoming The Dot-Com Bubble Of The 21st Century
ZeroHedge | author | 05/01/15

As I review the financials of one of the largest shale producers in the United States, Whiting Petroleum (WLL), I can't help but notice the parallels to the .COM era of 1999 which, to some extent, has already returned to the technology and biotech sectors of today. Back then, the faster you burned cash to capture customers regardless of earnings to drive your topline, the higher your valuation. The theory was that after capturing the customers (in energy today, it is the wells) spending would slow and so would customer additions allowing companies to generate cash. By the way, a classic recent case is none other than Netflix (NFLX) which, in the past was exposed for accounting gimmicks that continue even today.

What is worse is WLL continues to grow production even though prices have collapsed and cash generation is in decline. In fact, year over year cash generated from operations fell 30% despite production growing some 70% plus percent. Does this sound like a company you want to invest in or like one that is run efficiently? So, let's review: .com companies did the same and the majority went bankrupt so if WLL and other E&P companies continue to spend cash well above their operation capacity, not because they want to but because they have to, it will lead to the same result as it did in 2000... POP! ... Read more

The Uncounted; World Bank-Backed Energy Giant Threatens A Way Of Life
HP | Barry Yeoman | 05/01/15

The Tata group, one of India's largest conglomerates, promised to be a good neighbor when it took on the job of building the nation's first "ultra mega" coal-fired power plant. ICIJ and The Huffington Post estimate that 3.4 million people have been physically or economically displaced by World Bank-backed projects since 2004. For email updates on our investigation, sign up below. The plan was to build the plant along the Gulf of Kutch, an inlet of the Arabian Sea that provides a living for fishing clans that harvest the coast's rich marine life. Tata assured the World Bank Group, which was putting up $450 million to help finance the project, that there was little reason to worry about the giant plant's impact on people living and working nearby.

Tata reported that "the fishing potential of the Gulf of Kutch is significant," but there were "no local fishing activities in the coastal waters fronting the project." The "nearest small fishing community," it said, was located "outside the project area." ... Read more

Chernobyl At Risk
Chernobyl: Massive forest fire inches closer to abandoned nuclear plant, Ukraine (04/29/15) 0:58]
Chernobyl 25 Years Later: Soviet dream turned nuclear nightmare (04/26/11) [3:00]
Chernobyl Fallout 25: Pripyat, Nuclear Ghost Town (04/26/11) [26:14]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, May 01 [9:09]
*DN | Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders, the TPP "Corporate Coup d'Etat" & Writing to the White House (05/01/15) [10:58]
Alan Grayson on TPP & TTIP
*No to 'Fast Track,' No to Trade Treachery (04/29/15) [9:00]
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral rules-based trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. More at wikipedia

TPP
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed regional regulatory and investment treaty. As of 2014, twelve countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region have participated in negotiations on the TPP: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. The nine Trans-Pacific Partnership countries announced that the TPP intended to "enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, to promote innovation, economic growth and development, and to support the creation and retention of jobs." Some global health professionals, internet freedom activists, environmentalists, organised labour, advocacy groups, and elected officials have criticised and protested the negotiations, in large part because of the proceedings' secrecy, the agreement's expansive scope, and controversial clauses in drafts leaked to the public. More at wikipedia

TTIP
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States. Proponents say the agreement would result in multilateral economic growth, while critics say it would increase corporate power and make it more difficult for governments to regulate markets for public benefit. The American government considers the TTIP a companion agreement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. After a proposed draft was leaked in March 2014. More at wikipedia

TAFTA
A Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) is a proposal to create a trans-atlantic free-trade area covering Europe and North America. Such proposals have been made since the 1990s and since 2013 an agreement between the United States and European Union has been under negotiation: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Once complete, if combined with free trade agreements with Canada, Mexico and the European Free Trade Association it could form a free trade area covering a large portion of the two continents. More at wikipedia

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
http://www.senate.gov/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm http://www.TradeTreachery.com
TRNN | TRNN Investigative journalist Stephen Janis discusses: What We Know About the Multiple Investigations into Freddie Gray's Death (05/01/15) [10:51]
TYT | The Cause Of The Baltimore Riots According To One Idiotic Republican (04/30/15) [4:31]
TYT | The Story Of The Tulsa Race Riots Will Disgust You (04/30/15) [5:18]
TYT | Sen. Bernie Sanders Announces 2016 Run For Presidency (04/30/15) [6:07]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
Thom Hartmann | Alan Grayson: TPP is Trade Treachery (04/30/15) [5:27]

05.01.2015. 10:40



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