God knows that I have faithfully sounded the alarm repeatedly these past 14 years that the adoption of NAFTA/GATT would ultimately shatter this nation’s economic backbone, and we have now reached the point of no return. Every politician out there knows it too, but they don’t want to talk about it. Instead, they want to hold hearings about the threat posed to the sports industry by the illegal use of steroids. Nothing could be less important right now, but when all else fails you rearrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic and play a few comforting tunes.

We don’t have a “credit crunch” in the United States. “They” will tell you that, but it’s just not true. It was cheap credit that greased the skids to the economic demise we now face, and the same idiots who facilitated that easy credit now want the Federal Reserve to drop interest rates another half point to give Americans even more credit. The problem is that the credit honchos like American Express and Citi Group are tightening credit due to massive losses sustained, not only in the so-called “Mortgage Meltdown”, but also in credit card defaults that are growing exponentially.

So cheap money is hitting a snag getting to the consumers, and if you were American Express, Citi Group and all the others, you’d start hoarding all that cheap money too. What’s the point of loaning out cheap money at any discount if you know you are not going to get it paid back with interest? You might as well keep it and invest it offshore and in gold rather that put it at more risk with American consumers, right?

No, we don’t have a credit crunch at all; what we have is an American income crunch. For the past 14 years, real earned incomes haven’t even kept pace with real inflation, but the feds have lied about that too. They literally cooked the books! They came up with a new approach to accounting, called “Core Inflation”.

What’s that, you ask? Well, you take real, felt inflation at the consumer level, remove the costs of fuel and groceries, and call the balance “Core Inflation”. You tell all the Social Security recipients that they are not really paying more, in terms of cost of living, which is why you give them a 2.3% cost of living allowance instead of a minimum 10% cost of living allowance that would actually keep up with their true cost of living.

In any other realm, that would be called theft and fraud against the citizens, and where is the AARP in all this? Why hasn’t that massive organization for the retired and disabled filed lawsuits against the federal government over this theft? They know damn well what’s going on. The AARP is about as useless to the retired and disabled as the NRA is to gun owners.

No, this really is the end game, and there is absolutely no way to avoid checkmate. The moves were all in place and predicted, and the end is inevitable. That is why the credit card corporations literally bought the Bush presidency to get “Bankruptcy Reform” passed long before the average American got a sniff of the rotting corpse of this economy. Those engaged in usury and predatory lending practices saw it coming long ago.

So here’s the chess board as it stands: Long before the housing bubble, Americans lost millions of family wage paying jobs when NAFTA/GATT allowed American manufacturing companies to close, lay off their employees and move to China and elsewhere. The result was a massive downturn in American incomes, so American consumers began putting groceries and gasoline expenses on credit cards, because their earned incomes could not keep pace with their basic living expenses. The average American household was carrying $9,000.00 per month balances in credit card debt by the time the housing bubble hit, and when it did, the consumers who owned homes refinanced the faux equity out of their homes to pay off those credit card balances.

Now that the housing bubble has burst and home prices are plummeting, American consumers have nowhere else to turn to augment their insufficient incomes, so credit card debt is increasing again, and because credit card balances have reached the maximum allowed in many cases, credit card defaults are going right off the charts.

It was one thing for Citi Group to recently report they had a 5% credit card default write down, but American Express? Do I need to remind anyone that American Express was always considered the gold standard in credit cards? Only the most credit-worthy of Americans could qualify for an American Express credit card, so if American Express is experiencing a massive write down in credit card defaults, we have to assume all the other and less discrete credit card companies are about to report default write-downs that will shock the markets even more.

If I were the average credit card corporation CFO, one of the first things I would do is prohibit grocery stores and gas stations from accepting my credit cards – YESTERDAY. Why? Well, if anyone is charging groceries and gasoline on credit cards instead of using debit cards or cash to make those purchases, I would rightly assume their incomes are not sufficient and that they have to use credit to make those purchases that will not be repaid with or without interest when they finally max-out their credit limits.

Doesn’t that make perfect sense?

I’m telling you people, this IS the end game. You folks who went without to save, pay off your mortgages and all your other debts while your neighbors bragged about their 60” wide screen TV and refinanced the very homes they live in to buy toys like motor homes, boats ATVs, vacations and all the rest, are going to be the survivors of this debacle.

But I do suggest you make one very important purchase right now, and especially if you live in a high-density environment like a city or suburb: Buy a gun and know how to use it, because when this crisis hits all those grasshoppers who can no longer feed their children, they are going to be probing your nice, secure anthill, and not in a nice way.

Do I really need to explain further?