Bald Dollars (PICS)
20 Insane Vectors!
Besides the regular names we know I haven’t seen a good new vector artist in a while, that’s why I was really surprised with the work of Ahmed, he creates great vectors so full of details that it’s unbelievable. No wonder why he takes a month on each piece, check it out!All my artwork is created from start to finish on Photoshop CS3, using only a mouse, I create outlines using the Pentool provided then color. Some refer to it as a Vector, and others Vexel, eitherway it uses precise and accurate lines and shapes in order to create sharp artwork. An average artwork I create takes approx. one month. That said I am lazy ;P
For more visit owaikeo.com
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How Much Money Does a Billion iPhone Apps Get You? Not That Much
Recently, Apple proudly strutted its feathers, pointing at the one billion iPhone free and paid apps users have installed on their little bundles of electronic joy. Now, the folks at LSVP have done the math and calculated how much revenue, approximately, that billion generated.Short version: not that much.
Long version: Anywhere between $20 and $45 million; when you count in LSVP’s approximation that the ratio of free to paid apps, is somewhere between 1:15 and 1:40, and O’Reilly’s estimate that the mean price for paid apps is $2.65. Multiply (
) these numbers and you get revenue of $70-$160 million; Apple’s 30%, which is how much they get from each sold application puts their chunk of the cake at $20-45 million.
The lesson learned from these numbers, however approximate they may be, is that Apple is still primarily a hardware company; they sold 13.7 million iPhones and 22.7 Million iPods in 2008, which makes their profits from selling iPhone apps and even iTunes songs minor in comparison. However, iPhone apps are driving iPhone’s overall significance as a platform (which ultimately reflects on sales), and thus, indirectly, generate far more profit. As always, for Apple the formula is 1. build hardware, 2. turn it into a platform, 3. profit.
Download from MegaUpload Without Limit with Premium Link Generator
I seldom post any tips or tricks on MegaUpload because I really seldom use this free service. Reason is because there are 2 restrictions. Whenever I want to download anything from MegaUpload, I will get the message saying “All download slots assigned to your country (Malaysia) are currently in use. Please try again in a few hours or install the Megaupload Toolbar for immediate access – with the toolbar installed, there are no more slot limitations for you!” What? I have to download a toolbar in order to download using free account? Forget it! Fortunately, there is a Firefox extension which lets you bypass the requirement to download the unnecessary toolbar.
Second restriction is after I’ve downloaded the a file from Megaupload, I can’t immediately download the next file… I’ll have to reconnect my internet connection to get a new IP address to bypass this restriction. Sometimes I have no choice but to go through all that because the files I am looking for can only be found in megaupload.
I think I am lucky because while reading some post on a forum, I found a website that can generate megaupload premium link! A megaupload premium link means I have the highest download speed priority, maximum parallel downloads, no wait time before download begins, download starts immediately, and support resuming!
Ofme.info uses an amazing brilliant script which is also very simple. The script uses a premium megaupload account to generate a premium megaupload link from a normal megaupload link. A normal megaupload link looks like this (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XXXXXXXX) but as for PREMIUM megaupload link, it is very long and it looks something like this (http://www41.megaupload.com/files/aa3/file.rar)
I’ve never own a megaupload premium account before, therefore I don’t know if there are any download limit restriction for a premium account. A megaupload premium account cost $199.99 for a lifetime platinum membership. If you look carefully at Ofme.infowebsite, there is a lot of advertisements and I believe the owner can easily cover back his cost. It’s a win-win situation. He gets revenue by placing advertisements and we get free service. I sure hope he can continue this service as long as possible without getting noticed or banned by Megaupload.
OK, let’s get head on to the fun part on how to generate a normal megaupload link to a premium link. Visit Ofme.info website, scroll right to the bottom and you’ll see a small text box with a small Go button. Just paste the megaupload link to the text box and click Go! button. You will notice that the page is being refreshed and you’re at the top of the Ofme.infopage. Scroll down again and this time you’ll see a long link just below the text box.
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The 7 Crappiest “Super Heroes” in Comic Book History
What if instead of a radioactive spider, Peter Parker had been bitten by a radioactive butterfly? He’d be a freaking laughingstock, that’s what.
Some ideas for “super heroes” should have never been spoken aloud, and when they were the creator should have been laughed out of the room, preferably through a tenth story window. Instead, seven of them were fitted with origin stories and sent to the presses giving us unintentional hilarity like:
#7. Madam Fatal
Madam Fatal was Murder She Wrote in the 1940s if Murder She Wrote involved more criminals getting punched in the face by an octogenarian lady. So it’s more like that episode of The Golden Girls where Bea Arthur has to rescue Sofia from the Mafia using only her muscular, mannish body and her experience as a female wrestler (it is entirely possible we dreamed this episode).
What Went Wrong?
But like all super heroes Madam Fatal has a secret. Her Mike Tyson-like knock out power is fueled not by hatred of whippersnappers, but by testicles. And no, she doesn’t eat them for protein. Madam Fatal is a dude.
And really, who hasn’t had a date that ended just like this? Stupid Craiglist.
The Madam’s real name is Richard Stanton, a retired actor from New York, who dressed as a woman to rescue his daughter from some kidnappers. Richard liked it so much he decided to continue fighting crime using only his wits, face punching and acting abilities.
By “acting abilities” we of course mean dressing like a woman all the time. That’s his superpower. He/she is a superhero in the same way that Mrs. Doubtfire was a superhero.
They could have made it less lame by, well, by doing anything. But more specifically, if the guy had used his super acting skills to disguise himself as a doctor, a policeman or as a fellow crook, using his amazing powers to disappear into any room. But no, Mister Stanton wrestles men while wearing old lady clothes. And we’re guessing that when the crime fighting is over, well, he just leaves them on for a little while.
#6. Dazzler
Imagine Olivia Newton John, circa “Xanadu”, as a Marvel superhero. Now imagine her powers are really, really shitty. You got Dazzler!
Alison Blaire was a magna cum laude law student who decided to throw away her promising career for a chance of disco stardom. Who wouldn’t? Besides you, us and everyone we know. So when does superheroing enters the scene? Well, turns out our plucky lawyer / disco sensation was a mutant who had the power to transform sound into light… and rollerskates.
What Went Wrong?
Turning sound into light is only useful if you are fighting Dracula in the middle of a construction site. But at least she has her music career going on for her, right?
OK, that’s a no then.
You may be assuming this whole Dazzler thing was a product of the misguided disco era. You’d be wrong. Dazzler showed up in the early 80s, when all peoples of the world were trying to put disco behind them.
Like all great cultural icons, the character came about as a commission from a record company who wanted a superheroine singer with her own comic. If you wonder why you don’t remember any Dazzler records, it’s because the whole thing died before they got the chance. Casablanca records abandoned their end of the project by the time the first issue of Dazzler came out in 1981, presumably realizing how ludicrous the whole thing was.
Marvel, in the grand tradition of “Ah, fuck it, what do we have to lose?” began to publish the comic anyway, giving birth to the proud heroine we know as Dazzler.
#5. US. 1
Ulysses Solomon Archer (U.S.A. get it? Get it?) fights evil in the highways of America in his pimped out truck to avenge the death of his brother, Jefferson Hercules Archer. At this point we can only theorize that their father had the impossibly awesome name of Washington Samson Archer McPornstar.
His brother, by the way, was murdered by a sinister trucker known as The Highwayman, who sold his soul to the devil for a satanic eighteen-wheeler (honest). U.S. 1 was Marvel’s response to America’s short love affair with trucks and truckers brought by movies such as Smokey and the Bandit and that TV series about a trucker and his pet monkey (it’s unfortunately not possible that we dreamed this one; we Googled it).
What Went Wrong?
Because Marvel has a sense of timing on par with a wet fart right before match point at Wimbledon, the first issue of U.S. 1 came out in 1983, five years after Smokey and the Bandit, missing its cue even worse than Dazzler did. We assume they’ll have a Lambada themed comic next year.
Even if they had published this comic back when it made sense to do so, we don’t think the world was ready for a superpowered trucker. Oh yes, he had one superpower. In the same accident his brother lost his life, Ulysses skull was crushed and had to be replaced with a metal plate, which SOMEHOW allowed Ulysses to pick up CB transmissions.
Armed with this dubiously amazing ability, Ulysses tries to find the man who killed his brother. We don’t know about you, but our money is on the guy with an eighteen-wheeler powered by Satan and not on the guy who saved himself 50 bucks on a CB radio.
#4. The Red Bee
Rick Raleigh fights crime during the day as assistant district attorney of Superior City and fights crime… also during the day as the Red Bee, scourge of the underworld!
Sadly, we have not been able to find anything remotely close to an origin story for this guy, which is a shame because if anything needs an explanation it’s those awful stripped tights and see-through sleeves. You know what, maybe it’s better we don’t know.
What Went Wrong?
You know how Batman doesn’t actually fight crime with trained bats? And how Spider-Man actually stays away from actual spiders? Well the Red Bee said fuck that shit, and fights crime with bees… for real.
Not only that, but he keeps his favorite Bee and best friend, Michael, in a special compartment in his belt for special occasions. So think of Red Bee as an Aquaman, but limited to one insect, making him the scourge of people allergic to bees and villains who have never heard of insecticide.
You don’t even need a fly swatter to beat this guy, just roll a magazine or a newspaper and kill Michael already.
Since there is no known origin for this guy, we can’t tell you how he managed to train insects dumber than dirt that only live for a few months. We assume “Michael” gets changed pretty often after the old Michael gets a Viking funeral in the toilet. Even the creator of Red Bee is ashamed, he signed his work with the obviously phony name of B. H. Apiary (an apiary is a place where they breed bees. Get it!?!).
#3. The Whizzer
Whizzer is one of the earliest Marvel characters created and, to prove we’re not shitting you, we are simply going to copy and paste his actual origin story, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Yeah.
What Went Wrong?
You need to know right now, or at least before you try to go camping, that blood transfusions are not a cure for cobra bites as far as modern science is concerned. Not even with mongoose blood. Especially not with mongoose blood.
But aside from that, his entire origin story seems like it was created by filling in a mad-libs page.
Robert Frank is on a trip to ________, where he is _______ by a ________. Dr. Frank saves his live by a transfusion of __________.
Seriously, take that to a ten year-old kid and have him fill it in, he’ll wind up with a story that makes more sense than theirs. Don’t fill it in yourself, you’ll just wind up writing in “boobies” four times.
With that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at the costume:
No, we are not sure if it’s Whizzer talking here, or the cartoon chicken on his helmet. We like to think it’s the chicken.
Is there anything going in favor of this guy? Well, no. We’re pretty sure that even in the era when the character was written, “whizzer” was slang for “pisser.” But we’re thinking even a superhero who uses a magical stream of urine to thwart crime would be substantially less retarded than this guy.
#2. The Elongated Man
Ralph Dibny was a regular guy who invented a secret formula that made his body super-elastic. So yeah, he was pretty much a Plastic Man rip-off. So much that his creator admitted he created him only because he was not aware DC comics had actually bought the rights for Plastic Man a few years earlier and there was no need to make up another one.
Wait, it gets sadder.
What Went Wrong?
Young Ralph was a big fan of circus rubber men and wanted nothing more than to be like them. We guess this is like a girl being a very big fan of bearded ladies, in which case testosterone injections might help; but Ralph was not so lucky so he had to research his own way to reach the glamorous world of circus freakdom.
And research he did! Ralph discovered that all the rubber-men in the world drank a soda called Gingold. Yes, all of them; he went around the world and asked them.
So apparently there is this commercial soda being sold around the world that gives elasticity powers and only a few people have noticed that? Apparently Gingold is only drunk by circus freaks and other outcasts of society, like RC cola.
Using the gingold fruit, Ralph managed to make a super concentrated version of the soda and gave himself elasticity powers becoming the Elongated Man we all know and love; or at least know.
No, it isn’t.
While The Whizzer’s origin story is a dragon-punch right in the balls of science, it at least involves a cobra bite and bleeding that poor mongoose to death, so it’s kind of hard core. Elongated Man’s story, on the other hand, involves a kid with a sad obsession with freak shows and a beverage badly in need of a recall.
What could possibly be stupider than that? Just wait…
#1. The Black Condor
Thomas Wright was a Senator of the United States; who when not doing whatever the hell it is that Senators do, dressed in the manner of an exotic male prostitute to fight crime and Nazis as the amazing Black Condor. Yes, he was one of the many, many superheroes from around World War II who nobody remembers (or in this case, perhaps repressed the memory).
What Went Wrong?
Do please sit down, because this one is a doozy. Little Richard Grey was born in Mongolia during a scientific expedition his parents were members of. The expedition was attacked by bandits and everyone died except for baby Richard, who was later found and raised by condors. If huge carrion eating birds don’t know how to raise a baby, then who does?
Not bad for a bird that doesn’t even live in Mongolia, or anywhere near Asia for that matter.
By the way, did we mention that the condors taught him how to fly? Yes, apparently being raised by birds means you can slap aerodynamics in the face. If you were a comic book writer back in those days working for peanuts, you wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what you put on the page either.
Richard was later found by an old hermit who taught him how to speak and sent him back to America, where Richard found his next conceptual victim: Democracy.
Richard uncovered a plot to assassinate U.S. Senator Thomas Wright. Since Richard only has the power to fly and possibly also the power to eat rotten dead things, he tried to save the guy’s life and failed miserably. But every murderous cloud has a silver lining. Richard stole Wright’s identity and that’s how a barely literate orphan raised by birds and a crazy old man in the desert became a senator.
We understand that during World War II, America needed heroes, and you could say that even completely nonsensical and shitty heroes like the Black Condor were better than nothing. You could say that, but you’d be wrong. We don’t think we’re stepping out of line here when we say that a world ruled by the Fascists would probably have still been better than a world governed by undercover super-powered feral bird men.
How to watch the Olympics online?
The 2008 Beijing Olympics get underway Friday, August 8, 2008.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics will happen while most Americans are sleeping. While NBC, the games’ official media outlet in the United States, will be providing thousands of hours of content on the web, the only way to truly ensure you won’t miss too many record-breaking moments is to spread yourself across the web and take advantage of the many video outlets online. 
With opening ceremonies kicking off Friday, August 8, we have compiled a list of online destinations for getting your fix of the summer sporting events.
Live Streams and On-Demand Highlights
NBC Olympics. Media giant NBC has exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States, and will serve up four live streams and 3,000 hours of on-demand video online.
TV Tonic. NBC paired with Wavexpress to offer event highlights on demand via a download service similar to iTunes. If you use Windows Media Center to watch TV you’ll see a link to this software marked as “NBC Olympics” in the Online Media strip. This will offer video ranging in quality from 840×480 progressive to 1080i HD. For 32-bit Windows Vista users only.
YouTube. Starting Wednesday, Google will provide approximately three hours of content each day from the Olympics Broadcasting Service on a channel dedicated to the games. The content will include highlight reels and daily wrap-ups, but no live coverage. The footage will be available in 77 territories, including South Korea, India and Nigeria, that aren’t officially covered by Olympic sponsors, according to an International Olympic Committee press release.
CCTVOlympics.com. CCTV will be supplying more than 5,000 hours of Olympic Games coverage for mainland China and Macau.
BBC Sports. The U.K.’s official Olympics broadcaster will offer six streaming channels showing coverage from BBC TV and BBC News Interactive. Channels will focus on on-demand daily highlights and athlete interviews.
Yahoo7. Australia’s official Olympics online portal offers live streams, video coverage on-demand and behind-the-scenes interviews, specials and features.
CBC Olympics. Canadians can tune into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation online for supplemental live streams, video coverage on-demand and behind-the-scenes interviews, specials and features.
Getting Around Location Restrictions
In most cases, users in the United States will be blocked from viewing the footage on the non-NBC sites. But you may be able to view clips or streams from other countries if you use a proxy server located within that country, or if you can otherwise trick the streaming server into thinking you’re from a country where it’s allowed.
There’s some advice on this topic at Metafilter.
There are also paid services like Anonymizer that can do the trick for you.
If you have any additional advice, please add it here.
Peer-to-Peer Options
If you want to move beyond bite-size recaps and highlight reels, P2P sites are your best bet for backdoor access to unedited blocks of Olympics footage. Additionally, content is likely to be available sooner than the 12-hour delays expected with some of NBC’s coverage. Try these web workarounds for full access to the Olympics.
BitTorrent. Miss the opening ceremonies? Or the four-hour finale of table tennis? Try downloading torrents of popular Olympic events. Top torrent-tracking sites to try include isoHunt, Mininova and EZTV. Need a quick primer on using BitTorrent? Read our How-To Wiki entry on the subject.
Veetle Stanford University’s experimental web TV platform requires a downloadable player, but offers live broadcasts of soccer games, basketball and more.
Sopcast. This free P2P internet TV player requires a download, but offers a wide lineup of channels broadcasting the Olympic games.
TVants. This is a P2P Internet TV, which requires a free download. TVants can run on Windows or on Linux’s WINE.
PPMate. A Chinese P2P Internet TV network, download. PPMate only run under Windows.
TVU Networks. This P2P internet TV player requires a free download and only works with Windows, but is a good resource for watching global sporting events online.
Paris Hilton’s mom calls McCain ad “waste of money”
Paris Hilton’s mother — a John McCain donor — on Sunday dismissed as a “waste of money” a television ad that used her daughter and Britney Spears to portray Democrat Barack Obama as more celebrity icon than chief executive.
Kathy Hilton, the mother of the blond socialite-actress, lambasted the Republican presidential candidate’s advertisement in a blog posted on the political Web site Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com).
“It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign,” Hilton wrote.
“It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States,” she wrote.
The McCain ad, titled “Celeb,” asks viewers: “Is he (Obama) ready to lead?”
Hilton and her husband, a scion of the Hilton hotel chain, donated $4,600 to McCain’s November White House bid.
McCain has portrayed himself as an independent-minded politician with a history of bucking authority and said last week that his rival has shown little more than strong speaking skills.
Clinton Gets Most Lobbyist Money, McCain Most Help
Democrat Hillary Clinton has raised more money from lobbyists than any other presidential candidate while Republican John McCain has more of them assisting his campaign.
Clinton took in $823,087 from registered lobbyists and members of their firms in 2007 and the second-biggest recipient was McCain, who took in $416,321, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group which tracks political giving. Barack Obama, Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, doesn’t take money from registered lobbyists, although he received $86,282 from employees of firms that lobby, according to the center.
McCain has 26 registered lobbyists as campaign advisers or fundraisers compared with 11 for Clinton and none for Obama, according to review of records compiled by Public Citizen, a Washington-based group that favors stronger disclosure laws for lobbyists.
Even as they pledge to rein in special interests, the leading Democratic and Republican candidates are relying on lobbyists to bring in campaign cash by raising money from other donors, a technique known as bundling.
“These bundlers and advisers are central to the financial success of top presidential candidates,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “As such, they will essentially carry with them an IOU from the campaign.”
Lobbyist Bundlers
Clinton’s total from lobbyists is a fraction of what they raise on her behalf; her campaign doesn’t disclose which donations are brought in by lobbyist bundlers.
Heather Podesta, a Washington lobbyist, donated $4,600 to Clinton, FEC records show. She’s raised more than $250,000 for Clinton by tapping her network of contacts and holding fundraisers.
“Most of my attention is focused on raising money and new supporters,” Podesta, sister-in-law to President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff John Podesta, said in an interview. “That’s the best way for me to make a contribution.”
Like Podesta, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steve Ricchetti has also signed on to be a so-called Hillraiser. Ricchetti’s firm was paid $1.7 million during the first six months of 2007 to lobby on behalf of Amgen Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio, among others.
Won’t Be Swayed
New York Senator Clinton, 60, said during a Jan. 21 debate that she won’t be swayed by her support from lobbyists, saying she has “withstood the full force of corporate lobbyists” during her failed 1993 attempt at passing universal health care legislation as first lady and during her Senate career.
“I think I’m independent and tough enough to be able to deal with anybody,” Clinton said.
McCain, 71, an Arizona Republican who led the successful 2002 effort to ban corporate and union donations to the political parties, counts as campaign co-chairman former Representative Tom Loeffler of Texas. Loeffler now runs his own lobbying firm, which was paid $2.5 million by such clients as AT&T Inc. and Southwest Airlines.
Last week, former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, vice chairman of UBS Securities LLC who is registered to lobby for the bank, campaigned in Georgia for McCain.
On the campaign trail, McCain stresses his anti-lobbyist bona fides.
`Special Interests’
“I upset the special interests and Washington lobbyists when I fought for ethics reform and to stop union bosses and corporations from writing million-dollar checks to political campaigns,” he said in New Hampshire in November.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, 60, has contrasted his experience running a business and a state government with McCain’s tenure in Washington, and has vowed to rein in the influence of lobbyists.
Like former President Ronald Reagan, “I’d go to Washington as an outsider — not owing favors, not lobbyists on every elbow,” Romney said at a Jan. 30 debate.
And Romney, too, has registered lobbyists in campaign posts.
Former U.S. Representative Vin Weber, whose firm was paid $3.6 million by such clients as EBay Inc. and General Dynamics Corp., is Romney’s policy chairman. Other advisers include Ron Kaufman, chairman of Washington-based Dutko Worldwide, which was paid $11.2 million by such companies as Allstate Corp. and Target Corp.
Related Video |
`Extra-Curricular Activities’
“Among my many extra-curricular activities, I love public policy,” Weber said. “I try to be helpful to candidates.”
One campaign co-chairman for Illinois Senator Obama, 46, is former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a policy adviser at Alston & Bird LLP. The firm was paid $4.1 million by companies such as Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and Healthsouth Corp.
Daschle isn’t a registered lobbyist, yet has clout. “Some of the most powerful people in Washington’s influence industry aren’t registered to lobby,” Krumholz said.
And while Obama doesn’t accept lobbyists’ money, he raised the $86,282 in cash from employees of firms whose business centers on lobbying. He takes in even more money from employees of law firms which also engage in lobbying, including $226,491 from those working for Sidley Austin LLP, his old law firm, which was paid $3.1 million to lobby by clients such as Caterpillar Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc.
For the lobbyists, the return comes if their candidate wins, said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for Washington-based Common Cause, which supports stronger lobbying laws.
“They certainly would get access and influence if and when he or she become the next president,” Boyle said.
What a nasty letter over a $16.96 debt!
A collection agency tried to collect a $16.96 debt with an letter that addressed its recipient with a four-letter word for excrement. “Dear S—,” began the letter, attempting to collect from an old record club membership. The word was spelled out in the letter, which arrived in an envelope addressed to “S— Face.”
“I’ve never seen anything quite so brazen,” said attorney Kenneth Hiller.
He said his client plans to sue Nationwide Collections Inc. of Fort Pierce, Florida, next week.
Under U.S. law, debt collectors are not allowed to use profanity to collect a debt, Hiller said, nor are they supposed to threaten legal action over such a small amount.
Nationwide President Phillip McGarvey said the October 2007 letter was automatically generated after his company bought about 350,000 Columbia House accounts. “S— Face” is the name under which the account was opened and the way the coupon to start the club was filled out, he said.
Hiller’s client has signed an affidavit saying he never signed up for the music club membership under that name.
“It looks bad to the observer who is not familiar with the industry,” acknowledged McGarvey, “but anybody who understands the volume would understand how this could happen. …You’ve also got people filling in famous people’s names.”
The Dollar is Heading for Collapse
The borrow-and-spend bubble has popped.
- The U.S. Conference of Mayors predicts 1.4 million additional foreclosures in 2008, triggering devaluation of mortgage-backed securities in the hundreds of billions.
- Credit continues to contract because banks do not yet know how degraded their loan assets will become.
- The Federal Reserve is fighting the credit crisis and potential deflation with massive injections of money, thereby weakening the dollar and fueling inflation.
The U.S. government is living beyond its means.
- The government spends $1.3 billion per day over what it takes in.
- The U.S. debt grew 9.5% last year, surpassing $9 trillion at the end of 2007 — about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
- U.S. government liabilities, including net social insurance commitments, now total $53 trillion — $450,000 for each household.
- To bridge the gap, the Federal Reserve “prints” more money.
As more dollars are created and put into the economy, the purchasing power of all dollars is reduced.
- The dollar is backed by only a promise, so it is easy to create more dollars (at the stroke of a keyboard) when spending exceeds income.
- The total number of dollars grew 11% in the last year to $12.6 trillion.
- As of December 2007 the amount of money is growing at an annualized rate of 14.7%.
The purchasing power of the dollar is falling at an accelerating rate.
- The Farm Bureau’s survey shows the cost of a basket of 16 basic grocery items rose by 10.9% in the first three quarters of 2007.
- A gallon of gas is up 39% from a year ago.
- Health insurance premiums rose at double the rate of inflation in 2007.
- The dollar is hitting new lows against foreign currencies.