America’s Middle Class In 2024: Aging Vehicles, $300 Carts Of Groceries, and Mountains of Credit Card Debt

Have things been getting better for the middle class, or have things been getting worse? Needless to say, the answer to that question is obvious. The cost of living is absolutely crushing us, we can’t afford to replace our rapidly aging vehicles, debt levels are exploding, and the proportion of the country that is living paycheck to paycheck has been steadily rising. Our economy is a mess, and America’s middle class is getting smaller and smaller. Sometimes I feel like I am watching a very tragic version of musical chairs. If you are still holding on to your chair, you should be very thankful, because more people are slipping out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day.

If you are old enough, you can still remember a time when many middle class families would purchase a new vehicle every few years. Continue reading

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The Looming Debt Crisis: Is America Following the Path of Collapsed Empires?

Debt can topple even the most powerful empires.

Whether it’s Rome, Spain, France, Britain, or the Soviet Union, excessive debt has played a critical role in their decline.

The typical pattern in these examples of collapsing empires is: Continue reading

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Are You Unknowingly on a Suicide Mission? Chasing the Wild Goose

“We’re a creature of Congress, we’re not in the Constitution.” ~ Fed Chair Jerome Powell, December 4, 2024

The transfer of wealth from workers and savers to the government and the big banks rolled on this week with Swiss-like precision. The process is both mechanical and subtle. Here in the USA the automated elegance of this ongoing operation receives little attention.

NFL football. Holiday BOGO offers. Trump’s cabinet picks. Hunter Biden’s pardon by the big guy. You name it. Bread and circuses like these – and many others – offer the American populace countless opportunities for chasing the wild goose. Continue reading

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The ‘Great Gold Rally’ Could Continue Through 2025

Falling interest rates and consistent central bank demand could sustain gold’s rally through 2025, according to Lina Thomas, commodities strategist at Goldman Sachs Research.

“Since 2022, gold prices have surged 40% even as US interest rates were climbing,” Thomas said in an update published Monday. “That is very strange. Typically, higher interest rates make gold less attractive – because gold doesn’t pay any interest, unlike bonds.” Continue reading

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Even After 30% Rally ~ Silver Looks Cheap in 2025

Silver prices have managed to hold critical support above $30 an ounce and are currently trading above $31. However, one market analyst notes that the precious metal continues to underperform gold –  at least for now. Continue reading

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32¢ on the Dollar and Getting Screwed Faaaaaast!

Originally published on the Federal Observer, April 21, 2009. Maybe it’s coming ’round again. ~ J.B.

You spend your entire adult life living life the right way. You buy a car on ‘time’, you pay your debt. You get retail store credit cards, such as JC Penney, Sears, Best Buy, etc. – You pay your bills on time or before they are due.

You purchase your first home in 1972, another in the Spring of ’76, sell it and buy another in the Fall of the same year. In ’79 your daughter is born, you pay the bill to the hospital because you have no insurance and you buy another house, and then another in ’80 and ’85, move to the Valley of the Scum in 1990 and buy another house, and another in 2003, sell it in 21 months and make a killing, and buy another in 2005. Continue reading

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Gold Is About Understanding the Events That Got Us Here and How They Will Unfold

“BEWARE of a broker with a silver tongue!” ~ Jeffrey Bennett, Publisher

November 9, 2009 ~ Brokers and traders will show you, “turn your gold into wealth”, “put it to productive use, Trade It”! “Sell your gold and buy it again, many times”. “Do this and find the value lost from your youth”!

But I say, spend your time in the company of truly wealthy ones, see how they make gold lie very still! Know this now, the world will again, in your time, feel value in gold as never before. And that value will be as the “productive use of holding wealth thru the fire of change”. “Yes, you can also walk in the footsteps of giants”. Continue reading

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Playing with Fire: Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve

The Fed has been the source of booms, busts, and the ongoing impoverishment of Americans since the Fed’s founding.

This is why a new, critical look at the Federal Reserve is needed, and why the Mises Institute is now happy to bring you this new documentary on the Fed.

Playing with Fire provides a look at how the Fed uses its expanding power to damage our economy, increase inequality, and to impoverish ordinary Americans. The film also looks at how much the Fed has expanded its own power since the Financial Crisis of 2008.

Featuring interviews with Ron Paul, Tom DiLorenzo, Joseph Salerno, Mark Thornton, Jim Grant, Alex Pollock, and Jonathan Newman, Playing with Fire explains what the Fed is, where it came from, and why it is so dangerous. Perhaps most importantly of all, Playing with Fire shows why we need to end the Fed altogether.

Written and Published by The Mises Institute ~ October 3, 2024

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Snyder ~ On The Wrong Track: This Is What An Imploding Economy Looks Like!

One of the main reasons why Americans are in such a foul mood right now is because the economy is in really bad shape and it just keeps getting worse. This is very good news for the Trump campaign, because most Americans don’t want things to remain the same.

A desire for change is in the air, but our economy is unraveling so rapidly that it won’t be easy for anyone to turn things around. We have built up a tremendous amount of momentum in the wrong direction, and it appears that the months ahead are not going to be pleasant. Continue reading

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Smith: How the Bankers Outfoxed the Politicians

Since the job that was actually assigned to [the Fed] by Congressman Carter Glass back in 1913 is now vestigial and long gone, and the financial system has been flooded with massive liquidity for decades on end, it might well be time to declare victory and let the free market take care of jobs, growth, inflation and prosperity. ~ David Stockman

Blow it Outcher…

Let’s take a closer look at the job Congressman Carter Glass assigned to the government’s new central bank, the Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The first thing to notice is it’s a creature of government, not the market, otherwise there would be no need to support the Fed with a legislative act, which gave it the status of a state-backed cartel.

It’s crucial to understand that the push for central banking was part of the Progressive Era feature of business partnering with government in its war against competition. Mergers on the free market had failed for various reasons, including internal conflicts among members, challenges from new entrants in the market, and new competing markets altogether, such as the new motor vehicle industry that emerged in 1893 and by 1895 saw “thirty American manufacturers producing 2,500 motor vehicles.” Continue reading

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