Wall Street Warzone

Fed Dictator Bernanke Must be Stopped. 10 Warnings, Why “Easy Money” for Wall Street & the Super-Rich is Killing Capitalism & American Democracy. Class Wars Spreading Across America! Bernanke’s Toxic Bubble Will Explode Soon!

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 3/12/2011

Yes, Fed boss Ben Bernanke has emerged as the most dangerous human on earth, far more dangerous than Egypt’s Mubarak, Libya’s brutal Gadhafi & every other oil-rich dictator. Bernanke rules a “monetary dictatorship” that will trigger the coming “third meltdown of the twentieth century.” Bernanki’s “reign of economic terror” will end. Just as those oil-rich dictators are blind to the economic needs of the masses and democratic reforms, Bernanke is blind to the “easy money” legacy that’s set the stage for revolution, turning the rich into super-rich, while the middle class stagnate, and peanuts trickle-down to the poor. Warning, Egypt also had a huge “wealth gap” before their revolution. Bernanke is the final egomaniac in America’s bubbling 30-yr wealth gap, where the top 1% went from owning 9% of America’s wealth to owning 23% during this 30-year dictatorship.

Bernanke’s ruling ideology is the culmination of a 30-year economic war that since 1981 has forged together Reaganomics for the super-rich, Greenspan’s toxic allegiance to Wall Street, the extremes Ayn Rand’s capitalist dogma, culminating in the toxic bailouts of Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, two Wall Street Trojan Horses corrupting government from within. For three decades this “monetary dictatorship” has caused enormous collateral damage, systematically sabotaging democracy, capitalism and the American Dream, while fueling the rise of our most dangerous new enemy, China.

When Obama reappointed Bernanke a couple years ago, Black Swan’s Nicholas Taleb was “stunned.” Bernanke “doesn’t even know that he doesn’t understand how things work,” that Bernanke’s economic methods are so inadequate they make “homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.” We called Bernanke, the “Captain of the Titanic” last year, warning that he was setting up the “third meltdown” of the twentieth century, predicted by Irrational Exuberance’s Robert Shiller, a coming crash worse than the 2000 dotcom crash and the subprime credit meltdown of 2008 combined.

Inside the Fed: Cassandras, Chicken Littles & a Governor Crying Wolf
Unfortunately, Bernanke (& the ghosts of Greenspan & Reaganomics) are Tone Deaf

The 30-year dictatorship now headed by Bernanke must end soon: And when it does, the class wars will not be pretty. But it is no “black swan,” no one can claim they did not see this new crash coming. For several years before the 2008 meltdown we reported on money managers, economists and financial gurus warning of a coming meltdown, they included two other Fed governors who warned Greenspan in the early Bush years. And yet, as late as summer 2008 Bernanke, Paulson and Greenspan were systematically dismissing mounting evidence of a mega-crash dead ahead.

That’s why Time magazine’s cover story about Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City grabbed me. David Von Drehle’s “The Man Who Said No to Easy Money” is a warning to all America. Like Ed Gramlich and William Poole, the two Fed Governors who warned Greenspan during the Bush years, Hoenig regularly dissented from the Bernanke’s “easy money” policies that have been favored by Wall Street throughout this 30-year dictatorship. We’re paraphrasing Drehle’s interview with Hoenig as “10 warnings” because it brilliantly reveals the broader historical tragedy of the Fed’s 30-year “monetary dictatorship” driving America to the edge of another 1930s economic revolution, one that will be triggered by a repeat of the 1929 wake-up call.

Now please read Hoening’s ”10 Warnings” about Bernanke in my earlier 2.15.11 version on MarketWatch

Jail Goldman’s CEO? Too Late. America Needs The “Wall Street Revolution!” Why? Soon 4 Ticking Time-Bombs Will Reach Critical Mass, Bankrupt America!

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 3/2/2011

Put Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in jail for six months, and all this will stop, all over Wall Street and America, a former congressional aide tells Matt Taibbi in his latest Rolling Stone attack, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them.”

Taibbi’s right, everyone knows Wall Street’s run by a bunch of dictators who are doing more damage to democracy and capitalism than North Africa’s dictators. But jail the CEOs of Goldman, Citi, BofA or my old firm Morgan Stanley? Too late! Only a revolution will stop Wall Street’s self-destructive capitalism. Watching the people revolt against dictators like Mubarak and Gadhafi reminds us of the spirit that sparked the American Revolution in 1776.

But today we need a 1930s-style revolution. And look back at the S&L crisis two decades ago whan America had a backbone, indicted 3,800 executives and bankers. Today’s leaders have no backbone. Besides jail time won’t reform the darkness consuming Wall Street’s soul. We’re all asleep, in denial about the core moral crisis facing America, destroying us from within. Yes, we need a new revolution.

Jail time? We’ve heard that so many times before. Journalists have been beating that dead horse for three years. Jailing CEOs made sense in early 2009. But our naïve president missed that opportunity, instead surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders as Bush did with Blankfein’s predecessor. Trojan Horses manipulating a Congress filled with clueless Dems mismanaging tired Keynesian theories.

Taibbi got it right: Washington’s error was in protecting Wall Street’s billion-dollar crooks when they should have been prosecuting CEOs for criminal behavior in getting us into the 2008 mess. So today, the political statute-of-limitations has run. The “jail” solution is wishful thinking, like praying to the tooth fairy for a miracle. Time for action. Time for a revolution on Wall Street. Wake up America, listen:

“Our country is bankrupt. It’s not bankrupt in 30 years or five years,” warns economist Larry Kotlikoff, “it’s bankrupt today.”
Economist Peter Morici: “Capitalism is broken, America’s government is two bankrupt political parties bankrupting the country.”
David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians” the “tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.”
BusinessWeek recently asked analyst Mary Meeker to run the numbers. How bad is it? America really is bankrupt, with a “net worth of a negative $44 trillion.” Yes, we’re bankrupt.

And it will get worse. Why? Because nothing can stop America’s self-destructive Wall Street bankers. They simply do not care that their “doomsday capitalism” is destroying Wall Street from within, and bankrupting America too.

Read the full column in MarketWatch detailing the 4 “ticking timebombs” that will trigger the “third meltdown” of the 21st century and bankrupt Wall Street.

Warning Trends: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Will Fail Before 2020: WWIII, China, Lost Moral Compass, No Recovery, No Growth, Capitalism Dying, Final Bubble

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 2/23/2011

“The important thing is not this year,” Buffett tells Vanity Fair, “but where Berkshire is 20 years after I die. Not taking care of it would be like not having a will, cubed.” Twenty years? But that’s 2030, a decade after our defense budget drives Americans further in debt preparing for the Pentagon’s 2020 prediction that “as the planets carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge … warfare is defining human life.”

Warning to Berkshire shareholders: Buffett’s wrong, the most important thing really is this year, not 2030. Not even 2020. That’s too late. Why? Because the “will of the people” and the unpredictable “will of God” will always trump Buffett’s “will.” Worse, There are four powerful trends that can easily and swiftly make his legacy disappear long before 2030.

War’s been very much on Buffett’s mind. During a New York Times interview around the same time as the Pentagon’s WWIII predictions Buffett remarked: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” And global war: Remember Buffett once called derivatives financial “weapons of mass destruction” in Fortune. Then, after Wall Street’s 2008 meltdown, he surrendered to the enemy, investing billions in Goldman, headquarters of the world’s most destructive derivatives traders. What will his heirs have to surrender?

Yes, Berkshire loyalists have more to worry about than Buffett’s will: So when all 40,000 of you gather in Omaha’s Qwest Center this May, start asking about America’s future … about the decline of our middle class … about the impact of the global population exploding 50% in a generation … ask about 9 billion people demanding ever scarcer commodities … ask about how America’s debt-burdened taxpayers will react when the Pentagon war-machine demands ever-larger budgets to defend against terrorists, drug cartels and a far bigger threat, a more aggressive China building stealth bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and a China rapidly buying up strategic long-term commodity rights all over the planet, in Australia, Africa, South America and Eastern Europe. Are you asking the tough questions?

Yes, the years ahead will be very threatening for Berkshire. You know it. So does Buffett. But don’t be fooled: His will is more important to him than it should be to you. Why? It will be ineffective crossing the unpredictable global economic minefield ahead, no defense against all the hidden economic IEDs and “weapons of mass destruction” more deadly than derivatives. Buffett may be a legend. But he cannot be cloned. And the economy that made him rich is old news. So forget the will. And forget 2030 …. more in MarketWatch.

Goldman Conspiracy’s “Moral Pathology:” Deadly Virus Attacking Capitalism, Democracy & Middle Class Values. Warning, Goldman’s “War on America” Will Collapse the Entire Economy & Markets by 2020 … Worse Than 2000 & 2008!

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 2/8/2011

Warning, the “Goldman Conspiracy” is quietly accelerating its efforts to destroy the American economy by the end of this decade. Read Peter S Goodman’s article on HuffPost. In “Don’t Believe Goldman ,” he warns of a “report from Goldman’s Investment Strategy Group” that “dismisses suggestions that the American economy might yet confront substantial problems.” Translation: Goldman is hyping another bull run into a bad economy.

The Goldman report is titled “The U.S. Will Not Face a ‘Lost Decade,’” and has a “subheading in the report, which later calls the odds of that prospect ‘very remote indeed’.” But then Goodman adds: “the words at the top of Goldman’s report, ‘Stay the Course’ amount to a threat for the rest of the nation. The course is untenable. For most people, it leads to credit card debt, ulcer medication and, perhaps, bankruptcy.” As Suzanne McGee says in her book about Goldman. “they’ll take us to the brink again.” Except this time Wall Street will take us over the cliff with them.

The new Goldman Report sounds like they’re trying shoot down my recent 1o annual predictions for the decade, 2011-2020: “America’s 10 Worst Years Start Right Now.” If you really want to learn how bad Goldman is for the American economy, democracy and capitalism, read both of these columns.

The bottom line is simple folks … the Goldman Conspiracy is afraid American investors won’t jump on the new bull market bandwagon that they’re hyping … won’t jump in and start betting at the Wall Street casinos … won’t help Wall Street blow another too-big-to-fail bubble … won’t get suckered into their runup to the next meltdown. Yes folks, Goldman’s worried America is catching on to their congame. If you want more investigative background on the toxic “moral hazard” that the Goldman Report is spreading across America, here are ten of my MarketWatch columns on the “Goldman Conspiracy” from recent years.

Goldman’s secret moral pathology: 15 symptoms of Wall Street disease killing democracy & capitalism
Goldman Conspiracy helping China defeat USA: By 2040, China’s the new global super-economy rules
6 reasons Goldman Conspiracy must kill reforms: derivatives-bonus culture needs Reaganomics to survive
Goldman’s Reaganomics vs Obama: Kill Dodd’s reforms & set up Wall Street’s 2012 Meltdown
Goldman’s new dream-inception technology: Inside “Brother Lloyd’s” brain, laws from “God is My Broker”
Goldman’s ‘Chainsaw Massacre’ Halloween party. Vote: Best costume from your favorite ‘celebrities’
Goldman’s new American Socialism Manifesto: 8 ways ‘The Conspiracy’ is destroying American democracy
Goldman Conspiracy, Bogle’s ‘pathological mutation: Wall Street & Washington inspire 13-episode TV plot
Jack Bauer can’t even stop ‘The Goldman Conspiracy: 10 reasons Wall Street rule our American democracy
Goldman Should Pay Paulson a Big Fat $1 billion Bonus: King Henry’s the world’s greatest nudger

Global Economy Won’t Recover in 2011, Not by 2020. Not Never! Yale Scholar Warns Capitalism is Dying, Fast, Taking Down Global Economy With It!

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 2/1/2011

Warning, you’re being conned, again! Wall Street pundits tell us the next recovery’s on track, in the early stages, moving along nicely.

So start investing, trading, betting on stocks, bonds, etfs, commodities. At least that’s what those crafty Wall Street gamblers want you to think. Yes, the same million dollar bonus babies whose hi-risk bets triggered the 2008 meltdown.

Wrong. Bad advice. Don’t listen. Americans lost over 50% after the 2008 meltdown, next one will be far worse.

Not only won’t the economy recover soon, Yale’s Immanuel Wallerstein, the leading scholar on “world systems” analysis, says the global economy will never recover. Yes, never.

The conventional wisdom says markets and economies move in cycles, ”upturns always occur after downturns.” Wallerstein warns: “All systems have lives … the capitalist world-economy has been in existence for some 500 years … functioned remarkably well. But … it has moved too far from equilibrium … in structural crisis. The only sure thing is that the present system cannot continue. The fundamental political struggle is over what kind of system will replace capitalism, not whether it should survive.”

Capitalism is dying. Don’t say you weren’t warned. (For the complete Wallerstein article see Foreign Policy)

10 Predictions: America’s Worst Decade Ever 2011-2020: Rich Get Richer, Market Crashes, Revolution, Class Warfare, Ending of the American Empire

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 1/27/2011

Dateline December 2020. Let’s look back on the 2011-2020 decade, at what historians call the “Worst Decade in American History.” Totally predictable, totally denied. Back in January 2011 we made 10 predictions of a chain of events that would reach a critical mass and consume America in a torrent of “creative destruction,” crippling capitalism and other outmoded institutions, forcing new power players to step out of shadows and assume leadership in a time of extreme crisis.

“The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams,” warns Columbia Professor Robert Lieberman in the new Foreign Affairs Journal. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years.” A long trend of “ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top 1% has increased from roughly 8% in the 1960s to more than 20% today. … a level of economic inequality not seen in the United States since the eve of the Great Depression.”

And yet, here we are being conned again, like before the 2008 meltdown. But the same crooks we bailed out. Warning: Forget all Wall Street’s hoopla about a 2011 bull market with the Dow rocketing to 15,000. Think long-term. Wall Street lost an inflation-adjusted 20% of your money the last decade. They will lose another 20% by 2020. Today’s new “Gilded Age” bubble will end in a crash worse than 1929, triggering a new depression that will wreak havoc on your retirement portfolio. Yes, Lieberman is warning of class warfare dead ahead: “Income inequality in the United States is higher than in any other advanced industrial democracy … It breeds political polarization, mistrust, and resentment between the haves and the have-nots and tends to distort the workings of a democratic political system in which money increasingly confers political voice and power.” A costly new “Civil War” makes our enemies cheer.

So here are my 10 predictions for 2011-2020, a flashback, a retrospective, a year-by-year look back from 2020 at a decade of increasing battles between the haves and have-nots, where there is no longer room for “compromise” between the two ideologies destroying America from within. “The Gap,” the divide, the greed, the entitlements, the hostilities are now so entrenched that “negotiations” are impossible and only a catastrophic 1929-style collapse of our self-destructive capitalism and a descent into economic hell will force America to restructure. Here’s the 10-year timetable:

2011. Wall Street’s super-rich spend billions to control Washington
Thanks to the conservative takeover of America’s so-called democracy the past three decades, from Reagan to Obama, our activist Supreme Court delivered the coup de grace into America’s psyche last year, overturning long-established precedent giving rich owners of zombie corporations absolute rights of live humans, a decision that would have gotten a failing grade in my constitutional law class at the University of Virginia.

2012. Super-Rich gain absolute power over Washington
That bizarre decision destroyed legalized political bribery. Now billions pass through lobbyists to politicians in all parties, with one goal: A guarantee that all politicians (President, Congress, Fed, regulators and state governments), all adhere to Reaganomics and the ideology that money talks and wealth rules. As a result, America is no longer a democracy, not even a plutocracy. America is an Anarchy. Our middle class is in a rapid spiral down into third-world status, while the rich get richer and “the gap” between the richest and the rest widens. Worse, it’s irrelevant who wins the 2012 race, because money corrupts all in Washington and Obama is already a puppet of America’s super-rich conspiracy.

next: 2013-2020 on MarketWatch

Warning, “The More You Trade, The Less You Earn:” Stick to These 8 Winning Rules for America’s 95 Million “Predictably Irrational” Investors, Direct from Princeton’s Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Economist & Behavioral Scientist

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 1/20/2011

The Buttonwood Agreement was signed in 1792 near Wall Street, creating what is now the New York Stock Exchange. For two centuries after that, the industry lived with a “rational man” theory. Recent research by behavioral economists and neuroscientists proves conclusively that investors are actually quite “irrational and woefully uninformed, especially when they’re betting against Wall Street. Wall Street’s theory of the “rational investor” was actually pure propaganda, purposely intended to mislead investors. Today, the new theory of the “irrational investor” has set the “law of unintended consequences” into motion—instead of helping Main Street investors get a grip on their irrational behavior, it has opened new opportunities for Wall Street to exploit and turn the research, tools and technology of behavioral finance against investors, putting Main Street investors at an even bigger disadvantage than they were before, because Wall Street’s arsenal is growing stronger, while Main Street is last in denial.

The English playwright Harold Pinter, well-known for his long mysterious “pregnant pauses,” won the Nobel Prize in Literature a few years ago. A rarity, only the third playwright in a century. Equally rare, a few years earlier Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics. What do the two have in common? (more)

“Grow or Die?” Or “Grow & Die!” The Global “No-Win” Scenario: Economists Push Growth Even as the Planet Explodes with 50% Population Growth to 9 Billion by 2050. Yes, Destroying America’s Capitalism AND China’s Socialism

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 1/17/2011

What do we do, oh great zenmaster? “When you get to a fork in the road … take it,” replies the wise one, Yogi Berra, greatest Yankee catcher of all time. His sage advice to economists, politicians and investors everywhere: “The future ain’t what it used to be. We made too many wrong mistakes. You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

At the crossroads: “Growth!” Capitalism’s most sacred commandment, “Grow OR Die” may itself be on death row. With us since 1776, it’s being challenged by a “New God of Reality” that’s flashing relentless strobe warnings of an emerging new command from critics, contrarians and eco-economists: “Grow AND Die.” Yes, you heard right:

· “Grow OR Die.” Traditional economists: We need 3% GDP “Growth” to support 100 million new Americans in the 21st century. Drill Baby Drill. New jobs to fuel slow recovery. Worse, exploding growth demands as the rest of the world adds 2.9 billion new humans all chasing their unique “American Dream.”
· “Grow AND Die!” New eco-economists: They see Big Oil’s destruction of our coastal economies, the rape of West Virginia’s coal mountains, the unintended consequences of uncontrolled carbon emissions and ask: “When will economists, politicians and corporate leaders stop pretending Earth’s resources are infinitely renewable?” Unfortunately, even the new eco-economists fail to factor population growth, the big 800# Gorilla, into the equation.

A “No-Win” scenario: Yes, we are all at a crossroads, all facing a dilemma, all confronting the ultimate no-win scenario: “Growth” is essential to support the global population explosion. “Growth” is also killing our world, wasting our planet’s non-renewable natural resources. As a result, the “Growth” mantra will eventually destroy civilization. We are the horns of a very sharp no-win dilemma: We’re damned if we grow. Damned if we don’t. Growth.

Ultimate political sin: Turning a blind’s eye, failing to seek real solutions is suicide

“When you get to a fork in the road … take it.” But which fork? Flip a coin? Same result either way: Heads you lose, tails you lose. A no-win situation. Not just America, but Ireland, Greece, Brazil and China. All politicians, all economies, all trapped in Capitalism’s most sacred, rarely challenged, commandment: “Growth OR Die” … but the real issue is, “Grow & Die,” because the planet will increase its population by 50% to 9 billion in a generation, and self-destruct …

Read complete essay: MarketWatch

“Kamikaze Capitalism:” Can GOP Destroy Obama? Without Destroying the American Economy Too? What a Dumb Plot: Capitalism Loses, China Wins!

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 1/11/2011

Foreign Policy’s journal is inspiring: Don’t miss their annual issue on “Failed States” listing the 25 worst dictators: “The Committee to Destroy the World.” Next, think domestic policy. Think of Mitch McConnell’s “Mission Impossible” vow to do anything, including kill our economic recovery for the next two years – anything to make Obama look bad, make him a one-term president. Call it “Kamikaze Capitalism!”

Go Mitch! You stir my cinematic imagination. Made it go into hyper-drive last week when your GOP team decided to defeat Reagan’s signature national security victory, the nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia. You guys sure have a bizarre suicidal idea of leadership and governing. Ol’ grumpy Mitch also led his GOP saboteurs in killing the unemployment benefits extension, while making an even more bizarre claim that billionaires “need” a $800 billion bailout (that’ll trickle down to unemployed Middle Americans?). Then he played his ace, calling the GM IPO a failure that should have been left to the bankruptcy courts, with more jobless millions. Yes folks, ol’ grumpy would definitely get on a domestic list like “The Committee to Destroy American Capitalism.”

Folks, this is the stuff of great movie plots. Not an Oliver Stone or Michael Moore film. No, this is a true Eastwood thriller. Think “Magnum Force,” Dirty Harry killing real bad guys. Better yet, “Absolute Power.” Imagine: What if McConnell’s GOP gets their wish? Game on. The hunt begins. The GOP tried once before under Bush. Now they want a new shot at that old adage: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Eastwood brilliantly reveals why power corrupts. Why it blinds. Why it self-destructs. In “Absolute Power” we see an arrogant President convinced he’s untouchable, surrounded by Secret Service officers who will do anything to protect him, hide affairs, even murder. Until the unexpected, what economist Paul Krugman calls the “great unraveling.”

“Kamikaze Capitalism:” GOP stars in Eastwood “destroy the presidency” thriller?
Eastwood plays Luther Whitney, a small-time crook. Just wants enough from one last job, before retiring in the American Dream. His victim is out. But as luck would have it, the President, Gene Hackman, suddenly appears with the lady, upsetting Luther’s cleverly planned robbery. Luther hides in a secret room, a voyeur behind a one-way mirror. This President’s into kinky sex. But sadomasochism consumes him, he kills her.

Luther is what economists call a Black Swan, every thriller has them. Unpredictable events you never see coming, can’t plan for. They blindside you, taking a thriller into new dangers. Filmmakers love them. Tittilated, Luther watches the lurid sex, the murder, the cleanup by the Secret Service. They dispose of the body. But later, a new twist, they find evidence of Luther. Then frantic spinning, blaming a home invasion robbery gone bad. The hunt for Luther begins … and ends … absolute power corrupts absolutely … the presidency falls. Yes, Eastwood planned this … but McConnell can’t … no trick mirrors.

…. read column on Marketwatch

22 Reasons Your Federal, State & Municipal Taxes Must Keep Rising, in 2011, 2012, even 2020 … And Nobody, Not Boehner, McConnell, Palin, the GOP nor TeaParty Will Stop Debt From Growing!

by Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD

| Discuss | Print | 1/1/2011

Social Security and Medicare equal $65 trillion of unfunded debt. Add in the Bush/Cheney/Obama War debt from Iraq and Afghanistan, Paulson’s TARP Plan, the Obama Stimulus, plus add in Bernanke’s estimated $23.7 trillion in secret credits, loans, writeoffs and guarantees to Wall Street’s “too-greedy-to-fail” banks … now add in the costs of the new healthcare reforms and it looks like my early ’09 prediction is unfolding right on schedule.

Subtitled “Tax Bomb Dead Ahead: Former GAO Chief says your taxes will double” is now worth a second look, especially when you consider states and local governments are already desperately adding taxes to make up for lost property tax, sales and income revenues. The New York Times warns: “As Revenue Slump, States Look to Tax Services, From Head to Toe.” If you wonder whether we really are in an economic recovery, take a look at the bigger picture unfolding across America, at the 22 reasons all taxpayers at all levels of government will be impacted for years to come …

Imagine doubling your taxes: Yes, that’s what David Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller General and GAO chief warned on CNN: “Why Your Taxes Could Double: The federal government has spent more money than it takes in at an increasing rate. Total federal debt almost doubled during President George W. Bush’s administration and, as much as we needed some stimulus spending to boost the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates total debt levels could almost double again over the next eight years based on the budget recently outlined by President Obama,” with our “tax bill doubling over time.” Don’t say you weren’t warned!

Debt is killing the American Dream. We’ve mortgaged our future, and now Obama’s adding a new $1.84 trillion federal deficit. That’s four times Bush’s record deficit his last year. Plus deficits over $500 billion annually for the next decade. The president’s gambling, doubling down, betting the farm, going “all in” with a huge bet that could break the bank. Is this America’s “last hand” in high-stakes poker game? More grim tax facts: A few years ago Peter Orszag, Obama’s Budget Director warned: “Balancing the budget would require a 41% cut in spending on Social Security and Medicare, a 47% cut in discretionary spending, or a 17% cut in all non-interest spending.”

Secretary Geithner gave us an update: “The longer we wait to address the long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security, the sooner those challenges will be upon us and the harder the options will be.” Those two trust funds already eat up more than a third of the federal budget and are increasing $2 trillion a year. Still, AARP and other lobbyists resist all benefits cuts (that affect Boomers) more than tax increases (paid by younger workers), despite a new study telling us: Medicare surpluses will run out in 2016, Social Security by 2037, both earlier than previously estimated. Together they account for roughly $80-to-$120 trillion in unfunded liabilities, with Medicare 80% of the total … and please note, America’s debt now exceeds the $50 trillion GDP of all economies in the entire world! (more)