Dec 1
The Great Gamble
A long long time ago–exactly two weeks ago, to be precise–I reported that the U.S. government was on the hook for $5 trillion in short- and long-term bank debt. My November 17 "Nearing Midnight" update was titled “Drowning in a Sea of Red Ink.” I could have easily given the title, “Drowning in an Ocean of Red Ink,” to this one.
It is amazing what has transpired in just 14 days. The amount of money pledged by the Treasury and Federal Reserve has now topped $8.5 trillion.
I feel like I’m watching a financial soap opera. I would suggest titles like, “As the Dollar Turns,” "Days of Our Liabilities,” “General Bankruptcy,” or “All My Children Are in the Poor House.” Unlike the plot lines for soaps, we have no guarantee of a positive outcome.
The folks at Bloomberg Data have been keeping close track of the rapidly rising dollar figures. According to their latest count, the Federal Reserve has committed $5.5 trillion; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., $1.4 trillion; the Treasury Department, $1.2 trillion; and the Federal Housing Administration, $300 billion. The remaining pledge, as much as $200 billion to bolster Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hasn't been allocated to any agency.
Here are a couple of figures to help give you folks a grasp of the historic nature of these dollar figures. The $8.5 trillion is over half the value of everything produced in the nation last year–a sum of $14 trillion. The Federal Reserve is lending out money at a rate that is 1,900 times the weekly average from two years ago.
Despite all this lending, there is no guarantee that we will turn the corner and see a financial rebound. Banks are still bleeding cash. Citibank alone has lost $30 billion, which is why Uncle Sam needed to give it a $300 billion life line last week. According to Bloomberg, U.S. financial firms have taken losses of $666 billion since the beginning of 2007. That is a rather scary number in more ways than one.
The big question in my mind is: Where does this mess end? We are clearly headed for obligations totalling $10 trillion dollars. I hope events don’t force me to write a future article about commitments that have topped $15 or $20 trillion.
As of now, we have primarily been dealing with the fallout from the housing market. There is still the issue of the three automakers facing bankruptcy, several large cities needing a bailout, and credit card debt being in the danger zone for the past few years.
President-elect Obama has been talking about adding $600 billion to national debt by implementing a huge stimulus package. Obama has also promised to extend tax cuts that he had previously promised to end.
We are now at levels where America’s financial future is at stake. The government has so much debt on its balance sheet that if we don’t quickly pull out of this nosedive, our nation will face certain calamity. When you’re sitting on $8.5 trillion of risky assets, a 20 percent loss would come to $1.7 trillion. We are already expecting a trillion dollar budget shortfall for this fiscal year. I think international investors would balk at covering a nearly $3 trillion dollar deficit.
I have a peace of mind about this financial meltdown. So much has happened in such a short period of time, I can only conclude that the hand of God is at work here. We are already slated to escape the horrors of the tribulation. If God has also determined to have us escape an economic disaster, we have all the more reason to be looking for our Redeemer.
"Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man" (Luke 21:36).
-- Todd
Crisis/Change on the Way?
Talk show host Glenn Beck, as I wrote last week, senses that America will change for the worse “in the blink of an eye,” at a time he thinks will precede Christmas 2009.
Some have written me attributing that prediction to me, not Mr. Beck. Some accuse me of being a date-setter for the rapture of the Church of Jesus Christ. Let me be clear: I have never and do not predict a “blink of an eye” change of a nation and world-altering sort before Christmas of 2009 (or for any other specific time). Glenn Beck is the pundit who said he believes that a “blink of the eye” moment that will change things forever in this country and the world might happen before Christmas a year from now.
There are others in the news these days who predict dramatic change, although not change that will necessarily take place in “the blink of an eye.” One such prediction was made by Sen. Joseph Biden, then a candidate, now Vice President-elect. Biden’s tone and words of prediction spoken at campaign fundraisers at Seattle, Washington, October 19, 2008, were ominous, and seemed to imply he knew more than he was saying:
"Mark my words...It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
Most of the media pundits immediately inferred that Biden meant there would be a military confrontation like the Cuban missile crisis Kennedy faced in October 1962. They mostly felt, apparently, that this is just something that happens to new, inexperienced presidents.
However, if one gives serious analysis to the many prophetic stage-settings that surround the current times in almost every aspect of activity upon this troubled sphere, we are led to conjecture if perhaps Mr. Biden’s forewarning doesn’t involve manipulations by a cabal far more dangerous than the Russians, Chinese, or the Islamic terrorists of the world.
We have been giving notice for more than a couple of years about talk of a new currency in America. The "amero" has been kept just below the radar of public view, as it might fit into a new economic structure for the U.S. that would make this nation conform to a world trade consortium–this, along the lines of the European Union as prototype.
The North American Union (NAU) is the moniker for the organization with which the Bush administration–with full support, apparently, of the Democrat hierarchy--has been dealing. Again, it has all been kept hush-hush for the most part, or at least kept so complex in defining it that most of us are kept in the dark.
We have written about the super highway system as part of this new trade paradigm–a thoroughfare transport road system reaching from Mexico, through the United States, and into Canada. Those of us who are convinced that the semi-secret building of such a trade route–controlled not by America, but by foreign interests--has prophetic implications. But, because of strong American sovereignty and autonomy secured by the U.S. constitution, we wondered over events that might cause Americans to accept a movement into a changed global order we are certain God’s Word foretells: “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (Rev. 17:12-13).
Vice President-elect Biden made an astonishing statement, if it was more than mere rhetoric, saying that Barak Obama will face a major crisis in like virulence to JFK and Cuba in 1962. It is my conviction that we are seeing a fast-track build-up to that crisis to which Biden was referring.
Biden went on to say that Americans will need to stick with the President and his administration–trust them to do the right thing when the crisis occurs. We are more than curious to know whether the "crisis” that the Vice President-elect anticipates might be a changed economic order. Certainly, the nation and the world are now in a monumental such crisis.
If Glenn Beck’s prediction has legs, it is natural to want to think on what “blink of the eye” event might trigger such a “crisis”–a type crisis (economic) even more nation/earth-rending than that in which we are now mired…
While thinking in natural, human terms–and God more often uses natural and human agencies to accomplish His control—another prediction leaped to news punditry within the last week or so. Lou Dobbs of CNN and others brought up a prediction made by an economist outside of the western world. This excerpted news item gives some interesting thoughts by, admittedly, a person who doesn’t wish the United States success.
“A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.
Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: ‘The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse.’…
When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: 'It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator.’…
He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong…” (drudgereport.com, "Russian Analyst Predicts Decline and Breakup of USA," 11/25/08).
Times ahead for America and the world look bleak to those the economic meltdown are affecting directly, causing loss of their financial security. To those who see crisis as an opportunity to show their ability to perform their perception of FDR type semi-socialist governing brilliance, the times ahead seem aglow with promise under President Barak Hussein Obama’s leadership.
For some of the population, the times look dark, foreboding, but all human activities seem to be going along as usual for the most part, so the fear stays under wraps for now. For Christians, most are just going with the flow, giving no heed to what the prophetic Word of God says about these very days we are living, in my view.
Here’s the warning, I’m convinced, in which Jesus himself is speaking to this present generation–particularly to His Church: “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:32-36).
--Terry
***Terry’s New Book***
“The American Apocalypse: Is the United States in Bible prophecy?”
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