Is Economic Armageddon on the Horizon?

 George Soros seems almost hopeful. He's buying up all the gold, and off-loading all of his equity positions in major financial stocks. Take a look at the 13-F report he filed with the SEC.  Moreover, billionaire John Paulson, who made $20 billion off the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, is also going gold crazy.  Not to mention the central banks. They're buying up gold in great quantity. In fact, central bank gold demand doubled since last quarter!

So Soros is backing up his words of warning, stated in Newsweek, with action in more ways than one. Let's not forget Soros's Management Fund purchased enough grain elevators and food production sites to become the third largest conglomerate in the food industry in the U.S.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”
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As anger rises, riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable. “Yes, yes, yes,” he says, almost gleefully. The response to the unrest could be more damaging than the violence itself. “It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”

However, there are even more disturbing signs and/or clues that indicate economic collapse may be closer than we think. In addition to the billionaires and the central bank gold grab, here are some more interesting occurrences that make you go hmmm:

1. U.S. banks told to make plans for preventing collapse -- Uhm, shouldn't banks already have recovery plans? Banks are pulling in record profits right now, but you can bet your bottom dollar that should we see another economic collapse in the near future, the banks will be first in line for handouts, despite what this article reports.

U.S. regulators directed five of the country's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.

2. The fed's plan to raise capital requirements for the banking industry in September. According to Mark Adams JD/MBA, in a comment he made regarding the possibility of a banking crisis, he said,

"an increase in the reserve ratio will cause many banks to become under-capitalized with the stroke of a pen thereby causing a banking crisis which will result in another bailout for the big banks, another consolidation of power in the banking industry, another tightening of credit for main street, another economic crash, and austerity for the rest of us.
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I'll explain what going from a reserve capital ratio of 4% to 6% will do. With a capital ratio of 4%, a bank can lend $25,000 for each $1,000 of capital which includes funds raised through stock offerings, retained earnings and deposits. With a capital ratio of 6%, a bank can lend $16,667 for each $1,000 in capital. Since banks produce earnings by lending, most banks want to lend as much as is allowed, so this increase in the reserve ratio will immediately cause most banks to become undercapitalized thereby needing to be taken over and bailed out. After the new rule takes effect, banks that are lending more than 2/3rds of what is currently allowed will be undercapitalized, so that is most banks."

3. 611 bankster resignations in seven months -- American Kabuki posted  each and every one of them from 9/1/11 to 4/22/12...from world banks to investment houses to money funds to etc.

4. Homeland Security pursuit of crowd surveillance -- Are they expecting crowds to gather? And if so, why?

5. Multiple agencies of the federal government have ordered and are stockpiling millions of rounds of hollow point bullets -- While it's true, Fox News is reporting that it is not for potential civil unrest, but is "standard issue" and simply used for mandatory federal training sessions. However, as Maj. Gen. Jerry Curry pointed out, cheaper firing range bullets are used for practice and training.

Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don’t just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body’s organs. Death often follows." -- Maj. Gen. Curry

Moreover, Curry added that during the Iraq War the U.S. military used 70 million rounds of ammunition per year. Compare that with the 450 million rounds of hollowpoint bullets ordered in March by the Department of Homeland Security, and the additional 750 million rounds of hollow point bullets (DHS) ordered recently. That's over 1 billion hollow points in less than six months! 

RoninMaximus sums it up:

"What has largely been DELIBERATELY ignored by the media – though, I know full well they are more than aware – is that these thieves were insolvent when they were given trillions of US taxpayer money in the heist that was called a financial crisis in ’08. What the banks have done, along with their criminally complicit politicians is to craft the biggest fraud and the subsequent transfer of wealth in man’s history…using the outrageous and audacious fear tactic of too big to fail. The truth is, what was too big to allow to fail was the lie most all of the actors involved knew about and perpetuated.

The derivatives market is where the banks have been gambling away unabated since said financial crisis came to light in the first place. They’ve continued to manipulate the prices of the commodities market to keep their collective theft on going with Wall Street and Washington cheering it on. This is criminal, pure and simple and the government is attempting to quietly prepare militarily to deal with “we the people” when it becomes plainly apparent this ponzi scheme called the central bank is seen for what it is: An engine of theft and destroyer of the middle class’s wealth.