From Investment Watch Blog via Zero Hedge.

#1 In December 2008, 31.6 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, a new all-time record of 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps.  That number has increased by more than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the mainstream media still has the gall to insist that “things are getting better”.

#2 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

#3 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

#4 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all Americans have received money from a safety net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives.

#5 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

#6 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years.  Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

#7 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

#8 The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.

#9 In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed.  In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed.  It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place.

#10 When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.

#11 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all small business owners in America “say they would not start a business today given what they know now and in the current environment.”

#12 The number of jobs at new small businesses continues to decline.  According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration…

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

#13 The U.S. share of global GDP has fallen from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011.

#14 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

#15 There are four major U.S. banks that each have more than 40 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives.

#16 In 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing, but now there are less than 12 million.

#17 According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971.  Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are.

#18 The Pew Research Center has also found that 85 percent of all middle class Americans say that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.

#19 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

#20 Right now, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#21 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#22 According to one survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

#23 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percentof all men in the United States have jobs.

#24 The average amount of time that an unemployed worker stays out of work in the United States is 40 weeks.

#25 If you can believe it, approximately one out of every four American workers makes 10 dollars an hour or less.

#26 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.

#27 Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare.  Overall, there are almost 80 different “means-tested welfare programs” that the federal government is currently running.

#28 When you account for all government transfer payments and all forms of government employment, more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially dependent on the government.

#29 Barack Obama has been president for less than four years, and during that time the number of Americans “not in the labor force” has increased by nearly 8.5 million.  Something seems really “off” about that number, because during the entire decade of the 1980s the number of Americans “not in the labor force” only rose by about 2.5 million.

#30 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#31 According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.

#32 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

#33 Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

#34 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages.  According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#35 At this point, only 24.6 percent of all jobs in the United States are good jobs.

#36 In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

#37 Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.

#38 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#39 One survey of business executives has ranked California as the worst state in America to do business for 8 years in a row.

#40 In the city of Detroit today, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty, and close to 50 percent of all adults are functionally illiterate.

#41 It is being projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.

#42 More than three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as will be sold in 2012.

#43 If you can believe it, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.

#44 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs.  60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

#45 Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion.  That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.

#46 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#47 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

#48 The U.S. tax code is now more than 3.8 million words long.  If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.

#49 According to the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banking havens such as the Cayman Islands.

#50 The value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was first created.

#51 2012 was the third year in a row that the yield for corn has declined in the United States.

#52 Experts are telling us that global food reserves have reached their lowest level in almost 40 years.

#53 One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.

#54 If you can believe it, one recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.

#55 Medical costs related to obesity in the United States are estimated to be approximately $147 billion a year.

#56 Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high.  Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.

#57 Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.

#58 The wealthiest 400 families in the United States have about as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of all Americans combined.

#59 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percentof all Americans combined.

#60 At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#61 Nearly 500,000 federal employees now make at least $100,000 a year.

#62 In 2006, only 12 percent of all federal workers made $100,000 or more per year.  Now, approximately 22 percent of all federal workers do.

#63 If you can believe it, there are 77,000 federal workers that make more than the governors of their own states do.

#64 Nearly 15,000 retired federal workers are collecting federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually.  The list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.

#65 U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the royal family.

#66 Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.

#67 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#68 During fiscal year 2012, 62 percent of the federal budget was spent on entitlements.

#69 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#70 It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#71 Medicare is also growing by leaps and bounds.  As I wrote about recently, it is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.

#72 Thanks to our foolish politicians (including Obama), Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.  That comes to approximately $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

#73 Amazingly, the U.S. national debt is now up to 16.3 trillion dollars.  When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

#74 During the first four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated about as much debt as it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that George W. Bush took office.

#75 Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was originally created back in 1913.

From Dan Piraro at BizarroComics.com via Dawn N.

That's good advice.

From Spiegel Online International.

As always click on the photo below for the entire story along with a short photo essay.

Way super highly double recommended ... and then some.

The Woes of an American Drone Operator

By Nicola Abé

A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit of the United States Air Force in New Mexico. He kills dozens of people. But then, one day, he realizes that he can't do it anymore.

The container is filled with the humming of computers. It's the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren't flying through the air. They're just sitting at the controls.

Bryant was one of them, and he remembers one incident very clearly when a Predator drone was circling in a figure-eight pattern in the sky above Afghanistan, more than 10,000 kilometers (6,250 miles) away. There was a flat-roofed house made of mud, with a shed used to hold goats in the crosshairs, as Bryant recalls. When he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact.

"These moments are like in slow motion," he says today. Images taken with an infrared camera attached to the drone appeared on his monitor, transmitted by satellite, with a two-to-five-second time delay.

With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.

Nice chairs.

The single most terrible school house atrocity in history, the Bath School Disaster, was carried out without the use of a single gun. 

From Rootsweb a community within Ancestry.com

As always click on the photo below for the site from which it was taken.

With all due respect and sympathy to the victims and their families of the Newport, Columbine,  McDonald's, and Virginia Tech shootings, the Oklahoma bombing, and other mass murders, they were not the worst mass murders of children in the US.

On May 18, 1927, 45 people, mostly children, were killed and 58 were injured when disgruntled and demented school board member Andrew Kehoe dynamited the new school building in Bath, Michigan out of revenge over his foreclosed farm due in part to the taxes required to pay for the new school.

We found the following editorial excerpt to be interesting in that it asks many of the same questions we are asking ourselves today.

Clinton County Republican-News
May 19, 1927

THE BATH HORROR

Forty children were killed Wednesday forenoon at Bath.  As many more were injured, some of them crippled for life.  At least four adults, honorable and useful citizens were robbed of life.  Never before has Clinton county been visited by such a tragedy - and never again, we hope.  And all this was the result of the insane rage of another citizen of that peaceful Clinton county community.

Every week - almost daily it sometimes seems - people lose their lives in groups.  All over the country and all over the world there are tragedies where dozens of innocent people go to death.  But seldom does this happen to a group of children.  And almost never are these horrors the result of a fiend's planning as was the case in Bath yesterday.

Andrew Kehoe, according to people of Bath, has long been opposed to the township agricultural school in that village.  He fought its establishment.  He fought the expense of operating it.  He was a leader of those who were opposed to the higher tax it imposed upon the community and township.  Because of his activity  and the leadership he fell heir to, he became radical and most unreasonable on this subject.  Being heavily in debt on his farm, the added taxes contributed to his loss of the farm on a mortgage this spring.  Evidently this was the last straw.  Andrew Kehoe became a maniac.

Light hearted, laughing children left their homes on the beautiful spring morning for the school.  Less than two hours later their mangled little forms were lying in a mass of wreckage and debris.  Why?  Because one man was incapable, or too stubborn, to recognize the need of modern educational facilities.

Fond mothers and fathers waved cheery goodbyes to their loved little ones early Wednesday morning.  Two hours later they gropingly lifed the edges of a quilt or sheet that covered a twisted little body, praying that God had spared their little one, only to find the terrible worst.  Why?  Because one man, Andrew Kehoe, allowed his passions to run rampant so long that it resulted in maniacal wholesale murder.

One stoical young father, already having identified the lifeless remains of two of his dear little ones, joined the search among the ruins only to uncover the third baby of his little brood.  As he tenderly carried this child toward the grass plot where the other two lay, the agony in his face was terrible to witness.  Would Andrew Kehoe in his sane days have caused this father and mother the anguish they are now experiencing?  No!  He allowed the comparatively trivial problems of his workaday world to unbalance his mind.  He forgot God.  He forgot his friends.  He ignored the beauty of the spring day.  He was oblivious to the sacredness and beauty of innocent childhood.  Black, bitter and unreasoning wrath filled his soul.  He would kill.  He would [maim].  He would wreck.  Anything, everything - nothing was too terrible to satisfy the rage he had developed - and all because of a few paltry dollars.

What is the lesson?

What can the people of the country - for the whole country has been attracted by the horror of the catastrophe - learn or conclude from Andrew Kehoe's dreadful act? Is the Bath township tax situation serious enough to warrant despondency or insanity among its citizens?  Is the building of a modern institution which equips children to meet the problems of the world a burden - or is it a privilege?

Andrew Kehoe's act has no parallel, so far as we know, in the history of Michigan.  That he was insane there is little doubt.  But he was not always insane.  To start with he was merely antagonistic.  Then he became radical.  Constant brooding resulted in murderous insanity.  He was the victim of the progress of his own lack of balance - but with him to his ignominious end he took the lives of over forty children.

What a terrible price to pay for narrow-mindedness.  What an awful calamity for one peaceful little community to bear for one man's lack of ordinary American ideals.  What an overwhelming and crushing grief for mothers, fathers, relatives and intimate friends.  Never before have we known of aversion of the cost of education taking such terrible form.  There are, however, many people who unthinkingly hamper and discourage the progress of good schools and other institutions for the welfare and happiness of the public.

What are we going to do about it?

Ever wonder what's the big deal about Hollywood Fats?

Ever even heard of Hollywood Fats?

That's ok, few have.

Thought by some to be the greatest blues guitarist of them all, Michael Mann suffered the distinct misfortune of coming of age during a time of declining popularity for the Blues and then lost his life at the age of 32 long before getting his shot at another Blues revival.

Legend has it he was playing with Buddy Guy and Junior Wells before he turned 14. He worked with John Lee Hooker, J. B. Hutto and Albert King who fired him because he was too good.  He was on the road touring with Muddy Waters before he turned 20, maybe 18.

He recorded some sides both with/as the Hollywood Fats Band and Hollywood Fats and the Paladins all of which were very good but not earth shaking ... at least to my ears.

Finally when Dave Alvin left The Blaster's to become the "Godfather of Americana" or the "King of California" take your pick, Fats took over the lead guitar position and .....

Whoa!

The second time you listen to this, check out the tone, so perfectly crunchy and snarly at the same time.

Feel the power in his rhythm as he locks up the bass and drums and then walks them up into a whole new gear.

Listen for the little two bar fills into and out of both the verse and the chorus that perfectly frame Phil Alvin's vocals.

Finally, check out the look on Phil Alvin's face and know that he knows that what's going on here is very, very hard to come by.

This is Phil Alvin singing like only Phil Alvin can, Lee Allen on the saxaphone, John Bazz playing the bass guitar, Bill Bateman on the drums, and the legendary Michael Mann aka Hollywood Fats on lead guitar.

The Blasters.

Rock and Roll Will Stand.

59 years old and it still grabs me by the heart.

It's been a while since we've used two pieces from The Wall Street Journal in one week's time, but they're on a roll lately.

We took practically all of this piece because something is different in WSJ's linking system for this article and we found it to be very worthwhile. The link in the photo below will take you to a companion interview with WSJ writer John Hilsenrath on this group of unelected geniuses that are endeavoring mightily, while dining elegantly, to make your money worthless.

Do I seem bitter?

Inside the Risky Bets of Central Banks

By JON HILSENRATH and BRIAN BLACKSTONE

BASEL, Switzerland—Every two months, more than a dozen bankers meet here on Sunday evenings to talk and dine on the 18th floor of a cylindrical building looking out on the Rhine.

The dinner discussions on money and economics are more than academic. At the table are the chiefs of the world's biggest central banks, representing countries that annually produce more than $51 trillion of gross domestic product, three-quarters of the world's economic output.

Of late, these secret talks have focused on global economic troubles and the aggressive measures by central banks to manage their national economies. Since 2007, central banks have flooded the world financial system with more than $11 trillion. Faced with weak recoveries and Europe's churning economic problems, the effort has accelerated. The biggest central banks plan to pump billions more into government bonds, mortgages and business loans.

Their monetary strategy isn't found in standard textbooks. The central bankers are, in effect, conducting a high-stakes experiment, drawing in part on academic work by some of the men who studied and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s and 1980s.

While many national governments, including the U.S., have failed to agree on fiscal policy—how best to balance tax revenues with spending during slow growth—the central bankers have forged their own path, independent of voters and politicians, bound by frequent conversations and relationships stretching back to university days.

Many economists emerged from MIT with a belief that government could help to smooth out economic downturns. Central banks play a particularly important role in this view, not only by setting interest rates but also by influencing public expectations through carefully worded statements.

While at MIT, the central bankers dreamed up mathematical models and discussed their ideas in seminar rooms and at cheap food joints in a rundown Boston-area neighborhood on the Charles River.

Over Sunday dinners in Basel, which often stretch to three hours, they now talk of pressing, real-world problems with authority. The meals are part of two-day meetings held six times a year at the BIS. Dinner guests include leaders of the Fed, ECB, Bank of England and Bank of Japan, as well as central bankers from India, China, Mexico, Brazil and a few other countries.

The Bank of England's Mr. King leads the dinner discussions in a room decorated by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, which designed the "Bird's Nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics. The men have designated seats at a round table in a dining area scented by white orchids and framed by white walls, a black ceiling and panoramic views.

"It is a way in which people can talk completely privately," Mr. King said in an interview. "It is a big advantage if you have some feel for how central banks think about questions, what they're likely to do in the future if certain events were to occur."

Serious matters follow appetizers, wine and small talk, according to people familiar with the dinners. Mr. King typically asks his colleagues to talk about the outlook in their respective countries. Others ask follow-up questions. The gatherings yield no transcripts or minutes. No staff is allowed.

The 18-member group, formally known as the Economic Consultative Committee, has only once issued a public statement: a two-line missive in September, promising to look for solutions in interbank lending markets, responding to allegations that some private banks had conspired to manipulate the Libor interest rate.

On Mondays after the dinner, the bankers join a larger group of central bankers at a large round table on a lower floor of the BIS building, which is shaped like a rook chess piece. Staff members sit nearby at desks decorated in white leather.

"These meetings are a very important forum to understand the global situation," said Duvvuri Subbarao, governor of the Reserve Bank of India and a Sunday dinner participant. "People speak freely."