The economic news you rarely see on the major
media
The Most Important Documentary You May Ever Watch
This documentary by the National Inflation Association explains how the
current monetary policies of the government is leading us to bankruptcy,
hyper-inflation and the loss of entitlement programs like Medicare and
Social Security. It should be watched by everyone concerned for their
children's and grandchildren's future, you have been warned - editor.
Is the dollar Collapsing?
May 10, 2010
The World's Fiat Currency System Risks Collapse
On February 12th, NIA released an article entitled, "Greece Distracting
from Real Debt Crisis in U.S." in which we said, "We hope that Greece
doesn't get bailed out, because a bailout would cause foreign investors
to become more irresponsible than ever and create even greater moral
hazards. Unfortunately, not only is it likely that Greece will get
bailed out, it's possible our own Federal Reserve will get involved. The
U.S. Federal Reserve has the ability to make loans to foreign central
banks without disclosure to the U.S. public. European banks have already
benefited $50 billion from the U.S.'s bailouts of AIG, so it's not out
of the realm of possibility that the Federal Reserve will intervene due
to euro-zone countries being key U.S. trading partners."
NIA was right, late Sunday evening the Federal Reserve announced the
re-establishment of U.S. dollar liquidity swap facilities with foreign
central banks, as a part of the European Union (EU)'s nearly $1 trillion
bailout plan. The Federal Open Market Committee has authorized swap
lines through January 2011 with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England,
the European Central Bank (ECB), the Swiss National Bank, and the Bank
of Japan.
While the Federal Reserve may say these swap lines are necessary "to
help improve liquidity conditions in U.S. dollar funding markets and to
prevent the spread of strains to other markets and financial centers",
NIA recognizes that this is nothing more than another transfer of wealth
from the American middle class to bankers around the world through
inflation. This program was originally enacted in 2008 when the Federal
Reserve loaned $582.8 billion to foreign central banks without any
disclosure of which central banks got the money.
NIA believes it is unconstitutional for the Federal Reserve to make
loans to foreign central banks. Most likely, the Federal Reserve was
pressured by Wall Street to re-establish the swap facilities because
Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
have about $2.5 trillion in exposure to Europe, and Wall Street doesn't
want to see their bets go bad.
Not only will Americans now be exposed to the European debt crisis
through the Federal Reserve's swap lines, but the U.S. will be giving
money away to Europe through the IMF. The IMF is contributing up to 220
billion Euros as a part of the bailout, which equals $283.1 billion at
the latest exchange rate. The U.S. represents approximately 20% of IMF
funding, which means the bailout is costing U.S. taxpayers $56.7
billion, not including the potential losses from loans made by the
Federal Reserve and the inflation it will create.
The moral hazards of the EU bailout are immeasurable. It sets a
dangerous precedent that the ECB won't allow any eurozone nations to
fail, just like the Federal Reserve won't allow any major financial
institutions on Wall Street to fail. Eventually, if you don't allow the
free market to punish countries and financial institutions that
recklessly speculated and made poor financial decisions, the
financial
crisis we are preventing will turn into a currency crisis that the
western world will never be able to recover from. Although NIA still
believes the U.S. dollar will win its race to the bottom with the Euro,
we are now at risk of a total collapse of the world's fiat currency
system.
Imagine if baseball teams weren't allowed to fail. You probably remember
playing t-ball as a kid and at the end of every game, both teams were
declared the winner. Think about what would happen if Major League
Baseball declared there will no longer be losers at professional
baseball games, both teams will be declared the winners of every game.
Would you still pay $300 for a ticket to see a Major League Baseball
game? Of course not, the value of the tickets would collapse to nothing,
similar to how fiat currencies will soon lose their purchasing power if
we don't allow countries and financial institutions to fail.
NIA is almost done producing its nearly hour-long documentary 'Meltup'.
We spent quadruple the time and money producing Meltup than we did
producing our previous critically acclaimed documentary 'The Dollar
Bubble', which has already surpassed 710,000 views since November 23rd.
We believe Meltup will be the best economic documentary ever produced in
world history and a must see for yourself, your friends, and your
family.
Last week, NIA conducted an hour-long interview with Gerald Celente,
founder of the Trends Research Institute. We can honestly say that our
interview with Mr. Celente was the single most shocking, insightful and
informative interview we have ever witnessed or heard. NIA will be using
footage from our interview with Mr. Celente in Meltup. We highly
recommend that you visit Mr. Celente's Trends Research Institute and
subscribe to his Trends Journal. We just got done reading his latest
Trends Journal and it is one of the most compelling pieces of journalism
we have ever come across.
Why should the U.S. have to bail out European countries which give huge
pensions and social services to their retirees? Hold on folks this could
spread our way.
US taxpayers will be helping to foot the bill for the
Greek bailout, via the Interna tional Monetary Fund. And if the Obama
administration doesn’t draw a clear line, Uncle Sam may soon be on the
line for even more and larger European “rescues.”
The Greek government, with its high taxes and profligate
spending to support large bureaucracies and social programs, is
bankrupt. Its bonds have been downgraded to junk status.
As economist
Milton Friedman once said, “If you put the federal government in
charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of
sand.” Greece has run out of sand.
Concerned that the fiscal damage could spread throughout
the EU and the world, other
European Union members and the IMF have pledged $145 billion to bail
out Greece. And since the United States is the largest contributor to
the IMF budget, our government will be funneling billions of American
tax dollars to Greece.
No one wants to see Greece fail — the economic stability
of Europe is important. But US taxpayers have funded bailout after
bailout, and our country faces a debt crisis of its own.
Our unemployment rate stands at nearly 10 percent. The
public debt now stands at $9.2 trillion. The
Congressional Budget Office predicts that America’s debt held by the
public will reach 90 percent of gross domestic product within 10 years
under President Obama’s budget. Without dramatic spending restraints,
America is on a path like the one that led to Greece’s financial
catastrophe.
In fact,
Federal Reserve Chairman
Ben Bernanke recently warned congressional leaders that, without
significant spending restraints, the United States would soon face a
debt crisis like the one in Greece.
It is unfair and unwise to ask US taxpayers to fund
bailouts for EU countries while America racks up huge deficits.
And it’s unlikely that Greece will be the last major EU
member to seek financial help. High-debt Portugal, Spain and Italy could
all face similar crises soon. Piero Ghezzi, an economist at Barclay’s
Capital, estimates that Spain may need a $450 billion bailout. Italy
might well need more.
The United States pays 17 percent of total member
contributions to the IMF; No. 2 Japan provides just 6 percent. That
entitles us to a claim on the overall IMF balance sheet, not a share of
any specific loan — but it still means that our “share” of the $40
billion IMF package for Greece is equivalent to $6.8 billion.
Last year, Congress passed another $100 billion line of
credit to the IMF — funds the IMF said will go “to forestall or cope
with an impairment of the international monetary system or to deal with
an exceptional situation that poses a threat to the stability of that
system.”
In other words, the “too big to fail” doctrine is being
expanded to an international level — with the United States as the
primary stakeholder.
I have no problem
with private sector unions, if they over bargain their company will
fail. Public sector unions continually raise the taxes of those paying
for them and should be illegal. Look out Greece here comes the U.S. -
P.S. I was a private sector union employee for 23 years (Teamsters) and
both the nationwide companies failed. Are you public sector Union
employees willing to watch your County, State, or Nation fail? -
it will happen!
As
Rasmussen reports – “New Jersey and California are just two of the
states that are wrestling with high numbers of well-compensated
unionized public employees as they try to reduce growing
budget deficits. But a new
Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that Americans are
generally favorable toward these unions…”
Dow Jones Newswire reports –
“Greek Police Clash With Protesters As March Turns Violent - police have
fired tear gas and stun grenades as groups of angry youths rampaged
through the city center smashing shop windows, overturning
garbage bins, and setting fire to at least two businesses.”
The Greek protests are
led by government employee labor unions. In the states, we know SEIU
(Service Employees International Union) under the AFL-CIO. And as the
New York Times reported back in January, most U.S. union members now
work for the government.
“The clashes come as tens
of thousands of protesters gathered to protest the government’s recently
announced austerity measures in one of the largest protests in recent
years, and coinciding with a nationwide general strike that has
paralyzed the country.”
Overtaxed and still over
spent, Greece’s public sector labor unions are revolting against
government cutbacks. Obama and SEIU have the good ole USA poised to
follow that utopian trail into national bankruptcy. In both countries,
the majority of union employees now hold taxpayer funded government
jobs, the only kind of jobs that government can create.
The labor union protests
in the streets of bankrupt Greece are in opposition to forced cutbacks
in government spending and related services, all necessary to securing
additional bailout funds from the EU and IMF in excess of $100 billion
to keep Greece from sinking into complete anarchy.
Protesters who have
already bled the nation dry of resources in their endless demand for
socialist government handouts, are angry over the fact that it is
government jobs, protected by public employee labor unions and paid for
by Greek taxpayers, that must be cut in order to stop the excessive
deficit spending that left Greece the first of many nations to collapse
under the weight of socialized economics.
California and New Jersey
are the first to follow in the economic-suicide footsteps of Greece and
if it weren’t for ongoing multiple federal bailouts of these two states,
all at U.S. taxpayer expense, streets in the U.S. would look just like
the streets of Athens.
To no surprise, states
with the most labor union influence are first to belly up in America
To no surprise, states
with the most labor union influence are first to belly up in America.
So-called “right to work” states (aka, states where workers can reject
labor unions) seem to be faring much better, even in the economic
downturn.
Still, according to
Rasmussen, 53% of U.S. citizens support labor unions for public
employees, without connecting the dots between labor union demands for
ever shrinking worker productivity and ever increasing pay and benefits,
and the fact that the U.S. economy is only months behind Greece, Iceland
and much of the EU, at best…
Americans Had Better
Connect the Dots Soon!
Labor unions have
destroyed manufacturing in America. They made U.S. students the most
under-educated lot on earth. Now they are driving the cost of government
through the roof, just like in Greece and there is NO way for this to
end well.
When labor unions demand
every increasing wages and benefits for government employees, the
taxpayer takes a direct hit every time. When the economy stumbles, and
tax revenues shrink, the cost of government and welfare services in
particular, become unsustainable.
Protesters in Greece are
right about one thing - it is the lowest people in the economic pecking
order which will get hurt the most when oversized government has no
choice but to shrink in size and scope. Said another way, government
dependents don’t know what to do when the public trough runs dry.
But they fail to make the
connection between lack of productivity, increasing cost and shrinking
resources. The end is inevitable for any government that tries to become
all things to all people, while robbing the most productive members of
society of their rightful earnings to keep it all afloat.
In the end, no nation has
access to a bottomless well of resources.
For the record, Greece
was already one of the highest taxed nations on earth, with 33.5% of GDP
burned up in taxes. The United States is not far behind with 28.2% of
GDP swallowed up in taxes, while red ink still runs all over the page in
unfunded promises as far as the eye can see, with more unfunded promises
made daily.
Only a handful of
communist/socialist nations have a higher tax rate than Greece, yet
Greece was unable to sustain its government no matter how much money they robbed from their
productive members of society.
Yet many Americans don’t
seem to have the critical thinking skills to connect these dots and
predict their own demise, even as other nations begin to collapse under
the weight of excessive government and related taxation without real
representation for taxpayers.
No FREE Lunch
The FREE-LUNCH mentality
of the “entitlement generation” in America is driving the United States
right off the same cliff that Greece just fell off.
However, Americans,
unlike any other people on earth, have an equal birthright NOT to big
screen TV’s, fancy cars and
homes they can’t afford, but to
thrive, survive or fail of their own choosing. To live FREE, making
their own life choices, be they good, bad or indifferent.
The effort to trade
freedom for a free-lunch will always fail in the end, no matter the
momentary euphoria from a utopian campaign promise to destroy “the rich”
in favor of “the poor.”
The Unites States was
once the most prosperous and powerful nation on earth, largely because
it was the only nation on earth that didn’t fall for the false promise
of equal free stuff. But today, our “entitlement generation” has fallen
for the lie and they won’t be set free until they are once again able to
separate fact from fiction.
Bottom line… if we don’t
do away with public sector labor unions, we cannot reel in our runaway
government or the high cost of bailing out the unions while the nation
goes under.
Congresswoman Bachmann: Federal Government Now
Owns or Controls 51% of the Private Economy
Peter Schiff: New financial regs will likely increase
severity of next crisis
The following is an opinion piece
written by Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of
Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse. Mr. Schiff, a
Republican, is also running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by
Banking Committee chair Christopher Dodd.
In a speech to Wall Street today,
President Obama talked of a "failure of responsibility" in Washington
and on Wall Street. But the financial sector is the most regulated part
of the economy, so surely responsibility lies mostly with Washington. It
was the federal government that created deposit insurance, which removed
risk (and therefore caution) from bank deposits. It was also the feds
that created "too big to fail," our new system of private profits and
socialized losses. Most importantly, it was federal taxes and
regulations that undermined our productive capacity, rendering us weak
in the face of financial shocks.
In this speech castigating private greed,
no mention was made of Fannie, Freddie, or the FHA's role in encouraging
sub-prime loans, nor of the Fed's ultra-low interest rates which made
the mortgage "teaser rate" possible. The maligned "unregulated
derivatives" market was largely based on exposure to these
government-backed loans.
Obama claims he wants "common sense
rules" to be put in place. Yet, his reform proposal defies common sense.
The new "resolution authority" is an
attempt to replace the traditional bankruptcy court system with a
bailout bureaucracy that subordinates the rule of law to political
expediency. The result of this reform will be to increase uncertainty
for any honest market participants - and create a protected sandbox for
firms connected to the executive branch.
The "Volcker Rule" to split up large
firms runs directly counter to this, and the past, Administration's
encouragement of dominant banks to buy their weaker competitors.
Ironically, the additional regulations put in place by the bill will
create tremendous barriers to entry for new firms, and strongly
advantage those firms that can create the largest economies of scale
(number of productive employees per compliance officer).
So long as the Fed continues to hold
interest rates artificially low and the government continues to
guarantee mortgages, real estate prices will remain distorted, credit
will be misallocated, moral hazards will increase, and the underlying
fundamentals of our economy will continue to deteriorate. Contrary to
the President's assertion, government bailouts and stimulus have
weakened the underpinnings of our economy, not saved it. As a result,
the next economic crisis, likely to hit within a few short years, will
be that much worse. Not only will this new regulation do nothing to
prevent the second phase of the crisis, it will more than likely
increase its severity.
The President seems to insinuate the he
saw the crisis coming. Well, I was on national television as far back as
2005 explaining the problem and warning of an impending crash. This was
back when Senator Obama was voting for the bills that made it all
possible. Since the proof is in the pudding, click here to see my
presentation to the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2006.
Merrill Lynch & Co. engaged in the same investor fraud that the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. of committing, according to a bank that sued the firm in New York
last year.
Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank BA, known as Rabobank,
claims Merrill, now a unit of Bank of America Corp., failed to tell it
a key fact in advising on a synthetic collateralized debt obligation.
Omitted was Merrill’s relationship with another client betting against
the investment, which resulted in a loss of $45 million, Rabobank
claims.
“This is the tip of the iceberg in regard to Goldman Sachs and certain
other banks who were stacking the deck against CDO investors,” said
Jon Pickhardt, an attorney with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver &
Hedges, who is representing Netherlands-based Rabobank.
Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street
history, created and sold CDOs tied to subprime mortgages in early
2007, as the U.S. housing market faltered, without disclosing that
Paulson helped pick the underlying securities and bet against them,
the SEC said in a statement yesterday.
The SEC allegations are “unfounded in law and fact, and we will
vigorously contest them,” Goldman said in a statement.
“When one major firm becomes aware of the creative instrument of
others, there is historically an effort to replicate them,” said Jacob
Frenkel, a former SEC lawyer now in private practice in Potomac,
Maryland.
SEC spokesman John Heine declined to comment on whether it is
investigating Merrill’s actions.
Merrill loaded the Norma CDO with bad assets, Rabobank claims.
Rabobank seeks $45 million in damages, according to a complaint filed
in state court in June 2009. Rabobank initially provided a secured
loan of almost $60 million to Merrill, according to its complaint.
No Surprise
That Merrill Lynch now stands accused should not surprise anyone. Nor
will it be any surprise if Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are accused of
similar dealings. Indeed, it may be interesting to see who is not
accused.
Goldman's statement The SEC allegations are “unfounded in law and fact,
and we will vigorously contest them” is an interesting theoretical
debate.
Accusations that Goldman front runs trades, bets against clients, is
unethical to the nth degree, and has no sense of fiduciary
responsibility to its clients is quite easy to believe. Whether Goldman
Sachs violated the law is another question.
Even if the Goldman settles with the SEC for peanuts, numerous cases
will likely make it to court. This may drag out for years.
By the way, anyone buying those CDOs from Merrill or Goldman has mush
for brains, but that will not likely be a valid legal defense.
(Reuters) - Major U.S. banks temporarily
lowered their debt levels just before reporting in the past five
quarters, making it appear their balance sheets were less risky, the
Wall Street Journal said, citing data from the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York.
The paper said on Friday 18 banks,
including Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N),
Morgan Stanley (MS.N), J.P. Morgan Chase
(JPM.N) Bank of America (BAC.N)
and Citigroup (C.N), understated the debt
levels used to fund securities trades by lowering them an average of 42
percent at the end of each period.
The banks had increased their debt in the
middle of successive quarters, it said.
Citi, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs,
JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were not immediately available for
comment when contacted by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours.
Excessive leverage by the banks was one
of the causes that led to the global financial crisis in 2008.
Due to the credit crisis, banks have
become more sensitive about showing high levels of debt and risk,
worried their stocks and credit ratings could be punished, the Journal
said.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York could
not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters
Nearly half of US households not
actually paying fed income tax
Recession, new tax credits have nearly half of US households paying no
federal income tax
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tax Day is a dreaded
deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's
simply somebody else's problem.
About 47 percent will pay no federal
income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they
qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate
their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy
Center, a Washington research organization.
Most people still are required to file
returns by the April 15 deadline. The penalty for skipping it is limited
to the amount of taxes owed, but it's still almost always better to
file: That's the only way to get a refund of all the income taxes
withheld by employers.
In recent years, credits for low- and
middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making
as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as
there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis
by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.
Tax cuts enacted in the past decade have
been generous to wealthy taxpayers, too, making them a target for
President
Barack Obama
and Democrats in Congress. Less noticed were tax cuts for low- and
middle-income families, which were expanded when Obama signed the
massive economic recovery package last year.
The result is a tax system that exempts
almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone,
including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education.
It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners -- households
making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the
income taxes collected by the federal government.
The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a
profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax
credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the
government sends them a payment.
"We have 50 percent of people who are
getting something for nothing," said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy
analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
The vast majority of people who escape
federal income taxes still pay other taxes, including federal payroll
taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, and excise taxes on
gasoline, aviation, alcohol and cigarettes. Many also pay state or local
taxes on sales, income and property.
That helps explain the country's aversion
to taxes, said Clint Stretch, a tax policy expert Deloitte Tax. He said
many people simply look at the difference between their gross pay and
their take-home pay and blame the government for the disparity.
"It's not uncommon for people to think
that their Social Security taxes, their 401(k) contributions, their
share of employer health premiums, all of that stuff in their mind gets
lumped into income taxes," Stretch said.
The federal income tax is the
government's largest source of revenue, raising more than $900 billion
-- or a little less than half of all government receipts -- in the
budget year that ended last Sept. 30. But with deductions and credits,
especially for families with children, there have long been people who
don't pay it, mainly lower-income families.
The number of households that don't pay
federal income taxes increased substantially in 2008, when the poor
economy reduced incomes and Congress cut taxes in an attempt to help
recovery.
In 2007, about 38 percent of households
paid no federal income tax, a figure that jumped to 49 percent in 2008,
according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.
In 2008, President
George W. Bush
signed a law providing most families with rebate checks of $300 to
$1,200. Last year, Obama signed the economic recovery law that expanded
some tax credits and created others. Most targeted low- and
middle-income families.
Obama's Making Work Pay credit provides
as much as $800 to couples and $400 to individuals. The expanded child
tax credit provides $1,000 for each child under 17. The Earned Income
Tax Credit provides up to $5,657 to low-income families with at least
three children.
There are also tax credits for college
expenses, buying a new home and upgrading an existing home with
energy-efficient doors, windows, furnaces and other appliances. Many of
the credits are refundable, meaning if the credits exceed the amount of
income taxes owed, the taxpayer gets a payment from the government for
the difference.
"All these things are ways the government
says, if you do this, we'll reduce your tax bill by some amount," said
Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.
The government could provide the same
benefits through spending programs, with the same effect on the federal
budget, Williams said. But it sounds better for politicians to say they
cut taxes rather than they started a new spending program, he added.
Obama has pushed tax cuts for low- and
middle-income families and tax increases for the wealthy, arguing that
wealthier taxpayers fared well in the past decade, so it's time to pay
up. The nation's wealthiest taxpayers did get big tax breaks under Bush,
with the top marginal tax rate reduced from 39.6 percent to 35 percent,
and the second-highest rate reduced from 36 percent to 33 percent.
But income tax rates were lowered at
every income level. The changes made it relatively easy for families of
four making $50,000 to eliminate their income tax liability.
Here's how they did it, according to
Deloitte Tax:
The family was entitled to a standard
deduction of $11,400 and four personal exemptions of $3,650 apiece,
leaving a taxable income of $24,000. The federal income tax on $24,000
is $2,769.
With two children younger than 17, the
family qualified for two $1,000 child tax credits. Its Making Work Pay
credit was $800 because the parents were married filing jointly.
The $2,800 in credits exceeds the $2,769
in taxes, so the family makes a $31 profit from the federal income tax.
That ought to take the sting out of April 15.
U.S. Decline, Sloth Look a Lot
Like End of Rome: Mark Fisher
March 30 (Bloomberg) — Historians cite the late second
century as the turning point of the Roman Empire, when the once- proud,
feared society began its descent into infamy.
As the ruling class was undermined by civil wars and
attacks by outsiders, the Romans’ respect for law and social
institutions began to erode. In the end, a combination of political and
economic mistakes led to the empire’s downfall.
The U.S. today is a mirror image of the Roman Empire
as it tipped into chaos. Whether we blame our bloated government, a
greedy elite or a lethargic population, the similarities between the two
foreshadow a gruesome future.
The Roman economy grew fat from the plunder of
conquered territories and the added productivity offered by new lands.
The waning of expansionism didn’t bode well for the empire.
While the U.S. ascended quite differently, it also
used its position as a superpower to fuel economic expansion. Because
the country had the strongest military and economy in the post-World War
II era, the U.S. dollar became the de facto global reserve currency,
ensuring endless competitive advantages — which have vanished in the
last decade.
Americans have become less productive while relying
more on social safety-net programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security — and now expanded health-care insurance. Worse, like the
ancient Romans, a sense of entitlement has replaced the drive and
motivation we once championed. With easy access to abundant government
handouts, it’s no wonder so many jobless people have stopped looking for
work.
Bread and Circuses
In the fifth century, the Roman political elite began
searching for ways to distract its population from the hopelessness at
hand. Bread and circuses postponed the ultimate fall. The tactic stopped
working when people realized their bread tasted stale and sensed the
true scope of the impending disaster.
The U.S. government’s version of bread offerings
proliferated throughout the fiscal crisis, in which collapse was averted
only by a massive financial bailout and an endless supply of paper
money, along with the rest of the seemingly endless sustenance being
shoved down America’s throat.
