I suggest everyone that cares about the US and world economy read Richard Duncan’s book, The New Depression – The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy.   My review of the book is in a new article I posted today, http://www.thepurplemuse.com/id55.html.  The manuscript of this book was finished in late 2011 and the book was published in 2012.  Recently, Mr. Duncan provided an update to the conclusion of his book on his web site.  Here is the link to his update, http://www.richardduncaneconomics.com/2013/03/08/when-will-this-new-depression-end/.  

This is not a long book but it is the best summary of what has happened to the US economy and our government’s conversion to fiat money that I have ever read.  Mr. Duncan does a great job of showing how our government and the Federal Reserve have put our nation between a rock and a hard place. 

TPM

During the past week two significant events have occurred that are worth some commentary. 

The first topic is the Patriots Day bombing in Boston and the subsequent events including the death of one of the bombers and capture of the other.  Four people have died and over 180 people have been injured, many very seriously, as a result of the bombing and its aftermath.  It is becoming very clear that the two Muslim brothers built the bombs, acquired an arsenal of weapons and were intent on killing or hurting as many innocent people as possible because they were infidels.  Somehow these two brothers changed from being rational human beings to terrorists.  It is extremely unfortunate that the FBI failed to take seriously a warning it received from the Russian (or some other) government concerning the behavior of the older brother.  It remains to be seen if other people were involved or if the brothers received aid from a foreign terrorist organization.  The bottom line is that we will always be in danger of attack by Muslim extremists from within the US and outside the US as long as the turmoil in the Middle East continues.  If one assumes that Israel will exist as a nation forever, then the threat of attack on innocent US civilians will continue indefinitely.  It is imperative that the US government through its security agencies maintain a sharp focus on the activities within the US Muslim community in its efforts to prevent further attacks. It is not politically correct to focus on a single ethnic or religious group as a danger to our nation.  However, the time has come to throw political correctness in the trash can and do what is necessary to protect the vast majority of US citizens. Will President Obama and his team learn a vital lesson from this horrific event?

The second item I want to discuss is the work slowdown by the FAA's air traffic controllers. This items is a nuisance for those that need to fly around the country to conduct their business or pursue their personal interests. The US is proving to the rest of the world that its government is stupid.  It doesn't matter if we have or don't have a sequester, there is no reason for this situation to occur. There is no reason for government employees to purposely make our nation less efficient. From my perspective the person that must take responsibility for these actions is President Obama. Our President has proved again that he is a failed executive and leader. Instead of working to minimize the impact of a small spending reduction, he has allowed the government to negatively impact a major US industry (the airlines) and create needless inefficiency for tens of thousands of people. This is another failure of Obamanomics. Hopefully, this situation will be corrected quickly so we stop talking about it and move on to dealing with much more important issues, like Muslim terrorists and our long term government spending problems.

TPM

I just finished reading Graham Hancock's book, Supernatural - Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind.  After reading the book I updated my article, Spin, Lies, Conspiracy and Truth, http://www.thepurplemuse.com/id33.html. 

Supernatural covers a wide ranging set of topics within the context of its fundamental focus on hallucinations caused by ingesting hallucinogens and potentially without the use of hallucinogens throughout history.  One must have a very open mind to properly evaluate the material presented by Hancock in the book.  It is definitely thought provoking.

TPM

There is a group in the world that is determined to convince all of us that at some point in the future we will not be able to produce enough food to feed the world's population.  The bottom line is that this assertion is false, or at least false for the foreseeable future.  We have all seen pictures of people in Africa that are starving.  We have all read that some people can't afford to feed their families.  These points are correct but they have nothing to do with the world's ability to produce food.  The problems that we see are essentially local political issues that have caused people not to have enough to eat.

Why am I confident that I can state that the world can produce enough food to feed itself for the foreseeable future? During my travels over the past few years I have been to many places that at one time were massive food producers that today are not used or minimally used for food production.  For example, take a trip to Cyprus.  As one drives around the country you can observe the terraced land that was at one time used for food production.  On many Caribbean Islands that are huge amounts of arable land that were once used for sugar cane production that are now lying fallow.  In Africa there are many nations like Zimbabwe that at one time were major food producers that have had their agricultural economy disrupted by political turmoil.  The bottom line is that there are plenty of people available to work the fields and massive amounts of land to produce what we need.  All it takes is a concentrated effort by the governments of the world to make food production the number one objective of every nation.  If we make the effort and create an open market for food throughout the world, there will be plenty of low/moderate cost food for everyone.

I suggest to those that attempt to sell the shortage story to change their message to address the real issues.  There is no reason for anyone to go hungry in the world, if they are willing to work to feed themselves and their families and force governments to focus on feeding their populations.

TPM

The United States government has reported that its deficit for the first six months of the current fiscal year is $600B, an average of $100B per month or $1.2T per year.  I have read several reports that are complimentary to the government for reducing its deficits because the deficit for the same period of the prior year was over $700B.  Some people are happy that the US budget deficit has improved from horrible to really bad.  The reality is that the annual deficit in excess of $1T continues and the national debt and its interest cost continue to grow.

 

The House and Senate have passed budgets.  The President finally submitted his budget to Congress, months late.  However, nothing has been done to make fundamental changes to the US debt build-up and increasing unfunded long term liabilities.  There has been a lot of talk and no action.  President Obama has stated that he doesn't care about the debt build-up and appears to be willing to bankrupt the nation if necessary to advance his redistribution of wealth agenda.

 

Federal Reserve continues its program of buying about $80B per month of government debt as part of its low interest rate strategy that is necessary for the government to operate with its huge deficits.  Savers get no return on their money and the Federal Reserve's stated policy is to devalue their savings through a negative real rate of return created by inflation. 

 

I hope people are paying attention to what is happening.  The US government and Federal Reserve are working very hard to reduce the buying power and give it to others.

 

TPM