20 Signs That The Next Great Economic Depression Has Already Started In Europe

Posted on April 30, 2013 by raptureimminent

By Michael, on April 29th, 2013

The next Great Depression is already happening – it just hasn’t reached the United States yet. Things in Europe just continue to get worse and worse, and yet most people in the United States still don’t get it. All the time I have people ask me when the “economic collapse” is going to happen. Well, for ages I have been warning that the next major wave of the ongoing economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening. In fact, both Greece and Spain already have levels of unemployment that are greater than anything the U.S. experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Pay close attention to what is happening over there, because it is coming here too. You see, the truth is that Europe is a lot like the United States. We are both drowning in unprecedented levels of debt, and we both have overleveraged banking systems that resemble a house of cards. The reason why the U.S. does not look like Europe yet is because we have thrown all caution to the wind. The Federal Reserve is printing money as if there is no tomorrow and the U.S. government is savagely destroying the future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have by stealing more than 100 million dollars from them every single hour of every single day. We have gone “all in” on kicking the can down the road even though it means destroying the future of America. But the alternative scares the living daylights out of our politicians. When nations such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy tried to slow down the rate at which their debts were rising, the results were absolutely devastating. A full-blown economic depression is raging across southern Europe and it is rapidly spreading into northern Europe. Eventually it will spread to the rest of the globe as well.

The following are 20 signs that the next Great Depression has already started in Europe…

#1 The unemployment rate in France has surged to 10.6 percent, and the number of jobless claims in that country recently set a new all-time record.

#2 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole is sitting at an all-time record of 12 percent.

#3 Two years ago, Portugal’s unemployment rate was about 12 percent. Today, it is about 17 percent.

#4 The unemployment rate in Spain has set a new all-time record of 27 percent. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s the United States never had unemployment that high.

#5 The unemployment rate among those under the age of 25 in Spain is an astounding 57.2 percent.

#6 The unemployment rate in Greece has set a new all-time record of 27.2 percent. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s the United States never had unemployment that high.

#7 The unemployment rate among those under the age of 25 in Greece is a whopping 59.3 percent.

#8 French car sales in March were 16 percent lower than they were one year earlier.

#9 German car sales in March were 17 percent lower than they were one year earlier.

#10 In the Netherlands, consumer debt is now up to about 250 percent of available income.

#11 Industrial production in Italy has fallen by an astounding 25 percent over the past five years.

#12 The number of Spanish firms filing for bankruptcy is 45 percent higher than it was a year ago.

#13 Since 2007, the value of non-performing loans in Europe has increased by 150 percent.

#14 Bank withdrawals in Cyprus during the month of March were double what they were in February even though the banks were closed for half the month.

#15 Due to an absolutely crippling housing crash, there are approximately 3 million vacant homes in Spain today.

#16 Things have gotten so bad in Spain that entire apartment buildings are being overwhelmed by squatters…

A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.

“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”

#17 As I wrote about the other day, child hunger has become so rampant in Greece that teachers are reporting that hungry children are begging their classmates for food.

#18 The debt to GDP ratio in Italy is now up to 136 percent.

#19 25 percent of all banking assets in the UK are in banks that are leveraged at least 40 to 1.

#20 German banking giant Deutsche Bank has more than 55 trillion euros (which is more than 72 trillion dollars) of exposure to derivatives. But the GDP of Germany for an entire year is only about 2.7 trillion euros.

Yes, U.S. stocks have been doing great so far this year, but the truth is that the stock market has become completely and totally divorced from economic reality. When it does catch up with the economic fundamentals, it will probably happen very rapidly like we saw back in 2008.

Our politicians can try to kick the can down the road for as long as they can, but at some point the consequences of our foolish decisions will hunt us down and overtake us. The following is what Peter Schiff had to say about this coming crisis the other day…

“The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said. ”I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”

“We’re broke, Schiff added. ”We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”

Schiff points out that the market gains experienced recently, with the Dow first topping 14,000 on its way to setting record highs, are giving investors a false sense of security.

“It’s not that the stock market is gaining value… it’s that our money is losing value. And so if you have a debased currency… a devalued currency, the price of everything goes up. Stocks are no exception,” he said.

“The Fed knows that the U.S. economy is not recovering,” he noted. “It simply is being kept from collapse by artificially low interest rates and quantitative easing. As that support goes, the economy will implode.”

So please don’t think that we are any different from Europe.

If the United States government started only spending the money that it brings in, we would descend into an economic depression tomorrow.

The only way that we can continue to live out the economic fantasy that we see all around us is by financially abusing our children and our grandchildren.

The U.S. economy has become a miserable junkie that is completely and totally addicted to reckless money printing and gigantic mountains of debt.

If we stop printing money and going into unprecedented amounts of debt we are finished.

If we continue printing money and going into unprecedented amounts of debt we are finished.

Either way, this is all going to end very, very badly.

The Economic Collapse

This week on ‘The Hal Lindsey Report’ April 5th, 2013 {Video}

Posted on April 5, 2013 by raptureimminent

By Hal Lindsey

Cyprus is a small island in the Mediterranean Sea. It lies just 200 miles off the coast of Israel. According to scripture, Barnabas hailed from Cyprus. It was there that Paul began his first missionary journey.

At various times, Cyprus has been in the news because it is claimed by both the Greeks and the Turks. In fact, the Turkish Cypriots live in the northern part of the island and the Greek Cypriots in the south. They even have a UN-supervised line of demarcation that separates the two.

In the last few years, large gas and oil reserves have been discovered off the coast of Cyprus. This has focused international attention on the tiny republic and caused a great deal of internal strife over the distribution of the new found revenues.

Recently, Cyprus has been in the news for quite another reason. One that will have repercussions that may one day be felt here in America.

As a nation, Cyprus, and more particularly its banking sector, have fallen on hard times. So hard, in fact, that without a bailout loan of many billions, the nation faces bankruptcy.

To make a long and painful story short, a group of money powers known as “The Troika,” which consists of the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, agreed to help the island nation.

But, unlike their bailouts of other European nations like Spain or Greece, this time the Troika demanded more than a tightening of the belt or an increase in income tax revenues or the addition of a national value-added tax. This time, they demanded that Cyprus arbitrarily invade the bank accounts of ordinary citizens and confiscate 7 to 10% in order to help repay the debt.

Cyprus is as an offshore financial shelter for many Russians, like the Caymans for many Americans. Russian president Vladimir Putin was furious over the demand. He protested loudly and angrily. So did the Cypriots themselves.

In fact, their House of Representatives voted to reject the imposition of a tax on smaller accounts, but faced with impending default, acquiesced to a tax on larger accounts. Strangely, so did Putin. In fact, for some reason he agreed to keep his mouth shut when the dust settled and up to 60% of savings accounts in excess of 100,000 Euros was confiscated by the government.

To prevent a run on the banks that would collapse the system, the government abruptly closed Cyprus’s banks. What was supposed to be 24 hours turned into two weeks!

What if — without warning — you were told you couldn’t withdraw money from your bank for two weeks?

Can you think of any action the world powers could take that would send a greater chill through the world banking and financial sectors than arbitrary confiscation of private funds to pay debts run up by socialist politicians? And we’ve all seen what can happen when there are crises in the banking and financial markets!

Will that happen here? To paraphrase our nation’s founders, what Big Brother gives, Big Brother can take away! Unfortunately, it’s already happening, but through cleverly disguised “fees” and “account charges.” Even more subtly, the same thing is happening to us when the Federal Reserve System prints money backed by nothing and floods the markets. Every dollar printed causes the value of every dollar in your wallet to decrease. The Treasury agents might as well show up at your house and demand that you give them your wallet!

You may be asking yourself, “How does this concern me?” Well, even though the economy of Cyprus is smaller than the smallest state in our union, it’s conceivable that a collapse there could trigger other collapses in the Eurozone and spark a complete meltdown. If nothing else, the whole affair is undermining already shaky confidence in European banks and financial markets.

All it takes is a trigger, a lead domino to fall and start the whole chain collapsing. This crisis illustrates just how close we may be to the final meltdown that will open the door to the Antichrist.

President Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East proved to be nothing more than a PR tour comprised of photo-ops and displays of “feel good” statesmanship. He made some admirable pronouncements about the strength of the friendship between Israel and the United States. He also issued some stern warnings to Iran, but nothing we’ve not heard before.

Probably the most important incidents that occurred during the trip were largely ignored by the media. The President’s visit to a display of the Dead Sea Scrolls seemed to prompt an admission that the Jews’ ties to Israel extend into ancient history. This is something of a significant development for the President. He has previously seemed to believe that the Jews are in Israel as the world’s sympathetic response to the Holocaust.

Second, in a rather awkwardly contrived moment, the President apparently forced Prime Minister Netanyahu into issuing an apology of sorts to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan for the Mavi Mamara incident during the 2010 Egyptian-Israeli blockade of Gaza. It caused the deaths of nine Turkish militants. But maybe some good will come of it if it eases tensions between the two former allies.

Finally, last week the Supreme Court held hearings on the constitutionality of two cases related to same-sex marriage. Proposition 8 is an amendment to California’s constitution, duly passed by its citizens, that restricts marriage to a man and a woman. The second is a federal statute overwhelmingly passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. It’s known as the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. It effectively requires inter-state recognition of marriages only between a man and a woman. It also limits federal benefits only to opposite-sex marriages.

The factor that makes these two cases unique is that both governments who are charged with enforcing these laws — California and the federal government — refuse to defend them in court. And some of the justices on the highest court believe that the citizens themselves have no “standing” to defend them.

Though we probably won’t know the Court’s rulings for several months, this could be a watershed moment in our nation’s history. Obviously, if they strike down both of those laws, it will mean that same-sex marriage will be legal throughout the nation. But even if they decline to rule for “technical” reasons, and allow the current lower court ruling voiding Proposition 8 to stand, it will mean that every law passed by a majority of citizens of any state can be annulled simply by the elected officials refusing to defend them in court.

That means that we may be on the verge of a complete takeover of the legislative and electoral process by the US court system — and unscrupulous politicians. God help us if that happens.

I believe this issue — the obliteration of the divine institution of marriage between a man and a woman (which has been practiced by all civilizations for thousands of years) and the subsequent acceptance and celebration of same-sex marriage — may well be the issue that finally brings physical persecution to Christians in the United States. We are fast approaching the moment when we must decide to stand up and speak the truth of the Bible, and bear the consequences, or pointedly deny God’s Word and accept a concept that is, as Justice Alito noted, “newer than cell phones or the internet.”

Are you ready to stand up and be counted? I’ll begin that discussion this week and continue it in greater depth next week.

Don’t miss this week’s Report on TBN, Daystar, CPM Network, The Word Network, various local stations, www.hallindsey.com or www.hischannel.com. Check your local listings.

God Bless,

Hal Lindsey
mail: HLMM, P.O. Box 470470, Tulsa, OK 74147
email: comments@hallindsey.com
web: http://www.hallindsey.com