Solar Flares Arriving on Earth

We have been watching for an increase in solar flare disruptions....because we realize how significant electricity is to America's way of life.  What??  No cell phones?  No laptops?  No hot coffee?  No cash machines?  No lights to keep away looters?

So this headline today is interesting...and further foreshadowing of what may happen if an extreme flare from an increasingly violent sun were to disrupt planet earth.

Effects of solar flares arriving on Earth       

WASHINGTON — The impact of a series of eruptions on the sun began arriving at Earth on Friday and could affect some communications for a day or so.  

 Operators of electrical grids are working to avoid outages, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says some satellite communications and Global Positioning Systems could face problems.

The magnetic blasts, which Bogdan likened to a tsunami in space, can also affect electronic communications and electrical systems. A 1989 solar flare knocked out the electrical systems in Quebec, Canada, but the current solar storm is not expected to be that powerful. On a scale of 1 to 5, he said, it is probably a 2 or 3.

But more significant solar storms are expected in the next few years, he said. 

See it here; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44037650/ns/technology_and_science-space/

With heat raging at record levels all over the USA and power companies already scrambling to avoid black outs from an overtaxed electrical grid...we DO NOT need another fly in the ointment.

When will mankind realize that he is in control of nothing?  We need God to send the rain, stop the asteroids, calm the sun, stop the floods, keep the financial system intact, quell the earthquakes, etc...  We are only here on earth as long as He allows.

"By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." 2 Peter 3:7

57% of Americans Don't Believe in Devil

An interesting article made it's way onto page A11 of the Wall Street Journal today....an article about C.S. Lewis and his belief in the devil as a living entity.

What may surprise many readers today is that C.S. Lewis was ridiculed by Time Magazine as early as 1941 for being an intellectual and at the same time believing in the articles of Christian faith and the existence of the devil.

While a Gallup poll earlier this summer showed that nine in 10 Americans still believe in God, a survey by the Barna Group released last week found that only 43% of Americans believe the devil to be a "living entity," as opposed to a symbol of evil.

As Lewis explained, "There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. . . . The proper question is whether I believe in devils. I do. That is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God. . . . Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael."

Lewis noted the failures born from mankind's fallen nature. But he believed in the power of Jesus Christ to overcome sin, death and Satan, and the optimism of faith and hope.

"The Screwtape Letters" concludes by echoing the words of the First Epistle of John, as the patient dies in a bombing raid and goes to heaven—seeing not only angels but Christ himself. For as St. John declared, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. . . . The one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him."

See it here;  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576486441729097076.html

Pretty amazing that these words about "mankind's fallen nature", and the verse from John that says Jesus Christ can save you from the evil one....IS IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL!

It is God's will that none should perish...and the words of eternal life are even making it into the WSJ!

However we have free will and our adversary, the devil, prowls around like a hungry lion waiting to devour....how pleased must our adversary be that 57% of Americans are letting him roam around the country doing whatever he pleases wherever he pleases...because they don't believe a lion even exists...so why watch for one?  Why pray to God to save you from the evil one when 57% of Americans don't believe they need saving?

A sad commentary on the spiritual condition of this country.

Economist Predicts Financial Doomsday

Harry Dent is an economist who I had the opportunity to hear back in the early 1990's when I was at a convention in Las Vegas.  Back then he had a best selling book out called "The Coming Economic Boom".  Basically his theory is pretty darn easy to understand....consumers are at their max spending and saving mode in their late 40's and early 50's.  So when the baby boomers got to that age they bought every stock, every house, every car, everything in sight....and that drove the boom in the economy and the stock market.

Now fast forward to the age when all these baby boomers start selling all the stocks to support their retirement. (today)  Are there really enough 40 year olds with money to buy all the stock that the retirees are selling?  The statistics say no.  And who will buy all their 8000 square foot homes?  No one.  And who will buy all the crap that America sells at the malls which popped up on every corner during the hedonistic days of the 1990's and 2000 decades?  Not enough.  

So what will happen?  An economic depression that is only seen maybe once every lifetime....and according to Harry this day is closing in on us and will be here sometime after the next Presidential election in....2012.

Watch his interview here; http://finance.yahoo.com/video/economy-18773128/u-s-economy-a-ticking-time-bomb-26199945#video=26199945

Are we all ready for our known world to come apart?  Are we all drawing closer to Jesus so our foundations will be well fortified to survive the coming storms?  Is our faith in His Word growing?  Are we maturing in our knowledge, trust and understanding...or are we stagnant and even falling backward?  Have we fallen so in love with the things of this world that when they are ripped away we will scream, wail and complain?  Or have we listened closely to our Master and believed His words about NOT falling in love with the world and the things in it and NOT being conformed to it's patterns?  Are we eager for the Master to return....or does the thought of the trumpet sounding and all believers being snatched from earth to meet the Master in the air, make you nervous and even depressed?

Let's all test ourselves, as 1 John suggests, to make sure we have the Spirit in us.  If you are reading this and saying, "I was baptized as a baby so I'm for sure going to heaven,"...you better test yourself right now and see whether your life is bearing fruit of the Holy Spirit.

"On that day many will say, "Lord, Lord".....but I will say, "Depart from me. I don't know you."

Hat tip Mike S.

This May Be A Problem

We are all well aware that oil prices are a huge factor in the American economy.  If gasoline went to $6 gallon, one could safely assume that our economy would go even further into the tank

So the news that OPEC's new President is a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard...may be a problem.

A senior Iranian revolutionary guards commander targeted by international sanctions has taken over the presidency of Opec after he became Iran's oil minister on Wednesday.


Ghasemi is currently subject to US, EU and Australian sanctions and his assets have been blacklisted by US Treasury and western powers. He took 216 votes from the 246 deputies present in the 290-seat parliament.

The appointment of Ghasemi as Iran's oil minister automatically makes him the head of Opec which has a crucial role in determining oil prices.

As its second-largest crude oil exporter, Iran took the presidency of Opec after 36 years last October and Ghasemi's position will give the revolutionary guards a unique opportunity to influence an international organization.

See it here;  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/03/iranian-opec-president-revolutionary-guards

Did you catch that phrase, "...a crucial role in determining oil prices?"  So do you think he realizes what $6 gallon gasoline would do to the USA?...seeing that the Revolutionary Guard dreams of having the USA collapse and be gone from the world stage?

We will need to watch and wait to see what happens...but it is becoming increasingly clear that the USA is giving up more control of it's destiny with every day that passes.

China has control of our finances, Iran may have control of gas prices...now if someone messes with our electrical grid...we'll really be in a pickle.

China Downgrades U.S. Debt

On Tuesday Obama signed into law an agreement to raise the USA debt limit so we can continue borrowing money from others to run our country today.

Turns out that China, the largest buyer of U.S. debt, is less than impressed.

BEIJING: China warned Wednesday that tortured efforts to raise the US debt ceiling had failed to defuse Washington’s “debt bomb”, and that it would further diversify its currency holdings away from the dollar.


US President Barack Obama finally signed an emergency austerity bill on Tuesday that averted what would have been a catastrophic debt default for the world’s biggest economy.


But a failure to rein in US borrowing could “jeopardise the well-being of hundreds of millions of families within and beyond the US borders”, the official Xinhua news agency said in a blistering commentary on the deal.


“The months-long tug of war between Democrats and Republicans…failed to defuse Washington’s debt bomb for good, only delaying an immediate detonation by making the fuse an inch longer,” the commentary said.


Also Wednesday, Xinhua said Chinese rating agency Dagong, which has links to the government through its chairman, had downgraded the United States’ credit rating from A+ to A, with a negative outlook.


See it here; http://bigpeace.com/nmachiavelli/2011/08/03/china-obama-has-failed-to-defuse-debt-bomb-chinese-govt-downgrades-us-debt/

You have to love that word picture of the bomb going off...."only delaying an immediate detonation by making the fuse an inch longer."

Friends...this is getting serious.  It's imperative to the USA that China holds, and even buys, our IOU's.  If they start dumping them, and Russia starts dumping them, and Japan starts dumping them to rebuild the earthquake damage...then who is going to be at the auction next week when the Treasury attempts to sell $75 billion worth of IOU's?

At that point we will ONLY have the Federal Reserve "buying" our own debt....and at that point the whole unsustainable charade will quickly be revealed as a farce.

How and when will it blow up?  No one can know for sure....but it IS going to blow up.  It has to to make way for a new global currency.

Putin Calls U.S. a Parasite

Why did Putin call us a parasite?

LAKE SELIGER, Russia (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States Monday of living beyond its means "like a parasite" on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets.

"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow.

"They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar," Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls.

"Countries like Russia and China hold a significant part of their reserves in American securities ... There should be other reserve currencies."

See it here;  http://news.yahoo.com/putin-says-u-parasite-global-economy-191447751.html

So this one article is prophetic on a few levels.  First because Russia is a named player in Ezekiel 38-39 and will be leading a coalition to destroy Israel...so when Russia's leaders say things like this, we need to pay attention.  Their influence WILL rise in the last days because the Bible tells me so.

Second because they are calling for new currencies....He is correct in that America has had a monopoly on the dollar, and the world is calling for that to change.  The Bible says there will be a one-world-currency in the Last days.

Third because Putin knows that Russia holds a large amount of American IOU's...and he feels free to talk this way about someone who owes his country a lot of money.  "The borrower will become slave to the lender," Proverbs warns us.

U.S. Cities Start Filing Bankruptcy

The headlines have started reporting cities and counties beginning to file for bankruptcy.

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — The city of Central Falls, Rhode Island — one of a handful of U.S. cities and counties facing fiscal collapse in the wake of the economic recession — has filed for bankruptcy.

The smallest city in the smallest U.S. state made the filing Monday as it grappled with an $80 million unfunded pension and retiree health benefit liability that is nearly quadruple its annual budget of $17 million.

"Everything was done to avoid this day," Flanders, a retired judge, said.

"We negotiated with ... the police and fire unions, without success, attempting to reach voluntary concessions, and we tried in vain to persuade our retirees to accept voluntary reductions in their benefits," he added.  

See it here; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43987002/ns/us_news-life/ 

Notice the catch 22 here...the city is out of money so they go to the policeman and fireman and city workers and try to negotiate on their pensions and health insurance.  The retirees say no....and then the city has no choice but to file bankruptcy so in the end the retirees may lose more than had they negotiated.  This story is going to be repeated ad nausea.

Last week I talked to a local banker and he told me they had just turned down a school district for funding to build a new school...and it was all going to be financed by municipal bonds.  When the city asked the bank why, the bank said that they simply don't trust the government (local, state, federal) to honor their promises.

Understand the significance of this....if the banks don't trust government so they loan even LESS money than they have in the past few years....the whole economy will come to a screeching halt...or worse.  As we have said MANY TIMES....when the whole system is based on faith, serious problems may be coming as that faith vanishes.

Arabs Plan Protests Against Israel

Last week we posted about a ex CIA dude saying he thought war between Israel and Iran and it's proxies was coming in September.  Today we have this article saying that Palestinian leaders are planning mass protests against Israel for September...which would coincide with the request to declare a Palestinian state in the United Nations in September.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian officials say they plan to begin mass marches against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank on Sept. 20, the eve of a largely symbolic U.N. vote expected to recognize their independence.

Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo says leaders hope to draw millions of people into the streets, and say the day will be the beginning of prolonged demonstrations.

He says the marches will be peaceful. But Israeli leaders fear any unrest could easily spin out of control.

See it here;  http://www.theblaze.com/stories/palestinians-announce-massive-protests-against-israel-in-september/

We will need to keep our eyes open for September.

Also notice how most media refers to, "Israel's occupation of the West Bank".  The word occupation makes it sound like an enemy army is on someone else's sovereign territory...like the USA is occupying Iraq.  The joke is that there has never been a Palestinian state and that Jordan LOST this territory to Israel when Jordan attacked Israel in 1967.

How Did We Get All This Debt?

Lots of folks have been wondering how we got to the point of having $14.2 trillion of Federal debt.  We have spoken on it much and now have found a graph that confirms what we have been saying...courtesy of the New York Times.

Remember that Post WWII the USA was given the privilege of having the worlds ONLY reserve currency because we were the only country that wasn't destroyed in the war so we had 50% of the world's manufacturing capacity...and we had most of the gold.  So it was agreed at Breton Woods, where the winners of WWII all met, that USA would only print $35 of US Dollars for every ounce of gold we had in Fort Knox.  And that system worked for about 25 years.

Richard Nixon is the president who took us off that system (we had to pay for the bombs to drop on Viet Nam) and Congress agreed from 1971 on that the US dollar would now be upheld by "the full faith and confidence of the U.S. government".  From this point on our dollar became what is called a "fiat currency"....meaning it is only paper backed by faith.

Now go to this article and scroll down to the graph that says, "HOW OFTEN THE DEBT LIMIT HAS BEEN RAISED". http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/28/us/charting-the-american-debt-crisis.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

You will see that in the 1970's we had to start raising our debt limit because Congress soon figured out that they could simply print more IOU's to pay for any marvelous program they could think of.  New aircraft carriers....CHARGE IT!  New Medicare program....CHARGE IT!  New Social Security program....CHARGE IT!  A war in Iraq and Afghanistan...CHARGE IT!  New Food Stamp program...CHARGE IT!.....you get the picture.  If they ever charged TOO MUCH...never worry about it because they would simply raise the self-imposed debt limit and simply charge a little more.

Do you see how the graph looks like a hockey stick?  It's very hard to reverse this trend...not impossible but very hard.

We are now at the point where we have to borrow money every day to pay our daily bills.

How long can you continue borrowing from one credit card to make the payments on another credit card?

How long can a fiat money system survive based on faith and confidence of the U.S. government when faith and confidence in that government is now at an all time low?

"Have faith in God...and God alone."

PS....If you look at the graph that shows which Presidents ran up the debt, you will see that George W. Bush had rung up about $6.1 trillion during his tutelage....so lest you think we can blame this all on the Democrats or Republicans....all of our recent leaders (including Reagan) have been leading us to the financial abyss.

Happy Days Are Here Again!!

Wow!  What an amazing last few weeks it has been!!  All this talk of the U.S. government defaulting on payments and maybe losing their credit rating which would make borrowing more expensive....it has all been solved!  No more problems because Congress has fixed it!!

On the count of three now...everybody now...."HIP, HIP, HOORAY!!!

It looks likes the "Big Debt Deal" agreed on in D.C. is going to cut $2.4 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.  But before you go and buy a big bottle of champagne to celebrate this tremendous good news....remember that in 2011 alone we were adding $1.5 trillion to the credit card.

So let's rephrase what was agreed to;  (but has to be voted on today)
The USA has $14.2 trillion in debt that has been accumulated since the days of Ronald Reagan.  Most recently, due to the great recession which collapsed tax revenues and multiplied demands for government services, and our President Obama's continuing spending spree, we have added about $2.4 trillion in debt over the past 2 years.

And the "DEBT DEAL" that was agreed upon was to cut $2.4 trillion OVER THE NEXT 10 YEARS!!

Let me repeat this with emphasis added:  WE SPENT $2.4 trillion over the last 2 years borrowing money we didn't have...and WE HOPE TO CUT $2.4 trillion over the NEXT 10 YEARS.  Does that truly make anybody believe we have "fixed" our spending problem??  Seriously?!?!

The USA has now reached a point where if we can't borrow more money from someone else, we can't meet our current debt obligations.  So our only hope is to raise the limit on the amount of money we can borrow from others.  Not a good place to be.

Update:  The Asian stock markets were up firmly overnight because of the positive USA debt news...but now the US stock market is down over 80 points!!  What is going on???   This isn't supposed to happen!!  This post was titled HAPPY DAYS!  Our markets were supposed to go up!  Our wealth was supposed to have increased?  Dang it all!  Stupid news seems to be happening so fast that I can't even write a positive article about our debt problem because the news has changed from when I started writing.

When it all comes apart....it will come like a flood.