The following list is not necessarily blaming Obama for the economic problems, it’s just showing how things have gotten worse since he became President.

1: In January 2009, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent.

2: When Barack Obama took office, the number of “long-term unemployed” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is up to 6.2 million.

3: When Barack Obama first became president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.83. Today it is $3.79. This also affects the price of almost everything else that we buy.

4: In April 2009, the average U.S. household spent approximately $201 on gasoline. In April 2011, the average U.S. household spent approximately $369 on gasoline.

5: According to an article in the Daily Mail, the cost of a Memorial Day cookout was 29 percent higher this year than it was last year.

6: When Barack Obama was sworn in, there were nearly 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million on food stamps.

7: According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years.

8: When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.  Today it is 14.3 trillion dollars.

9: The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.

10: 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.

11: The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011.  Thanks to George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress, U.S. taxpayers are standing behind that debt.

12: Under Obama, the U.S. trade deficit continues to grow. The trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009, and the 2011 trade deficit is expected to be even bigger.

13: Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

14: Just since August, 2 million more Americans have left the labor force.

15: In 2010, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure for the first time ever, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.

16: The U.S. real estate crisis just continues to get worse. During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.

17: The U.S. dollar has fallen by 17 percent compared to other major national currencies since 2009.

18: Faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries is rapidly declining.  The mainstream news is not reporting on it much, but right now the Chinese are rapidly dumping U.S. government debt. That is not a good sign.

19: When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs about $1500.

20: Americans seem to be more pessimistic about the economy than ever.  According to a brand new poll, 61 percent of Americans believe that they will not return to their “pre-recession” lifestyles until at least 2014.

Source: The American Dream

1: According to The New York Post, nearly all of the major Wall Street banks are planning huge layoffs….

“Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley currently are among those financial institutions either weighing staff cuts or actually paring payroll.”

2: A new CNBC article claims that a “negative feedback loop” has “taken control” on Wall Street.  Essentially what is happening is that bad economic news is creating an “environment of pessimism” which creates even more bad economic news, etc. etc.

3: OPEC has announced that oil production levels will not be raised. This is likely to spook the financial markets and cause the price of oil to go up even higher in the coming weeks. The last time U.S. energy expenditures were over 9 percent of GDP was back in 2008 and at that point the economy rapidly plunged into a very deep recession. For the first time since 2008 we have reached the 9 percent figure again, and many on Wall Street fear that this could lead to bad things.

4: QE2 will be wrapping up at the end of June, and many on Wall Street had been counting on yet another round of quantitative easing. Over the past couple of days, however, it has started to become clear that is just not going to happen – at least for now. In fact, Pimco’s co-chief investment officer, Bill Gross, is telling investors that for the Fed it will “be difficult to initiate a QE3.” But without artificial stimulation the U.S. economy may start really struggling again, and Wall Street knows this.

5: Moody’s recently warned that it may downgrade the debt ratings of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. Bank stocks were on the cutting edge of the financial collapse of 2008, and it looks like that may happen again this time.

6: Faith in the U.S. dollar continues to decline. Back on April 18th, Standard & Poor’s changed its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned that the U.S. could soon lose its AAA rating. China has been very busy dumping short-term U.S. government debt and there does not seem to be a lot of people (other than the Federal Reserve) that are eager to buy U.S. Treasuries right now.

7: U.S. consumer confidence is already lower than it was back in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed. Consumer spending makes up approximately 70 percent of the U.S. economy and Wall Street is watching this number closely.

8: A whole slew of bad economic news has been pouring in lately. Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently pointed out to CNBC some of the data points that have been particularly alarming….

“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”

9: A whole lot of folks in the financial industry have been warning about the next financial collapse lately. For example, economist Nouriel Roubini recently made the following statement….

“I think right now we’re on the tipping point of a market correction. Data from the U.S., from Europe, from Japan, from China are suggesting an economic slowdown.”

10: According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 48% of Americans believe that it is either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that the United States will experience a “depression” within the next 12 months. Needless to say, Wall Street is highly influenced by the overall mood of the nation.

Source: The American Dream