Foodstamps Surge By Most In One Year To New All Time Record, In Delayed Release

While there had been speculation that the BLS may delay the release of its October nonfarm payroll number until after the election, it turned out there was no reason to worry. Perhaps this is because the number, while at stall speed, was not quite as horrible as some had expected (even if the change in average hourly earnings did tumble to new all time lows) and so boosted Obama's reelection chances. There was, however, another closely tracked number which perhaps is far more indicative of the economic "growth" in the past 4 years, which certainly had a delayed release. The number of course is that showing how many Americans are on foodstamps, and usually is released at the end of the month, or the first day or two of the next month. This time the USDA delayed its release nine days past the semi-official deadline, far past the election, and until Friday night to report August foodstamp data. One glance at the number reveals why: at 47.1 million, this was not only a new all time record, but the monthly increase of 420,947 from July was the biggest monthly increase in one year. One can see why a reported surge in foodstamps ahead of the elections is something the USDA, and the administration may not have been too keen on disclosing.

Companies plan massive layoffs as Obamacare becomes reality

by Kerry Picket, The Washington Times:
Freedom Works has put together a list of companies that will be laying off employees as a result of President Barack Obama’s health care law:
Welch Allyn: a company that manufactures medical diagnostic equipment in central New York, announced in September that they would be laying off 275 employees, or roughly 10% of their workforce over the next three years. One of the major reasons discussed for the layoffs was a proactive response to the Medical Device Tax mandated by the new healthcare law.
Dana Holding Corp.: As recently as a week ago, a global auto parts manufacturing company in Ohio known as Dana Holding Corp., warned their employees of potential layoffs, citing “$24 million over the next six years in additional U.S. health care expenses”. After laying off several white collar staffers, company insiders have hinted at more to come. The company will have to cover the additional $24 million cost somehow, which will likely equate to numerous cuts in their current workforce of 25,500 worldwide.
Stryker: One of the biggest medical device manufacturers in the world, Stryker will close their facility in Orchard Park, New York, eliminating 96 jobs in December. Worse, they plan on countering the medical device tax in Obamacare by slashing 5% of their global workforce – an estimated 1,170 positions.
Read More @ WashingtonTimes.com

Parts of New York City Descending into Absolute Chaos

Emergency Shelters that are open, are Death Traps
from Off Grid Survival:
FEMA, the federal agency who’s responsible for responding to natural disasters and emergencies, apparently can’t figure out how to respond to anything. Over a week after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, the agency is still having trouble providing basic emergency supplies and shelter to the affected area.
And now to add insult to injury, FEMA has actually had to shut down emergency relief shelters due to a snow storm that just hit the area.
Is this really what America voted for? We spend billions of dollars a year on this agency and they can’t even handle the one thing their supposed to be able to do; respond to an emergency situation.
Read More @ OffGridSurvival.com

James Turk: Crunch Time for US in 2013-15 Timeframe 

from Gold Money:

Gold has been the standout winner following the US election. The metal’s performance yesterday was particularly impressive in that it coincided with notable losses in stock markets. The Wall Street Journal comments that year-to-date, gold has outperformed the S&P 500 (the former up 10.6%; the latter just 10%).
This is not a huge difference, and critics of gold will be sure to note that it doesn’t pay a dividend. But as Franco-Nevada Chairman Pierre Lassonde once commented: “bullion doesn’t pay interest or dividends, nor does it grow or expand by itself. That’s the price you pay for tranquillity.” Physical gold (and other precious metals) are no one else’s liability, in contrast with stocks, bonds, and currencies; given the shakiness of the financial system at the moment and the systemic risk affecting financial assets, this value is not to be sniffed at.
Read More @ GoldMoney.com

CBO on “Ultimate Can Kicking”

by Bruce Krasting, Bruce Krasting Blog:
The Congressional Budget Office is out with a very well timed report on what the hell should be done with debt, deficits, taxes and the economy.
There is a lot of information in the reports. (link), I doubt that too many of the folks in Congress will bother to read it. I looked through it; I think the following chart is the one the deciders in D.C. will focus on:
Lots of policy options are measured in the chart. Think like a politician, and go to the bottom line. What set of proposals has the biggest bang?
-Totally junk the scheduled spending cuts for the military.
-Do away with all of the mandatory non-defense cuts (sequestration).
-Don’t do anything with taxes. Roll over everything for a couple of more years.
-Extend the 2% payroll tax break for two years.
If we kick the can down the road for a few more years, what do we get?
Read More @ BruceKrasting.blogspot.com

Nullification Goes Mainstream; States Defy Washington on Drugs and Health Care

by John Rubino, The Dollar Collapse:

As the federal government gradually assimilates the rest of the country, a few states have begun to fight back. From the Kansas City Star:
No state-run health insurance exchanges in Missouri or Kansas
Missouri will be unable to implement a key provision of federal health care law, Gov.Jay Nixon announced Thursday.
Meantime, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownbacksays he won’t support an application from Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger to establish a state-federal health insurance marketplace.
That means it will be up to the federal government to establish health insurance exchanges in Missouri and Kansas.
Read More @ TheDollarCollapse.com

Will Spain Turn to Its History of Anarchy in Economic Crisis?

from Silver Vigilante:
Tens of thousands of people marched in 56 Spanish cities at the beginning of October to protest austerity cuts imposed from the European north through the ECB. The country has been rocked by an unemployment rate around 30%. The youth unemployment rate is around 50%. 20,000 people marched in Madrid alone behind a banner that read: “They want to ruin the country. We have to stop them.” The rally in Spain’s capital was supported by 150 organizations.
“They are abusing the lower social classes,” 54-year-old teacher Luis Diaz said. “By backing banks, they are torturing the working class and badly affecting public education, health care and pensions when what they should be doing is exactly the opposite.”
Read More @ Silver Vigilante

If The Greek Elections Were Held Today

Last week's largely symbolic vote in which the Greek bailout-addicted parliament passed, by the tiniest of margins, the latest request for just one more monetary fix promising that this time it will, pinky swear, get its house in order (and maybe even collect some taxes, because all those previous promises were just rehearsals) succeeded in one thing: the coalition government from this summer's elections, crumbling well ahead of time. Which means the time for yet another parliamentary vote is fast approaching. So if a vote were held today, who would be the most represented parties in the Greek parliament? The answer, according to the latest KAPA poll, is the following...

Four More Years!!! Nah It Won’t Take That Long

from DRescapes.com:
Hi guys its Barry in DR. I have a few days to catch up now that the last few people departed yesterday. The next couples don’t arrive till mid next week so it leaves me a bit of time for one or two blogs. During the past two months it’s been a steady process of picking up Discovery Tour people, introducing people and in general trying to fit five pounds of apples into a four pound bag. It truly has been a delight to meet so many like minded people.
We’re pleased to see so many have decided to take their futures into their own hands and break away from the negativity and soon to follow violence looming over the western nations. But with this latest election in America… you will NOT have to worry about FOUR MORE YEARS OF THIS!!! Not a chance! It will never hold together that long.
Read More @ DRescapes.com

EU Budget Talks Collapse

Talks to agree the European Union’s budget for next year broke down amid rows involving among member states including Britain – sparking a new funding crisis.
by Bruno Waterfield, The Telegraph:

Eight hours of negotiations in Brussels ended in walkouts after MEPs refused to drop demands for an extra £13.8 billion in European Union spending for this year and 2013.
The failure of the talks casts a fresh doubt on whether a major summit to agree to the EU’s future funding from 2014 to 2020, scheduled for later this month, can go ahead.
There had already been speculation that the summit would be cancelled because David Cameron was refusing to drop his threat of using Britain’s veto to block any future increase above the level of inflation.
Read More @ Telegraph.co.uk

Strategic Relocation – FULL VERSION

from TheAlexJonesChannel:

Joel Skousen sits down with Alex Jones and discusses strategies on how to prepare for and survive major disasters. Joel Skousen is a world renowned expert in designing secure homes, geo-political analysis, and strategic relocation. Preparing food, water, arms, medical supplies, and shelter may not be a good enough plan. Large population centers are the biggest threat to survival after any major disaster. Joel Skousen explains his strategy for survival, which includes acquiring all of the essentials, preparing in a safe location and methods on how to avoid a dangerous hungry population and safely arrive at your secure location.

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Barclays' Barry Knapp Batters Bullish Believers

Barclays' Barry Knapp has joined the growing crowd of 'sub-1400 year-end S&P 500 target' realists among sell-side equity strategists. With Morgan Stanley's Adam Parker at 1167 and Goldman's David Kostin at 1250, Knapp just reduced his target to 1325 as he notes "the election scenario that unfolded was the one with the most risk, the status quo outcome." In a brief but densely packed interview on Bloomberg TV (the likes of which we suspect we will not see on CNBC), Knapp summarizes his non-rose-colored-glasses view: "In the longer term, while U.S. growth ... remains constrained by policy uncertainty and balance sheet deleveraging. Financial repression has limited the Fed’s effectiveness... We believe a period of significant equity market valuation improvement can’t begin until the Fed initiates the exit strategy process, which is unlikely to occur until Federal government debt sustainability is addressed." From lame-duck impotence to tax-selling pressures, Knapp nails our new reality and explains, as we have been saying, that the only solution lies in a market-forced move: "We suspect, absent a market correction large enough to force compromise, the two sides will not agree on the starting point for tax rates." Must Watch...

"The Worm Turns" As Chevron 'Infected' By Stuxnet Collateral Damage

"I don't think the US government even realized how far it had spread" is how the collateral damage from the Iran-attacking Stuxnet computer virus is described by Chevron. The sleep San-Ramon-based oil giant admitted this week that from 2010 on "we're finding it in our systems and so are other companies... so now we have to deal with it." It would seem that little consideration for just how viral this cyber warfare tactic has become and this news (reported by Russia Today) is the first time a US company has come clean about the accidental infection. On the record, the federal government maintains ignorance on the subject of Stuxnet, but perhaps Chevron sums up the impact of Stuxnet best (given the escalating Iranian enrichment program): "I think the downside of what they did is going to be far worse than what they actually accomplished." As more truth comes out so it would appear the probability of copycat attacks is rising as the shadowy Iranian-based hacking group called The Qassam Cyber Fighters took credit for launching a cyberattack on the servers of Capital One Financial Corp. and BB&T Corp just last month.

On Germany's Desire To See America "On Its Knees", And Its "Infantile Crush On Obama"

When you strip all the politically correct rhetoric, and the carefully sculpted facade is taken off for the night, this is what remains: Via Germany's most popular financial newspaper Spiegel: "There is hardly an issue about which Germans as so united as they are by their desire to see America on its knees. It unites both the left and the right. Wherever they look, they see decay, a lack of culture and ignorance. "A perverse mixture of irresponsibility, greed, and religious zealotry".  With a bit of luck, the specter across the Atlantic might even take care of itself. It can't be ruled out. When they are not shooting each other or being fried by dangling power lines then the Americans might simply pop. Two out of every three US citizens are overweight, or even obese! Every child in Germany knows the numbers. The childish excitement over Obama, that once again took hold over Germans during this election -- fully 93 percent of the country would have voted for him in this election -- is the flip side of this desire for America's demise. That the Germans, of all people, should see themselves in a black civil rights attorney from Chicago can only be explained by the fact that they see him as the opposite of what they consider to be normal Americans."

Helicopters Grounded?

from Azizonomics:
Having recently uncovered in its own research that quantitative easing is enriching the richest 5%, and the British economy still mired in the doldrums even in spite of hundreds of billions of easing, the Bank of England announced last week that it was grounding its fleet of helicopters dropping cash onto the big banks and suspending the quantitative easing program.
Yet, this may not be the end for British monetary activism.
Anatole Kaletsky wrote last month:

This week an even more radical debate burst into the open in Britain. Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, found himself fighting a rearguard action against a groundswell of support for “dropping money from helicopters” – something proposed by Milton Friedman in 1969 as the ultimate cure for intractable economic depressions and recently described in this column as “Quantitative Easing for the People.”
Read More @ Azizonomics.com

Avoiding The Fiscal Cliff = QE To Infinity

from Truth in Gold:

There is no reason to expect that renewed efforts at federal budget deficit reduction will result in anything more than the usual smoke and mirrors, further increasing, not reducing, long-term U.S. sovereign-solvency risk. In reality, the U.S. economy has not recovered, and no recovery is pending. Consumer liquidity remains severely impaired, and broad business activity continues to falter anew. As a result. the actual federal budget deficit going forward will be much worse than the relatively rosy numbers being used as the basis for government negotiations - John Williams, www.shadowstats.com
Everyone can draw their own conclusions about how this so-called “fiscal cliff” situation will play out, but the only way it can possibly be “resolved” is by postponing the inevitable. As Williams states: “Accordingly, global market reaction—to a severely deteriorating outlook for U.S. fiscal conditions—increasingly should reflect massive flight from the U.S. dollar and movement into gold and the stronger Western currencies.”
Read More @ Truthingold.blogspot.com

WHAT Are They Hiding???

6 lingering questions about the exit of Gen. David Petraeus
by Edward-Isaac Dovere and Josh Gerstein, Politico:
Resignations over scandals often raise more questions than they answer, and that’s true of Gen. David Petraeus’s abrupt exit from the Central Intelligence Agency.
Some have already been put to rest: Paula Broadwell, the author of “All In: The Education of David Petraeus,” has been identified as the woman at the center of the FBI email probe that ultimately toppled him.
But many questions remain. Here are POLITICO’s six most important:
1. Why resign now? The Obama administration’s first sex scandal exploded just three days after the president was reelected at the end of a hard-fought campaign and just days before Petraeus was scheduled to appear at a congressional hearing about the attacks in Benghazi.
Read More @ Politico.com

Why Did CIA Director Petraeus Suddenly Resign … And Why Was the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Murdered?

The Deeper Questions Behind the Ambassador’s Murder … and the CIA Boss’ Sudden Resignation
from Washingtons Blog:

While the GOP is attacking (and Dems defending) the Obama administration in connection with the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, there is a deeper story.
Sure, it is stunning that the State Department never requested backup or that people such as Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer allege that President Obama personally watched in real time the attacks as they occurred via video feeds from drones flying over the Benghazi consulate.
Many Syrian Terrorists Come from Libya: The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.
But these claims only can be assessed – and the whole confusing mess only makes sense – if the deeper underlying story is first exposed.
Read More @ WashingtonsBlog.com

America enters “Post-Democracy”

by Michael T Bucci, Global Research:

In many states, November 6 was a good day for blue and identity politics, but said nothing about big national issues of war vs. peace; Wall Street vs. Main Street; Constitutional rights vs. restrictions; Democracy vs. Oligarchy. It said nothing because nothing was said about these issues by either candidate for President or by the media. The debate was over degrees of pain to inflict through austerity, to inflict on other nations through expanding wars, on how to insure future funding of the military machine unleashed abroad and soon, no doubt, to be used at home. Your Street, Your Constitution, Your Civil Liberties, Your Democracy are not subjects for debate any longer – or for mentioning.
We are entering post-Democracy.
American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate put 2012 voter turnout at 57.5% of all eligible voters, compared to 62.3% who voted in 2008 and 60.4% who cast ballots in 2004. In 2000, the turnout rate was 54.2%. Some analysts claimed 2012 turnout numbers were lower. Viewed another way, approximately 90 million eligible voters did not vote. “This is one of those rare elections in which turnout in every state in the nation went down,” said Center Director, Curtis Gans. On the other side of the geopolitical chessboard, PressTV presented slightly lower numbers, “Latest figures show that 117 million Americans, less than 50 percent of the eligible voters, have taken part in the presidential polls,” claimed the wire service. Whatever the final figure, when voter absenteeism reaches 50%, Democracy is naught and Oligarchy (or plutocracy) is entrenched. Once lost, it would require another Revolutionary War to regain.
Read More @ GlobalResearch.ca

Remember Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate?

by Eric Peters, Lew Rockwell:
Strong passions have to be released somehow. Else, they might erupt in unpredictable ways.
The state understands this – and desires that strong passions be released in a harmless – to the state – way. Enter the modern, near universal obsession – in particular, the male obsession – with fuuuhhhhhhhhhttttttttttball and organized, mass spectacle sports generally. These things are the actualization of the fictional Two Minutes’ Hate in Orwell’s 1984. A means by which the passions – the frustrations and anger of men in particular – are diverted and dissipated. In order that they aren’t directed at anything actually important – such as the ever-increasing control exercised over men by the state. The stifling of independent action, the punishment of deviation from any official orthodoxy… and most of all, the relentless suppression of independent judgment and self-reliance.
The systematic thwarting, simply put – of a normal man’s inclination to be a man.
The average man has virtually no real control over his life in modern America. He must Submit and Obey at every turn, from the moment he awakes to the moment he lays his head down on the pillow at night. He must never raise his voice, at work or in public. He must avoid confrontation at all costs.
Read More @ LewRockwell.com

Time For Indictments? Clinton Won’t Testify on Benghazi Due to ‘Scheduling Conflict’

by Joel Gehrke, The Washington Examiner:

House investigators asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify next week about the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi, but she declined citing a scheduling conflict.
“[Clinton] was asked to appear at House Foreign Affairs next week, and we have written back to the Chairman to say that she’ll be on travel next week,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters yesterday. “She has a commitment with the Secretary of Defense to the AUSMIN Ministerial.” Per AFP, “AUSMIN is the highest level forum for Australia and US consultation on foreign policy, defense and strategic issues.” The United States is reportedly concerned about Australia’s plan to cut their defense spending.
Clinton has not been asked to testify at any of the other hearings next week, Nuland said.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., has been frustrated with the State Department’s failure to provide information that she has requested.
Read More @ WashingtonExaminer.com

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