Do you still think inflation is only 1.5%... I have some prime swamp land for sale!

If inflation was as low as the government says it is, would prices have spiked higher and higher as they have in the past 7 years, or 40 years? Oh, but you say the 20oz can of beans I bought yesterday only went up in price by a few pennies. Look more closely at the can. It more than likely says that 20oz can of beans is now only 16.5oz. Not only did the price increase, the amount of the contents decreased. True inflation as it was calculated in the early 1970's is well over 12% and rising. Since then, the government removed food, energy, and any other item they could tag as having the ability to 'price spike'.

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If the average chief executive officer cooked balance sheet numbers the way the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the Consumer Price Index, the CEO would be in jail, even without Sarbanes-Oxley reporting standards.


Telling the truth about inflation would require the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and that would be bad for economic growth.

Besides, hundreds of billions of dollars in government entitlement payment outflows depend on the inflation number.

For instance, federal law mandates that Social Security checks increase thanks to “cost-of-living adjustments,” or COLAs, that are supposed to compensate for inflation.

So, higher inflation numbers cost the federal government millions more in increased Social Security payments.

But when the Bureau of Labor Statistics intentionally rigs the Consumer Price Index calculations to low-ball the inflation rate, Social Security entitlement payments are kept level.

As a result, retirees quietly lose billions of dollars that should have been paid out, had the cost of living numbers been reported honestly. But the government saves the expense.

How does the federal government manipulate inflation numbers?

The Consumer Price Index, or CPI, is the central statistic the federal government uses to calculate inflation.

The CPI is a complex government statistic that was introduced in the 1920s to track the market cost of a “basket of goods and services.”

Beginning during the Carter administration, federal economists cleverly redefined the CPI, with the goal of removing from the index expensive items, including food and energy, that would push the CPI higher.

Today, the Federal Reserve when setting interest rates focuses on a variation of the CPI that measures “core inflation.”

According to the Forbes “Investopedia,” core inflation excludes items such as food and energy because food and energy “face volatile price movements.”

In other words, since food and energy prices can spike upwards, as they have this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates “core inflation” without food and energy prices, under the rationale that food and energy price spikes are merely temporary price shocks that would distort the measurement of underlying long-term inflation.

To a family faced with paying rising food costs to feed the kids and skyrocketing gas costs just get to work, the definition of “core inflation” at 2 percent is a joke, not at all reflective of the increased dollars the family has to shovel out just to get by.

Even more disturbing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ calculation of “core inflation” is not limited merely to throwing food and energy prices out of the CPI.

The price of any good or service in the CPI market basket prone to spiking can be thrown out, under the rationale that the items with the largest price changes reflect passing market disequilibrium that would distort the measurement of long-term trends.

When removing expensive items from the CPI market basket of goods and services was not enough to depress inflation numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics innovated even more, changing the “weighted factors” used in calculating CPI statistics, so the results end up under-reporting the true inflation people experience in everyday living.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2008/03/59409/#mZHDyz2QTMlkteyr.99

The Only SAFE hedge for inflation is physical gold and silver. It is the only commodity that typically increases in price relative to inflation. The government is even trying to control them. Right now, gold and silver prices are tracking at well below where they should. which means they are under valued. Now is the time to buy... before the market overrules the government controls and their prices skyrocket to where they should be!

Are You Prepared for the Coming Economic Collapse?

It may take a year or more, or as mentioned in the previous blog article, it could happen in as little as three days.  Have you done what is necessary to protect yourself and your family?  How long can you survive?

If your philosophy is to do nothing and that whatever happens, happens, do you realize how painful it could be?  Do you realize that it may not be quick?  It may involve days or weeks or months of torture and/or rape and humiliation at the hands of gangs.  Are you ready for that?

Whether or not you get the torture treatment, you may end up in a DHS/FEMA Detention Camp, where you will be a slave to the government, tortured, raped, beaten, undernourished, and over worked, cleaning the dead bodies of others from the streets at gun point.

You could let all that happen and more, or you can prepare yourself mentally and physically, and do some things now that can make a huge difference in your ability to survive and help rebuild the country for you and your family.

When they publish the future entries into the history books, will you be portrayed in a photo as a dead body in a ditch among thousands of other bodies, or will you be portrayed as a survivor, helping to restore the country and maybe even the world?

Your choice speaks volumes about your character. Do you like what you see?

Prepare now. Do what you need to do. You will only get one chance to do the right thing. Do it now. Later will probably be too late.

Exactly how an Economic collapse would work – timeline Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/exactly-how-an-economic-collapse-would-work-timeline/#MHil3w3CUr8RyXUd.99

These are from protocols that were set up long ago

When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a force majeure on debt, it wouldn’t be broad-cast on mainstream media. There’s no sense because the American people don’t even understand what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be picked up by all media outlets anyway.

The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European markets close. It’s also the lunch hour for the markets. It’s when you’re going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges. That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.

A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds, commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.

So-called ‘pools’ would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand contracts every few minutes. ‘Limit-offered with pools’ – this is trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit- offered price. That would begin to build.

By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being released at lunch hour.

A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the installation of the so-called ‘declaration of fast market conditions,’ for instance; the declaration of ‘no more stop orders,’ the declaration of ‘fill at any price,’ etc. in a desperate bid to maintain liquidity.

That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the American people found out what this was all about and when it was explained to them.

At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the next day.

The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.

On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had left.

Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar and declare it worthless.

This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been temporary and have been brought back up. But what we’re talking about now is the end.

These protocols that I’m referring to aren’t even all that secret. They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/exactly-how-an-economic-collapse-would-work-timeline/#MHil3w3CUr8RyXUd.99

Beautiful Explanation of the US Debt Problem