The Stock Market Has Officially Entered Crazytown TerritoryMichael SnyderEconomic CollapseDecember 27, 2013

It is time to crank up the Looney Tunes theme song because Wall Street has officially entered crazytown territory. Stocks just keep going higher and higher, and at this point what is happening in the stock market does not bear any resemblance to what is going on in the overall economy whatsoever.

So how long can this irrational state of affairs possibly continue? Stocks seem to go up no matter what happens. If there is good news, stocks go up. If there is bad news, stocks go up. If there is no news, stocks go up. On Thursday, the day after Christmas, the Dow was up another 122 points to another new all-time record high. In fact, the Dow has had an astonishing 50 record high closes this year. This reminds me of the kind of euphoria that we witnessed during the peak of the housing bubble. At the time, housing prices just kept going higher and higher and everyone rushed to buy before they were “priced out of the market”. But we all know how that ended, and this stock market bubble is headed for a similar ending.

It is almost as if Wall Street has not learned any lessons from the last two major stock market crashes atall. Just look at Twitter. At the current price, Twitter is supposedly worth 40.7 BILLION dollars . But Twitter is not profitable. It is a seven-year-old company that has never made a single dollar of profit.

Not one single dollar.

In fact, Twitter actually lost 64.6 million dollars last quarter alone. And Twitter is expected to continue losing money for all of 2015 as well.

But Twitter stock is up 82 percent over the last 30 days, and nobody can really give a rational reason for why this is happening.

Overall, the Dow is up more than25 percent so far this year. Unlesssomething really weird happensover the next few days, it will bethe best year for the Dow since1996.It has been a wonderful run forWall Street. Unfortunately, thereare a whole host of signs that wehave entered very dangerousterritory.

The median price-to-earnings ratioon the S&P 500 has reached an all-time record high, and margin debtat the New York Stock Exchangehas reached a level that we have never seen before. In other words, stocks are massively overpriced and people have been borrowing huge amounts of money to buy stocks. These are behaviors that we also saw just before the last two stock market bubbles burst.

And of course the most troubling sign is that even as the stock market soars to unprecedented heights, the state of the overall U.S. economy is actually getting worse…

-During the last full week before Christmas, U.S. store visits were 21 percent lower than a year earlier and retail sales were 3.1 percentlower than a year earlier.

-The number of mortgage applications just hit a new 13 year low.

-The yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries just hit 3 percent.

For many more signs like this, please see my previous article entitled “37 Reasons Why ‘The EconomicRecovery Of 2013′ Is A Giant Lie“.

And most Americans don’t realize this, but the U.S. financial system and the overall U.S. economy are now in much weaker condition than they were the last time we had a major financial crash back in 2008. Employment is at a much lower level than it was back then and our banking system is much more vulnerable than it was back then. Just before the last financial crash, the U.S. national debt was sitting atabout 10 trillion dollars, but today it has risen to more than 17.2 trillion dollars. The followingexcerpt from a recent article posted on thedailycrux.com contains even more facts and figures which show how our “balance sheet numbers” continue to get even worse…

Since the fourth quarter of 2009, the U.S. current account deficit has been more than $100 billion per quarter. As a result, foreigners now own $4.2 trillion more U.S. investment assets than we own abroad. That’s $1.7 trillion more than when Buffett first warned about this huge problem in 2003. Said another way, the problem is 68% bigger now.

And here’s a number no one else will tell you – not even Buffett. Foreigners now own $25 trillion in U.S. assets. And yet… we continue to consume far more than we produce, and weborrow massively to finance our deficits.

Since 2007, the total government debt in the U.S. (federal, state, and local) has doubled from around $10 trillion to $20 trillion.

Meanwhile, the size of Fannie and Freddie’s mortgage book declined slightly since 2007, falling from $4.9 trillion to $4.6 trillion. That’s some good news, right?

Nope. The excesses just moved to a new agency. The “other” federal mortgage bank, the Federal Housing Administration, now is originating 20% of all mortgages in the U.S., up from less than 5% in 2007.

Student debt, also spurred on by government guarantees, has also boomed, doubling since 2007 to more than $1 trillion. Altogether, total debt in our economy has grown from around$50 trillion to more than $60 trillion since 2007.

So don’t be fooled by this irrational stock market bubble.

Just because a bunch of half-crazed investors are going into massive amounts of debt in a desperate attempt to make a quick buck does not mean that the overall economy is in good shape.

In fact, much of the country is in such rough shape that “reverse shopping” has become a huge trend. Even big corporations such as McDonald’s are urging their employees to return their Christmas gifts in order to bring in some much needed money…

In a stark reminder of how tough things still are for low-income families in America, McDonalds has advised workers to dig themselves “out of holiday debt” by cashing in theirChristmas haul.

“You may want to consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem as appealing as they did,” said a website set up for employees.

“Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.”

This irrational stock market bubble is not going to last for too much longer. And a lot of top financial experts are now warning their clients to prepare for the worst. For example, David John Marotta of Marotta Wealth Management recently told his clients that they should all have a“bug-out bag” that contains food, a gun and some ammunition…

A top financial advisor, worried that Obamacare, theNSA spying scandal and spiraling national debt is increasing the chances for a fiscal and social disaster, is recommending that Americans prepare a “bug-out bag” that includes food, a gun and ammo to help them stay alive.

David John Marotta, a Wall Street expert and financial advisor and Forbes contributor, said in a note to investors, “Firearms are the last item on the list, but they are on the list. There are some terrible people in this world. And you are safer when your trusted neighbors have firearms.”

His memo is part of a series addressing the potential for a “financial apocalypse.” His view,however, is that the problems plaguing the country won’t result in armageddon. “There is the possibility of a precipitous decline, although a long and drawn out malaise is much more likely,” said the Charlottesville, Va.-based president of Marotta Wealth Management.

So what do you think is coming in 2014?

Corporatist Chamber Of Commerce Gets Behind Establishment Effort To Defeat Tea PartyKurt NimmoInfowars.comDecember 27, 2013

Banks and big business orchestrating a 2014 political rumble. Corporate statists under cover of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are targeting the tea party faction in Congress and backing establishment Republicans as the 2014 primaries approach. “Our No. 1 focus is to make sure, when it comes to the Senate, that we have no loser candidates,” ScottReed, a Chamber political strategist, told The Wall Street Journal. “That will be our mantra: No fools on our ticket.”

For the Chamber, political fools are those who oppose unchecked federal spending and irresponsible deficit spending and a ballooning national debt.Calling itself an advocate for small business, the Chamber of Commerce is dominated by banks and large transnational corporations. CitiGroup, Google, Microsoft, Boeing, Merck and other banks and large corporations drive the relationship between the trade organization and government. In 2013 alone,the Chamber spent $30 million electing establishment and “centrist” Republicans who support corporate socialism.During the faux government shutdown, corporate trade groups signed a letter denouncing the effort led by the tea party faction in the House to defund Obamacare and force the government to address an astronomical federal debt. The letter complained that a government shutdown would interrupt “vital services that industry relies upon” and be “economically disruptive and create even more uncertainties for the U.S. economy,” the Huffington Post reported in September.The Chamber supports a continuation of an out-of-control federal budget and an escalating deficits under the guise of remedying a broken economy.

“We appreciate fully the importance of restraining federal spending, both discretionary spending and mandatory spending, to reduce federal budget deficits, contain the growth of federal debt, and thereby re-establish fiscal discipline in the near-term and for the long haul. However, with the U.S. economy continuing to underperform, the federal government needs to maintain its normal operations pending a successful outcome of broader budgetary reforms,” the letter sent by the Chamber to members of Congress ins September states. “It is not in the best interest of the employers, employees or the American people to risk a government shutdown that will be economically disruptive and create even more uncertainties for the U.S. Economy.”The Chamber is targeting Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Both played an instrumental role in the failed effort to shutdown the government. In October, Tom Donahue, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, attacked Cruz during an interview with the Christian Science Monitor. Asked if Cruz should “sit down and shut up,” Donahue said that’s “one of the things we could work with him on.”In November, the Chamber applied pressure to GOP intra-party voting and helped establishment Republican Bradley Byrne beat tea party candidate Dean Young in a special Alabama House election.In addition, the Chamber has decided to get involved in primary races, something it has avoided in the past. It is pushing Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, who has become a House fixture over the span of nine terms, in a race against a tea party challenger.According to The Hill, the Chamber may influence Senate races in North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa, where tea party candidates are expected to oppose GOP candidates.The Chamber has emerged from the shadows to play its card during the coming elections. It special interest group believes this is necessary because the tea party is pushing to interrupt and eventual shut down the federal spending trough that feeds large corporations and banks at the expense of the American tax payer and, through pernicious debt, will enslave future generations.

Big Business Backs Obama, Fights Government Shutdown VIDEO BELOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMu-_nF7OqI

Federal Judge Rules NSA Surveillance LegalKurt NimmoInfowars.comDecember 27, 2013

NSA program a “counter-punch” to al-Qaeda U.S. District Judge William Paley ruled today that the NSA’s rampant violations of the Fourth Amendment are legal.

He cited al-Qaeda and 9/11 when he dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the NSA’s surveillance program.Paley said the NSA program “represents the government’s counter-punch” to al-Qaeda. Despite recent evidence to the contrary, Paley also said violating the rights of millions of Americans prevents terror attacks.Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor who is a member of a White House panel established to investigate NSA violations unearthed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, said last week evidence that massive surveillance stops terrorist attacks is “very thin.”Obama insists that lives have been saved by violating the Fourth Amendment and the conclusions of the panel handpicked by his administration reveal deep skepticism of the NSA program’s efficacy.Paley said the government “adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestratingattacks across the world.”

INFOWARS.COM BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND