French Workers Paid; Blow-up Threat Worked

On Monday July 13, employees of New Fabris -- a bankrupt French car-parts supplier -- in central-eastern Chatellerault, threatened to blow up their factory unless Renault and Peugeot pay them compensation. A union official said that the 366 employees of New Fabris were occupying the plant and demanding that the automakers, which accounted for 90 percent of their business, pay €30 000 - nearly R350 000 - to each worker.

"The gas bottles are in the factory. Everything has been planned for it to blow up unless there is an accord by July 31," Guy Eyermann, CGT union official and secretary of the company works council, told AFP. The Chatellerault factory is believed to have car parts worth some two million euros, as well as a new Renault machine estimated at another two million.

"We are not going to let Peugeot and Renault [ both of which received public funds] wait until August or September to recover the spare parts and machines still in the factory," a union leader warned. "If we get nothing, they get nothing at all."

The Telegraph reported Friday the French workers were paid:

After lengthy talks that lasted well into Thursday night, management met their demand that laid off workers receive 30,000 euros in compensation, and the strikers removed the gas cylinders and put the cranes back inside the factory.

"It's a shame that we reached this point. If management had wanted, we could have avoided this tough conflict," said Christian Amadio, a JLG worker representative.

Time will tell what will become of these workers, but for the time being this event could trigger widespread violence (or the threat of violence) throughout Europe.

"The staff at JLG, a company that makes platforms mounted on cranes for fixing equipment high off the ground, were the third in France to make similar threats this month," says The Telegraph, "after workers from the telecoms manufacturer Nortel and car parts maker New Fabris. JLG workers at three plants in southwestern France had been on strike for three weeks over a management plan to lay off 53 of them. After hearing news of the threats made at Nortel and New Fabris, they decided to follow suit."

Low crimes like Breaking and Entering may not get prosecuted in Detroit

California may capture the lion's share of media attention for black hole budget woes, but cities and states across the nation are crumbling before our eyes -- as Wall Street rallies on -- and may soon become about as lawless as the Wild West. To wit, Detroit. Prosecutor Kym Worthy told commissioners that low-priority crimes like breaking and entering might not be prosecuted and the conviction rates will continue to decline if the proposed budget for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is approved, according to Kathleen Gray with The Detroit Free Press.

“We can’t even cover our courtrooms anymore,” Worthy said in vehemently disagreeing with the $28-million general fund budget proposed for the prosecutor’s office by Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. “At some point, if the budget continues to be cut, we’re going to have to start making decisions about what crimes we prosecute.”

Commissioner Burton Leland states the obvious: “The No. 1 problem in the city is crime. If there’s not a certainty of punishment here, this is the place where they come to do their business. You’re the last department we should cut.”

“I know times are tough," said Worthy, "but I don’t care about any other department. I care about mine,” she said. “I’m not a prima donna, but we’re losing cases now that we shouldn't’t because we don’t have enough people.”

667,534 filed claims last week - Govt Lied

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 667,534 in the week ending July 11, an increase of 86,389 from the previous week. There were 483,981 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.6 percent during the week ending July 4, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,135,066, an increase of 63,714 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.3 percent and the volume was 3,118,724.

Extended benefits were available in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin during the week ending June 27.

Initial claims for UI benefits by former Federal civilian employees totaled 1,642 in the week ending July 4, an increase of 14 from the prior week. There were 1,870 initial claims by newly discharged veterans, a decrease of 192 from the preceding week.

There were 17,471 former Federal civilian employees claiming UI benefits for the week ending June 27, an increase of 17 from the previous week. Newly discharged veterans claiming benefits totaled 28,772, an increase of 242 from the prior week.

States reported 2,525,342 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending June 27, an increase of 6,241 from the prior week. EUC weekly claims include both first and second tier activity.

The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending June 27 were in Michigan (7.2 percent), Puerto Rico (6.9), Oregon (6.5), Pennsylvania (6.3), Nevada (6.1), Wisconsin (5.8), California (5.4), South Carolina (5.4), Connecticut (5.2), Illinois (5.2), New Jersey (5.2), and North Carolina (5.2).

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending July 4 were in Michigan (+12,144), New York (+8,913), Wisconsin (+5,838), Indiana (+5,430), and Ohio (+4,240), while the largest decreases were in New Jersey (-5,030), California (-4,293), North Carolina (-3,983), Kansas (-3,544), and Oregon
(-1,454).

Source

Destroy The Federal Reserve - BARTER

The U.S. currently boasts some 500 barter exchanges, up from about 40 in 1980, and that's the official count; many businesses barter informally to avoid the IRS.

The depth and length of Depression 2.0 will be the most severe depression in history. When the unemployment benefits run out for great swaths across America, who will they turn to when bankrupt states slash welfare and food stamp programs? As our global economy comes to a full stop, trade will begin to flourish in local communities out of necessity.

But there's another even more important reason to barter -- to destroy the Federal Reserve. Congress will never reform the banking system. Congress, bankers, Wall Street, The Federal Reserve, are all fleecing the system of taxpayer wealth. Government officials, economists, and financial pundits would like all of us to believe the nature of our current financial crises results from a complex series of events, but it's really very simple: the elite (Wall Street bankers and their whore political system) have robbed taxpayers blind in the largest transfer of wealth in history.

Read what the author of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, Thomas H. Greco, has to say about banking, bartering, and the Federal Reserve:

Historically, every financial and economic crisis has been used to further centralize power and concentrate wealth. This one is no different, and in fact the moves being promoted by the Obama administration and the central banks of the Western powers will take the whole world to the pinnacle of financial despotism -- unless enough people wake up and claim their own "money power.”

In recent months, the Fed has expanded its "assets" from about $800 billion to more than $2,000 billion. Those so-called assets are securities it bought from financial institutions and loans made to central banks in other countries. But the Fed refuses to name the specific recipients of those funds, while admitting that by doing so they are manipulating the value of the US dollar on foreign exchange markets. (Congressman Alan Grayson Grills Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn.)

Where does the Fed get the money to buy those "assets" or to make those loans? Quite simply, it creates the money. Unlike you or me or any other economic entity, the Fed has the power to create Federal Reserve dollars by effectively writing a check against no funds. This is the function known as "Open Market Operations."

What is the economy experiencing now, and what is in prospect for the future? Despite unprecedented inflation of the money supply, we are now (mid-July, 2009) in a period of depression. How can we have simultaneous inflation of the currency and still have economic depression?

It is a matter of where the money is going. While the public sector (federal government) is being lavishly funded to maintain a global empire, and the banks are being bailed out to try to keep a dysfunctional and destructive financial system from collapsing, the private productive sector is being starved for credit. As a result, businesses are bankrupting, people are losing their jobs and their incomes, and lower levels of government are being squeezed because their tax revenues are shrinking.

There is also the matter of the real estate bubble that was created by the financial institutions as they loaded up the private sector with a debt burden that was way beyond its ability to bear. Now that burden is being shifted to the public sector as the government assumes those "toxic" loans. Unfortunately, it is not the poor suckers who were lured into the debt trap that are being relieved, but the predatory lenders who laid the traps. So mortgages are being foreclosed at an unprecedented scale, people are losing their equity as housing values plunge, and more Americans are being made homeless.

These are the factors that have so far kept the effects of monetary inflation from becoming extreme. Ultimately, however, such abusive issuance of political money shows up as rising prices.

When will the price effects of hyper-inflation begin to kick in? How will the government respond to it? What will be the social and political fallout? What can ordinary people do to protect themselves from monetary and legislative abuses? These are the questions that beg for answers.

Already there are rumblings and signs that the U.S. dollar is about to lose its status as the global reserve currency. When that happens, imports of energy and other necessities will become more expensive. The U.S.’s massive trade deficits will not be sustained into the future. China, the OPEC countries, and others that have been buying massive amounts of U.S. government bonds with their dollar earnings, are indicating that their appetite has been sated. Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements are being made that bypass the use of the dollar for international trade.

One thing is clear -- we cannot rely upon the government to act in the best interests of the people. Already, President Obama has moved to give the Federal Reserve even more power to control the people's credit and financial resources. According to a June 18 article in the Wall Street Journal, "The central bank would win power to monitor risks across the financial system, and sweeping authority to examine any firm that could threaten financial stability, even if the Fed wouldn't normally supervise the institution." This is not a new plan; it was floated as a trial balloon during the Bush administration. As early as March 2008, then Treasury Secretary Paulson was proposing to "give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system."

Ostensibly that would be done to prevent the errant financial institutions from repeating their sins of the recent past, but more likely it will have the effect of suppressing any private initiative that might compete with the financial cartel. The Fed is, after all, a private company run by the bankers for the bankers. A recent Reuters article is critical of Obama's move because of the Fed's lack of accountability. It is a plan that seeks to preserve at all costs the credit monopoly that exists under the central banking regime and to perpetuate the looting of the economy by monetization of federal government debts and other ultimately worthless "assets."

During the Great Depression, President Franking Roosevelt, upon taking office in 1933, declared a "bank holiday." He ordered all banks to close. Many of those banks never reopened and many people lost their savings. He also demanded that all Americans turn in their gold holdings in return for paper currency, which was one of the biggest robberies in history up to that time. Some pundits are predicting that another such bank holiday is being planned to put the brakes on price increases, once they begin in earnest, by depriving people of access to their savings, as was done in Argentina in 2002.

Governments that mismanage money invariably use the force of law to prevent the sheep from escaping from the shearing pen (or the slaughter house). So long as people are completely dependent upon political money and banks, they will docilely (or grudgingly) accept whatever "solutions” the political leadership puts forth, and do whatever the government demands of them.

Fortunately there is a way out. The primary purpose of money is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services in the markets. But it is possible to mediate the exchange process without using political money as the payment medium, and without borrowing from banks.

There is plenty of precedent for this sort of cashless trading. It involves a process of direct credit clearing among associated buyers and sellers. During the Great Depression the entrepreneurial middle class in Switzerland organized themselves into the WIR Economic Circle Cooperative. After 75 years, the WIR clearing circle continues to thrive with more than 60,000 member businesses trading the equivalent of about US$1.3 billion per year.

The past four decades have seen the emergence of a new industry comprised of commercial trade exchanges, sometimes called "barter" exchanges, that act as "third part record keepers" enabling the same sort of direct credit clearing for thousands of businesses in cities around the world. Efforts at the grassroots by social entrepreneurs to localize exchange and finance have been similarly widespread in many communities over the past twenty-five years.

Measures to properly reform the money and banking system by political means have about as much chance as the proverbial snowball in hell. However, what is possible, and what seems to be gaining traction to transcend the dominant system, is the materialization of voluntary, private initiatives that enable the cashless exchange of goods and services. As these systems continue to improve, proliferate, and scale up, they will provide a pathway toward a sustainable economy, greater local control, and a better quality of life for all.

Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is the director of the Community Information Resource Center, which he founded in 1992. CIRC is a nonprofit consulting organization and networking hub dedicated to economic equity, social justice, and community improvement, specializing in community currency and mutual credit design, development, and implementation. His newest book is The End of Money and the Future of Civilization.

$1.2 Trillion Slush Fund: Congressman Alan Grayson Grills Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn

Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn testified before the Financial Services Committee, along with John Bovenzi of the FDIC. The Fed's balance sheet has expanded by $1.2 trillion since September 1. Where did the money go? Kohn wouldn't say.

Michael Shedlock on The Alex Jones Show

Alex talks with Michael Shedlock, investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Shedlock wrote recently on his blog that mortgage delinquency rates more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier.

Washington is Bluffing: This Isn't a Recession, It's a Collapse

I'm going to bow out and have you read a great piece posted on Seeking Alpha written by Gregor MacDonald.

Washington is bluffing that it will not bail out California, and every other state suffering from collapsed revenues and massive job losses. If cuts in police and schools don’t force DC off from its current position, then the math will. Because in many states the aggregate revenue losses and looming cuts to state payrolls will largely render the intended effects of federal stimulus as moot. Frankly, unless Washington prints money and bails out every state that needs capital, including California, federal power will decline amidst this severe economic recession, and the process of a soft American devolution will begin. If you think this idea is outrageous, then you’ve still not come to terms with a core reality of our current situation: the structure of this financial crisis is wholly different than any in our post-war era. This isn’t a recession. This is collapse.

In Recession vs. Collapse published in March, this blog explained that in a normal recession existing savings are used to support government debt issuance and that those who remain employed increase their savings to also support government debt issuance. Neither phenomenon is at work today. Yes, the savings rate has soared in the US. But this has not resulted in any actual accrued savings. Because private sector debt came to define the internal structure of the US system, savings currently is little more than debt service. Also, bank purchases of US Treasuries are really just a result of the circularity of monetization. It’s just money from the FED being recycled into Treasuries. There is no privately driven growth of bank deposits, in the aggregate. Americans as a class are broke. What the savings rate more accurately measures is a collapse of consumer spending.

The internal composition of the US economic and financial system when it hit 2007/8 was very different than in previous recessions, even the severe recession of 1980/82. It’s this internal composition that’s now determinative, to the outcome. The sawdust of debt, and the monetization of assets rather than the production of goods, continually came to define the internal composition of the system. The economy cannot, therefore, express the same kind of resilience it has done so often, since WW2.

This is the core problem of this collapse and why the prospect for recovery is dim. Americans can’t actually rebuild the savings that the banking system needs to escape from the current mess. Individually, Americans are trapped by debt and cannot spend. In The Seigniorage Curse, I explain that one of the primary mechanisms for the hollowing out of the American economy over many years was the dollar advantage, which at first was earned. And then, came to be un-earned. By the time the US reached the 21st century, our primary manufactured product was debt, and dollars. Is it any wonder that once that system collapsed, that we quickly gave up 100% of the phantom job growth that had been sitting on top of the debt bubble? The current level of employment in the United States has now returned to the levels of June 2000. Enough said.

Washington apparently has a fresh dilemma on its hands, just inside of 6 months after the new administration came to power. Clearly the economic team, even though they were given almost 18 months to study the nature of the current crisis (starting in the Summer of 2007), incorrectly judged this recession to be of the post-war variety. Is that any surprise?

Nothing in the public record since the year 2000 indicates that Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, or Tim Geithner understood that we had been building a skyscraper of private sector debt in textbook blow-off style, since the deflation scare of 2001. Now, two years after FED repair operations began on the broken credit system, and over 3 years since US real estate topped in price, major portions of the country are staring at further home price declines in most major markets. Indeed, it appears that the same macro cycle of the last two Autumns is about to repeat, with more waves of foreclosure, more withdrawals from savings and investment to pay for living expenses, and the attendant bailouts of financial institutions that comes around each time.

Washington can’t really take a pass on this situation. If the federal government decides it can wait while “the states rebuild their balance sheets and clean up their payrolls” (as in past recessions) they’ll be waiting forever. None of that is underway.

It’s no surprise therefore that the country is already being prepped for a second stimulus. Sure, Washington would like to act tough and tell the States to clean up their act. This is the moral hectoring version of Ben Bernanke saying in 2006 he doubts US real estate will ever decline year over year, or Treasury Secty Paulson saying that the front-end of the crisis was just a problem contained to sub-prime. We’ve seen this script before. If California issuing IOUs in a state where banks refuse to accept them doesn’t get the message across, nothing will. We are on the front end, not the back end, of a crisis within the States.

Unless Washington prints up dollars and bails out the States, of what use is Washington? Exactly what services can Washington provide, if California is let go? Left on its own, there would no doubt come an initial hooray from rubber-neckers and I-Told-You-So-ers. A newly broken relationship between Washington and the states might also quicken the pulse of anti-federalists, who feel we are long overdue for a tip in the balance of power. Perhaps it would all work out well. For the best, even?

In Washington today the annual budget deficit crossed the one trillion mark. In Sacramento, there is a 26 billion dollar shotgun hole in their budget. (One hopes that CALPERS is marking to market, because if they’re not, that would be a new liability for Sacramento to deal with). Meanwhile, Autumn approaches and whole range of rather nasty choices looms over the school system. Imagine living in a prime area of California and watching your house decline by 40%, your household income knocked for an initial 30%, and the after-school programs and town services get cut. Now throw some fees and tax hikes on top of that mess. For the coup de grace, imagine California voters sitting down each night to another wave of bailouts from Washington to financial corporations. Under those circumstances it seems quite unlikely Washington can say no, to the States.

Wall Street Prison Consultants

Corruption runs rampant on Wall Street, so much so that "wealthy first-time convicts are turning to a novel cottage industry: prison coaches with advice on what it's like inside the big house". Of course most of the big time financial crooks will never see the inside of prison walls, not until mass arrests are made on members of Congress.

Meet Larry Levine, a Los Angeles based consultant who served 10 years for drug trafficking, securities violations and distribution of machine guns. His "Fedtime101" course covers it all: coping with the daily grind of prison, avoiding assaults, decoding prison lingo, and even an inside scoop on what the best prison jobs are. Levine is one of "a half-dozen similar firms [that] have emerged across the country, according to USA Today's Kevin Johnson. Johnson says Levine's website has photos depicting the harsh transition "from the exchange floor to the prison yard." and that last week, the New York Stock Exchange Group demanded Levine drop the references, arguing that they tarnish the exchange's image -- an image Congress lauds as they praise Goldman Sachs for manipulating the stock market for profit.

At least a half-dozen similar firms have emerged across the country, says Johnson. Steve Oberfest, who opened his firm after the 2002 Enron collapse, calls himself an "inmate adaptation specialist" and offers a course in close-quarters combat. "I can prepare you to go into hell," says Oberfest. The fees for these prison coaches go up to $20,000, and clientele includes the likes of Martha Stewart and Bernard Madoff. Johnson says Madoff and Stewart got their penitentiary insight from the Baltimore-based National Center for Institutions and Alternatives. Herbert Hoelter, its co-founder, says the firm waived its fee for Madoff because his assets were frozen.

What an indictment this is of the hopelessly corrupt American political system, a system that serves as nothing but a front for thieves, liars, cheats, cons, and confidence men, with the main stream media serving as their obedient stenographers. The fact is, in most prisons in America, all the wrong people are in jail. Most prison inmates are petty criminals compared to the grand theft of America Wall Street and Congress are pulling off.

10 More Reasons Not To Trust The Government

Although I changed the title, I found this little tidbit of useful information from Yahoo's Tech-Ticker, who in turn condensed it from Mortimer Zuckerman's WSJ piece. Zuckerman says, "The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession." I would add that it's the government's willful subterfuge in masking the recent unemployment numbers that undermines confidence not just in the economy, but it in the government itself.

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000," writes Zuckerman, "which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

"Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates" [condensed]:

• 185,000 workers in the June number were the product of statistical sampling, but could not be verified by the government.
• Companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave.
• 1.4 million unemployed workers weren't counted because they're not searching for work.
• Part-time employment has doubled to 9 million.
• The work week is 48 minutes shorter than when the recession began.
• The number of long-term unemployed (4.4 million) is at an all-time high.
• There were no wage gains in June.
• The goods-producing sector lost over 223,000 jobs just in June.
• When business picks up, businesses will just add hours to existing workers, rather than create new jobs.
• Old business lines are being eliminated entirely, not shrunk down, decreasing the odds that the unemployed will be able to find work.

Now read this from Ilargi:

Whitney...provides the worst unemployment prediction emanating to date from a "serious" finance source: 15%. U3, that is. Which would, if you allow me the back on the envelope, take U6 to around 30%, and Shadowstats' alternate U6 likely between 35% and 40%. If Whitney's right, the US economy would fall into what can only be called a pitch black hole.

Bloomberg - The Ministery of Truth

Some of Bloomberg's misleading headlines come straight out of Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Consider this act of misdirection from a headline written by Bloomberg's Brian Swint:

U.K. Housing Market Improves as London Index Rises

The U.K. housing market improved last month as more London real-estate agents and surveyors said home values increased rather than fell for the first time in 20 months, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said.

The rest of Swint's piece is filled with plastic green shoot optimistic blather and even an admission that house prices are likely to fall further into next year before stagnating in 2011 based on a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP report. And yet another admission that in May, house prices dropped 12.5 percent from a year earlier.

Now consider this Guardian UK headline published on the same day:

House prices will stay in the doldrums for years

The Guardian's Larry Elliot writes: PricewaterhouseCoopers said recent signs of a recovery in the market which had been detected by a fresh survey of estate agents were a "false dawn". John Hawksworth, the chief economist at PWC, said prices would experience a gentle decline for the next 18 months and then pick up slowly over the following years. PWC said it was more likely than not that real house prices in 2015 could still be below average levels seen in 2008, after adjusting for inflation. Even in 2020, after five years of relatively strong growth, the consultancy saw a 30% chance that real house prices could be below 2008 levels.

"Although the estimated average UK house price overvaluation of around 25% in mid-2007 has now been largely eliminated, our analysis suggests that house prices could still have further to fall over the next year.

"Despite some recent reports of rises, we are not out of the woods yet by any means. It is important for buyers to take a long-term rather than a short-term view."

And Jeremy Leaf, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' own spokesman had this to say:

"Although the market is showing signs of improvement, it is unlikely that there will be a sustained upturn while mortgage lenders remain risk adverse. A lack of stock on the market is providing a platform for modest price increases. While supply remains tight, the market may continue to show tentative signs of firming but instructions are starting to increase in some regions and this could dampen any meaningful recovery as long as economic conditions remain quite so uncertain."

John Hawksworth, the chief economist at PWC went on to say: "What would be a surprise would be if house prices now started to recover strongly in a sustained way. That would go against the lessons of history. There may be the odd month where the market seems to be going up but it is a false dawn because there is no underlying strength."

He added: "The pace of recovery in house prices seems likely to be relatively modest until the middle of the next decade, although it could pick up again beyond that as supply shortages reassert themselves, credit conditions return to normal and negative memories of the current housing bust fade."

Prepare For Rash of Murders, Suicides, Civil Unrest

USA Today reports the number of police officers killed in the line of duty increased 20% during the first six months of 2009 compared with last year. All categories of officer deaths in the U.S. are up in 2009, including those killed by gunfire.

Steve McNair's girlfriend had mounting debts that included payments on a Cadillac Escalade, and LaToya Jackson is claiming Michael Jackson was murdered for his money.

European researchers have concluded what many of us already new, murders and suicides spike with unemployment.

"The scientists, who combed through almost four decades of European Union records," reports Bloomberg, "found that a 1 percent increase in joblessness brings about a 0.8 percent rise in suicide and murder rates. The global economy is now in its deepest recession since World War II, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicting the output of its 30 members will shrink 4.1 percent this year. The slump has pushed unemployment to its highest since 1983 in the U.S. and the most in a decade in the 16 nations that use the euro.

“The effects of a financial crisis depend crucially on how governments chose to respond,” lead researcher David Stuckler of Oxford University said in a telephone interview. “Suicides are just the tip of the iceberg,” Stuckler said. “We can’t measure all the emotional distress. There is much more going on in the background in terms of human suffering.”

"When the social security system is less extensive, unemployment is a more probable mediator between mental illness and suicide," said Dr. Andreas Lundin and Dr. Tomas Hemmingsson, of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. "A related concern is that fear and anxiety in the present crisis could be particularly long-lasting; even when the market recovers, people's worries and associated behaviors might not."

Even as far back as March of this year, Christian Science Monitor's Patrik Jonsson considered the mounting violence when he wrote about four Oakland, Calif., police officers who were shot down; an Alabama man strolling a small town with a rifle looking for victims; seven elderly people shot dead at a North Carolina nursing home; and six people, including four kids, who died in an apparent murder-suicide in an upscale neighborhood in Santa Clara, California.

"Most of these mass killings are precipitated by some catastrophic loss, and when the economy goes south, there are simply more of these losses," says Jack Levin, a noted criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.

Criminologists say that certain kinds of violent crimes have risen during specific economic downturns. The recession in the early 1990s "saw a dramatic increase in workplace violence committed by vengeful ex-workers who decided to come back and get even with their boss and their co-workers through the barrel of an AK-47," Mr. Levin says.

Jonsson covers a study released in Florida which links domestic violence and job loss and foreclosures. The study claims Florida saw an almost 40 percent jump in demand for domestic-violence centers, an increase related to the state of the economy.

Jonsson's piece also directs our attention to the link between murder-suicides and the economy and a study by the Violence Policy Center in Washington. "We've been looking at this issue of whether there are more murder-suicides … [and] a pattern is starting to develop that may point in that direction," says Kristen Rand, legislative director at the center. "Between the Texas Tower shootings in the 1960s until the McDonald's massacre in 1984, it was extremely rare to see these types of mass shootings. Now we're seeing them much more often, and they do seem to happen in spurts."

Since we already live in a violent world, it's easy to dismiss the news reports of murders and suicides as isolated incidents unrelated to Depression 2.0 -- even as the violence multiplies before our eyes.

And we're just getting started. Unemployment will continue to rise to unprecedented levels. In the US, record numbers are receiving Food Stamps, and the welfare rolls continue to swell as state after state will follow California's lead into bankruptcy. The picture becomes even more chilling when you consider that each day more and more of the unemployed run out of their extended unemployment benefits. When all the benefits run out, the states go broke, and the US defaults, then what?

French Workers Threaten to Blow Up Factory Unless Paid

GOING OUT WITH A BANG? Fake graves outside the bankrupt New Fabris factory show the number of years that people have been with the company. Ex-employees are threatening to blow up the plant if their requests for lost-job compensation and indemnity from prosecution are not met by July 31, 2009. Image: AFP

As media talking heads and government officials continue deceiving the public with "green shoot" lies, the anger-wrought masses are beginning to take things into their own hands. Employees of New Fabris in central-eastern Chatellerault -- a bankrupt French car-parts supplier -- are threatening to blow up their factory unless Renault and Peugeot pay them compensation. AFP reports a union official said on Sunday that the 366 employees of New Fabris were occupying the plant and demanding that the automakers, which accounted for 90 percent of their business, pay €30 000 - nearly R350 000 - to each worker.

"The gas bottles are in the factory. Everything has been planned for it to blow up unless there is an accord by July 31," Guy Eyermann, CGT union official and secretary of the company works council, told AFP. The Chatellerault factory is believed to have car parts worth some two million euros, as well as a new Renault machine estimated at another two million.

"We are not going to let Peugeot and Renault [ both of which received public funds] wait until August or September to recover the spare parts and machines still in the factory," a union leader warned. "If we get nothing, they get nothing at all."

Commercial banks have frozen lending to hundreds of Europe's auto suppliers -- which are on the brink of bankruptcy -- because of the perceived high risk. Sales for European auto suppliers have fallen between 25% and 35% from a year ago, according to WSJ.

"Of Europe's 5,000 or so auto suppliers, 200 have filed for bankruptcy since December and 700 to 800 suppliers are now facing 'acute liquidity problems,'"said Lars Holmqvist, Chief Executive of European Association of Automotive Suppliers. "The summer vacation period, which most car makers are extending because of weak sales, will exacerbate the problem for suppliers."

As GM emerges from bankruptcy eight major suppliers have filed for their own bankruptcy, including Lear Corp -- one of GM's biggest automotive seat and interiors providers. "Supplier health will be the wild card for the next 90 days, not only for GM but all of the auto makers," said Mike Robinet, vice president of global vehicle forecasts for CSM Worldwide.

The French workers' militant tactics including "bossnappings" where managers have been held hostage in their offices, may become viral around the globe.

Signs of economic doom Govt can't hide

No matter how much effort the government and their media lap dogs invest in distorting, re- framing, and omitting crucial statistical data to conceal the truth, signs abound that reveal the stark truth about the present state of the global economy, signs that also reveal the grim forecast of what lies ahead. Ship after ship in the busiest port in the world are empty and idled; the following BBC excerpt explains why:

Idling ships clog up Singapore shores
By Pauline Mason

Singapore claims to be the busiest port in the world. About 130,000 ships arrive there each year. But these days, the problem is many of those vessels are not putting back out to sea. The usual stay for a cargo carrier is just ten days. That is enough time to offload one set of cargo and take on another load, re-fuel and re-stock supplies. But, of the 220 container ships arriving in Singapore this year, - excluding the tugs, yachts and bunkering vessels which are permanent port residents - more than half have stayed longer than that. Another 44 cargo ships have been in port for more than six months.

It costs about $1,000 (£614) per day to keep a ship at Singapore port. On top of that, most of these ships would have been bought with multi-million dollar loans that need to be serviced. They will have a crew that needs to be paid, fed and watered. Engines and machinery that need to be maintained. All of this is necessary for a ship to maintain its class - the equivalent of an MOT or bill of health. Being taken "out of class" means a ship cannot trade or earn money and cannot be insured for voyage on the open sea.

The sharp downturn in world trade is behind this enforced idleness. And, in the absence of global economic recovery, all firms can do is minimise their costs. A ship owner can save up to 80% of his or her running costs just by laying anchor 45 minutes south of Singapore, off the Indonesia islands of Batam-Rempang-Galang. Earlier this year, Rob Wilkins, general manager, Enviro Force, opened a new anchorage off Galang.

"In Singapore you have to maintain a full crew (25-30 people on average) on-board your vessel," he says. "In Batam you don't. You can save on insurance costs, maintenance costs and crew costs by laying up here instead."

Mr Wilkins and his partner Damian Chapman are serial entrepreneurs. For months, they have noticed more and more vessels idling in ports, running up huge costs. According to AXS Alphaliner, 511 container ships are laid up. That is a tenth of the global fleet.