I hope that you're sitting down when you read this.  It hasn't been mentioned yet on the "mainstream" media.  I don't imagine that it will be mentioned there anytime soon.

Before you go any further, I want you to keep this in proper perspective.  Remember how upset we all were about the $0.8 trillion of TARP expenditures.  OK.  Remember how upset we've been at the $1.2-$1.3 trillion annual deficits that the Administration has been spending?  OK.  Remember how outraged we've become over the $15.2 trillion dollar National Debt and the $6.5 trillion in National Debt added in the past three years by the Obama Administration?  OK.

Now, only the most informed and aware folks know about this one...  Remember how astonished you were when this first-ever partial audit of the Federal Reserve got underway, and it came out that the Fed had transferred another $16 trillion of funds secretly to help bail out Europe?

Now, have you heard about the ADDITIONAL "MISSING" $9 trillion that the Federal Reserve has "spent" "off the books"?!?!  Yes, we thought MF Global and Jon Corzine were bad for losing a piddly $1.2 billion!  Heck, MF Global was mere child's play!  The Fed has "lost" a full $9 trillion.  Now, that's serious negligence -- or corruption.  Bad either way!

So, let me get this straight....  The Federal Reserve has, over three years given away or spent "off the books" a full $25 trillion on top of $6.5 trillion of deficits by the Obama Administration on top of nearly $1 trillion of TARP in two batches.  Let's see.... That's $32.5 Trillion of money that didn't exist three years ago (and still doesn't except in funny money).  Overall food and energy inflation -- which are not included in the Consumer Price Index which supposedly measures inflation but does nothing of the sort -- is hovering around 40% this past year.  And inflation of food and energy has been the norm for the past 24 years.  But when the number of dollars in circulation has been increased by a factor of four in three short years, the devaluation of the dollar is at a devastating level.

The only things that are holding back rampant hyperinflation are (1) the terrible economy and the huge unemployment rate and (2) the collapse of the European socialist economies which is making the dollar appear temporarily to be the "strong man" among world currencies.  That's just not going to last much longer.  Get ready folks!

But back to the missing $9 trillion dollars.  Listen to Alan Grayson's questioning of the Federal Reserve "auditors".  These dolts are incredibly unprepared, unbelievably dim-witted, and almost comical.  If this weren't so serious, it could qualify as a SNL sketch.


Bill Cochrane

_Here are the 50 economic numbers from 2011 that will shock you (via The Economic Collapse):

1. A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

3. If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

5. One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8 percent once you account for inflation.

8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

11. Back in 1980, less than 30 percent of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40 percent of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

12. Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job.  In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

14. The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

15. According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

16. As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages.  According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

17. The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

18. In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.

19. Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.

20. If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant.  That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

22. New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.

23. 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

24. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

25. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5 percent of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3 percent.

26. One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

27. If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

28. The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

29. It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.

30. The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse.  According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

31. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

32. According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5 percent in just one recent 12 month period.

33. Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever.  The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

34. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

35. According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.

36. If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

37. A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7 percent) than has ever been measured before.

38. Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

39. Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

40. Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America.   According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

41. Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

42. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7 percent of all income.  Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

43. A staggering 48.5 percent of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

44. Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP.  Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

45. For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.

46. If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

47. Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

48. If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

49. The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

50. During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

Of course, after going through all these numbers, the obvious question is, “how has it come to this?”  The Economic Collapse has a simple answer:

. . . the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve.  The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence.  If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape.   The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based.

But who among America’s leaders has the will and determination to do this?  Judging by how the Obama administration has conducted itself thus far, it doesn’t intend to consider (let alone implement) any of the suggestions mentioned in the above. Therefore, that leaves only the GOP candidates.

Who among them has the best chance to restore economic stability?  Who is the most likely to return the U.S. to prosperity?

“Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country,” TEC writes.

Indeed, 2012 may be one of the biggest turning points this country has ever seen.

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.

Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first-ever audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning.

What was revealed in the audit was startling:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 ($16 Trillion) had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest.

Why the Federal Reserve had never revealed any of this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious ― the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is "only" $15.1 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is "only" $3.5 trillion.

Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

"This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else." - Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Ron Paul (R-TX) as well as self-identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.

Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows..

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places.



Various

This is very disturbing albeit not unexpected.  The Federal Reserve has issued a Request for Proposal to have software developed which will monitor publications, blogs, news media, social media ―  all manner of sources for anything that is said about the Federal Reserve.  Then the software will automatically issue alerts and reports based on what is being said and by whom.  It will determine the "sentiments" being expressed and allow the Federal Reserve to "reach out" (what a euphemism!) to individual authors and bloggers who express views that the Federal Reserve doesn't like.  Read more....