More Americans Think Economy Will Never Recover

It's not the economy I'm worried about. It's the traitors who govern this nation who are selling its citizens out.

About 10 percent of Americans say they never expect their spending to return to pre-recession levels. Americans are growing increasingly doubtful about direction of the US economy, according to the latest survey from business-advisory firm AlixPartners. In fact, an increasing number, some 61 percent, say they don't expect to return to their respective pre-recession lifestyles until the spring of 2014, if ever.

What's worse, a full 10 percent said they expect they will never return to pre-recession spending.

That's a more pessimistic view than last year, when those surveyed expected that they could be back to pre-recession spending levels by the middle of 2013.

"Americans continue to push their expectations for return to a pre-recession 'normal' further and further into the future—close enough for comfort, but far enough away to seem realistic," said Fred Crawford, CEO of AlixPartners. "But as that happens, more and more it seems normal is actually where we are right now."

The latest employment report, which showed that U.S. employers hired far few workers than expected in May, only serves to reinforce these attitudes.

"It's a vicious cycle," Crawford said. "Americans need to see a significant decrease in unemployment to feel confident in the economic recovery, but companies are waiting to see increased demand for their products and services before they begin hiring and making job-creating capital expenditures."

In the latest survey, some 63 percent of Americans said they feel "not good" or "bad" about the state of the US economy, representing a significant increase from May 2010 when only about 49 percent of those polled felt this gloomy.

The survey also found that Americans overwhelmingly expect to delay by at least 12 months major purchases and expenditures such as spending on new cars, home repairs and vacations.

There have already been signs of this in the latest retail sales reports that came out earlier this week from a handful of major retailers.

Overall, sales at stores open at least a year rose 5.0 percent in May, which is below the 5.4 percent increase that Wall Street expected, according to Thomson Reuters data.

While some analysts used a number of excuses, including high gasoline prices, poor weather, and lackluster merchandise, to explain away the disappointing results, the findings of the survey may suggest that consumers are hunkering down amid the uncertainty.

The view was expressed Thursday by Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, who said that traffic at Target stores slowed in the second half of the month.

"Our guests continue to shop cautiously in light of higher energy costs and inflationary pressures on their household budgets," Steinhafel said, in the company's monthly sales press release.

AlixPartners is by no means the first organization to recognize this growing pessimism.

Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius said the number of consumers who believe they have a chance to bring home more money one year from now is at its lowest level in 25 years, based on his analysis of the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters consumer sentiment poll.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43268037

The euro zone’s reluctance to consider some kind of restructuring for Greece – and at some point Ireland and Portugal – has been heavily criticized by economists, who believe a default of some kind by one or all three of the troubled economies is now inevitable. The debate centers on a single question. Who do you bail out? The troubled nations? Or the institutions that hold the debt they are being weighed down by?

“These bailouts are actually bailing out the banking sector of creditor nations, such as Germany and France, and not the economies that are in trouble, like Ireland and Greece,” said Devina Mehra, the chief strategist at First Global in a research note on Friday.

“By kicking the can down the road (read buying time), which is the sole objective of the bail-outs, they are allowing their national banks to settle their accounts with these troubled economies,” said Mehra.

Since the euro zone debt crisis, the major banks of Germany and France have been reducing their exposure to the debt markets of the euro periphery.

“Net exposure of European banks into PIGS (the last row) has fallen from over $500 billion to around $230 billion at the end of 2010, marking a decline of almost 55 percent in a year,” said Mehra, referring to the economies of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

“The numbers suggest that German and French banks, which were at the heart of any mishap in all these troubled economies, have successfully capitalized on the situation to reduce their exposure to the troubled nations,” he said.

This, in Mehra’s view, will make matters worse for the troubled nations as selling pressure adds to the borrowing costs of the troubled nations.

“Who cares about the homes of the neighbors when one’s own house is on fire?,” he said.

“If debtor nations are forced to pay for their mistakes by bringing their fiscal house in order, which has hit their economies so hard that all the benefits enjoyed in the last decade have been reversed, lenders cannot be allowed to have a free lunch," said Mehra.

“The troubled nations are being hurt further in the process, as they are being forced to implement more austerity measures in order to bring their fiscal house in order, the creditors are only getting rid of the toxic assets (that becomes even more toxic due to this process) on their balance sheets,” he said.

With all three nations likely to resort to some kind of restructuring at some point the big loser is likely to be the ECB’s balance sheet, according to Mehra.

“Should Greece default and the ECB decide to cut its life injecting capital supply to these banks, then the ECB’s balance sheet will be equally hit and hence, it will think twice before making such a move,” he said.

US Collapse & Energy Medicine:

On Thursday's show, Roger Tolces, a private investigator specializing in electronic counter-measures, spoke about ways the United States is being brought down by multinational corporations. He also talked about energy medicine treatments that are suppressed by the government. America has become a total surveillance state, he said, citing some of the revelations of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake. Our constitutional rights have been eroded by the Patriot Act, and "any electronic media you use is routed through the NSA," including your credit card statements, IRS records, landline & cell phone calls, medical records, and the "back door" into your personal computer, Tolces continued.

The attempt to dissolve the United States, its constitution, and its military is an agenda of the multinational corporations who seek to turn America into a "consumptive colony," Tolces outlined. He warned of a coming currency collapse, and suggested that the massive surveillance already in place will be used to monitor and arrest people that protest the economic changes.

He discussed Royal Rife's technology which has been used for cancer treatments. The machines work by using specific frequencies to eliminate different types of pathogens, he explained. Tolces was also impressed by a technology out of Russia called Kirlionics, that makes Kirlian scans of a person's fingers, which reveal bio-energy patterns.

Royal Rife Technologies Homepage http://www.rt66.com/~rifetech/