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LONDON — The brains of people tripping on magic mushrooms have given the best picture yet of how psychedelic drugs work and British scientists say the findings suggest such drugs could be used to treat depression. Two separate studies into the effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, showed that contrary to scientists' expectations, it does not increase but rather suppresses activity in areas of the brain that are also dampened with other anti-depressant treatments. "Psychedelics are thought of as 'mind-expanding' drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity," said David Nutt...

Canada needs to look beyond its southern neighbour for markets because the United States economy is unlikely to ever fully recover, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said Sunday. In an interview with CTV's Question Period, Carney said that it is vital for Canada to look for new trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere to prevent the economy from being dragged down by the U.S. "It's going to take a number of years before they get back to the U.S. that we used to know - in fact, they are not, in our opinion, ultimately going to get...

22 Signs That We Are On The Verge Of A Devastating Global RecessionJanuary 12, 2012Michael Snyder 2012 is shaping up to be a very tough year for the global economy. All over the world there are signs that economic activity is significantly slowing down. Many of these signs are detailed later on in this article. But most people don't understand what is happening because they don't put all of the pieces together. If you just look at one or two pieces of data, it may not seem that impressive. But when you examine all of the pieces of evidence that...

How To Prepare For The Difficult Years AheadMichael SnyderJanuary10, 2012 How should people prepare for the difficult years that are coming? I get asked about that a lot. Once people really examine the facts, it is not too hard to convince them that an economic collapse is coming. But once they accept that reality, most of them want to know what they can do to prepare themselves and their families for the hard times that are ahead. Well, the truth is that it does not have to be complicated. Many of the things discussed throughout this article are things that...

.....[Economists] predict that the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.7 percent from 8.6 percent, which was the lowest rate since March 2009.

Growing numbers of New Yorkers seeking food stamps have created an unwelcome spillover effect at some of New York City's job centers: overcrowding that in some cases has grown so severe, benefits were jeopardized. The crush of people grew so large at one Brooklyn center in November that the Fire Department intervened and prevented anyone from entering the building.

The markets were on a roll. New companies were being listed every few days. Germany had a new currency, and its mighty exporters were doing business around the world. Greece had merged its currency with that of France and Italy in a bold experiment in monetary union. A massive new continental economy was flooding the world with cheap goods, disrupting old industries. And new technologies were creating global markets, where money and information zipped from bourse to bank virtually instantaneously. Until the crash came, it seemed as if everyone would keep on getting richer and richer forever. You could be...

Meanwhile, as the eurozone slides towards disaster, the prospects for Europe have rarely been bleaker. Already the European elite have installed compliant technocratic governments in Greece and Italy, and with the markets now putting pressure on France, few observers can be optimistic that the Continent can avoid a total meltdown.... For the most chilling parallel, though, we should look back exactly 80 years, to the cold wintry days when 1931 gave way to 1932. Then as now, few people saw much to mourn in the passing of the old year. It was in 1931 that the Great Depression really took...

The dawn of a new year is usually a time of hope and ambition, of dreams for the future and thoughts of a better life. But it is a long time since many of us looked forward to the new year with such anxiety, even dread.

The Obama Nation: Even More Debt And Even More Store ClosingsDecember 28, 2011 Well, it is time to raise the debt ceiling again. Right now we are about to hit the current limit of $15.194 trillion and the Obama administration is going to ask that it be raised by another 1.2 trillion dollars. Unfortunately, Congress has already promised not to stand in the way, and so soon the debt limit will be raised to a staggering $16.394 trillion. Considering how much debt we have already placed on the backs of future generations, what is another 1.2 trillion dollars? After all,...

For years, the food pantry in Crystal Lake, Ill., a bedroom community 50 miles west of Chicago, has catered to the suburban areas’ poor, homeless and unemployed. But Cate Williams, the head of the pantry, has noticed a striking change in the makeup of the needy in the past year or two. Some families that once pulled down six-figure incomes and drove flashy cars are now turning to the pantry for help. A few of them donated food and money to the pantry before their luck soured, according to Williams. “People will shyly say to me, ‘You know, I used...

As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts: 1. Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has. 2. The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent. 3. Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work. 4. College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush. 5....

An unpatched critical flaw in 64-bit Windows 7 leaves computers vulnerable to a full 'blue screen of death' system crash. The memory corruption bug in x64 Win 7 could also allow malicious kernel-level code to be injected into machines, security alert biz Secunia warns. Fortunately the 32-bit version of Windows 7 is immune to the flaw, which has been pinned down to the win32k.sys operating system file - which contains the kernel portion of the Windows user interface and related infrastructure.Proof-of-concept code showing how to crash vulnerable Win 7 boxes has been leaked: the simple HTML script, when opened in...

Essay: Are we witnessing the U.S. empire head into its final decline? Obama is drifting. Republican candidates inspire little confidence. But viewed from Europe, which is more skeptical than ever, it’s worth taking a closer look at a nation with the Peter Pan gift of never growing up. ******** BERLIN -- When it’s not busy with its own problems, Europe looks across the Atlantic and shakes its head. America would appear to be on an unstoppable downward spiral. While neo-conservative dreams of the “unipolar moment” disperse, troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, the ups and the downs of the...

Financial Panic Sweeps Europe As The Head Of The IMF Warns Of A “1930s Depression”December 17, 2011 Are we on the verge of another Great Depression? Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said this week that if dramatic action is not taken immediately we could actually see conditions "reminiscent of the 1930s depression" and that no country on earth "will be immune to the crisis". Right now, financial panic is sweeping across Europe, but most Americans are not too concerned about it because they simply don't understand how important the EU is. The truth is that the EU has...

More Upside For Gold As Government Spending Continues Unabated By Bill Bonner 12/16/11 Baltimore, Maryland – Have yourself a merry little depression. Dow up 45 points. Gold down $9. We’re still waiting for a major correction in the gold market. Each time one begins, it seems to run out of steam before doing any real damage. At yesterday’s closing price, $1,577, gold is still solidly ahead for the year. So, where’s the soft spot? Where’s the test? Where will it come from? When? Don’t worry, dear reader, Mr. Market will test us. He’ll throw his curve ball. We have to...

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde has warned the Great Depression of the 1930s may repeat itself unless the EU pulls together and gets foreign help. Fresh unemployment statistics added to the gloom by highlighting the social cost of austerity. “If the international community does not work together, the risk from an economic point of view is that of retraction, rising protectionism, isolation. This is exactly the description of what happened in the Thirties and what followed is not something we are looking forward to," Lagarde said in a speech delivered to the US State Department on Thursday (15...

Are We At The Beginning Of A 25-Year Recession?The world economy faced a similar slump in the 19th Century. And it wasn't pretty posted on December 15, 2011, at 10:39 AM Our currency economic crisis has some troubling historic parallels with the "Long Depression" that began afflicting America in the 1870s. The current economic slump won't end any time soon, says Matthew Lynn in MarketWatch. The current crisis eerily resembles one that brought the financial world to its knees in the 1870s. A new industrial power — back then it was Germany, now it's China — had rocketed to the...

WASHINGTON - Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

Unpopular Cures For Unemployment And Economic Depression By Bill Bonner 12/14/11 Baltimore, Maryland – So far, so good. Things keep happening, more or less as they should. That is, the US and European economies keep falling apart. And the fixers keep failing to put them back together again. Just as we expected. Trying to fix a depression it is not only expensive…. The US government spends $1.60 for every $1 it receives in taxes. This is a recipe for a disaster, not for a recovery. Worse. It actually prevents a real recovery from happening, by blocking the market’s natural self-healing...

(Kitco News) - Comex February gold futures prices careened lower and hit a fresh nearly three-month low on follow-through selling pressure from the strong losses posted in afternoon trading Tuesday. It was a “risk-off” trading day in the market place Wednesday, and that was very bearish for the precious metals. A stronger U.S. dollar and sharply lower crude oil prices were also major bearish factors for gold Wednesday. Fresh, serious near-term technical damage has been inflicted in gold this week. February gold last traded down $76.80 at $1,586.60 an ounce. Spot gold last traded down $47.00 an ounce at $1,584.50....

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he wishes he knew the full extent of the economic crisis when he took office, if only so he could have let Americans know just how tough the coming years would be. "I think we understood that it was bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was,” Obama said in an interview with KIRO in Seattle. "I think I could have prepared the American people for how bad this was going to be, had we had a sense of that." Obama’s comments came as he sat down with a string of local TV reporters...

What Happens When World’s Economic Growth Engine Goes Kaput The Daily Reckoning Dec. 9, 2011, 2:53 PM Europe is the world’s biggest economy. It is menaced by bank and government debt defaults. It is growing old and has far more social spending obligations than it can afford. It is paralyzed by competing national governments and decentralized financial institutions. It can say ‘drop dead’ in 17 different languages. And if Europe goes into a deep or prolonged economic slump, the rest of the world follows. Because Europe is a big customer, not only for Asia, but for America too. The only...

First, the report from Commerce on durable-goods orders offers a wan outlook on manufacturing: New orders for manufactured goods in October, down two consecutive months, decreased $1.6 billion or 0.4 percent to $450.0 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.1 percent September decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.2 percent. Shipments, up five consecutive months, increased $2.6 billion or 0.6 percent to $455.4 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent September increase. Unfilled orders, up eighteen of the last nineteen months, increased $1.8 billion or 0.2 percent to $885.9 billion. This followed a 0.6 percent September increase....

STEVE KEEN: The Best We Can Hope For Is Japanese Style Stagnation Gus Lubin Dec. 3, 2011, 6:45 AM If you haven't heard of him, think of Steve Keen as the Nouriel Roubini of Australia: a vocal economist who pissed people off for predicting the recession before it happened, and is still pissing people off predicting further economic crisis. In fact Keen says the world in another Great Depression, where developed countries would be lucky to come out as easily as Japan. Here's an excerpt from his interview with BBC's HardTalk: HT: Do you really think we’re headed for another...

I warned last week that a recession and higher unemployment were about to hit the U.S. economy. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis cut their estimate of growth in the third quarter ending September from 2.5% to 2%. Then on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve rocked financial markets by forcing America’s 31 largest U.S. banks to “stress test” balance sheets to determine their capability to withstand an 8% drop in the economy; which would cause home prices to plunge by 21%, and unemployment rate to jump to 13%.

Bix Weir of RoadtoRoota.com joins us today to talk about gold and silver manipulation and the impending collapse of the world fiat money system. Bix has been studying economic history and the markets for a long time and has arrived at the conclusion that once the collapse occurs, it will be the largest debtors who fare the best. And of all the debtor nations, the United States stands head and shoulders above the rest. According to Bix gold and silver are still screaming bargains who's time will soon come. He believes that eventually the gold to silver ratio will go...

TroubleNovember 25, 2011 The global economy is heading for a massive amount of trouble in the months ahead. Right now we are seeing the beginning of a credit crunch that is shaping up to be very reminiscent of what we saw back in 2008. Investors and big corporations are pulling huge amounts of money out of European banks and nobody wants to lend to those banks right now. We could potentially see dozens of "Lehman Brothers moments" in Europe in 2012. Meanwhile, bond yields on sovereign debt are jumping through the roof all over Europe. That means that European nations...

Stocks closed in negative territory in thin, shortened trading Friday as investors were reluctant to go long ahead of the weekend and amid ongoing worries over the euro zone. The Dow and S&P posted their worst Thanksgiving week since the Great Depression on a percentage basis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average erased their gains to finish lower, led by H-P [HPQ 25.39 -0.39 (-1.51%) ] and Chevron [CVX 92.29 -1.46 (-1.56%)]. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also ended lower, logging a seventh consecutive decline. Some traders are watching for 1,150 on the S&P as the next key level. The...

This Is What People Ate When They Had No Money During The Depression Vivian Giang Nov. 18, 2011, 12:25 PM Image: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection If you've ever visited anyone's house for dinner and a big, sloppy "secret family recipe" dish is flopped down in front of you, chances are high that the messy goodness could have originated from the Depression era. Families were taught to creatively stretch out their food budgets and toast, potatoes and flour seem to be the popular, inexpensive ingredients. Expensive meat was typically eaten only once a week. Some foods...

The Mother Of All Dreads, Global Economy On The Brink Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis Nov 18, 2011 - 11:22 AM By: Ramy Saadeh Ramy Saadeh writes: The World is on the brink of a cataclysmic spiral that could make the Greek crisis look like a walk in the park. Interestingly, markets still seem very hushed about the emerging risks ahead; the final bell hasn’t rung yet, can this be it?The trigger of the dreadful events could come as soon as the 23rd of November 2011, as the “Super Committee”, who is expected to set forth a long awaited plan...

More than one in four American women took at least one drug for conditions like anxiety and depression last year, according to an analysis of prescription data. The report, by pharmacy benefits manager Medco Health Solutions Inc, found the use of drugs for psychiatric and behavioral disorders in all adults rose 22per cent from 2001. The medications are most often prescribed to women aged 45 and older, but their use among men and in younger adults climbed sharply. In total, more than 20per cent of American adults were found to be on at least one drug for mental health disorders....

Older women who got more exercise and less television time were the least likely to be diagnosed with depression, according to a U.S. study of thousands of women -- with physical activity having the biggest impact. According to findings published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that women who reported exercising the most in recent years were about 20 percent less likely to get depression than those who rarely exercised. On the other hand, the more hours they spent watching TV each week, the more their risk of depression crept up. "Higher levels of physical activity were associated...

DAVID ROSENBERG: We Are In Year 4 Of A 7-10 Year Depression Cullen Roche, Pragmatic Capitalism Nov. 13, 2011, 6:56 AM David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff joined Consuelo Mack on Wealth Track this weekend to discuss his outlook for the economy. Rosenberg isn’t just bearish. He say the US economy is in a modern day depression similar to what Japan has suffered from for the last 20 years. He bases this view on the idea that de-leveraging tends to coincide during a prolonged period of economic weakness that is not merely consistent with recession. Rosenberg says we’re just 4 years...

Short version: What's the tactful way to tell a friend she's marrying a loser, and should I bother? Long version: A friend of mine, who is nominally a conservative Christian, is engaged to her liberal Muslim boyfriend of two years. At many points along the way, I dropped subtle hints about how unwise it is for a Christian to marry a non-Christian. I'm not sure why she started dating him in the first place, but I have three guesses from observing the relationship from the beginning. 1) He pursued her relentlessly. 2) He's more masculine than most of the other...

DELONG: It Is 1931. We Are Austria. If The Fed Doesn't Save Us Here Comes Another Great Depression... Henry Blodget Nov. 9, 2011, 5:21 PM How does Berkeley professor Brad Delong feel about what's going on in Europe? He's freaking out: Time to Spread Foam on the Runway: The Federal Reserve Needs to Act Now to Firewall Off the Eurocrisis I have been complaining for some time now that Reinhart and Rogoff think that the time is always 1931 and that we are always Austria--that the great fiscal crisis is about to erupt and send us lurching down toward Great...

15 Trillion Dollars In Debt, 45 Million Americans On Food Stamps And Zero Solutions On The HorizonNovember 3, 2011 How does a country end up 15 trillion dollars in debt? 30 years ago, we were just a little over a trillion dollars in debt. How in the world do supposedly rational people living in "the greatest nation on earth" allow themselves to commit national financial suicide by allowing government debt to explode like that? It almost seems like there should be some sort of official ceremony in Washington D.C. to commemorate this achievement. It really takes something special to be...

12 Reasons To Be Extremely Pessimistic About The Direction That The Economy Is Headed11-1-2011 Do you want to feel optimistic about the U.S. economy? If so, you might not want to read the rest of this article. In many areas of the United States today, you can almost smell the fear and the anxiety in the air. Survey after survey has found that the American people are extremely pessimistic about the direction the economy is headed. In fact, many recent surveys have found that economic pessimism is at the highest levels ever recorded. There has been an astonishing loss of...

By August of 1935, Roosevelt had achieved some of his signature pieces of legislation: a new entitlement program known as Social Security, banking reform, pro-union reform, infrastructure expansion and massive transfers of wealth to the poor and middle classes. Sound familiar?

The current economic crisis rivals the one of the 1930s.  Despite shameless propaganda by government and its cronies in the media, people understand that the situation is getting worse.  Consumer confidence continues to decline as does confidence in the future.We are headed for an event that history will record as worse than the Great Depression.  It is unavoidable.The Level of DebtThe principal reason for the dire prediction is the level of debt outstanding.  Current debt levels are simply not sustainable.  Assets and cash flows cannot support or service this debt.No economic recovery can occur without massive debt reduction.  As...

The USDA has released their projections for food price inflation in 2011/2012, showing troubling forecasts that may send you to the grocery store today, before paying higher prices tomorrow. The report shows that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all food increased 0.8 percent between 2009 and 2010, and is forecasted to increase 3.5 to 4.5 percent in 2011. Items that are expected to inflate the most include beef, cooking oils, and seafood. Processed vegetables and beverages were projected to to see smaller changes in the CPI. The Wall Street Journal notes that “the midpoint of the new USDA outlook...

In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Alfred Landon by an electoral vote of 523 to 8. This was the only contested election in which the major losing candidate received fewer than 10 votes (1788, 1792 and 1820 were uncontested). The landslide came on the heels of what appeared to be an economic recovery. Unemployment fell, productivity rose; people believed the New Deal really worked and they rewarded FDR accordingly. Shortly into the second term did the ugly truth reveal itself. The so-called recovery had been built entirely on government spending. Massive borrowing and government make-work projects put money in enough...

(Video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=exuGv3HsV-U These clips are not just of the Great Depression, but time frames surrounding that period. Do you have any doubts that the Communists and Progressives have been with us for 100 years or better? Well, they have been under many guises. Many times it is in the form of unions and organizers who claim they want to help the worker, when in reality, the ultimate goal is bringing ‘change’ to our form of government. When you were growing up, did you ever hear of these riots and this violence that eventually led up to WWII and afterwards? I...

All of Obama's efforts to turn America into a Nation of Zombies, (NOZ), have been wildly successful. Youths on the streets in over 140 cities in this country alone, proclaim that THEIR zombieness represents 99 % of America! Obama has kept 9.1 % of America's working population as the permanent zombie-unemployed class. Following the 2008 Federally-Regulated Bankruptcy of the Federal Housing Authority, (FHA), Obama has made sure that over a million home loan owners are still held in foreclosure-zombieland. Not satisfied with his obvious skill at turning voters into zombies, Obama has turned non-voting children and grandchildren into National-Debt-Zombies for...

Revisionist History And The Great Depression Economics / Economic Depression Oct 22, 2011 - 01:50 AM By: Andy Sutton Over the past several years, the term ‘Great Depression’ has made a grand re-entry into the American mainstream and has as a consequence become perhaps one of the most misunderstood terms. We are told it was everything that it wasn’t and that it wasn’t everything that it was. Like many important historical events, there is a good bit of revisionist history at work with regards to those dark 12 years in American history when it seemed as though there was nothing...

There is no such thing as a Unicorn that craps out pretty colored candies. In the case at hand in the United States we have a government on both sides of the aisle that has made promises that are mathematically impossible to keep. That same government conspired with The Fed and with Wall Street to blow a series of bubbles that led you to believe, over the space of 30 years, that you could have more than you can actually pay for with your work output. This claim was a lie and it infested virtually every area of our nation....

ROBERT REICH: The Republican Economic Plan Is An Austerity Death-Trap Robert Reich Oct. 19, 2011, 6:25 PM Ron Paul’s newly-unveiled economic plan – promising to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget in year one (presumably that means 2013) – is only slightly more ambitious than what we’re hearing from other Republican candidates. They’re all calling for major spending cuts starting fifteen months from now. What are they smoking? Can we just put ideology aside for a moment and be clear about the facts? Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping because consumers are losing their...

Not since at least 1960 has the US standard of living fallen so fast for so long. The average American has $1,315 less in annual disposable income now than at the onset of the Great Recession. Think life is not as good as it used to be, at least in terms of your wallet? You'd be right about that. The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago. Economic Issues Economic Crisis Financial Markets Cost of Living Recessions...