Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

Is “discretionary income” rapidly becoming a thing of the past for most American families? Right now, there are a lot of signs that we are on the verge of a nightmarish consumer spending drought. Incomes are down, taxes are up, many large retail chains are deeply struggling because of the lack of customers, and at this point nearly a quarter of all Americans have more credit card debt than money in the bank. Considering the fact that consumer spending is such a large percentage of the U.S. economy, that is very bad news. How will we ever have a sustained economic recovery if consumers don’t have much money to spend? Well, the truth is that we aren’t ever going to have a sustained economic recovery. In fact, this debt-fueled bubble of false hope that we are experiencing right now is as good as things are going to get. Things are going to go downhill from here, and if you think that consumer spending is bad now, just wait until you see what happens over the next several years.

continued …

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-02/guest-post-16-signs-middle-class-running-out-money

When two weeks ago we exposed the heretofore secretlocation of JPM’s London gold vault (located under the firm’s massive L-shaped office complex at 60 Victoria Embankment) we thought: what about New York? After all, while London is the legacy financial capital of the “old world“, it is New York that the biggest private wealth of the past century is concentrated, and it is also New York where the bulk of the hard assets backing the public money of the world’s sovereigns are located, some 80 feet below ground level in the fifth sub-basement of the New York Fed, resting on the bedrock of Manhattan.

Continued …

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-02/why-jpmorgans-gold-vault-largest-world-located-next-new-york-fed

50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam That Is About To Collapse.

Today is the day when, if one listens to Obama whose idea it was in the first place, an unprecedented $85 billion spending cuts will be sequestered, unleashing famine, pestilence, the apocalypse and grizzly bears as all park rangers will be dead from starvation. Which is why we applaud the administrations desire to preempt this tragic for the nation outcome, by issuing, in one day alone: February 28, $80 billion in Treasurys sending debt to obviously what is a new all time high $16,687,289,180,215.37.

Continued …

via There Goes The Sequester | Zero Hedge.

http://lewrockwell.com/casey/casey153.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rep4/hot-to-disarm-citizens.html

Sent from my iPad

Authored by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse blog,Is the U.S. economy about to experience a major downturn? Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of signs that economic activity in the United States is really slowing down right now. Freight volumes and freight expenditures are way down, consumer confidence has declined sharply, major retail chains all over America are closing hundreds of stores, and the “sequester” threatens to give the American people their first significant opportunity to experience what “austerity” tastes like. Gas prices are going up rapidly, corporate insiders are dumping massive amounts of stock and there are high profile corporate bankruptcies in the news almost every single day now. In many ways, what we are going through right now feels very similar to 2008 before the crash happened. Back then the warning signs of economic trouble were very obvious, but our politicians and the mainstream media insisted that everything was just fine, and the stock market was very much detached from reality. When the stock market did finally catch up with reality, it happened very, very rapidly. Sadly, most people do not appear to have learned any lessons from the crisis of 2008. Americans continue to rack up staggering amounts of debt, and Wall Street is more reckless than ever. As a society, we seem to have concluded that 2008 was just a temporary malfunction rather than an indication that our entire system was fundamentally flawed. In the end, we will pay a great price for our overconfidence and our recklessness.

So what will the rest of 2013 bring?

via Guest Post: 20 Signs The U.S. Economy Is Heading For Big Trouble In The Months Ahead | Zero Hedge.

Many farmers are quitting an industry hit by rain, disease and cheap imports – just as food security becomes a worldwide issue

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/23/weather-battered-farmers-hope-food-security-will-help

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?_r=0

Preface: While a lot of people talk about the loss of our Constitutional liberties, people usually speak in a vague, generalized manner … or focus on only one issue and ignore the rest.

This post explains the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution – and provides a scorecard on the extent of the loss of each right.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-02-21/scorecard-how-many-rights-have-americans-really-lost