The Wake Up Project

(CounterThink) – While the White House is celebrating a 3.5% reported growth in GDP last quarter — the first economic growth in a year — they conveniently forget the simple fact that it’s easy to fake economic growth with debt spending. This so-called “growth” was really just the result of the U.S. Treasury flooding the economy with more debt-ridden “stimulus dollars” that will drive the nation even deeper into irreversible debt. That’s not genuine economic growth, it’s just really bad economic planning. For example, if a family is living on credit card debt to buy groceries, and they’re two years behind on credit card payments, and then they suddenly take out a huge cash advance against their credit cards so they can spend even more money, that’s not “economic growth.” That’s just more stupid spending. The U.S. government has done precisely the same thing: It’s spending money it doesn’t have, then claiming “an end to the recession” because the nearly $1 trillion in stimulus dollars di...

The newsletter Growth Stock Wire says recent gains in the stock market are just temporary. Growth Stock Wire says the pickup in leading economic indicators and the stock market's gains are the result of the government’s throwing trillions of dollars into the system. Home sales today are higher this month than last, but way lower than this time last year. Auto sales have picked up due to the "cash for clunkers" program. And the pickup in nearly every other consumer durable product is due mostly to restocking depleted inventories. The newsletter says a better way to gauge the strength of economic activity is to look at the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the price it costs to ship commodities overseas. This Index is still 60% below where it was a year ago. If the economy were truly in "recovery" mode, the Baltic Dry Index would be moving consistently higher and it's not. The stock market has gotten way ahead of itself. Investors are banking on a booming economy...

Have you heard the great news? The recession is over! It’s true; I saw it on TV. Why fret about growing unemployment lines when banks are paying big-time bonuses again? Proof of the turn was apparently revealed by the 2nd quarter GDP figures that showed that the economy declined by only 1%. After four consecutive quarters of negative GDP, the green shoots now assume that growth will resume over the summer. But before we pop the corks, it may be worthwhile to ask, “what really has changed, and what is responsible for our new lease on life?” In truth, because of the continued profligacy of the government and Federal Reserve, the imbalances that caused the current recession have actually worsened. We are now in an even deeper hole than when the crisis began. Rather than wrapping up a recession, we are actually sinking into a depression. If things look better now, it’s just because we are in the eye of the storm. We must remember that recessions inevitably follow periods of artificial grow...