Useful book.

Media talking heads complain that Washington is “dysfunctional.” But it is functioning very well—in the interests of those at the top of the economic pyramid. Growing inequality is not an accident. The rich are getting richer from the same policies that are making American workers poorer.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Servant-Economy-Americas-Sending/dp/0470182393/

Best Buy - 200 to 250

Kmart - 175 to 225

Sears - 100 to 125

J.C. Penney - 300 to 350

Office Depot - 125 to 150

Barnes & Noble - 190 to 240

Gamestop - 500 to 600

OfficeMax - 150 to 175

RadioShack - 450 to 550

Via: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eight-retailers-that-will-close-the-most-stores-173320796.html?page=1

Back in 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2012, corporate taxes accounted for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.

General Electric

• U.S. Profits: $10,460,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$4,737,000,000

PG&E Corp.

• U.S. Profits: $4,855,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$1,027,000,000

Verizon Communications

• U.S. Profits: $32.518.000.000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$951,000,000

Wells Fargo

• U.S. Profits: $49,370,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$681,000,000

American Electric Power

• U.S. Profits : $5,899,000,000
• Taxes Paid : ‐$545,000,000

Pepco Holdings

• U.S. Profits: $882,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$508,000,000

Computer Sciences

• U.S. Profits: $1,666,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$305,000,000

CenterPoint Energy

• U.S. Profits: $1,931,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$284,000,000

NiSource

• U.S. Profits: $1,385,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$227,000,000

Duke Energy

• U.S. Profits: $5,475,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$216,000,000

Boeing

• U.S. Profits: $9,735,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$178,000,000

NextEra Energy

• U.S. Profits: $6,403,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$139,000,000

Consolidated Edison

• U.S. Profits: $4,263,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$127,000,000

Paccar

• U.S. Profits: $365,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$112,000,000

Integrys Energy Group

• U.S. Profits: $818,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$92,000,000

Wisconsin Energy

• U.S. Profits: $1,725,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$85,000,000

DuPont

• U.S. Profits: $2,124,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$72,000,000

Baxter International

• U.S. Profits: $926,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$66,000,000

Tenet Healthcare

• U.S. Profits: $415,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$48,000,000

Ryder System

• U.S. Profits: $627,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$46,000,000

El Paso

• U.S. Profits: $4,105,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$41,000,000

Honeywell International

• U.S. Profits: $4,903,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$34,000,000

CMS Energy

• U.S. Profits: $1,292,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$29,000,000

Con-­way

• U.S. Profits: $286,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$26,000,000

Navistar International

• U.S. Profits: $896,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$18,000,000

DTE Energy

• U.S. Profits: $2,551,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$17,000,000

Interpublic Group

• U.S. Profits: $571,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$15,000,000

Mattel

• U.S. Profits: $1,020,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$9,000,000

Corning

• U.S. Profits: $1,977,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$4,000,000

FedEx

• U.S. Profits: $4,247,000,000
• Taxes Paid: $37,000,000 (a rate of less than 1%)

Total

• U.S. Profits: $163,691,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$10,602,000,000

Earlier this month, the Facebook Inc. released its first “10-K” annual financial report since going public last year. Hidden in the report’s footnotes is an amazing admission: despite $1.1 billion in U.S. profits in 2012, Facebook did not pay even a dime in federal and state income taxes.

Instead, Facebook says it will receive net tax refunds totaling $429 million.

Via: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/abolish-the-income-tax-you-wont-believe-who-is-getting-away-with-paying-zero-taxes-while-the-middle-class-gets-hammered

The U.S. Postal Service has defaulted on a $5.6 billion payment for retiree health benefits that was due on Monday, just as the Postmaster General had warned it would.

he said the Postal Service was "in the midst of a financial disaster" and that it is "burdened by an outdated and inflexible business model" that prevents it from making payments.

Postal Service hit its debt limit last year, which means that it cannot borrow any more money from the U.S. Treasury.

The Postal Service plans to cut 150,000 workers.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/01/news/economy/postal-service-default/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Full report: http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/media/downloads/Squeezed_Britain.pdf

Makes quite easy to understand current "democratization" trends.

If you add here huge deficits (both financial, production and fuel) of many guys in green here, it'll be even more interesting.

For ordinary citizen difference is much more than you can initially think looking at numbers as they account all consumption including agriculture and manufacturing.

Via: http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6

Via: http://www.slideshare.net/DouglasWestwood/sns2012-1-mar-2012-jw-slideshare

The recent losses from JPMorgan have proved to be much more based upon suspending gravity with 0% official rates in the Delta-Hedging complex game tied to the vast over-burdened Interest Rate Swap contracts, rather than the European sovereign bonds as first claimed. The Jackass is on record on May 11th, aided by the indefatigable forensic analyst Rob Kirby, in pointing to Interest Rate Swap stresses from the sudden March and April movement in the 10-year USTreasurys within the strained bloated USGovt sovereign bond market. The IRSwap setbacks were the underlying cause of the JPM losses. The giant bank does not want attention give to this derivative tool which controls the bond market in a devious artificial manner. As far as debt is concerned, the United States is Greece times 100. It is Italy times 20. It receives a pass from the bond market, precisely because the nation prints the money and controls the vast Interest Rate Swap support mechanism. But the tower is finally exposed.

The IRSwaps act like giant buttresses to support the evergrowing USTreasury Tower of Babel that stretches to the sky. Every year, the expansive tower grows another $1.5 trillion higher. Every year, the challenge grows exponentially for the JPMorgan master financial engineers to apply their control panel magic to achieve equilibrium. Every year, the degree of difficulty becomes more arduous. Every year, the tower must withstand the high winds from Europe, where the bond market is doing more than undergoing stress. It is crumbling before our eyes. In a way, Europe helps to conceal the great strains from the broken USTreasury Bond market, held together by interest derivatives. Few analysts connect the failure of the Draghi LTRO funds to the JPMorgan losses. They do not grasp the gravity of the USTBond problem. They prefer to focus on FINREG for regulatory changes centered on the Volcker Rule, or on the division of proprietary trading. They focus on the personalities of the so-called Whale. Now a new verb has entered the lexicon, as a firm was just "Iksil-ed" to mean they suffered massive leveraged losses in a high risk game of playing god in the financial markets. JPMorgan cannot hedge since THEY ARE THE MARKET. What the Whale or JPMorgan do is attempt to maintain balance of the USTreasury Tower of Babel, which grows every year to try to touch the sky, to achieve the perfect world. They scrape the devil's attic door instead.

Without any doubt whatsoever, the ultimate problem is that the bond market cannot defy the natural forces (gravity on the tower) from enormous new supply coming to the USTBond market (higher tower) in the form of $1.5 trillion deficits, and keep the bond yield at 0% for the FedFunds and under 2.0% on the TNX. Essentially the 0% rate is an engineering display of the most extreme arrogance. It is tantamount to placing the buttress support structure at a very low position. The sovereign bonds of Southern Europe with their 5% or 6% bond yields have the equivalent of buttresses place in very high positions, sufficient to endure the whips and sways from the high winds and routine vagaries dealt by the never-ending global financial crisis. In my opinion, the global financial crisis is far more than that. It is instead a global monetary war, to preserve the USDollar supremacy at all costs, with victims being the Western banking systems and the Western economies. The entire platform that supports the major fiat currencies is collapsing, namely the sovereign bonds. The platform is breaking at its weakest points, where it has non-homogeneous planks in Southern Europe that do not fit together. Imagine how the USTreasury Bond market would look if all 50 states had their own sovereign debt as components to the entire USGovt. Imagine each year the $1.5 trillion in debt were apportioned as 15% to California, 4% to Texas, 8% to New York, 8% to Florida, in shared responsibility. Imagine each state had its own bond traded in a market that strived for equilibrium, each with a unique bond yield, all tethered to the USDollar. The United States would fracture in six months from the stress, not the least factor for which would be the apportionment of syndicate banker benefit and divvying up the war costs. That is Europe in parallel.

Read full at http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article34819.html

your opinion?

Via: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/is-wal-mart-destroying-america-20-facts-about-wal-mart-that-will-absolutely-shock-you

new data, released by the United Nations, shows how the number of international migrants has increased by nearly 80 million over the last 25 years.

In 1995, there were more than 154 million migrants who left their home country and moved to another for various reasons. In comparison, that number had risen to 231 million globally by 2013, according to the international migrant stock trends data. from The Daily Mail

(Click on picture for interactive map)

The top worldwide destinations for international migrants were the U.S., Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, UK and France, according to the data.

What if this is false assumption? What if in the mid term, it was not dumb move, but smart one

If you reduce energy consumption by industry. If you pay for all other energy, that had been used to produce imported goods, by zeros in database and some very questionable knowledge. If most other countries, who have worse energy balance and outlook, are now also on the same needle.

What if near future will be not be battle for people and areas, as it had been previously? But battle for resources, where nations, who won't have access to them, will pay using their workforce. Billions of new slaves, working for some food and $1 per day. Corporations do not care.

http://getgems.org

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-13/americas-poor-have-never-been-deeper-debt

https://www.worldwealthreport.com/

The cuts could be made over the next two fiscal years, ending in March 2014, though the timing hasn't been settled, the people said. The potential cuts were the first details to emerge of Mr. Hirai's restructuring plan since he succeeded Howard Stringer as CEO this month. The plan is expected to be announced at a corporate strategy meeting on Thursday.

Mr. Hirai is focusing on turning around an electronics business that has had four straight years of losses.

Via: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303772904577333162194832288.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Now we also add gas consumption and look at this from other perspective.

Colonies live different life starting from Tanzania, up to Bulgaria and Moldova (both countries consumption is falling each year).

Same source as http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/9118/per-capita-oil-consumption#Item_1

Italy has the highest level in Europe of young people who are neither in education nor employment, at 23.9 percent, the study showed. In Italy's impoverished south, one in three people aged 15-29 fell into this group.

The number of people living in families considered to be seriously deprived has doubled in the past two years to 8.6 million, or about 14 percent of the population, ISTAT said. Families who meet more than four of nine poverty indicators are considered seriously deprived. These include not being able to heat their home adequately, which affected one in five people in 2012 according to the report, twice as many as in 2010.

The percentage of people in families who could not afford to eat a protein-based meal such as meat every two days rose to 16.6 percent in 2012 from 12.4 the previous year and 6.7 percent in 2010.

About 14.9 million people, or a quarter of Italy's 61 million population, are living in families that meet three of more of ISTAT's poverty indicators.

Just 57.6 percent of young people who graduated within the last three years are in employment, well below a European average of 77.2 percent, the data showed.

Italians' purchasing power fell by 4.8 percent last year, an "exceptionally steep" decline caused largely by aggressive tax hikes aimed at strengthening public finances, following four years of smaller falls, ISTAT said.

A traditionally high savings rate in Italy has dwindled steadily and is now far below those of France and Germany, with the situation becoming particularly acute in the poor south, the report said.

Via: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/22/us-italy-economy-poverty-idUSBRE94L0AX20130522

But, of course as some guys told us previously, if we look at this data properly, all this people just went into undegraund and invisible small manufacturing sector that store all the products in the basement not selling them, hence all the statistic data.

Acer reported a net loss of $446 million in Q3, and plans to cut its staff headcount by seven percent globally in an effort to save $100 million in annual operating expenses.

CEO resigned.

The global top-5 notebook brand vendors saw their combined shipments drop 18% on month in October, while the top-3 notebook ODMs together also saw an on-month shipment drop of 14%.

:-)

The yearly report from the Association for the Development of industry in the Mezzogiorno, Svimez, published Oct. 17, shows a dramatic improvements of all aspects of the crisis.

• In 2012 there have been more deaths than births. That has not happened since 1918, the end of World War I.

• Adjusted unemployment figures are 28.4% (officially 17%)

• In 2009-2012 manufacturing lost 20% of the labor force.

• In 2008-2013 some 560,000 jobs have been lost in all sectors.

• In 2007-2012, industrial investments dropped 47%.

• The GDP dropped 3.2% in 2012 (as against 2.1% in Northern Italy). In 2007-2012, GDP dropped 10% in the Mezzogiorno.

• GDP per capita is EU17,263 against EU30,073 in Central/Northern Italy. The gap between the richest region in per-capita GDP (Val d'Aosta at EU34,415) and the poorest (Calabria at EU16,460) is almost EU18,000.

*Almost one-fifth of Sicilian families live on less than EU1000 a month. Some 62% of southern families belong to poorer strata (adopting a division in five sections, 100 families in five classes of 20).

If the five other big energy suppliers follow the lead of SSE and raise their gas and electricity prices by a similar amount, it is predicted that the average dual fuel bill would rocket to just under £1,500 a year from £1,353.

Eon, Scottish Power, EDF Energy, nPower and British Gas are expected to announce their new tariffs shortly.

Last week, SSE said that annual dual fuel bills would go up by an average of 8.2 per cent from mid-November.

Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch, said: "This is dangerously close to the tipping point of £1,500, beyond which 59 percent of households will be going without adequate heating and 36 percent will be forced to turn their heating off entirely ."

Via: http://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/436422/Fuel-hikes-to-push-families-over-edge

Fun, isnt't it?