What happened to all those “green shoots” we heard about? Joblessness continues to drag down the economy and the government is doing its damnedest to make things worse:

Shadow Stats founder John Williams has just announced that he sees no way for America to avoid a hyper-inflationary depression.

Demand for new workers in America continues to collapse.

Moody’s is predicting banks will remain unprofitable for the 2010 fiscal year.

The Obama administration is actually implementing a program to encourage the short selling of homes by troubled borrowers.

Unemployment has risen in 30 states.

Sales tax rates hit are at record highs as states and municipalities struggle to make ends meet.

The proposed Illinois state budget is based on borrowing billions of dollars from the government.

Detroit is looking at a plan to de-populate parts of the city and de-industrialize, turning other parts into farmland.

Needless to say, this looks less like green shoots and more like a slow slide into second world status. Are you prepared?

Not by Fire but by Ice is book that, although flawed, puts forward the important that true extinction events are caused by ice ages which occur with alarming frequency on planet earth. Now a scientist from Eastern Europe is warning that the next ice age is starting and could be upon us in as little as five years!

It’s TEOTWAWKI!!!!!

A leading scientist has revealed that Europe could be just five years away from the start of a new Ice Age.

While climate change campaigners say global warming is the planet’s biggest danger, renowned physicist Vladimir Paar says most of central Europe will soon be covered in ice.

The freeze will be so complete that people will be able to walk from England to Ireland or across the North Sea from Scotland to northern Europe.

Professor Paar, from Croatia’s Zagreb University, has spent decades analysing previous ice ages in Europe and what caused them.

“Most of Europe will be under ice, including Germany, Poland, France, Austria, Slovakia and a part of Slovenia,” said the professor in an interview with the Index.hr.

“Previous ice ages lasted about 70,000 years. That’s a fact and the new ice age can’t be avoided.

[...]

And he added: “The reality is that mankind needs to start preparing for the ice age. We are at the end of the global warming period. The ice age is to follow. The global warming period should have ended a few thousands of years ago, we should have already been in the ice age. Therefore we do not know precisely when it could start – but soon.”

The Zagreb based scientist says it will still be possible for man to survive in the ice age, but the spending on energy will be enormous.

“Food production also might be a problem. It would need to be produced in greenhouses with a lot of energy spent to heat it”, commented the professor, who remains optimistic despite his predictions.

I’m stocking up on blankets.

Drudge is red lettering these reports. The inflation is said to be “unexpected” but haven’t we crazed survival types been crying about this for months?

From CNBC:

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 31,000 to 473,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That compared to market expectations for 430,000.

Another report from the department showed prices paid at the farm and factory gate rose a faster than expected 1.4 percent from December after a 0.4 percent gain in December, as higher gasoline prices and unusually cold temperatures helped boost energy costs.

“When you have PPI moving up and still no progress in the jobs situation, that doesn’t bode well for continued improvement in equity prices,” said Alan Lancz, president at Alan B. Lancz & Associates in Toledo, Ohio.

Last week was the survey week for the employment report for February, which is scheduled for release in early March.

The labor market, hardest hit by the worst recession in seven decades, has lagged the economic recovery that started in the second half of 2009. The economy has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the downturn in December 2007.

The PPI report may give investors, who keeping a wary eye on inflation following massive efforts by the Federal Reserve to pull the economy out of its worst slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s, something to worry about.

“The bottom line is that the Fed is going to have some decisions to make at its next meeting, since it seems inflation is now back on the table,” said Lancz.

Fed officials, keeping an eye on how quickly the recovering economy absorbs the excess slack that built up during the recession, have said they are likely to keep interest rates extraordinarily low for “an extended period.”

About three-fourths of the increase in PPI last month was due to a 5.1 percent jump in prices for energy goods, the department said. Energy costs were pushed up by a spike in prices for gasoline, liquefied petroleum and home heating oil.

Strong energy prices overshadowed a slowdown in the food prices, which rose 0.4 percent after increasing 1.3 percent in December.

Stripping out the volatile food and energy costs, core producer prices rose a faster than expected 0.3 percent last month after being flat in December. The core index had been forecast to rise 0.1 percent in January.

Er, how to explain this. Breitbart has video from this report that kind of does but this is pretty arcane stuff. In essence, there is going to be inflation that you will feel whenever yo pull out your wallet unless the Fed makes some moves to combat it including raising interest rates which they will never do.

Yahoo finance has more of the same. Job numbers are also a problem.

Thanks for the “recovery” Obama.

A lot of people think of TEOTWAWKI as a single catastrophic event. I call this the zombie apocalypse scenario, where you go to bed one day and wake up in a world of complete chaos the next. Obviously this is more of a fantasy than reality, as real world examples of economic collapse (like Argentina) and natural disasters (like Katrina) show that no matter how bad things get there is no situation in which there is not nominal government authority. Your pipe dream of making a living looting empty stores will never happen.

TEOTWAWKI as simply The End of the World as We Know it has already happened. Our lifestyles of cheap credit, plentiful food and American decadence are over and most people haven’t even realized it:

Suburban homelessness is at record levels, and the new homeless comprise former blue and white collar workers:

ROOSEVELT, N.Y. – Homelessness in rural and suburban America is straining shelters this winter as the economy founders and joblessness hovers near double digits — a “perfect storm of foreclosures, unemployment and a shortage of affordable housing,” in one official’s eyes.

“We are seeing many families that never before sought government help,” said Greg Blass, commissioner of Social Services in Suffolk County on eastern Long Island.

“We see a spiral in food stamps, heating assistance applications; Medicaid is skyrocketing,” Blass added. “It is truly reaching a stage of being alarming.”

The federal government is again counting the nation’s homeless and, by many accounts, the suburban numbers continue to rise, especially for families, women, children, Latinos and men seeking help for the first time. Some have to be turned away.

“Yes, there has definitely been an increased number of turnaways this year,” said Jennifer Hill, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness in suburban Cook County, Illinois. “We’re seeing increases in shelter use along the lines of 30 percent or more.”

In a perhaps related note Minneapolis wants to limit the amount of time people can park at a rest stop to six hours.

Large retailers are cutting the number of brands they carry. Even Wal-Mart! Stock up on your favorite toothpastes now!

Pennsylvania man dies waiting for ambulance … for 30 hours. He made 10 911 calls:

Snow-covered roads, poor communication and a 911 center deluged with more than double the average number of calls during last week’s crippling snowstorms combined to cause Mr. Mitchell’s long wait, city officials said.

Ambulances were dispatched three times on Saturday, Feb. 6, to the couple’s home in the 5100 block of narrow Chaplain Way, but couldn’t get there because of the snow. Paramedics twice asked whether Mr. Mitchell could walk to an intersection, even after he told them that he could not because he was in too much pain.

Emergency vehicles were within blocks of his home three times — once so close Ms. Edge could see the ambulance lights from her porch — but did not make contact with him. They finally reached the home on Sunday morning, Feb. 7, but Mr. Mitchell was already dead.

Even A.B.C. is now running stories on how the debt will cripple our nation with tax increases and spending cuts that “aren’t even imaginable.”

China is dumping our treasuries.

The Kansas City Fed President is warning that our debt is unsustainable.

Crow Nation tribal members held a Tea Party where they called on the tribe to break from the federal government.

Credit card holders are facing “crippling” rate increases.

L.A. is set to lose thousands of jobs and will have its credit rating downgraded making it harder to borrow money.

Texas is challenging the E.P.A.’s greenhouse gas emissions ruling.

The U.S. almost had a failed treasury auction. If you only read one link, read this one.

The strengthening dollar is going to hurt our export market, thus our recovery.

Don’t expect to wake up to TEOTWAWKI. The decline of our lifestyles as we knew them started last year and in all likelihood will continue to do so no matter what plans either party comes up with. Are you prepared to live through that?

h/t Drudge and Survivalblog

I say this is a set up because Amaro Goncalves of Smith and Wesson and 20 other people were the target of a sting that almost any multinational corporation would have fallen into when doing business overseas. The question I have is why legal arms manufacturers are being targeted by the F.B.I. while Militant Islam is increasing it’s activity here and abroad?

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – An executive of Smith & Wesson (SWHC.O) and 21 others have been charged with violating U.S. bribery laws after an undercover sting in which federal agents posed as arms-buying representatives of an African defense minister.

The defendants, including a senior Smith & Wesson sales official Amaro Goncalves, were accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, and conspiracy to commit money laundering tied to the sale of guns, body armor and other law enforcement equipment.

The FCPA prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign officials in order to secure business contracts.

[...]

Among those charged was the chief executive of Protective Products of America Inc (PPA.TO), R. Patrick Caldwell, who previously worked for the U.S. Secret Service for 27 years and was in charge of the division for the vice president’s protection. A spokesman for the service declined to say when Caldwell left the agency.

An attempt to reach Protective Products was not successful. Protective Products filed for bankruptcy protection last week and sought approval to be acquired by an affiliate of the private investment firm Sun Capital Partners Inc.

[...]

As part of the FBI sting operation, an unidentified business associate who was a former executive for an arms manufacturer arranged a meeting between the arms sales representatives and undercover FBI agents who posed as representatives of an African country’s minister of defense.

The agents told the sales representatives that in order to win a contract, they had to add a 20 percent “commission” to price quotes, half of which would go to the purported minister of defense and the rest would be split between the others.

In the case of the Smith & Wesson executive, Goncalves gave price quotes for two sales, a small one of 25 guns and a larger one with 1,800 pistols. He gave two price quotes for the transactions, including one that had its price inflated by 20 percent, the Justice Department said.

The two-and-a-half-year-long investigation involved 250 FBI agents, according to Mark Mendelsohn, deputy chief of the Justice Department’s fraud division. In connection with the indictments, 150 agents executed 14 search warrants across the country and British police executed another seven, Justice Department officials said.

Three of the defendants worked for unnamed British companies; another worked for an unnamed Israeli company, according to the indictments. The defendants sought to obtain contracts for the sale of products ranging from grenade and tear gas launchers to pistols, ammunition and explosive detection kits.

Breuer said the investigation was the largest action ever undertaken by the Justice Department against individuals in an FCPA case. He also said it marked the department’s first large-scale use of undercover techniques in an FCPA investigation.

That’s a lot of resources to trip up an American gun maker, some military equipment manufacturers from England and a Israeli arms company. Odd that no communist nations seem to be involved. Even more odd is that these companies will be supplying the enemies of Communists and Islamists in a less robust fashion now that they’ve been hauled into court when Isamofascism is gaining ground in several countries. Just an observation.

The American government gives billions in “aid” to oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, aid they don’t need but is in fact a Jizya meant to make it easier for American interest in that part of the world. When dealing with third world nations corruption is part of the price of doing business. Everyone knows that but the government wasted the time of at least 250 F.B.I. agents while Muslim terrorists were sneaking underwear filled with explosives onto airplanes.

Are these the priorities we want the feds to have?

h/t The Firearm Blog