Whatever the Obama administration would like you to believe (as he still blames Bush for the mess), the economy has gotten a LOT worse since the day he took office, not better.  Or in the words of economist; Michel Dube, author of “The Dollar Freefall“: The economy is broken and by all reason must collapse.

Home values have plummeted 13%.  The unemployment crisis has gotten worse – even going by the “official” figures, which are by no means accurate. The cost of food is up and the number of food stamp recipients has risen by 45%.  The price of gas has skyrocketed 83%!  The number of Americans living in poverty has risen  by 6.4 million and our national debt has increased by over  four and half  TRILLION dollars!  And at this point, there’s no amount of taxation or budget cuts that will ever get it paid.  We don’t make anything here anymore except for debt and entertainment, so I don’t know what Obama was talking about when he said he was going to double our exports… Are we gonna make the world buy more video games and  reality shows?  Because they don’t want our debt anymore.

The economic crisis that we’re seeing unfold in Europe will explode into a world-wide financial disaster, which will have devastating effects on the United States.  What’s Barack Obama going to do then?  Socialists only know how to spend money…  Your money.  We never even recovered from the financial crash of 2008, and they call us kooks for storing food?!

If you’re still holding out hope that ol’ Barry’s gonna set things right, it’s time to WAKE UP!

The following are 18 statistics that prove that the economy has not improved since Barack Obama became the president of the United States from www.blacklistednews.com:

#1 Today there are 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment.  That is an all-time record high.

#2 When Barack Obama was elected, the percentage of unemployed Americans that had been out of work for more than 52 weeks was less than 15%.  Today, it is above 30%.

#3 There are 1.2 million fewer jobs in America today than there were when Barack Obama was inaugurated.

#4 When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million.  Today, that numberis sitting at 5.6 million.

#5 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is hovering close to an all-time record high.

#6 During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risenby 23 percent.

#7 Since Barack Obama has been president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased by 90 percent.

#8 Since Barack Obama has been president, home values in the United States have declined by another 13 percent.

#9 Under Barack Obama, new home sales in the U.S. set a brand new all-time record low in 2009, they set a brand new all-time record low again in 2010, and they set a brand new all-time record low once again during 2011.

#10 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by more than 6 million.

#11 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

#12 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#13 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” is now sitting at an all-time high.

#14 When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850.  Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

#15 Since Barack Obama became president, the size of the U.S. national debt has increased by 44 percent.

#16 During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

#17 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#18 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

Oh, but Barack Obama is promising that things will be much better very soon.  Barack Obama is pledging that 2 million more jobs will be added to the economy in 2012.

Do you believe him?

Never mind the Mayan calendar.  There are plenty of other real and demonstrable issues that are building to a “perfect storm” that threaten our infrastructure, society and general survival, that don’t require speculation or “belief” in invisible planets, lizard people, judgment day or the end of the 13th baktun.

That’s not to say I’ve ruled any of that out (well… except for the Mayan calendar. But that’s a topic for another article). Anything’s possible until unquestionably proven or disproven, but if I wasted my time and energy worrying about what may, or may not happen, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I may get hit by a bus the next time I go into town, or I may slip in the shower and break my crazy neck, but I’m not about to let that cripple me with fear and apprehension.

What I’m more concerned about are the trends and forces that have been building visible and quantifiable momentum over recent years (to those of us who are “awake”, that is), pushing us closer and closer to collapse on numerous fronts – or a “confluence of crises”, as some have called it.

When you consider problems such as the growing U.S. and Global economic crisis, the incremental destruction of our Constitutional rights and liberties, our unsustainable energy infrastructure, the world-wide dwindling of food production capabilities, the depletion of fresh water reserves, the increase of natural disasters (yes, climate change is happening… but it’s not all about carbon emissions) and the United States’ ever-expanding imperialist agenda of invasion and occupation – coupled with increasing socio-political unrest throughout the Middle East… You don’t need to make up more fantastic and implausible reasons to be prepared (and these are but a few examples).

In recent years, I have been somewhat reserved about being too emphatic in my warnings about the growing dangers. Mostly because I am too well aware that if you run around hollering “doom and gloom” and warning people about TEOTWAWKI, you’re typically going to be perceived as a nut-case, and whatever you say – no matter how valid – will be either ignored or taken with a grain of salt. So I tried to nudge people a little at a time… in bits and pieces… so as not to be a complete shock to their conditioned psyche.

But time is running out for those who are still waiting to see how things will “play out” before they decide to start prepping. Things are playing out right now, and have been for some time. What we are experiencing has been described as a “collapse in slow motion”, and as such, just like the proverbial frog, many aren’t even aware that we’re slowly being boiled. Don’t wait for the regretful epiphany of hindsight to make you aware of what’s going on all around you right now!

But don’t take my word for it alone. Recently, Gerald Celente’s Trends Journal has published their Top 12 Trends for 2012. Celente is one of the few economists and trends researchers out in the media who tells it like it is. He’s not beholden to the corporate owners or the powers that be, so he doesn’t deal in BS. He has an impressive track record of dozens of accurate trends predictions going all the way back to the 1987 stock market crash and is called by many the most trusted trends forecaster in the world.

1. Economic Martial Law: Given the current economic and geopolitical conditions, the central banks and world governments already have plans in place to declare Economic Martial Law … with the possibility of military martial law to follow.

2. Battlefield America: With a stroke of the Presidential pen, language was removed from an earlier version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), granting el Presidente authority to act as judge, jury and executioner. Citizens, welcome to “Battlefield America.”

3. Invasion of the Occtupy: 15 years ago, Gerald Celente predicted in his book Trends 2000 that prolonged protests would hit Wall Street in the early years of the new millennium and would spread nationwide. The “Occtupy” is now upon us, and it is like nothing history has ever witnessed.

4. Climax Time: The financial house of cards is collapsing. In 2012, many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and geopolitical trends that Gerald Celente has been accurately forecasting will come to a climax. Some will arrive with a big bang and others less dramatically … but no less consequentially. What’s next for the world? Are you prepared?

5. Technocrat Takeover: “Democracy is Dead; Long Live the Technocrat!” A pair of financial coup d’états in Greece and Italy have installed two unelected figures as head of state. No one yet in the mainstream media is calling this merger of state and corporate powers by its proper name: Fascism, nor are they calling these “technocrats” by their proper name: Bankers! Can a rudderless ship be saved because a technocrat is at the helm?

6. Repatriate! Repatriate!: It took a small, but financially and politically powerful group to sell the world on globalization, and it will take a large, committed and coordinated citizens’ movement to “un-sell” it. The “Repatriate! Repatriate!” trend will pit the creative instincts of a multitude of individuals against the repressive monopoly of the multinationals. 

CLICK HERE to read the entire list.