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In the 1960s, economist Arthur Okum began calculated America's Misery Index by adding the unemployment and inflation rates for a sense of public pain or lack of it in good times.

In May, it hit a record high exceeding 25, surpassing the earlier June 1980 21.98 top, based on how both measures were then calculated, not today's methodology, manipulated to hide painful truths.

At issue is:

-- over 22% unemployment, including discouraged workers and the so-called "birth-death model" estimate of net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from ones no longer operating; during hard times, painful truths are hidden by creating non-existent jobs out of whole cloth instead of subtracting them to reflect fewer, not additional new businesses;

-- double digit inflation, including soaring food, energy, healthcare, college tuition, and other costs omitted or understated in core figures;

-- rising poverty, more than one in seven affected according to way understated Census Bureau figures, using threshold measures developed 40 years earlier;

-- record numbers on food stamps;

-- record measures of food insecurity - Feeding America.org reporting one in six American facing hunger;

-- predicted record 2011 numbers of home foreclosures, estimated at 1.2 million after one million lost last year;

-- record homelessness numbers up to 3.5 million on any given night, needing refuge wherever they can find it or face life on city streets; and

-- other measures of worsening conditions during a Main Street depression, affecting Europe, Japan and elsewhere like America.

Economic recovery? Explain how to millions unemployed or underemployed, foreclosed homeowners, bankrupt business owners, impoverished legions, and many others food insecure at a time US and European leaders enforce austerity when massive social stimulus is needed.

Across Europe, large deficits and public debt crises are spreading, an Economist April 29 article highlighting "a moment....when events spiral out of control. As panic sets in, bond yields lurch sickeningly upwards and fear spreads to shares and currencies."

It happened in September 2008, a decade earlier when Russia defaulted, and similar past events. "When the unthinkable becomes the inevitable," contagion and panic follow like a tsunami sweeping away everything in its path.

Numerous European countries are deeply troubled, notably Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, entrapped in debt, locked in a Eurozone straightjacket. Perhaps heading for default, they've inflicted painful austerity on working households, rallying them en masse in protest.

On May 30, financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss said:

"Never before have I seen so many threats to your safety and wealth converging in one time and place," citing:

-- deteriorating bank safety, evident from increasing failures and other systemic risk measures;

-- a deepening housing market depression with no end in sight;

-- a worsening European sovereign debt crisis; and

-- most worrisome, the contagion spreading to America.

According to Weiss:

"If you thought the debt crisis of 2008-2009 was a harrowing experience, wait till you see what's coming next." Last time, corporations were affected. Sovereign states are getting hammered now, including America.

On May 16, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) headlined, "Global systemic crisis: Confirmation of a Major Alert for the second half of 2011 - Explosive fusion of world geopolitical dislocation and the global economic financial crisis," saying:

As it predicted in February 2008, GEAB again believes conditions now suggest a later in the year "explosive fusion....(a worldwide) geopolitical dislocation on the one hand and (a) global economic and financial crisis on the other."

Combined they show major economic trauma coming, extinguishing economic recovery hopes, notably in debt entrapped America, "represent(ing) the end of an era (in which the) dollar was the currency of the United States and the rest of the world's problem."

Ahead, it's becoming "the main threat weighing on the rest of the world" and America. Summer 2011 "will confirm that the Federal Reserve has lost its bet: the US economy has, in fact, never left the 'Very Great Depression which it entered in 2008 despite" massive money creation.

As a result, interest rates will rise. Government deficits will explode. Economic decline will intensify. Equity valuations will decline. The dollar will behave erratically "before suddenly losing 30% of its value" as earlier predicted. Continue Reading>>>>

J.S. Kim of the SmartKnowledgeU investment system and the Underground Investor letter cites the work of GATA's Adrian Douglas in his new essay on the paper shuffling in the futures markets that seems meant to disguise a shortage of precious metal. Kim's commentary can be found at the Underground Investor here:

http://www.theundergroundinvestor.com/2011/06/js-kim-on-max-keiser-discu...

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The Got Gold Report's Gene Arensberg writes today that the short positions of the biggest dealers in silver have fallen to below 29 percent, a level from which rallies have begun. Arensberg's commentary is headlined "When Big Sellers of Silver Futures Seem Timid" and you can find it at the Got Gold Report here:

http://www.gotgoldreport.com/2011/06/when-big-sellers-of-silver-futures-...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/07/us-china-usa-dollar-idUSTRE756...

BEIJING -- China should guard against risks from "excessive" holdings of U.S. assets as Washington could pursue a policy to weaken the dollar, a senior currency regulator said in comments published on a website that briefly pushed the dollar lower.

However, the comments by Guan Tao of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange were quickly removed from the website at his request. He told Reuters the comments had been made in private academic discussions and represented his personal view only.

"We must be alert of economic and political risks in excessive holdings of U.S. dollar assets," Guan, head of the international payment department at SAFE said in the article on the website of China Finance 40 Forum, a Beijing-based think-tank of Chinese economists, bankers and officials (www.cf40.org.cn).

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Market analyst Jim Rickards, who will speak at GATA's conference in London in August (http://www.gatagoldrush.com), tells King World News about "financial repression," the Federal Reserve's likely policy of maintaining negative interest rates for 10 years or so to eliminate the burden of about half the U.S. government debt. Rickards says the Fed won't mind a gently rising gold price. You can listen to the interview at King World News here:

http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/6/4_Ji...

Also at King World News today is the weekly precious metals review with Bill Haynes of CMI Gold & Silver and futures market analyst Dan Norcini. Norcini thinks gold looks very strong. The weekly review can be heard here:

http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/6/4_KW...

Economist and former banker Alasdair Macleod, writing at GoldMoney, says that with the U.S. economy weakening, the Federal Reserve's options for reflating it and financing the U.S. government's debt are narrowing. MacLeod, who will speak at GATA's conference in London in August (http://www.gatagoldrush.com/), writes:

"It is the Fed's problem, rather than Greece's impending financial collapse, that should be closely monitored by gold bugs. This is not to belittle European difficulties and those of the European Central Bank. But in a strict monetary sense, the ECB is not so far down the monetary inflation route as the Fed -- yet. It is the Fed that has already expanded its money quantity explosively and is struggling to find further monetary fuel to lift the economy. It is the Fed that is locked on a course of accelerating monetary inflation, as those monetary base statistics show."

Macleod's commentary is titled "Catch 22 for the Fed" and you can find it at GoldMoney here:

http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/catch-22-for-the-fed.html?gmrefco...

There's gold in them thar hills, but pretty soon you won't be allowed to touch it.

In California, the state built on gold, the time is up for prospectors who are about to see their way of life declared illegal.

Just 162 years after history's biggest gold rush, diggers -- or dredgers as they now are -- are losing a long-running battle with environmentalists.

The reason for this mammoth fight is ... salmon.

At the centre of the battle is suction dredging, today's mechanised version of gold panning.

Up to 4,000 people in California use suction dredging to extract gold.

It involves motorised rigs that act like giant vacuum cleaners, sucking up mud and gravel from the bottom of a watercourse and then using gravity to sort tiny quantities of gold from the rocks and dirt.

Environmentalists say the technique disturbs riverbeds where fish such as pacific salmon lay their eggs.

The salmon population has fallen steeply in the Golden State.

The environmentalists also say the dredging releases poisonous mercury into the water.

They persuaded California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to agree to a two-year moratorium on suction dredging in 2009 while scientists compile an impact report.

The 800-page report has been finished at a cost of $1.5 million.

continue>>>

In the new edition of the Got Gold Report, Gene Arensberg muses on the search for a mechanism of wealth preservation against the possibility of currency collapse. Three guesses as to what that mechanism might be. The new GGR is headlined "Tired of 'Dire'?" and you can find it here:

http://www.gotgoldreport.com/2011/06/got-gold-report-tired-of-dire.html

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the not-understanding-the-technology dept

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons had proposed a new bill that was designed to make "streaming" infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn't available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend "public performance" rights to section 506a of the Copyright Act.

Supporters of this bill claim that all it's really doing is harmonizing US copyright law's civil and criminal sections. After all, the rights afforded under copyright law in civil cases cover a list of rights: reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works or perform the work. The rules for criminal infringement only cover reproducing and distributing -- but not performing. So, supporters claim, all this does is "harmonize" copyright law and bring the criminal side into line with the civil side by adding "performance rights" to the list of things. Continue Reading

This article is essentially the second part to an article I wrote yesterday about how we are seeing warnings about the next financial collapse all over the place right now.  Panic is building and a lot of investors are trying to figure out where to put their money.  Suddenly everyone seems a whole lot less optimistic than they were a couple of months ago.

Michael Sheldon, the chief market strategist at RDM Financial, believes that all of the bad economic news we are seeing right now is clear evidence that we are entering an "economic slump"....

"Initially, we just had bad news from the weekly jobless claims data, but now we're starting to see a broad-based economic slump."

So what are some of the numbers that have investors so concerned?

Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently explained to CNBC why he is so alarmed right now....

"US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing."

The bad economic news just keeps rolling in.  It is almost as if someone has slammed on the economic brakes.

The following are a few more examples of the bad economic numbers that have come out over the past couple of days....

*According to the latest ADP Employment Services report, private employers in the United States only added 38,000 jobs last month.  That number had been expected to be somewhere around 175,000.  This jobs report is being called a "disaster".

*Manufacturing activity in May was much lower than most economists were projecting.  The following is how CNBC described the newest numbers from ISM....

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists' expectations for 57.7.

*Moody's downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday, and stated that they believe that there is a 50/50 chance that Greece will default.  This time Moody's downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1, and that caused the euro to fall like a rock.

To get an idea of just how imbalanced the European financial system has become at this point, just check out this article.

*Earlier this week it was announced that U.S. home prices have declined 5.1% from a year ago.  Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen more than they did during the entire Great Depression.

*As I mentioned yesterday, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 in May.

So what is causing all of this?

Well, the truth is that the "sugar high" that the U.S. economy has been enjoying is coming to an end.

QE2 is almost over and the vast majority of the federal "stimulus money" has been spent.  Now the federal government is talking about getting spending under control and we are seeing austerity programs being implemented on the state and local level from coast to coast.

But without massive intervention by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. government will the U.S. economy be able to stand?

Douglas Borthwick, a managing director with Faros Trading in Stamford, Connecticut is not optimistic....

"The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it."

The truth is that the Fed and the U.S. government went all-out in an attempt to keep the economy from falling into a total depression.  The U.S. government has been running budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the Fed has been printing money like mad.  If these measures are removed, the economic crisis we are experiencing might just get a whole lot worse.

How much worse?

Well, just check out what Peter Yastrow, a market strategist for Yastrow Origer, recently told CNBC....

"Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything," Yastrow said. "We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it."

Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama keep talking about the "economic recovery" but most Americans know better.

According to one new poll, 66% of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.

Perhaps this is a sign that the American people are starting to wake up to the new economic realities that we are facing.

The U.S. economy is being ripped apart and shredded.  Thanks to our short-sighted trade policies, the Chinese economy has roared to life while the U.S. economy continues to ship jobs and factories overseas.

But instead of facing up to our economic problems and coming up with some solutions, our nation has been on a horrific debt binge over the last couple of decades in a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living.

One of the reasons why I pound on the economic news day after day is so that more people will really understand what is going on and will start to wake up.

In fact, if you have a family member of a friend that just doesn't get it, the following is a great article to share with that person: "50 Things Every American Should Know About The Collapse Of The Economy".

Look, even Barack Obama says that the present state of affairs is "unsustainable" and that changes have to be made.

But if the U.S. government decided that it was going to go to a balanced budget tomorrow, that would suck approximately a trillion and a half dollars out of the economy.

What do you think would happen if that came to pass?

Of course by going into even more debt we are destroying the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect future generations to pay it off.

It is absolutely disgusting what we have done and it is thievery on the highest level.

Everyone knows that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that at some point it is going to pop.

Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is for a little bit more time before economic disaster strikes.

Unfortunately, all of the latest economic news seems to be pointing toward another economic slowdown.

Hold on to your seats. Source>>>>