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The slow-motion disaster that we are witnessing on the west coast is unlike anything we have ever seen before.  A series of atmospheric rivers has already dumped trillions of gallons of water on the region, and trillions of gallons of additional water will fall before the end of the year.  This has caused some rivers to rise to the highest levels that we have ever seen.  Meanwhile, some areas in the Northwest have been repeatedly pummeled by extremely high winds.  As you will see below, some of the wind speeds that have been recorded are difficult to believe.  For a long time I have been warning my readers that weather patterns have been going nuts all over the globe, but of course many people will never be convinced until it actually happens where they live.  For tens of millions of Americans that live along the west coast, a wake up call has finally arrived.

According to the Weather Channel, the parade of storms that we have been witnessing will continue to roll on into next week…

A parade of Pacific storms accompanied by atmospheric rivers will continue to march into the West Coast into Christmas week, spreading the threat of heavy rain from already flooded areas of western Washington to Oregon and California.

To say it’s been a terrible stretch of weather in parts of the West has been an understatement.

The last sentence in that quote made me smile.

Yes, “a terrible stretch of weather” would most certainly be an understatement…

First, record flooding hit parts of western Washington. Then, as flood-ravaged areas were recovering, a powerhouse windstorm blasted much of the Northwest and Rockies Wednesday, with winds clocked up to 144 mph and over 160 reports of wind damage in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

I can’t recall a windstorm of this magnitude ever hitting the Pacific Northwest in modern times.

It is being reported that at least nine different states experienced wind speeds of over 100 mph…

High winds slammed the Pacific Northwest and Rockies Wednesday and Wednesday night, cutting power to three-quarters of a million customers at peak, according to PowerOutage.US. That number was down to 325,000 as of Thursday morning.

The highest wind gusts in the region were on mountain tops — 144 mph at Mount Coffin, Wyoming, 142 mph at Coldwater Ridge, Washington, and 138 mph at Mount Hood, Oregon. Winds gusted over 100 mph on mountaintops in at least nine different states.

Now that storm has moved into the middle of the country, and blizzard conditions are expected in much of the Northern Plains…

“Wind gusts of 80+ mph, several feet of mountain snow, and blizzard conditions are in the forecast for the northern and western U.S. today and tomorrow,” the forecast said.

A map included with the post on X showed that while the entirety of the Northern Plains was expected to see some impacts from the storm, some states will likely be hit by widespread major impacts. These include Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Idaho.

But it is the west coast that has been getting hit harder than anyone else.

Some areas of Washington state have already had about 2 feet of rain, and more rain is on the way.

Yes, Washington state always gets rain, but this is truly unusual.

If you can believe it, approximately 5 trillion gallons of water fell on the state in just a 7 day period…

Warm water and air and unusual weather conditions tracing back as far as tropical cyclone flooding in Indonesia helped supercharge stubborn atmospheric rivers that have drenched Washington state with almost 5 trillion gallons (19 trillion liters) of rain in the past seven days, threatening record flood levels, meteorologists said.

The Skagit River rose to the highest level ever recored.

So did the Snohomish River.

Needless to say, many other bodies of water flooded as well.

According to Governor Bob Ferguson, a 49 mile stretch of US Highway 2 will be closed for months as a result of the flooding…

Massive flooding conditions persist across western Washington as another round of heavy rain and wind targets the region, adding to the damage from last week’s historic flooding and raising renewed concerns about vulnerable levees, landslide risks, and long-term transportation disruptions.

On Tuesday, Gov. Bob Ferguson said a 49-mile stretch of US Highway 2 between Skykomish and Leavenworth will be closed for months after floodwaters and mudslides heavily damaged the roadway.

Unfortunately, more rain is in the forecast.

In fact, it is being projected that some areas of western Oregon could get more than 10 inches of rain from this next storm…

A general 4-8 inches of rain is forecast to fall on western Oregon, with slightly less in the Interstate 5 corridor near Portland. From 8-12 inches of rain with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 16 inches is projected for the western slopes of the Oregon Cascades.

This amount of rain will be enough to unleash moderate to major flooding along both small streams and rivers in western Oregon. A few locations may experience crests close to record levels, such as in the Portland area. Motorists should be prepared for areas of high water and road washouts. Mudslides are also a danger with the storm.

Meanwhile, meteorologist Ryan Maue is telling us that the Sierra Mountains in California could see up to 30 inches of precipitation from the “firehose of moisture” that is approaching…

California is looking at historic precipitation from onslaught of atmospheric rivers in next 10-days.

Could be 20″ or 30″ mostly rain in the Sierra from “firehose of moisture” directed right at coast with strong jet stream.

This going to be really bad.

He isn’t exaggerating.

It certainly looks like the next couple of weeks will be really bad.

If you live in an area along the west coast that is prone to flooding, you should be doing what you can to get prepared.

Of course this is just the beginning.

Global weather patterns have been getting increasingly unstable for quite a while, and I am entirely convinced that what is coming in the years ahead will be much worse than anything that we are experiencing now.

We really are living in extremely chaotic times, and the insane weather that we are currently witnessing is just one element of “the perfect storm” that is now upon us.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.

Guess which nation has the most proven oil reserves?  It isn’t Saudi Arabia, although the Saudis rank a close second.  It isn’t Iran or Iraq either.  In fact, the country with the largest proven oil reserves isn’t even in the Middle East.  Canada has a lot of oil, and so does Russia, but neither one of them tops the list.  At a whopping 303 billion barrels, the nation that currently possesses the most proven oil reserves is actually Venezuela…

Venezuela holds the largest proven crude oil reserves globally, estimated at approximately 303 billion barrels as of 2024. These reserves are predominantly located in the Orinoco Belt, containing extra-heavy crude oil that requires advanced extraction techniques.

Oil is what makes Venezuela important.

We are being told that we must go to war with Venezuela to stop the flow of illegal drugs, but the truth is that the amount of drugs coming into this country from Mexico absolutely dwarfs the amount of drugs coming into this country from Venezuela.

So if stopping the flow of drugs is the priority, why aren’t we going to war with Mexico?

We are also being told that Nicolas Maduro is a tyrant and that the elections in Venezuela are rigged.

Of course these days elections are rigged in lots of countries, and there are far worse tyrants than Maduro out there.

Kim Jong Un is one name that immediately comes to mind.

He is so tyrannical that he makes Nicolas Maduro look like Mother Theresa.

So why aren’t we going to war with North Korea?

If we are going to go to war, there needs to be a really good reason.

On Tuesday, President Trump told the world that the U.S. will be stopping all sanctioned oil tankers from traveling to or from Venezuela…

Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us. The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping. For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela. The Illegal Aliens and Criminals that the Maduro Regime has sent into the United States during the weak and inept Biden Administration, are being returned to Venezuela at a rapid pace. America will not allow Criminals, Terrorists, or other Countries, to rob, threaten, or harm our Nation and, likewise, will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Did you notice that President Trump repeatedly focused on the subject of oil throughout that Truth Social post?

Imposing a blockade is a very serious step, and a Justice Department memo from 1961 makes this very clear…

A Justice Department memo from 1961, when tensions were running high between the US and Cuba, said the president could institute a blockade of Cuba, but noted “a blockade is a belligerent act which, as a matter of international law, is ordinarily justified only if a state of war, legal or de facto, exists.”

Throughout human history, a naval blockade has always been considered to be an act of war.

Needless to say, the Venezuelans are absolutely furious…

The statement from Venezuela’s government decried the move, saying Trump “seeks to impose, in an absolutely irrational manner, a so-called naval military blockade on Venezuela with the aim of stealing the riches that belong to our Homeland.”

The government reaffirmed Venezuela’s sovereignty and said its ambassador to the United Nations “will immediately proceed to denounce this grave violation of International Law.”

It is not going to be a small job to enforce this blockade.

According to CNBC, there are currently 34 sanctioned oil tankers in the Caribbean…

At least 34 U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers with a history of carrying Venezuelan oil are currently at sea in the Caribbean, according to a new analysis obtained by CNBC on Wednesday.

And at least 12 of those tankers appear to be filled with crude oil from Venezuela, according to vessel location data from Kpler, a global trade intelligence company.

Are we just going to start grabbing all of them?

The oil that the tanker that the U.S. seized last week was carrying was reportedly worth somewhere between 60 million and 100 million dollars…

The “Skipper” was loaded with an estimated 1.8 million barrels of oil earlier in December before transferring an estimated 200,000 barrels just before its seizure, Reuters reported.

The oil on the tanker is likely worth $60 million to more than $100 million, based on current average oil prices. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for any additional comment on the estimated price tag of the oil but did not immediately receive a reply.

When we seize oil that has been produced by Venezuela, we aren’t just hurting Venezuela.

This is such a critical point.

In 2025, China has been purchasing approximately 76 percent of all the oil that is being exported by the Venezuelans…

Venezuela has produced around 900,000 barrels of crude oil and condensate so far in 2025, accounting for roughly 1% of the total global supply.

Kpler data indicates China buys about 76% of Venezuela’s output.

The Chinese need this oil.

Do you think that they are just going to sit there and let us steal vast amounts of oil that the Chinese economy depends on?

Following the announcement of the blockade, the Chinese accused the U.S. of “bullying” Venezuela…

China has accused the US of “bullying” Venezuela, after Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

In a phone call on Wednesday, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi told his Venezuelan counterpart, Yvan Gil, that Beijing supported Caracas in defending its sovereignty.

If we keep going down this road, we are going to destroy our relationship with China.

Just imagine how we would feel if some other country started grabbing oil tankers that were bringing desperately needed oil to the United States.

There is not a president in history that would have hesitated to order military action.

But we just expect China to sit there and take it.

If we push the Chinese too far, it could have very serious consequences.

It is easy to imagine a scenario in which the Chinese decide that it is an opportune moment to invade Taiwan while U.S. forces are tied up with a regime change war in Venezuela.

And why in the world would anyone think that another regime change war is in our national interest?

Didn’t we learn anything from our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq?

2025 has certainly been a year of war, but a war in Venezuela would have the potential to take things to an entirely new level in 2026.

Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail.

Let’s hope that President Trump pulls us back from the brink before it is too late.

But from where I am sitting, it appears that the decisions have already been made.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.

Frustrated job seekers all over America just got more bad news.  The unemployment rate just hit the highest level that we have seen in four years, and that is yet another indication that the labor market is getting even tighter.  If you currently have a good job that you highly value, hold on to it, because finding a replacement for that job would not be easy in this very challenging economic environment.  In previous articles, I have shared heartbreaking stories from unemployed Americans that have been unable to find work no matter how hard they have tried.  I am going to share more of those stories today.  When you are unemployed and month after month goes by without finding a job, it can really do a number on your self-esteem.  If you have ever been through a stretch like that, you know exactly what I mean.

37-year-old Anna Whitlock thought that it would be relatively easy to find another tech position when she was laid off in November 2024, but nearly a year later she is still searching for work…

When Anna Whitlock was let go from her job in the technology industry in November of 2024, she wasn’t worried about lining up a new position. The Washington state resident had 11 years of experience managing network infrastructure projects, a specialized role that involves equipping buildings with internet access, cameras and wifi security systems.

“The last time I had to job search, I found something pretty easily,” she said.

Almost a year later, the 37-year-old is still without a job. Whitlock said she has applied to hundreds of jobs — even for positions she’s overqualified for — to no avail.

Whitlock is highly qualified and has a ton of experience.

But even though she has applied for hundreds of positions, her job search has gone nowhere, and now her unemployment benefits have run out…

“The more I looked, the more I wasn’t getting responses. If I did have an interview, I only made it the first one or two rounds,” said Whitlock, who has a 16-year-old daughter. “Things got really real when my unemployment ran out.”

There are countless others that are going through the same thing, and their ranks are growing with each passing day.

In fact, even the government bureaucrats at the BLS are admitting that the unemployment rate has risen to the highest level that we have seen in more than 4 years…

The unemployment rate in November rose to 4.6%, the highest level since September 2021.

The November employment report offers a fresh picture of the labor market after a six-week blackout in official data caused by the recent government shutdown. The data suggests that employers in industries ranging from manufacturing to hospitality are hitting the pause button on hiring amid concerns about economic growth and tariff costs, some economists noted.

“Businesses are not hiring as they adjust to tariffs, uncertain conditions and AI. The result is about 700,000 more unemployed Americans than there were a year ago,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, in an email.

In 2021, we were still recovering from the massive spike in unemployment that we experienced during the initial stages of the pandemic.

What excuse do we have now?

According to one prominent economist, the U.S. economy is now “in a jobs recession”…

“The U.S. economy is in a jobs recession,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The nation has added a mere 100,000 in the past six months. The bulk of those jobs were in healthcare, an industry that is almost always hiring due to America’s aging population.”

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

So over a six month period, the U.S. economy must produce 900,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth.

So the fact that we have added only 100,000 new jobs over the last six months means that we are 800,000 new jobs short of what would be required just to be treading water.

Digging deeper into the numbers that the BLS released, we discover that the number of full-time workers in the U.S. fell by nearly a million between September and November…

In November, the number of full-time workers plunged by 983K from September to 134.17 million. At the same time, in the two months since Sept, the number of part-time workers soared by over 1 million (1.025 million to be precise) to 29.486 million…

Wow.

I knew that we were losing good paying full-time jobs, but I didn’t think that it was happening that fast.

Throughout 2025, large companies have been ruthlessly laying off highly paid workers all over the nation.

In fact, Challenger, Gray & Christmas has reported that the number of announced job cuts through the first 11 months of this year was 54 percent higher than the number of announced jobs cuts through the first 11 months of last year…

Americans are growing increasingly terrified about layoffs – and with good reason. Cuts are accelerating, and no industry feels safe. All told, employers have announced roughly 1.2 million cuts so far this year, according to layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas – that’s 54 percent more than during the first 11 months of 2024. Perhaps the most unsettling is that industries once seen as safe harbors for employees – tech, manufacturing and even small business – are now among the hardest hit.

Most of the jobs that are being cut are good paying full-time jobs.

We are talking about the sort of jobs that college graduates work.

Once upon a time, a college degree was a ticket to a good job and a middle class lifestyle, but these days a college degree is a lot less valuable than it once was…

Not so very long ago, the accepted wisdom (or at least the advice that your parents told you over and over again) was that going to college to get a degree would set you up for more success in life, opening doors to interesting careers and bigger wage checks. But new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland suggests that this may no longer be quite so definitive today. In fact, some kids who are fresh owners of high school diplomas may be finding it easier to land jobs than their more educated colleagues.

I feel so badly for young college graduates that are trying to find work right now.

When Jake Fishman graduated from Cornell, he assumed that his degree would open up all sorts of doors for him.

But after applying for over 300 jobs, he is still without a job…

Each morning, Jake Fishman ’25 opens his laptop to repeat the same ritual. Scrolling through Handshake, LinkedIn and Indeed, he submits countless cover letters and resumes that, according to him, rarely get a response.

Since graduating from Cornell’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration in May, Fishman estimates that he has applied to more than 300 jobs and has only heard back from five.

A lot of people assume that those that are unemployed are idle.

But of course that is not true at all.

Searching for work in this environment is essentially a full-time job, and Fishman says that he is “somehow busier than ever”…

“Despite being unemployed, I’m somehow busier than ever,” Fishman said. “Basically, applying for a job is a full-time job.”

While Fishman tells himself that he is bound to find a job as a Cornell graduate, months of unanswered applications made him question that assumption.

I wish that I could tell job seekers that conditions will soon improve.

But I can’t do that.

Yes, economic conditions are really rough right now, but I am convinced that they will continue to deteriorate during the months ahead.

So if you are without work, I would encourage you to grab whatever is available while you still can.

A major economic storm has now arrived, and the intensity of that storm is only going to increase as we head into 2026.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.

We possess technology that would have been unimaginable to people living 100 years ago, we have access to more entertainment than any other generation in human history, and we have been enjoying an artificially-inflated standard of living that has been fueled by an unprecedented debt binge for decades.  So why are so many of us so miserable?  One out of every eight Americans is taking an antidepressant, more than 48 million Americans have a substance use disorder, the suicide rate has been trending in the wrong direction for years, and according to Gallup the percentage of U.S. adults that are currently dealing with depression has nearly doubled since 2015…

The percentage of U.S. adults who report currently having or being treated for depression has exceeded 18% in both 2024 and 2025, up about eight percentage points since the initial measurement in 2015. The current rate of 18.3% measured so far in 2025 projects to an estimated 47.8 million Americans suffering from depression.

We like to think that we are smarter than all of the generations that have come before us.

If that is true, then why can’t we figure out how to be happy?

What we are doing now is clearly not working, and this is particularly true for our young people.

One study found that approximately 42 percent of Americans that belong to Generation Z have been diagnosed with “anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD” or some other mental health condition…

In fact, an estimated 42% of Gen Zers have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD or other mental health condition, with a staggering 60% reportedly taking medication to manage their mental health, according to a study on the respected Psychiatrist.com website.

Nobody can deny that we have failed our young people, and now we have a colossal mess on our hands.

We have never seen a group of young adults that is as unhappy as Generation Z is, and without a doubt they are feeling an enormous amount of pressure from many different directions…

Analysts point to a host of difficult, anxiety-producing issues facing Gen Z, including widespread financial worries – with college costs in the stratosphere, food more expensive than ever, home ownership out of reach for most, and two jobs often needed just to pay the rent.

Then there’s the disconcerting reality that many Gen Zers are not dating or getting married and having families – partly due to economic pressures, high anxiety and insecurity about the future, disillusionment with marriage due to the high level of divorce in their parents’ generation, and widespread reliance on dating apps. But also because they are spending so much time living in a virtual world where they can plug into and commune with every imaginable – and unimaginable – type of individual, cause, “influencer” and community on earth, all recruiting 24/7.

I think that all of the reasons mentioned in the quote above are valid.

But I think that there is another that is more important than any of them.

Over the years, Gallup has found that there is a very close link between loneliness and depression…

Gallup research has shown a strong link between depression and loneliness, as one-third of those who had experienced loneliness the day before were also currently suffering from depression, compared with 13% among those who had not.

After declining from pandemic-era highs of 25% to a range of 17% to 18% through much of 2022 and 2023, reports of individuals experiencing significant loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday” have inched upward again since the latter half of 2024 to 21%.

Even though we are more “connected” to one another through the Internet in this day and age, the truth is that we are more isolated than ever.

As a result, much of the population is desperately lonely.

We were designed to love others and to be loved by others, and if we want to turn our mental health crisis around we need to rediscover the importance of making real human connections.

But instead, many Americans are turning to drugs and alcohol to ease the emotional pain that they are feeling.

A report that was put out two years ago by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that 48.5 million Americans have a substance abuse disorder…

According to a 2023 report by the federal agency Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and above have a substance use disorder.

This is a national epidemic that is getting worse every single year.

It has been estimated that substance use disorders are now costing the U.S. economy more than 90 billion dollars annually…

A new study has found that substance use disorders (SUD) cost the U.S. economy just under $93 billion in 2023 from a combination of missed work, reduced work productivity and lost household productivity.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on December 8, was conducted by a team at the Division of Injury Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Needless to say, drugs and alcohol are not the answer.

So a lot of people that go down that road end up giving up completely.

For decades, the suicide rate in this country has been steadily moving higher…

Since the 1950s, the suicide rate in the United States has been significantly higher among men than women. In 2022, the suicide rate among men was almost four times higher than that of women. However, the rate of suicide for both men and women has increased gradually over the past couple of decades.

This breaks my heart.

So many people are needlessly ending their own lives.

According to the CDC, an American now dies by suicide every 11 minutes…

The level of suicides among our young adults is particularly alarming.

It is being reported that the suicide rate for young adults in the 18 to 27-year-old age bracket jumped by almost 20 percent from 2014 to 2024…

The suicide rate for U.S. adults aged 18-27 increased nearly 20% between 2014 and 2024, rising from 13.8 per 100,000 people to 16.4, per a new analysis of CDC data from Stateline, a nonprofit newsroom.

We have failed our young people.

Here we are at what many believe to be “the happiest time of the year”, and yet much of the population is soul-crushingly miserable.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Previous generations of Americans were much happier, and today there are lots of people that are living lives that are absolutely teeming with joy.

So if you are feeling depressed right now, I want you to know that there is hope.

You may not realize it yet, but you are greatly loved.

Once you learn how to respond to God’s love and the love that others have for you, everything will start to change.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.

Inflation is a tax that nobody can escape.  No matter how hard you may try, the rising cost of living is going to catch up with you eventually, and we live at a time when the cost of living has become exceedingly painful.  The reason why the cost of living has become such an important issue is because those that are running the system have been treating our currency like toilet paper.  Many of us warned what would happen when the Federal Reserve started printing money out of thin air and monetizing the debt.  But instead of learning their lesson, they are beginning to do it again.  And Congress is spending so much money that the monthly budget deficit for the month of October just set an all-time record.  What they are doing to us is literally insane, and the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes.

In so many ways, the U.S. economy is starting to resemble the economy of the Weimar Republic just before hyperinflation kicked in.

As the U.S. dollar rapidly loses value, even high earners are now struggling to stay afloat financially.

If you doubt this, just consider the shocking results of a brand new Harris poll…

• Six figures is survival, not success: 64% of six-figure earners say six figures is no longer a sign of wealth but survival mode — a paycheck that covers costs, not comfort. The benchmark of success has become the bare minimum to keep up.
• The American Dream feels out of reach: More than half of six-figure earners say the Dream no longer feels attainable, revealing a generation of professionals who have achieved everything on paper but feel they’re standing on financial quicksand.
• Where luxury used to live, the basics now move in: Groceries, housing, and healthcare are the top expenses draining even the top 10%. Vacations, savings, and wellness — once staples of comfort — have quietly slipped into the “nice-to-have” category.
• The illusion of wealth is exhausting: Many top earners say people assume they can afford it all, yet behind the image of success are quiet sacrifices: skipped purchases, delayed plans, and a fragile sense of security.
• Credit cards as life rafts: Three-quarters of six-figure earners have used a credit card in the past three months because they ran out of cash, not to collect points. For many, plastic has become the bridge between paychecks.
• Affluence, paid in installments: BNPL use is highest among $200k+ households — the top 10% now financing everyday life, from groceries to gas, in ways once reserved for those just getting by.
• The new middle class begins where old wealth used to end: Six-figure earners now define financial comfort at $200k+, and more than half say they’d need double their current income to finally feel secure. The top 10% are quietly struggling — so what happens to the other 90%?

If nearly two-thirds of six figure earners feel like what they are bringing in is only enough for “survival mode”, what does that say about our economy as a whole?

The truth is that our leaders are systematically murdering the American Dream.

I have been ranting about this for years, and now people all over the country are finally waking up to what they have done to us.

According to a new AP-NORC poll, 87 percent of Americans have noticed “higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months”…

The survey indicates that it’s the level of prices — and not just the rate of inflation — that is the point of pain for many families. About 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 87%, say they noticed higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months, while about two-thirds say they’ve experienced higher prices than usual for electricity and holiday gifts. About half say they’ve seen higher than normal prices for gas recently.

It is virtually impossible to get 87 percent of Americans to agree on anything.

But somehow we are all convinced that grocery prices have been going up.

When I go to the grocery store, I can hardly believe how high prices have become.

Some things are now three or four times as much as they once were.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have witnessed such a dramatic shift.

But this is only just the beginning.

According to Fox Business, the proportion of U.S. small businesses that are raising their selling prices “jumped by an all-time high in November”…

The share of small businesses raising their selling prices jumped by an all-time high in November as inflationary pressure continued to impact businesses and consumers, according to a new report by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).

NFIB’s monthly report on small business economic trends for November found a 13-point jump in the net percent of owners who reported raising their average selling prices, which was the largest monthly jump in the history of the survey.

That pushed the percent of owners saying they’re raising average selling prices to a net of 34%, which is the highest reading in the survey since March 2023. That’s also well above the monthly average of a net 13%.

What this means is that our cost of living crisis is accelerating.

If your paycheck is not keeping up, you are losing ground.

Meanwhile, mass layoffs continue to occur all over the United States.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers have announced a grand total of almost 1.2 million job cuts so far this year…

Americans are growing increasingly terrified about layoffs – and with good reason. Cuts are accelerating, and no industry feels safe. All told, employers have announced roughly 1.2 million cuts so far this year, according to layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas – that’s 54 percent more than during the first 11 months of 2024. Perhaps the most unsettling is that industries once seen as safe harbors for employees – tech, manufacturing and even small business – are now among the hardest hit. That’s left millions of workers asking the same pressing question: How do I avoid getting the chop?

Retail is one of the industries that has been hit particularly hard.

So far in 2025, retailers have announced almost 140 percent more job cuts than they did during the same period in 2024…

For the year so far, the industry has announced 91,954 job cuts, up nearly 140% from the same period in 2024. The cuts are primarily attributable to softening demand, tariff uncertainty and changing consumer preferences, per the report.

As I discussed last week, the tourism industry has also fallen on extremely hard times.

In New Orleans, a lack of tourists is causing the streets to be quieter than they have been in a long, long time…

But in the quieter areas, things are, well, quieter. On a cool December evening as raindrops polka-dotted the pavement, longtime street performer Onunze Ubaka, 72, crooned Motown classics to a virtually empty corner off the usually busy Jackson Square in the French Quarter. Few tourists passed by. Even fewer stopped to drop dollar bills into his white tip bucket.

“You can feel the change,” Ubaka said in between songs from Lou Rawls and The Temptations. Inside his tip bucket, a small pile of greenbacks barely covered the 15-pound dumbbell he started putting in after a young man tried to run off with it.

Ubaka said there’s been a general economic slowdown, in particular a loss of international tourists.

Just look around.

Everything is changing.

You would have to be blind not to see it.

Sadly, a whole lot more pain is on the way.

Printing more money won’t solve our problems.

It will only make things even worse.

Borrowing and spending more money won’t solve our problems either.

Our leaders kicked the can down the road for many years, but now the entire road is coming to an end.

They kept trying to outrun the laws of economics, and for a while they actually thought that they were getting away with it.

But now a time of reckoning has arrived, and it is not going to be fun.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.

Do you remember all of those people over the years that warned us that the cost of living would eventually spiral out of control? It turns out that they were right. Our leaders flooded the system with trillions upon trillions of new dollars, and now we have a real life nightmare on our hands. The value of the U.S. dollar has tanked, the price of silver is up more than 100 percent in 2025, and we are in the midst of a horrifying cost of living crisis that never seems to end. In particular, food prices have become exceptionally painful, and this is hitting those on the low end of the economic spectrum really hard.

The Century Foundation just conducted a survey that came up with some absolutely stunning results.

According to that survey, 34 percent of U.S. registered voters have skipped a meal in order to save money, and 29 percent of U.S. registered voters have “delayed or skipped medical care over the past year”…

• 29% of registered voters said they delayed or skipped medical care over the past year; including 49% of voters under 30 years old, 37% of Hispanic voters and 32% of Black voters.
• 24% said they delayed or skipped buying medicine prescribed by their doctor.
• 64% of poll respondents said they switched to cheaper groceries or cut back on groceries; including 79% of voters under 30 years old, 74% of Black voters, 72% of women, and 71% of Hispanic voters.
• 34% of registered voters said they’ve skipped a meal to save money, including 54% of voters younger than 30 years old, 44% of Black voters, 41% of Hispanic voters, and 39% of women.
• 48% of poll respondents said they tapped into savings to meet daily expenses, including 59% of voters younger than 30 years old, 57% of Hispanic voters, 55% of Black voters and 52% of women.

These numbers are crazy.

Large segments of the U.S. population are now going without the essentials because the cost of living has become so oppressive.

Are you starting to understand why I rant about this so much?

Tens of millions of Americans are really hurting right now.

Just look at what is happening to the price of ground beef.  It now costs about three times as much as it did just 15 years ago…

When I was growing up, my mother was constantly feeding us ground beef.

Now it is considered to be a “luxury meat”.

Our standard of living is being steadily destroyed all around us.

Earlier today, I was shocked to learn that tickets for a Christmas program at a local Baptist church in Texas are selling for up to 71 dollars per person…

A Christmas show at a church in Plano, Texas, has become a flash point in America – a Rorschach test in today’s hyper-political culture.

The ‘Gift of Christmas’ at Prestonwood Baptist Church, as the nearly two-hour extravaganza is called, has become one of the most well-known holiday shows across the US, mostly thanks to social media.

People seem to either love or loathe the ‘Vegas-style’ production at the mega church- complete with a flying Santa Claus and live camels and sheep- with tickets selling from $20 to $71 per person.

What in the world are they doing?

When I was growing up, going to church was always free.

Just about everything that you can think of has become so expensive these days.

And U.S. consumers just continue to become less confident about what is ahead…

A new Gallup poll shows that U.S. consumer confidence deteriorated sharply in November, falling to its weakest level in 17 months as households contended with a protracted federal government shutdown, volatile financial markets, cooling job prospects, and renewed inflation anxiety.

Americans are being squeezed financially from countless directions, and as a result debt levels have been exploding.

Unfortunately, many are now reaching a breaking point.  In fact, the number of foreclosure filings has risen 21 percent in just one year…

If you need proof that Americans are struggling financially, here it is.

Foreclosures — when a bank or lender takes back a home after missed mortgage payments — are continuing to skyrocket.

New data from ATTOM shows the number of homeowners falling behind is rising every single month.

In November, 35,651 properties had a foreclosure filing — up a staggering 21 percent from just one year earlier.

Of course there are vast numbers of people that can no longer afford to live in a home at all.

Millions of Americans now permanently live in their vehicles, and that includes a 50-year-old woman in Vermont named Chandra Duba…

Chandra Duba has been living in an RV outside a friend’s house in Jericho for the past few months, after losing her Section 8 subsidized housing in Winooski. Until last week, she didn’t have electricity, but now she’s able to plug into a nearby solar array.

Duba, 50, works as a delivery driver at Domino’s, where her pay with tips is too high for food stamps but too low for rent in the area, she said. The RV was relatively affordable but partially gutted — the stove is gone, and the heating and cooling systems don’t work.

Duba said she is grateful to have a roof over her head but that she doesn’t see the vehicle as a long-term answer to her housing problem.

She is literally living in an RV without any heat, but she still makes too much money to qualify for food stamps.

This is what life is like in 2025 for so many people.

It turns out that business leaders are also very concerned about where things are heading.  One recent survey found that only 28 percent of U.S. business executives are “optimistic about the U.S. economy’s outlook over the next 12 months”…

The AICPA and CIMA survey polls chief executive officers, chief financial officers, controllers and other CPAs in U.S. companies who hold executive and senior management accounting roles. The survey is a forward-looking indicator that tracks hiring and business-related expectations for the next 12 months.

Twenty-eight percent of business executives said they were optimistic about the U.S. economy’s outlook over the next 12 months, down from 34% in the past quarter. Domestic economic conditions (No. 1) and inflation (No. 2) were cited as top concerns, swapping places from last quarter.

If only 28 percent are optimistic, that means that 72 percent are either pessimistic or declined to give an answer.

Yes, things really have gotten that bad.

Personally, I am particularly concerned about the plight of our farmers.

As I documented in a previous article, farmers in the United States haven’t faced a crisis of this magnitude in decades.

And even though the Trump administration has just announced a 12 billion dollar aid package, many farmers are still facing financial ruin anyway…

A few years ago, Wisconsin soybean farmer Doug Rebout was getting $14.50 a bushel for his crop. Now, amid a trade dispute with China and rising production costs driven by inflation, that price has plummeted to around $9.30.

Rebout’s farm, which grows about 80,000 bushels of soybeans annually, is looking at a $400,000 economic loss due to the drop in prices, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Prior to President Donald Trump’s announcement of a $12 billion assistance package for farmers, Rebout said that though financial aid would help farmers “weather the storm,” many fear the economic uncertainty will linger. Some are worried about losing farms that have been in their families for generations.

It is time for all of us to be honest with ourselves.

2023 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.

2024 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.

2025 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.

That isn’t a coincidence.

That is a trend.

And if you don’t want to think about how difficult things are now, you definitely won’t want to think about where the long-term trends are taking us next.

Inflationary policies lead to inflationary results.

For decades, our leaders have been doing highly inflationary things.

Now we are enduring a historic cost of living crisis that has spun out of control, and that should not be a surprise to any of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.

Why have major tourist destinations all over America been so depressingly quiet in 2025?  Normally tourism accounts for close to 10 percent of U.S. GDP, and that makes it a critical pillar of the U.S. economy.  We witnessed an enormous downturn during the early days of the COVID pandemic, but that was just temporary.  Now we are witnessing a similar downturn, but this time we don’t have a pandemic to blame.  Needless to say, the overall economy is steadily moving in the wrong direction, and that is certainly affecting tourism.  But as you will see below, there are other factors that are very much within our control that are driving tourists away.

When I claim that the U.S. is experiencing a “tourism industry apocalypse”, I am not exaggerating at all.

This summer, many of the country’s top tourist destinations were so empty that they resembled something out of “a dystopian novel”…

Imagine walking into what was once America’s most vibrant tourist destinations and hearing nothing but the whisper of wind through empty corridors. This isn’t a scene from a dystopian novel — it’s the stark reality of US tourism in 2025.

The summer that was supposed to be bustling with laughter, excitement, and packed attractions has turned into a ghost town of economic uncertainty. Take Florida, once the entertainment paradise of America, where over 15,000 Walt Disney World employees now face the terrifying prospect of reduced hours or complete layoffs — right in the middle of peak tourist season.

In the past, I have written about how a vacation to Disney World has become so ridiculously expensive that it is now out of reach for most middle class families.

But that doesn’t fully explain why international visitors to Florida fell by 38 percent in just one year…

The numbers are brutal. International visitors to Florida have plummeted by a staggering 38% in just twelve months. Hotel bookings from Orlando to Miami have nosedived by 27%, creating what experts are calling a “post-pandemic crisis without a pandemic”.

But this isn’t just about empty hotels and quiet theme parks. It’s about the human stories behind these statistics. Workers who built careers around tourism are now facing an uncertain future. The problem runs deeper than just fewer tourists — it’s about systemic vulnerabilities in tourism-dependent economies.

Many would argue that conditions in Las Vegas are even worse.

There are thousands upon thousands of empty hotel rooms every night, and many casino floors are eerily empty these days…

Agitators in the city have attempted to document the deterioration by posting ominous images of barren casinos, conjuring the perception of a place hollowed out by economic armageddon. The reality is more nuanced, but it is true that practically every conceivable indicator tracking tourism to Las Vegas is flashing warning signs. Hotel occupancy has cratered. Rooms were only 66.7 percent full in July, down by 16.8 percent from the previous year. The number of travelers passing through Harry Reid International Airport also declined by 4.5 percent in 2025 during an ongoing ebb of foreign tourists, for familiar reasons. Canadians, historically one of the city’s most reliable sources of degenerates, have effectively vanished. Ticket sales for Air Canada jets flying to Las Vegas have slipped by 33 percent, while the Edmonton-based low-cost carrier Flair has reported a 62 percent drop-off. Those last data points have provoked the city’s mayor, Shelley Berkley, to engage in some emergency diplomacy. In September, she implored our neighbors from the north to make their prodigal return to the Strip.

“I’m telling everyone in Canada, please come,” she said. “We love you, we miss you, we need you.”

We don’t like to admit it, but we are very dependent on our neighbors to the north.

Canadians normally account for approximately 30 percent of all international visits to the U.S. each year.

But this year it has been a completely different story…

From Washington state to northern New England, American businesses that have long depended on Canadian visitors are seeing traffic dry up — and with it, a crucial source of revenue.

A new report shared exclusively with Fortune by the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) – Minority, a congressional standing committee dating back to 1946 responsible for documenting the economic conditions of the U.S., details how a sharp drop in Canadian tourism is hitting every U.S. state along the northern border.

For many border communities, maintaining a healthy level of visitors from Canada is a matter of economic survival.

If there is a substantial drop in Canadian visitors, many businesses will simply cease to exist.

If you live in a community near the Canadian border, you know exactly what I am talking about.

So the fact that the number of vehicles crossing over the border from Canada has dropped so precipitously is extremely alarming…

From January to October 2025, the number of passenger vehicles crossing the U.S.-Canada border fell by nearly 20% compared with the same period in 2024, according to the JEC analysis, which draws on U.S. Customs and Border Protection travel statistics. In some border states, the decline reached 27%, a shift that local tourism agencies say is showing up in fewer tourists, more hotel vacancies, and weaker sales.

Other than during the early days of the pandemic, we have never seen anything quite like this.

One woman that runs a gift shop in northern New Hampshire says that she can count the number of Canadian tourists that she has encountered this year on one hand…

In northern New Hampshire, the absence of Canadian license plates is especially stark. “Being only eight miles from the border, normally Canadians make up anywhere from 15-25% of visitors. Now, I can probably count the number of Canadian visitors on one hand. I’m just trying to plug along and keep my nose above the waterline,” said Elizabeth Guerin, owner of the Fiddleheads gift shop in Colebrook, New Hampshire.

Everyone knows what has happened to our relationship with Canada over the past year.

And now the Canadians are showing us exactly how they feel about it.

We need people to come here and spend their money.

So it is important to be friendly.

Unfortunately, we continue to implement even more measures that will make it even more difficult for foreign visitors to come to this country.

For example, it appears that millions of foreign visitors will soon be required to submit “five years of their social media history” before entering the United States…

The Trump administration is proposing to ask visitors from several dozen nations that enjoy visa-free travel to the U.S. to submit additional personal information before entering the country, including five years of their social media history, the Department of Homeland Security said in a notice this week.

Citizens of 42 countries enrolled in the visa waiver program can generally come to the U.S. for up to 90 days for tourism or business travel, without needing to apply for a visa at an American embassy or consulate, a process that can take months or even years.

The list of countries in the visa waiver program includes many European nations like the United Kingdom, Germany and France, as well as some U.S. allies around the world, including Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

The tourism industry is already in critical condition.

Are they trying to finish it off?

Of course even if we were as welcoming as possible, a lot of tourists would still shun us because of how expensive the U.S. has become to visit.

When one author wrote that we have built “a tourism economy designed to extract maximum revenue from every interaction”, he was right on target…

America has become too expensive to visit, and the tourism industry refuses to admit it. We’ve turned travel – and living – into an extraction operation, and we’re surprised when people stop coming.

America has lost the plot. We built a tourism economy designed to extract maximum revenue from every interaction, and it’s backfiring spectacularly. We have priced ourselves out of our own welcome mat. What once felt like a promise to the world is now an obstacle course, a trip measured not in miles but in fees, surcharges, and the steady erosion of goodwill.

I’ve spent nearly 15 years observing this industry at Skift, watching as we’ve collectively convinced ourselves that premium travel’s resilience somehow masks the fundamental rot beneath. But the cracks are showing, and they’re widening faster than anyone wants to admit.

If we want tourists to visit, we need to stop ripping them off.

At this stage, the vast majority of America’s most prominent tourist destinations are only affordable for the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy.

And the gap between the rich and the rest of us just continues to grow.

According to one recent report, the top 0.001 percent of the world’s population has three times as much money “as the entire bottom half of humanity”…

Fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity, according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that urgent action has become essential.

The authoritative World Inequality Report 2026, based on data compiled by 200 researchers, also found that the top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90% combined, while the poorest half captures less than 10% of total global earnings.

Wealth – the value of people’s assets – was even more concentrated than income, or earnings from work and investments, the report found, with the richest 10% of the world’s population owning 75% of wealth and the bottom half just 2%.

If you are at or near the top of the pyramid, life is good.

But for those in the bottom half, things are really rough.

History has shown us that when the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” gets too large, really bad things can happen.

We have already seen eruptions of civil unrest all over the globe throughout 2025, and I am convinced that this is just the beginning.

Reviving the middle class should be a priority for leaders all over the globe.

And if we want to have a sustainable tourism industry, we need to make tourism affordable for the middle class again.

Unfortunately, the tourism industry has become yet another example of the rampant greed that is now permeating our society, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.

$60 silver is here!  The exponential rise in the price of silver that we have witnessed in recent months is astounding experts all over the globe.  So far in 2025, the price of gold is up about 60 percent, but the price of silver is up more than 100 percent.  We have never seen anything like this before, and there are some very specific reasons why this is happening.  Fortunately for silver investors, it appears that conditions will continue to be very favorable as we roll through the early months of 2026.

Many of us had been anticipating that the price of silver would smash through the $60 threshold and stay there this week, and that is precisely what occurred on Tuesday…

Gold rose on Tuesday as traders remained optimistic ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision, while silver rose to hit the unprecedented $60 per ounce milestone as the white metal faced supply constraints.

As I write this article, the price of silver is sitting at $61.22 an ounce.

It seems like just yesterday we were talking about $50 silver, and now some analysts are projecting that it will hit 70 dollars an ounce during the first half of next year…

Gold has shrugged off the jobs report, Haberkorn said, and added “we could see silver trade over $70 an ounce in the first half of 2026, and gold is on a path towards $5,000 an ounce.”

This is amazing news for silver investors.

But hardly anyone is talking about the real reasons why this is happening.

Right now, hundreds of giant AI data centers are being constructed all over the United States.

Hundreds of others are going up in various other nations around the world.

Many of these AI data centers are powered by solar energy, and approximately 300 metric tons of silver are required for just one 500 megawatt solar array…

Tech giants have pledged to power their AI data centers with renewable sources. That means an explosion of new solar installations — and each solar panel uses roughly 20 grams of silver in its photovoltaic cells.

A single 500-megawatt solar array — enough to power one hyperscale data center — requires roughly 300 metric tons of silver. Multiply that by the hundreds of new data centers being built worldwide, and the connection between AI and industrial silver demand becomes undeniable.

As long as the AI boom continues, demand for physical silver will remain strong.

Of course silver is used in thousands of other high tech products as well, and that is why it is being anticipated that there will be strong industrial demand for physical silver for at least the remainder of this decade…

“People are anticipating that there’s going to be strong industrial demand for silver for years to come, which is why it’s been bid up, the silver price,” said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at City Index and FOREX.com, adding that the buying momentum is strong at the moment.

Sectors including solar energy, electric vehicles and their infrastructure, and data centers and artificial intelligence will drive industrial demand higher through 2030, the Silver Institute industry association said in a research report.

Meanwhile, the behavior of the BRICS nations is also driving the price of silver higher.

Demand for physical silver in India has been off the charts, and it went even higher once the Reserve Bank of India decided to “allow consumers to monetize their physical silver holdings”…

In a report published this summer, Metals Focus noted that India is the world’s second-largest market for physical silver investment, accounting for nearly 80% of global silver bar and coin demand. The research firm also noted that India has long been the world’s largest consumer of silver jewellery and silverware by volume.

In an updated report, the analysts said that over the last five years, Indians — particularly lower-income consumers in rural communities — have purchased an estimated 29,000 tonnes of silver in jewellery and 4,000 tonnes in coins.

Metals Focus added that they see a potential game-changing development for the silver market as a new rule from the Reserve Bank of India will allow consumers to monetize their physical silver holdings.

I don’t think that demand from India is going to slow down any time soon.

Russia is another BRICS nation that is having a sizable impact on the silver market.

In late 2024, Russia’s central bank decided to start purchasing silver for its State Reserve Fund, and since that time the price of silver has dramatically outperformed the price of gold…

Silver is moving out of a long shadow cast by gold, its precious metal sister with hints of a major new buyer, Russia’s central bank, starting to influence the silver price which has risen to a 14-year high.

Data is scarce but since Russia revealed a plan late last year to add silver for the first time to its State Reserve Fund the silver price has outperformed gold.

Last but certainly not least, China recently decided to impose very significant export restrictions on silver starting in 2026…

The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (MOFCOM) has issued Announcement 2025-No. 68, imposing stringent conditions on the export of three critical minor metals – tungsten, antimony and silver – for the period 2026-2027. The move reflects China’s intensifying resource-security agenda and tighter export controls over strategic materials.

The Chinese want to ensure that they will have enough physical silver for the data centers that they will need to win the global race for AI dominance.

Supplies of physical silver have been getting tighter and tighter, existing mines can only produce so much, and we are being told that “it takes many years to get a new one up and running”…

The world’s mines are expected to produce only about 813 million ounces of silver this year, slightly less than they did in 2021, according to the Silver Institute. Mines can only produce so much each year, and it takes many years to get a new one up and running — something that puts a cap on supply.

Right now, approximately 50 percent of global silver production comes from Central America and South America.

In fact, Mexico produces more silver than anyone else.

So that suddenly makes Mexico a much more important piece on the global chessboard.

Thanks to the AI boom and the behavior of the BRICS nations, silver is now the hottest precious metal on the entire planet.

And if you think that things have been crazy this year, just wait until you see what happens in 2026.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine 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.