The environmental horror caused by the massive oil spill spreading rapidly throughout the Gulf of Mexico is becoming more apparent by the day.  In fact, it would be very difficult to understate the damage that all of this oil is already doing to a very intricate ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico or the danger that this oil spill represents if it continues to spread.  Hundreds of species of animals and plants are at risk.  Millions of living things in the Gulf of Mexico are going to die.  The entire region is going to be an environmental nightmare for years - perhaps decades.  This really is "the end of the world as we know it" for hundreds of thousands of people living in the Gulf region who depend upon the Gulf of Mexico for their economic survival.  What we are witnessing is the death of an entire region of the planet - and perhaps more than that if this thing continues to spread. 

Yes, this disaster is really, really, really bad.  Just consider the following quote from Richard Charter of the Defenders of Wildlife....

"It is so big and expanding so fast that it's pretty much beyond human response that can be effective. ... You're looking at a long-term poisoning of the area. Ultimately, this will have a multidecade impact."

So just how much oil is flowing into the Gulf of Mexico at this point?

Well, BP spokeswoman Ayana McIntosh-Lee said on Monday that the damaged well is releasing 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.  Barack Obama is calling this oil spill a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.  In fact, federal officials have already closed a portion of the northern Gulf of Mexico to all fishing.

It would be hard to underestimate how serious this is for folks who live along the Gulf coast.  Residents of the Gulf region are starting to fear that the damage from this oil spill will be worse than the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.

One Louisiana resident recently put it this way....

"A hurricane is like closing your bank account for a few days, but this here has the capacity to destroy our bank accounts."

But there are signs that this disaster is going to get even worse before it starts to get better.

It is being reported that a confidential government report on the disaster in the Gulf makes it clear that the Coast Guard now fears the damaged well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.  One Alabama newspaper has posted excerpts from this alarming report....

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28th that was posted on . "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

If that report is even partially true, then we may not have even seen the worst of things yet.

Even if things remain as they are, it is already being projected that this could be the most costly environmental disaster in history.

Estimates vary at this point, but it is being reported that some analysts are already projecting that the costs related to the oil spill could exceed 14 billion dollars.  The cost to the fishing industry in Louisiana alone could top 3 billion dollars, and it is being projected that the tourism industry in Florida could lose even more than that. 

But the truth is that it is way too early for estimates, because as long as the damaged well keeps gushing oil the nightmare is only going to get worse.

So how long until things get better?

Well, U.S. Representative Charlie Melancon of Louisiana has made a couple of statements about this disaster which are extremely chilling....

"The best-case scenario is that this lasts for a couple of weeks."

"The worst case is that we've got several months to go."

In fact, the Obama administration and BP are both now indicating that the worst case scenario is more likely.  Officials said on Monday that it might take up to three months to completely seal off the leaking oil well.

That is not good news.

BP is certainly freaked out about all of this, and they are already trying to claim that it was not "their" accident that caused all of this.

Tony Hayward, the CEO of British Petroleum, told NBC's Meredith Vieira on Monday that his company was not responsible for creating the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico but that they are responsible for cleaning it up....

"It wasn't our accident, but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up, and that's what we intend to do."

That sad thing is that this is the type of world we live in - a world where the lawyers are in charge and nobody takes responsibility for anything.

For once it would be really nice to see a CEO stand up and admit responsibility for something.

But that just isn't going to happen.

Meanwhile, the more we learn about this oil spill the more frightening it becomes.

The reality is that we simply do not know at this point just yet how incredibly destructive this disaster may become.  In his recent article, "The Oil Mess - The Takedown Of World Economy?", George Ure posted a message from one of his readers this is extremely troubling.  The reader is a very experienced engineer, and his diagnosis of the danger that we are facing from this oil spill is incredibly frightening.  If what he says is true, then we are headed for a complete and total nightmare....

A reader who is an engineer of considerable experience says watch this one evolve carefully because it is destined to continue to grow and he shares this long (but worthy) explanation why:

"Heard your mention of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this morning, and you (and most everyone else except maybe George Noory) are totally missing the boat on how big and bad of a disaster this is.

First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they're saying 200,000 gallons a day. That's over a million gallons of crude oil a week!

I'm engineer with 25 years of experience. I've worked on some big projects with big machines. Maybe that's why this mess is so clear to me. [and is so unclear to the millions without such knowledge]

First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.

When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean.

Now they've got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you!

First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way.

The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I'm not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work.

If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?

We're so used to our politicians creating false crises to forward their criminal agendas that we aren't recognizing that we're staring straight into possibly the greatest disaster mankind will ever see. Imagine what happens if that oil keeps flowing until it destroys all life in the oceans of this planet. Who knows how big of a reservoir of oil is down there.

Not to mention that the oceans are critical to maintaining the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for human life.

We're humped. Unless God steps in and fixes this. No human can. You can be sure of that."

Sometimes there are things in life that happen so suddenly that they take us completely by surprise.  But there are other things that happen so slowly over a period of so many years that you can see them happening from a mile away.  The collapse of the U.S. dollar falls into the second category.  For years, many observers have been warning that if we did not fundamentally alter our economic policies that the U.S. dollar would eventually collapse.  In fact, U.S. Representative Ron Paul has been warning about the demise of the dollar for decades.  We can all see it happening in slow motion, and yet the U.S. government still does not seem to have the will to do anything about it.

In fact, the financial crisis of 2008/2009 greatly accelerated the ultimate collapse of the U.S. dollar.  Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson says that the U.S. economy came "very close" to collapsing into a second Great Depression during that time, and he is actually correct.  If the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve had not stepped in with massive bailouts at that point, we would have had a financial apocalypse.

But while the bailouts helped stabilize the U.S. economy for the moment, they actually made our long-term problems much, much worse.

It turns out that instead of $700 billion, it was actually $23.7 trillion that the Federal Reserve gave banks access to during the financial crisis.  During the financial crisis, the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve flooded the U.S. financial system with dollars.

This helped the U.S. banking system weather the storm, but it also hastened the ultimate destruction of the dollar.

Why?

Because each time more dollars are introduced into the economy, the value of each existing dollar goes down.  Just check out the following chart from DollarDaze.org....

When the number of dollars goes up, the purchasing power goes down.  It is simple mathematics.

Every time the amount of money in circulation goes up, it destroys each dollar that you own by just a little bit more.

So did all of those bailouts put our economy back on the right track?

No.

In fact, those in charge of monitoring the TARP program are warning that it may have created an even bigger financial crisis to come.

The Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program recently released the Quarterly Report to Congress for the period ending 12/31/2009.  The executive summary of that report contains a frightening assessment of the impact of TARP.  You have got to read this....

The substantial costs of TARP — in money, moral hazard effects on the market, and Government credibility — will have been for naught if we do nothing to correct the fundamental problems in our financial system and end up in a similar or even greater crisis in two, or five, or ten years’ time. It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date.

• To the extent that huge, interconnected, “too big to fail” institutions contributed to the crisis, those institutions are now even larger, in part because of the substantial subsidies provided by TARP and other bailout programs.

 

• To the extent that institutions were previously incentivized to take reckless risks through a “heads, I win; tails, the Government will bail me out” mentality, the market is more convinced than ever that the Government will step in as necessary to save systemically significant institutions. This perception was reinforced when TARP was extended until October 3, 2010, thus permitting Treasury to maintain a war chest of potential rescue funding at the same time that banks that have shown questionable ability to return to profitability (and in some cases are posting multi-billion-dollar losses) are exiting TARP programs.

• To the extent that large institutions’ risky behavior resulted from the desire to justify ever-greater bonuses — and indeed, the race appears to be on for TARP recipients to exit the program in order to avoid its pay restrictions — the current bonus season demonstrates that although there have been some improvements in the form that bonus compensation takes for some executives, there has been little fundamental change in the excessive compensation culture on Wall Street.

 

• To the extent that the crisis was fueled by a “bubble” in the housing market, the Federal Government’s concerted efforts to support home prices — as discussed more fully in Section 3 of this report — risk re-inflating that bubble in light of the Government’s effective takeover of the housing market through purchases and guarantees, either direct or implicit, of nearly all of the residential mortgage market.

Stated another way, even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car.

Wow.

Remember, this is an official government report.

For an official government report to say that "we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car" is absolutely stunning.

The truth is that the U.S. economy and the U.S. dollar are headed for big trouble.

The U.S. financial system will fail again, and more bailouts and more government cash will be needed.

So what will happen next time?

For the moment, though, life is good for companies that have been bailed out.  For example, AIG was scheduled to distribute about $100 million in bonuses to its employees on Wednesday.

Ouch.

It is time for the American people to wake up and realize what is happening to their economic system.  It is slowly dying, and in the short video below, Ron Paul actually warns that when the U.S. economy and the U.S. dollar do die, we may see a complete breakdown of law and order in society.....

The great tragedy of the 7.0 earthquake that essentially destroyed the nation of Haiti has many wondering if that nation can ever recover.  In fact, as you read this Haiti continues to be a disaster zone of unprecedented magnitude.  Lots of money has been raised by celebrities, but victims of the earthquake in Haiti are still absolutely desperate for food and water.  

But even as Haiti struggles to recover from the greatest disaster in that nation's history, information is coming to light that the key to a brighter future for the Haitians may have been lying under their feet all this time.  It turns out that there are massive reserves of gold and oil in Haiti.  These abundant natural resources could be used to rebuild Haiti and give those people an incredibly bright future - if someone else does not sweep in and steal those resources first. 

I'll have to admit when I first heard about oil in Haiti I was quite skeptical.

After all, why wouldn't we have heard about it by now if they had it?

Well, the reality is that there are vast untapped oil reserves in many areas of the globe, and Haiti's have not been developed due to the violence and political instability that have ravaged that nation for decades.  Not to mention the fact that Haiti does not possess the technical expertise to exploit those resources.

But apparently they do exist.

According to a report in the French newspaper Le Post, scientists Daniel and Ginette Mathurin say that  Haiti's oil reserves are larger than those of Venezuela.

In fact, Daniel Mathurin says that Haiti's oil reserves are so much larger that they are not even worth comparing....

"An Olympic pool compared to a glass of water that is the comparison to show the importance of oil Haitian compared to those of Venezuela."

That is an amazing statement considering the fact that Venezuela is one of the world's major oil producers.

But Daniel and Ginette Mathurin are not the only ones making these claims about oil in Haiti.

In a paper dated March 27, 2004, Dr. Georges Michel detailed the history of oil discoveries in Haiti and explained why they have not been exploited yet. 

According to Michel, the big oil companies know about the massive reserves of oil in Haiti but in the 50s and 60s there was almost too much oil to go around so they decided that those reserves were not needed at the time and that they would be kept in reserve until later....

[The attitude of these big multinational oil companies was] "We shall keep the Haitian deposits and other such layers of deposits in reserve for the 21st century when the Middle Eastern jackpot are depleted."

In fact, it was apparently known as far back as 1908 that Haiti has substantial reserves of oil.

But those poor people have been kept in abject poverty all this time when they could have been benefiting from all of this oil.

Not only that, but Haiti also apparently possesses a great deal of gold as well.

A United Nations study in the 70s indicated Haiti could be littered with gold and copper deposits.  However, the same political violence and recurring coups that have kept the oil in Haiti from being exploited have also kept the gold from being mined.

So how much gold does Haiti have?  Well, the former president of Dominican Petroleum Refinery recently said that Haiti has vast untapped reserves of gold and iridium (a little known and rare mineral that is vital for the construction of spacecraft) and that these resources should be used to pay off the Haitian foreign debt.

And he is not alone in his assessment.

Back in 2007 a geologist with 27 years of experience hunting for gold was asked what he thought the chances of discovering huge amounts of gold in Haiti were.  This is how he responded....

"I don't think there's a question of whether there's a good deposit here. It's a question of whether we can develop it here in Haiti."

In fact, analysts are predicting "a stampede into Haiti" if the existence of large gold deposits there can be confirmed.

So one of poorest nations in the world turns out to be just brimming with oil and gold....

Do you think that those resources will be used to rebuild Haiti and to give those people a truly bright future?

Don't count on it.

In fact, now that Haiti has essentially been destroyed, troops are pouring in and politicians are already talking about starting business ventures in the country.  To many in Washington, Haiti's natural resources are considered "strategic reserves" of the United States.

You see, for decades Haiti has been viewed by many as being essentially "owned" by the United States.  The U.S. government has done little to actually help the nation of Haiti get on the right path, but they maintain a huge presence there.  In fact,  the U.S. constructed its fifth largest embassy in the world in the nation of Haiti.

But perhaps that is just a coincidence.

The key will be to watch what happens to Haiti's natural resources as the rebuilding of that nation proceeds.

Will all of the gold and oil be used to help the people of Haiti, or will the gold and oil be exploited by ruthless foreigners?

The world will be watching.

Detroit has become ground zero for what is quickly becoming known as the American Nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of people in the Detroit metropolitan area are desperate for work, and there is no help in sight. The Detriot News is reporting that while the "official" unemployment rate in Detroit is 27 percent, the reality is that it should really be about 45 percent using a broader definition of unemployment.  And according to the Detroit News report, that 45 percent figure does not even include those who gave up searching for a job more than a year ago.  That would add about another 100,000 people to the unemployment figure in Detroit.

In other words, Detroit is a complete and total mess.

Even the mayor of Detroit acknowledges that the unemployment situation is a lot worse than official figures indicate.

At a jobs forum in Washington D.C. earlier this month, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said that the unemployment rate in Detroit is actually "closer to 50 percent."

So what has happened in Detroit?

Detroit used to be the mecca of auto manufacturing.  But over the past couple decades factory after factory has been closed only to be reopened elsewhere in the world.

Now those jobs are gone forever.  For millions of people in Michigan, the American Dream has become the American Nightmare.

But what is going on in Detroit is just a microcosm of what is going on in the United States as a whole.

For decades everyone has stood by and watched as millions of jobs have been shipped off to China, India, Mexico and dozens of other nations.

Millions of Americans were all too glad to scoop up products made by slave laborers in places like China for a few pennies less than products made in America.

U.S. politicians were all too glad to sign one-sided trade agreements with other nations that closed the doors of other nations to American products while opening the doors of the United States to a flood of cheap imports.

Now the manufacturing base in the United States has been decimated and it is not coming back.

Millions of jobs have been lost forever.

Now blue collar workers all over the U.S. find themselves in direct competition with millions of workers in China and India and Mexico who are making only a small fraction of what they make.

How in the world can they compete?

The truth is that this is the end of the world for the blue collar worker of the United States.

There will be no recovery for factory workers.

In fact what we are seeing in Detroit will ultimately spread across the U.S.

The foolishness of decades of bad policies in Washington D.C. is now starting to hit home.

So pay close attention to what is happening in Detroit.

It will be hitting your hometown soon enough.

As Americans run out today like chickens with their heads cut off and run up billions more on their credit cards, the vast majority of them have no concept of how bad things really are for the U.S. economy.  The truth is that the very foundations of the United States financial system are coming apart like a 20 dollar suit.  While the U.S. government and most of the mainstream media continue to wallow in denial, the numbers that you will read in this article simply do not lie.  The United States has engaged in an orgy of debt for decades and now the day of reckoning has arrived.

But what else should we expect from a nation that is the third fattest in the world?  The truth is that America has become a nation of gluttons who think that the good times will continue to roll.  But the cold reality is that all of us are about to face the end of the financial world as we know it.

The American consumer is tapped out.  The total number of bankruptcies filed in the third quarter in the United States surged 33%.  The seemingly endless ability of the American consumer to spend and spend powered the global economic engine for years, but now the party is over.

Why doesn't the American consumer have anything to spend?  Well, one factor is certainly that American consumers have gone so far into debt that there is just not much more room for more. 

But also, the truth is that the United States is experiencing a massive epidemic of unemployment.  In fact, CNBC is reporting that the real jobless rate in the United States is 17.5 percent.

That is nearly one out of every five workers.

They can't find work.  The work simply is not there.  For years and years U.S. corporations shipped jobs overseas while the U.S. government encouraged it.  Those jobs are not going to come back.  Those who still do have jobs are finding their incomes increasingly stretched as their dollars buy less than they did before.

Some U.S. citizens are now so desperate for work that they are heading over to street corners and home improvement store parking lots to find day-labor work usually done by illegal immigrants.

If you do not understand just how explosive the growth in unemployment has been over the past two years, we would encourage you to view this startling animated map which shows the stunning growth of unemployment in the United States.

So will things pick up soon?

Well, the FDIC is reporting the biggest drop in business loans on record.  That is really bad news for job seekers.  You see, most companies in the U.S. are extremely dependent on debt to fund their operations.  It will be extremely difficult for the vast majority of U.S. businesses to expand their businesses and hire more workers if they can't borrow money.

Meanwhile, mortgage lenders are also decreasing the flow of credit.  Fannie Mae has announced plans to raise minimum credit score requirements and limit the amount of overall debt that borrowers can carry relative to their incomes.

Do you understand what that means?

That means that less people will qualify for home loans.

That means less buyers for residential real estate.

If there are less buyers for homes that means that housing prices will go down.

In fact, they could go down a lot.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index has risen 5% from the April low, but the index is still predicting a massive 45% fall in home prices from today’s values.

A 45 percent decrease.

How will you feel if the value of your home goes down 45 percent?

Already, almost one out of every four U.S. homeowners owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth.

Are you starting to get the picture?

So who is going to come to the rescue?

The U.S. government?

Well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is openly saying that Americans will be willing to "absorb" higher deficits in exchange for more jobs.

Indeed, as we speak Congress is reportedly scrambling to write "Economic Jobs Stimulus 3.0".

Just what we need, eh?

Another stimulus bill?

After all, since the U.S. government has already put our children and grandchildren trillions of dollars into debt, what are a few trillion more?

How much money can the U.S. government possibly spend anyway?

Well, the U.S. federal government spent 3.5 trillion dollars during Barack Obama's first year in the White House. That far exceeds the spending for any other first-year president.

So is this money being spent wisely?

Of course not.

For example, the Pentagon has just awarded a $5,760,000 contract for men's undershirts.

Also, the U.S. government is reportedly spending 2.6 million U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.

This is our money that is being spent.

The truth is that the debt of the U.S. government is spiraling out of control as the following chart reveals.....

All of this debt and borrowing is going to destroy the value of the American dollar.  By pumping billions upon billions of new dollars into the U.S. economy, the value of all existing dollars will be devastated.

The next chart shows the growth of the U.S. money supply.  In particular, pay attention to the very end of the chart where it shows how the growth of our money supply is absolutely exploding in 2009.....

So what will all of this money do?  It will destroy the value of all current dollars.   Inflation is going to go absolutely wild.  In fact, gold prices hit record highs above $1,190 an ounce last week as the dollar sharply declined.

But that is just the beginning.

What we are facing is the end of the world as we know it as far as the U.S. financial system is concerned.

The good days are over.

A financial apocalypse of unprecedented magnitude is on the way, but most Americans remain blissfully ignorant of this reality.  They will be caught totally unprepared by what is coming.

Don't let that happen to you.