The Economy

U.S. consumers have piled up the largest mountain of household debt in the history of the world.  If the federal government was not almost 36 trillion dollars in debt, the fact that U.S. households are nearly 18 trillion dollars in debt would be making a lot more headlines.  Sadly, our entire society is absolutely saturated with debt at this point.  Government debt on all levels is spiraling out of control, corporate debt has ballooned to absurd levels, and consumers have been gorging on debt as if there will never be any consequences.  Unfortunately, a time of reckoning has arrived, and it is going to be incredibly painful.

On Wednesday, we learned that total credit card debt has surged to a brand new record high of 1.17 trillion dollars…

Collectively, Americans now owe a record $1.17 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Credit card balances rose by $24 billion in the third quarter of 2024 and are 8.1% higher than a year ago.

Needless to say, incomes have not increased by 8.1 percent over the past year.

So our credit card balances are growing faster than our paychecks are, and that is a problem.

Meanwhile, total student loan debt has reached a brand new record high of 1.61 trillion dollars.  If you can believe it, a whopping 30 percent of all student loan borrowers have “gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills”…

• Thirty percent of federal student loan borrowers say they’ve gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds.
• In addition to skipping necessities, 38% of people with federal student loans said they carried credit card debt that they wouldn’t have otherwise, the bureau found.
• Around 44% of borrowers said their education debt delayed when they could by a home, and 26% said the debt pushed back when they’d start a family.

If you are a young person that is considering going to college, please try to avoid piling up student loan debt.

It can haunt you for decades.

Overall, total household debt in the United States has skyrocketed to a brand new record high of 17.94 trillion dollars…

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today issued its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. The report shows total household debt increased by $147 billion (0.8%) in Q3 2024, to $17.94 trillion.

What a nightmare.

How did we ever allow ourselves to pile up nearly 18 trillion dollars in household debt?

That is insane!

Our wild spending fueled solid economic growth for a long time, but now most consumers are just barely scraping by from month to month and businesses all over the country are deeply struggling as a result.

For example, U.S. retailers have announced the closing of 6,481 stores so far in 2024…

U.S. retail closures have reached the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to recent estimates.

As of Nov. 8, retailers have announced 6,481 store closures, an increase of 336 closures in just the past week, according to the latest data from Coresight Research. The majority of these closures were driven by American Freight, which is shutting all 329 of its locations as part of its parent company’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Meanwhile, the auto industry is having a very tough time adjusting to lower consumer demand.

Last week, we learned that Nissan will be eliminating “9,000 jobs and a fifth of its manufacturing capacity”…

Nissan Motor shares slumped 6% in Tokyo trade Friday, a day after the Japanese automaker said it would cut 9,000 jobs and a fifth of its manufacturing capacity as it struggles with sales in China and the United States.

On Thursday, Japan’s third-biggest automaker slashed its forecast for full-year operating profit by 70%. It said restructuring would cut costs by 400 billion yen ($2.61 billion) in the financial year to the end of March.

Ouch.

Stellantis is another automaker that has decided it is time to reduce production and lay off workers…

Stellantis is indefinitely laying off more than 1,000 employees at its Jeep assembly plant in Ohio as the automaker significantly reduces its inventory levels to match demand.

Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram, issued Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices to the respective state and local governments as well as the United Auto Workers union.

The 1,100 layoffs at the Toledo South Assembly Plant will be effective as early as Jan. 5.

Sadly, I think that this is just the beginning of very tough times for the auto industry.

The tech industry is facing enormous challenges too.  In fact, chipmaker AMD just announced that it will be reducing the number of workers that it employs globally by about 4 percent…

″As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%,” an AMD representative said in a statement. “We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition.”

At least AMD is still treading water.

There are countless other firms that are falling apart right in front of our eyes.

Spirit Airlines is one of the latest victims.  Spirit’s share price suddenly crashed when it announced that it will be filing for bankruptcy…

Spirit Airlines is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection, it emerged last night – sparking fears among flyers about mass cancelations.

After news broke about the bankruptcy emerged on Tuesday evening, Spirit’s share price plummeted 45 percent in just seconds – erasing hundreds of millions in market value from the carrier. By Wednesday morning, it was down by 70 percent.

The Florida-based low-cost airline is in final negotiations with bondholders on a restructuring plan to secure the support of key creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported this evening. It owes more than $3 billion.

This is what happens when a debt bubble bursts.

At this stage, things are so bad that even CNN is getting ready to conduct some very harsh layoffs…

CNN is planning to wield the axe on some of its high-paid staff after dismal election ratings that cap off a disastrous period for the cable news network.

According to an explosive new report from Puck, network executives will unleash sweeping lay-offs in a bid to save the network’s flailing reputation.

It comes after the departure of stalwart Chris Wallace, and amid reports senior stars like Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper have both been denied raises.

Of course the carnage is not just limited to large businesses.

The percentage of small businesses that cannot pay their rent has reached the highest level since the peak of the pandemic, and that should deeply alarm all of us…

Close to half of small business owners couldn’t pay their rent in September, marking a new three-year high.

According to business networking platform Alignable’s September Revenue & Rent Report, 48% of small business renters could not make their rent payments. That was up from 41% in July and August. And it was the highest it has been since the Covid recovery era in March 2021, when 49% of small business owners were delinquent.

So what is the bottom line?

For years, we were able to enjoy a ridiculously inflated standard of living by piling up staggering amounts of debt.

But now that debt bubble has started to implode, and a tremendous amount of pain is on the horizon.

Going into massive amounts of debt may be enjoyable for a while, but it always catches up with you in the end.

Those that are telling you that there is an easy way out of this mess are not being honest, and we only have ourselves to blame for what is about to happen.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

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It is that time of the year again.  The Social Security Administration has finally released the final wage statistics for 2023, and they are quite sobering.  According to the report, last year the “median wage” in this country was just $43,222.81.  In other words, half of all American workers made less than $43,222.81, and half of all American workers made more than $43,222.81.  That is terrible news, because the cost of living has been rising much faster than paycheck have.  More people are being squeezed out of the middle class with each passing day, but most Americans don’t even realize that this is happening because the media isn’t really talking about it.  Poverty, homelessness and hunger are all growing all around us, and if we stay on the path that we are on the middle class will continue to be systematically eviscerated.

Once upon a time, the vast majority of the country could afford to live a middle class lifestyle.

But now those days are long gone.

A study that was recently released found that it now takes more than $100,000 a year for a typical U.S. household to live “the American Dream” in all 50 states, and in 29 U.S. states it takes more than $150,000 a year…

A household would have to spend more than $150,000 a year to live the dream in 29 of the 50 states, according to an analysis published in April by the personal finance site GOBankingRates.

According to the report, the optimal American lifestyle would cost $137,842 a year in Ohio, $147,535 in Texas, $159,932 in Florida, $194,067 in New York and $245,723 in California.

The state that has the lowest cost of living is Mississippi.

Living the American Dream only costs $109,516 a year in that state.

Needless to say, someone earning $43,222.81 a year is not going to be able to live the American Dream anywhere in the nation.

Even if there are two people earning $43,222.81 a year in the same household, that still isn’t going to get you anywhere close to living the American Dream.

When I was growing up, my father worked and my mother stayed home with the kids, and we were still able to live a middle class lifestyle.

But now most households cannot afford to live a middle class lifestyle even if both parents are working.

After reading that, is there anyone out there that would like to disagree with me about the fact that we have been experiencing a long-term economic decline?

What I have been warning about all these years has been slowly but steadily playing out right in front of our eyes.

Not too long ago, a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll found that only about one-third of the entire U.S. population actually believes that the American Dream “is still alive”…

Only about a third of U.S. adults believe the American dream is still alive, a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll published Wednesday found.

A survey of 2,501 people conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute twelve years ago found more than half of respondents believed the American dream “still holds true,” but now only a third feel that way, according to a recent WSJ/NORC poll of 1,502 adults. The study also found an increasingly large gap between people’s economic goals and what they think is actually attainable — a trend that was consistent across gender and party lines, but was especially common amongst younger generations.

Nobody out there can deny what is happening.

This is our country now, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.

One of the biggest reasons why the American Dream is out of reach for most of the population is because home prices have gone absolutely haywire over the last four years…

Twenty-four percent of likely voters who rent their homes said that “the cost of housing” is the most important economic issue they’re considering as they decide their vote, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS between September 19 and 22.

That’s no surprise: The US is facing a once-in-a-generation housing affordability crisis. In the four years through August 2024, national home prices have risen 45%, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. According to the National Association of Realtors, the median sales price of a home in the US hit a record high this summer and now hovers just below that level.

Renting used to be an affordable alternative for many people, but these days close to half of all renters in this country “spend more than 30% of their income on housing”…

Nor has renting become any easier than buying. Nearly half of US renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, qualifying them as “cost-burdened,” according to US Census data from September.

In September 2024, the median rent in the U.S. was $2,050 a month.

How are you supposed to be able to afford that if you are making just $43,222.81 a year?

Increasingly, America is being divided into the “haves” and the “have nots”.

If you don’t know which group you belong to, let me clue you in.  If you are not making more than $100,000 a year, you are definitely among the “have nots”.

Unfortunately, economic conditions are rapidly getting worse, and we are seeing high profile bankruptcies happen at a pace that we haven’t seen since the global financial crisis.  For example, one of the largest crafting chains in the U.S. just filed for bankruptcy…

Joann — the craft store chain formerly known as Jo-Ann Fabrics — has filed for bankruptcy amid ongoing financial troubles.

But DIYers need not worry just yet: The company’s more than 800 stores nationwide will remain open and its website will stay active as the Hudson, Ohio-based company restructures its finances.

As hordes of businesses fail all over the nation, our historic commercial real estate crisis just continues to intensify.

If you doubt this, just check out these numbers…

The delinquency rate of office mortgages backing commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) spiked to 9.4% in October, up a full percentage point from September, and the highest since the worst months of the meltdown that followed the Financial Crisis. The delinquency rate has doubled since June 2023 (4.5%), according to data by Trepp, which tracks and analyzes CMBS.

I don’t even have to tell many of you what those numbers mean.

We are headed for a historic meltdown, and it is going to absolutely devastate small to mid-size banks from coast to coast.

Meanwhile, most Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month as our standard of living steadily deteriorates.

We are in far more trouble than most people realize, and the months ahead are going to be extremely challenging.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

When nearly half of all small businesses are struggling so much that they can’t even pay their rent, you have an enormous economic crisis on your hands.  The last time that we witnessed anything like this was during the peak of the COVID pandemic, but here in 2024 we don’t have a major global health crisis to blame for our catastrophic economic performance.  In March 2021, 49 percent of small business owners in the United States could not make their rent payments, but that was because so many states had instituted lockdowns which were severely harming the economy.  In September 2024, 48 percent of small business owners in the United States could not make their rent payments, but there is no excuse this time around…

Close to half of small business owners couldn’t pay their rent in September, marking a new three-year high.

According to business networking platform Alignable’s September Revenue & Rent Report, 48% of small business renters could not make their rent payments. That was up from 41% in July and August. And it was the highest it has been since the Covid recovery era in March 2021, when 49% of small business owners were delinquent.

We have a “lockdown economy” without the lockdowns.

Does anyone out there want to try to put a positive spin on this?

Because if you do, I would love to hear what you have to say.

Fox Business interviewed one restaurant owner in California that has tried everything that she can think of to keep her restaurants going…

A regenerative farmer and restaurateur who closed several of her California eateries is now facing the possibility of shutting down her remaining two locations.

Mollie Engelhart, owner of Sage Regenerative Kitchen, said despite her continuous attempts to keep her restaurants afloat, they are “barely hanging on by a thread.”

“It doesn’t feel like we can hold on because I’ve run out of assets to literally liquidate, to keep us above ground and above water,” Engelhart told FOX Business. Engelhart said she and her husband “leveraged everything” including their retirement and home, in hopes that things would turn around.

I feel so badly for her.

But the truth is that there are countless other small business owners that are in the exact same boat.

Our economy really stinks.

That is the bottom line.

Of course many larger businesses are deeply struggling too.  In fact, we just learned that TGI Fridays has just filed for bankruptcy…

Casual dining chain TGI Fridays Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas on Saturday with the company’s executive chairman saying it still has not fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bar and grill chain, known for serving up hamburgers, loaded potato skins and $5 happy hour drinks, said the move was done to “address legacy liabilities and position restaurants for long-term success,” the company said in a press release.

The Dallas-based company says 39 of its corporate-operated domestic restaurants would remain open.

When I first started using the term “restaurant apocalypse” many months ago, a lot of people thought I was exaggerating.

Since then, chain after chain has gone bankrupt.

It turns out that I was not exaggerating one bit.

Meanwhile, the percentage of middle-income households that rate their financial situations negatively has just hit a brand new high…

America’s middle class is feeling the squeeze like never before, according to new data.

Primerica’s latest Financial Security Monitor report for the third quarter found 55% of middle-income households now rate their personal financial situation negatively, a 6-point jump from the previous survey.

“For the first time in a year, a majority of middle-income households are feeling negative about their personal finances,” said Glenn Williams, CEO of Primerica. “In fact, this latest report represents the highest negative rating we’ve seen since we began fielding the survey exactly four years ago.”

The middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and it is getting worse with each passing month.

Last week, I was stunned to learn that hundreds of people had applied to rent a “sleeping pod” in San Francisco for $700 a month…

A company that rents “sleeping pods” in downtown San Francisco for $700 a month has had 300 people apply for its remaining 17 beds, the company’s CEO said.

Brownstone Shared Housing describes its mission as “providing low cost housing in the most expensive cities”. Its bunkbed-style “pods” measure approximately 3.5ft-by-4ft-by-6.5ft, large enough to fit a twin mattress. The pods come with privacy curtains, inside lighting and charging ports.

I still remember the days when you could rent a spectacular luxury apartment for $700 a month.

Now all you get for $700 is a “pod” that allows you to sleep in a large room with a bunch of other stinky people.

The government has been feeding us numbers that indicate that the economy is performing well, but it turns out that they were just an illusion.

For example, we are now learning that the labor market is actually far weaker than we were originally told…

Biden/Harris lied about jobs numbers.

They said in August there were 159k added, there were only 78k.

In September they said 254k, but only got 223k.

In October they expected 100k, but only got 12k.

Will they later revise October’s number even lower?

It takes 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.

And that doesn’t even account for the millions upon millions of people that have been coming into this country illegally.

And the outlook for the months ahead is not good at all.

It is being reported that Nissan “is planning on cutting production of its main U.S. models by 30%”…

In continuing signs that the U.S. consumer is tapped, Nissan is planning on cutting production of its main U.S. models by 30%, according to a new report from Nikkei, which says the cuts could jeopardize the automaker’s 2024 global sales targets.

Nissan forecasts a 99% drop in quarterly operating profit to 995 million yen ($6.52 million) and a 12% decline to 500 billion yen for the year, citing weakening U.S. market earnings, the report says.

The company’s target of 3.65 million vehicles sold for 2024 is now at risk, it says.

If Nissan thought that the economy was about to turn around, they wouldn’t be doing this.

So far in 2024, U.S. banks have shut down more than 700 branches…

US banks closed more than 700 branches in the first nine months of the year, forcing thousands to travel further to access vital services.

Bank of America closed the most locations of any bank, shuttering 132 between January and September.

U.S. Bank followed swiftly behind, having closed 101 of their own branches.

If our banks thought that the economy was about to turn around, they wouldn’t be doing this.

Warren Buffett continues to sell off stocks, and he now has a cash stockpile of 325 billion dollars…

Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate headed by Warren E. Buffett, extended its retreat from stocks in the third quarter, cutting its holdings in Apple and Bank of America and increasing its cash to a record $325.2 billion.

If Warren Buffett thought that the economy was about to turn around, he wouldn’t be doing this.

Let’s be real.

I have been documenting our economic decline for more than ten years, and now we have reached a terminal phase.

Our leaders flooded the system with money and piled up trillions upon trillions of dollars in new debt.

They were able to delay the inevitable for a few years, but now the economy is crashing anyway.

Economic pain is all around us, but what is ahead is going to be even worse.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The economy is the number one political issue in America right now, and it isn’t because the economy is doing well.  The long-term economic collapse that I have been writing about for years is playing out right in front of our eyes, and it is going to have an enormous impact on the outcome of this election.  But don’t just take my word for it.  Survey after survey has shown that U.S. voters are extremely concerned about the direction that the economy is heading.  For example, the following comes from a Gallup survey that was released earlier this month…

The economy ranks as the most important of 22 issues that U.S. registered voters say will influence their choice for president. It is the only issue on which a majority of voters, 52%, say the candidates’ positions on it are an “extremely important” influence on their vote. Another 38% of voters rate the economy as “very important,” which means the issue could be a significant factor to nine in 10 voters.

Voters view Donald Trump as better able than Kamala Harris to handle the economy, 54% versus 45%. Trump also has an edge on perceptions of his handling of immigration (+9 percentage points) and foreign affairs (+5), while Harris is seen as better on climate change (+26), abortion (+16) and healthcare (+10). The candidates are evenly matched on voters’ impressions of who would better address gun policy.

Countless other surveys have told us the same thing.

The American people remember what life was like before the pandemic, and they desperately want to have that back.

In particular, U.S. voters have become deeply frustrated with the cost of living…

“It’s inflation, stupid!” wrote Bernard Yaros, U.S. lead economist at Oxford Economics, in an October 24 report, borrowing from political strategist James Carville’s famous coinage. “Inflation is the foremost issue voters are concerned about, and how it is perceived will determine the election.”

The Biden administration is being blamed for this inflation crisis, and that is going to cost Kamala Harris millions upon millions of votes.

At this moment, demand at food banks is off the charts in many of the key swing states that Harris desperately needs to win.

In Pennsylvania, we are being told that demand “is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic”…

Joe Arthur, who runs the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, told NBC News the current problem is “a hunger crisis.”

“The need that we’re seeing in our localities is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic, yet there are less resources for those families today.”

At one food bank in Michigan, demand is actually “significantly higher” than it was during the pandemic…

One truck can carry enough food for up to 600 households, but some days even that isn’t enough to meet the demand, which has gone up by 18% over the past 12 months, said Ken Estelle, president of Feeding America West Michigan.

“We have never seen this level of need in the 43 years we have been serving this community. It is significantly higher than during Covid and has pressed us beyond our capacity,” said Estelle. “We’ve just seen this drumbeat increase every month of more people and more people.”

And at one food bank in Wisconsin, demand has more than doubled since 2022…

In the relatively affluent Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, Rochelle Gamauf said each week she is seeing new faces at her food pantry, Friends With Food, which she started during the pandemic.

The organization has gone from giving out around 420,000 pounds of food in 2022 to over a million pounds in 2023. On a recent week in September, nearly 400 families came through the door, 48 of whom were coming for the first time — a 50% increase in new families compared to last year, she said.

This is the biggest reason why Donald Trump is leading in the polls in all three states.

A lot of the people that are going to these food banks actually have jobs.

But they aren’t earning enough to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living.

If you go to the grocery store and you completely fill up your cart with food, it is going to cost you hundreds of dollars.

25 years ago, I could fill up an entire grocery cart for less than 50 bucks.

Inflation is a hidden tax on all of us, and it is suffocating millions upon millions of households all over the country.

Of course the Biden administration insists that everything is just fine.

For months, the government has been releasing numbers that look great initially, but later they are revised dramatically lower.

Let me give you an example.  Last month we were told that job openings were rising, but now we have learned that they are actually plunging…

Last month, when Kamala Harris still had some chance of winning the election, we were not surprised to learn that according to the extremely political Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August the number of job openings unexpectedly soared from an upward revised 7.7 million to 8.040 million, which was not only a 3-sigma beat to expectations, but was also above the highest Wall Street forecast. Fast forward to today, when Kamala’s chance of winning are effectively zero – as even the suddenly apolitical Jeff Bezos now admits – and shockingly moments ago the BLS reported that in September, the number of job openings  plunged from over 8 million to just 7.4 million, the lowest since early 2021…

This kind of thing has been happening over and over again.

The American people are sick and tired of being fed fake numbers when they can see that economic conditions are clearly deteriorating all around them.

Our standard of living has been steadily declining for years, and most Americans are just barely scraping by at this point.

I am entirely convinced that most of the experts will be completely shocked by the outcome of this election, and our imploding economy will be the number one reason why so many unexpected voters come out of the woodwork.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

One of the main reasons why Americans are in such a foul mood right now is because the economy is in really bad shape and it just keeps getting worse.  This is very good news for the Trump campaign, because most Americans don’t want things to remain the same.  A desire for change is in the air, but our economy is unraveling so rapidly that it won’t be easy for anyone to turn things around.  We have built up a tremendous amount of momentum in the wrong direction, and it appears that the months ahead are not going to be pleasant.

Just look at what is happening to home sales.

Last month, sales of previously existing homes fell to the lowest level that we have seen since October 2010.

Of course in October 2010 we were dealing with the aftermath of a global financial crisis.

Overall, we are on pace “for the worst year since 1995” for sales of previously existing homes…

Sales of existing homes in the U.S. are on track for the worst year since 1995—for the second year in a row.

Persistently high home prices and elevated mortgage rates are keeping potential home buyers on the sidelines. Sales of previously owned homes in the first nine months of the year were lower than the same period last year, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

Existing-home sales in September fell 1% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.84 million, NAR said, the lowest monthly rate since October 2010.

Let those numbers sink in for a moment.

We haven’t seen anything like this for a long time, and nobody can deny that the market for residential real estate is in a depressed state right now.

And it appears that this month could be even worse than last month, because the number of mortgage applications being submitted is absolutely plummeting…

Mortgage applications decreased 17% from one week earlier as mortgage rates surged, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly application survey for the week ending October 11, 2024.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 17% on both a seasonally adjusted and an unadjusted basis from one week earlier.

Meanwhile, our nationwide commercial real estate crisis just continues to intensify.

If you can believe it, an office building in Manhattan that sold for 332 million dollars in 2006 just sold for 8.5 million dollars…

The sale of a nearly 1 million-square-foot Manhattan office building listed on the online auction site Ten-X was completed Tuesday for only $8.5 million.

That’s 97 percent less than the $332.5 million that the seller, Swiss bank UBS, paid for the Midtown property in 2006. The loss on the building at 135 West 50th Street was minimally offset by a $6 million gain UBS realized by buying and selling the ground beneath it in the interim.

UBS and its brokers at JLL listed the 920,000-square-foot building for sale on the online platform. The two-day auction kicked off July 30 with a starting bid of $7.5 million. The sale ended the next day after Ten-X lowered the reserve price. The winning bidder, whose identity has yet to hit property records, closed about 70 days later.

That is insane!

Commercial real estate prices have been crashing all over America, and this crisis is not getting the attention that it deserves from the media.

The banking industry is headed for big trouble as well.  In fact, the government shut down another bank on Friday…

Friday, The First National Bank of Lindsay was closed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) appointed as receiver. The OCC acted after identifying false and deceptive bank records and other information suggesting fraud that revealed depletion of the bank’s capital. The OCC also found that the bank was in an unsafe or unsound condition to transact business and that the bank’s assets were less than its obligations to its creditors and others.

The OCC is referring the matter to the United States Department of Justice, which has a wide variety of tools to hold individuals accountable for criminal acts and focuses on victims in all of its matters.

Some experts are projecting that hundreds of more banks will soon fail.

If that actually happens, it will be a complete and utter nightmare.

The “restaurant apocalypse” that I have written about so much also continues to roll on.

Sadly, we just learned that Denny’s has decided to shut down 150 locations…

Denny’s is closing 150 restaurants over the next year, and the 71-year-old diner chain is mulling a major change to its 24/7 operating hours.

Fifty locations are set to close by the end of 2024, while the remaining 100 will shutter in 2025, Denny’s announced in an earnings call Tuesday. That amounts to a tenth of its restaurants, leaving 1,375 locations once completed. A specific list of closing restaurants weren’t immediately announced.

Needless to say, lots of other chains are slimming down as well.

Right now, thousands upon thousands of restaurants are being permanently closed from coast to coast.

If the economy was heading in the right direction, this would not be happening.

Speaking of closures, another major retailer has announced that it will be closing all stores…

Buybuy Baby is shuttering all of its stores roughly a year after new owners tried to revive the brand.

The company announced on its website that it is transitioning to an online-only model after recognizing the need for a “a strategic reset.”

“With this shift, we’ve come to the difficult decision of closing our physical stores by the end of this year,” the company wrote. “We understand this may be disappointing news, and we want all our customers to know this wasn’t a choice we took lightly.”

Most retailers that are experiencing difficulties will try to hang on until at least the end of December.

But once we get into 2025, expect a huge wave of new store closures.

As I discussed the other day, U.S. consumers are really hurting at the moment.

You can’t get blood out of a stone, and a staggering percentage of U.S. cardholders have already maxed out at least one credit card…

Nearly 2 in 5 cardholders (37%) have maxed out a credit card or come close since the Fed started raising interest rates, Bankrate’s Credit Utilization Survey found. That includes 20% who have maxed out a credit card and 17% who have come close to maxing one out.

This is what an imploding economy looks like.

Bubbles are bursting all around us, and the outlook for 2025 and beyond is absolutely horrible.

Our leaders kept the game going for a long time by injecting trillions of dollars into the system and by going into unprecedented amounts of debt.

But despite all of their efforts, the economy is coming apart at the seams anyway, and so I hope that you are prepared for a very hard landing.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

A recent survey discovered that 79 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. is on the wrong track right now.  As a nation, we may not agree on much, but this is one thing that almost all of us can agree on.  Needless to say, the economy is the number one reason why so many people are dissatisfied with the direction that the country is heading.  Over the past four years the cost of living has risen much faster than paychecks have, and as a result our standard of living has been going down.  Now we have reached a point where tens of millions of U.S. consumers have been squeezed bone dry, and as a result businesses are failing all over the nation.

Traditionally, the performance of the home improvement industry has been a very important economic harbinger.

And at this moment the home improvement industry is really struggling.

For example, True Value has been doing so poorly that it was finally forced to file for bankruptcy…

True Value, a 75-year old hardware store brand, has filed for bankruptcy and is selling substantially all of its operations to a rival, the company announced Monday.

In a press release, True Value said it will continue day-to-day operations of selling hardware and other homeware tools to its 4,500 independently operated locations during the Chapter 11 process, which includes a $153 million stalking horse bid from rival company Do it Best.

Meanwhile, Home Depot says that sales in 2024 will be down quite a bit from 2023…

The home improvement retailer said it now expects full-year comparable sales to decline by 3% to 4% compared with the prior fiscal year. It had previously expected comparable sales, a metric that takes out the impact of store openings and closures and other one-time factors, to decline about 1%.

In an article that I posted last week, I mentioned that Home Depot has been dumping millions of square feet of warehouse space.

They wouldn’t be doing this if they thought that the economy would be turning around any time soon.

Another giant in the home improvement industry, PPG, has decided the time has come for mass layoffs…

PPG — a global manufacturer of paints, coatings, and specialty materials — is laying off nearly 2,000 workers as it trims operation costs and sells off a chunk of its architectural business.

The cuts will impact about 1,800 positions, primarily in the U.S. and Europe. PPG didn’t disclose when the layoffs would occur.

The Biden administration continues to insist that all is well, but the home improvement industry is telling us a completely different story.

Meanwhile, drug stores continue to shut down all over the nation at a staggering pace.

In fact, Walgreens just announced that it will be permanently shutting down 1,200 stores…

Walgreens said on Tuesday it would shut 1,200 stores over the next three years as new CEO Tim Wentworth plots a turnaround at the struggling pharmacy chain operator hit by sluggish consumer spending and low drug reimbursement rates.

You don’t shut down more than a thousand stores if you believe that good times are ahead.

Let’s be real.

The restaurant industry is also being hit extremely hard in this difficult economic environment.

Last week, I was saddened to learn that TGI Fridays has been closing locations all over the country…

Your ability to enjoy a plate of loaded potato skins and $5 happy hour drinks is slowly dwindling, as TGI Fridays has closed 12 U.S. locations in the past month and shuttered 35 restaurants across the pond.

According to the company’s location section on its website, multiple TGI Fridays locations in the Northeast closed last week, including in Clifton Park, Middletown and Poughkeepsie, New York; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Enfield, Connecticut; and Leesburg, Virginia.

Additional closures from earlier this month took place in the Southeast and Midwest regions, in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, as well as two locations in Minnesota.

If TGI Fridays anticipated that economic conditions would soon turn around, they would try to keep these restaurants open.

But the truth is that the writing is on the wall.

Even churches are feeling the pain.  According to a recent study that was conducted by Lifeway Research, giving has been falling from coast to coast…

A majority of Protestant pastors are blaming a poor economy for their struggling bottom lines after experiencing double-digit declines to zero improvement in financial offerings from churchgoers over the last year, data from a new study released by Lifeway Research show — but the sentiment is divided along political lines.

“National trends of a favorable stock market along with unfavorable inflation and interest can influence a local congregation’s finances, but so do more local factors that contribute to economic problems or prosperity in the church’s community,” Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, said in a statement on the study. “In general, pastors have turned a little more negative in describing economic forces impacting their church this year.”

What do all the examples that I just shared with you have in common?

They all show that most consumers don’t have a lot of discretionary income to spend right now.

Or as Gerald Storch put it during a recent interview with Maria Bartiromo, “consumers are running out of money”…

US corporate media outlets continue to push propaganda that the economy thrives ahead of the presidential elections, cheerleading the most recent retail sales print. However, most Americans know MSM is full of ‘malarkey’ because inflation and interest rates force many to spend more but receive less. Many folks have depleted their personal savings and racked up insurmountable credit card debt just to keep up with rising food, energy, insurance, and shelter costs. This toxic mix of inflation, sparked by failed Bidenomics, has hit low- and middle-income families the hardest, potentially leading to a breaking point this upcoming holiday shopping season.

“It’s very clear that consumers are running out of money. They’re increasingly stressed by inflation and the exhaustion of their pandemic-era savings. When you take a look over the last several years, what you see month after month, everyone talks about, the consumer’s still spending. They might be, but they’re spending less than the growth of inflation,” Storch Advisors CEO Gerald Storch told Fox Bussiness’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday during an interview.

That is the bottom line.

Millions of U.S. consumers have been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and now they are bone dry.

Last year I warned my readers that we had reached an “economic tipping point”, and now things are starting to roll downhill very rapidly.

There is a tremendous amount of frustration that has built up over the past four years, and I think that all of that frustration will play a major role in determining which party wins the White House in November.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

I have a feeling that October is going to be one of the most tumultuous months that we have seen in a really long time.  Ports all along the East Coast and all along the Gulf Coast are about to shut down, and that could throw U.S. supply chains into a state of chaos for an extended period of time.  Meanwhile, vast areas of the South are just starting to recover from a “once in a generation storm” that has done about 100 billion dollars in total damage.  Sadly, economic conditions in those states will not return to normal for the foreseeable future.  On top of everything else, we are less than 40 days away from a presidential election which threatens to absolutely rip this country apart.  If you can’t see the storm clouds that are rapidly approaching at this point, you must have your head in the sand.

Tonight, 45,000 dockworkers from a total of 36 different U.S. ports are scheduled to go on strike…

US ports from Maine to Texas could shut down Monday night if a union representing about 45,000 dockworkers carries through with a threatened strike.

A lengthy shutdown of 36 ports – which handle half of America’s cargo from ships – could raise cause shortages and price increases at big and small retailers alike as the holiday shopping season approaches.

Walmart, Home Depot, Ikea and Amazon – who import tens of thousands of containers a year through ports on the east coast – would be worst hit.

We haven’t seen a strike of this magnitude in nearly 50 years.

Of course 50 years ago we made a lot more of the things that we buy on a regular basis in our own country.

It is being reported that the dockworkers are demanding a pay increase of close to 80 percent…

The International Longshoremen’s Association is demanding a pay rise that works out at about 77 percent over six years. For union members on a typical rate, their wage would go from $81,120 to around $143,520.

Retail expert Neil Saunders of Global Data told DailyMail.om that the strike will cause two main problems – shoppers will face higher prices and empty shelves.

Needless to say, they aren’t going to get that much of a pay hike.

Either they are going to have to lower their demands, or we are going to be facing an extended strike.

If this strike goes on for a month or more, it is going to have an enormous impact on our supply chains.

So if there is something that you really need, I would get it now while you still can.

Of course this is happening at a time when the South has just been hit by a “once in a generation” storm.

There are vast areas that will never be the same after this.  Many are comparing this disaster to Hurricane Katrina, and that is not an exaggeration at all.  At this moment, millions of Americans that were hit by the storm are really, really hurting…

Short on supplies, power and patience, storm victims who saw the brutal force of Helene upend their lives have emerged to a new week, facing the daunting challenge of rebuilding.

Some of the roads and bridges they need to do the job aren’t there anymore. Electricity could be a week away or longer. Emergency services are stretched. Communications infrastructure is in shreds. And neighbors, some of whose own homes are gone, are helping neighbors – all the while worrying about the fate of those from whom they haven’t heard.

At least 102 people have died across six states since Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a mammoth Category 4 hurricane, tore through the Southeast and left millions without power and communications.

We were warned that this storm would be “unsurvivable” wherever it first came ashore, and that was most certainly the case in the small Florida town of Steinhatchee…

As Hurricane Helene pounded Florida’s Gulf Coast this week it virtually wiped the small town of Steinhatchee “off the map” with 10-foot waves and 140 mph winds.

Although the town was evacuated, the 500 people who saved their lives came back to homes and businesses destroyed by the Category 4 storm. “It’s heartbreaking,” Donna Landon told the New York Post. She suffered the total loss of her mobile home.

The Post toured Steinhatchee on Friday, which is located about 90 miles southeast of the state capital Tallahassee. There were few buildings not blown away by the storms and the ones that survived total demolition were heavily damaged. The human cost has been at least 45 dead.

But what made this storm truly unique is that it continued to cause immense devastation hundreds of miles inland.

In North Carolina, entire houses “floated away from subdivisions”…

The rushing water rose five feet higher in the Swannanoa River than anyone had ever seen.

The ground disappeared on South Tunnel Road, leaving a giant sinkhole full of asphalt soup.

Houses floated away from subdivisions. Bridges crumbled. The flood waters flipped semi-trucks into mangled piles. Mud and tree branches and food from local grocery stores flowed into the streets.

Asheville, North Carolina has been completely and utterly devastated.

We are talking about a city of nearly 100,000 people.

Of course North Carolina will be one of the most closely watched swing states during this election.

Will this storm have an impact on how residents of that state vote?

So far, help from the federal government has been very slow to arrive, and people are not happy about that.

Needless to say, this election threatens to unleash a wave of civil unrest that is unlike anything we have ever seen before.

And once it starts, there will be millions of “new arrivals” that will be quite eager to join in.

According to brand new data that was just released, there are approximately “425,000 convicted criminals living in the U.S. illegally”…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials published new data this week indicating there are as many as 425,000 convicted criminals living in the U.S. illegally.

The individuals identified by ICE are listed on the agency’s Non-Detained Docket, a component of its Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. These programs ensure “compliance with release conditions” while ICE works to remove migrants from the U.S.

These aren’t just people that have been accused of committing a crime.

These are people that have actually been convicted of a crime in a court of law.

A CBS News article that attempted to put a positive spin on this number actually admitted that many of these criminals have been in the U.S. for many years, and it also admitted that many of them cannot be deported “because their home countries won’t take them back”…

The bottom line is that many of the convicted criminals described in the letter have been in the U.S. for a long time, before the Biden administration took office, according to government data and officials. Some are still in federal or state custody serving criminal sentences and are likely to be arrested by ICE. And others cannot be deported because their home countries won’t take them back or they received legal relief from deportation in immigration court.

Sadly, the number of criminals continues to rise with each passing day, because more are constantly pouring over our wide open borders.

The stage has been set for widespread chaos on a level that most people don’t even want to think about.

And I haven’t even talked about the situation in the Middle East in this article.

As Israeli forces go into Lebanon, what sort of chaos do you think we will see on college campuses all over the nation?

My friends, a “perfect storm” is here, and the month of October is only going to be just the beginning…

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.