Needless to say, the financial community is pretty horrified by all of this news. They were expecting a much better jobs report, and many of them are not hiding their disappointment. Here is one example from the Wall Street Journal…

“This was an unqualified dud of a jobs report,” said Curt Long, chief economist at the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, noting “the unemployment rate fell, but for the wrong reason as labor force participation declined for the second consecutive month.”

And here is another example that comes from David Donabedian, the chief investment officer at Atlantic Trust Wealth Management…

We can’t find a positive nugget in today’s job report. If we were looking for signs of strength in this report, there is nothing to hang onto here.

But of course the mainstream media is doing their best to put a positive spin on these numbers. For instance, CNN just published a laughable article entitled “America’s economy is stronger than weak jobs report.”

And the White House insists that this new employment report really isn’t that big of a deal…

The White House doesn’t get “too disappointed” over the number of unemployed and underemployed Americans.

“I’ve been reacting to jobs numbers here at the White House for more than seven years, and what is true today has been true in the past, which is, we don’t get too excited when jobs numbers are better than expected and we don’t get too disappointed when jobs numbers one-month are lower than expected,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told CNBC.

But of course the truth is that it is a really big deal. We just received major confirmation that the U.S. economy has slipped into recession mode.

For months, I have been writing about how virtually every other indicator has been screaming that a new economic crisis had already begun.

But the employment numbers had remained fairly decent up until now. Employment is typically considered to be a “lagging indicator,” which means that it isn’t one of the first places we would expect to see signs of a recession show up. However, it is inevitable that the official unemployment numbers will reflect an economic downturn eventually, and that is what we are starting to see now.

What this means is that you probably have even less time to get prepared for what is ahead than you may have originally thought.

The U.S. economy has already entered the early chapters of the next great economic crisis, and most of the population is going to be caught totally off guard and will suffer tremendously.

If our leaders had made better decisions since the last crisis, things could have turned out differently. But instead, they continued to conduct business as usual, and now we will reap what they have sown.

Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.


(activistpost.com)

Mainstream press outlets are mounting a new brand of coverage on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. They’re questioning her ability to win the nomination and/or the general election. All of a sudden, the done deal is not done.

What’s behind this switch?

Aside from fear of The Donald, there is the boiling Hillary email scandal. There is also the specter of further revelations about the syndicate known as the Clinton Foundation. That’s a big one. A very big one.

As I’ve previously reported, the sale of 20% of the uranium in the US to Putin—that’s right—involved donors to the Foundation—unreported donors—as well as the participation of Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. Detailed by the NY Times, the scandal has lain there for several months like a poisoned meal, with the press afraid to touch it further.

Now, enter a financial analyst named Charles Ortel. Ortel made a name for himself by publishing his analysis of serious problems in General Electric’s financial reports (2008). On his website, he has begun taking apart the entire Clinton Foundation, brick by brick. Here is an explosive excerpt from his overview:

“In financial terms, the size of criminal activities directly involving the Clinton Foundation exceeds $2 billion—counting affiliated and indirect criminal activities, the size exceeds $50 billion. The geographic scope of these unprosecuted criminal activities touches all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and more than 100 foreign countries where Clinton Foundation entities operate or solicit donations.”

“Beginning late in 2008, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and others expanded efforts to cover up illegal operating and fundraising activities of the Clinton Foundation since inception. Working ultimately with individuals inside the I.R.S. and elsewhere, these persons led efforts to ‘restructure’ the Clinton Foundation to make it appear that it had been legally constituted and validly operated in compliance with applicable laws, when this was certainly not the case.”

“Trustees and other persons have been engaged in an unprosecuted criminal conspiracy to operate the Clinton Foundation in the guise of a public charity, when it is, instead, an illegal money-laundering and influence peddling scheme.”

“In fact, the Clinton Foundation has engaged in widespread unauthorized activities, including illegal operations internationally and in the U.S., and illegal fundraising across state and national boundaries, using telephones, mail, and the internet.”

“Moreover, the Clinton Foundation has never validly been authorized by the I.R.S. to pursue tax-exempt purposes other than serving as an archival records repository and research facility in Little Rock, Arkansas.”

“Instead of concentrating upon its specifically-authorized tax-exempt purposes, trustees performed lax oversight and installed ineffective controls, creating conditions where Bill Clinton, Ira Magaziner, and others deliberately and illegally diverted substantial sums from the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates.”

In light of Ortel’s analysis, to say the Clintons have wandered off the reservation would be a vast understatement.

So…how have they remained free of this tsunami of a scandal? Who has been protecting them?

Let us return to the period when Bill Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas—and a 1995 book titled Compromised, by Terry Reed (former CIA asset) and John Cummings (former Newsday reporter).

Buckle up.

According to the authors, Bill Clinton was involved with the CIA in some very dirty dealings in Arkansas—and I’m not just talking about the cocaine flights landing at the Mena airport.

It seems Bill had agreed to set up secret CIA weapons-making factories in his home state, under the radar. But because Arkansas, when it comes to money, is all cronies all the time, everybody and his brother found out about the operation and wanted in. Also, Bill was looking for a bigger cut of the action.

This security breach infuriated the CIA, and a meeting was held to dress down Bill and make him see the error of his ways. His CIA handlers told him they were going to shut down the whole weapons operation, because Bill had screwed up royally. A screaming match ensued—but the CIA people backed off a bit and told Bill he was still “their man” for the upcoming 1992 run for the Presidency.

Of course, there are people who think Reed and Cumming’s book contains fiction, but John Cummings was a top-notch reporter for Newsday. He co-authored the 1990 book, Goombata, about the rise and fall of John Gotti. He exposed US operations to destroy Cuban agriculture with bio-weapons. It’s highly doubtful he would have put his name onCompromisedwithout a deep conviction he was correctly adding up the facts.

Here, from Compromised, is an account of the extraordinary meeting, in Arkansas, between Bill Clinton and his CIA handlers, in March of 1986, six years before Clinton would run for the Presidency. Author Terry Reed, himself a CIA asset at the time, was there. According to the authors, so was Oliver North, and a man named “Robert Johnson,” who was representing CIA head Bill Casey.

Johnson said to Bill Clinton:

“Calm down and listen….We are all in this together…I’m not here to threaten you [Bill]. But there have been mistakes. Bill, you are Mr. Casey’s fair-haired boy. But you do have competition for the job you seek [the US Presidency]. We would never put all eggs in one basket. You and your state have been our greatest asset…Mr. Casey wanted me to pass on to you that unless you **** up and do something stupid, you’re No. 1 on the short list for a shot at the job you’ve always wanted.

“That’s pretty heady stuff, Bill. So why don’t you help us keep a lid on this [CIA weapons-manufacturing] and we’ll all be promoted together. You and guys like us are the fathers of the new government. Hell, we are the new covenant.”

By this account, Bill Clinton was the CIA’s boy back in 1986, long before he launched himself into his first Presidential campaign.

He was their boy, and they protected him, despite the fact that he had wandered off the reservation.

But now, it’s happening again. It appears Bill and his wife have taken their massive Foundation to new heights of careless, reckless, devil-may-care criminality.

Well, the Clintons are that way, aren’t they? They don’t just push the boundaries of what is legal and moral, they drive a huge tank through the boundaries and shout WHO CARES as they hurtle off to commit new and slimier deeds.

The question is, will the CIA still give this duo cover? Or will Agency insiders throw in the towel and leave them out in the cold?

Has that decision to abandon them already been made? Is that why the CIA Mockingbird press is starting to turn on Hillary?

Have she and Bill gone too far?

Is John Kerry lurching into his polished loafers and getting ready to step into the breach as the Democratic nominee for President?

Jon Rappoport

By Matt Agorist

So far, 2016 is proving to be the year the September 11th attacks have been blown wide open. But when the U.S. Government is involved, it’s one step forward, then two steps back.

For the first time since that fateful September day, a once oblivious populace has begun to question why the US invaded Iraq in spite of the fact that 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

Then, in an April episode of 60 Minutes, former Florida governor, Democratic U.S. Senator and onetime chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Bob Graham implicated a US ally for their role in the September 11th attacks.

“I think it’s implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many didn’t have a high school education, could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States,” said Graham in the interview, implicating Saudi Arabia for their role in 9/11.

Graham mentioned that a redacted portion of the 9/11 investigation, now popularly known as the 28 pages, implicates the Saudi Kingdom in aiding the attackers.

Just when it seemed that Americans were finally going to get a glimpse into the facts of what really happened on 9/11, Saudi Arabia threatened the US with the collapse of the dollar if they released the 28 pages.

Predictably, Obama caved to the Saudis.

Ah, but there was another glimmer of hope after the U.S. Senate’s unanimous passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which allowed the families of victims of 9/11 to sue the Saudi government in federal court.

Last week, after the victims’ families had their hopes built up by the passage of JASTA, it was revealed that the bill’s co-sponsor Chuck Schumer slipped in a last-minute loophole, effectively castrating the entire bill.

While JASTA would allow for families of victims of 9/11 to overcome the current restrictions, the new section of the bill would essentially allow the heads of the Justice and State departments to stay any lawsuits indefinitely. The provision allows for the organizational heads to simply “inform the judge hearing the case that the US government has engaged with Riyadh in diplomatic talks to resolve the issue” — indefinitely.

As if rendering JASTA irrelevant wasn’t enough, this week, a U.S. government prosecutor, Ed Ryan, announced that a military court is being asked to withhold from the public a cockpit recording from a hijacked jet in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, because it contains evidence needed for upcoming trials. Joanne Stocker, reporting for Sputnik News in Guantanamo Bay explains:

“[The voice recording] has significant events for the purposes of the government’s case-in-chief,” Ryan told Judge James Pohl. “It proves hijacking in the first place. It proves intent. It proves the initial murders of the crew in the cockpit — the sounds of which can be heard — and, at the end, it contains the attempts to retake the airliner.”

The recording is from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania before reaching its intended target. Flight 93’s recording is unique as it is the only one which survived the September 11 attacks.

The recording allegedly captured passengers taking back over the plane from the hijackers before the plane crashed.

According to Sputnik, Ryan stated that the prosecution plans to play the audio at upcoming trials of suspects detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

He explained that the protective order must be in place before the US government can turn the audio over to lawyers who are defending terrorist suspects, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Keeping the recording a secret is a kick in the teeth for the families who lost their loved ones on that day, especially the ones on Flight 93. It is also entirely unnecessary. The ones who are allegedly on trial are in Gitmo, and American citizens listening to that audio would have zero impact on the outcome of these hearings.

The court’s keeping this audio secret is just another reason American citizens, and the victims’ families in particular, have no reason to trust their government any longer.

Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. .