The U.S. Labor Department reported Oct. 30 that its Index of Employment Costs — which hasn’t declined in 25 years except for the first, “crash” quarter of 2009 — dropped by 0.6% in the third quarter of this year. The Index, which includes wages and all retirement, pension, and health insurance benefit costs for employment of a given hour of labor, is still 2.1% higher than one year earlier. But all that increase and more was the increased company costs of health insurance plans (+3.3%) undera Obamacare. Wages, and all other benefits, fell in real terms over that year.

A Sept. 30 report on wages and poverty issued by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) shows that the wages side of this decline is still continuing.

The study, based on analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, found that since the end of 2009, when recession “ended” and Obama’s “recovery” began, real wages have declined for the majority of all employees in the United States.

For all American workers, the median real weekly wage is down by 4% during this “Obama recovery.” But for those in lower-wage occupations, the loss of income has been greater. For cooks, it is down 8.9%; for food preparation workers, down 7.7%; for personal care and home health aides, the fastest-growing “healthcare job,” the median weekly wage is down 6.6%; for retail salespeople, it is down 5.5%; for waiters and waitresses, down 5.1%, for janitors and cleaners, down 5.0%.

Thus the huge and continuing increase in food stamp use to 50 million; the 22 million Americans now living in “extreme poverty”; the fact, exposed by New York City Congressmen this week, that the average income for all minority households in New York City puts them in the official “low-wage worker” category.

Against this background, the White House wanted to raise Medicare premiums by an average of 15% in 2015 while freezing all Social Security and disability benefits. Congress blocked Obama from doing this, but replaced it with (1) cuts in eligibility for Social Security disability benefits, and (2) cuts in Medicare payments to outpatient clinics operated by or within hospitals.

Financial consultant Jim Rickards, of the Strategic Intelligence newsletter, used that title to describe a Wall Street debt bomb preparing to explode, like the mortgage derivatives bubble which melted down the banking system in 2007-08. Rickards’ piece is published in Australia’s Daily Reckoning financial blog.

Rickards outlines a 2015-16 crash of the commodities bubble, with oil debt blowing out. “The first place losses will appear are in junk bonds. There are about US$5.4 trillion … of costs incurred in the last five years for exploration, drilling, and infrastructure” with inefficient oil recovery at very high prices, which have long collapsed.

“With oil in the US$45-55 per barrel range, that debt will begin to default in late 2015 or early 2016.” In fact, 10 drilling companies have already declared insolvency in and around the Bakken Oil Shale Basin during October.

“That means those debts will need to be written off. How much? That’s a little bit more speculative. I think maybe 50% of it has to be written off. But let’s be conservative and assume only 20% will be written off. That’s a trillion dollars of losses that have not been absorbed or priced into the market.”

Rickards notes that “in 2007, the total amount of sub-prime and Alt-A loans was about US$1 trillion. The losses in that sector were well above 20%. There, you had a US$1 trillion market with $200 billion of losses. Here we’re talking about a US$5 trillion market with US$1 trillion of losses from unpaid debt — not counting derivatives.”

This is a warning about only one part of the immense bubble of debt linked to commodities which have collapsed in price, and the much larger arena of derivatives bets linked to them. One of the largest exposed “counterparty” holders in that derivatives arena is Deutsche Bank, and its crisis, like that of the big commodity companies, is rapidly heading in the direction of the “debt bomb” Rickards indicates.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Russia delivered a public warning Oct. 30 that the Obama Administration is contemplating a world war against Russia.

Dmitri Rogozin addressed journalists after a meeting of the Russian National Security Council, which may have discussed the subject, and denounced the United States’ “current Prompt Global Strike doctrine,” a strategy which plans to suppress an adversary’s (Russia’s or China’s) ability to retaliate against a pre-emptive first strike. Rogozin called it “illusory,” but in unmistakeable terms.

“The U.S. strategists are, for the first time, beginning to have an illusory vision that they may achieve victory over a nuclear power in a non-nuclear war. This is nonsense, this will never happen.” Rogozin said after the meeting, as quoted by TASS.

However, he seemed in fact to be warning of nuclear war, in discussing plans to revive “civil defense” in Russia. “But in the face of this threat, the task is to protect the population,” Rogozin said. “In essence, civil defense and safety facilities for the population are to be rebuilt anew and, most importantly, this activity should be streamlined properly.”

Rogozin made this warning as the largest NATO maneuver in many years, “Trident Juncture,” has gotten underway, including a practice of a pre-emptive strike on Russian forces.

While voices in the U.S. Democratic Party are beginning to attack Obama’s “illegal and unconstitutional” war plans, EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized throughout Obama’s second term that he is capable of, and likely to launch thermonuclear war against Russia and/or China, unless removed from the office of President for which he is unfit.