Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/08-8

For 150 million workers, Tea Partiers pushed through more cuts in the already starved federal programs that are aimed at diminishing the yearly 58,000 fatalities in workplace-related disease and trauma plus larger numbers injured and wounded.

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-downgraded-standard-poors-stock/story?id=14253014

Standard & Poor's today downgraded the debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and 10 of 12 Federal Home Loan Banks that were propped up by the federal government after the financial crisis of 2008. S&P reduced their ratings one notch, to AA+ from AAA, its very highest rating. The agencies guarantee or own more than half of the $5 trillion in U.S. mortgage debt.

Link: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/2011-2020-ten-years-of-us-economic-hell-2011-08-08?link=home_carousel

Warning, in short, that we’re headed into a perfect storm rivaling the disastrous political insanity of the 1930s that prolonged the depression, driving the economy into far reaching global problems that added fuel to an irrational zeitgeist and world war. Over the past decade we predicted the 2000 crash, the 2008 meltdown and the short-lived 2009 rally, and now it seems quite clear that future historians will indeed look back on the 2011-20 decade as the “Worst Decade in American History.” Worse than the “Great Depression” of the 1930s. Totally predictable, totally denied.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/environment/151886/we%27ve_entered_the_age_of_mass_extinction%3A_goodbye_fish_and_a_whole_lot_more/

Mass extinction is finally fighting its way back into the news cycle, thanks to recent scary reports on climate change from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, the United Nations Environment Program and the July issue of Science. But University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward has been there, done that, and he's still depressed as hell.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-07/muni-market-prepares-for-loss-of-aaa-ratings-as-s-p-downgrades-u-s-credit.html

Standard & Poor’s lowered the AAA ratings of thousands of municipal bonds tied to the federal government, including housing securities and debt backed by leases, following its Aug. 5 downgrade of the U.S. The rating company assigned AA+ scores to securities in the $2.9 trillion municipal bond market including school- construction bonds in Irving, Texas; debt backed by a federal lease in Miami; and a bond series for multifamily housing in Oceanside, California. Olayinka Fadahunsi, an S&P spokesman, said he couldn’t provide a dollar figure on the affected debt.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/08/2011889711816877.html

Will economic grievances bring down the government of Binyamin Netanyahu? On Saturday, more than 250,000 Israelis took to the streets in protest over the rising cost of living in the country and the growing social divide it is creating. This social movement of people demanding their share of Israel's new economic prosperity is posing an increasingly powerful challenge to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his coalition.

Link: http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2011/08/08/vulnerability-indigenous-tribes-brazil

According to workers at the Brazilian government-run national Indian foundation, FUNAI, late last week a group of men from a paramilitary faction from Peru, armed with rifles and machine guns, entered Brazilian territory and encircled a remote jungle guard post used by FUNAI researchers to study and protect isolated indigenous tribes near the border with Peru. The incident happened at a FUNAI post known as Xinane, a very remote monitoring location in Brazil's Acre state that serves as a small, five-person research base for the study and protection of isolated indigenous tribes in the region.

Link: http://blogs.aljazeera.net/europe/2011/08/08/eurogeddon

For the last 18 months, the euro has been in trouble. There have been a series of emergency meetings, crisis summits and rescue attempts but still the stench of death hangs around the currency. Its future should become clearer in the next month or so. Just two weeks ago, eurozone leaders were patting themselves on the back for creating the European Financial Stability Facility, a mechanism to help countries who found borrowing on the open markets much too expensive. The problem is that Italy is now in trouble and the EFSF simply is not big enough to bail out the world’s eighth largest economy. Italy has been in trouble for a while – but things started to get substantially worse in June when its credit rating was put on watch by global credit agencies.

Link: http://dont-tread-on.me/got-silver/

Quadrillions of wealth will seek the safety of real tangible assets. Food, Energy, Gold and Silver are the premier asset to be in, but you will need goods to survive the violent transformation of society. This will collapse the faith of the currency and the markets as people panic to get out of free falling paper markets and dive into real things that they need. More money chasing after fewer goods will send the price of real things to unimaginable heights. (Read the 11 Mentality Shifts of Silver Investors.)